What a Trauma Therapist Actually Does to Regulate Her Nervous System
People assume therapists have this all figured out. We don't! I still get overwhelmed. I still get anxious. I still have days when my brain is going approximately 400 miles an hour while my body is begging me to stop. Being a therapist doesn't mean I don't get dysregulated. It mostly means I have more tools within arm's reach when I do. And honestly, most of those tools are much less impressive than you might think.
I Check In With My Body Before Coffee
Before coffee, email, Instagram or figuring out what needs to happen that day, I take about thirty seconds while I'm still in bed to notice what's happening in my body. Where am I holding tension? What's my breath doing? Is my chest tight? Is my stomach clenched? Do I feel rested, heavy, restless or energized? Basically: what's the weather in there today?
The important part is that I'm noticing, not fixing. That's a hard distinction for people who are used to treating every uncomfortable feeling like a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes noticing is enough. I've learned that when my day starts entirely from the neck up, it has a tendency to stay there. Suddenly I'm six hours into working, my shoulders are touching my ears and I've ignored every signal my body has been sending me. Nobody really warns you about that part.
I Finish My Stress Responses
After a particularly heavy therapy session, I can sometimes feel the activation sitting in my body. So I move it. Sometimes I literally stand up and shake my body out. Yes, really. Other times I take the dogs around the block at a pace they find deeply suspicious.
Stress isn't only an intellectual experience. Your heart rate changes, your muscles tense, your breathing shifts and your nervous system prepares you to respond. Then many of us do what we've been taught to do our entire lives: sit still, keep working, answer the email, go to the next meeting and tell ourselves we're fine. High functioning women can become especially good at this. You learn how to keep performing while your body is screaming at you that something is happening.
Eventually, all that activation can show up as irritability, restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion or that weird experience of finally sitting down at night and suddenly feeling like you might crawl out of your own skin. Sometimes your body doesn't need another explanation. It needs somewhere for that energy to go.
I Let Myself Be a Mess on Purpose
This one might actually be harder than the nervous system exercises. Some evenings, the dishes stay in the sink. The laundry doesn't get folded. Whatever productive thing I theoretically could be doing does not happen. Instead, I am horizontal under approximately four pets watching garbage TV. And I let that be enough.
There is a particular kind of anxiety that can develop when your sense of safety gets tangled up with productivity. As long as you're accomplishing something, organizing something, fixing something or taking care of someone, you feel okay. Stop moving and suddenly the discomfort gets louder. For some people, rest doesn't initially feel peaceful. It feels unsafe.
Part of taking care of my nervous system has been allowing myself to have periods where I am profoundly unimpressive. No optimizing my evening. No turning relaxation into another wellness routine I'm supposed to perform correctly. Sometimes I'm just on the couch. It's okay to not have your shit together every hour of the day.
Yes, I Still Go to Therapy
My therapist has a therapist too, and I find that deeply comforting. Therapy isn't something you graduate from once you've accumulated enough coping skills or become self aware enough. I can understand my patterns and still need another person to help me see something I'm missing. I can teach nervous system regulation and still become dysregulated. I can help someone recognize when they're intellectualizing an emotion and then catch myself doing the exact same thing three days later.
Knowing how this stuff works doesn't make you immune to being a human being. Sometimes it just helps you recognize what's happening a little sooner.
Nervous System Regulation Isn't Another Thing to Perfect
Taking care of your nervous system doesn't require an elaborate morning routine, an hour of meditation every day or becoming a person who is mysteriously calm in every circumstance. Most of the time, it's much smaller than that.
It's noticing you're clenching your jaw and letting it go. It's taking the walk when your body needs movement. It's letting yourself cry instead of immediately explaining why you're crying. It's noticing that you're exhausted and deciding the dishes can wait. It's asking for support. It's giving yourself thirty seconds to notice what you're feeling before automatically overriding it.
Taking care of your nervous system is mostly a series of small, repeated decisions to not abandon yourself. It isn't fancy, and it doesn't need to be.
When You Need More Than Insight
If you're incredibly self aware and can explain exactly why you feel the way you do but still don't know what to do when anxiety takes over, that's exactly why I created the Therapize Yourself worksheets. They're designed to give you practical tools you can actually reach for when you're overwhelmed instead of asking you to analyze your feelings for the 400th time.
Start with Therapize Yourself: For When Your Anxiety Feels Like Too Much if anxiety is the thing that tends to hijack your brain and body.
Get the anxiety worksheet here
If you're in Pennsylvania or Colorado and you're ready for more individualized support, Revive Therapy Services currently has limited openings for new clients. We specialize in working with people who have done the thinking, have the insight and are ready to learn how to actually feel, process and move through what their bodies are still carrying.
Book a consultation with Revive Therapy Services to get started.
About Revive Therapy Services
At Revive Therapy Services, we help adults heal from trauma, PTSD, Complex PTSD, childhood trauma, attachment wounds, anxiety, and chronic stress through evidence-based, trauma-informed care. We offer online therapy throughout Pennsylvania and Colorado, as well as in-person therapy in Philadelphia and Colorado. Our services include:
EMDR Therapy: Helps reprocess distressing memories, core beliefs, and emotional patterns that continue to affect you in the present.
IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy): Helps you understand and heal the different parts of yourself with greater self-compassion and inner connection.
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP): Combines ketamine treatment with therapy to support deeper emotional processing and new perspectives.
Eating Disorder Treatment: Provides individualized support for binge eating, restriction, emotional eating, body image struggles, and other concerns around food and your body.
If you’re ready to stop simply coping and start addressing the root of what’s keeping you stuck, schedule a consultation today. We’d love to help you find an approach to therapy that fits your needs.
Craving the raw, unfiltered side of therapy conversations?
If today’s post resonated with you, I’d love to invite you to listen to my podcast Trauma, Tea, and Tangents! It’s a space for real talk about healing, resilience, trauma, and everything in between. Each episode blends trauma-informed perspectives with relatable conversations to remind you someone else is probably thinking what you are too! Available on all major platforms—just search for Trauma, Tea, and Tangents wherever you listen! Subscribe to my Substack for more authentic conversations about trauma, healing, and navigating life as a human. This is my unfiltered, behind-the-scenes content that you won’t find on here!
