Why Your Body Doesn’t Feel Safe — And How That Impacts Every Part of Your Life
Have you ever felt exhausted even when you’ve done nothing “hard”? Or maybe you find yourself overreacting to small things—snapping at your kids, getting overwhelmed by a simple to-do list, or feeling paralyzed by decisions that shouldn’t be that difficult?
If you’ve blamed yourself, thinking, “Why can’t I just handle life better?”—you’re not alone. But here’s the truth:
It’s not a mindset issue—it’s a nervous system issue.
Your body is wired for safety first.
Your nervous system’s #1 job is to keep you safe. When it senses threats or stress, it shifts into survival mode—fight, flight, or freeze. The problem? Many of us have spent years (or even decades) in a constant state of low-level survival without even realizing it.
What causes to get into this state to begin with? Here are just a few examples:
Chronic stress
Past trauma (even things you wouldn’t label as “big” trauma)
Unmet emotional or physical needs
Pushing through exhaustion instead of resting
Never truly feeling calm, even in “safe” moments
Parents that were dysregulated
Do you see yourself in this list at all? I know I do!
Over time, this rewires your body and brain, making it harder to relax, harder to think clearly, and harder to feel present in your own life.
Signs Your Body Doesn’t Feel Safe
You don’t need to have major trauma to experience nervous system dysregulation. It can show up in subtle ways, like:
Feeling constantly on edge, even in calm moments
Struggling to slow down or rest without guilt
Overreacting to small stressors or feeling emotionally drained by little things
Brain fog, forgetfulness, or decision fatigue
Waking up tired even after a full night’s sleep
Digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, or chronic inflammation
If any of these resonate, it’s not because something is wrong with you. It’s because your nervous system has learned to operate in survival mode—but the good news is it can be rewired for safety.
Creating Safety in Your Body Again
Your nervous system can heal. Just like it adapted to stress, it can relearn safety.
But here’s where I see a lot of people go wrong: they think that to find safety they must control their environment. Their safety depends on their situation, who they’re around, and what they’re exposed to.
And that’s understandable. I wouldn’t feel safe walking down a dark alley in Seattle by myself. So to a point, it’s true that our environment impacts our feeling of safety. But it can easily become all we focus on.
“I don’t feel safe when I’m around certain people who are talking about certain subjects.” “I don’t feel safe when I drive my car.” “I don’t feel safe when I step outside my house.” “I don’t feel safe unless I am in full control of my surroundings.”
When that is your reality, your world becomes very small and limited. And most often, you don’t actually feel any safer, you end up needing to remove more and more triggers.
Real safety comes from a balanced nervous system. To be dysregulated means that your nervous system is responding inappropriately to perceived threats or stressors. The solution isn’t to remove all of those threats, the solution is regulating your nervous system so it’s reactions are appropriate to the situation.
Here are two things you can do to regulate your nervous system and learn real safety:
Teach your nervous system that uncomfortable is okay.
My favorite way to do this is with cold showers. But you’re not just jumping into cold water, the process is very specific and slow and you should be calm the entire time. I created a free PDF that walks you through how to do this effectively. It made a dramatic difference for me in how my nervous system reacted! After starting this practice I noticed that small things that would typically give me anxiety weren’t triggering me at all anymore.
I know it sounds miserable, I was against trying this for a long time, but it’s been one of the most effective tools I’ve tried. Learn how to do it HERE.
Listen to your body’s responses
This sounds too simple but our small actions send loud signals to our nervous system. When we’re already leaning toward survival mode, your nervous system is looking for any clue that you’re not safe.
When you ignore your body signals like hunger or thirst, needing to go to the bathroom, sleep, or just being physically uncomfortable; it tells your nervous system that you must not be safe enough to listen.
Which makes sense. When you’re running from a tiger, you’re not going to stop and eat something.
Start listening to those signals. It tells your nervous system that you’re safe enough to be in your Rest + Digest state.
If learning safety is something you struggle with (this was me too), then the course I created is exactly for you. In Regulate + Thrive, I teach you exactly how to do all of this—step by step. You’ll learn how to shift from survival mode into a state of calm, clarity, and energy so you can feel like yourself again.
If you’re ready to break free from exhaustion, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm, stay tuned—I’ll be sharing more tools and insights in the coming weeks. But if you already know you need this, you can join Regulate + Thrive HERE.
I’m starting a cohort in April where we will go through the course together in 21 days, and you’ll get extra coaching from me! When you sign up now, it means immediate access once it launches!
Your body isn’t broken. It’s just waiting for you to show it safety again.
