The Green Zone

When you’re stressed, do you tend more towards lion, duck, fawn, or turtle energy? Hopefully it has been helpful to identify and reflect on your own patterns of stress response.

When you start to become aware of previously unconscious patterns, you support the process of creating new, healthier patterns. This, along with your SSP listening, can help shift your baseline towards more of a state of safety and ease. What animal comes to mind to represent this “green” zone for you?

When you’re in the green zone, you may feel calm and grounded. When your nervous system is in this state, your social engagement system is activated.

Without getting too science-y here, this shifts many things that help you connect with other people, including your energy, your nonverbal cues, and your ability to tune out distractions and tune in to others with empathy and compassion. Rather than being flooded with stress hormones like cortisol, your nervous system triggers the release of feel-good hormones like oxytocin. This chemical helps you feel safe and loved within connection to others.

In the green zone, the logical, reasoning part of your brain is able to function better, meaning you can have more capacity to focus and learn. This part of the brain is also involved in controlling emotional responses and impulses. In this state, you are able to be more reflective - pausing and thinking about what you should do - rather than being reactive and at the mercy of your emotions.

When you are in a state of safety and ease, your usual bodily processes, like your immune and digestive systems, function better. Many people experience digestive discomfort or are more vulnerable to illness when they are stuck in a stress state, because the energy the body would normally use to support these systems is diverted to handle the stress.

Although it sounds great in theory, the goal is not for us to live in the green zone all the time. It’s not realistic to think we’ll be able to feel calm, joyful, and connected all the time - unfortunately, that isn’t the human experience! Rather, the goal is that you can stay more regulated when you move into activation or shutdown, cope with the stress in a healthier way, and then shift back into the green zone instead of getting stuck in a stress cycle. When you can flex in and out of stress states, but come back to the green zone, this helps you to build a more resilient nervous system.

It can be helpful to think of your nervous system as your partner and ally, not as your opponent. Its biggest priority is to keep you safe, and the patterns you have developed over the years make sense based on your experiences. Your nervous system is amazing and figured out which stress responses worked best to keep you safe!

So next time you notice that you’ve shifted to a stress state, don’t try to resist and push the feelings away. Instead, acknowledge it: “I’m feeling activated/shut down.” Then, thank your nervous system for wanting to protect you. That may sound cheesy, but there is some fascinating research out there about the power of “talking” to your body to shift stuck patterns.

Sometimes a shift into a stress state will make sense to you based on what’s happening externally, but other times, you might not be so sure why you feel that way. The emotions that come along with the different stress states are important to listen to. Try to be curious - they can give you valuable information about what’s happening for you and how you might best nurture your nervous system in that moment.