The Nervous System Paradox Nobody Talks About

(Why feeling MORE dysregulated might mean your healing is actually working.)

I just had a hard week.

I was with family I love deeply, navigating some unexpected health concerns, stress in the household, people needing support. I did what I know to do: slept enough, hydrated, ate well, moved my body, got outside, set some boundaries. It helped. And it was still genuinely hard. I'm an empath, I was out of my element, and I was absorbing things that weren't mine to carry, for people I care about deeply.

By the time I got home on Sunday I needed to regroup. That evening I went to an outdoor concert with my daughter, lawn chairs, a cooler, good music, people watching at Red Butte Gardens. It was exactly right. I slept in my own bed. That alone helped me reset.

Then I headed up to Park City for just a couple of days, a tradition I've kept for nearly thirty years. I had cleared my schedule. I was looking forward to peaceful time in the mountains.

It didn't quite feel that way.

There was a lot of noise, a lot of stimulation, not much stillness. My nervous system was not happy.

And here's the part that stopped me:

I've done significant nervous system work over the past year. I expected to handle this better. And in some ways I did. I recognized what was happening, I used my tools, I stayed functional. But I still felt dysregulated. More than I expected. More than felt fair, honestly, given the work I've put in.

So I sat with that. And I realized something important.

Here's the paradox nobody talks about.

A more healed nervous system doesn't mean you stop feeling dysregulated.

It means you recognize dysregulation faster and more clearly, because you finally know what regulation actually feels like.

Before I did this work, I would have white-knuckled my way through a week like that and called it fine. I wouldn't have known what I was feeling. I wouldn't have named it. I would have absorbed everything and paid for it later in ways I couldn't trace back to their source.

This time I knew exactly what was happening. I felt it clearly. I knew what my nervous system needed and didn't need. I knew when I'd hit my limit. I knew that sleeping in my own bed would help and it did.

That IS the work showing up. Not immunity to dysregulation, the awareness of it. Not the absence of hard weeks, the presence of someone who knows herself well enough to navigate them.

Here's the distinction that matters:

My window of tolerance has expanded. I can hold more than I used to without completely falling apart. This is real and it matters.

AND my nervous system work has also made me more attuned to what my nervous system actually likes and doesn't like. More sensitive to what it needs. More honest about what drains it.

Those two things are separate and intertwined at the same time. Both can be true.

A larger window of tolerance doesn't mean nothing bothers you. It means you can stay present with more, and you notice sooner when you're approaching your edges.

A more regulated nervous system isn't one that never gets dysregulated. It's one that knows itself well enough to notice, and knows what to do next.

This is one of the most important things I try to communicate in my work, because I see people misunderstand it constantly.

They do the work. They feel something hard. They think the work isn't working.

But sometimes feeling something hard IS the work working. Your nervous system is no longer numb, no longer bypassing, no longer storing what it can't process. It's actually feeling what's there.

That's not failure. That's function.

The goal was never to stop feeling. The goal was to feel, and know what to do with what you feel.

If this resonates. If you've had weeks where the work seemed to make things harder before it made things easier. I'd love to hear from you.

And if you want a supported, structured space to do this work with others, the September Inner Listening Circle starts September 10th. Five Thursday evenings, small group, 6–7:30pm MDT.

Early bird: $397 through August 27th (then $497).

Returning members: $297, with $100 referral credit for up to two referrals.

ILC LINK