You’re not broken, you’re protected: seeing your behaviour through the lens of your nervous system
It’s 11pm. You’ve just snapped at someone you love about the dishwasher. Or you’ve spent the whole afternoon not opening one email. Or you said yes to a thing you absolutely didn’t have time for, again.
Most of us explain moments like these with character. I’m lazy. I’m too much. I’m a pushover. I can’t cope. We treat our behaviour as a verdict on who we are.
I did this for years. After a decade in the corporate world, I was stressed, overwhelmed and burnt out. I felt broken. It turned out I wasn’t broken at all. I was dysregulated. And learning to see my thoughts, feelings and behaviours through the lens of my nervous system changed everything.
This piece is about that lens: what it is, how to use it, and why it might be the kindest, most useful thing you learn this year.
Your nervous system has one job
Your nervous system is your body’s communication and control network. It takes in information from inside your body (your heartbeat, breath, gut, muscles) and from the world around you (what you see, hear, touch). It interprets all of it, then sends signals to coordinate how you respond.
Underneath everything, its job is simple: work out what’s safe and what isn’t, and keep you alive.
Here’s the part most of us were never taught. That safety check happens mostly below conscious awareness, in what’s often called the survival brain. It’s fast, automatic and built to protect you. Your thinking brain, the part that plans, reasons and judges, is slower, and it isn’t fully developed until your late twenties. When your survival brain decides something is a threat, it doesn’t wait for your thinking brain to weigh in.
That’s why you can know perfectly well that a “Quick chat?” email from your boss isn’t a tiger, and still feel your heart race.
The states your nervous system moves between
Rather than thinking of yourself as calm or stressed, it helps to think in states. Your nervous system moves between them all day, and each one changes how you think, feel and behave.
Home base (ventral vagal). Feels like: Grounded, curious, connected. You can feel emotions and come back to a workable place. Looks like: Listening properly, making eye contact, thinking clearly, laughing.
On button jammed (sympathetic: fight or flight). Feels like: Racing thoughts, tight chest, short fuse, on edge, can’t switch off. Looks like: Snapping, defending, overworking, fifteen tabs open, awake at 3am.
Handbrake on (dorsal vagal: shutdown). Feels like: Flat, foggy, numb, far away, exhausted however much you sleep. Looks like: Going quiet, withdrawing, not replying, struggling to start anything.
Foot on gas and brake (freeze). Feels like: Buzzing inside but stuck, like your feet are in cement. Panic with no movement. Looks like: Knowing exactly what to do and being unable to do it. Going blank.
Keeping everyone okay (fawn: a blended state). Feels like: Switched on enough to read the room and fix problems, at the cost of your own needs. Looks like: People-pleasing, over-apologising, saying yes when you mean no.
None of these states are bad. Fight and flight get you through a deadline. Shutdown conserves energy when there’s too much to handle. Even freeze, which gets a lot of shame and very little airtime, is your system doing two protective things at once.
The trouble starts when you get stuck.
Your window of regulation
Picture a window. Inside it, your nervous system can feel stress, get activated, and come back to baseline. You can think, feel and respond flexibly. That’s what regulation actually is: not being calm all the time, but being able to return.
Above the window is too much mobilisation: anxiety, panic, rage, racing thoughts. Below it is not enough: numbness, fog, shutdown, exhaustion.
A few things worth knowing about your window:
Spikes are normal. Cortisol gets a bad reputation, but it’s the hormone that gets you out of bed and sharpens your focus before a big presentation. Ups and downs through the day are a healthy system at work.
It’s not a fixed size. Stress, relationships, sleep and past experiences all shape it. After a bad night, things that wouldn’t normally tip you over suddenly do.
The problem is wear and tear. When your system is activated too often or too intensely, and never fully switches off, the load builds up over time. That build-up is what so often turns into burnout.
Where are you right now? If you’d like a quick read on your own state, take the two-minute nervous system check-in. No sign-up, and you get one thing to try today.
The question that changes everything
Here’s the lens. Next time you catch yourself doing something you don’t like, swap the question.
Instead of “What’s wrong with me?” ask “How is this behaviour protecting me?”
Then look again at the moments from the start of this piece:
Procrastinating on that email might be freeze: your system flooding with activation and slamming on the brakes at the same time.
Snapping about the dishwasher is often fight: a nervous system that has been above its window all day, finally with somewhere safe to let it out.
Saying yes when you meant no can be fawn: an old, clever strategy for staying safe by keeping everyone else okay.
Working late every night can be flight: your system mobilising you to perform, prove and please, because at some point that’s what felt safe.
Feeling nothing at all is often shutdown: your body’s oldest way of conserving energy when there’s simply too much.
These behaviours made sense at some point. Many of them were learned early, when a young nervous system borrowed its sense of safety from the adults around it. Repeat something often enough and it becomes the default.
Anxiety works the same way. It can act like a security guard standing at the door of your emotional experience, trying to keep certain feelings out because, at some point, your system learned they weren’t safe to feel. Fighting the guard rarely works. Getting curious about what it’s protecting usually does.
Put down the second arrow
There’s an old teaching about two arrows. The first arrow is the painful thing that happens: the stressful meeting, the argument, the reaction you didn’t choose. The second arrow is the one we shoot at ourselves afterwards: the shame, the blame, the “Why am I like this?”
That second arrow isn’t harmless. Shame is itself a threat signal, and it pushes your nervous system further out of its window. Understanding your reactions as brain-body states, not personality flaws, is how you stop firing it.
This is why I start every session and workshop with education. When people understand what’s happening in their body, it increases their sense of safety, builds self-compassion, and gives them more choice about what to do next. Education really does lead to regulation.
Try it: a two-minute check-in
You can’t think your way out of a nervous system state, because your thinking brain isn’t the one in charge. But you can work from the body up. Try this now, wherever you are:
Give yourself a number. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is so immobilised you couldn’t get up if you wanted to, and 10 is far too much mobilisation, where are you?
Notice how you’re holding your body. Tension in the jaw, shoulders or hands often points to activation. Heaviness or collapse often points to shutdown.
Find your feet. Bring your attention to the soles of your feet: the floor, the inside of your shoes, the temperature. If it’s hard to feel them, slowly slide one foot along the ground.
If you’re closer to 10, notice the chair underneath you and let it hold your weight. Look around slowly and name a few things you can see.
If you’re closer to 1, start small: wiggle your toes, press your feet down, roll your shoulders.
Check your number again. Any shift counts, even half a point.
What you’re doing is turning up the volume on real, neutral information from your senses, so your survival brain can hear clearly that, right now, you’re okay.
What this means at work
Everything above applies to teams too. A team of people stuck above their window looks like short fuses, back-to-back urgency and nobody able to switch off. A team stuck below it looks like silence in meetings, missed deadlines and people who seem to have stopped caring. Neither is a people problem or a culture problem. It’s nervous systems that have been running on “go” for too long.
One of the most useful things a team can get is a shared language for this. “I’m above my window today” is a lot easier to say in a stand-up than “I’m not coping”. Swapping stress for mobilisation, and I’m useless for my system’s pulled the handbrake, takes the shame out of the conversation and makes room for support.
Can it change? Yes.
The good news comes from neuroplasticity: your brain and nervous system change in response to experience, throughout your life. They’re pattern-seeking, so the more you practise coming back into your window, the easier that path becomes. Your window can get wider.
One line from my training has stayed with me more than any other: time doesn’t heal dysregulation, experience does. Waiting it out rarely works. New, safe experiences, practised often, do.
So the next time you catch yourself procrastinating, people-pleasing or snapping, try the lens. You’re not broken. You’re protected. And protection can learn a new way forward.
Want to go further?
Learn this properly, with guided practice and tools that fit your life. Book a Reset Now session, or bring this to your team.
This article is for education and wellbeing. It isn’t a replacement for medical care or psychological therapy. If you’re struggling, please speak to your GP or a qualified professional.
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