Nervous system regulation practices can backfire

If you have unresolved/incomplete survival stress “stuck” in your nervous system, specially if your system “setting” is to go into freeze or shutdown, the last thing you want to do is starting to add a list of specific exercises, elaborate visualisations and vagal nerve toning to your routine.

It’s true that these exercises can be helpful if applied with deeper understanding and not as an one-size-fits-all approach.

When a nervous system is in shutdown it means it has reached the highest stage of overwhelm.
So adding more complexity with various exercises might seem like a good idea at the time, but it will invite more overwhelm into your system.

Two unexpected things can happen when you try so hard to feel better with a “quick fix” technique.

⚠️You might make yourself feel worse which will feed more the downward negative spiral.

‼️You might feel better and may even continue to feel better for the rest of the day, only to crash again the next day or a couple of days later. Getting back into the endless unhelpful loop.

This can happen because your system received a “kick-start” but it didn’t have enough capacity to handle and integrate the short burst of energy, so after awhile your body goes back into its known old patterns, switching between stress and overwhelm.

The long lasting solution is to invest in building nervous system capacity first, so that you can navigate different nervous system states without getting “stuck” in them.

Share this post to help people understand that LESS IS MORE in deep healing work.