Why Your Nervous System Is Stuck in Survival Mode (And How to Reset It)

You can’t pinpoint when it started. Maybe it was that period of relentless work stress. Maybe it was after the breakup. Or maybe it was just years of doing too much, absorbing too much, and never quite recovering. But somewhere along the way, your body stopped feeling safe—and it forgot how to switch off.

Your jaw is perpetually clenched. Your shoulders live somewhere near your ears. You startle at unexpected noises. You’re exhausted but wired at night, scrolling your phone with a racing mind that refuses to quiet down. Your doctor says your blood work is fine. Your therapist says you’re making progress. But your body? Your body says something is very, very wrong.

Welcome to nervous system dysregulation—the condition that’s trending across health conversations in both the US and UK for a very good reason. It might be the missing piece in your mental health puzzle.

Your Body Has Its Own Operating System

To understand what’s happening, you need to understand the autonomic nervous system—the part of your nervous system that operates beneath conscious awareness. It controls your heart rate, digestion, breathing, immune response, and a thousand other functions you never have to think about.

This system has two primary modes. The sympathetic nervous system is your accelerator—the fight-or-flight response that activates when you’re in danger. Your heart rate speeds up, muscles tense, digestion stops, and stress hormones flood your bloodstream. This response evolved to help our ancestors survive tiger attacks. It’s supposed to be temporary.

The parasympathetic nervous system is your brake—the rest-and-digest mode that activates when you feel safe. Your heart rate slows, muscles relax, digestion resumes, and your body shifts into repair and recovery mode. This is where healing happens.

The problem? Modern life keeps stomping on the accelerator. Constant notifications, financial stress, information overload, global crises on every screen, demanding bosses, relationship pressures—your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a tiger and a stressful email chain. It just knows: threat. Activate. Survive.

When Your Alarm System Gets Stuck

Dr. Stephen Porges, who developed the Polyvagal Theory, described a third state beyond fight-or-flight: the freeze response. When your nervous system determines that you can’t fight or flee—when the threat feels overwhelming and inescapable—it shifts into shutdown mode. This is the dorsal vagal response, and it looks like numbness, dissociation, brain fog, chronic fatigue, depression, and feeling disconnected from your body and the world.

Many people oscillate between these dysregulated states—ping-ponging between anxious hyperactivation and exhausted shutdown—without ever landing in the calm, connected, regulated state where they can actually think clearly, feel emotions normally, and enjoy life.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s neurobiology. And increasingly, therapists, neuroscientists, and wellness practitioners in both the US and UK are recognizing that you can’t think your way out of a body-based problem.

Why Talk Therapy Alone Isn’t Enough

Here’s the controversial truth that’s reshaping mental health treatment: for many people with nervous system dysregulation, traditional talk therapy alone isn’t sufficient. Understanding why you’re anxious is valuable. Being able to articulate your triggers is useful. But if your nervous system is stuck in survival mode, intellectual understanding doesn’t change the physiological state.

This is why someone can spend years in therapy, gain tremendous insight into their patterns, and still feel their body clench with anxiety the moment they walk into a meeting. The brain got the memo, but the body didn’t.

Somatic approaches—therapies that work directly with the body to process and release stored stress—are exploding in popularity because they address the nervous system directly. And the science is catching up with what practitioners have been saying for years.

The Vagus Nerve: Your Built-In Reset Button

The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in your body, running from your brainstem down through your neck, chest, and abdomen. It’s the primary communication highway between your brain and your body, and it’s the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system.

When your vagal tone is high—meaning your vagus nerve is functioning well—you can regulate your emotions more easily, recover from stress faster, and shift between states smoothly. When vagal tone is low, you get stuck in fight-or-flight or freeze, and recovering from stressful events takes much longer.

The exciting news? You can actually improve your vagal tone. It’s not a fixed trait—it’s trainable, like a muscle. And that’s where the practical applications get genuinely interesting.

Evidence-Based Nervous System Resets

These aren’t woo-woo techniques plucked from Instagram. They’re backed by research and used in clinical settings.

Diaphragmatic breathing with extended exhale. When your exhale is longer than your inhale, it directly activates the parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve. Try inhaling for four counts and exhaling for six to eight counts. Just two minutes of this measurably reduces heart rate and cortisol levels. This is the simplest and fastest way to send your nervous system a safety signal.

Cold exposure to the face and neck. Splashing cold water on your face or applying a cold pack to the sides of your neck activates the dive reflex—a parasympathetic response that slows heart rate and calms the nervous system. This is why cold plunges have gained popularity, but you don’t need an ice bath. A cold washcloth on your face works.

Humming, singing, and gargling. The vagus nerve runs through the muscles of your throat and vocal cords. Vibrating these muscles through humming, singing, chanting, or even vigorous gargling directly stimulates vagal tone. This is why monks chant “om”—they figured out vagal stimulation centuries before we had the science to explain it.

Gentle movement and shaking. Animals literally shake off stress after a threatening encounter. Humans are the only animals that suppress this natural release response—because shaking is socially unacceptable. Somatic practitioners now use intentional tremoring and shaking exercises (like TRE—Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) to help the body discharge stored survival energy.

Social connection. Porges’s Social Engagement System describes how genuine, safe social connection activates the “smart vagus”—the most evolved branch of the vagal system. This is why eye contact with a trusted person, a warm hug, or even a friendly conversation can calm your nervous system in ways that no supplement or meditation app can match.

Signs Your Nervous System Needs Attention

Not sure if this applies to you? Here are common signs of a dysregulated nervous system that often get blamed on other things:

You feel tired even after sleeping eight hours. You’re easily overwhelmed by sensory input—crowds, loud noises, bright lights. You have difficulty concentrating or making decisions. You experience digestive issues that don’t respond to dietary changes. You feel emotionally numb or disconnect from experiences. Your muscles are chronically tense, especially in your jaw, shoulders, and hips. You have a hard time sitting still but also can’t motivate yourself to move. You react disproportionately to minor stressors. You feel unsafe in situations that are objectively safe.

If several of these resonate, your nervous system might be running an outdated threat response that no longer matches your actual life.

The Over-Optimization Backlash

Here’s something important: the very wellness culture that introduced nervous system work to the mainstream is also capable of turning it into another source of pressure. If your “vagus nerve stimulation routine” is a 45-minute protocol that you feel guilty about skipping, you’ve missed the point.

The goal isn’t to achieve a perfectly optimized nervous system. It’s to develop enough awareness and enough simple tools that you can notice when you’re dysregulated and gently guide yourself back toward safety.

This can be as simple as taking three slow breaths before responding to a stressful text. Or noticing that your shoulders are up around your ears and deliberately dropping them. Or calling a friend when you feel the familiar numbness creeping in.

The nervous system responds to gentleness, not force. Trying to aggressively hack your way to calm is a bit like screaming at yourself to relax. It doesn’t work because it can’t work—the approach itself is activating the very system you’re trying to calm.

Building a Regulated Life

Long-term nervous system regulation isn’t about techniques—it’s about the conditions you create in your daily life. Sleep, movement, nutrition, social connection, meaningful work, adequate rest, and reduced exposure to unnecessary stressors all contribute to a regulated baseline.

This might mean unfollowing the news accounts that spike your cortisol every morning. It might mean setting boundaries with the person who always leaves you feeling drained. It might mean leaving the job that keeps your body in a constant state of threat. These aren’t indulgences—they’re neurobiological necessities.

Your nervous system isn’t trying to make your life harder. It’s trying to protect you using the best information it has. If you teach it—through repeated experiences of safety—that the threat has passed, it will stand down. Not instantly. Not perfectly. But gradually, predictably, and with profound effects on every aspect of your health.

You don’t need to think your way to calm. You need to feel your way there. And your nervous system already knows how—if you give it the chance.

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References:

• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation.
• Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation.
• Gerritsen, R.J.S., & Band, G.P.H. (2018). Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
• Berceli, D. (2015). Trauma Releasing Exercises: A Revolutionary New Method for Stress/Trauma Recovery.
• Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.