Does Your Capacity Exceed The Demands On You?

Dr. Aimie Apigian is an M.D. and a trauma expert. In her new and highly recommended book, The Biology of Trauma: How the Body Holds Fear, Pain, and Overwhelm, and How to Heal It, she talks about how trauma is not an event, but the body’s reaction to something that at one point overwhelmed the nervous system, and triggered a trauma response: either fight or flight, freeze, or fawn.

If the trauma response was not properly dispersed at the time, it can get stored in the nervous system. Then whenever some event similar to the first trauma occurs, the body/brain may have the same trauma response.

No doubt you’ve experienced this yourself. Did you ever “fly off the handle” over some little thing and wonder what on earth set you off? You got dysregulated. At that moment, the demand on your nervous system, possibly triggered by some unconscious unhealed “heart issue,” exceeded your capacity.

Dr. Apigian points out the demand can be great or small. But any time demand exceeds the system’s capacity to deal with it, a trauma response occurs.

The original trauma may not seem like a trauma to an outsider, or to the adult person, but that does not matter. This explains why someone can feel like they did not have trauma in their background, when really they did. And it explains why one can be “triggered” easily whenever their capacity is low, even if the demand is not very great.

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley talks similarly about the “window of tolerance” in her book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. A person with a wide window is more easily able to function effectively during stressful and challenging events, as well as recover afterwards. They will be more resilient and flexible, tolerant of uncertainty, comfortable with curve-balls and change, and they can stay socially connected during stress.

Someone with a narrow window of tolerance will be easily anxious, irritated, or overwhelmed; less resilient, more distracted; their decisions are more likely to be impulsive or reactive; and they will likely have more interpersonal challenges.

Additionally, those with a “highly sensitive” nervous system will inherently experience more demands because their nervous system takes in more information, and processes it all more deeply—all of which are demands on the nervous system.

You can think about capacity as if it were a bank account. You put in deposits, and you make withdrawals. Every demand on your nervous system is a withdrawal. Like some bank accounts, some withdrawals are automatic, such as the demands of the body such as digestion, defending against toxins and pathogens, and all the autonomic functions of the body.

Others are more deliberate, such as when you pay your credit card statement from your checking account. If you don’t have enough money to pay off the credit card, you will accrue interest. Your check may bounce, and further fees may accrue. Likewise, if you withdraw too much “energy” from your nervous system capacity account, you will have to pay in some way. Your body will try to compensate with a trauma response. If you don’t take action to deal with the overdrawn account, further distress, perhaps even illness or disease, may follow.

What we need in our “nervous system capacity account” is enough reserves to handle the big, unexpected emergencies. If we don’t, just like our bank account not having enough money to pay for, say, a new toilet and plumber bill, the nervous system may not have enough reserves and that broken toilet can take you out into a full-blown physical trauma response.

Dr. Aimie Apigian says the nervous system is constantly determining whether our capacity can meet the current demands. It will shut us down if it perceives we don’t have enough capacity. That’s when you experience overwhelm and stress.

If your nervous system is always on high alert, always on guard, always expecting a problem (and the default is to always expect the worst, by the way)–you will constantly be draining your reserves.

This leaves little energy for personal growth or investing emotional energy in relationships. It also leaves the body less reserves to fight off infections or disease.

So, what to do?

Three things.

First: get to know your own nervous system. Notice when you feel stressed, and what is going on in your body at that time. Also notice your thoughts and emotions.

For some people, especially if they are trauma survivors and/or have Childhood Emotional Neglect in their background (definitely one kind of trauma), getting in touch with emotions might be difficult. That’s where paying attention to the body can be so helpful. Get to know the signals your body is giving you when you’re under stress, and your nervous system is dysregulated.

I’m noticing that when my nervous system is activated, I get clumsy. I’ll drop things or even almost lose my balance. I get distracted easily. My short-term memory disappears.

When you notice signs like this, or whatever stress arousal is for you, look to what just happened to cause it. For me, it’s often when I feel time stress, such as when several things are going on at once. It can also happen when I’m transitioning from one demand to another.

This happened just the other day. I had a meeting I planned to attend at 7pm, and knew I’d have to start dinner at 5. But just then the air conditioner serviceman arrived, and I needed to hold the ladder for him to safely get into the attic where the equipment was. That delayed dinner. Then a friend called, and we had a wonderful conversation. After dinner, which started right when the online meeting did, I remembered something important I had to prepare for the next day. It wasn’t until 10pm that I realized I had missed the meeting I’d looked forward to all week. It was all the transitions and distractions that blew my well-laid plans for the evening out the window.

It’s good to know that about myself. I can now double check the plan for the day (laid out the night before) when I feel I’m getting distracted.

Second: Pay attention to the demands. Dr. Aimie says don’t just look at events, but at your body’s response to the things happening in your day. This gives you a clue as to the capacity of your nervous system “account” at present. If you find yourself getting irritated or upset easily by “little things,” that’s a clue that either you’re being triggered, or that your “account” has little reserves—or both.

Photo by Marco Palumbo

Pay attention to the little things, the daily drains when tiny withdrawals are quietly being taken from your account.

These could be negative thoughts, hurtful memories, even environmental stresses like clutter. (You might want to review my blog series on “hidden stressors” and see how many might apply.)

Become aware of what might be draining you, and do what you can to plug up these leaks. Address the negative beliefs and memories with The Healing Codes; clear the clutter, remove as many of the hidden stressors as you can.

Third: Regularly and intentionally add deposits to your energy account. I do this through the somatic exercises I learned from Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, plus the healing practices I’ve developed in my Align with Your Divine Design program (which includes The Healing Codes). These things heal not only my “heart issues,” but rewire my nervous system as well.

Keeping a “gifts journal” and doing Immanuel Prayer on a regular basis also make big deposits in my resilience account. They connect me to God and build my faith. When dark times hit, I can go back over my experiences with God and lean on the faith that as He came through so many times in the past, so He will this time too.

What can you do to lessen the demands and make deposits in your nervous system capacity account? Let me know via email reply, or post a comment on the blog. Your ideas might just inspire others!