The Nervous System 101: Understanding the Key to Emotional Regulation
Before we can heal, lead, or love with any real depth—
We need to understand what’s actually running the show.
And no, it’s not your mindset.
It’s not your morning routine.
It’s not how much you know about trauma or self-help.
It’s your nervous system.
Because no matter how evolved your thinking is, if your body still believes it’s under threat, that’s where your decisions will come from.
And that’s the difference between coping and regulating.
Let’s break this down.
What is the Nervous System?
Your nervous system is your body’s communication highway.
It processes everything—sensory input, emotional data, internal signals—and determines one fundamental question every moment of every day:
“Am I safe?”
That question runs underneath your thoughts, under your strategies, under your conversations.
It decides if you’re open or closed.
Available or withdrawn.
Reactive or responsive.
The part of the nervous system we’re most concerned with in emotional healing is called the autonomic nervous system—and it runs automatically (hence the name).
You don’t choose how it responds. But you can train it over time.
The Three Main States: A Simplified Map
Let’s make this clear, simple, and grounded.
There are three primary states your nervous system moves between. These aren’t moods. They’re full-body physiological states.
Sympathetic Activation
Your body’s fight or flight mode.
Heart rate increases, breath becomes shallow, digestion slows.
You feel anxious, tense, reactive, urgent.
Great for running from tigers. Not great for having conscious conversations.
Dorsal Shutdown
The freeze/collapse response.
Your body goes into energy conservation.
You feel numb, foggy, disconnected, shut down.
It’s the "why can’t I just do the thing?" state. Everything feels too heavy.
Ventral Vagal Regulation
The gold standard of regulation.
This is your calm, connected, curious self.
You feel grounded, present, and open.
You’re not performing calm—you are calm. Naturally. Embodied.
These states aren’t right or wrong—they’re adaptive.
Your nervous system learned them to protect you.
But what protected you then might be blocking you now.
What Emotional Regulation Actually Means
Regulation isn’t being calm all the time.
It’s being able to move between states with awareness and choice.
It’s feeling the activation without spiraling.
It’s noticing shutdown before you disappear.
It’s choosing how you respond instead of reacting from old wiring.
And here’s the thing: you can’t “mindset” your way into regulation.
You have to practice it through your body.
That’s where somatic tools come in—breath, movement, sound, stillness, and presence.
They work not by fixing you, but by giving your body evidence:
You’re safe.
You can stay.
You don’t have to disappear or armor up to survive.
Why This Matters for Your Relationships, Work, and Healing
If your nervous system isn’t regulated, you will:
Misread neutral situations as threats
Project old wounds onto present people
Perform success while feeling internally fragmented
Be physically present but emotionally checked out
Regulation is the foundation for:
Boundaries that stick
Presence in hard conversations
Leadership without burnout
Parenting with clarity, not reactivity
Receiving love without shutting down
It’s not a “nice to have.”
It’s the baseline for everything.
You’re Not Broken—You’re Patterned
This is where most people get stuck.
They think “something is wrong with me” because they can’t stay calm, or because their reactions don’t make sense.
But once you understand the nervous system, you realize:
It’s not that you’re dysfunctional.
It’s that your system is trying to protect you in the only ways it knows how.
And with the right support, it can learn new ways.
Final Thought
If you’ve been doing all the mindset work, reading all the books, saying all the right affirmations—and still feel stuck—it’s not because you’re failing.
It’s because your nervous system needs to be brought online.
This is the real work.
The deep, slow, sometimes uncomfortable but always liberating return to safety in your own body.
It’s not glamorous.
It’s not linear.
But it’s what changes everything.
This is how we stop managing symptoms and start transforming at the root.
—KerryAnne Kelley
