Have you ever felt like your body is running faster than your life?. You wake up already tense, your heart is racing before the day even starts, or you move through the day on autopilot – focused, efficient, but strangely disconnected.
This isn’t weakness. It’s your body trying to protect you.
The Body’s Built-In Safety System
Our nervous system is always scanning the world around us, asking one question: Am I safe?
This process, called neuroception, happens automatically — long before we consciously notice what’s going on.
According to Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, our nervous system moves through three main states:
- Fight or Flight: the body mobilises energy for action — your heart races, breathing quickens, and adrenaline floods the system.
- Freeze (or Shutdown): when escape doesn’t feel possible, the body slows down to protect itself. You might feel numb, disconnected, or spaced out.
- Safe and Connected: when your nervous system senses safety, your body relaxes, your mind feels open, and connection feels easy.
Each of these states has a purpose. They’re not “bad.” They’re intelligent, the body’s built in survival strategies.
When Protection Becomes a Pattern
Trouble begins when the body stays too long in protection mode.
According to Polyvagal Theory, the body can tolerate fight-or-flight activation for weeks without major impact. But our modern lifestyles rarely allow that system to rest.
Constant emails, screens, rushing, noise, and emotional pressure keep us stuck in survival gear far beyond what the body was built for. And that prolonged stress begins to show up everywhere.
You might notice:
- Restless sleep or waking at 3 a.m.
- Fatigue or “wired but tired” energy
- Digestive issues like bloating or IBS
- Irritability, anxiety, or emotional numbness
- Difficulty concentrating or remembering things
If your brain thinks you’re facing a tiger, digestion no longer matters so your digestive system slows or shuts down. That’s why stress so often leads to bloating, nausea, reflux, or IBS-like symptoms.
Your reproductive system also pauses, because reproduction isn’t essential when survival is at stake. Hormones fluctuate. Libido drops. For many, menstrual cycles become irregular or fertility struggles appear without clear medical explanation.
Meanwhile, your immune system suppresses to conserve energy. Over time, that chronic activation leads to inflammation, fatigue, and “mystery” physical symptoms that blood tests can’t easily explain.
When the nervous system can’t return to safety, every organ system begins to strain, digestion, hormones, immunity, even your ability to sleep or focus. That’s why chronic stress isn’t just emotional — it’s embodied.
It’s Not “Just Stress” — It’s a Stuck Nervous System
Many people blame themselves: “Why can’t I just relax?”. But you can’t “think” your way out of a physiological state.
Your body learned this survival pattern long ago, maybe in childhood, through pressure, uncertainty, or trauma. Those early experiences taught your nervous system that vigilance equals safety.
And so, even now, it keeps scanning for threat, long after the danger has passed.
Why Lifestyle Alone Isn’t Enough
Healthy eating, exercise, and meditation all help, but they only go so far if your body still doesn’t feel safe.
Safety isn’t just a mindset, it’s a state of the body.
When your nervous system feels unsafe, it hijacks digestion, sleep, and mood regulation, no matter how disciplined your routine is. The key isn’t doing more, it’s helping your body feel safe enough to rest and reset.
How Trauma Therapy and EMDR Can Help
This is where trauma informed therapy can make a profound difference.
As a psychologist and EMDR practitioner, I help clients reconnect with their bodies, release chronic stress responses, and rebuild a sense of internal safety.
Using approaches such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), somatic grounding, and polyvagal-informed therapy, we can gently retrain the nervous system to recognise safety again.
Together, we work to:
- Regulate the body’s stress responses
- Rebuild trust between mind and body
- Restore sleep, focus, and energy
- Reconnect with the calm, grounded self beneath survival patterns
Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never feel stressed again, it means your body learns to recover quickly, to return to balance instead of getting stuck in survival mode.
A Gentle Reminder
If you’ve been feeling stuck, tense, or disconnected, it’s not because you’re weak, it’s because your body has been doing its best to protect you. And just as it learned to survive, it can also learn to heal.
With the right support, you can help your nervous system find its rhythm again, to rest, recover, and reconnect and begin living from a place of calm confidence.