For the last few days here in Maine, the sky has been…strange.
The sun has been muted behind smoke from the Canadian wildfires, casting everything in this yellowish haze. It’s eerie. Almost apocalyptic.
The first morning I walked outside, my body reacted before my brain had a chance to make sense of it.
Something feels wrong.
I knew exactly what was happening. I knew the smoke was coming from hundreds of miles away. I knew I wasn’t in immediate danger.
And yet…
My nervous system stayed activated for most of the day.
I felt unsettled. On edge. Like something bad was about to happen.
It was such a good reminder that we can’t simply override our nervous system because our thinking brain has different information.
This is something I talk about all the time as a somatic psychotherapist, but it’s different when you feel it happening in your own body.
We live in a culture that teaches us we should be able to think our way out of difficult emotions.
Think more positively.
Be more grateful.
Heal more.
Meditate harder.
If you’re still anxious, sad, grieving, or overwhelmed, you must not be doing enough inner work.
But that’s not how the human nervous system works.
Your body is constantly gathering information from the world around you. Light. Sound. Facial expressions. Tone of voice. Smells. Movement. Changes in your environment.
Long before your thinking brain catches up, your nervous system has already started asking one very important question:
Am I safe?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
Sometimes it’s no.
And sometimes, especially if you’ve experienced trauma, the wiring gets a little crossed.
Your nervous system may respond to something happening today with protective strategies that were originally built for something that happened years ago.
That doesn’t mean your nervous system is broken.
It means it’s trying to protect you with the information it has.
I think that’s an important distinction.
Because so often people assume the goal is to stop feeling what they’re feeling.
To push it away.
Override it.
Convince themselves they’re fine.
But pretending doesn’t create safety.
Pushing harder doesn’t create safety.
Shaming yourself for having a nervous system definitely doesn’t create safety.
Curiosity does.
Instead of asking, “Why am I like this?”
We can begin asking, “What is my nervous system noticing?”
“What is this response trying to protect me from?”
“What does my body need right now?”
Those questions create something entirely different.
They create enough safety for your nervous system to begin settling.
And from that place, you can start to sort through what belongs to this moment and what may be an old survival pattern that’s getting activated.
You don’t have to ignore your nervous system to heal.
You don’t have to believe every story it tells, either.
You simply have to listen.
Because your nervous system is always communicating with you.
The signal may not always be about what’s happening right now.
But it’s always telling you something that deserves your curiosity.
As a somatic psychotherapist, I see this every day in my work with women. We don’t heal by becoming people who never feel anxious, sad, overwhelmed, or activated. We heal by learning how to listen to our bodies with compassion instead of judgment. That’s where nervous system regulation begins—not by forcing ourselves into calm, but by creating enough safety for our bodies to find their way there. Counseling for women can provide a supportive space to better understand these responses and reconnect with your body in a more compassionate way.
