How to Know When You’re Dysregulated (and What to Do About It)
System 1, Week 2: The Nervous System is the Foundation of Emotional Control
Let me paint a picture that may sound familiar to you…
You’re snapping at someone you care about, and you don’t know why.
You catch yourself zoning out mid-conversation, your thoughts scattering.
Or maybe you’re suddenly exhausted — shut down, foggy, flat.
Many days it can feel like you’re broken.
Like you’re failing.
But what you’re feeling isn’t random.
It’s not your personality either.
It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it’s been wired to do.
The state you’re in is called dysregulation — and it’s much more common than most of us realize.
Dysregulation happens when your body doesn’t feel safe, even if your mind can’t explain why.
So it shifts into defense mode: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
You react. You shut down. You spiral.
And then you blame yourself for not “keeping it together.”
But what if this wasn’t a personal flaw — but a physiological signal?
What if emotional control began not with willpower, but with body-awareness?
Play in the background for the maximum reading experience.
This week, we’re continuing our Emotional Mastery series with Lesson Two: a practical guide to understanding how your nervous system shapes your emotional reactions — and why learning its patterns is the first foundational step toward reclaiming your power.
If you’ve ever wondered why you shut down, snap, or spiral out of nowhere, this one’s for you.
Let’s get to it, initiate.
What Is Emotional Dysregulation?
Emotional dysregulation isn’t about being “too sensitive” or “overreacting.”
It’s a physiological state — a moment when your nervous system is overwhelmed and unable to return to balance.
In plain terms: your body feels unsafe, and so your emotions follow.
At its core, dysregulation is when your internal state shifts into defense mode.
That can look like emotional flooding (sudden outbursts, spiraling thoughts, tears that won’t stop).
Or the opposite — shutdown and numbness (you can’t cry, can’t care, can’t feel anything at all).
It might show up as irritability or snapping at someone you love.
Or zoning out completely in the middle of a conversation.
These aren’t mood swings. They’re your body’s way of trying to protect you.
Scientifically, emotional dysregulation is governed by the autonomic nervous system. Specifically, your sympathetic (fight/flight) and parasympathetic (rest/freeze/fawn) branches.
A helpful way to picture this is imagining emotional weather in your body:
In sympathetic hyperactive states, the storm is outside — agitation, restlessness, panic.
In parasympathetic freeze states, the storm moves inward — numbness, detachment, collapse.
When you perceive a threat — whether it’s a real danger or just an old emotional wound being triggered — your body tries to keep you safe by activating a survival response.
The heart rate changes. Muscles tense.
Blood rushes away from your brain's rational centers and toward your limbs.
Your thinking narrows.
You feel like you're "not yourself" — because, in a sense, you're not.
You're in protection mode, not connection mode.
Importantly, dysregulation isn’t a flaw. It does not mean you’re broken or weak.
In fact, it means your nervous system is doing its job — it just may be overfiring due to chronic stress, trauma history, lack of safety, or even subtle environmental cues your brain associated with past threats.
The system that once helped you survive may now be firing during everyday stress.
By learning to recognize what dysregulation is, you gain the power to respond — not just react.
How the Nervous System Works (in Plain English)
Your nervous system isn’t just part of you — it’s the system that governs every part of you.
It’s the reason you can think clearly, breathe deeply, fall in love, feel safe, sense danger, speak with confidence, or spiral into panic.
It controls how alert you are, how emotionally present you feel, how fast your heart beats, whether your digestion works — even how your face expresses emotion.
When your nervous system is balanced, everything flows.
When it’s out of sync, everything feels harder than it should.
FUN FACT 🤓🧪: The human brain consists of 100 billion neurons and over 100 trillion synaptic connections. There are more neurons in a single human brain than stars in the milky way!
(Source: Yale School of Medicine)
Understanding your nervous system isn’t a niche skill.
It’s the foundation for emotional control, deep focus, conflict repair, creative clarity, and real healing.
Most people never learn how it works — which is why so many chase goals with systems that don’t account for the body’s baseline state of safety.
When you're dysregulated, your nervous system has moved outside its natural window of tolerance — which is the range where you feel safe enough to process emotion, think clearly, and stay present.
When you're inside this window, you can respond.
When you're outside of it, you react.
At a physiological level, this hinges on a balance between two key branches of your autonomic nervous system— which we introduced in the previous section:
The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
Ideally, your body shifts flexibly between the two.
But trauma, chronic stress, or emotional repression can wire your system into survival mode, leaving you stuck in high tension (sympathetic overdrive) or collapse (parasympathetic shutdown).
Over 70% of adults in the U.S. have experienced some type of traumatic event at least once in their lives. More women are affected by PTSD than men. — World Health Organization
Neither state of systemic tension is your fault.
They're just patterns the body runs when it perceives a threat.
But the more you understand your system, the more choice you unlock.
Historically, the idea of nervous system regulation dates back to early 20th-century research, but it wasn’t until the late 1990s that psychologist Dr. Dan Siegel popularized the window of tolerance model.
His work helped bridge neurobiology with therapy, giving people language to understand why some moments feel manageable…while others spiral out of control.
So your job now isn’t to force yourself to “stay calm.” It’s to gently re-expand that window — so your body learns it’s safe again.
But let’s first look at the common signs you may be dysregulated right now.
Signs You’re Dysregulated (and Don’t Know It)
Dysregulation doesn’t always look like a panic attack.
It often looks like being very good at everything — too good, in fact.
Overly responsible. Unbothered.
Sharp, high-achieving, and permanently tired.
Scrolling your phone until your eyes burn.
Saying “it’s fine” when it’s not. Playing cool while your body tenses for impact.
The nervous system doesn’t just speak through breakdowns. It whispers through your habits, your posture, your relationships.
When your system has normalized a chronic state of threat — whether from trauma, burnout, or cultural conditioning — dysregulation can feel like your default personality.
Here are some of the most common, socially accepted signs of dysregulation:
😓 Overworking: A constant drive to prove, fix, or stay ahead. Busyness as a buffer against feeling.
🚫 Hyper-independence: Refusing help, even when you’re drowning.
📲 Phone addiction: Compulsively checking your screen to soothe your nerves or escape discomfort.
🤖 Perfectionism: Believing you must “get it right” or be worthy to rest.
🎭 People-pleasing: Avoiding conflict at all costs, staying agreeable to feel safe.
🌀 Emotional numbing: You’re not sad or mad — you’re just nothing.
Many of these patterns are rooted not just in personal experience, but in social survival.
Women — especially those who’ve had to navigate racism, class pressure, or gender expectations — often live in long-term states of fight/flight or freeze/fawn without even realizing it.
That’s not a weakness. It’s your internal wisdom, adapted under pressure.
But you don’t have to stay in those states forever.
✍🏾 Mini Check-In Prompt: “What’s one behavior I’ve normalized that might actually be a nervous system response?”
Learning to recognize these signs doesn’t mean judging yourself.
It means creating space — to pause, notice, and eventually choose something new.
How to Return to Regulation
When it comes to regulating your nervous system, the first and most powerful mindset shift is this: regulation is not about control — it’s about relationship.
You’re not trying to force your body to "behave."
You’re learning to listen to its signals, understand its needs, and respond with care.
Like any meaningful relationship, this one requires trust, consistency, and a willingness to be present even when things get messy.
Because…
Remember ⏰: regulation starts with learning to recognize your internal state — and then respond, not react.
The goal isn’t to stay calm at all costs. It’s to build the capacity to return to calm when needed.
(Cause I don’t know about y’all but I do enjoy getting my heart rate up in the name of a good kiki 💃🏾🙂↕️)
That process begins with simple tools that work with your biology, not against it:
BREATH 🫁 : Slow, deep belly breaths signal safety to your brain.
SOUND 🎵: Humming, sighing, or low-tone vocalizations activate the vagus nerve.
MOVEMENT 🧘🏿♀️: Shaking, stretching, or pacing helps discharge excess energy.
TEMPERATURE SHIFTS 🧊: Cold water on the face, warm showers, or grounding with heat can restore balance.
STILLNESS ⏳: And finally — sometimes, the most powerful reset is sitting still and noticing your emotions. I mean, think about it — aren’t there moments where you want your friends to just hear you, not try to give you endless advice when you’re feeling down? Your nervous system is the same way.
These aren’t silly tricks — they’re somatic invitations.
Micro-moments where you tell your body, “I hear you. I’ve got you.”
You don’t need to master every method.
You only need to start where your body already feels safe.
Maybe that’s placing a hand on your chest. Maybe it’s taking a walk.
The more consistently you respond to your system with care, the more space you create for emotional boundaries — the quiet knowing of what is yours and what is not.
That discernment is the beginning of emotional leadership.
And the more regulated your nervous system becomes, the more magnetic your presence feels.
Remember: Your Body Isn’t Betraying You
If nothing else, remember this:
Your body is not broken. It’s not betraying you. It’s trying — in the only language it knows — to protect you.
What might look like mood swings, overreactions, zoning out, or shutting down is often your nervous system doing its job: keeping you safe from what it perceives as danger, even if that danger is long gone.
These patterns weren’t created overnight.
They were shaped by lived experience — stress, trauma, conditioning, and environments that asked you to survive more than thrive.
So here’s your invitation to ask yourself:
What’s one signal your body gives when it’s overwhelmed?
Maybe it’s a tight chest. Maybe it’s a sudden need to leave the room.
Maybe it’s a foggy brain, a dropped stomach, or a voice that goes quiet.
You don’t have to change anything yet — just begin by noticing.
Notice without judgment.
Observe without urgency.
Let your nervous system know you’re finally paying attention.
The goal isn’t to bypass your body. It’s to partner with it. To learn its cues. To rebuild trust, slowly and gently, from the inside out.
Next week, we’ll take the next step by diving into emotional literacy — decoding the actual feelings beneath the dysregulation.
Because when you can name it, you can navigate it.
And over time, this relationship with your body becomes the root of everything: your clarity, your boundaries, your voice.
Until then, just listen. Your body’s been waiting for you to come home.
Be safe. And stay dangerous.
— Iguere
📚 Cultural Renaissance: What I’m Reading This Month
P.S. — One of the quiet joys I keep as part of my creative and emotional hygiene is reading one intentional book per month.
Reading is a part of what I like to call a Cultural Renaissance, a slow-growing tradition I hope to one day open up into full live discussions or a synergy you share among your community offline.
This month, I’m reading Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.
Breath is a powerful exploration of how something as simple as breathing — something we do over 25,000 times a day — has been misunderstood, neglected, and even harmed by modern life.
Nestor traces the ancient science of breath, interviews free divers, explores nasal reconstruction, and lays out how breathwork might be the hidden key to improving focus, anxiety, sleep, and even facial structure.
From jaw development to skin tone and posture, it makes a powerful case that better breathing is the foundation of both inner regulation and outer glow.
If you want to read alongside me this month — or simply want a dope, grounded companion to your inner work — I highly recommend it.
You can find it here or at your local bookstore. 🌬️