Thanks for joining me for this time together during this episode for the Lessons from the Playroom podcast, I am really excited to have this conversation with you. We’re going to talk about something that is super interesting to me. I hope you find it super interesting.
It’s the nervous system. For those of you that have been my students and have studied with me for a long time, you know that I love talking about the nervous system. But today we’re going to talk about it in a different context.
We’re going to talk about it in the context of understanding family dynamics. And I’m going to share with you a little bit about the collective nervous system of the family and your role in helping support the regulation of that system. So let’s jump in here.
If you are a notetaker, this might be one of those podcasts where taking notes might be interesting. I’m going to hopefully say some things that you haven’t really considered before. And again, these conversations are just to create conversation, to help you get curious, help expand your thinking.
It’s the things that I have picked up along the way that have been meaningful for me on my journey and I hope that they land is meaningful for you. So we’re talking here about the nervous system of the family system. And what I mean by that is that we are so used to thinking about looking at the nervous system in an individual way.
So the child’s nervous system or the parent or caregiver’s nervous system, or if there’s a couple, right, the nervous system of each partner. But we don’t often talk about the collective nervous system of the whole system and what’s going on there. So it is true.
Each member of the family has their own individual nervous system. And their nervous system is doing what it does, which is that when the individual is perceiving some type of a challenge the nervous system is helping out by revving up to take the challenge on or by going into a more dorsal collapse withdrawal expression to support the individual in being able to defend in that kind of a way. And we all have this.
This is happening moment to moment. By the way, it’s not accurate to say that somebody lives in a particular state of activation because the activation is a reflection or an extension of whatever perception you’re having in any given moment. So your nervous system is actually really fluid.
You’re actually constantly shifting from sympathetic to dorsal. Sometimes you’re even in both if you’re not aware that that’s a possibility. It’s also not true that you’re just in one state or another.
The nervous system is much more dynamic and swirly than that. So we also, because of our own life experiences, because of our perceptions, because of our own development, our own relationships, we’ve had with ourself, our own templates, patterns, et cetera, we also all tend to have we’ll call it the go to. So the system tends to default at times towards either a sympathetic or a dorsal.
When challenges come on, you might even just pause there and think about that for yourself. Do you tend to be more of a dorsal individual or do you tend to be more of a sympathetic individual? I know my system tends to rev when I perceive a challenge. It tends to want to take the challenge on or go head to head with the challenge.
So mine tends to rev up into sympathetic expression. Also a reminder that sympathetic isn’t also take the challenge on in terms of like, I’m going to fight it. The rev is also anxious.
So you can also rev up in anxiety, which keeps your system highly alert, attempting to take the challenge on. So there’s just a little bit of a review there just so that we can set the stage for this conversation. And also our nervous system is helping us move into ventral when we are able to connect to ourselves and when we have a neuroception of safety with people in our environment or with the environment.
So again, the nervous system is doing so many things to help us ultimately stay connected. Now, the thing that the nervous system is also trying to do I just gave you a little clue here it’s trying to keep us connected. It’s also trying to, in a sense, bring us back into our own sense of homeostasis, bring us back into our own inner alignment, if you will.
I want you to hold that concept because that’s part of what’s happening on a larger scale with the nervous system, the collective nervous system of the family unit. So we can picture this, right? We’ve got all these members of the family, they each have their own nervous system expressions. And these nervous systems are also talking to each other and saying hello to each other and we can picture this.
Well, now I want us to zoom out and I want us to begin to understand that the nervous system of the family unit is actually always in balance. So what do I mean by that? Well, because the system is also trying to arrive at a place of homeostasis and the system is also trying to connect to itself, if you will, or come home within itself, if you will. The system is also having to play out different expressions of the nervous system almost in a polarity kind of way.
So let me give you some examples in case what I’m saying right now is making you scratch your head. So here’s one that I think that many of you might be able to relate to. So let’s take a system that has two kids.
It is not uncommon in the system for one child in the system to tend to specialize in more dorsal and the other one to specialize in more sympathetic. It’s also not uncommon in a system let’s take two people in partnership where one partner tends to be more sympathetic in their go to and another tends to be more dorsal in their go to. It’s also not uncommon.
I’m going to give you lots of different common patterns so you can think about this in terms of your own system and then the families that you’ve worked up with. It’s also not uncommon if you have, let’s say, two caregivers in the system that tend to be more sympathetic in their expression. It’s also in that system the system is almost destined to have a child in that unit that is going to specialize in dorsal.
If you have a system where you have two caregivers as an example or one caregiver that’s incredibly, incredibly dorsal that system is almost destined to have another member of the family, usually a child, but not necessarily that’s going to specialize in sympathetic. So as I am saying these different examples, I want you to hear that there’s a balance when the system is well, let me give you another visual here. I know you can’t see me, but if you can picture this if you can picture that in my hands I’m holding a balloon, okay? And let’s say that somehow in the balloon I could take my hand, one hand and I could squeeze half of the balloon.
See if you can picture that. I’m squeezing half of the balloon. And as I squeeze half of the balloon, it forces the air to expand in the other side of the balloon.
Or let’s say now the side of the balloon that’s expanded. If I took my hand and I now contracted it down it would try to force air into the other side that was once contracted, it would try to force that to expand. Or if I took both hands and squeezed it down in the balloon the air would attempt to try to go out expand the balloon out sideways.
What I want you to see here is that the energy in the balloon is constantly moving as I move it down. We could call that as we go dorsal, it’s forcing the expansion of we’ll call that sympathetic. As the expansion or the contraction of the sympathetic moves into dorsal it forces the expansion of the energy that I know we’re using the metaphor here from dorsal out to sympathetic.
A family system, everyone is no different. When you have someone in the system that specializes in sympathetic and they’re very, very sympathetic, others in the system have to go dorsal to balance that out. If you have someone or a couple of people in the system that tend to go more dorsal, you’re going to have individuals in the system that are going to become more activated and are going to express themselves sympathetically to balance out the system.
That’s what I mean when I say that the collective nervous system of the family is always in balance. That is an interesting concept because when we look at family systems and family dynamics, we’re often trained to look where the we’ll use the word dysfunction is. I, by the way, find that to be a really OD word because all behavior ultimately has a function and has a purpose.
So the word dysfunction doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m going to use it because that’s a word that we hear just so that you can understand the concept that I’m explaining. We tend to think of, oh, the system needs more balance. What I want you to get is that the system is always balanced.
Always. Now, sometimes it’s balanced out as an extreme state, extreme hypo, extreme hyper or extreme sympathetic, extreme dorsal, or it’s a little bit more the expression of the nervous system isn’t quite as extreme, but that’s still balanced. And that’s just as balanced as it was out at the extremities.
I want you to maybe think of like a scale. A scale tipped in a large direction is just as balanced as a scale that’s not tipped in quite such a large direction, but the system itself is still balanced. When we can look at it through that lens, we start to see that there’s order in the family unit, that there’s roles that people are playing, that the nervous systems are doing their job.
By attempting to keep the system equilibrated, it’s attempting to keep the system in a place of homeostasis, if you will. I know I just mentioned that word dysfunction, but I just want to come back to that as you’re thinking about this from that perspective, maybe also think about, okay, well, if that’s true and the system is always in balance, maybe the behaviors in the system, maybe there’s also some function to them as well. And so maybe this idea that a system is dysfunctional or not balanced, maybe that’s simply not true.
Maybe that’s impossible. From when you look at it from a perspective of energy and you look at it from a perspective of health and wisdom and that the system itself is always up to something and it’s always attempting to maximize its growth and it’s constantly trying to maximize its evolution. I’m taking a breath right now because truly this topic is so exciting to me.
It’s such a cool lens. So I’m just going to take a breath and feel my feet on the floor so that I don’t start talking so fast that you’re listening, going slow down. Lisa.
This is one of the topics that we get into a lot in the certified Synergetic play therapy course where we really unpack all the details. But I just want to give you some nuggets here to think about. So that’s the first piece.
I just want you to get that there is a collective experience of the nervous system and that the system itself is attempting to equilibrate itself and that the nervous systems are playing a part in that. Let me give you another one that I know is probably familiar to you. Chances are you have had a child on your caseload that was part of a sibling unit.
And they came in and let’s say that when they were working with you, that they were working with you primarily on behaviors that we could classify in the sympathetic category. And let’s say that they were able to regulate a bit more and that some of those expressions integrated. And then let’s say you discharged that client and then right away you get a phone call from the family, from the parents saying, oh my gosh, my other child who used to be quiet is now acting out.
My other child who used to not give me any problems is now acting out in doing the very things that the other kid was doing. Sometimes you hear language like, oh, they must have been copying them. What I want you to understand is that the system shifted.
So because again, the system is attempting to equilibrate itself, when one individual in the system was able to integrate part of what was going on for them, that contributed to the activation. It shifted the energy in the system. And because it shifted the energy in the system, it gives the possibility for new expressions in the system.
So the child that was once dorsal now has an opportunity to move into a different kind of expression. So it’s not that they were copying, it’s that the system moved. Everything shifted and therefore there’s new expressions.
So I’m just going to again leave you with that thinking that through just to keep in mind this idea that the system is always balanced. The system is constantly trying to equilibrate itself. And the system itself, there is a collective nervous system, if you will.
Okay, let’s now move into what do you do with this information clinically? Well, for those of you that do family work, what you are doing is you are becoming the external regulator for the system itself. And what you are doing is you’re regulating the collective nervous system energy. Now this is the same, by the way, for classrooms and groups.
I’m just going to mention this here. If this concept that I’m talking about is interesting to you and you do work in classrooms or you do work with groups, I am going to encourage you to go check out the Synergetic Education Institute, because this is one of the things that we work with teachers on understanding, so that they have a better way of learning how to regulate their own system as well as the classroom at large. Because one of the things that we can think is, okay, well, this family system has five members in it.
How do I regulate five nervous systems that are attempting to equilibrium? How do I do that? And there’s two pieces here. One is there’s going to be a collective experience of the nervous system which you are going to feel in your own body. So if the system tends to be more dorsal, if that’s the primary charge in the moment, if you will, or the primary expression in the moment.
Because remember, it’s constantly shifting and changing. So the system can as a whole also be moving from dorsal to sympathetic and back and forth and all of that. So whatever is present in the moment, if the dorsal is the most present, you’re going to feel that.
If the sympathetic is most present, you are going to feel that your work within that is to learn how to connect to yourself and how to be with that activation inside of your own body. So how do you sit with dorsal? How do you sit with the sympathetic activation so that you can stay connected to yourself so that you can then co regulate the system? Now, yes, it is true that you are regulating five nervous systems. But here’s the tip that I want to give you.
I want you to find the most Dysregulated individual in the system. And that’s not necessarily the sympathetic person. It could be the dorsal person.
The dorsal person sometimes, by the way, holds a lot of energy in the system because the system itself starts to circle around that individual because that energy you get pulled down into dorsal. There can even be a walking on eggshells kind of an experience that can happen also. So sometimes dorsal is actually the biggest energy in the room.
Can also be sympathetic as the biggest energy in the room. So we’re looking for the most Dysregulated nervous system. And then what you’re doing is you’re co regulating with them and you are designing regulation activities for that individual, recognizing that as you regulate the most Dysregulated individual in the group, that everyone else is going to follow suit because their nervous system is influencing the rest of the nervous systems in the system.
So I want you to take that little nugget. I want you to identify. So maybe you’re having a family session and maybe it’s the four year old in the room that is the most Dysregulated.
So what can you do to create a regulation experience or to co regulate with or to create regulation activities between the parents and the four year old, however you approach it. But how do you create regulation for the four year old recognizing that then that nervous system is going to affect the other nervous systems? Maybe in, for example, a classroom setting. Maybe there’s someone in the classroom that is incredibly dorsal.
Great. So how do you create a regulation activity there? Maybe it’s an invitation for everyone to stand up and gently move their body. Maybe it is an invitation to do some artwork.
Who knows? But what do you need to do knowing that individual to support their nervous system? Because again, recognizing that their nervous system is impacting all the rest of the nervous systems. So I’m going to review a couple of things that I have said. As I mentioned, we go into depth in this in the certification program.
So I know I’m just giving you some high level, big picture things to think about. I know that this isn’t a full course, but here’s number one, the family system is always balanced and it’s always attempting to equilibrate itself. Number two, when you’re with this system, you’re going to feel the collective activation and you’re going to feel whatever is the strongest in the moment.
So you’re going to feel the dorsal, you’re going to feel the sympathetic. What do you need to do in those moments to connect to yourself? Because that’s number one in co regulation so that then you can regulate the system. Number three, as you are thinking about regulating the system, can you identify who in the group is the most Dysregulated and how do you support the regulation of that individual? I’m going to say one more thing about that last one because what we’re always working towards in the family unit ultimately is to support the parent or caregiver in being able to regulate the child.
So even if it’s, for example, the four year old that you’ve identified as being the most Dysregulated, how do you support the parent first in being able to connect to themselves so they can then co regulate with you and co regulate with the four year old in supporting the nervous system of the family unit. And maybe it’s one of the parents that’s the most dysregulated. In which case you are stepping in to regulate the parent so that the parent’s nervous system then can then influence the nervous systems of the rest of the individuals.
So everyone, I hope you found this interesting. I hope you found a little nugget in here that’s making you scratch your head, go going what? If nothing else, even this normalizing, maybe your own family dynamic, if you’re saying, oh my gosh, Lisa, you described my family when you were talking about I’ve got one kid that goes this way and another kid that goes this way or I tend to be more dorsal and my partner is more sympathetic. And I want you just to recognize that there’s wisdom there’s wisdom in the nervous system expressions that are occurring in your family unit.
And to get curious about that. Okay, listeners, thanks so much for being with me in the last 2020 plus minutes while I introduced you to this idea. And wherever you are in the world, I invite you to take a breath check in with your own nervous system.
I’m taking a deep breath with you. Take care of yourselves, everyone. You’re the most important toy in that playroom.
