The Hidden Nervous System Patterns Behind Anxiety, Conflict & Burnout And How to Rewire Them with Jonny Miller

Dhru Purohit (0:00)

Jonny, I want to start off with a question that people often ask themself at their worst moments. When something bad happens in your life, you snap at your partner, you've been procrastinating so long that maybe you lose an opportunity.

When you try to show up and something doesn't go the way that you want to, people often ask themself these questions, and these questions sound like, why do I keep showing up this way and repeating this pattern? What's wrong with me? That's a big one. Why am I broken? That's another one. When people ask themself these questions, the answer that their body often responds with or their mind is some version of, well, you're lazy. That's why. If you're procrastinating, you're broken. If it's a pattern you keep on repeating, it's obviously clear, you're broken. That's the answer.

Or they tell themself, the kindest version of that is this, it's just as, this is who I am, this is what I'm like. And that's what they're left with when they're repeating these patterns. And today's conversation, if anybody has resonated with this in their life and has felt at any point in time, they've asked themself these questions and had these very unsupportive answers that end up leaving them in a place where they just repeat the patterns again and again.

This conversation is for you. And I'd love to start off with, instead of that person leaving themself with the idea that they're broken, they're lazy, they're just like this. I think you have a different possibility, a different vision, a different framework as to what might actually be going on.

Jonny Miller (1:42)

My work, I think, comes from the premise that the state of our nervous system is the lens through which we experience life.

And so many people just live in their minds, and they try and use their minds to influence their state and how they feel. And for me, that is actually, you're kind of fighting an uphill battle and often you can just make it worse. And so what I study, what I research, what I teach is this journey, I call it nervous system mastery, but it's basically the journey of reducing the half-life of reactivity. So the things you mentioned, when someone snaps at their partner, when they're beating up on themselves, our nervous system is in a reactive state in that point. And there are skills you can cultivate to reduce the amount of time that you spend in that state. And for me, that is the, probably the most empowering piece of all of this, because instead of the narrative of like a fixed mindset of like, oh, I'm broken, this is just how I am. I'm screwed, like, there's nothing I can do. There are actually quite easy to cultivate skills that allow you to notice that state, to shift your physiology, maybe feel some emotions, and then come back to living more intentionally. And I think that for me is why I'm so passionate about this, is because on the other side of this, we can live with greater intentionality.

And I think that's what your question was speaking to.

Dhru Purohit (3:15)

Let's talk about reactivity for a second. What percentage of their life, actions, how they show up in a day to day, is based on reactivity versus choosing how they want to show up? What's your thoughts about that?

Jonny Miller (3:29)

I would say a lot of people are living from reactive tendencies and patterns. I mean, what's your answer to that? Like, how would you answer that?

Dhru Purohit (3:37)

Yeah, I think whether people know it or not, I think that it's definitely more than 50% of their day is just reacting to stuff instead of saying like, how do I actually want to show up? What do I want to do? Sometimes that's reacting to the news, that's reacting to social media. They don't realize it. They're doom scrolling. They see that somebody, you know, made a lot of money from launching a business and it's kind of in the back of their head and they've been procrastinating on something that they've been doing. And without even realizing it, they're making their coffee in the morning and just feeling bad about themselves. And they're not sure why. That's a reaction. I would say most people are probably living at least 50%, 80% in some situations of their life in a reactive state.

Jonny Miller (4:16)

And there's actually two modes of reactivity as well. There's something that a lot of people know. But there's one mode which is hyperarousal, which is basically when there's too much energy in the system and it takes you out of what's known as your window of tolerance, which is basically the amount of stress in your system that you can stay present, grounded, centered, kind of connected to yourself. And when you go beyond that, some people go up into this hyperarousal, which is basically maybe anxiety, frustration, anger, maybe overwhelm, and it's the sympathetic system, kind of going outside of this capacity basically. And then for other people, which is actually the hardest spot, going down into the parasympathetic system, the second reactive state called hypoarousal. And this looks like lethargy, withdrawal, like disassociation, numbness, maybe kind of procrastination, laziness.