When Nervous System Regulation Becomes Hypervigilance
I've been sharing more of my story online lately, and something strange keeps happening. I keep remembering pieces of my anxiety that I had completely forgotten about.
One of the biggest ones: how often I was reacting to what I was feeling in my body. It was constant. Every little twinge, every random pain, every slightly uncomfortable sensation would set off a thought. "What if that's cancer?" "Something must be wrong." "Am I having a heart attack?" "What if I'm about to pass out?" And the second that thought showed up, my body would dump a load of stress hormones into my system, and now I'm buzzing with anxiety, which of course gave me even more sensations to worry about.
This was running in the background of my mind so often that I didn't even notice it. And I never said any of it out loud. Somewhere deep down, mostly subconsciously, I believed that as long as I didn't speak it, it couldn't come true.
And it didn't stop at my body. All that focus on what was happening inside me spilled out into everything around me too. "This fragrance is going to overwhelm my system and give me a headache." "This food is going to mess up my gut." "This toxin exposure is going to give me cancer."
I was stuck in that loop for a really long time. But what took me even longer to see was that I didn't think of it as a problem. I thought I was protecting myself.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately, because I see a version of the same loop showing up in the world of nervous system regulation. People scanning their bodies all day long, wondering if they're regulated enough, reaching for a tool every time something feels a little off. And I get it .. I really do. But sometimes our efforts to regulate turn into one more form of hypervigilance.
The loop I didn't know I was in
Let me break down what was actually happening, because I think a lot of you will recognize it.
It starts with a sensation. A twinge in your chest, a headache, a weird flutter in your stomach. Totally normal body stuff. Our bodies make noise all day long. But then your brain attaches a scary story to it. That story tells your nervous system there's danger, so it does exactly what it's designed to do: it gets you ready to deal with it. Your heart rate goes up, your breathing gets shallow, your muscles tighten, and stress hormones flood in.
And now you have even more sensations, which feel like proof that something really is wrong. So the story gets louder, and the cycle keeps going.
There's actually a name for this in the research: anxiety sensitivity. To keep it simple, it means being afraid of the feelings of anxiety themselves. Your brain reads a racing heart as a sign of danger. And it's one of the strongest predictors of panic attacks, which makes complete sense to me. For years I lay in bed at night sure something was wrong with my heart, convinced I wouldn't wake up in the morning. I couldn’t fall asleep if I was in a position where I could feel my heart because I would hyper focus on it and it would spike my anxiety. Looking back, I wasn't really afraid of my heart. I was afraid of what I was feeling.
None of this means something is wrong with you. This is a protective system doing its job a little too well.
Why checking feels like safety (and keeps you stuck)
So why is this loop so hard to get out of? A big part of it is that checking feels good, at least for a minute.
You feel something, you check on it, you reassure yourself it's probably fine, and you get a little wave of relief. Or you avoid the fragrance, the food, the thing, and you feel safer. These are called safety behaviors, and the tricky part is that they really do work in the short term. But every time we check or avoid, we're also telling our nervous system, "That was dangerous. Good thing we caught it." So the fear never gets a chance to fade.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how your nervous system is a prediction machine, not a truth machine. This is where we can see that playing out. Whatever you keep scanning for, your brain learns to expect. So the more we watch for danger, the more our system gets trained to find it.
And here is something fascinating. Researchers who study interoception (your ability to sense what's happening inside your body) have found that people with anxiety often report paying really close attention to their bodies .. but that doesn't make them better at reading them. Watching more closely mostly just sets off more alarms.
I want to be really clear about one thing though: this isn't me telling you to ignore your body. Symptoms are there for a reason. New or persistent symptoms are always worth checking out with a provider. The difference is checking once versus scanning all day long.
Yes, some things really are harmful
I also don't want to swing too far the other way. Because there ARE things in our environment that aren't great for us. Some people really do have sensitivities to fragrances or certain foods. Paying attention to what you put in and on your body is a good thing, and I'm not going to tell you otherwise.
But there's a big difference between making thoughtful choices and living in constant fear of every potential threat. That second one isn't a way to live. And I know because I was there for such a long time. It feels protective, but it isn't actually helping.
A nervous system that's always on guard is a nervous system that never gets to rest, digest, repair and recover, which is the very thing we're trying to protect in the first place.
When regulation becomes one more thing to watch
Let’s bring this back to regulation, because I see this pattern show up in the wellness world all the time.
We learn about the nervous system, and suddenly we start noticing every little shift. Am I dysregulated right now? Was that a fight or flight response? I'm feeling a little anxious — I need to do my breathwork. I need to get outside. I need to fix this before it gets worse.
I like to think of it like a thermostat. A thermostat is there to keep your house comfortable, and it mostly does that on its own. But imagine someone standing in front of it all day, adjusting it every five minutes because it's a degree too warm… now a degree too cold… now too warm again. The house would never actually settle. And that person would be exhausted.
That's what it can look like when we use regulation tools from a place of fear. The tools themselves aren't the problem. Breath work, time in nature, cold exposure… these are wonderful. But the same tool can either support you, or it can become another safety behavior. The difference is why you're reaching for it.
And just so this doesn't get lost, I'm not saying you should stop using your regulation tools, or that using them a lot is a bad thing. I use mine all the time. Using tools throughout your day is how we give our nervous system consistent support, and it's a big part of how we build capacity over time.
Building them into your day on purpose looks like a morning routine that grounds you instead of a rigid schedule for optimal productivity. It's a gentle walk after dinner instead of obsessing over how many steps you got in that day. It's a few slow breaths before a hard conversation to settle yourself, versus a practice you do just to check it off your list. That's the difference.
It starts to work against us when we reach for a tool every time we notice a sensation, because we're afraid of what it might mean or because we feel like we have to stay calm at all costs. That's when a tool turns into one more way of checking.
So the question isn't how often you're using your tools. It's what's behind the motivation to reach for them.
Being hyper-focused on staying regulated is a protective response in itself. And a system that's constantly bracing against its own activation isn't a regulated system, no matter how many tools it's using.
So here's a question worth asking yourself: am I supporting myself right now, or am I running from a sensation?
What nervous system regulation actually looks like
So if it's not about staying calm all the time, what is regulation?
A regulated nervous system is one that responds appropriately to what's actually happening, and then comes back down. That's it. It still gets activated, it's just flexible enough to rise to meet a hard conversation, a deadline or a car swerving into your lane and then settle once the moment has passed.
Which means anxiety itself isn't a sign that you're dysregulated. Sometimes anxiety is entirely appropriate! If you're nervous before a big presentation, that's your body getting you ready. If your heart pounds when a car cuts in front of you, that's your nervous system doing its job beautifully.
And how we interpret that activation also matters. In one study, people who were told that their racing heart before a stressful test was their body getting ready to help them performed better than people who weren't told that. Same body, same sensations, just a different story about what it all meant.
Even your heart works this way. One of the markers of a healthy heart is heart rate variability, a heart that speeds up and slows down easily, not one that stays perfectly steady all the time.
So regulation is a state of being. It's not something you can force yourself into. It doesn't come from avoiding every trigger, and it doesn't come from creating the perfect environment. It comes from your system learning, over and over, that it can feel something and still be okay.
One tiny practice to start with: when you notice a sensation, try naming it without needing to fix it. "My heart's racing. That makes sense, I'm running late." And then let it be.
The cold shower that didn't work
Let me give you an example of what this kind of hypervigilance looks like when trying to utilize a regulation tool.
In my free community right now, we're doing a growth challenge using cold showers to grow our capacity. I love this practice so much. But there's a way to do it that works with your body instead of against it.
I remember talking to a follower who told me she'd tried cold showers and they just didn't work for her. She was miserable. So I asked her how she was doing them, and she said she'd turn the water as cold as it would go and grit her teeth through it until she couldn't breathe anymore.
And then I completely understood why it didn't work. She was focused on the thing itself, the cold shower, and not on the mechanism behind it. Every time she stepped in, she was setting off her threat response. So the only thing her nervous system learned was that cold showers are really uncomfortable and something to avoid.
The whole point of a practice like this is to give your body an experience of something uncomfortable that it can stay calm through. Your nervous system learns a sensation is safe through repeated exposure in a way that it can handle, not by being forced through it. That's why you start with a temperature that feels uncomfortable but where you can still breathe and stay present. And when that voice says you're done, you're done. Even if it's just a couple of seconds.
What makes the difference is understanding the why behind what you’re doing, and coming to it with the right intention. When we come at a tool with hypervigilance — bracing, forcing, checking whether it's "working" — we lose all of that.
And if you want to learn more about the challenge or to join us, CLICK HERE.
A quick note: cold exposure isn't right for everyone. If you have a heart condition, are pregnant, have Raynaud's, or have any other health concerns, check with your doctor before you start.
Something to sit with
If any of this sounds familiar — the scanning, the checking, the constant what-ifs — please know you're not alone. I lived there for years, and I really thought it was keeping me safe.
A few questions to ask yourself this week:
Where am I scanning instead of living?
When I reach for a regulation tool, am I supporting myself, or am I trying to make a feeling go away?
What would it feel like to let a sensation just be a sensation?
Regulation isn't something you achieve by watching all the things closely enough. And it doesn’t come from avoiding all the potential threats or triggers. Regulation is what shows up when your system finally learns it doesn't have to be on guard all the time.
There’s no perfect way to get there. The best place to start is to just start noticing.
This post is for education and isn't a substitute for care from a medical or mental health provider. If anxiety feels constant or severe, or if health worries are taking over your days, working alongside a licensed professional can be invaluable.
