This is how I would have described myself in the throes of nervous system dysregulation. It began in childhood, with recurring nightmares of knots inside me growing tighter and tighter, bigger and bigger, until I would wake up terrified and breathless.
Today, I share my deepest gratitude for:
- Discovering how my nervous system kept me bound by webs that stifled my healing and growth.
- Realizing how it literally saved my life but forgot to set me free.
- Finally, by restoring it, I’ve been able to taste the taste of thriving despite everything.
“Our nervous system is an archive of all our most stressful and traumatic experiences, from conception to now. It shapes how we move, feel, think, behave, listen, speak, perceive, and interact with life, people, stressful situations and relationships today.”
I can now say ‘thank you’ to my nervous system for keeping me alive while I take back control and BE here, now—connected, curious, and yes, far more compassionate!
When we grow to love our nervous system and our full range of feelings, we find a reassuring inner freedom. No matter what arises, we can meet ourselves with a quality of care that promotes healing instead of reigniting the cortisol bomb that’s always ready to blow—or withdrawing because it just feels all too much.
“No matter how choppy the waters of life become, or when the strong winds of emotions want to kick up an inner (and possibly outer) storm, you can act from a deeper wisdom, knowing ‘you’ve got this,’ even if it’s a little messy for a while.”
Nervous system restoration is “not about rescue—though for a time we may need rescue tools. Ultimately, it’s about living life in real-time with a lifelong healing vision, feeling resourced, and reclaiming your sense of self every step of the way.”
The danger is: if we don’t figure out our nervous system, we will never have a true sense of well-being and health
But there is a danger ⚠️, and that danger is: if we don’t figure out our nervous system, we will never have a true sense of well-being and health, inner control, or peace. The nervous system will drive us to distraction and drain our vital energy, leaving us exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally.
We cannot just hope we’ll heal someday or once things pass (I’ve tried that and stayed stuck in stress mode). Instead, we can take action that instills hope by helping us feel more connected and in control. This change can happen slowly over time or, for some, pretty quickly when we shift from hopeful healing to helpful healing.
We need to create space to recover and breathe. Honestly, I used to roll my eyes when people waved the “breathe” flag. I’d think, ‘How could breathing possibly help me get through a divorce, financial devastation, and giving up my home as a trade-off for peace as I raise my innocent daughter?’ on top of all my childhood unresolved trauma. And truthfully, breathing couldn’t be my first doorway, given the panic and tension I felt inside. (In yoga classes, I would ‘fake breathe’ all the time!)
My road back to self-regulation started with bilateral stimulation and learning not only how to ‘stack my brain’ in my favor but also how to balance and stimulate it to optimize my ability to function and thrive. FYI—that’s why I stuck with Trauma Informed yoga and taught myself how to consciously move in ways that restored balance to my system and yes, now I’m happy to say that my body feels safe to breathe with ease again, too, and that in itself has been my greatest gift to myself and my emotional and physical health.
You see, “the bilateral nature of the stimulation triggers the brain’s cross-hemispheric communication, fostering a sense of coherence and balance.”
The significance of this inner freedom is, that it’s your birthright. You can’t thrive on just the ‘hope of healing,’ especially if you have chronic stress or trauma-related stress, the source of which resides in your neurophysiology. Talking alone often isn’t enough and used to completely overwhelm my nervous system. It would take me days to recover from the exhaustion I felt after a session, the sleepless nights and emotional dysregulation. I realized that too much wanted to come out all at the same time. When I directed my energy towards restoring safety to my nervous system, I felt less and less distressed and more and more emotionally resilient.
I’ve learned from hard-won experience that real and tangible change happens when we turn our attention inward and decipher the seemingly complex language scripted by our past’s need to “just survive this lifetime.”
If you have never explored how nervous system restoration can support your healing journey. What you will gain is more than just mind-body awareness; you’ll achieve embodied awareness, enhancing your capacity to:
- Feel safe with your emotions and reduce overwhelm.
- Recover from stressful events and situations with greater ease.
- Feel less triggered over time and more empowered to cope.
- Improve the quality of your listening, care, and compassion.
- Strengthen and sooth your inner and outer voice.
- Unlock your healing potential.
- Enhance your heart’s happiness.
- Harmonize your gut health.
- And learn to ‘Be’ , ‘Truly Be’ while you positively influence your future.
Through engaging, creative methods, you’ll experience internal shifts that promote stress resilience and facilitate emotional processing by redefining your relationship with your body’s innate wisdom, that is always trying to guide your healing.
Many in recovery describe their newfound embodied wisdom as “unbelievable.” If you feel entangled in past experiences or overwhelmed in the present, you can unravel the inner tangles that keep you from feeling connected with yourself.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
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Roseanne Reilly DipNUR, APCST, ERYT500hr CEP specializing in Restoring Safety to the Nervous System Repair
Roseanne comes from a Background of Nursing, She is an Advanced CranioSacral Therapist, Yoga Teacher and Educator and Somatic Emotional Healing Practitioner
Roseanne provides research based tools and resources for nervous systems restoration following chronic and trauma stress
She provides insights from her own healing journey towards recovery, through blogs, weekly resources, work shops, courses, 1 to 1 mentoring and small group sessions
Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/roseanne-reilly-3014a0200/
website address: https://handsoftimehealing.com/
Beautifully written and so informative! Learning to regulate our nervous system is so important to our healing.
Thank you, for taking the time to read and comment. Yes, I would have to agree befriending our nervous system is important to the sustainablitlgy of our healing.
I resonate deeply with what you have written. Very insightful.
It has taken me years of healing and therapy to realize the toxic role that my dysregulated nervous system played in my life. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I mistakenly thought that leaving my abusive home and going to college would make me feel better. Unfortunately, the unhealed trauma followed me from house to house, job to job, relationship to relationship and caused a lot of problems in my life. It wasn’t until later in life that I found the courage to face my past and begin the healing process. Yes, breathing exercises, yoga and many other healing modalities I have employed over the years has really made a significant – and healing- impact on my nervous system.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing the impact your nervous system has had and for give us a picture of your life pre and post nervous system awareness. I can safely say, it impacted the first 40 years of my life and the choices I made at many levels.
Thankfully we are back in the driver seat now and glad you found your way to help restore safety to your nervous system.
What are the methods?
“Through engaging, creative methods, you’ll experience internal shifts that promote stress resilience and facilitate emotional processing by redefining your relationship with your body’s innate wisdom, that is always trying to guide your healing.”
Great question and essentially its any technique that encourages generating new experiences and ideas of how to explore our nervous system states from different angles, using highly individualized and less conventional approaches
*This is just one example of what can help us connect to a creative edge in our healing and it might be to begin asking , What am I interested in? What excites me and ignites even just a spark of aliveness, connectedness, brightness within me? For some it could be cycling, for others its cooking, or writing or taking photos of sunsets .. so this is very individual to you .. and from there we can play around with how differently you can experience these through each nervous system state
Lets say cooking for example, how differently do we experience cooking, in sympathetic arousal versus a Ventral Vagal State, or even a Dorsal vagal state (when in this sates we may not even feel like we have the energy to get up and nourish ourselves). I was unaware of how I used to cook in flight mode, with soo much tension in my body, even though I loved cooking, I was always watching the clock. I would chop carrots as though they were about to attack me or yell at me !!
So we learn to integrate this nervous system awareness it into our daily lives and activities and explore tools to help regulate the system that relate best to you and your nervous system based on your individuality.
Healing happens in the present moment so weaving this into our daily lives in these explorative creative ways, builds a sense of autonomy and gives us a real opportunity to switch states with greater ease, instead of knowingly or unknowingly being stuck in survival mode for hours or days or weeks or even years.
I hope this helps to give you an idea and to maybe spark your creative juices!