How to Regulate Your Nervous System

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 263 of 365

I'm writing this from the couch, technically doing nothing. My daughter is napping. The house is quiet in that way it only gets when a toddler finally surrenders. It's a still afternoon, the kind that should make it easy to breathe deep and settle in.

I should feel peaceful. I don't.

My first instinct was to call someone. I started running through names, trying to figure out whose voice might help me make sense of what was moving through me. Then my mind went blank — not the peaceful kind, more like every thought I'd been carrying collided at once. I couldn't pick who to call because I didn't know what I'd say.

So I asked myself the question I've asked more clients than I can count: what would I tell her to do right now?

The answer came fast. Stop trying to solve your whole life from the couch. You just lived through a week that shifted something real — you don't owe anyone a tidy understanding of it by dinnertime. Breathe. Let your shoulders drop. Let whatever you're feeling be there without explaining it to anyone.

I knew exactly what I'd say to her. I just couldn't say it to myself.

What Learning How to Regulate Your Nervous System Doesn't Prepare You For

I pulled up a meditation video — soft piano, slow water, the whole production. I sat back, looked outside, and tried to be still.

I made it about twenty-five seconds.

Then my brain remembered everything at once. Forgotten tasks surfaced with perfect timing. Half-finished conversations started rehearsing themselves in my head, like they'd been waiting all day for me to stop moving.

The video kept playing. I was still holding my phone.

I teach people how to regulate their nervous system, and I still couldn't make my own body cooperate. I can walk someone else through this with total steadiness. Alone on my couch, I wanted to rush myself through it instead — will the music to work faster, force my breathing to slow down on command.

My body had not gotten the memo.

Maybe you know this one. You spend all day waiting for one quiet hour, picturing what you'll do the second nobody needs you. Then the quiet actually arrives, and you have no idea what to do with it. You reach for your phone. You remember the shopping list. You wanted rest, you might have genuinely needed it, and once it showed up you couldn't settle into it at all.

That was me today.

Rest Doesn't Always Look Like Relief

It reminded me of one of those games where a balloon pops up and you tap it before it disappears, and another one's already rising behind it. That's what rest has felt like lately — I reach for it, think I've caught it, and another thought floats up before I can. There's no final balloon. Nothing announces that you've handled everything and are officially cleared to relax. There will always be one more thing.

If a client described exactly this to me, I wouldn't tell her she was failing at rest. I'd tell her surrender isn't always the pretty version, music swelling, body finally letting go. Sometimes it's sitting in the discomfort instead of calling someone to talk it away. Sometimes it's noticing the urge to fill the silence and choosing not to obey it, just this once.

I don't teach this because I've outgrown it. I teach it because I still live it, and some days I need the same reminders I give everyone else.

Maybe the First Step Isn't Forcing the Calm

I don't want to wait to write this until I've reached some finish line where the feelings are all processed and the lesson fits into five steps. I want to write it from the couch, phone still in hand, meditation still playing in the background. I want the woman reading this — the one who takes care of everyone else and still can't quite give herself the same thing — to know she isn't the only one.

There's no shame in knowing better and still finding it hard.

Maybe those twenty-five seconds weren't a failed attempt at rest. Maybe they were the most honest moment I'd given myself all week. I noticed I was anxious. I noticed the phone in my hand. I noticed how fast my mind moved to fill a silence I'd been begging for all day.

That's not the peaceful ending I thought I'd write today. It's just the truth.

When I finish this, I'm going to sit here a little longer, maybe with the phone set down instead of in my hand. Another balloon will probably float by before I make it through a full minute of quiet.

I'm not any better at this than I was an hour ago. I'm just willing to try again. On repeat.

We'll see what my nervous system has to say about it.

It rarely does anything on my timeline. But it's usually right eventually.

About the Author | Day 263 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like sitting on the couch with the music playing and the phone still in my hand, finding out that rest can be right in front of you and still feel impossible to catch.

Day 263 of 365. Still breathing. Still surrendering. Still letting a few balloons float by. 🐧