Nervous System Regulation Is the New Diet Culture

Spoiler alert: it also sucks.

Struggling? Have you tried regulating your nervous system? Feeling hopeless? You may need a nervous system reset!

I've been a therapist for 15 years. I watched diet culture teach people that their bodies were a problem to fix. Regulation culture is running the same play on the nervous system.

Diet culture sold a number. Regulation culture sells a state. You can't pick a number and make your body that, any more than you can do a 10-day reset and pick your nervous system. And I'm sorry, but "resetting your nervous system" isn't actually a thing. Nervous systems don't reset. They adapt, they learn, and they build capacity over time.

We're calling everything "nervous system regulation" now. Breath-work. Movement. Cold plunges. A walk. All one word, sold like one fix. Clinically, that collapses very different interventions into one promise. The same skill can soothe one nervous system and activate another. What grounds someone can flood you.

You can't copy a stranger's routine off the internet and expect your body to respond the way theirs did, any more than you can follow a "what I eat in a day" and end up in a new body.

Solving for the wrong problem

We're obsessed with optimization. Optimization culture is an unhealthy preoccupation with health. We are exhausted. I am exhausted! Aren't you?

The thing I hate the most isn't that it doesn't work. It's that when it doesn't work, it sells the story that it's because of you. Try harder, do more, double down, circle back and get back on the horse. You did it wrong.

There is nothing more American than solving for the wrong problem.

Your nervous system isn't a dial you turn alone. It's biology. History. Genetics. Temperament. Stress load. Context. Trauma history. Our nervous systems are built. They learn through experiences.

We need other people.

Human behavior isn't just shaped by context. It's shaped by resources: sleep, safety, support, money, time, housing, food, justice. This isn't a mindset. It's access.

Regulation is co-regulation. We are not supposed to be doing this by ourselves in a room with an app. And then listening to a self-compassion meditation at 1.5x the speed. (I see you, I am you.)

Out, in, and both

Your body is always taking in information from two directions. Exteroception is awareness pointed outward: sight, sound, touch, smell, what's happening in the environment. Interoception is awareness pointed inward: heartbeat, breath, gut sensation, muscle tension, temperature. Neuroception is your nervous system's read of safety or danger, pulling from both, before your conscious mind catches up.

And a lot of regulation and optimization culture focuses on the individual: you, alone, tracking your own body, optimizing your own state, scaling something.

Waking up from anti-relational behaviors and habits is what we need the most right now. We need each other more than ever.

Dual awareness is being able to straddle both: one eye pointed out, one eye pointed in, and noticing the interaction of the two. It is really hard to know what is what when we don't have custody of our own attention, thank you, Meta.

You cannot talk to your nervous system

The thing that's really important to know about neuroception is that you cannot talk to your nervous system. Neuroception is shaped and altered through safe experiences that are repeatable over time.

That is the part a 10-day reset can't sell you. Safety isn't installed. It's learned, slowly, through experience, and with other people.

Looking for cues of safety or neutrality in our environment is how we communicate with and alter our neuroception. Active awareness is being able to anchor safety cues in our bodies, safety cues in our external environment, and what we pay attention to. There are so many details that we miss when we're activated and narrowly focused on the things that we're afraid of or are conditioned to see.

Regulation is not the absence of dysregulation

Regulation was never supposed to mean the absence of distress. It is our capacity to move with flexibility throughout the human experience. Often things that dysregulate us are accurate as hell. When we're able to experience our emotions without attaching to them, we can return back to baseline, back to our window of tolerance. Back to the human experience that is flawed and imperfect and not optimized.

Calm isn't the goal. Capacity is. Your window of tolerance isn't fixed. It's built.

Our nervous systems all need different things. Something that could soothe one person's nervous system can activate another's. Helping our clients find ways to build their window of tolerance and build capacity is individual and has to be tested through experiences and safe relationships.

Did I mention we need each other!?

I am not saying don't practice. Breathe, cold plunge, tone that vagal.

I'm saying when we skip the nuance, the message is always the same:

You're the problem. Try harder.

Instead of:

You're solving the wrong problem.

Capacity, connection, community

Let's stop regulating shit and start building capacity, connection, and community.

Keep fighting the good fight.

xx Meghan

More skills, less suffering. Better therapy.