You don’t have to be in crisis to be dysregulated.
That’s the part most people miss. Nervous system dysregulation doesn’t look like a panic attack in the grocery store. It looks like waking up at 3am for no reason. It looks like snapping at someone you love and not knowing why. It looks like lying on the couch after work, too tired to move but also too wired to actually rest.
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It looks, a lot of the time, like your normal.
What’s Actually Happening
Your nervous system has one job: keep you alive. To do that, it’s constantly scanning your environment for signals of safety or threat. When it detects something unsafe, it activates your stress response heart rate up, breathing shallow, muscles tense, digestion paused. Your body is getting ready to fight, freeze, or run.
This system is brilliant. It’s kept humans alive for hundreds of thousands of years.
The problem is that it wasn’t designed for the specific texture of modern life. Back-to-back meetings. Phones that never go quiet. Financial stress that doesn’t resolve. A news cycle that’s always on fire. Your nervous system can’t tell the difference between a charging lion and an email from your boss at 9pm. It responds to both the same way.
And when the stressors don’t stop, your system gets stuck.
Psychologist and researcher Stephen Porges developed what’s known as polyvagal theory, which describes three states the nervous system cycles through: a calm, connected state; a mobilized, fight-or-flight state; and a collapsed, shut-down state. Most people living in chronic stress are bouncing between the second and third, rarely landing in the first. You’re either activated and anxious or exhausted and checked out. The window in between, where you feel genuinely settled, gets smaller and smaller.
Your cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, is meant to spike in the morning and taper off through the day. When you’re dysregulated, it stays elevated. Sleep suffers. Digestion suffers. Your immune system takes a hit. Everything that requires your body to feel safe, to repair and restore, gets pushed back indefinitely.
What It Feels Like to Live There
I spent a lot of years in this state without having a name for it. I was productive, creative, always building something, always moving. From the outside that looks like ambition. From the inside it felt like I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to. Rest felt dangerous. Sitting still felt wrong. I was capable and chronically on edge at the same time.
That’s dysregulation. Not breakdown. Just a body that’s forgotten what safe feels like.
Some common signs:
You sleep but wake up tired. You feel anxious for no specific reason. You get irritable faster than you used to. You find it hard to be fully present in conversations. Your digestion is off. You get sick more often than seems fair. You crave sugar, caffeine, or scrolling as a way to regulate your mood. You have trouble feeling joy even when things are going well.
None of these are character flaws. They’re your nervous system asking for help.
How to Actually Shift It
The good news is that your nervous system is plastic. It changes with input. The practices that move you out of dysregulation aren’t complicated, but they have to be done consistently. One sound bath won’t fix a decade of chronic stress. But a consistent practice starts to rebuild the body’s sense of safety, and that changes everything.
Here’s what genuinely works:
Slow, extended exhales. The exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch responsible for rest and digestion. A longer exhale than inhale is one of the fastest ways to downshift your arousal state. Breathe in for four counts, out for six to eight. Do it for two minutes. Your heart rate will follow.
Sound and frequency. This one is close to my heart. Sound at specific frequencies has been shown to slow brainwave activity and reduce cortisol, which is why people walk out of sound baths feeling like they slept for hours. The bowls aren’t decorating the room. They’re doing something measurable to your nervous system. (Goldsby et al., 2017)
Yoga nidra. Often described as “yogic sleep,” yoga nidra guides you through a systematic relaxation that takes your brainwaves from beta (alert, thinking) all the way into theta (the edge of sleep). A 2026 meta-analysis of 73 studies and over 5,000 participants found meaningful reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression following yoga nidra practice. It works. And you don’t have to do anything except lie down and listen.
Time outside without a destination. Not a workout. Not errands. A walk where the only goal is moving your body through space. Research consistently shows that time in nature lowers cortisol and activates the parasympathetic system. Fifteen minutes counts.
Consistency over intensity. The nervous system learns through repetition. One long weekend retreat is lovely. Ten minutes of breathwork every morning is more powerful. Your system starts to expect the signal of safety, and over time, the baseline shifts.
One Thing You Can Do Right Now
Breathe in for eight counts. Out for eight. Do It with me?
That’s it. It’s not nothing. It’s your vagus nerve getting a message that it’s okay to let go.
Work With Angela
Free sessions on YouTube: This is where Angela is building her library of guided sound baths, meditations, and breathwork you can return to again and again. Before bed, when you’re overwhelmed, when you need ten minutes that are actually yours. Subscribe and it will be waiting for you whenever you need it. youtube.com/peacefulplacewellness
Bring it to your space: Private sound baths and corporate wellness events are Angela’s favorite thing to do. She comes to you, whether that’s your home, your office, a retreat, or an event. If you want to create a memorable evening of sound healing for your team, your family, or yourself, fill out this form and she’ll put something together with you.
Attend a class: Angela teaches sound baths and yoga nidra at a variety of studios across Los Angeles. See the full schedule at angelawrightmusic.com/classes-schedule.
This essay first appeared on my Substack. Subscribe for new writing on sound, rest and the nervous system.
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