Mastering Your Nervous System: How to Regulate to Stop Surviving and Start Thriving

What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t because you’re not trying hard enough…

but because your nervous system doesn’t feel safe enough to receive what you’re working so hard to create?

In this solo episode of Relentlessly Authentic, Rachael dives into one of the most transformative topics of her work: the profound impact your nervous system has on the way you experience life.

Because your nervous system isn’t just influencing how stressed you feel.

It’s shaping your thoughts.
Your emotions.
Your relationships.
Your decisions.
Your ability to rest.
Your capacity to receive.
And ultimately—the reality you create.

Through a blend of personal stories, neuroscience, and practical tools, Rachael explores how chronic stress and dysregulation keep us trapped in survival mode, filtering life through fear, scarcity, and self-protection.

Together, you’ll explore:

• how your nervous system determines whether you’re operating from safety or survival

• why your thoughts create emotions, emotions shape your energy, and energy influences your experiences

• the role breathwork plays in emotional regulation and healing

• how identity and past experiences impact the way you perceive reality

• why high-achieving women often struggle to slow down, receive, and trust themselves

• how nervous system regulation supports better decision-making, creativity, connection, and abundance

• the importance of creating safety within yourself before seeking it externally

Rachael also shares simple ways to begin regulating your system so you can move through life with more presence, joy, and resilience.

Because healing isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about creating enough safety within yourself to become who you’ve always been beneath the stress, the coping mechanisms, and the survival patterns.

If you’ve ever wondered why you keep repeating the same cycles, why it feels hard to enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to build, or why personal growth hasn’t created the peace you expected—this episode will change the way you understand yourself forever.

You don’t need to hustle your way into healing.

Sometimes the biggest transformation happens when your body finally learns that it’s safe to exhale.

You don’t need to become more worthy of the life you desire. You need to teach your nervous system that it’s safe to have it.”

Find Rachael on Instagram @highvibeyogii

Find Gaby on Instagram @rising.monarca and @gabrielafverdusco on Tik Tok 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Why, hello everyone. Welcome back to Relentlessly Authentic doing something a little bit different today. I am coming in as a solo episode while Gabs is traversing through San Diego in California and changing her life and upgrading her life and her energy. And I'm so fucking excited for her. But we're trying something a little different. So this is gonna be like a masterclass all about your nervous system. So let me know in the comments. Send me a message. Let me know how you feel about some solo episodes, some more educational type of episodes. Maybe you want to grab a notebook, a piece of paper, and might want to come back to this episode a few different times. Also, like you might want to send this to somebody who also needs to hear this. This is seriously going to be like a mini educational masterclass about your nervous system. So the state of your nervous system ultimately determines the frequency you're tuned into. And we've talked about this a lot on the podcast. And I really just wanted to kind of break down and give more of the science behind this and the understanding, some of the like vocabulary and definitions to make this easier to comprehend, understand, and also for you to understand like how vital and important it is because this ultimately determines our reality. You know, yoga was really the thing that broke me into this kind of healing and growth world, but regulating my nervous system is the thing that, especially through breath work, that fucking really changed my life. And it kind of brings tears to my eyes because it really gave me my life back. I was very much in the frozen state, numbed out, deer in the headlights, could not articulate what was going on with me. So, like my body would, you know, take away all of my energy to as a way to protect me and keep me safe. And I really didn't understand why I wasn't able to function, to communicate, to relay what was going on with me in a kind of adult manner, right? I was using a lot of protective mechanisms that from childhood, and those were no longer serving me. And in a way for my body to keep me safe, it would revert back to those protective coping mechanisms. And that wasn't helping me function in adult life. It wasn't helping me function in my relationships. And I really wanted to grow and to understand why these things were happening to me and I couldn't willpower myself out of them. And I had these big lives and these big dreams, and I had no energy to kind of mobilize to move toward those because every time I did and kind of stepped outside of my comfort zone, I was kind of met with this energy of immobilization. So I this has been literally life-changing. And I will talk about breath work and these modalities for the rest of my life. It's why I have committed my life to these things. It's why I am on this podcast. It is so fundamental to who I am today that I just feel like it, I need to give it the space to actually dive into these so it it and break it down for you to really understand. So grab your notebook, grab a piece of paper, and let's get into it. As always, or when we remember, let's drop in a little bit and use the breath to do so. So if you aren't driving, go ahead and close down your eyes if that feels safe. Maybe a hand to the heart and a hand to your belly. I already have the goosebumps along my skin. Feeling the emotions right on the surface. Part of something that really helped me in my journey also was this acronym of AIR, which is awareness of what you're feeling, interrupting a pattern and then redesigning that pattern. It's a tool that I use with clients when that cascade of triggers and emotions start to happen. Let's take a deep breath, inhale through your nose, and open mouth, exhale, let it go. Do that one more time. Inhale and exhale. It feels good. One more breath in and open mouth, let it go. And from my heart to yours, I hope this is um eye-opening and also gives yourself a lot of grace. That a lot of the times these patterns, these conditionings, these nervous system states are usually in control of us. So the more we give ourselves grace and understanding, the more we can start to shift our state. I really like to think that this is where science, somatics, and spirituality beautifully meet. So when you're ready, you can blink open your eyes, but stick with me because your thoughts aren't just like private inner dialogues. They carry an electrical charge measurable in brainwave states. So these would be alpha, beta, delta, and theta. These brave waves shape your state of being, and that state has an energetic frequency to it. So I think it was Albert Einstein, right, that says everything is energy. I love that trend that's going around Instagram where it's like, oh yeah, you think this is woo-woo, and then it shows you like Tesla, Albert Einstein, all of these really famous scientists who talk about energy. And this is me breaking that down for you. So thoughts lead to emotions, lead to vibration. So let's say you wake up and you instantly think, work, damn, nothing ever works out for me. That thought creates an emotional response within the body. Maybe that's frustration, sadness, defeat. And that emotion influences your body's chemistry. Okay, so think more cortisol and less serotonin. And that changes your energetic field, your frequency contracts. In that contrast, you can think of the contrast or the opposite of that as, you know, I trust that things are always aligning for me. So even if things aren't perfect, this thought invites more kind of openness, peace, hope. Your body softens, your heart expands, your vibration lifts. So it's two different two different energies. So your thoughts literally inform your frequency. And the more you think a certain way, the more it becomes a part of your energetic baseline, right? Your just normal way of being because that neural pathway is so ingrained. So your body is also the frequency holder, right? So if your thoughts affect your frequency, your body's the thing that's holding that frequency. It's kind of like the vessel for your energy, it's the conductor. It holds, processes, and moves energy. So every sensation, contraction, tension, or expansion also carries a frequency. So your nervous system is the frequency regulator. Okay. So a regulated nervous system, we can think of that more as like this parasympathetic state, creates co-coherent and really steady energy. A dysregulated one, which is one that's more in the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, creates chaotic, kind of erratic energy. So if your body feels unsafe, it doesn't matter how many kind of affirmations you say, your vibration will reflect that inner state of tension or collapse. And this is why safety is really the foundation of magnetism, attraction, manifestation, practices that really help regulate your nervous system are breathwork, vagus nerve stimulation, yoga, things that restore kind of a harmonious energetic field. Now, every unprocessed emotion stays somewhere in the body. So we can think of, you know, our overload of stress, our grief, our shame. Um, over time, this is stored energy that really starts to put stress on the load and creates a lot of blocks. Um, so this really shifts our frequency. You know, we can do all of the manifestation work, but if we still feel heavy, stuck, or invisible, um, they're not really gonna work because the emotions are so powerful that they're gonna win, right? We can't kind of willpower ourselves out of it. That's why emotional release is so powerful. So, like things like your vibration plate that are really popular right now, crying, shaking. I feel like there's so much of like nervous system work we're seeing online right now of like jumping up and down, shaking the body, golf, golf swings. You know, these aren't like weaknesses, these are ways that we can move energy throughout our body, which helps shift our frequency. And your heart actually has the biggest electromagnetic field. It's actually 60 times stronger than your brain. So when we think that like we want to logically think our way out of anxiety, it doesn't work like that because our heart, right? Our the center of our being is actually 60 times stronger than your brain. So when you feel emotions like love, gratitude, joy, your heart will expand and become more coherent and send out more of a coherent frequency that is actually very magnetic. That's why people can feel when you're in alignment. It's not about, you know, necessarily being perfect because we're just humans. Like I think we need to throw fucking perfection in the garbage, right? We need to like have like let it dissipate from our mind because it's about embodying your truth and your heart isn't gonna lie in that magnetism, right? And when you're in alignment and you're sharing from joy and from gratitude and from love. So when your thoughts really start to align with your body's truth, which is also what is very popular as a word called somatics, your body feels safe enough to like full have a natural flow of energy. Um, you radiate a frequency that's like becomes undeniable, right? It doesn't matter what you look like, right? It's the energy that you walk into a room with. So if we want to walk into a room and have all the eyes kind of come onto us, it's really about regulation, which allows us to radiate. You become the kind of person who, like I just said, walks into a room, changes the energy naturally without having to say a fucking word. You attract aligned opportunities effortlessly. Um, this is truly about being deeply present, connected, and magnetic without even trying. And this is where manifestation comes from embody it, embodiment and not just like your vision board, but that also does work. Your nervous system, like I said, is your body's command center. So it's constantly scanning your environment for cues of safety or danger. This is called neurosception. The two main branches of your nervous system is your sympathetic nervous system, which is activates your survival states when you sense danger or stress, that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. Then we have the parasympathetic, which is what restores calm. It's your rest and digest, it's the healing center, it's where your body feels safe, where healing, connection, creativity happen. Now, when we get stuck in fight, which is really where we feel that anger, that hypervigilance, or we get stuck in flight, which is the anxiety, the restlessness. We get stuck in fro freeze response, which is that shutdown, that numbness. The fawn response is like the over people pleasing, the abandoning of selves to stay safe. And all of these mean it's your nervous system still thinks that you're under some sort of threat, even when your dang like the danger has passed. So that's really the big difference between regulation and dysregulation. You know, regulation means that you can go from, you know, an activated state to disactivated, and you have a natural way of doing that, and your body can find that equilibrium again. Um, when we're stuck in survival mode, essentially in one of these four states, it's that our body actually, like the threat has passed, but our body cannot regulate and get us back to that place of equilibrium. So we get stuck there, and then that stress overloads and becomes a part of a term called our allostatic load. And then that's when we have that once that asthelic load gets so intense, that's when things like chronic illness happen, burnout happens, shutdown happens, you know, depression happens, anxiety happens, fibromyalgia, chronic illness, like that's a lot of the time is when we've been in survival state for so long that our body is now calling out for help. And those we think those things are like the root, but actually your nervous system is the root. So when we think of these patterns of our body brain, you know, uh states, fight, like I said, is this anger, irritability, defensiveness. So our fight state. This is where energy surges. So you can't confront the threat. Now, flight is anxiety, restlessness, overthinking, the urge to escape or outrun the threat. Freeze is this numbness, this shutdown, feeling stuck, disassociated. The body says, even if I can't escape or fight, I'll just shut down to protect myself. Now, the fawn is the people pleasing, the overaccommodating, the abandoning of your own needs. This is a survival strategy. If I can keep them happy, right, then I'll be safe because they're okay. All of these are normal, adaptive, but they aren't meant to be meant to be temporary. Okay. So they're not meant to last forever. And like I said, problems come when the nervous system doesn't reset and you keep living from this survival mode. So chronic dysregulation can show up as anxiety, stress, weight gain, burnout, hormonal issues, autoimmune disease, gut problems, fatigue, relationship struggles with triggers and attachment styles. So all of this is affecting our day-to-day life, right? And it's kind of crazy. Like, I wonder how many things of what I've already spoken to that you kind of feel. Now, breath work helps because breath work changes your physiology. Your breath is one of the fastest and most direct ways to communicate safety to your body. Unlike your heartbeat or digestion, your breathing can be consciously controlled and it sends a message back to your brain that I'm safe and you can actually like downshift your nervous system. So your breath is one of your few body functions that's both automatic, like you don't have to think about it, and voluntary that you can take conscious control over. Most of the time you breathe without thinking, right? That's the autonomic nervous system, but you can also consciously change your breath. And when you do, you directly influence your physiology. This is so important, y'all. So here's like a step-by-step of how this works. So your breath talks to this vagus nerve. The vagus nerve runs from your brain stem down to your heart, your lungs, and even your gut, right? How many of us have gut problems, bloating, inflammation? So slow, deep breathing, especially longer exhales, stimulates this vagus nerve. This increases vagal tone, which activates this parasympathetic nervous system, the rest, digest, and restore. So when we slow down our breath, our heart rate slows down, our blood pressure decreases, stress hormones like cortisol drop, muscle tension releases. Each inhale slightly speeds up your heart rate while each exhale slows it down. Okay, y'all. I'm interrupting this episode for something really exciting because I'm officially opening the applications for the abundance activation retreat in Greece. And honestly, this is gonna be such a fucking vibe. I'm so excited. I'm so excited about the women who are already joining. Uh, so if you are a soul who has been craving expansion, softness, adventure, sisterhood, healing, abundance, and a deeper connection to your feminine energy, this is your sign to join the vibe tribe in Greece. This is a seven-day yoga, Pilates, feminine embodiment retreat through the Greek islands for the woman who's tired of holding her entire life together through stress, pressure, overthinking, and survival mode, and is ready to step into a completely different energy. Because abundance isn't something you hustle for, it's something you open yourself up to receive. We'll move our bodies overlooking the sea, regulate our nervous system, dance under the stars, and have bougie boat days, deep conversations, incredible freaking Greek food, beach clubs, sunsets, healing, laughter, and the kind of experiences that generally change you forever. Because sometimes you don't need another tool, technique, or strategy, you need a new environment, you need a moment to pause, a new frequency, a new energy to help remind you of who you really are. After my first time in Greece, everything really shifted for me, not just externally, but internally. I trusted myself more, I trusted the universe more, I stopped forcing life so hard. I felt supported, guided, and deeply connected to creation, possibility, and magic. And that's exactly the energy, the vibe of this retreat. So you've been waiting for a sign to stop playing small, to start going after what you truly want, to start saying yes to your next big level, then this is it. You can apply or reach out to me via Instagram for more information. I seriously cannot wait for this experience and to experience this magic with you. Helps you like take control of your heart rate variability. A high heart rate variability is uh equals like flexible, resilient nervous system that can handle stress. And a low heart rate variability equals like you being kind of in stuck in survival mode. So uh this is also affects the brain, okay? Because the prefrontal cortex, which is, you know, that thinking brain, goes offline when you're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. So when we think of like a blind rage, right, where someone just is beating someone up and we don't know why, it's because their prefrontal cortex has completely shut down, right? They have lost access to the prefrontal cortex. Like I said earlier, when I was numb, disassociated, completely like deer in the headlights, right? It's because my prefrontal cortex would shut down and I couldn't function, right? I couldn't think, I couldn't communicate, I will, I was numb. And that's why, because the prefrontal forte cortex, which is the thinking brain, literally was shutting down and putting me into survival mode. So your breath allows for increased blood flow to come to the brain and restores activity in that prefrontal cortex. This lets you respond thoughtful, like more thoughtful instead of just reacting from your survival instincts. So your breath automatically helps regulate your nervous system on a physiological level. So, just as like a summary, we activate the vagus nerve, uh, which is helps us get into that parasympathetic state. And we can increase over time our heart rate variability, which allows more flexibility and resilience in our nervous system, which means that those triggers that instantly would trigger the blind rage, the shutdown, you know, we create more resilience and more resilience in the system. That way our window of tolerance starts to broaden where those triggers don't trigger us as fast. Okay. And then the more we can bring our prefrontal cortex more online, the more our clear thinking we we have. So literally, breath is the most accessible built-in tool you have to actually shift your state, um, which I just think is so fucking cool because we can so easily, you know, use this beautiful tool that we've been naturally given. Now, just to circle back, the state of your nervous system, right? Because of your nervous system is so in control of your frequency, this influences what you attract into your life, because the subconscious mind, right? When we think of the prefrontal, it's that 5%. The subconscious is the 95% of our brain, which is where all our beliefs, our thoughts, our emotions are stored. So when we think about attracting things into our life, unless we've done a lot of this work to retrain like our beliefs, the stories that we tell ourselves, we are attracting really from that 95%. And then our nervous system is in control. So it's our brain and our nervous system, then the body is what we feel through the somatics, and it's just like this cascade of energy. So I know this can sound very far fetched, and I know it is a lot to kind of take in, but research actually suggests, and this is why I love like the neuroscience, that the same actions taken with different emotional states or energies can lead to much different outcomes. So, like most people believe they need to do more in the physical world to get. Better results. And I'm not denying that we need to take aligned action. We do. We I do think there is something to be said as like a feminine being you can attract a lot, but I also we all need to take the masculine action. But it doesn't mean that we need to, like, there's also the universe that's gonna meet us and that we don't always have to like push ourselves to be more productive, more focused, more motivated. We don't even realize that the state of our nervous system plays such a significant role in shaping the direction of our lives. And I think that's the really part I want to lean into is that there's this like conscious creation we can take by just regulating our nervous system that helps us navigate the world in a more heart-aligned, you know, intuitive, more fulfilling kind of way without us having to like add more to our to-do list. So our nervous system affects like our experience, right? Your brain literally filters for um what motivates you to do, um the thoughts that arise automatically and the subconscious choices you make before you're even aware of it, right? So your brain is filtering all of that. And if you're neglecting your brain and your nervous system, you can force discipline and take all the action in the world, yet will struggle to create the results that you truly desire. Whether that's, you know, attracting love, um, fulfillment, financial abundance, just or meaningful connections and relationships, this can all feel really hard, even when we're taking all the aligned action. So, because your brain and your nervous system, if they aren't aligned with what you actually say consciously you want, it can feel like you're constantly working kind of against yourself. You're like, what the fuck? Why am I not getting the results that I want? However, when your nervous system is regulated and your brain is wired to support your goals, the exact same actions can produce entirely different outcomes. So let's kind of go into this more because the science behind this comes down to one kind of fundamental idea. You don't experience actually life as it is. You experience your brain's interpretation of reality. Everything you've ever experienced, and maybe we need to take like a deep breath because I have goosebumps just saying this. Everything you've ever experienced has been constructed by your brain. Okay. There's a really cool concept known as the black box analogy, and you can look this up on your own. But essentially, like, imagine your brain existing inside of a black box. The only information it receives comes through your five senses. As you move through life, you grow older, you have experiences, your brain takes in all of this sensory data and it filters it through your beliefs, your past experiences, your sense of identity, your emotional state, the state of your nervous system, and your existing programming. Using all of that information, okay, your brain constructs your present moment experience. In other more simple like terms, you don't really see the world through your own eyes. Your eyes collect light signals, but your brain interprets those signals through the lens of your memories, your thoughts, emotions, beliefs before creating the image that you actually are perceiving. So you don't see the world with your eyes, you see the world through your brain. And that's wild. So the only true vision is true for your entire experience of your reality. So your brain is constantly searching for evidence that matches that your state that you're in. This is essentially what I'm saying. Okay. So your brain is constantly looking for affirmations for the state that you're currently in. So if you're stressed, if you're anxious or operating from, you know, those survival states in survival mode, your brain becomes more hyper-focused on identifying potential threats, problems, limitations. This is like the hypervigilance, okay? Which I very much had. You may overanalyze conversations, dwell on mistakes, think about how you're gonna mess up, scan your environment for signs that reinforce your fear or uncertainty because that's the state that you're in. So your brain is now being primed to look for more evidence for that to be actually true. In these moments, it can feel like life itself is stress, okay? Which also often learns leads to more dysregulation. And the brain simply is looking for evidence to explain why. But the opposite can also be true. So when your nervous system is regulated and you feel safe and you feel supported and you feel grounded, your brain begins to notice opportunities, it begins to notice beauty, it begins to notice connection, and it begins to notice all of the possibility that surrounds you. Isn't that so beautiful? And that we get to train ourselves to be more in that state. And that's kind of the beauty of this, right? Is the we get to do the work to help this, to help ourselves and our brain function and relieve some of the stress and the anxiety that we often feel because of the overload that's also been uh we've been accumulating for our entire lives. So small moments we begin to notice when we're more regulated that otherwise usually go unnoticed. And me and Gab talk about this a lot, okay? Like noticing the butterflies, noticing this, the flowers on your walk, right? A stranger's smile, the warmth of the sun, a meaningful conversation that really just like opens your heart and evidence that life is working in your favor. Okay. This happens more when we are regulated. When we're dysregulated, again, it's doom, gloom, um, nothing's working out for me. You know, we're coming from that state of more fear. Okay. When we're regulated, we're much more in this, like, again, this state of presence, of being, of love, of possibility of creation, of flow, really, too. So your brain is gonna filter reality according to the state that you're currently living in. All right. So the energy behind your actions really matter. So the key to creating the life that you want isn't always in taking more action, but it's actually in the energy behind why you're taking the action. Okay. So your internal state influences the choices you make, the opportunities you recognize, the risks you're willing to take, the thoughts you entertain, and the emotions that you cultivate. So life isn't only about achieving more, it's also about how you feel while you're actually doing it. Because we can all have this like carrot that we're chasing, and that carrot can be fulfilling, or it can be, you know, it's never enough. It's never enough, it's never enough. And that just only creates more stress, more anxiety, more overwhelm, and doesn't make life like fun, right? Or fulfilling. So your nervous system plays this profound role in in all of this. And that's why it's so fucking important to learn strategies and techniques and tools to really shift into this place where we get to create like this beautiful radiance for ourselves, for our life. Like we get to take control over that. Nobody has control over that for us. We do. And there are simple ways that we can do this. So the state of your nervous is that determines your frequency. And here's how we can raise it. Okay. Because a lot of us are taught that success comes from working harder, pushing through, discomfort, forcing ourselves to be more disciplined. Yet, despite all of our efforts, we still feel stuck in the same patterns, attracting the same experiences, and wondering why nothing seems to change. The missing piece is not found in taking more action and doing more. It lies in your nervous system. So you don't experience reality as it is, right? We experience your brain's interpretation of it. Everything you've perceived has been filtered through your nervous system, your beliefs, your memories. This is where trauma really comes into play, what your identity is, who you I who you associate yourself and being, believing and thinking about yourself, right? Your internal dialogue and your emotional state. So this essential, right? And for really us to uh to understand and that we take all this in through our senses. Um, in other words, your brain isn't simply recording reality, it's actively creating your experiencing, your experience through it. And you don't see the world through your eyes, you see it with your brain, okay? And the state of your nervous system determines what your brain chooses to notice. So when you're dysregulated, your brain searches for threats, right? So, what could go wrong? What mistakes did I make? What signs? What should I have done? What danger should I prepare for? This isn't a character flaw, okay? Because when we're stressed and anxious and overwhelmed in that survival state, your brain is going to prioritize safety above all else, all right? The amygdala part of our brain, this is associated with the fear and threat detection. It becomes more active, right? This is happening without you knowing. Your brain begins scanning for all of these potential problems and it's happening automatic. You're not in control of it. And so again, this isn't character flaw. There's nothing wrong with you. Okay. It's your nervous system doing its job. The challenge is that when you live in this state chronically, right, all of the time, your brain starts filtering reality through the lens of fear, lack, and limitation, like scarcity. Let me repeat that. The challenge is that when you live in this state chronically, your brain starts filtering reality through the lens of fear, lack, and limitation. Your brain is doing that. No one's doing that for you. Okay. And you begin collecting evidence that reinforces that way of feeling because now your brain is filtering and looking for it. So your past experiences you may have been fallen victim to, okay, but now you're actually those stories are in control of you, and you are no longer your brain is in control of you, and those stories and that trauma is now in control of you. And now you're filtering life through that trauma, which often leads to less of what we want and not the things we do want. So you may believe your external circumstances are causing you stress, but often it's the dysregulation that came first. Okay. And your brain is now finding reasons to justify it. So this is everything. And I just want to leave you with that we can raise our frequency and we can regulate our nervous system. So even if we found some of these things to be hit home, to resonate, to be true, I know they do for me. We can also shift our state. And that's the power. And breath work was really that thing for me that really helped. EFT is another huge one. Air, there's a lot of these other tips that we can do. And so the energy behind why we do things, right, really matters. Okay. So we can be, hey, I want to do this because I'm out of money and I need to make money. And or we can do this because I love what I do and I know the money's gonna come, right? Those are two different energies. Or I really want to work out because I love myself and I want to take care of myself and I feel really good. Or I want to work out because I'm fat and I hate myself and I hate my body, right? Two very different energies: one coming from survival, one coming from possibility. Okay. So the energy behind your actions matter because it's what you're attracting in. So two people can take the exact same steps toward a goal while operating from an entirely different internal state. One may act from fear, urgency, scarcity, the other may act from trust, confidence, and soul alignments. Their experiences and often their outcomes will look very different because your energy influences the decisions you make, the risks you're willing to take, the opportunities you notice, the thoughts your brain generates, and the way others respond to you. Success isn't only about what you do, it's about the state from which you do it. Success isn't about what you do, it's about the state from which you do it. I have goosebumps. So here are three ways that we can regulate and raise our frequency. Okay. The first is learning how to create safety within yourself. Whew, safety is huge, right? We just said when we're not safe, our body's in threat and it's gonna start to scan for all of the other threats, even if they aren't there. And that's what hypervigilance is, and that's what when I had PTSD, that's what my body was naturally doing, and I was stuck in a chronic state of disassociation and stress. So when you're regulated, your brain's gonna become more flexible, your intuition becomes much more clear, right? When I was so dysregulated, I could not make a decision to save my life, and I just thought there was something inherently wrong with me. Now, when you're regulated, your creativity expands, your thoughts become more supportive, and naturally you make better decisions. So regulation doesn't mean you'll never experience stress again. Okay. I want to make that very clear. It means that building the capacity to move through stress becomes like it means the building the capacity to move through stress without becoming consumed by it. Okay. Meaning you have enough capacity to deal with that stress before it sends you into a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Okay. More important more importantly, you stop making yourself wrong for where you actually are, right? We start to understand ourselves when we are regulated. If you've spent years in survival mode, your nervous system's adapted that way to protect you. So the more that we understand that that's happened and we were not in control of that, it's our body trying to protect us. I really think that's where healing begins, is with that compassion. And that's really true towards me. Um, and that was a lot to accept. But it once I did, I really started to make a lot of strides forward. And that acceptance is actually kind of regulating within itself. And I also want to say that I'm not a perfectly humaled version of myself, but I do believe that I'm worthy of love, abundance, and success because perfection does not exist. Okay. So EFT has really helped me tap those beliefs and thoughts about myself into myself. And I think you can grow while honoring where you are right now and accepting that and being okay with this season of life, if it might be a little harder, and uh, you're opening yourself up to more of that work and understanding kind of where you are, but that's where the grace and the compassion comes in. The other thing too is that we often need to rewrite our identity. Okay. So your brain heavily relies on identity. It continually asks who I am, and then it motivates choices that reinforces that answer. So if you're always identified as someone who struggles with consistency, consistency, confidence, abundance, your brain will continually direct you toward those familiar patterns. Even when you consciously want something different, again, from that 5%, we're dealing with, oh, I consciously want more abundance and more money and a better job, but we're still operating for them that 95% of our subconscious. So even when you consciously want something different, identity work is important because rather than asking, what do I want to achieve? can we ask, who am I becoming? What beliefs does that version of you hold? Right. I talk about this a lot in my yoga classes, and you guys might just think that I'm saying this for no reason, but I'm actually saying it to create this new identity and align that vision of yourself with the actions of that version of you would take. So, what beliefs does this version of you hold? What habits support this new identity, this new version? How do you speak them to yourselves? How do this version of you navigate challenges? You know, a lot of people create like to-do lists, but a lot of us actually need to create to be lists. So who you believe yourself to be influences everything you do. Identity work is huge, right? Our identity is a part of how our brain functions and works and decides what we're gonna go after, right? If we associate ourselves with someone who plays small, right, we're not gonna take risks that are gonna expand us to this version of us who is abundant. So, what version of you do you desire right now, right? And allow that answer to start to guide you. Now, belief is a biological advantage. Research suggests that our internal state influence our performance. So, in one study, participants prepared for a mock interview. One group reflected on a time they felt powerful, the other reflected on a time where they felt powerless. Although the interviewers had no knowledge of the experiment, participants who had been primed to feel powerful were rated as much more hireable. The qualifications remained the same. The difference was their state of being. So confidence, belief, and self-perception influence how we show up and how others respond to us, right? That's this idea of manifestation, attraction, magnet magnetism, right? That's all that advantage of actually having a state that is like functioning towards your uh what you want. So if we can train our brain for confidence belief and a stronger sense of self and identity, right? The more we're gonna show up like that, the more the people are gonna feel it. So your brain is constantly filtering information. So the question becomes what are you teaching it to look for? Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain can change. Hell fucking yeah, man. One powerful practice is intentionally collecting evidence of what you want more of. So if you desire more abundance, notice where abundance already exists, right? So instead of like looking at someone's abundance and thinking, like I'm separate from that, looking at it and thinking, wow, there is abundance in the world and I am a part of that. If you want more love, can you look for more moments of love throughout your day and be aware of them and like sit and be like, wow, love is possible, love is here. If you crave more joy, can you begin documenting the small experiences that bring it to your life? Right. We all have a phone in our hands. I often like take videos of me smelling flowers and noticing the animals and noticing the breeze of the leaves, right? Because that brings me joy of being present and regulated. Another practice that we can do is at the beginning of each week, can we create a little note that's titled like wonders of the week? So throughout the week, record moments that move you, right? That you don't need, they don't need to be extraordinary or like I want a million dollars, right? But the sound of the rain on your window, a meaningful conversation. You know, Gabby talks about watching the sunrise, a stranger's kindness or smile at you, the feeling of sunlight on your face, waking up in the morning and feeling grateful. At first, you may need to search for these intentionally, but over time your brain will begin to notice them automatically. Your perception shifts, your emotional baseline shifts, and ultimately your experience of life shifts. And I know these sound simple and maybe it's small, but they make a difference. So why not try it and see how your life unfolds, right? It's like, why not? See what happens. Fuck around and find out. Now, again, you don't have to force your way into a life you desire. The more regulated your nervous system becomes, the easier it is to align your actions with your intentions. You've been you begin making choices that support your goals naturally, right? That's what's really beautiful. You start to have energy to move towards what lights you up, what brings you joy, follow your bliss. Like that becomes so much natural when you are in a regulated state. Now, we often can recognize opportunities that we once overlooked. Your experience of more presence, joy, and peace, you know, becomes much more your natural way of being. It's also, you know, the more internal safety we can create through regulation, the more you're going to become the person you're meant to be because you're able to hold more. Your nervous system influences your thoughts. Your thoughts influence your actions, your actions shape your reality. So when you change your state you're living from, you may discover that the life you want has been closer than you realized all along. So just to kind of also recap, right? Your nervous system is your body's command center. Its job isn't happiness, success, or abundance. We have to teach it that. Its job is survival, okay? Your nervous system's job is survival. We have to train it and prime it for happiness, success, and abundance. And I love that because it's you get to take responsibility for it. Okay. You get to do the work to do that. And it's gonna be the most rewarding work that you ever fucking do because it's actually gonna help your fucking life. And I like the word fuck because it's it, I like how it emphasizes our what I'm saying. And every second of every day, your nervous system is scanning your environment and your internal world for cues of safety, right? I feel safe, I'm open, I'm open to receive, or it's scanning for danger. This process happens automatically and largely outside the conscious awareness. This is called your neurosception or called neurosception. So your nervous system is constantly asking, Am I safe? The answer to that question influences the thoughts that arise automatically. Okay. So your nervous system is constantly scanning for am I safe? The answer to that question influences the thoughts that arise automatically. Okay. The opportunities you notice, the emotions that you experience, the decisions you make, the energy you bring into relationships, and the frequency you're operating from. Now, just to recap, the sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your body for action when stress or danger is perceived. This is your survival system. It activates as the instinct response designed to keep you alive. So your fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These are adaptive and protective. The challenges occur when they become our default way of moving through life. Our parasympathetic, you know, not perfect, right? So the PNS, the parasympathetic nervous system, supports your rest, your digestion, your healing, your connection, creativity, restoration. This is often referred to as your body's safe state. This is where healing happens. It's where your intuition becomes clear. It's where better able to access presence, joy, and possibility. When your body feels safe, your brain begins filtering reality differently. So when our nervous system perceives threat, it automatically shifts into protective strategies. These are signs that these aren't. Aren't signs that something is wrong with you, right? This is where the grace comes in. Your body's doing this naturally. They're evidence that your body has learned how to survive. So when we're in fight, in the fight response, the nervous system responds by moving toward the threat. This can look like anger, irritability, defensiveness, hypervigilance, control. That's a big one. The body mobilizes energy to confront what feels unsafe. So this is your nervous system moving towards the threat. Energy is being mobilized to confront what feels unsafe in the body. Now, your flight response, the nervous system responds by moving away from the threat, away from what makes us feel unsafe. This may show up as your anxiety, restlessness, overworking, perfectionism, overthinking, feeling like you can never slow down. This is that flight response, right? We're moving away from the threat that makes us feel unsafe. Makes sense, right? Perfectionism, right? The more perfect we are, the more there's less of a threat because we're perfect. So the underlying message here is if I do more, maybe I'll finally feel safe. Okay. It's a way that we protect ourselves. Now freeze occurs when the nervous system determines that fighting or escaping isn't possible. Okay. So the body conserves energy through shutdown. This is what I was exactly as my like how my nervous system back in the day used to deal with circumstances. Okay. The body conserves energy through shutdown. This can feel like numbness, disassociation, brain fog, fatigue, feeling stuck. And this is a big one, procrastination. And I've written a lot of emails about this. Procrastination is comes from a frozen response. Okay. So when we feel unsafe, like you can't fight, you can't run, you shut down to protect yourself. Okay. Now, again, a lot of this is happening and our body's doing it for us because our nervous system's main goal is not abundance or fulfillment, it's survival. So the fawn is a relational survival strategy. So safety becomes linked to keeping others happy. It's a big one, often with our parents, right? So this can look like people pleasing, overaccommodating, difficulty setting boundaries, ignoring your own needs, seeking external validation from others. And the underlying belief becomes if everyone else is okay with me, right? Then I'll be safe. So if I'm liked and I'm loved, am I because I'm overgiving and overdoing and I'm making people feel that way, right? And I'm putting myself, I'm abandoning myself, then that's okay because I'm being loved. And that means with that love, I will be safe. All four responses are very intelligent, intelligent adaptations. I'll say this again: they're not character flaws. They're not signs of weakness, they're evidence of a nervous system doing what its best to protect you. So the challenge arises when the nervous system doesn't recognize that the threat has passed, okay? That we're no longer in that sense of survival. And now that survival becomes chronic. And then that dysregulation affects a lot of different areas of our life. Again, that becomes chronic anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, fatigue, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, immune dysfunction, weight fluctuations, relationship struggles, attachment wounds, difficulty experiencing joy or receiving support. So my intention with all of this is, and in this episode, is to help you gain some awareness of your experiences. And instead of shaming yourself for it and making yourself feel bad about experiencing these things, it's that your body and through is simply asking for safety. Okay. And then the best way that we can provide that safety, there are tools, okay. Uh, and the beautiful thing is that our nervous system can change. Okay. One of the fastest ways to communicate safety to our body is through our breath. Your breath is a bridge between the body and the mind. So conversation between our conscious awareness, our nervous system, and our subconscious. And it can be helpful to be a reminder that uh you're safe and you're safe right now, and that there is no, there's nothing to run from, right? There's nothing to, you're safe, right? Even though your body and your nervous system are giving you the signals that you're not safe, that you are running from, you know, the the bear. But actually, you get to tell your body and help your physiology, right, by using your breath. Now, like I said, the breath often supports the thinking mind. So when survival responses activate, like I said, the prefrontal coronet cortex, the planning, the perspective, the decision making becomes less accessible. So slow breathing helps regulation through the nervous system and getting that part of the brain back online. And through that, we're less triggered because we have our thinking more clearly. We have access to more of a response rather than a reaction. Okay. And we often get to tell ourselves that we're safe now, that it's safe to soften, it's safe enough to receive, it's safe enough to become, you know, who you are beneath your survival mechanisms and your coping mechanisms and the way we protect ourselves. So this is my little guide for you on your nervous system and my hope to bring you awareness as to how much this influences our day-to-day life. And the other thing, too, is that I do want to just touch on is that your nervous system also can be really helpful, right? We talk about the parasympathetic, but activating our nervous system, we also need, okay? And breath work allows us really to navigate, negotiate, or manipulate kind of the life force energy within our body. And so we can either be activating the sympathetic nervous system or we can be deactivating. And this, when we do more activation type of breath work, this actually opens the subconscious mind to recalibrate and reassociate a lot of the pain and the trauma that we have that we can recondition and reprogram ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves. So there are, there is space for both. Okay. There's activation type of breath work to do more of that reassociation work. And there's deactivation that helps you really, you know, downshift your nervous system. So it's not that one is more important than the other. It just depends on kind of where what you're working on and what your goals are. Okay. So, you know, 95% of our day is spent on that autopilot operating from our subconscious mind. You know, that subconscious is the control of our behavior. And if we never do anything to kind of rewrite that behavior, we're always living from that kind of 95%. Uh, and a lot of that has been programmed because we're we were in a state of hypnosis, essentially, which is a theta brainwave state until we were, you know, roughly seven years old. So we take in all this information, we learn from our surroundings, our environment, our community, and we're being conditioned of what's right, wrong, good, bad. And then we adapt through those survival mechanisms of what's acceptable and not acceptable, how we gain love, acceptance, you know, all of this is playing a role into these programs that we have and we've had since childhood. So you're broadcasting out a signal that is returning, you know, returning the same cycles and patterns and lessons to you because of kind of what is in your subconscious mind. And then your body and your nervous system are perpetuating that and your brain. So it's not about willpower, right? Because how is that 5% of our logical mind going to stand that 95%? So learning how to be in the world and receive what you need to feel safe, loved, and accepted for survival. You get to give that to yourself now as an adult. And that's what I mean about kind of taking responsibility and what we've talked about a lot on our podcast. So, you know, this is all about grace and uh giving yourself that space to regulate. Oftentimes, when we change our environment, we also become more regulated. And there are a lot of tools and techniques. And if you're interested in breath work, please reach out. And like I said, it is the thing that helped me really heal my PTSD and my hypervigilance and my frozen and response. I will say too, there were times where I've definitely fluctuated in and out of being frozen, being in a fight response and really defensive, being in a people-pleasing response. And uh, you know, especially as women, I think we definitely fawn a lot, right? We overgive, we over-comply in order to receive love and acceptance and being taken care of a lot of the time. Um, and I think it's really amazing how women are shifting out of that and really taking care of themselves. And your nervous system deserves, you know, your awareness and your care, right? Because it's, it's, it's essential to our well-being. And I hope through this episode, I've given you that awareness to notice that, right? That it is a, it is a part of our well-being. And we need spaces to find that sense of regulation and slowing down and recognizing a lot of our internal dialogue and how we speak to each other as part of our being aware of our state, right? Our internal dialogue, shallow breathing, our triggers when we are feeling that fear, that stress, that anxiety, right? Using that sense of awareness when we're in that state, the interruption of interrupting that pattern, and then the redesign with a lot of different skills and techniques that we can do to start regulating our system and when we are feeling triggered and redesigning our response for new neural pathways. And so I hope this has given you a good masterclass on nervous system regulation and why it is so important, and that is the tools can be simple but profound. And I let us know if you kind of like some of these solo kind of masterclassy educational type of podcasts. Me and Gabby will be back and have more guests on the horizon. But I think just to give some context of a lot of what we talk about on here, um, it's nice to kind of sprinkle in some of these educational pieces. So, y'all, thank you so much for supporting. Thank you so much for listening. I maybe I'll go more into my story in one episode. It's a pleasure to be here, to be showing up for people to be listening, for community to be gathering. And I think the world becomes a much more beautiful place and we are regulated. And I love sharing about this because it is so life-changing and healing and transformational. And imagine when our brain and our body are primed for possibility, for creation, for love, for aliveness, for really like living up to our human potential. That's why I do what I do, and that's what I want for all of you. So thank you for listening, for being here. Please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. It also might help give you a lot of understanding for the people in your world, um, why they act, behave the way that they do. Doesn't mean we don't have boundaries, but can also give us some compassion and grace and love for those people and also know that the greatest thing we can do for another is to work on ourselves. And sometimes we can't control other people's paths, right? And we have that sense of control as that kind of fight response, right? As a protectiveness uh for ourselves to create safety that if we can control, then we are safe, okay? But we get to find that safety within instead of controlling those around us and surrendering to that flow. So thanks for being here. And send this to someone. Please uh break the show, send this and have a great week. And we'll see you next week, y'all. What up, y'all? We are so thankful and excited that you're here. If you're loving the show, feeling the show, please think about sharing it with a friend who could also get something out of it. We're also asking for your help. If you could rate the show or write a review, that way we can grow and expand together. Reach the right people who need and are meant to hear this message. I know it's super easy not to do it, but every single rating and review helps this show grow so much. We appreciate it more than you know. Thanks so much for supporting Relentlessly Authentic. This is raw unfiltered conversations on healing, identity shifts, nervous system regulation, and the messy middles that crack you open and change everything. New episodes every Wednesday.