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A couple of months ago, I made the mistake of lingering on an Instagram post that promised teachings on how to “regulate your nervous system.”
I don’t know exactly how it found its way to my algorithm (all that perimenopause content and plastic surgery before-and-afters in my feed must make me an easy target for self help). But it was enticingly vague enough for me to pay attention.
It offered a series of tips for slowing my breath, soothing my system, using gentle movement and letting myself feel.
What the post didn’t explain was the problem it was solving. Did my nervous system need regulating? How would I know if it did?
“Your nervous system isn’t asking for perfection,” the caption read. “It’s asking for safety.”
Turns out, I had inadvertently entered a booming space in the wellness sphere, one in which people identifying as experts, holistic coaches and therapists increasingly use the term “nervous system dysregulation” to describe symptoms associated with stress and burnout.
Some research does exist around the bodily effects of PTSD and chronic stress, but there’s no official DSM diagnosis for this particular condition. It appears to have been hive-minded into existence by social media around the time of the pandemic, when everyone was genuinely feeling stuck in an anxiety loop, chained to their phones and looking for a way—any way—to calm down.
Six years later, the concept of a “regulated nervous system” has reached critical mass. Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty have each dedicated multiple podcast episodes to the subject. The gymnast Jordan Chiles has said that naps “help regulate my nervous system.” A post from Goop’s official account in February featured Gwyneth Paltrow sharing her personal nervous system reset, which included a relaxing bath, a superfood smoothie and a girls’ weekend in Ojai.
It’s appealing to believe that that abstract idea of the body’s nervous system—the vastly complicated network made up of the brain, spinal cord and nerves, that involves everything from breath to thought to digestion—is something we can control, if only we work hard enough. I have watched videos of people doing cold plunges, giving themselves ear massages and contorting themselves into impossible stretches all in the name of fixing dysregulation.
I began to monitor my own physical reactions to everyday moments. Did watching my son perform at his piano recital cause my breaths to get shallow? (Yes.) Did thinking about all the things on my plate cause my heartbeat to rise? (Sure.) After a particularly long, road rage-y drive, I splashed my face with ice water, a tip I learned on TikTok, to see if it might take the edge off my vibrating tension. (A cocktail helped more.)
I was learning that many aspects of our day-to-day lives are apparently bad for our nervous systems: Working too much. Being on Instagram. (I read that on Instagram). Skipping breakfast. Poor posture. Reading the news. Was everything dysregulating?
“When people online refer to the nervous system, they’re using a metaphor to talk about themselves physically, and they’re using a term that sounds science-y,” said Lisa Barrett, a distinguished professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the author of the bestselling “Seven and Half Lessons about the Brain.” “When they say they’re ‘dysregulated,’ what they mean is, I feel distressed. I feel exhausted. I feel overwhelmed,” she said.
But much of the language surrounding this concept is “neuro-bulls—t,” Barrett said.
Stress is real, and Dr. Barrett knows there is a lot of it out there. “We’re living through a time of uncertainty, and persistent uncertainty is like low-grade inflammation on your immune system,” she said. In other words, stress can be bad for you. But framing it as a problem of the nervous system “is all a massive simplification,” she said.
The pathologizing of bad feelings is a very modern concept. What used to be thought of as the attendant physical sensations of life—occasional fast heart beat, quick breath, shakiness when something goes wrong—is now some kind of clinical condition. Paradoxically, this shift has happened as the public has gained greater knowledge about mental-health issues. As words such as trauma, boundaries and narcissism have entered the mainstream, they are more misused and diluted.
It’s not without business potential.
For nervous system regulation, you can buy a “fight or flight” supplement kit from Aegis Formulas for $132. Or a vagus nerve stimulator from Truvaga for $499. You can even hire a “nervous system specialist.” Gwyneth Paltrow has one to help her with mental health, she said on her Goop podcast, though she hasn’t shared specifics of what said specialist does to help.
One of the topic’s biggest proselytizers is Jim Curtis, a “hypno-meditation” coach—probably better known as Jennifer Aniston’s boyfriend—who has over a million Instagram followers. He has emerged as a kind of shiny-haired guru for those seeking to cure dysregulation. In an emailed statement, Curtis said his own chronic illness taught him that stress and fear can “profoundly influence how we feel and live,” and he’s seen people experience “meaningful improvements in their well-being” after learning to regulate their emotional responses.
Curtis charges $2,995 for his “Awaken & Align” course. “Nervous system regulation is the key to it all,” he said in a viral reel from December, which has been viewed millions of times.
But what if all this scrutiny on our own internal state is actually part of the problem? Going through this experiment of trying to constantly feel the sensations in my body in an effort to regulate them with breathing, stretching and humming (my husband didn’t appreciate that one), I was getting mixed messages. Running late to a meeting, I noted that my stomach felt weird. But, I found, my stomach also felt the same kind of weird when I got an email with good news. “The human body is very efficient. There are lots of times when you want your heart to be beating fast. It could be about uncertainty, but it could be about determination, or exhilaration,” said Dr. Barrett.
Rather than looking inward, she said, perhaps we should be moving back toward other people (and seeking professional help if the stress is too persistent). “Consuming is not communicating,” she said. “Go have coffee with a friend when you’re stressed and stop scrolling Instagram for tips.”
A few weeks ago, I dropped my son off at sleep-away camp for the first time. Walking back to the car, weeping behind my sunglasses, I was shaky and hot and breathless, my heart hammering in my chest. I remembered Dr. Barrett’s words: “Feeling unpleasant doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong. It could just mean that you’re doing something hard.” Instead of immediately trying to regulate my nervous system, I let myself feel worried and sad. And then I called a friend. “How was it?” she asked. I felt better already.