Understanding Interest-Based Nervous System (Part 1)

sensory-motor, interest and attention loop.

There are three basic systems at work, two enabling us to be ON, one enabling us to switch OFF. Both of the ON systems manage and direct our energies and attention towards or away from things in our world in anxiety, fear, reward or pleasure.

only when the nervous system deems the environment safe and that these circuits are involved in health, growth, and restoration.

The nervous system compensates for being in a state of self-perpetuating arousal by setting off a chain of adaptations that eventually bind and organize the energy into “symptoms.” These adaptations function as a safety valve to the nervous system.

When we learn to befriend the nervous system, track states, and anchor in autonomic safety, the inevitable challenges that we all face as we go through our days aren’t quite so formidable. If we put a problem aside and turn our attention toward learning how to shape our systems in the direction of safety and connection, we can return to the problem

Self-determination theory maintains that humans are organisms that seek out complexity, and that our brains are problem-solving organs that require a steady diet of increasingly difficult problems to solve.