Nervous System States

This is your body’s regulated state. Here, you feel grounded, creative, compassionate, and socially present. The world feels safe enough to connect, learn, and love. Heart rate slows, digestion resumes, and clear thinking becomes available.

In this mobilized state, your body prepares to act. Attention narrows, breath quickens, and muscles engage. This state is protective in real danger, but when it lingers it can feel like tension, anxiety, irritability, or overwhelm.

In this state, your nervous system seeks safety through connection. You may prioritize harmony, minimize your needs, anticipate others’ reactions, or stay agreeable to reduce threat. It often looks like kindness from the outside, while feeling tense or self-erasing on the inside.

This state emerges when overwhelm feels inescapable. Energy drops, emotions flatten, and disconnection sets in as a form of protection. Movement out of this state usually happens slowly, through warmth, safety, and gentle reconnection with sensation and presence.