Your Nervous System Thinks You’re in Danger.

Feeling exhausted all the time even though you “did nothing.”
Overthinking every conversation — replaying it 20 times.
Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.”

You’re not procrastinating or tired because you’re lazy — your nervous system thinks it’s unsafe.

How to heal your nervous system to stop the endless loop:

Our nervous system is our body’s operating system and the deciding factor of our emotional and physical state.

• When it senses safety, we are in a parasympathetic state — calm, connected, and grounded.

• When it senses danger, we go into a sympathetic state — fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Spending too much time in chronic stress or in a sympathetic state can cause your nervous system to get “stuck.”
It’s always asking if we are safe, and when dysregulated it will always respond “no.”

When our nervous system gets “stuck” like this, it starts eating away at your health, causing:

This is your body’s way of keeping you alive — no need to shame it for that.

Most people say the cause is only trauma, but it’s more than that.
It’s broken trust — with your guardians, your loved ones, yourself, and the world.
Constantly being shown the world is a dangerous place.
This was the only way your body knew how to keep you alive.

Breathwork, cold plunges, shaking, tapping, journaling, screaming into a pillow — you’ve heard them all.
Sure, they temporarily help, but they don’t teach your body to trust.

These tools teach your brain what to do when the alarm bells go off,
rather than preventing the alarm bells from going off in the first place.

Find the unsafe beliefs causing the alarm.
When triggered, ask questions without judgment or shame:
Where did it come from? What are you afraid will happen?

The best way to go about this is to keep a running list —
your “threat map” to better understand yourself.

Create tiny moments of safety in discomfort.
When rest feels dangerous, take a 5-minute break in silence.
When honesty is terrifying, start with something simple —
like saying what you really want for dinner.

Sorry, but this takes time and will not be healed overnight.
Rewiring your neural pathways takes time.

If you do too much too fast, you could end up re-triggering yourself
and making the belief even deeper.
It can be harder than before if you reinforce the fear.

Be careful and mindful to respect yourself in the process.
It’s one step outside your comfort zone, not ten.

Find your window of tolerance —
the window where we can tolerate stress fairly comfortably.
Between hyperaroused (anger, anxiety, very high emotions)
and hypoaroused (depression, apathy, numbness).

Too far outside that window, you might shut down.
Too safe, and there’s no growth.

Sit with discomfort and emotions.
Instead of trying to “fix” the emotions by overanalyzing or pushing them down,
try acknowledging them and feeling them.

The best way is to talk to your nervous system:
“We are safe. I know it’s scary, but that’s okay. We will get through this.”

The worst thing you can do here is shame or invalidate yourself —
because it reinforces the unsafe belief.
So no more “I should be over this” or “It doesn’t matter.”

Repeat over and over and over.
Think of this like the nervous system gym.

You don’t do one curl and think,
“BAM! I’m jacked and healthy now!”
No — you need to keep doing reps
to feel calm in your own body
and stop snapping at the people you love.

Extra tools that help this process:

Sometimes you go through these steps only to still spiral into panic and old wounds.
That’s likely because you are still in an unsafe environment.

You can’t heal a wound with the cause still in the body.
You need to remove it first, then focus on disinfecting,
then healing and keeping it clean.

The goal isn’t to never stress again.
It’s to get our nervous system healthy again.

There will still be times where it activates in danger —
that’s a sign it’s working.
We need that sense of danger to keep us alive.

What we want is to recover quickly when we’re triggered
and trust ourselves to get through it.

 

btw — I’ve opened a few 1:1 spots where I help with things like building habits, boosting confidence, and learning how to look + feel better in your own skin.

Not therapy, just someone who’s been there and gets it.

Healing is not linear and looks different for everyone.
It’s not black and white.
It takes time and energy.

Be patient with yourself.
And thank you for reading.

Until next time 🙂 have a happy and healthy day.