445. Your guide to nervous system regulation

Tips for nervous system regulation are everywhere right now - from breathwork and cold plunges to conversations about burnout, anxiety, and trauma. But what does it actually mean to be regulated, and are we sometimes turning healing into another thing to obsess over? In this episode, we take a grounded, research-informed look at what your nervous system is really trying to do, why fight-or-flight is not the enemy, and how stress, trauma, lifestyle, and hypersensitivity can shape the way we feel in our bodies. We explore: • What the window of tolerance can teach us about overwhelm and shutdown • Why your nervous system is trying to protect you • The role of trauma, chronic stress, and lifestyle factors in dysregulation • What a regulated nervous system can actually feel like • How hypersensitivity can keep us stuck in symptom-monitoring • Why sleep, safety, nourishment, connection, and routine matter more than expensive wellness tools Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Our favourite sources: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.31887/DCNS.2006.8.4/jbremner https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005789413000191?via%3Dihub https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/44/6/zsaa289/6053003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJAjx-AGAo See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop. Because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns. So I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 0:49Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 1:26Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:10Jemma Sbeg?

  But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? Health versus hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy nominated host Trace Dominguez talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to really matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts. Growth isn't linear. There's no magic timeline or secret template. And no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University. Because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to 90 credits.

• 2:55Jemma Sbeg?

  And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor. And here's the best part, there's no set class times. So school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit SNHU.edu/psych. That's SNHU.edu/psych.

• 3:22Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

• 3:41Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Nervous system regulation is probably something we have all heard more about, I would say, in recent years. It's this idea, if you haven't heard about it, that a great deal of our stress, our irritation, our inability to focus, comes from an invisible kind of dysregulation within our brain and our body that we are no longer sensitive to. Our settings have kind of been changed at the switch internally.

• 4:26Jemma Sbeg?

  And the consequence of this is a nervous system that doesn't necessarily work and a body and a mind that had stopped feeling like our own in many ways. As with many other concepts in psychology, nervous system regulation has definitely moved from something that was only really spoken about in a couple of textbooks, in therapy rooms, in trauma-informed care, to something we hear about in wellness podcasts, including this one, but wellness spaces, in TikToks, online, in workout classes, wherever you've experienced wellness, we hear about nervous system regulation very, very regularly now.

• 5:11Jemma Sbeg?

  Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. I don't think so. But for something so critical, you do want to make sure that you have the right facts and you have the scientific knowledge that is required. You know, your nervous system sits at the core of who you are in so many ways. It goes on to determine how you behave, whether you can be a good friend, a good partner, your capacity for self-expansion and growth. And so today, we're going to talk about the basics and what actually happens when something goes wrong with your nervous system, how to fix it, how to notice dysregulation,

• 5:53Jemma Sbeg?

  and the things that are necessary for you to take yourself from a place of dysregulation to regulation and what that actually involves. Because there are a lot of things that you may hear online or a lot of misconceptions about this and about the value or the role of stress that might not be accurate. So without further ado, let us get into the psychology of nervous system regulation.

• 6:22Jemma Sbeg?

  So if you were to hear someone say, you know, I'm really working on regulating my nervous system right now, what would they actually mean by that in a tangible sense? When people talk about nervous system regulation, they are usually talking about the body's ability to move flexibly between different states of arousal. And the key word here is flexibly. Nervous system regulation is sometimes presented as if your body is a broken machine and it needs to be hacked, reset, detoxed, iced into submission. It needs to be optimized into a permanent state of calm. That is not what nervous system regulation is about.

• 7:08Jemma Sbeg?

  The nervous system functions best when it can be alerted, it can be stressed, it can be fired up, but it can also come down from that. Now, something that, well, something essential to note is that our body also doesn't just have these two settings. You are not either stressed or calm. Your body actually has three states and your nervous system in particular has three states. The first is the ventral vagal state. This is associated with feelings of safety, connection, social engagement, groundedness. In this state, we can communicate, we feel connected to others, we feel connected to ourselves. We can regulate our emotions.

• 7:52Jemma Sbeg?

  We feel present in our bodies, in our mind. This is the state we are usually aiming to return to. The second kind of state that we can be in is the sympathetic state. This is associated with mobilization, fight or flight. The body prepares for action. This is what this state really represents. We feel anxious, we feel angry, restless, urgent, panicked, hyper alert. We are in protection mode. The third is the dorsal vagal state. Now, this is associated with complete immobilization, with shutdown.

• 8:32Jemma Sbeg?

  You feel numb, you feel disassociated, you feel emotionally disconnected. There is this filter between you and the rest of the world. And it often happens when the nervous system perceives that fighting or fleeing or fawning is not possible. So it moves into conservation and withdrawal.

• 8:54Jemma Sbeg?

  A common misconception, again, is that we should aim to be in the first state, that ventral vagal state, at all times. But our nervous system has these three different states. For a reason, even if they are inconvenient or sometimes painful, they each serve a purpose. Sometimes you need activation, you need adrenaline, you need to get away from danger. You also, and this is gonna sound strange, might actually need to shut down and remove yourself emotionally when a situation is too much. There are just some events that are too big for our brain and our soul and our body to face. And our body's inclination or ability to disengage in those moments is powerful and is lifesaving.

• 9:39Jemma Sbeg?

  Of course, that has long-term consequences if you survive that moment and if your trauma remains undisturbed. But being able to disengage, being able to get into that state in that moment and reduce the intensity is important. I should say, the other thing is that a regulated nervous system also operates from a logical place. For example, if something scares me, I should be alert to that. But if something small and insignificant happens, I should not be having the same response to that as I did to the danger, as I did to the threat. This is the point where we see dysregulation. Our nervous system is behaving irrationally. Your brain and your central nervous system can't tell the difference between positive, neutral,

• 10:24Jemma Sbeg?

  and negative. Everything just feels the same. It feels like it is a threat. And so the response becomes not as it should be. To understand nervous system regulation, we also need to understand a very core concept, which is our window of tolerance. This is a theory that was coined by the psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel from UCLA in the nineteen nineties. And essentially what he said is that our window of tolerance is the zone where we can function, we can feel, we can respond to life without becoming completely overwhelmed or completely shut down.

• 11:03Jemma Sbeg?

  When we are inside our window of tolerance, we might still feel stressed, we might still feel sad or nervous or even excited. But those feelings feel manageable. We can almost have, I guess, a conversation with those feelings, if that makes sense. Like, we can kind of hold space for them. I know that's such an overused term, but yeah, we can hold space for them. When our nervous system becomes overwhelmed, we move outside of that window. And we move outside of that window in one of two directions. And these directions relate to the dorsal vagal state and the sympathetic state that we just spoke about. The first direction that our nervous system can move in is towards hyperarousal.

• 11:46Jemma Sbeg?

  This is what we often associate, again, with that fight or flight response. It is the body moving into a point of action, it is your body responding with, with an act, with activating your heart rate. Your body gets tingly, your breathing starts to feel less natural, your thoughts might race. That is hyperarousal. The second is hypoarousal. This is more associated with the freeze, with the shutdown, with the collapse that we spoke about before. Instead of feeling wired and activated, you might feel numb and foggy and detached. And sometimes, like, unable to really think, unable to really speak, everything just starts to take a while.

• 12:26Jemma Sbeg?

  Hypoarousal is the body basically checking out and saying, all of this other stuff that is going on is too much. I cannot fight, I cannot run, because I've been doing that for so long in a physical sense, in an emotional sense, in a psychological sense, that I just need to conserve energy and just survive this. And getting into the hyperarousal state is no longer accessible to me. This is not weakness, it's not laziness, it is just as much a survival response as the previous kind, as, as the fight or flight response. What determines whether you're gonna go into hyper or hypoarousal is somewhat difficult to, to figure out.

• 13:11Jemma Sbeg?

  It's a combination of the level of stress or trauma, the type of stress or trauma, the frequency of stress or trauma, and how long it's been going on for. But you can sit outside your window for tolerance for a long time. Specifically, if you are in a hypo-aroused state. This is most evident when, I don't know, I don't know if you've had these moments where you've seen people who are like this, where they just don't care. They don't care what really happens. Like, there is almost a, a sense of just ambivalence. There, like, there are so many words for it. I think the best one is, like, it, it's a state of prolonged dissociation or, or depression or dorsal vagal shutdown.

• 13:56Jemma Sbeg?

  Essentially, our body has been like, this is too much to bear. I need to just not be able to experience this the way that I've been experiencing it. And as I said, this can go on for a long time. Hyperarousal can also go on for a long time. But it is more likely that at times you will come out of it into the hypoarousal state. So what actually makes the nervous system dysregulated, whether, whatever direction we end up going in? I would focus on three broad routes to dysregulation. The first is unprocessed trauma. I think we need to talk about trauma more as a nervous system disease or a nervous system injury.

• 14:37Jemma Sbeg?

  Just as an accident can snap a bone in half, or a disease can impact how your organs function, trauma damages your nervous system physically. When you encounter trauma, think of it as if there is this huge concrete wall that you can't push through, you can't make sense of. So your body and your brain just, like, keeps throwing itself at it. Keeps trying to move this wall out of its way, just keeps trying to get through it, and ends up bloodied and bruised and, and unable to function. When trauma remains unprocessed, the nervous system is injured and it can become more sensitive to anything that resembles the original threat.

• 15:16Jemma Sbeg?

  This is where we end up developing triggers. You know, your boyfriend raising his voice in excitement at a video game doesn't register to you as, oh, he's just excited because he's talking with his mates. It registers as, he is mad, he is angry, this feels like when I was a kid and my father was yelling and we need to shut down and we need to get out of here. Even though those two situations are completely different. A friend who was upset at you isn't just a friend that's upset at you or a social problem to work through. It represents the loss of a relationship, the potential for rejection, for conflict, for abandonment. And it triggers all these reactions in you that have come from past experiences.

• 15:57Jemma Sbeg?

  There was a two thousand and six review published in Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, the journal. And it describes how traumatic stress is associated with changes in your brain circuits, specifically involving the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the medial prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus in particular is important here, because it is what helps place memories in time and in context. When your hippocampus stops being able to do that correctly, it struggles, it struggles so dearly to file certain experiences as this happened then versus this is happening now.

• 16:39Jemma Sbeg?

  Anything in experiences, the lines get blurred, and you can see why that becomes really problematic. Another meta-analysis done in two thousand and twelve also found, if you experience trauma, we see consistent patterns of altered neural activity, including in areas, like they said, in hippocampus, the amygdala, but also in threat processing and emotional regulation. We see this physically, and this supports the idea that trauma can leave the brain more reactive to reminders of danger, even when you are no longer in that original situation. A smell, a tone of voice, you know, a strange bodily sensation can trigger a full body

• 17:22Jemma Sbeg?

  stress response, because the nervous system is trying to protect you based on what it has learned from past experiences. And based on the way it's been shaped and injured by trauma. Now, the second route to nervous system regulation is a bit more subtle, and it's more chronic. And we're gonna talk about that and how our nervous system gets dysregulated by small things even after this short break.

• 17:53Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns. So I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 18:38Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 19:15Jemma Sbeg?

  Growth isn't linear. There's no magic timeline or secret template and no one understands that quite like Southern New Hampshire University. Because SNHU has online degree programs built for whatever path you are on. Tried college before? Transfer up to 90 credits. And if you're new to this, no worries. Every student gets a dedicated academic advisor. And here's the best part, there's no set class times. So school actually fits your life. Ready to get started? Visit SNHU.edu/psych. That's SNHU.edu/psych. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health.

• 19:58Jemma Sbeg?

  And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice, telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction.

• 20:40Jemma Sbeg?

  Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:53Jemma Sbeg?

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• 21:38Jemma Sbeg?

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• 22:14Jemma Sbeg?

  So the second way our nervous system becomes dysregulated is from prolonged exposure to things that lessen our ability to cope. This is not one big event like Trauma with a Big T, the kind we just spoke about, but it is the slow accumulation of pressure, maybe from things like financial or work stress, caregiving stress, conflict loneliness, academic pressure, unstable relationships. Most of us can tolerate these stresses for a short amount of time. But if they become the norm, the body just can't. And it keeps us in survival mode because it thinks that's where we need to be.

• 22:57Jemma Sbeg?

  The sympathetic nervous system, which is, we've already spoken about it, the one involved in fight or flight, becomes dominant when this is occurring, meaning the body is going to spend far too much time thinking that it needs to be ready for action and not enough time recovering and coming down from that arousal. And this starts to feel normal. In fact, in his 1998 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Bruce McEwen, who is a foundational expert on this, explains that stress mediators protect us in the short term, but repeated activation of a time creates a wear and tear that is similar to wearing the same shoes every single day or using a certain muscle every single day.

• 23:41Jemma Sbeg?

  It physically and psychologically is worn down and torn. This is explained through the concept of allostatic load, where our body adapts to the chronic stress through neural, hormonal and immune responses when our stress systems are repeatedly activated over time and then doesn't know what it feels to not be in those states. Our body changes, our systems change, our response changes. And there comes a point where we just don't notice it. Like at the beginning we did, now we no longer do because of the chronic stress. Now, the third route we need to talk about to nervous system dysregulation is lifestyle factors. And I know when we mention lifestyle, there often comes this narrative of like personal blame

• 24:25Jemma Sbeg?

  and, and choice and that you are choosing a dysregulated nervous system if you live this way. That is not what the, what this reflects, you know? We're not saying like if you adopt a certain lifestyle, you are responsible for your dysregulated nervous system. I just want to point out some of the things that contribute on top of trauma and often on top of chronic stress as well. The first one is, is poor sleep. Poor sleep is a huge one that has been shown to significantly worsen our ability to stay within our window for tolerance in a very profound way. But other things that we don't even realize, like under eating, too much caffeine, lack of movement, too much screen time, too much alcohol, constant busyness,

• 25:10Jemma Sbeg?

  can all make the body more reactive and prone to stress. Simply put, if your system is already under-resourced by a lack of sleep, by a lack of nutrition, by a lack of rest, it has less capacity to tolerate stress. It also goes to show, I think that, that regulation begins with very basic signals of safety. Rest, nutrition, daylight, movement, connection. If those don't feel adequate, it cannot be fixed by yoga or breathwork or meditation. Like luxuries do not fix basic problems, especially when they happen in combination with chronic and traumatic experiences. I think a really important aspect of nervous system regulation and why I'm such a big fan of the topic

• 25:55Jemma Sbeg?

  is that it really shows us that these responses like anxiety, like stress, like burnout, like trauma, they aren't just in our heads, they are felt in the body. Your emotional reaction, your psychological reactions have a home within your nervous system. And I think it, it shifts us away from a previous narrative that was all about cognition. You know, your life will be better if you just reframe how you're thinking. Your problems are your thoughts. What nervous system regulation says and why I think so many people resonate with it is that, no, you have these ancient survival mechanisms. Something along the way has disturbed, changed how these systems operate.

• 26:38Jemma Sbeg?

  I think I love the switch analogy. Somebody has gone in and reset like the control board. Somebody has gone in and flipped a switch and now. How these systems were meant to function is no longer how they do. And that starts to feel normal to you. The question is, though, when we've been in this state for so long, how do we go about noticing it, right? I keep saying, oh, you you get to a point where you don't notice it. But at some point, you know, there is a sliver of awareness and awareness is required. Um, how do we gain access to that? Like, how do we start to realise, like, something in my body and with my nervous system isn't making sense? I mean, I'll give you a little bit of a list of the ten biggest things

• 27:21Jemma Sbeg?

  that you may notice in your body that might indicate dysregulation. Number one is disproportionate and uncontrollable emotional and physical responses. You snap at a simple request from your partner or your friend. A small task at work feels unbearably stressful. Committing to plans triggers a wave of anxiety. But equally, things that should be stressful, sometimes you just couldn't care less about. Again, your responses are illogical. Secondly, you feel wired but tired, hypervigilant, on all the time, even when you're trying to sleep. You you never feel rested.

• 28:04Jemma Sbeg?

  It's like that feeling, the best way I can describe it is like when you try and catch a five A M. flight from a busy airport and you're like, I'm so tired, but I'm so awake right now. Third, you startle easily, even at the most insignificant things. Four, you often have moments of realising how tense you have been. And even when you like go to relax your forehead or go to relax your shoulders or your jaw, it feels like there's always some tension like left over, like some tension kind of stuck in you that like you can never rub out. Five, you're irritable. You find it hard to be around people. You don't find things that you used to do very relaxing. Six is brain fog.

• 28:49Jemma Sbeg?

  Your ability to concentrate has also diminished greatly. Your memory might seem a little bit off. Even if it's something that you're excited about, like even if you got the perfect night's sleep, there seems to be this kind of cloud over your focus that just like lingers and you kind of snap away and snap back in and snap away from what you're doing. I know I kind of mentioned this, but like you really struggle to sleep. You struggle to get to sleep. You struggle to stay asleep. Even when you get a good night's sleep, you don't feel rested. You often have moments of feeling detached from reality. That's another big one and very floaty. And by moments, you know, I can mean minutes, I can mean hours, I can mean days of prolonged dissociation where you don't feel in your body, you don't feel in your world.

• 29:34Jemma Sbeg?

  And that can get very, very scary, very, very quickly as well. And finally, you find you lack any desire or expansion for growth. Remember, when you are stuck in chronic activation or in dorsal vagal shutdown, these states are not conducive or designed to help you invest in the future. They are, they exist to help you survive the present. Growth and expansion require the opposite. They require the ventral vagal state, where the body has enough spare capacity and resources to explore and to take risks and to learn and to connect. Curiosity, excitement, n- novelty, expansion

• 30:19Jemma Sbeg?

  are emotional luxuries and they will remain inaccessible to you for the time being. So when we've been in this place for so long, what does a regulated nervous system even feel like anymore? How do we even know what we're missing? This is a big thing for a lot of people. A, we can't really recognise, like, really, I think it's the biggest issue. We can't really recognise that we are outside of our window for tolerance because we haven't been in our window for tolerance for years or for decades. And so when people talk about, you know, a a regulated nervous system, we almost feel like I don't need that because this is normal, is it not? Because we can't imagine what it feels like to have anything differently.

• 31:04Jemma Sbeg?

  So what does a regulated nervous system even feel like? If you've been stuck in this place for so long, like, how do you, A, yes, notice that you are dysregulated? B, how do you remember what it even feels like to not be this way? The thing is, many people don't. And they also, they just simply cannot imagine the alternative. One of the biggest symptoms of trauma and chronic stress is what psychologists call a sense of foreshortened future. You physically cannot picture yourself in the future. You deeply believe I'm gonna die young.

• 31:47Jemma Sbeg?

  You cannot imagine yourself in a happy relationship with a happy work life, in a good job or in old age. And what they found is that your sense of time itself is affected. Your safety has been so threatened in the past that to believe it will not be threatened again in the future is to go against a deep, deep survival instinct, which is to always prepare for the worst, which is to always be on high alert. If you are preparing for the worst all the time, it becomes impossible to imagine the best or even the existence of more. Now, this changes you as a person.

• 32:30Jemma Sbeg?

  This constant state of prepare for the worst, always be on high alert means you struggle to do anything but survive. Means you struggle again for expansion and for curiosity. Many people confuse the actions of a dysregulated nervous system with their personality or with a character flaw. You know, I can't manage my diary. I feel so overwhelmed by plans because I'm a bad friend. That must be why it is. You know, I snap at my partner, I'm really moody because I'm not capable of love. I can't follow through on ideas because I am just lazy. I'm a lazy person. I'm no good, I'm a bad person.

• 33:15Jemma Sbeg?

  What you need to understand is that when your nervous system is dysregulated, you have this big control board in front of you and the wiring behind it is all wrong. So you push buttons and you're like, great, I wanna do this. And a completely different reaction is produced. Like, that is what you are kind of dealing with. Further evidence that this isn't personal and that it isn't a personality flaw or a character flaw, but you know, physiological and psychological is case studies. Case studies of people who suddenly feel safe after years of not, who get out of bad environments and their entire life shift. There is still anger, there is still sadness, but it feels like they suddenly have enough space between a feeling and a response where they can insert their own agency.

• 33:59Jemma Sbeg?

  And I think that's what a no, you know, regulated nervous system really represents. It's just choice, like, I can choose my reaction to my reaction. I have an expanded sense of my own ability. My emotional capacity has improved. I feel like I am in control. So if we've been in this state for a while, can we actually fix what has become dysregulated? The psychology says yes. Polyvagal theory says yes. If we understand the science of safety and how to support homeostatic functions that promote growth, but then also restoration and flourishing. Homeostatic basically just means steady state.

• 34:40Jemma Sbeg?

  And it is a scientific principle that describes how organisms, like you and I, can only function if their internal conditions are kept within a specific range. Basically, what we're describing is the window for tolerance. Crucially, though, the timeline for getting back and and really experiencing homeostasis

• 35:03Jemma Sbeg?

  is gonna differ for everybody. It really is based on how long this has been happening for, whether you're still living in the conditions that keep this system activated and whether you have the support around you to get you out of this place. If dysregulation is linked to a short period of stress, if you had a really tough few weeks at work, you've been through a breakup, you are experiencing insomnia, it may settle relatively quickly once the stressor reduces and the body has enough time to recover. In those cases, it's less about something that's been rewired or retrained, it's more just about giving your overworked nervous system space and and some time to rest and consistency to just like back down and just calm down.

• 35:46Jemma Sbeg?

  But if dis- dysregulation, especially the kind we've been describing, has been present for months or for years, or if it's linked to trauma or chronic stress or long-term emotional unsafety, it is gonna take longer because the nervous system has had more time to learn that high alert is necessary for survival. What has been reinforced repeatedly usually needs repeated experiences to safely shift off. We know this through research on neuroplasticity, including a very famous paper published by, where was it published, by researchers at Harvard, I think, Harvard Medical School, back in like the mid two thousands.

• 36:31Jemma Sbeg?

  That essentially says the brain remains capable of change throughout your life. But this change is difficult and it's shaped by repetition. It's shaped by context and experience. So if you've experienced repeated stress and a sense of unsafety, it would follow kind of that like an equal number of safe experiences are required to reverse the influence of unsafe experiences. Now, psychological safety doesn't just mean the absence of threat. That is something that a lot of people perhaps get wrong. It's of course number one, you can't do anything if you feel like you are unsafe where you are. But it also means something more. It means the availability of resources needed for more than survival, for for flourishing. It also requires the presence of choice.

• 37:17Jemma Sbeg?

  It requires the presence of support and also just the knowledge to self-regulate. I like to think of this as like a pyramid. And what sits at the bottom is required to reach the pinnacle. At the bottom of the pyramid is the foundations. It is sleep, it is nourishment, it is warmth, it is medical care, it's predictable routines. If you are sleeping only four hours a night, as we said, if you are under-eating, if you are living in chaos, if you are constantly checking messages from someone who makes you feel awful or if you are, if you really, if you have a job that just makes you feel awful all the time.

• 37:59Jemma Sbeg?

  There is, I know this is gonna sound controversial, but very little that you can do beyond improving those things that is gonna fix your nervous system. You cannot apply luxuries like um an ice bath or luxuries like red light therapy onto a lack of sleep and think that it's gonna have the same effect. So we need to fulfill those basic requirements. Following that and sitting close to it is choice. A sense of agency, as we already know, is foundational for a regulated nervous system. Because how are you meant to feel safe ever? If you can't control what's gonna happen to you or what you wanna engage in? Even if everything in your life is taken care of?

• 38:43Jemma Sbeg?

  If you don't have a say in how it is taken care of? Or what you need to do to have it taken care of? Or what would happen if it wasn't taken care of? Your nervous system will remain on high alert. In psychology, this is called perceived control. In the nineteen seventies, this researcher from Yale University, his name is Dr. Jay Weiss. He demonstrated in a series of experiments with rats how important choice really is. In this experiment, he subjected two groups of rats to simultaneous electric shocks. But one group of these rats could exit the box where it was receiving the shock. The other couldn't.

• 39:25Jemma Sbeg?

  They both experienced the same voltage, the same number of shocks. They went through this round and round again. But after they received a shock, one rat could walk through a door and leave, the other one couldn't.

• 39:38Jemma Sbeg?

  The availability of a way out didn't take the pain away. But it was enough to lower a stress response in the rat that felt it could do something and it could escape and it could move. It isn't the exercising of the choice that regulates the nervous system or reduces the pain of trauma. It's that knowing that a door exists, that if you needed to, you could, you could escape, you could leave, you could make a choice about this. So if you do not have a choice, if you do not feel like I can change these circumstances, if you do not feel like I can choose a different alternative, like your system is never gonna be regulated. Everything around you could be going really well, but if you were in a job where you're like, I don't feel like I'm in control of my circumstances.

• 40:22Jemma Sbeg?

  If you are in a relationship where you don't feel in control, if you're in, even if that's like a family system where you don't feel in control. Yes, basic things could be taken care of, but you could still experience this hyper or hypo arousal. The next level in the pyramid are stabilizing practices. So once we have basic needs and choice down pat, things like gentle movement, getting enough daylight, consistent meals, reducing stimulants, getting outdoors, creating routines that provide the body with predictability are the next thing that's gonna help regulate a nervous system. The reason this is so important is that it allows the brain to stop constantly trying to predict what comes next. And it stops needing to work so hard.

• 41:07Jemma Sbeg?

  And in that space of ambiguity, feeling like it needs to shoot you in these different directions. After that is relational regulation. So safe people, co-regulation, therapy support groups, affection, feeling seen. Those are things people don't always speak about in terms of nervous system regulation, but are so important. In a nineteen eighty-five paper, authors Cohen and Willis, they talk about this theory called the stress buffering hypothesis. And what they essentially say is that, you know, the stress buffering hypothesis, what that basically says and argues is that social support is particularly important for protecting wellbeing, not just because it's nice, but because it buffers people from the harmful effects of stressful events.

• 41:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Especially when support is perceived as responsive and individual. We cannot underestimate the impact of sitting with somebody and knowing that if something went wrong, we would have somebody to call. The body often borrows safety before it can learn to generate it alone. I also think that this is why we overlook factors like loneliness in contributing to nervous system dysregulation. Again, I think this is a disservice that has been done in how this is described. We think that it's only high stress, the addition of stressful experiences, dangerous experiences.

• 42:35Jemma Sbeg?

  But feeling lonely and feeling like you don't really have friends or you don't really have a good support system for a prolonged period of time will dysregulate your nervous system, the same way that experiencing a really intense catastrophic event might do so. Yes, they target the brain and the body and the mind differently, but they still are both pathways to to feeling dysregulated. I'd argue that social support also includes the more targeted psychological work too. So therapy, the CBT, the exposure-based work, the EMDR, and medication as well, where appropriate. And with that as well, the skills for emotional regulation. Like, these are the necessary interventions for when this chronic

• 43:20Jemma Sbeg?

  or overwhelming sense of dysregulation can't just be solved by more sleep or eating better. As much as I'm saying these are foundational, like sometimes again, there just is a lot going on in your life that you've never been taught to deal with. And if nobody ever teaches you how to deal with it or gives you the ability to rationalize things that can be rationalized or to process things that like feel inaccessible to you, you're not going to feel any better. At the top is when we get the luxuries. The saunas, the retreats, the expensive classes, the gadgets, the supplements, biohacking, cold plunges, all these things. These may be enjoyable and they're definitely helpful in certain cases. But these are not the base.

• 44:05Jemma Sbeg?

  And this is my whole point with talking about the foundations of nervous system regulation. The wellness industry will have us thinking that we are, you know, one cold plunge away from being calm. But we're not. What we really need to do is to stop ignoring the fundamentals that actually carry the nervous system and stop believing that the reason our nervous system isn't regulated is because we don't have the money to do all these things all the time that people are selling to us. So with that in mind, we're gonna take a short break. And then we're gonna discuss the free stuff that is actually available to basically every single human being to regulate their nervous system. It doesn't have a price tag. It, we're not gonna gatekeep it.

• 44:47Jemma Sbeg?

  It is hard ride into our body as a way to calm down and feel regulated. So stay with us.

• 45:00Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information-driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights

• 45:43Jemma Sbeg?

  that have made me more intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise,

• 46:28Jemma Sbeg?

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• 46:41Jemma Sbeg?

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• 47:24Jemma Sbeg?

  And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction.

• 48:07Jemma Sbeg?

  Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something that really frustrates me is when wellness brands greenwash their products to make them seem more clean or better for the environment when they are actually not. When you look into it, they are kind of just like the rest of them. Nature's Sunshine, however, doesn't just talk about the planet. They do something about it. They sustainably source ingredients. They craft their supplements with 100% solar powered manufacturing. And their products are incredible. I don't drink coffee. And so Nature's Sunshine Brain Edge gives me that kick I sometimes need

• 48:52Jemma Sbeg?

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• 49:33Jemma Sbeg?

  That's code PSYCH for 20% off your first order at naturessunshine.com.

• 49:40Jemma Sbeg?

  Now that we know the basics of nervous system regulation, what it is, what it isn't, and the pyramid of needs, where does that leave us practically? Well, there are a few kind of key areas to look at where we can gradually start reducing the amount of threat our body is having to manage. The first is perhaps unsurprising, considering what we've spoken about. But it's knowing when this needs more than just self-help advice. Self-guided regulation is incredibly useful. And it should probably be taught to us much earlier, even in childhood, even in schools, if you were going to ask me.

• 50:22Jemma Sbeg?

  But if your symptoms are seriously affecting everything about your life and you have tried everything to try and fix it, I don't think you need to manage this alone. Major guidelines for adults with PTSD, for example, recommend trauma-focused CBT or EMDR as structured treatments for at least eight to 12 sessions, with more sometimes when needed. Like this is things that are going to help and that are prescribed. You know, if your nervous system regulation manifests as a panic disorder, the guidelines suggest sometimes up to 14 hours to be completed over four months of practical guidance

• 51:07Jemma Sbeg?

  with a counselor or with a therapist or maybe even a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Not everybody's going to recover in that same window, but I think it goes to show that like there are treatment plans for people. We kind of know when people will start responding. But it does really need a trained clinical professional to be able to do this safely. Serious nervous system dysregulation is a condition. It doesn't affect the majority of people, but it does affect a lot of people. And that needs real clinical support. Then you can kind of add some of the other things. The second thing is to stop treating regulation as something you only do in a crisis, right? I've fallen into this trap of delaying kind of basic needs

• 51:51Jemma Sbeg?

  in favor of productivity and output a lot of times in my life, thinking that like there is things that are more important that absolutely weren't. And it's just a reminder that just because you can work harder, just because you can push yourself further, doesn't mean you should. Like, I really do think that making this part of your genuine hygiene practices of like, what am I doing today to not feel like I am always rushing or busy or stressed is an incredible thing that we should be paying attention to more. And one of the critical ways that I do that is just like giving myself more time to do things. Giving myself more time to get places.

• 52:33Jemma Sbeg?

  Giving myself more time to like make errors in my progress. Do you know what I mean? Like, what are simple things that you can do every single day to reinsert choice and freedom and flexibility back into your life? So that you are not constantly needing to rely on adrenaline and needing to rely on arousal to get things done. Sleep hygiene, also incredible. I've spoken about sleep already quite frequently in this episode. But maybe I'm just obsessive with it at the moment. All the research says, or like so much of it says, if you can hack your sleep, like a lot of the other biohacking

• 53:18Jemma Sbeg?

  that is sold to us or that we think is required is not necessary. It is one of these functions and one of these, I don't want to say resources, but one of these things that if we get right, if we can figure out stems and floods into every other aspect of our life. I'll throw some data at you just to nail in my point. Sleep deprivation can increase nervous system arousal by 500% across an average day. It lowers life expectancy. And according to a 2000 report, the loss of one hour of sleep a night can knock a whole point off your IQ. And it's hard to have a regulated nervous system when you don't feel sharp.

• 54:03Jemma Sbeg?

  So if the choice is between going to a sauna for an hour or napping for an hour, take a nap. We can also start thinking about vagus nerve activation here, which is basically like your body's inbuilt on and off switch. The vagus nerve is one of the major, if not the most major communication pathway between your brain and your body. It's definitely the longest, that's for sure. It's most definitely the longest. And it plays a massive role in parasympathetic control. It is also the newest frontier of psychological research. There are so many therapeutic devices and interventions and methods that focus on vagus nerve activation for lessening anxiety,

• 54:49Jemma Sbeg?

  for lessening panic, for lessening OCD, depression, you name it. It is like the new big thing. But you can activate the vagus nerve and its calming abilities on your own, in your room, in less than five minutes. Your vagus nerve actually starts, or I guess exits your brain, right below your ear. It runs the length of your neck before traveling down through the rest of your body. And the methods for stimulating it are so ancient and so simple, they almost sound useless. But literally doing things like singing, like breathing deeply, even just relaxing your jaw, you calm your nervous system because of that nerve pathway. Try it with me right now.

• 55:33Jemma Sbeg?

  Relax your jaw completely. I almost went to do it, but I have to speak. But relax your jaw completely and then relax it again. And then one more time, and then gently rub your neck. You're trying to relax the tension around that nerve. Do you feel better?

• 55:49Jemma Sbeg?

  You can even do things like sing. Literally, singing activates your vagus nerve. Like I said, this is free. Literally, everybody has this capacity. And it is pretty magnificent that your whole body feels almost at the behest of this like one nerve. It's obviously not all involved in that one long nerve, but it is critically aligned and critically related to this one nerve. That you can control the tension and the pressure that your body is placing on it. Personally, I find the link between singing and vagus nerve activation also incredibly compelling. Like, I think it's so beautiful that music is genuinely psychologically and physically healing.

• 56:31Jemma Sbeg?

  We think singing in the car or humming along to music whilst we cook dinner, like even going to concerts is just like this nice fun thing that we do, like it's a coincidence that we enjoy them so much. It's a coincidence that we feel better and we feel sometimes like really high from them. But the twenty ten paper found loads of evidence that music triggers calming neurophysiological, emotional and psychological reactions. And acts on our body and acts on our nervous system, much like certain substances do. Like, I just wish we talked about that more, that music, people who listen to music, who sing, who engage in music more,

• 57:11Jemma Sbeg?

  typically have more regulated nervous systems, especially when, you know, we look at as well, going deeper into this, like the reactions of people at concerts or fan culture, or why people cry to music, why certain songs have such a fundamental impact on us. It just shows the deeply psychological influence of music is something that isn't actually a luxury, is a necessity. Now, none of these things, including music, obviously, are magic switches and they mean nothing without those fundamental needs for safety and agency. But they are simple ways of offering the body repeated cues of rhythm, steadiness and safety that get us back to that homeostatic place.

• 57:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Your third focus area should also be slowing down how you respond to symptoms of hyper and hypoarousal, though. A lot of us feel something uncomfortable and we will feel uncomfortable at times and we will still feel hyper and hyper aroused during the early stages of regulating our nervous system and we go into fixing mode. And it's no surprise that we do that when we spent a lot of time feeling anxious or stressed or dysregulated. And with starting to improve, we can feel very sensitive to the signs that it might be happening again. But we have to pull back as much as we can from that. There was an amazing video by somebody called Maggie Sterling on YouTube that I would really encourage you guys to go and watch called Why Your Nervous System Won't Regulate, literally the easiest title ever.

• 58:37Jemma Sbeg?

  And in it, she talks about how our urgency to fix the problem of a dysregulated nervous system is actually part of the problem. Because it just speeds everything up when we want it to be, we want it to be slowing down to a healthy level. It makes it more of an event. When we feel anxious, we respond to it in an anxious way. So it's often, it magnifies the perceived significance of the threatening feeling. We respond to our feeling of of dissociation with fear, which gives it, you know, which legitimizes the dissociation. It gives our nervous system more evidence that we absolutely do need to shut down. So what Maggie in this video suggests is something highly counterintuitive, which is just to sometimes let yourself be the version of you that is dysregulated.

• 59:23Jemma Sbeg?

  And that sounds ridiculous, given all the advice we've spoken about, but her argument is simply, and essentially, this. The nervous system that works best for you will be a flexible one. You cannot expect to live life without stepping outside your window for tolerance. Our goal is not always to live in the window, although it would be nice. It is be able to bring ourselves back to the window when we would like to, if that makes sense. Someone who is regulated will go up and down. Somebody who is dysregulated stays in one place and that place is not the centre. Therefore, the kind of final frontier of nervous system regulation is to accept dysregulation.

• 1:00:09Jemma Sbeg?

  Let yourself feel it fully. Don't panic about it. Literally say, this is a dysregulated response I'm having right now, isn't it? This is hyperarousal, this is hypoarousal, this is what's happening in my body. I'm gonna let my nervous system do my job and then let it take it, take me where I need to go and I'm gonna follow it. I'm not gonna push myself or ask my body to go into spaces that are unnatural. I'm gonna feel discomfort for a second and then I'm gonna apply my methods for regulation. I'm not going to speed everything up or slow everything down. Again, that may feel quite counterintuitive and it's a weird way to end the episode. Is the secret to being regulated being dysregulated seems like a trick?

• 1:00:52Jemma Sbeg?

  But I think it makes more sense in the context of nervous system regulation becoming more popular. Again, we accidentally make the nervous system sound like it's our enemy. And so anything that doesn't feel calm feels wrong. Anything that is fight or flight, like that's bad, stress is bad, cortisol is bad. You know, if we're in an activated or aroused state, something has gone wrong. If you are somebody like me, thinking that means that when it naturally does go wrong, which it will, it's not that it's going wrong that's bad, it's our exaggerated response to that because we are afraid of it getting worse. Your stress response is not a designed flaw. It is protective. It wants to keep us alive.

• 1:01:37Jemma Sbeg?

  So rather than vilifying our nervous system and being fearful or panicked by the setting it operates on at times, it may be more compassionate and perhaps more sustainable and effective to have that psychoeducation to reapply the logic and say, this is my body. It's working very hard to keep me safe. Thank you for doing that. And I'm not always gonna feel great. I'm not always gonna feel good about it. You know, I'm not always gonna feel regulated and that's okay. The flexibility is what I'm after. I also think, let's say it again, the second biggest thing I hope you got out of this episode is that a regulated nervous system is not something that you can buy.

• 1:02:19Jemma Sbeg?

  I was looking up, when I was researching this episode, all the different methods for, you know, vagus nerve activation and regulation and and calming. I found a device that was like, somebody had priced at like two thousand, three thousand pounds or three thousand dollars. And I think what I was intending to do with this episode is make you realise, like, you don't need that. I think maybe one percent of people who are struggling with this need that. You don't need a device that tracks your sleep. You don't need a three thousand dollar backyard sauna, I'm sure they cost a lot more.

• 1:02:57Jemma Sbeg?

  When you have all this stuff within you that is free, that is accessible, that can help you more than a gadget. Now, something that is expensive that is worth it is therapy and is getting like a genuine help. Let us like dig into your past and like really pick up the threads of where this dysregulation has happened. But only when you have those base, like the baseline, basic needs available to you, choice that is available to you, social help and assistance and support, do we add those things on the top. So I hope this episode has been helpful. I hope that it's taught you more about the fundamentals of nervous system regulation.

• 1:03:42Jemma Sbeg?

  Again, this is just a basic introductory episode. I'm gonna leave some more stuff down below from people who spend so much more time thinking about this and talking about this than I do. And I hope the value of science and and the scientific backing to this has kind of reached you and and convinced you that this is important, but also made you realise some of the things that you hear online might not be true. If you've enjoyed this episode, just a reminder that you can now listen, or I should say, watch full episodes of this podcast, The Psychology of Your Twenties, on Netflix. You can also read the transcript to this episode if you want some of the links to the research I mentioned on Substack.

• 1:04:23Jemma Sbeg?

  And if you have further interesting thoughts about this or your own experiences, you can DM me at That Psychology Podcast on Instagram. Or you can leave a comment on Spotify below. I hope this really was a great introductory episode for you. I hope that it's reset some of your beliefs and expectations about nervous system regulation. If it is something that you are encountering or thinking about yourself. And I hope it's been informative. I feel like I've said that a million times, but I hope, yeah, that it's been informative and taught you something. Thank you as always to our researcher Libby Comet for her assistance with this episode. And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

• 1:05:08Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year and something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop, because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns so I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a thirty day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 1:05:53Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favourite gym clothing at gymshark dot com.

• 1:06:30Jemma Sbeg?

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