Understanding How Your Nervous System Impacts Your Thoughts

The cognitive model focuses on the importance between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It emphasizes that when something happens your mind starts to process through its own thoughts about what has occurred. This then leads to impacting your emotions, which then leads to impacting how you react, respond, and/or behave. 

Dosal state, freeze state, and sympathetic state are three states of dysregulation. When we are activated in any of these three states, our thought processes and emotions can be significantly impacted. Understanding how these states impact our thought process can allow us to better manage, cope, and see warning signs before this state worsens our daily functioning. 

Below are examples of each state and thoughts that may arise in each state: 

-Sympathetic state (or also known as fight/flight): “I can’t handle this, there is too much to be done.”

-Dorsal state (or also known as shut down/numb): “Nothing ever goes right for me.” 

-Freeze state (or also known as a combination of Sympathetic and Dorsal): “I need to get everything done, but I just can’t. I am stuck.” 

The ventral state is the regulated state of the nervous system. This is where we find safety, security, connection, and homeostasis. An example of thoughts that arise in this state is “Even when things are difficult, I can manage what is ahead.” 

If you are wanting to improve your thought process and learn how to cope through a dysregulated state, call our office at 859.338.0466 to schedule an appointment with one of our providers. Our current offices are located in Lexington, Frankfort, and Richmond, KY. We have been trusted mental health professionals in Central Kentucky for over 22 years! 

Supporting Articles:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35941799/

https://neurodivergentinsights.com/dorsal-vagal-shutdown/

https://beckinstitute.org/about/understanding-cbt/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24387236/