Leaders are Just Nervous System Regulators...

My students prefer definitions that sound less technical and more "strategic." But I have come to believe that the best leaders know how to manage their own nervious systems and they help us regulate ours as we follow or consider following them. This is not a natural thing for me to say, since I was raised to believe that logic matters more than feelings. I also think I don't feel safe very often, and I am learning about neuroception and polyvagal theory that we notice things (without consciously noticing things) on three levels: inside, outside, and between people. Neuroception is "detection without awareness" (Deb Dana), meaning it is outside of the control of our cortex, so we have to invite our brain into the "perception of neuroception." The three pathways are where your nervous system is picking up signals and listening to decide how to keep you safe. It listens to what is happening inside you (literally, your lungs, your gut). It listens to the world around you- your physical space (we know this from all the decluttering posts) and the larger world (is the news on the TV? Your nervous system is picking that up even if you are not watching it directly). When you engage with others, you also start to pick up what their nervous system is saying. People and places can draw our nervous systems in or incite the desire to separate or get distance. Our first responsibility to being alive and thriving and even to being spiritual is to tune in to what is happening in our nervous system. To listen and get understanding (these ideas are from Deb Dana and her work in her book x). The second responsibility is to never assume what is going on in someone else's nervous system, but we can be curious. And we can seek matches and avoid or repair mismatches. A match simply means that you can activate the energy appropriate to the need, you bring or get in the state to effectively manage the experience in the way it needs to be met (it is important that meeting some experiences with fight or flight is a match. Or it is a match to collapse and disappear. It can also be a match to stay calm and continue. The case of mismatches is more interesting to me- one type occurs when we can't calm our survival energies. I think this fits me most of the time. This breeds a habitual, familiar, ongoing state of hyperarousal and hypervigilance. I am always worried I might be in trouble. This is weird, because I am the adult here. The other experience, the one I almost never have, is an inability to raise the energy to safely conduct myself in the world. Key tips: neuroception is biological. We don't respond to neuroception, we respond to the outputs of it, the physiological reactions of our body. The way to discern fit is to ask: In this moment, in this place, is this response needed? (Not the same as "appropriate- don't substitute). If it is not needed, is it familiar? Has it become your default? I guess I am asking if I am bringing guns to knife fights...although I don't love the anger and conflict in that analogy. We can do this. We can bring perception to neuroception and then we can bring curiousity and discernment. But to do so, we need time for reflection (or a coach who asks good questions). Good luck. I am working on it too.