4 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Nervous System Healing
Nervous system healing has become all the rage over the last handful of years. And while there's an endless amount of great information and guidance out there, I also think there are a handful of assumptions we've brought into this work that can leave us approaching our healing in a sort of backwards way.
So I want to look at four places I think we can get turned around—and what nervous system healing might look like if we turn them back around.
1. We try too hard
Our nervous systems are designed to move through different states. There are times when we need activation—to get up in the morning, connect with other people, pursue something we're excited about, solve a problem or respond to a challenge—and there are times when our systems need an opportunity to settle and restore.
There’s an inherent rhythm to this system, kind of like a wave—it moves up and it moves down. Healing our nervous system isn’t about eliminating the upward movement so that we never feel activated, stressed or anxious. It’s about supporting the system so it can move more fluidly between states.
A lot of us are already living with plenty of activation and relatively little time or space for true settling. And because many of us now have a sense of how important the nervous system is, when we recognize that we're stressed, overwhelmed, anxious or exhausted, our response is often to give ourselves more things to do—a sort of agenda for nervous system healing.
It might look like some combination of: meditate, journal, do breathwork, cold plunge, optimize my morning routine, change my mindset, eat more protein, lift weights, do yoga and put my legs up the wall before bed.
There's nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. A lot of them can be incredibly helpful.
But there’s a contradiction here that’s really worth noticing: we are trying to help our system settle by doing more.
Sleep is probably the easiest way I can explain what I mean by this.
When I was a kid, I really struggled to sleep. I was scared to be the only person awake in the house, so the minute I got into bed I felt this tremendous pressure to fall asleep before my parents went to bed.
And, of course, it was the pressure to fall asleep that kept me from sleeping.
I think something similar can happen with nervous system healing. We can start treating ease or settling like something we have to do, achieve or make happen—and that puts pressure around the very state we're trying to access.
And I'm not suggesting that doing or effort itself is the problem. Meditation takes effort. Yoga takes effort. Choosing to put our phone down and go sit outside instead of doom scrolling takes some degree of intention and effort.
So the answer isn’t to stop doing things that support our nervous systems. But I think it's worth asking what all of our effort is actually creating.
Is it genuinely helping me experience more ease? Do I actually feel more supported by the things I'm doing? Or has nervous system healing become one more thing I need to stay on top of—one more set of things I have to get done before I can finally relax?
2. We undervalue experiences that don’t seem productive
I think the flip side of putting so much emphasis on doing things to heal is that we can completely undervalue some of the experiences that can be most healing to our system.
Why?
Because they don’t look like we’re doing much of anything. In fact, they can often appear lazy or indulgent.
I’m talking about things like rest, pleasure, enjoyment, spaciousness—experiences where there may be absolutely nothing to accomplish and nothing to show for the time we’ve spent.
And I think that’s difficult for a lot of us.
We’re accustomed to valuing our time based on what we did with it. If I worked for an hour, I got something done. If I exercised, I did something for my health. If I learned something about my nervous system, I can point to what I learned.
But if I lie outside in the sun for an hour because it feels good, what exactly did I accomplish?
Nothing, really.
And that’s kind of the point.
A lot of us give ourselves permission to rest only once we’ve worked hard enough or gotten enough done. Or we wait until we’re so depleted that rest becomes necessary.
Which raises a question I think is really worth considering:
Do we have to prove that rest is necessary before we’re allowed to want it or take it?
Here’s the thing, doing fills space. Rest and pleasure require space—but they also create it. And the more room we make for experiences where nothing is required of us, the more room there can be for ease.
So if we’re already stressed, overwhelmed and overextended, and our response is to fill the little remaining space we have with all the things we’re supposed to be doing to heal our nervous system, we’re actually crowding out the very thing our nervous system needs.
Maybe we don’t need another thing to do. Maybe we need some time and space in our life where, for a little while, nothing is required of us.
And I think part of nervous system healing is learning to give that real value—not only when we’ve earned it or become so depleted that we have no other choice, but because rest, pleasure and enjoyment are valuable and healing experiences in and of themselves.
3. Building capacity to tolerate more
Of course, there are times in life when there really isn’t much room to do less. Sometimes we’re simply in an incredibly demanding season. There are things that need to be done, people who need us and circumstances we can’t immediately change.
And this is one of the reasons building nervous system capacity matters. We want to be able to remain present and connected through a wider range of experiences without becoming completely overwhelmed by them.
But rather than treating capacity as something that supports us, we can start to treat it as another way of measuring and proving ourselves.
In other words: How much can I tolerate? How much can I have on my plate and still manage it all?
Underneath those questions can be an assumption that the more we’re able to handle, the stronger, more resilient or even more healed we must be.
But at some point I think we have to ask:
Am I building greater capacity so I can move through the unavoidable demands of life with more flexibility, or so I can keep asking more and more of myself?
Because “Can I handle this?” and “Do I actually want to be handling this?” are two very different questions, but the line between them can easily get blurred.
I had a client who gave me such a clear example of this recently. We had been working together for a while, and at one point I commented on how much steadier she seemed.
And she basically said, “Yeah, but that's because I gave up that job I hated.”
She had been working a part-time job that was creating a tremendous amount of stress in her life, and financially she didn't actually need to be doing it anymore. So eventually she stopped.
And what struck me was the way she discounted the steadiness she was experiencing afterward. It was almost as though it didn't really count because she had changed the circumstances that were making her miserable. As though the real evidence of growth would have been keeping the job she hated and learning how to feel steady anyway.
And I think a lot of us carry some version of that assumption. I should be able to feel okay within circumstances that don't feel okay to me. And if I can't, I must still have more work to do.
Yes, sometimes the work is increasing our capacity so we can better navigate the challenges of life. But sometimes it’s recognizing that certain aspects of our life aren't working for us and, when we have a choice, giving ourselves permission to change them.
4. Sensation matters—but so does our relationship with it
Sensation is an incredibly important part of nervous system healing. It's part of how we experience emotion, how we know what's happening within us and how we process experience and how we stay connected to ourselves within that experience.
But our relationship with sensation can become complicated for all kinds of reasons.
One being that we live in a culture that puts tremendous value on thinking, rationality and productivity. Because of that, a lot of us have gotten very good at living from the neck up—thinking about our experience rather than actually being in contact with it.
Beyond the cultural influence, for many of us, being “in our head” becomes the more manageable place to be because our internal or external experience feels overwhelming, unpredictable or uncomfortable. So those of us who experienced chronic stress or trauma often retreat into our mind as a coping mechanism.
But that doesn’t mean that nervous system healing is simply about learning to feel more.
Telling someone to “get into your body” or pay more attention to sensation isn't necessarily helpful if being in contact with sensation has historically been overwhelming.
And this is another place where that more-is-better mindset can sneak in. If sensation is important, it's easy to assume that more sensation must be better.
But the goal isn't the maximum amount of sensation we can tolerate. It's developing a healthier relationship with sensation.
And there’s another reason that relationship matters: sensation gives us information.
If I’m constantly overriding my internal experience, it becomes much harder to know the difference between something I’m choosing because I genuinely want it and something I’m choosing because I think I should be able to handle it—or because my nervous system is used to handling it.
The more connected I become to sensation, the more opportunity I have to notice: Does something in me actually feel drawn toward this, or does something pull away? Am I exhausted, excited, afraid? In other words, what am I actually feeling in the moment?
With that said, none of those sensations necessarily gives us an infallible answer about what we should do. Sensations associated with fear or anxiety, for example, don’t automatically mean something is wrong for us. Sometimes we experience them because we’re trying something new and moving beyond our comfort zone.
So the value of sensation in healing our nervous system isn’t about simply increasing how much we can feel or how much sensation we can tolerate. Instead it’s about becoming more connected to ourselves and better able to listen to what these sensations might be telling us, in real time.
So what happens when we turn all of this back around?
When we put all of this together and turn these assumptions back around, nervous system healing starts to look a little different.
First, nervous system healing isn’t always about doing more. Sometimes it’s about doing less, and sometimes it’s about looking at whether all the things we’re doing are actually creating more ease—or just giving us more to do.
Second, rest and pleasure have value in and of themselves. We don’t need to earn them or justify them. Carving out time and space to be instead of constantly do is itself an important part of nervous system healing.
Third, building capacity matters, but its value isn’t simply in proving how much we can tolerate. Growth can mean increasing our capacity to move through difficult experiences, but it can also mean giving ourselves permission to change circumstances that aren’t working for us—even when we could tolerate more discomfort.
And fourth, reconnecting with sensation is an important part of nervous system healing. But the goal isn’t simply to feel more. It’s to develop a healthier relationship with sensation—one that helps us stay connected to ourselves and better listen to what our own experience is telling us.
And I think when we look at nervous system healing this way, it stops looking quite so much like another project where we’re continually trying to optimize ourselves, increase how much we can handle or finally get ourselves into the state we think we’re supposed to be in.
It's learning how to work with our nervous system in a way that actually supports the life we want to be living.
If you’re interested in exploring this more deeply, I have a free class called Beyond Self-Awareness, where I talk about the relationship between the nervous system, our inner experience and the way we relate to ourselves.