Stress isn't solved on the mental level. It's solved in the body, through the nervous system that's actually running it.
Hello friends,
As a highly sensitive person, I'm used to feeling overstimulated fairly easily. My nervous system processes things more deeply than the average person does. That brings real gifts, and real challenges. For years I've researched and practiced how to avoid the trap so many HSPs fall into: going from one over-exhausted phase to the next, simply because we don't take good enough care of our nervous system along the way.
This matters just as much beyond HSPs. During the day, we all move between different levels of stimulation, whether we notice it or not. Your stress level is reflected in your nervous system, or to put it simply: in your body. Feeling highly stressed shows up as shallow breath, overwhelming thoughts or emotions, tunnel vision, a raised heart rate, tensed muscles, and often impulsive or reactive behaviour.
What chronic stress actually does
Stress means your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. The adrenaline wears off, but cortisol stays and does its damage. Left unchecked, chronic stress has real effects on your health: from permanently tensed muscles, to inflammation in the body, to measurable shrinkage in the frontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for decision-making.
Here's why. Chronic stress means your "fight or flight" mode, the sympathetic part of your nervous system, stays dominant. You're not spending enough time in "rest and digest" mode, its counterpart, the parasympathetic nervous system. Our bodies always seek balance. But the sheer amount of daily stimulation and information most of us live with keeps us trapped in what's sometimes called sympathetic overdrive, meaning too much stress, and too little relaxation.
Managing stress means managing the nervous system
Have you ever tried lowering your own tension by telling yourself to relax? Just like telling someone else to calm down mid-argument, it rarely works. Stress can't be solved on the mental level. It has to be worked through the body.
Here are three ways to calm your nervous system and lower your stress response.
One: work with the breath. The breath is managed by the same part of the nervous system that raises or lowers your stress response. It always mirrors your mental state. When you sleep, your breath is slow and deep. When you're anxious, it's shallow. If you want to relax, you need to breathe as if you already are. A well-researched technique is the physiological sigh: a double inhale through the nose, followed by a long exhale. Even a few slow, deliberate breaths can nudge your body into rest-and-digest mode.
Two: take true breaks. A study from Microsoft's Human Factors Lab found that during the day, depending on our stimulation level, we move through different brain wave states. Beta waves roughly represent stress, alpha waves represent relaxation. Most of us stay in beta for most of the day, but we need to return to alpha to avoid burning out. When you scroll your phone or check email on a break, you stay in beta. Your brain never actually resets. A true break is one that really calms you down: closing your eyes, a short meditation, stretching, or a five to ten minute walk.
Three: activate the sympathetic nervous system, in small, intentional doses. While we generally want to reduce fight-or-flight activation, some techniques deliberately put the body into a state of heightened stress on purpose, to build resilience over time. These are sometimes called hormetic practices: things that would harm you at a high dose, like breath holds, cold water, or fasting, actually strengthen the immune system in small ones. Intense workouts and sauna visits fall into a similar category. Meditation, even though it isn't remotely life-threatening, seems to have a comparable effect: it also builds resilience over time.
To sum it up, if you want to self-regulate your nervous system:
- take a few deep, conscious breaths, or the physiological sigh, whenever you notice tension building
- take five to ten minutes of true breaks between meetings during the day
- build a weekly hormetic routine: a cold shower, a longer meditation, or a sauna visit
Which of these are you already using? And which one would you want to build into your week? I'd love to know.
Have a lovely day,
P.S. Nervous system regulation is one of the core practical tools in Module 6 of our 8-week Emotional Intelligence in Action programme. Discovery Call is at cal.com/sophie-bachmann/discovery-call when you're ready.