The collective nervous system lives in you
We are undergoing major changes in the collective space, where over the next many years we will see systems fall apart and new ones being built. An important process, which has its origin in Pluto in Aquarius, but also Neptune conjunct Saturn, Uranus in Gemini and Chiron in Taurus play a major role. More and more people experience emotional overload, overstimulation and an increasing feeling of insecurity. Many describe that they are more tired than before, have pain in the body without any real cause, they become more easily affected by conflicts, they lose energy more easily and have more difficulty finding inner calm.
It is close at hand to explain this development with the rise of social media, a higher pace or general societal development. For me it is only part of the explanation. We overlook something very important! Because beneath the visible changes, a much deeper process is also taking place, where our individual and collective nervous systems are exposed to a constant pressure of information, relational tensions and emotional influences. We are trying to solve collective problems through systems, rules, knowledge and control, while the real challenge is largely about regulation of the nervous system.
We forget the mirror when we look for the cause
The nervous system that we have forgotten to talk about through generations. Just as important as it is that we talk about environment, education, economy and health, just as important is it that we begin to understand the role the nervous system plays in each of our lives, but which also plays an important role in the collective space. Because behind our actions, relationships, conflicts and choices there is a nervous system that constantly evaluates whether we are safe or unsafe. Many of today’s children and young people are trying to call out to us adults, but we soothe their behavior with diagnoses, school refusal and even more words. Many young people get the impression that they are the ones who are wrong. But in reality we often forget the mirror and the importance of the people the child or the young person is mirroring themselves in.
We can easily solve the collective nervous system
We have long tried to solve problems through rules, systems, control, knowledge and structure. We bring in professionals and experts who name the collective nervous system, but who are not necessarily helping to regulate anything. A person with a dysregulated nervous system does not need more words, rules or explanations. It needs to meet regulated adults so the body can feel safe again and thereby find calm. The body must feel safe.
But what does it mean in practice that adults are regulated? It means that what you bring into a room already communicates before your words do. Your nervous system speaks first, language afterwards. When you stand in front of another human being, constant signals are sent, which the other nervous system registers outside of consciousness.
It is in your tone of voice, in the rhythm you speak in, in the way pauses arise or do not arise. It is in micro-tensions in the body, in your breathing. It is in the tempo of your speech, in your gaze and in the timing between contact and distance. And it is in the small movements between openness and control, between presence and micro-rejection.
Jung’s theory of synchronicity and mirroring reveals that it is not only children and young people who are dysregulated, but that we as adults continue to carry and enact the same unresolved patterns in new relational constellations. Where the unconscious is no longer expressed through direct experience, but through repetitions, encounters and reactions in the relational field, as if life is constantly trying to show us the same material from new angles until we become able to see it.
What you experience as “the other” is a mirror of something in yourself
In practice this means that what we experience as “the other” is often also a mirror of something in ourselves that has not yet been regulated, integrated or understood. Relationships are therefore not only contact between two people, but also an encounter between two nervous systems that mutually influence each other’s states.
Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein describes how the child not only learns through words, but through affective states, projections and inner images of safety and insecurity, which later become fundamental structures in the way we as adults regulate ourselves and each other.
If you are a mother sitting there thinking “did I do something wrong”, then do not despair. First of all, what I am writing about here is a complex field. Furthermore, it is a legacy that comes from many generations through time. We are only seeing a culmination in the energy system because we have not been aware of it before. Through generations we have pushed the subtle forward. And secondly, we cannot avoid that we influence each other in both positive and negative ways. That is how our energy system works. We should therefore remind ourselves that we are here to heal.
Relationships shape us much more than we think
The work with the nervous system is a collective task. Because the way we meet ourselves is often the way we meet others. And the way we meet others slowly becomes part of the society we are all helping to create.
Uranus moves into the sign of Gemini and begins a new development of the communicative field. Gemini is about information, learning, language, social networks and the way we exchange thoughts with each other. Uranus always challenges the existing and creates a need for new ways of understanding the world. Therefore Uranus in Gemini is not only about technology, artificial intelligence or communication platforms. It is also about the way our nervous systems are affected by the information and relational signals we are constantly surrounded by.
