Nervous System & Triggers
Your Nervous System Reacts Before Logic.
Your nervous system is constantly taking in information from your body, environment, relationships, and past experiences. Sometimes your body responds before your thinking brain has had time to understand what is happening.
Your brain and body take in information from what's happening around you and inside you.
START WITH THE BASICS
Your Nervous System is Always Paying Attention
Your nervous system helps you take in information, determine what needs your attention, and prepare your body to respond. Much of this happens automatically, before conscious thought.
Notice
Understand
Your nervous system uses current information and past experiences to make rapid predictions about what is happening.
Respond
Your body prepares for action, which can influence your sensations, emotions, thoughts, urges, and behavior.
Understand what activates your nervous system and why some experiences create stronger reactions than others.
Body Responses
Notice the physical signals that can appear before you consciously understand what you're feeling.
EXPLORE YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM
What Do You Want to Understand?
Start with what you're noticing right now, or explore the topics below to better understand how your nervous system responds.
Triggers
Fight, Flight, Freeze, & Fawn
Learn how your nervous system attempts to protect you when it detects stress, threat, or overwhelm.
Thought Spirals
Understand how activation can influence your thoughts, predictions, and interpretations.
Window of Tolerance
Understand why some experiences feel manageable while others push you toward activation or shutdown.
Regulation
Learn practical ways to help your nervous system settle and return to greater capacity.
Start with Nervous System
Short, straightforward explanations to help you understand how your nervous system notices, reacts, and learns from experience.
How the Nervous System Works
Understand how your nervous system takes in information and shifts your body into different states and responses.
WATCH & LEARN
Why You Can’t Open Up
Explore how past experiences can shape what your brain notices, prioritizes, and prepares your body to respond to.
How Triggers Show Up in the Nervous System
See how triggers can activate protective responses and influence your body, emotions, thoughts, and behavior.
Understand what your body, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are telling you.
PUT IT INTO PRACTICE
Notice What’s Happening.
Choose What You Need.
Understanding your nervous system is a starting point. Use these tools to explore what you’re experiencing, identify patterns, and find strategies that may help in the moment.
Awareness Toolkit
Trigger Reflection
Learn why the pattern developed and what keeps it going.
Regulation Tools
Use practical tools to regulate, communicate, connect, and make intentional choices.