Understanding the States That Shape Your Day
You don’t need to be in crisis for your nervous system to be working overtime.
Sometimes, it’s the subtle tension that never quite leaves your shoulders.
The overwhelm that rises with no warning.
The silence after a hard day that feels… unbearable.
These aren’t personality traits. They’re nervous system states.
And when you begin to see them for what they are — temporary, intelligent, and shifting — you can meet yourself with more clarity and far less blame.
What State Are You In?
At any given moment, your nervous system is shaping how you feel, think, move, and relate.
Not because it’s broken — but because it’s designed to keep you safe.
These states aren’t random. They are adaptations. And once you begin to notice them, everything changes.
Here’s a gentle map:
Rest + Digest (ventral vagal): You feel safe, connected, calm, and capable. Your body can rest. You can be present.
Fight/Flight (sympathetic): You’re wired for action. You feel tense, irritable, on edge, or anxious. Your system is trying to get you out of something.
Shutdown/Collapse (dorsal vagal): You feel numb, shut down, overwhelmed or far away. Your system is trying to protect you from what feels too much.
Freeze (combined state): You feel like you need to run as fast as you can to solve all the problems that you can see and sense but you’re too exhausted to move. Or you are slogging your way up that hill of problems dragging yourself along - numb, without enthusiasm or energy - because it’s not safe not to.
You’re not “lazy.” You’re not “too sensitive.”
You’re responding — intelligently — to what your nervous system has learned.
Noticing Is the First Medicine
Before we can shift anything, we have to see it.
And that takes practice.
One of the most healing questions you can ask yourself each day is:
“What state am I in right now?”
This isn’t a trick question. It’s a doorway.
Instead of pushing harder, shaming yourself, or checking out — you start to listen. You begin to notice patterns. You start learning what brings you down, what pulls you up, what helps you stay.
You build what I call nervous system fluency.
And that’s the beginning of everything.
What Ayurveda Knew
Long before polyvagal theory, Ayurveda mapped how energy patterns in the body shift under stress:
Vata increases — we disconnect, scatter, lose grounding.
Pitta can overheat — we push, overachieve, or burn out.
Kapha can stagnate — we freeze, withdraw, or become heavy.
Modern science and ancient wisdom are saying the same thing:
You’re not overreacting.
You’re responding.
But… you don’t have to stay stuck there.
From State to Safety
The goal is not to force yourself back into calm.
It’s to offer your body what it needs to feel just a little safer, so it can shift on its own.
That might be breath.
Warmth.
Touch.
Quiet.
Movement.
A moment of connection.
A pause where you let yourself just be.
The nervous system shifts through experience, not logic.
You don’t have to convince it. You just have to support it.
A New Kind of Relationship
What if you could meet your system each day with respect — not resistance?
What if you stopped trying to fix yourself, and instead started listening?
This is how we build real resilience.
Not by pushing through, but by befriending what’s happening inside.
You don’t need to do it all at once.
But you can start today — by asking,
“What state am I in?”
and letting your body be heard.