14/04/2026
REPOST
Understanding Your Nervous System đź’ś
I’ve been learning more about the three main nervous system states, and it’s honestly helping me understand my own patterns in a much more concrete way.
According to polyvagal theory, the nervous system shifts between three primary states:
• Ventral vagal (rest & regulate) — slower breathing, steady heart rate, clearer thinking. This is when you’re able to feel relatively calm, present, and open to connection.
• Sympathetic (fight or flight) — increased heart rate, faster breathing, narrowed focus. This is a mobilized state where your system is preparing you to respond to a perceived threat. It can feel like anxiety, urgency, irritability, or panic.
• Dorsal vagal (freeze/shutdown) — low energy, disconnection, heaviness, sometimes dissociation. This is more of a conservation state, where the system pulls back when something feels overwhelming or inescapable.
What I find useful about this framework is that it ties mental and emotional experiences directly to physiological states.
For example, when I’ve had dissociative episodes, the confusion, inability to make decisions, and automatic behavior actually line up with a dorsal vagal response. It’s not random—it’s a specific state my body is entering.
Same with anxiety—when my thoughts are racing and I feel on edge, that maps onto sympathetic activation.
This doesn’t mean every reaction is “accurate” to what’s happening externally. It means the nervous system is responding based on perceived safety, not objective reality.
And that distinction matters.
Because instead of only analyzing thoughts, you can start to look at:
• What state am I in?
• What is my body doing right now?
• What would help shift this state, even slightly?
Regulation isn’t about forcing yourself to be calm all the time. It’s about understanding these patterns well enough that you can work with your nervous system instead of against it.
🟣 The Purple Phoenix Collective