Social Media and The Nervous System

This is just my perspective on this issue as someone who has researched the psychology and neuroscience of emotion, emotion regulation and mental well-being. I now work with mental health professionals who want to speak accurately about the science of the human mind and brain and who also have concerns over the discourse on social media. I know people have different opinions about when simplification stops being helpful and becomes problematic and that’s ok. I’m not here to place blame on people who are well-intentioned. But I do worry about vulnerable groups who are exposed to over-simplified narratives that sell hacks and solutions with no safety net. Let’s get into it.

One of the things that made me groan and got me annoyed enough to start talking about science publically (something that I never felt knowledgeable enough to do when I was an active scientist – interesting, eh?) was all that chat about “The Nervous System” on social media. At the time, I felt pretty out of control myself with uncontrollable toddler twins, not having had a full night of sleep in years, and looking after opinionated animals with their own physical health issues (I longed more than anything for a horse I could just get on and ride into the sunset with – my horses are not that). I had also just moved to a different country (after just 5 years in the country I previously lived in) and although my parents lived close, I didn’t have a social circle. I can see now how bloody hard life was at the time and also how feeling out of control was probably a pretty normal reaction to all that. But at the time I totally fell for the narrative that the reason why I felt absolutely terrible was that I needed to work on my nervous system. In fact, I believed that I could solve that whole situation by working on myself. I know.

That whole situation pretty much illustrates how the nervous system machinery operates. It preys on vulnerable people, people who are under a lot of stress, with few to no resources for relief, and tells them, the solution to their discomfort is in their own control, at their fingertips, in their breath, their eye-movements, only a few well-placed taps or a specific massage away. The message is “If you feel stuck in your circumstances and let down by the world, you have the power to solve all your problems YOURSELF”. By this message, we don’t need the circumstances to change, all we need to do is learn the right coping strategies and we will achieve calm and happiness. Sounds great, right? Oh, to be independent from what the world throws at us, like an old oak tree that weathers the storm, that persists through the seasons, that isn’t changed by a hog using it as a scratchpost (incidentally, a German proverb “was kümmert es die Eiche, wenn sich die Wildsau daran reibt”). The oak tree doesn’t desire to change the weather, it copes by having just enough bend in its branches (most of the time) that they don’t break, by having roots long enough to keep it in the ground, by having a stem sturdy enough to remain upright.

Hey, and I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to build some resilience by being able to tell the difference between things we can and can’t change, or by finding calm moments through breathing techniques or meditation if that works for you. But I want to draw your attention to the flipside of the idea that change is entirely within our power and independent of the “system”.

It also suggests that your well-being is entirely your responsibility.

What does that mean? It means, by the logic of these posts, that if you’re unable to make yourself feel better despite the circumstances, one of three things must be true: you need to keep going (and paying “nervous system coaches” to help you), or you just aren’t trying hard enough (and therefore need to keep trying, or conclude…), there’s something wrong with you, you have failed personally, you must be irreparably broken if these strategies don’t work for you. Of course, that’s not the message that’s conveyed, directly, by the nervous system crowd. But it’s one that is easy to jump to, especially by the most vulnerable (I certainly came to that conclusion when no amount of breathing changed my inner turmoil).

I know there are a lot of people out there who talk about the nervous system because it sounds scientific and helpful and they are well-intentioned and just want to help people. Maybe you are one of them. This article is not an attack on anyone and everyone who uses the term “nervous system” as a simplification. Please hear me out before you decide I’m just an uppity scientist who wants to be nit-picky about discourse “that is helping people”. I am not, I am genuinely happy for anyone who finds something that helps them cope in stressful times. At the end of this article I will suggest some ways to talk about the same things but with a bit more specificity – try them out and see if they work for you and your audience.

But, since this is supposed to be a scientific account, let’s also look at how the information that is conveyed about the nervous system is also incorrect. Specifically, let’s examine what the nervous system is, how it works, and why it’s not separate from its environment.

The nervous system is comprised of ALL nerve cells in our bodies, that means all the cells that carry signals, electrical or chemical, between cells to effect change. The nervous system includes:

• The central nervous system

  • Brain and spinal cord

• The peripheral nervous system

  • The somatic nervous system (between brain and muscles)

  • The autonomic nervous system

    • Sympathetic nervous system

    • Parasympathetic nervous system

    • Enteric nervous system

Elina A. K. Jacobs, PhD has talked about this in much more detail, I won’t repeat it all but I do recommend you go and read her post.

If you have followed me for a while, you can probably guess the first issue that bothers me about nervous system content – it’s super unspecific. The influencers in the mental health bubble are not talking about the nervous system in its entirety, they’re clearly talking about only the autonomic nervous system. I think that’s part of the reason why this content gets so muddled – fitness influencers are talking about communication between the brain and the muscles, wellness influencer are talking about the autonomic nervous system, nutritionists might even be talking about the enteric nervous system and they all use the same language but mean different things.