Our autonomic nervous system has two states - parasympathetic and sympathetic.
The two most commonly known stages of the sympathetic nervous system are fight and flight, but there are 5 more - startle, freeze, fawn, collapse and shock.
the first states of sympathetic are known as the active stages - the body is preparing the fight, flee, freeze or protect ourselves from danger. They use a lot of muscular effort and force, and various systems in the body like digestion and heart rate slow down to use the energy for a different purpose. If our body stays in this state for a prolonged period of time it is not possible to continue functioning well, our body begins to slow down and collapse on itself. It goes into a state of conserving energy for our survival.
It is in these conservation of energy states that people tend to receive the diagnoses of some kind of autoimmune condition. The different conditions are reflective of their own individual experience - our behaviour and genetics play a large role, but it could be said that the root cause is always the same. The nervous system has been out of balance for too long.
Chronic Fatigue syndrome is characterised by prolonged fatigue, muscle aches, fever, depression and lack of motivation.
When our body is in a state of collapse, our fascia becomes dehydrated and can no longer support our structure and we experience discomfort, there is decreased blood flow to the brain so we experience brain fog and memory loss and we have a lack of motivation to do anything because our unconscious brain is telling us to stop! To slow down and not to wear ourselves out, we cannot keep moving in a body that spends most of the time in a sympathetic state. Our body knows what it is doing and is wise.
But we can change, we are adaptable, we have choices! Our nervous system state is designed to change and we can shift the dominant state out of collapse.