Have you ever found yourself feeling anxious, overwhelmed, panicky or completely shut down and thought:

Why I am I like this?

Maybe nothing particularly bad is happening. You’re safe. Life might even look pretty good on paper. And yet your heart is racing, your chest feels tight, your mind won’t stop thinking or you just want to hide away from the world.

And then, because we’re human, we often make ourselves feel even worse by blaming ourselves for feeling that way…

I should be able to cope with this.

Why can’t I just stop thinking about it?

Other people deal with far worse.

What is wrong with me?

But what if, instead of your body getting it wrong, it’s actually trying to protect you?

A huge realisation for me was that our bodies aren’t always reacting to what is actually happening. They’re often reacting to what they believe is happening

Our nervous system is constantly taking in information and looking for signs of safety or threat. And the important thing to understand is that the threat doesn’t have to be something physically happening in front of us right now.

You can be lying safely in bed while your mind replays something painful that happened ten years ago, and your body can respond as though the danger is happening again in the present moment. Or you can be making a cup of tea while worrying about something that might happen next week, next month or five years from now, and your nervous system can react as though it’s happening right now.

Your thinking brain knows the difference. It knows that the thing you’re remembering happened years ago. It knows that the thing you’re worrying about hasn’t actually happened yet and may never happen at all.

But when something is remembered or imagined vividly enough to feel threatening, your body can still have a very real response in the present moment. Your heart might start racing. Your muscles might tense. Your breathing might change. You might feel sick, shaky or restless. You might want to run away, hide, cancel everything or completely shut down. The feelings are real, even when the threat isn’t actually happening right now.

Our stories can feel very real to our body.

We all tell ourselves stories…

I’m going to get this wrong.

They’re going to judge me.

Something bad is going to happen.

I won’t be able to cope.

What if I fail?

What if I let everyone down?

These thoughts often come from somewhere. They might be connected to something that happened years ago, something we learnt growing up or a time when we felt embarrassed, rejected, unsafe or out of control. And sometimes we’ve repeated them so many times that they feel completely true.

The problem is that while we might think we’re simply worrying or overthinking, our body can be responding to the story as though the danger is happening now. That’s why it can be so difficult to simply “think positive” when your whole body is telling you that you’re not safe.

Your nervous system is trying to keep you safe

Your nervous system’s job is to protect you.

If it senses danger, it can prepare you to fight, run away, freeze, hide or shut down. These responses have helped humans survive for thousands of years.

The problem is that the things that set off those responses today aren’t usually a tiger standing in front of us, or a car heading directly our way.

It might be an email, a difficult conversation or posting something online. It could be standing up in front of a room full of people, someone not replying to a message or a memory from years ago. Or lying awake at 2am imagining everything that could possibly go wrong.

Your nervous system can respond to all of these things as potential threats, particularly if something about them connects with a past experience or an old fear. And this is why understanding the nervous system changed so much for me. Because instead of immediately thinking, Why am I like this?, I could start to understand what was actually happening.

What is my nervous system trying to protect me from?

I think this is such a different question from What is wrong with me? It doesn’t mean that every feeling or reaction is purely down to your nervous system, or that we don’t have any responsibility for what we do next. But it does mean we can stop adding another layer of shame and self-criticism on top of an already activated nervous system. Because if your body already believes you’re under threat, telling yourself that you’re ridiculous, weak or failing probably isn’t going to help you feel any safer.

Understanding what’s happening gives us another way in. We can begin to notice when we’re caught up in a memory from the past or a worry about the future. We can look around and remind ourselves where we actually are. We can notice what we can see, hear and feel around us. We can ask ourselves: Is this happening right now? And we can help our body notice that, in this moment, we might actually be safe.

That doesn’t mean the difficult feelings disappear instantly. And it doesn’t mean we have to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t.
But it can help us understand that our body isn’t trying to work against us – it’s trying to protect us.

And when we begin to understand that, we can stop fighting ourselves quite so much and start giving our nervous system the safety and support it needs.

Because sometimes, the first thing we need isn’t to change our thoughts or push ourselves to do more. It’s to become aware of what’s happening in our body and notice the thoughts or stories that might be behind the emotional response.

When we understand what our nervous system is reacting to, we can begin to help our body recognise that what happened in the past isn’t happening now, and that what we’re worrying about in the future hasn’t happened yet.

And from there, we can start to create a sense of safety in the present moment.

Much love,

Jo x