Building a Reserve in Your Nervous System

Here are some strategies to build up a healthy amount of resilience in your nervous system to help deal with upcoming physical and emotional challenges during and after your medical treatments. Think of it like making deposits of cash into your body’s bank account so that you have extra stored when your nervous system needs to make withdrawals.

Cartoon of an old fashioned wooden scale of justice holding a stack of bills on the left and coins on the right. The scale is level.

A young Eastern Indian woman is painting flowers on a sunny day at a wooden table. Her picture is on a wooden easel, she is painting with her right hand and holding a steaming cup of coffee in her left hand. Her eyes are closed, her hair is braided in pig-tails to her upper chest, and she is wearing gold looped earrings.

Get into the flow

Regularly participate in activities that you lose time or get into a flow with. These activities help to fill your neurological bank account, allowing you to enter your surgery or other medical treatments with an abundant cash reserve rather than going in with only pennies of energy and emotional resilience.

Move it!

Continue to exercise as much as you have the time and energy for. Too often, patients tell me they stopped exercising after their cancer diagnosis because of all the appointments and stress they were juggling. But those exact challenges are the reason staying active during and after treatment is so important, (unless instructed otherwise by your health care team).

A young Latinx woman is in a wood floor gym with red brick walls standing in a squat while holding black straps with foam handles that hold some of her weight and are hooked above her. She is wearing a short-sleeved turquoise blue T-shirt and grey spandex shorts. Her black hair is in a ponytail, she is smiling to herself with her lips closed, and is wearing very small circular pink earrings.

Distract yourself

An elderly Italian woman with white hair in a bun is playing a Spanish guitar while sitting in a wooden chair. Her eyes are closed and she looks very relaxed as she plays. She wears a blue T-shirt beneath a red long-sleeved dress robe. There is a floor lamp to her left. The wallpaper is light green with palm trees and she is wearing gold hooped earrings.

A young muscular black woman with her hair in a ponytail and noise canceling headphones on her ears is relaxing in a clawfoot tub beneath bubbles. There are music notes in the air above her head. Her eyes are closed and she appears relaxed with a closed lipped smile.

Engage your senses

When you are in pain or worrying about upcoming testing or treatments, it is helpful for you to get out of your head and back into your senses. You can do this by soaking in a hot bath—listening to the bubbles fizz, breathing in the essential oils, and enjoying your favorite music.

Building a Reserve in Your Nervous System

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