We all have those days—sometimes weeks or even months—where we're going about life and everything seems to be going well. Then suddenly, something activates us.
Maybe we're talking with a friend or family member, and something they say doesn't sit quite right. Maybe someone driving in front of us is going too slow, or someone behind us is riding our bumper. Or maybe we receive news that completely shatters our version of known reality, sending us into a spiral.
We may feel annoyed, angry, frustrated, confused, hurt, or devastated.
We are activated.
From this activated state, if we haven't done the work of learning new ways to respond, our instinct is often to react impulsively. Maybe that looks like arguing, yelling, walking away, shutting down, withdrawing, retreating, or staying quiet. These are our nervous system's automatic survival strategies.
I've also noticed that we tend to become more easily activated in what I call high-stakes relationships—our closest, most meaningful relationships, the ones tied to our sense of safety, security, and belonging. The thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the people we love often affect our nervous system much more deeply than those of acquaintances or strangers.
These reactions aren't signs that we're broken. They're learned patterns our nervous system developed over a lifetime in an effort to protect us from perceived threats to our safety and security.
But what if there was another way?
What if becoming activated didn't have to determine how we responded?
This is where nervous system regulation began changing everything for me.
Activation → Reaction → Awareness → Reflection → Response
Recently, I found myself living this process firsthand.
I received news I wasn't expecting. Almost immediately, my mind began making assumptions, creating stories that weren't necessarily true. Before I knew it, my nervous system became completely flooded. I was entirely outside the banks of my river of well-being.
I was activated.
The sensations in my body were visceral. I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut. I wanted to be sick.
From that dysregulated state, I reacted.
I immediately blocked the source of my perceived rejection, walked away, shut down, withdrew, and became completely self-focused as a way of self-protection and preservation. These were instinctual behaviors my nervous system had practiced over my entire lifetime.
Nature has taught me something my nervous system is still learning: healing can't be forced.
You cannot rush a flower to bloom before it's ready, and you cannot rush your own growth either.
While I still reacted by blocking, retreating, and turning inward, something was different this time.
I became consciously aware of the pattern I was repeating.
That awareness changed everything.
Instead of remaining shut down and isolating myself, which is what I would have done in the past, I reached for the tools I've been learning over the last several years.
That night, I allowed my emotions to move through me instead of pretending I was unbothered.
I cried.
I journaled.
I sought comfort from my wonderful canine companion, and we cuddled.
I reached out to a friend for support—something I never would have done before because I believed I should handle everything myself and didn't want to burden anyone else.
I kept my already scheduled trauma-informed group session that evening. In the past, I would have canceled and isolated myself in my perceived rejection.
I took a bath to offer myself some gentle care.
Over the following week, I returned to nature. I paddleboarded. I hiked through the woods. I gave myself space to reconnect with who I am beneath the activation.
These have become some of the most effective tools I've practiced over the last several years.
Even after using all of these new skills, my nervous system wasn't immediately back within the banks of my river of well-being.
It still took nearly five days before I felt fully regulated again—before I was ready to unblock, open back up, and reconnect.
Five days may sound like a long time, but for me, that is tremendous growth.
Years ago, this pattern could have lasted weeks or even months.
Somewhere during those five days, my perspective slowly shifted from, "Why is this happening to me?" to "What is this trying to teach me?"
That's when I remembered a phrase that has guided me many times:
This isn't happening to me; it's happening for me.
Learning to regulate our nervous system isn't much different than learning a new language, playing a sport, or driving a car.
At first, it feels awkward.
We forget.
We fall back into familiar habits.
But every time we pause instead of reacting, every time we choose a healthier response, we're strengthening new neural pathways.
Eventually, those new responses become just as familiar as the old survival patterns once were.
This is why I believe it's so important to learn the language of our bodies.
When we pause long enough to notice a sensation, we can begin asking ourselves gentle questions.
What am I really feeling?
Am I scared?
Do I feel rejected?
Dismissed?
Unseen?
Our bodies often know before our minds do.
That awareness helps us recognize when we've felt this before and what we truly need in that moment. Instead of expecting someone else to meet that need, we have an opportunity to offer it to ourselves with compassion. In many ways, this becomes an act of reparenting our inner child.
None of this happened overnight.
It came through years of slowly collecting tools that helped me reconnect with myself—mindfulness, meditation, nervous system regulation, time in nature, creative expression, trauma-informed coaching, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic Experiencing (SE), understanding attachment patterns, and learning how to receive support instead of carrying everything alone.
None of these practices "fixed" me.
They simply helped me create enough safety within myself to make a different choice when life inevitably activated me.
That's also why so much of the work I now offer through Noble Healing centers around creating experiences that help people reconnect with themselves—not by forcing change, but by creating the conditions where change becomes possible.
This experience reminded me that healing isn't about never becoming activated again.
It's about recognizing what's happening sooner, meeting ourselves with compassion instead of judgment, and choosing a different response one small moment at a time.
In my next Reflection, I want to explore something that completely changed the way I understand myself: learning how to get back into my body.
For years, when coaches or therapists asked me, "What does that feel like in your body?" I honestly had no idea how to answer.
That question would eventually become one of the most important invitations of my healing journey.
We'll dive into that together next time.
And if you'd like to hear the parts of this story I don't share publicly—the moments that shaped this lesson, what happened after those five days, and the practices that helped me find my way back—I invite you to join my email community.
That's where I'll share the deeper reflections that don't always belong in a public blog.