Your Nervous System Is Running the Show
(And You Didn't Even Know It)
Why you reach for the chips when you're not hungry, snap at people you love, and can't fall asleep even when you're exhausted
You know that feeling when your heart races before a difficult conversation? When your stomach ties in knots before a big presentation? When you can't stop scrolling your phone even though you're exhausted and want to sleep?
That's not weakness. That's not lack of willpower. That's not you being "broken."
That's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do, trying to keep you safe.
The problem? It's working with outdated information. And until you understand how it works, you'll keep wondering why you can't just "calm down" or "push through" or "get your act together."
Let me show you what's really happening.
Meet Your Autopilot: The Autonomic Nervous System
Right now, as you read this, your body is doing thousands of things you're not thinking about.
Your heart is beating. Your lungs are breathing. Your food is digesting. Your temperature is regulating. Your immune system is patrolling for threats.
You're not making any of this happen. You're not consciously telling your heart to beat 72 times per minute or your stomach to release digestive enzymes.
This is your autonomic nervous system at work.
"Autonomic" means automatic; it runs in the background without your conscious input. It's your body's autopilot, constantly adjusting thousands of functions to keep you alive.
But here's what most people don't realize: this same system is also controlling your emotional responses, your stress levels, your sleep quality, your ability to connect with others, and yes, whether you can resist those chips or not.
The Two Settings: Gas Pedal and Brake
Your autonomic nervous system has two branches that work like the gas pedal and brake in your car.
The Sympathetic Nervous System: Your Gas Pedal
This is your "go" system. Your activation system. Your get-shit-done system.
When it's engaged, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol. Your heart rate increases. Your pupils dilate. Blood flows to your muscles. Digestion slows down. Your brain becomes hyper-focused on threats.
This system is designed for one thing: survival.
It's what kicks in when you:
Narrowly avoid a car accident
Get called into an unexpected meeting with your boss
Hear a strange noise in your house at night
Receive a concerning text message
Check your bank account and panic
In genuine danger, this system is lifesaving. It's what helped your ancestors run from predators, fight off attackers, and survive actual threats to their existence.
But here's the problem: Your sympathetic nervous system can't tell the difference between a lion chasing you and an email from your boss.
A threat is a threat. So it activates the same response.
And in modern life, the "threats" are constant and relentless.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System: Your Brake
This is your "rest and digest" system. Your recovery system. Your healing system.
When it's engaged, your body releases different hormones. Your heart rate slows. Your breath deepens. Digestion activates. Your immune system does its repair work. Your brain can think clearly and creatively.
This system is designed for restoration, connection, and growth.
It's what allows you to:
Digest your food properly
Sleep deeply and wake refreshed
Heal from injury or illness
Think clearly and make good decisions
Feel connected to others
Experience joy, peace, and contentment
Build and repair tissue
Consolidate memories and learning
This is where your body wants to spend most of its time. This is your default setting when you're actually safe.
But here's the second problem: Most of us are not spending most of our time here.
The Real Problem: You're Stuck with Your Foot on the Gas
Think about your typical day.
You wake up to an alarm (mild threat; jolts you out of sleep). You immediately check your phone (multiple potential threats in your inbox, texts, news). You rush to get ready (time pressure = threat). You sit in traffic or deal with public transit (lack of control = threat). You navigate work demands, difficult people, deadlines (ongoing low-level threats). You worry about money, family, health, the state of the world (perceived threats, even if not immediate).
Your sympathetic nervous system is firing all day long.
And when you finally get home and try to relax, your nervous system is still revved up. So you:
Can't stop thinking about work
Reach for food even though you're not hungry (trying to soothe the activation)
Scroll mindlessly through your phone (numbing the discomfort)
Snap at your partner or kids (no capacity left for regulation)
Lie in bed unable to sleep even though you're exhausted (too activated to downshift)
This isn't a character flaw. This is nervous system dysregulation.
You're trying to rest while your body is still in survival mode. It's like trying to sleep while someone's holding down the gas pedal in your car.
Why Your Willpower Keeps Failing
Important stuff here…
You cannot think your way out of a nervous system problem.
When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking, long-term planning, and impulse control, goes offline.
This is by design. In actual danger, you don't need to be contemplating philosophy or planning next week's menu. You need to run or fight.
So when you're stressed (which your body registers as danger), you literally don't have access to your best thinking. Your willpower is weakened. Your decision-making is impaired.
This is why you:
Know you should go to bed but stay up scrolling
Know you're not hungry but eat anyway
Know you need to have a calm conversation but end up yelling
Know you should exercise but can't make yourself move
It's not that you don't know better. It's that your nervous system is running the show, and when it's in survival mode, it overrides everything else.
The Good News: You Can Change Your Settings
Here's the truth that changes everything:
Your nervous system is trainable.
Just like you can strengthen muscles through exercise, you can train your nervous system to spend more time in parasympathetic mode and less time in sympathetic overdrive.
But you can't do it by trying harder or thinking differently.
You have to work with your body, not against it.
This means:
Learning to recognize when your sympathetic nervous system is activated (the physical signs before the behaviors)
Having tools to actually shift your state (not just "think positive thoughts")
Building capacity to tolerate discomfort without immediately trying to fix, numb, or escape it
Understanding the difference between actual danger and perceived threat
Creating safety signals your nervous system can recognize and respond to
And the foundation of all of this? Your breath.
Why Breathwork Works When Everything Else Doesn't
Remember how I said your autonomic nervous system is automatic, it runs without your conscious control?
That's true for almost everything. Your heart rate, your digestion, your hormone release, you can't directly control any of it.
Except your breath.
Your breath is the only function of your autonomic nervous system that you can consciously control.
And here's the key: when you change your breathing pattern, you send direct signals to your autonomic nervous system. You can literally shift yourself from sympathetic to parasympathetic activation - from gas pedal to brake - in minutes.
Not by thinking about it. Not by trying to relax. But by breathing in specific patterns that communicate safety to your nervous system.
This is why breathwork is so powerful for:
Anxiety and overwhelm (downregulating sympathetic activation)
Compulsive behaviors and addiction (creating space between urge and action)
Sleep problems (shifting from activated to rest state)
Emotional regulation (increasing your window of tolerance for feelings)
Chronic stress and burnout (building nervous system resilience)
It's not magic. It's neuroscience. And it works.
What This Means for Your Transformation
If you've been trying to change your life by:
Reading more self-help books
Making more vision boards
Setting better intentions
Trying to think more positively
Pushing yourself harder
And you keep ending up in the same patterns...
It's not because you're not trying hard enough. It's because you're working at the wrong level.
You're trying to remodel the house while the foundation is cracked.
The foundation is your nervous system. And until you address that, until you learn to regulate, to shift states, to build capacity, everything else you try to build will keep crumbling.
We can't become who we're meant to be while we're stuck in survival mode.
The Cocoon Phase, where we start the transformation journey, is all about creating nervous system safety. Learning to regulate. Building the foundation of felt safety in your body.
Because from there, everything else becomes possible.
You can release what you've been holding (Emergence Sessions) because your system finally feels safe enough to let go.
You can build new capacity (The Wingwork) because you have the resilience to handle intensity.
You can live as your authentic self (Becoming Her) because you're not constantly hijacked by survival responses.
It all starts with understanding and working with your nervous system.
What Happens When You Learn This
When you learn to recognize and regulate your nervous system states, everything changes.
Not overnight. Not magically. But really.
You start to notice:
The physical sensations that signal "I'm getting activated" before you spiral
The difference between actual danger and perceived threat
The moment when you reach for food/phone/distraction; and you have a choice
Your window of tolerance expanding: you can handle more without falling apart
Sleep improving because you can actually downshift at night
Clearer thinking because your prefrontal cortex is back online
Less reactivity in relationships because you're not operating from survival mode
More energy because you're not burning through stress hormones all day
Connection to your body and its wisdom instead of being at war with it
This isn't about becoming perfect or never stressed.
It's about having tools that actually work. Understanding what's happening in your body. Being able to shift your state instead of being at its mercy.
It's about reclaiming your nervous system from survival mode and remembering what safety feels like.
Ready to go deeper?
If this resonated with you, you're probably thinking: "Okay, but HOW do I actually do this?" That's exactly what I answer in Reflections.
Subscribe to Reflections (currently free) to get access to the post about the most accessible tool you have for nervous system regulation (breathwork) and more.
The real transformation happens when you learn practices that actually retrain it, when you build the capacity to regulate yourself, to shift states, to tolerate the discomfort of growth without defaulting to old patterns.
Your nervous system has been running the show.
Now it's time to learn how it works and how to work with it instead of against it.
There's only one of you, and you're already enough. Your nervous system just needs to remember that.
Dawn
beauty not as approval but as truth
be-U-tiful One