The Brain and the Threat Bucket

Yesterday we talked about the four categories of protective responses your nervous system makes to real or perceived threats–fight, flight, freeze, or fawn–and I gave some examples of how they show up in my life. I hope some of them resonated with you.

Now, let’s get back to the nervous system.

The primary goal of your brain is to keep you alive. It’s so committed to this goal that it will sacrifice long-term gains for short-term survival and it’s constantly scanning the environment for threats. 

The Threat Bucket Analogy

Below is an illustration of a bucket (representing your brain) and some of the threats it’s assessing in every moment. 

In this analogy, the bucket has only so much capacity and when it gets to the dotted line, you get an output. This can manifest as physical pain (my shoulder hurts), emotional pain (I feel sad), or mental (I am overwhelmed). It’s all the same to the nervous system. These outputs are signals that your brain wants you go do something different, for example, to stop using your shoulder, get grounded or set a boundary.

This chart shows more examples of outputs. As you can see, there is a range of outputs and not all of them are healthy.

When you retrain the nervous system and what it perceives as threatening you can remain regulated and experience positive outputs instead of being activated or triggered into a fight/flight/freeze/fawn survival response.  Learning how to reduce the threat level in the bucket will allow you to experience less pain and more resilience. 

The way we do that is to demonstrate to your system that it’s SAFE. We can objectively measure this using your body as the instrument.

There are a number of ways to assess your system’s current threat level. Torso and neck rotation are some of my favorites. When your brain senses a threat, it prepares the body for fight, flight, or freeze by shutting down its ability to rotate. To throw a punch, run away, or brace for impact, you don’t need rotation. You need force.

Here’s the How-To Check: 

1. Assess how much your body rotates. Here’s a short video showing you how it’s done. 
2. Try a Neurosomatic Exercise/Drill. A gentle and often effective one is Foot Sensory Stimulus. Here’s a video on that, too. 
3. Immediately after the drill, reassess your rotation like you did at the beginning. Be sure to put your feet back in the exact same place as Step 1 so you get an accurate reading.
   1. When you compare the two, was there an improvement from the first time? Were you able to rotate further or with more ease? If so, that means your system likes the input from this exercise.
   2. If your rotation got worse, it means your system experiences this as threatening, so stop doing it. This is not your drill. Everyone’s system is different. You’ll find one that works for you. 
   3. If the result is neutral, neither decline nor improvement, it means we need to adjust the exercise. Reach out to me and I can make some suggestions. 

By taking a baseline assessment, doing an exercise, and then reassessing, you’re demonstrating to your body that it’s safe and it will allow more rotation. With practice, you’ll experience more freedom of movement physically, emotionally, mentally and metaphorically.

Now, you may be wondering what does rubbing my feet with a cloth have to do with anything?

See the next post!