Episode 5: Vaginismus and the Nervous System Advice You Don’t Want to Hear
Hello and welcome to VagQuest: The Podcast! VagQuest was created to bring support, personal insights, and levity to those on a journey with vaginismus and related pelvic floor dysfunction.
My name is Missi and this podcast partners with a program I created to support those of you struggling with moving through vaginismus through a purely physical approach of exercise and dilating. Those are the things that got me started and moved me across the finish line, but in today’s episode, we’re going to begin our exploration of lessons gleaned from the root chakra of yoga, and our first lesson is: nervous system regulation.
The nervous system as a whole isn’t only associated with the root chakra; we will be exploring it throughout this series. Today we’ll focus on a very short and basic overview of the nervous system, why nervous system regulation is important, and a proactive approach to nervous system regulation.
Alright, so what the heck is the nervous system? I’m going to let medical professionals answer because I’m not a doctor. According to the Cleveland Clinic,
"Your nervous system is your body’s command center. It’s made up of your brain, spinal cord, and nerves. Your nervous system works by sending messages, or electrical signals, between your brain and all the other parts of your body. These signals tell you to breathe, move, speak and see, for example. Your nervous system keeps track of what’s going on inside and outside of your body and decides how to respond to any situation you’re in."
In addition to its many duties, our nervous system is a protective mechanism. What might be happening in those of us with vaginismus is the nervous system sensing a threat, either internally or externally, and responding appropriately to that threat. When I say responding appropriately, I mean responding to the perceived threat in a way it has survived responding to that threat at some time in the past. Survived is the key word there. The job of your nervous system is to keep you alive. It’s very important, but it’s not here to help you find pleasure, fulfillment and joy. It’s here to make sure you breathe another breath and live another day.
Let’s first dive into the different types of responses the nervous system has, what each of those responses mean, then we’ll dive into their pros and cons, and then chat through navigating through these responses when we’re trying to move into a more balanced state.
When our nervous system encounters some sort of stimulus or trigger, it has a few different ways of responding:
* The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) kicks in. This is what's known as fight/flight. If you saw a tiger in the woods, your SNS would trigger a reaction for you to either fight or run. In yoga philosophy, this is associated with Rajas.
* The Dorsal Vagal Complex within the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) kicks in. This is known as freeze. If you saw a tiger in the woods, your PNS would trigger a shut down response, like a possum playing dead. In yoga philosophy, this is associated with Tamas.
* The Ventral Vagal Complex or the Social Nervous System, also within the PNS: This is known as fawn. If you saw a tiger in the woods, your social nervous system would have you trying to appease the tiger or relate to or care for it in some way.
Each one of these different aspects of the nervous system has its strengths and weaknesses, and is vital to not only our survival, but our day-to-day living. Without our SNS/Rajas, we wouldn't wake up in the morning or feel motivated to work on an exciting project. Without the PNS/Tamas, we wouldn't sleep or rest. Without the social nervous system, we wouldn't connect to our communities and loved ones, and reach the balanced, connective state known as Saatva. A problem only occurs when our nervous system response doesn’t match what we need in the situation.
Author and somatic experiencing practitioner Kimberly Ann Johnson wrote an amazing book called Call of the Wild on this subject. In her book she breaks down what each part of the nervous system looks like in safety and under threat. Listen closely and notice if you experience any of these states.
In safety, the sympathetic nervous system shows up as alertness, drive, focus, assertiveness, healthy aggression, climax, and the fetal ejection reflex during birth. Under threat, this system looks like fight, flight, arguing, and avoidance.
The parasympathetic nervous system looks like relaxation, winding down for sleep, dilation, sphincter release, and arousal. Under threat, it’s freeze, procrastination, resignation and collapse.
The social nervous system looks like bonding, contact and communication, intimacy, and afterglow. Under threat it’s people pleasing, hyper socializing, striving to fit in, fawning, camouflaging, or conversely, isolating.
Take a moment to reflect if any of those states seem familiar to you and if there are any common patterns or triggers that push you into threat states, and patterns or practices that help you get into safety states.
When my body perceives a threat, I imagine this “shields up” reaction happening, like a magical instant donning of knight's armor in an Arthurian novel, or in the case of vaginismus, if you’ve seen Scary Movie, the chastity belt scene (look it up on YouTube for a laugh). This response of armoring can be situational or it could be building consistently over time.
An example of a situational response— as a child, I was playing on a playground one day, and my foot slipped between a platform and a wooden bridge, resulting in my leg going in between the two and my body landing with my pelvis hitting the edge of the bridge— like the female version of getting kicked in the balls. Ouch! Later, when I experienced anything moving toward that area of my body, my pelvic floor braces for expected pain.
An example of a conditioned response that builds up could be consistently hearing messages over long periods of time regarding one’s body, role in a relationship, etc. In the U.S. we often refer to this as purity culture— environments where women are expected to retain virginity until marriage, or perhaps receive messaging from their families or religious institutions that their bodies are sinful, or that it's their responsibility to control or prevent male desire— if that is the explicit or implicit messaging we’re hearing day in and day out, our minds and bodies are being trained to armor up.
In either scenario, when we encounter situations or relationships in our present life that mimic threats to our systems that we’ve experienced in the past, our bodies react in the way they have been trained, even when the "threat" it perceives might not be a threat at all, but something our system has merely associated or programmed as one. Luckily, much like a software update, we can reprogram our nervous system!
I like to view working with the nervous system as a two-pronged approach: Proactive and reactive. I also want to call out that this is my own theory. I definitely could have read or listened to a podcast that promoted this idea as well, so if this is out there and has been studied by actual scientists, amazing. Right now, I just see it as a paradigm that has helped me and I hope helps you.
I see the proactive approach to working with the nervous system as daily system maintenance. It helps us navigate a typical day. Daily maintenance involves practices that may sound quite obvious, but perhaps harder to put into practice. They include:
* Getting enough sleep
* Eating in a way that fuels our body
* Drinking enough water to hydrate ourselves
* Limiting substances like alcohol and caffeine, or other depressants or stimulants
* Expressing ourselves creatively— this can mean speech, writing, art, song, woodworking, underwater basket weaving— anything that helps us express our ideas.
* Moving our bodies consistently and in a way that releases or discharges any pent up tension or emotions we might be holding on to
* Socializing and connecting with people
* Getting enough sunshine to maintain our circadian rhythm, which is regulated by the nervous system
If you are listening to this episode and rolling your eyes at the simplicity, I’d like to share a personal anecdote. I recently went through a lot of change in my personal and professional life, and I wasn’t getting enough sleep each night for weeks if not months. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that was the issue right away; it snuck up on me. I was increasingly irritable and emotional, I started feeling like everything was a threat, I started externalizing and projecting my problems, doubts and insecurities, my libido was super low, and I started feeling full body pain, indigestion, constipation, etc. It wasn’t until I felt the acute physical symptoms that I could not ignore that I took a pause and I realized how exhausted I felt. I made some environmental changes to support my sleep. After that, it only took a couple of good nights of sleep for me to recalibrate and feel normal again. So if anything I listed feels inconsequential— sleep, nutrition, water intake, limiting substances, creative expression, movement, socializing, getting sunshine— know that these have a much bigger impact than we may realize.
Take a moment and identify if there is anything on that list that you aren’t honoring consistently on a daily basis. If you’re up for a challenge, make a checklist in a journal or spreadsheet and track each of these behaviors for a week. If you notice any aren’t getting consistent support, choose one that you want to work on, and after a week, see how you feel and what changes you observe. It doesn’t have to be huge. Maybe I want to work on socialization, so every day I’ll check on someone in my life— maybe even as simple as sending a text message. Or perhaps I work in a building with limited windows, so I schedule a 5 minute break in my day to go outside or at minimum, find a window and look outside. Maybe I don’t move a lot during the day so I habit stack by stretching, walking, or dancing for 3 minutes after each meeting. Start small— it will be easier to create time and build the habit.
Another way we can proactively work with our nervous system is by slowly and intentionally putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations, perhaps just beyond our comfort zone, observing what happens in our bodies and minds, and learning to find comfort. Yoga asana is a great way to practice this. Asana refers to the postures of the physical practice of yoga, and by putting our bodies in these weird positions, we learn to slowly and methodically adapt to new or existing environments, situations, or triggers. This expands our ability to handle new situations when they arise. You don’t have to do physical yoga practice. Maybe you take on a project at work or at home that is just outside of your skillset or comfort zone. You can get creative here!
That feels like a big enough topic for one episode. Again, if you’re up for it, I encourage you to take a few moments to reflect on your typical day and see if there are seemingly small changes you can make for 1-2 weeks, and track any changes. If you need an external tracking tool, there is an app called Neurofit that I’ll link in the show notes that can help you track these activities daily. It also suggests 3-5 minute regulation tips based on how you feel.
Coming up, we’ll chat through what I think of as a reactive approach to nervous system regulation (as in what to do when we feel acutely triggered), the parasympathetic nervous system which is associated with the root chakra; and working with the PNS with a yoga lens.
Until next time, take deep breaths into your lower rib cage and lower back, and wiggle out anything you’re holding onto from your day, and I’ll see you on the other side of vaginismus. Peace.
