10 Signs Your Nervous System Is Dysregulated

Introduction

You've done the bubble baths. The gratitude lists. The deep breaths that everyone swears will fix everything.

And yet... something still doesn't feel right.

You're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. Little things set you off. You feel like you're watching your life from behind glass — present, but not really there.

Here's what I wish someone had told me years ago: you cannot think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. I tried. For years. It doesn't work.

That's because your nervous system doesn't speak the language of logic. It speaks the language of sensation, of safety, of the body. And when it's been stuck in survival mode for long enough, no amount of positive thinking will convince it to stand down.¹

The signs below aren't character flaws or things to fix with more willpower. They're your body waving a flag, trying to get your attention. Let's look at what it might be saying.

1. You're Exhausted, But You Can't Sleep

This one's cruel, isn't it? You're running on empty all day, collapse into bed completely drained — and then lie there, wide awake, thoughts spiralling.

Or maybe you fall asleep fine but jolt awake at 2 or 3am with your heart pounding for no apparent reason.

This is what happens when your body gets stuck in sympathetic activation — the "fight or flight" branch of your autonomic nervous system.² Your stress hormones keep pumping even when there's no tiger chasing you. Your body has forgotten what "off" feels like.

2. Small Things Feel Overwhelming

The pile of dishes. An unanswered email. Someone asking "what do you want for dinner?"

Suddenly you want to cry. Or scream. Or crawl back into bed.

When your nervous system is dysregulated, your window of tolerance — the zone where you can handle life's normal ups and downs — gets narrower and narrower.³ Things that wouldn't have fazed you before now feel like too much. That's not you being dramatic. That's a system running on fumes.

3. You Feel Disconnected From Your Body

You live in your head. You forget to eat until you're shaky. You don't notice you need the bathroom until it's urgent. If someone asked you "how does your body feel right now?" you'd draw a blank.

This disconnection is called dissociation, and it exists on a spectrum.⁴ At its core, it's a protective response — your nervous system learned somewhere along the way that being fully present in your body wasn't safe. So it pulled you out.

It kept you safe then. But it's keeping you stuck now.

4. You Startle Easily

A car horn. A door slamming. Someone tapping you on the shoulder.

Your heart leaps, your body tenses, you might even yelp — and then you feel silly because it was nothing.

An exaggerated startle response is a classic sign of a nervous system stuck in hypervigilance.⁵ Your body is constantly scanning the environment for threats, even when you're objectively safe. It's exhausting, and it's not something you can just "decide" to stop doing.

5. You Can't Relax (Even When You Try)

You book a massage and spend the whole hour mentally running through tomorrow's to-do list. You try meditation and somehow feel more anxious than when you started.

Sound familiar?

When your nervous system has been in overdrive for long enough, relaxation starts to feel foreign — even threatening.⁶ Stillness becomes uncomfortable. Safety feels suspicious. Your body doesn't trust the quiet because it's been waiting for the other shoe to drop for so long.

6. You Experience Chronic Muscle Tension

That jaw you're always clenching. Shoulders practically touching your ears. A lower back that holds tension like it's being paid to.

This isn't random. Your muscles hold patterns — physical echoes of stress, protection, and emotion that never fully got processed.⁷ Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, calls this "stuck survival energy" — the incomplete stress responses that got frozen in your tissues.⁸

Your body is literally holding onto what your mind may have moved past.

7. Your Emotions Feel Extreme — Or Completely Absent

Some days you're flooded. Rage over nothing. Tears that come out of nowhere. Panic that grips you for reasons you can't explain.

Other days? Nothing. Flat. Numb. You know you should feel something, but it's like the volume's been turned all the way down.

This emotional whiplash reflects a nervous system swinging between states — hyperarousal (too much activation) and hypoarousal (too little).⁹ Neither state allows you to feel your feelings in a regulated, grounded way.

8. You Have Digestive Issues

Bloating that comes and goes with stress. A churning stomach before difficult conversations. IBS symptoms that flare when life gets hectic.

Your gut and your nervous system are in constant conversation via the vagus nerve — the longest nerve in your body, running from your brainstem all the way to your abdomen.¹⁰ When you're dysregulated, digestion takes a back seat. Your body is too busy surviving to worry about breaking down your lunch.

9. You Feel Stuck or Frozen

You know what you need to do. You want to do it. But you just... can't.

You stare at the task. You procrastinate. You avoid. You feel paralysed and then beat yourself up for being "lazy."

This isn't laziness. This is freeze — the oldest survival response we have.¹¹ When fight or flight aren't options (or haven't worked), your nervous system hits pause. Movement feels impossible because, in that moment, your body believes stillness is the safest option.

10. You've Lost Touch With What You Actually Want

"What do you need?" Someone asks, and you genuinely don't know.

You've spent so long in survival mode — managing, adapting, putting out fires — that your own needs have gone quiet. Your internal compass has gone fuzzy.

This is a loss of interoception: your body's ability to sense its own internal state.¹² Hunger, thirst, tiredness, emotions, desire — when you're disconnected from your body, these signals get harder and harder to hear.

Why This Matters

If you saw yourself in more than a few of these signs, I want you to hear this clearly: nothing is wrong with you.

Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do — protect you. It adapted to circumstances that required you to be vigilant, to push through, to disconnect from pain. It did its job beautifully.

The problem is that those adaptations, those survival patterns, are still running in the background — even when the original threat has passed. You're still bracing for impact in a life that might finally be safe.

As Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score: "The body keeps the score... if the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera... then the road to recovery runs through the body."¹³

What You Can Do Next

Healing a dysregulated nervous system isn't about hacks or quick fixes. It's not about forcing yourself to calm down (if only it were that easy).

It's about slowly, gently, teaching your body — through experience — that it's safe to soften.

A few places to start:

Orienting: Slowly look around the room. Name five things you can see. Let your nervous system register that you're here, now, and safe.
Grounding: Feel your feet on the floor. Really feel them. Press down. Let your body know it's supported.
Extended exhale: Breathe in for 4 counts, out for 6. Longer exhales activate your parasympathetic nervous system — the "rest and digest" branch.¹⁴
Gentle movement: Shake your hands. Roll your shoulders. Let your body discharge some of that stored tension.

These aren't cures. They're starting points — small invitations back into your body.

And if you're craving deeper support? That's where somatic work comes in. Body-first approaches that go beyond talking and into feeling, releasing, and rewiring.

Ready to Come Home to Your Body?

I work with women who are tired of feeling tired. Who know something's off but can't quite name it. Who are ready to stop managing their symptoms and start healing at the root.

Through my signature SomaCycle™️ Method and 4-Body Healing System, we work with your physical, mental, emotional, and energetic bodies — so you can finally release what you've been carrying and reclaim your full-body yes.

Learn more about working with me → Book An Embodiment Session

Written by Shannon Harrison — Somatic & Energetic Integration Specialist, foundress of Somatic Body™️

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