How to Actually Regulate Your Nervous System

If you’re on social media, you may have noticed the growing conversation around regulating your nervous system and how to regulate your nervous system. 

It’s wild how you can learn so much on social media, and also never understand the full story. 

From a licensed therapist, here’s the truth: regulating your nervous system is hard work. 

It’s not something that can be ~fixed~ within a 30-day challenge or detox, let alone instructions from a 10-second tiktok. 

As convenient as it would be to take a single deep breath (or buy an expensive greens powder) and say bye-bye to your anxiety, trauma response, negative coping skills, or depression…regulating your nervous system requires getting to know yourself. 

Getting to know yourself means being able to answer these questions: 

• When was the last time your nervous system was regulated? 
• Can you identify people in your life who seem to be able to regulate their nervous system?
• What tools have you built in as a reaction to your environment, upbringing, attachment styles?
• What coping skills work for you?
• Are there coping skills that negatively impact your  life? 
• How are you actively choosing to slow down each day?

Here’s something you probably haven’t heard on tiktok: Your nervous system regulation patterns are primarily created within the first 18 months of your life. 

Can you remember the first 18 months of your life? Obviously not. 

Everything you know about what your life was like as a baby is through what people tell you, which is also warped and biased through their own experience and perception. Which means, you likely aren’t getting the full story. 

So, when you are learning to re-regulate your nervous system as an adult, you can’t just hold the ice cube and hope for the best. You can hold the ice cube between therapy sessions, where you are doing the work to identify how you understand your nervous system. 

At Forward Healing, we are all about developing awareness around our patterns, calling them out, and figuring out how to do something a bit different with them on the days where we are present enough to do so. The Internet can be helpful with tips or tricks, but your nervous system wasn’t dysregulated in a single day, and you’ll struggle to regulate it with only a 30-second hack. 

The real growth comes when you seek out multiple perspectives, possibly seek professional mental health help, and start identifying your patterns. 

Ready to regulate your nervous system on your own terms, with a licensed professional to support you? 

Choose your form of mental health support: 

FREE: Grab our free mental health resource bundle – playlists, podcasts, and quizzes. Get it HERE.

LOW-COST: Check out The Shift workshops and go through them on your own time. Get one workshop for $17 or all 6 for $89. Learn more HERE.

1:1 SUPPORT: Check out our After-Therapy® offerings and inquire about working with Becca, our Founder & LCSW. Learn more HERE.