Let’s explore what it really means to have a well-regulated nervous system
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If you believe that emotional regulation means being calm all the time, then I’m sorry to break the news: it isn’t.
Having a regulated nervous system means being able to navigate moments of calmness, but just as much through intense emotions like anger and sadness.
A well regulated nervous system allows you to experience and express intense emotions in a healthy way, without judgement, grounded in the knowledge that these emotions are temporary.
Emotion is energy in motion
Intense emotions rise in the body as a response to an event, be it internal or external.
An example of an external event could be that you had a boundary violated that triggered your anger, whereas an internal event could be the random surfacing of a memory that triggers sadness.
In these moments, the connection between body and mind becomes clear, often manifesting as an overwhelming feeling that the energy needs to be released.
This release can happen in various ways at a bodily level: the urge to scream, cry, or hit something. These actions help us shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state.
But for that to happen, you need to be comfortable feeling the emotions, and not get caught in the cycle of judgement that often follows.
Being calm all the time is not a sign of a well regulated nervous system, it’s a sign of emotional suppression. Our bodies are meant to feel and release emotions regularly.
Being able to regulate your emotions means you can process, express, and recover from them.
Your emotions are not the problem
During my 20-year journey of self-discovery, I realised I had spent most of my life suppressing my emotions because I saw them as inadequate. This was due to my early development, where I was led to believe emotions were either dangerous and a sign of weakness.
A switch flipped when I learned that my emotions weren’t the problem; the issue was the judgements I had of myself when I had them. That was what had been blocking me from living fully and authentically.
What made this shift even more powerful was realising that my emotions and feelings, especially the difficult ones, were actually reflections of my unmet emotional needs.
Understanding this helped me see emotions not as obstacles, but as signals guiding me towards what I truly needed in those moments.
So instead of suppressing them, I began to listen to them, using them as a guide to meet my emotional needs and foster a deeper connection with myself.
How to become comfortable with feeling your emotions
There are often two things that prevent us from fully feeling our emotions:
Fear: The fear that the emotion will never go away, or that it will take over and make you cause a scene. This is not a primal fear, but a fear that comes as we think about the emotion.
Self-judgement: A judgement that the emotion is inadequate, and therefore you are inadequate.
Emotions are physiological responses that happen before rationality kicks in. A big part of having a well regulated nervous system is learning to resist the urge to suppress emotions through judgement.
This is where mindfulness, Yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises can be incredibly helpful — provided they aren’t being used as tools for emotional suppression, which I unfortunately see many people doing.
Instead, they should be used to calm your nervous system just enough so that you can engage with the emotions in a way that helps guide you toward understanding your unmet emotional needs.
What do you think? Do you have a well regulated nervous system?
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No, You Are Not Meant to Be Calm All the Time. Here’s Why. was originally published in Mindful Mental Health on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.