What Nervous System Regulation Looks Like… in Real Life

Last weekend I had the most wonderful, intimate and loving baby shower, organised by people who knew that this was also a tiny piece of healing for me.

I had Grace during COVID and, after rearranging my baby shower three times, we eventually admitted defeat and cancelled it. There was something particularly special about getting to have this experience this time around, surrounded by people I love.

For a lot of people, I imagine you could go to a special event being held in your honour and simply enjoy it for what it is. You turn up, spend quality time with friends & family, eat some cake, open some presents and go home feeling happy.

Some Brains Just Won’t Let Us Just Enjoy ‘The Thing’

Before the shower, I had to make a few ‘needs requests’. They weren’t about what gifts I wanted, what games we played or how anything looked. They were about what I knew I needed to have any chance of relaxing and enjoying myself.

Firstly, I didn’t want to know anything about it. I knew that the more information I had, the more opportunity there was for me to get involved, start worrying about details, overthink things or somehow make myself responsible for how everything turned out. I needed people I trusted to organise it and, importantly, I needed to stay out of it.

I also said that I didn’t want it at our house because I know exactly what happens when people are coming over. Suddenly I can see every dusty skirting board, every bit of clutter and every tiny job I’ve happily ignored for the last six months. I knew there was a very real chance I’d spend the week cleaning instead of doing anything else on my list.

It was at our house, so I obviously did a deep clean.

And, being heavily pregnant and dealing with the side effects of low iron, it absolutely wiped me out 😓. On the positive side, I seem to have accidentally combined the baby shower with some fairly intense pre-baby nesting, so the house is now spotless. I’ll take the win 🙈.

But actually, it was what happened the following day that interested me most.

My Brain was Searching for Something to Worry About

Had Chloe definitely got enough gluten-free food? Nic seemed quiet, was she okay? Cristina had made such a long journey, was she annoyed that she’d had to travel that far? Emma didn’t really know anyone, had I spoken to her enough?

Nothing had happened to suggest there was a problem, we all had a lovely day. Yet my brain had started going back through the day looking for something, anything, telling me that someone might have been unhappy, uncomfortable or annoyed who I needed to check-in with or apologise to.

And somehow, in every version of the story my brain came up with, it was my responsibility.

If someone was quiet, I should have done something about it. If someone hadn’t enjoyed themselves, I should have made it better. If someone had travelled a long way, I should feel guilty about it. If someone felt uncomfortable, I should have done more to make them comfortable. And if any of those things were true, maybe they’d think badly of me because of it.

The Questions Could Have Been the Beginning of a Spiral

This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand what nervous system regulation actually means.

If your brain and nervous system have spent years, or perhaps most of your life, scanning for potential problems and trying to keep you safe, it isn’t suddenly going to stop doing that because you’ve learned about nervous system regulation.

No matter how self-aware we become, how much work we do on ourselves, how much we understand our patterns, or even how much we teach this stuff to other people, we’re still going to have thoughts that are uncomfortable.

Nervous system regulation isn’t the ability to never have these thoughts again. It isn’t never feeling anxious, fearful, overwhelmed or uncomfortable. It isn’t being permanently calm or somehow becoming so emotionally evolved that nothing bothers you.

It’s being able to notice what is happening before automatically being swept along with it.

Nervous System Regulation Gives us Something Back

It doesn’t give us permanent calm, we’re not robots. But it does give us choice.

The choice to notice a thought without automatically believing it. The choice to recognise when we’re becoming overwhelmed and respond earlier. The choice to ask for what we need. The choice to set boundaries that make situations more manageable. And the choice to let other people have their own feelings and experiences without automatically making ourselves responsible for them.

I could hear the questions starting and recognised them, “Ah, I know what you’re doing. There you go again.”

My brain was searching, hard, for a problem. It was trying to work out whether everybody else was okay and whether I needed to take responsibility for their experience. It was filling in gaps where I didn’t actually have information and, unsurprisingly, wasn’t filling them with particularly positive, helpful or real explanations.

The difference now is that I don’t have to follow it, at least not for as long as I used to. And the big one, I don’t have to act on these thoughts straight away.

I don’t have to message everyone to check that they’re okay. I don’t have to replay conversations looking for clues. I don’t have to spend the next few hours trying to work out whether someone’s facial expression meant something. I can notice that my brain is doing something it learned to do a long time ago – to look after everyone else and scan for upset.

Healthy Nervous System Regulation is the ability to notice, call it out and have enough freedom in that moment to carry on living your life, on your terms, before the thought takes over.

There’s another part of regulation that I think is really important too, particularly for neurodivergent people. Regulation doesn’t only start once we’re overwhelmed. The work we do before we reach that point matters just as much, if not more.

Knowing I didn’t want the details of my baby shower was part of regulating my nervous system. I know too much information can give my brain more material to overthink, so I asked for less. Knowing that having people in my house might send me into an unnecessary cleaning frenzy was also useful information about myself, even if that particular boundary didn’t quite work out!

The First Step to Healthy Regulation? Identifying Your Needs

The more we can recognise what we actually need to feel comfortable and able to cope in different situations, the better.

Only then can we notice the early signs that we’re becoming overwhelmed or stressed, understand what tends to make things worse, and work out what genuinely helps.

It also means we can start asking for what we need to others as well as ourselves, without automatically attaching guilt or shame to them.

For someone else, not knowing the details of an event might feel more stressful. For me, it removed the opportunity to become overly involved and responsible for it. Neither response is right or wrong. Regulation is personal, which is why understanding your own nervous system and your own needs matters far more than collecting a list of generic “regulation techniques” from Instagram.

That’s where some of the most meaningful work happens. We start to recognise the strategies our brains have developed to protect us, sometimes from a very young age, without necessarily allowing those strategies to keep running everything.

Try this *FREE JOURNAL EXERCISE*

and start getting curious about where your
own regulation needs aren’t being met.

We don’t have to eradicate every anxious thought, stop ourselves from ever becoming dysregulated or somehow perfect the way our nervous system responds to the world. Sometimes progress looks much less dramatic than that, as you’ll see in the exercise.

I’d love to hear your own insights from the exercise and any blockers I can help you with.

Much love to you all,

K x