When Your Nervous System Won’t Calm Down

You’ve probably heard the terms emotional self-regulation and dysregulated nervous system. They’re everywhere right now, and for good reason. But I want to make sure we’re all on the same page about what dysregulation actually looks like when it’s happening to you, in your body, on a Tuesday afternoon.

That’s what I’m getting into on this episode of The Terri Cole Show. How dysregulation presents in real life, and a few of my favorite ways to come back to yourself when you’re stuck there.

Prefer the audio? Listen here.

When Your Body Won’t Stand Down

Your stress response system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, is a gift. It was designed to protect you from real danger. The problem is that it was built a long time ago, when danger looked very different. Your body hasn’t gotten the memo that the threat is an inbox and a news cycle, rather than a lion or a bear. It still reacts the same way.

When the system falls out of balance, you get stuck at one of two extremes. 

Either you’re locked in fight-or-flight, hypervigilant, unable to relax, running on overdrive, or you’ve shut down completely, withdrawn, foggy, detached.

Neither extreme lets you return to a calm, safe, regulated state.

Physiologically, this can show up as chronic pain, fatigue, digestive issues, headaches, insomnia, and muscle tension. 

Emotionally, it can look like heightened anxiety, depression, panic, or emotional instability. Cognitively, it’s memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and brain fog. Dr. Daniel Amen, world-renowned American psychiatrist, brain disorder specialist, and 12-time New York Timesbestselling author, scanned my brain a while back and told me it was the busiest brain he’d ever seen out of over 200,000 scans. And I can tell you that when that brain gets foggy, it’s genuinely disorienting.

And then there’s amplified reactivity, where you feel rageful over something that, in a regulated state, you could handle, or you go the other direction and detach from things that deserve your full presence.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re in good company. We all get dysregulated. It’s part of being human. The goal isn’t to never feel it, it’s to not get stuck there.

Five Ways to Self-Soothe

Self-soothing is easier to reach for in a hard moment when you’re already doing it regularly. Your window of tolerance expands with practice. Here are some of the things that work for me.

A hot bath or shower. Since I was a kid, sick in the middle of the night, the only thing that helped was getting into a hot tub. I light a candle, I add essential oil to the water, I dim the lights. I’ve put together what I call my witches’ brew, a combination of things I add to the bath, and I’ve included the full recipe in the guide for this episode at terricole.com/guide.

Guided meditation. I’ve had a daily meditation practice for over two decades. If that feels like a lot, start with two minutes. Search “two-minute meditations” on Insight Timer, a free app, and you’ll find dozens of options. I have free guided meditations there as well. You don’t have to be a meditator to meditate. If you have a couch and a butt, you already are one.

Breathing exercises. When we’re stressed, our physiology shifts, and breathwork can interrupt that cycle. My friend Sam Skelly has a breathing app with options ranging from a few minutes to longer sessions, depending on how much time you have. I’ll include the link in the guide at terricole.com/guide.

Low light and warmth. I almost never have overhead lights on. There’s something about softening the sensory environment that signals safety to a nervous system that’s been on high alert. Candles, a soft lamp, a blanket. Small things that tell your body it’s okay to stand down.

Sometimes, self-soothing is just lying down and letting the body stop. That counts too.

Co-Regulation: How We Help Each Other

Co-regulation is what happens when someone else’s calm helps you find your own. It’s not about fixing what’s wrong. It’s about being witnessed and felt.

Vic and I figured this out long before I had a name for it. We made an agreement early in our marriage: whoever loses it first gets to be the one losing it. The other person cannot alsolose it. Someone has to stay on the ground.

A few years ago, I came out of the bathroom in our New York apartment and snapped at him about something, but I wasn’t actually angry at him. I didn’t even fully understand what I was feeling. He looked at my face and said, “Hey, what’s wrong, Ter?” I started crying. He said, “Come sit on my lap.” He didn’t get defensive. He didn’t match my energy. He just made room for me to fall apart, and that’s what let me stop falling apart.

That’s co-regulation.

Some ways to practice it before you need it:

Pick a calm moment and breathe together. Five slow, deep breaths in sync. When you do this regularly, “breathe with me” doesn’t feel strange in a hard moment. It feels familiar.

Sit silently together. When I’m dysregulated, and Vic asks how he can best support me, I often say, “Just lie behind me on the couch.” He puts his arms around me, and his calm presence lets me get to calm faster. He’s not fixing anything. He’s just there.

Hold hands on purpose, not in passing. Intentional touch does something different.

After my first cancer surgery, I had a terrible reaction to the anesthesia. I was throwing up, in pain, and freezing in a hospital gown with my neck bandaged. Vic came in and put his big hand on my bare back, warm and still. Everything hurt less immediately. The nausea lifted. I’ve thought about that moment a lot since then. Touch is that powerful. When I was single in New York, I’d go get a cheap massage, not because I was sore but because I needed human contact. I didn’t know then that I was regulating my nervous system. But I was.
If you’ve been feeling dysregulated, you are not alone. I’ve been feeling it for at least six months. There are so many reasons we’re vulnerable to it right now, and living in a world this chaotic is one of them.

So here is your inspiration for self-soothing and co-regulating. 

As always, take care of you.

For the full guide, including the witches’ brew bath recipe, Insight Timer meditation links, and Sam Skelly’s breathing app, visit terricole.com/guide.

Terri Cole, licensed psychotherapist and author of Boundary Boss and Too Much, answers common questions about nervous system regulation.

What is a dysregulated nervous system?A dysregulated nervous system occurs when the body’s stress response gets stuck at one of two extremes: hyperarousal, which looks like chronic anxiety, hypervigilance, and inability to relax, or hypoarousal, which looks like shutdown, withdrawal, and emotional detachment. Either state can produce physical symptoms like fatigue, chronic pain, and insomnia, as well as emotional and cognitive symptoms like brain fog, difficulty concentrating, and heightened reactivity.

What is the difference between self-soothing and co-regulation? Self-soothing refers to practices you do on your own to return your nervous system to a calm, balanced state, such as breathwork, meditation, or sensory comfort. Co-regulation is what happens in a relationship when someone else’s calm presence helps you find your own. It doesn’t require fixing the problem. It requires staying grounded while the other person is not.

How do I know if I’m dysregulated or just stressed?Stress and dysregulation can feel similar, but the distinction is in the recovery. Feeling anxious or overwhelmed in response to something genuinely hard is a normal stress response. Dysregulation is when you can’t come back from it, when the heightened or shutdown state persists even after the immediate stressor has passed.

Can touch help regulate the nervous system?Physical contact, holding hands, being held, or even a hand on the back, can help calm a dysregulated nervous system. Intentional, compassionate touch signals safety to the body in a way that words often can’t. This is one reason co-regulation between partners can be as simple as sitting together quietly or holding each other without trying to fix anything.