5 Things That are Silently Stressing You Out and How to Reclaim Regulation
by Katie Simons, PharmD, BCPS, CCHT
Originally published in Brainz Magazine
You know those days when nothing technically goes wrong, but you still feel off? Your chest feels tight. You’re snappy with people around you. You feel like you need something, but you have no idea what it is. Everything feels like too much and not enough, all at once.
Most of us chalk these moments up to mood swings, hormones, weather, or what we ate last night. It's when these days start to stack up into a pattern that we can no longer brush them off as anomalies. We lose motivation and can't seem to get things done. The people close to us begin to wonder if we're ok. And we start to wonder, "What is wrong with me?"
Well, technically, nothing is wrong with you. Technically, your body and nervous system are doing exactly what they were evolutionarily wired to do to keep you safe. It's just that the "threat" is not always as obvious these days as a tiger stalking you. Sometimes the challenges to our nervous system are so subtle and pervasive that we live in a slightly dysregulated state for years, all the while never quite being able to put our finger on "what's wrong."
To understand why this happens, we need to look under the hood at how the nervous system actually works, and why it’s so easily thrown off by things we don’t consciously recognize as stressful.
The Science of Safety
Here’s what most people don’t realize: your body processes around 11 million bits of information every second, from light, sound, temperature, posture, internal organ function, and more. But your conscious brain can only process about 40 to 60 of those bits at a time.
That means your body is aware of vastly more than your conscious mind. You might not be able to name why you feel off, but your body already knows something is misaligned. This is why you often feel something before you can think it. It’s also why you can’t logic your way back into calm.
The part of your nervous system responsible for this background surveillance is the autonomic nervous system (ANS). It’s divided into two key branches: the sympathetic (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic (rest and digest when regulated, and freeze when dysregulated). These systems are designed to help you respond to life’s demands and then return to a baseline of safety.
When these systems are balanced, you exist within what’s known as the "window of tolerance,” or more intuitively, your "window of safety." Within this window, you feel present, grounded, alert but calm, and capable of connecting with others. You can think clearly and respond skillfully. This is what nervous system regulation feels like.
Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, helps explain these shifts. It describes a hierarchy of states your body moves through based on its perception of safety: regulation and connection, mobilization (fight/flight), and immobilization (freeze/shutdown). These responses happen fast, often without your conscious awareness.
The takeaway? Dysregulation isn’t random. It’s your body’s intelligent response to subtle cues of challenge, even when your thinking mind can’t name them. And understanding this is the first step toward reclaiming your sense of internal stability.
The Everyday Nervous System Hijack
So what does it really mean to be outside your window of safety?
It means your body has detected something, even something small, that it perceives as challenging or threatening, and has shifted into a survival response. When you’re pushed outside that window, maybe by a harsh comment, a jarring noise, a packed schedule, or even subtle social cues, your system shifts into a stress response. You may go into sympathetic activation (anxiety, tension, irritability) or parasympathetic collapse (numbness, fatigue, withdrawal).
It’s easy to think of triggers as being linked to trauma or dramatic events. But often, the things that throw us off are subtle. A tone of voice. A delayed text. Too much noise. A messy house. A smile that doesn’t quite feel real. These micro-signals can all cue the nervous system that something’s not quite right.
And they tend to fall into five main categories, the hidden stressors that quietly challenge our sense of internal safety: physical safety, the unknown, incongruence, internalized expectations, and change.
Understanding these helps make sense of why we feel “off” more often than we’d like, and shows us where we can start to shift to re-establish safety.
Silent Stressor #1: Lack of Physical Safety
This one may seem less silent and more obvious, but you don’t need to be in immediate danger for your nervous system to feel unsafe.
Sometimes, it’s your environment quietly sending cues that it’s not quite right. Loud or chaotic spaces, cluttered rooms, flickering lights, blaring notifications, or even tight clothing. These might not seem like a big deal, but your body can register them as micro-threats. They keep your system on alert, preventing it from fully settling.
Other times, the lack of safety shows up in your posture, hunching your shoulders, crossing your arms, or clenching your jaw. These are subtle signs that your body is guarding itself, preparing to react. Even how you breathe — shallow and high in the chest versus low and slow — signals to your system whether it’s time to stay ready or rest.
This doesn’t mean you need a perfectly quiet life or minimalist home. But it does mean noticing what environments and conditions support your body in feeling more at ease. That might mean soft lighting, clean spaces, boundaries around noise, or clothing that lets you breathe. When your body feels safe physically, it can begin to loosen its grip, and that’s when regulation becomes possible.
Silent Stressor #2: The Unknown
Few things spike the nervous system quite like uncertainty. And since the only two certain parts of life are birth and death, we certainly have a challenge on our hands.
We are wired to anticipate and prepare, so when we face the unknown, our nervous system often fills in the blanks with memories. Sometimes those memories are our own, but other times they’re inherited through stories, media, movies, or even generational history. The body pulls from any available data to predict what might happen, because predictability equals safety.
This is why uncertainty, even about small things, can feel so triggering. Waiting for test results. Speaking up and not knowing how the other person feels about it yet. Moving to a new place. Being between jobs. These moments create an internal gap that feels vulnerable, and the nervous system desperately tries to close it. And when it can’t, the body may default to anxiety, controlling or compulsive behaviors, hypervigilance, or shutdown.
It doesn’t matter if the unknown isn’t dangerous. What matters is that your system can’t predict it, and therefore, can’t feel fully safe. Ironically, the stories our minds can weave to try to fill in the blank are often worse than reality. Yes, catastrophizing is somehow more comfortable to our subconscious than the unknown.
Learning to recognize when you’re in this state is powerful. It helps you pause and breathe before reacting, and reminds you that the discomfort isn’t always about what’s happening. Sometimes, it’s simply about what hasn't happened yet.
Silent Stressor #3: Change
Closely related to the unknown, change is another major disruptor to our sense of internal safety, even when it’s welcome or positive.
New job? Moving to a better home? Starting a relationship that feels aligned? These are all good things, and they still challenge your nervous system.
Why? Because change requires adaptation. And adaptation demands energy, focus, and a temporary loosening of your internal map of “how things are.” Even positive changes bring a period of unfamiliarity, where your system isn’t quite sure what to expect yet. That liminal space, the in-between of what was and what’s becoming, is often where dysregulation arises.
This is especially true when multiple changes happen at once. Starting a new job while moving, changing routines while parenting, shifting roles in a relationship — even if everything is moving in the right direction, your system may register it as too much, too fast.
It’s important to name this so you don’t confuse resistance with misalignment. Just because change feels hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It might just mean your body needs more time, space, and care as it integrates the new.
Understanding that change, even good change, is a stressor helps you meet yourself with more patience and support instead of judgment. It’s not about avoiding change, but about learning to move through it with awareness, regulation tools, and grace.
Silent Stressor #4: Incongruence
There’s a particular kind of stress that comes from sensing something is off, but being told everything is fine.
Your friend smiles and says they’re doing great, but something in their voice tells you otherwise. You walk into a room, and the conversation stops, but everyone insists “nothing’s going on.” You tell yourself you’re fine while your body tightens in protest.
This is incongruence: when the signals don’t match the message.
Humans are wired to detect inconsistencies in our environment. Our nervous systems are finely tuned to subtle shifts in tone, facial expression, and body language. When these cues don’t line up with the words being spoken, your system senses the falsity and doesn’t feel safe, because it can’t accurately predict what’s happening. This mismatch between perception and information creates internal dissonance.
And it doesn’t only come from others. We create incongruence within ourselves when we bypass or override our emotions. Telling yourself to “just get over it” when you’re still hurting, pretending to be happy when you’re actually exhausted — these inner contradictions confuse your system just as much as mixed messages from the outside world.
Incongruence makes it hard for your body to settle because it keeps scanning for what’s real. It needs the environment, both external and internal, to make sense. When things don’t add up, it stays on alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
One of the most regulating things we can do for our nervous systems is practice congruence: letting our outer expression match our inner experience. That might mean being more honest, more nuanced, or simply more willing to say “I don’t know how I feel yet.” Because clarity, even messy clarity, helps your body exhale.
Silent Stressor #5: The "Shoulds" and Unmet Expectations
We all carry an invisible rulebook of how life is supposed to go. Who we should be by a certain age. How we should feel, act, parent, work, look. These expectations, often inherited from family, culture, or social media, create an internal pressure cooker.
When reality doesn’t match the ideal we’ve internalized, our nervous system feels that gap. It registers as a kind of failure or danger, even if nothing external has gone wrong. And because the danger is internal, it can be even more confusing and insidious.
We get caught in loops of self-judgment and shame. We hustle to meet unrealistic standards. We perform for approval, then feel hollow inside. The nervous system, sensing this inner conflict, goes on high alert or checks out entirely.
What’s worse, we often mistake these internalized “shoulds” for truth. They’re not. They’re adaptations, often ones we made in childhood to secure belonging or love. But continuing to live by them as adults keeps us disconnected from our actual needs, desires, and rhythms.
The antidote is self-inquiry and self-permission. To question the "shoulds," to trace where they came from, and to ask: Do I still choose this? Is this true for me now? Giving yourself permission to rewrite those scripts — to want what you want, to need what you need — is one of the most regulating and liberating things you can do.
When your inner world becomes a place of honesty and acceptance, your nervous system can finally stop bracing. You return to yourself — not as you should be, but as you are.
Where We Go When We’re Chronically Stressed
When the nervous system remains in a state of dysregulation for too long, the survival responses that were designed to be temporary start becoming chronic. Instead of mobilizing for a short burst of energy and returning to rest, your system stays stuck in high alert or collapse.
This isn’t just a feeling; it’s physiological. Prolonged sympathetic activation keeps cortisol and adrenaline pumping, which wears down your body over time. You might feel chronically anxious, be reactive and irritable, suffer from insomnia, have panic attacks, or even have physical symptoms like muscle tightness and pain or heart palpitations. On the flip side, if your system tips into parasympathetic shutdown, you may feel emotionally flat, depressed, disconnected, unmotivated, dissociated, overwhelmed, or like you’re watching life from a distance, unable to engage.
In both states, it’s difficult to be fully present. Your attention narrows, your breath shallows, and your ability to think clearly or connect meaningfully becomes compromised. This affects everything from your work to your relationships to your sense of purpose.
The longer this dysregulation continues, the more "normal" it starts to feel. People often adapt to these states without realizing it, until something breaks down. The body speaks louder through chronic tension, digestive issues, migraines, insomnia, mental health issues, or burnout.
Recognizing these patterns is crucial. Not because you need to fix them all at once, but because awareness offers choice. And with choice, you can begin to relate to your nervous system with more clarity, compassion, and skill.
How to Return to Nervous System Regulation
By now, I'm sure you have recognized yourself in at least one, if not multiple, of these explanations. So how does one unwind these patterns and return to a regulated state that we all crave? Here are some simple steps:
Step 1: Awareness — Identify and Acknowledge
The first and most crucial step to shifting your nervous system state is awareness. Start by naming which challenge is present. Is it the unknown? A change? A sense of incongruence or unmet expectations? Awareness brings the unconscious to the surface, giving you the power to respond rather than react.
Awareness doesn’t have to be profound. It might sound like: "I’m feeling anxious because I don’t know how this situation will play out." Or, "I’m exhausted and irritable because I haven’t felt physically safe all day." Just naming the stressor begins to lower the intensity of its grip.
Step 2: Expression — Let the Body Complete the Cycle
Once you’ve named what’s happening, your body needs a way to complete the stress response. Animals do this instinctively. After a perceived threat passes, they shake, tremble, yawn, or stretch to release energy. Humans often suppress this natural release, which keeps stress locked in the system.
Letting yourself cry, sigh, shake, or move can be powerful. You don’t have to intellectualize it. Just allow the body to do what it’s built to do. This might mean:
Letting tears come when they arise
Dancing or shaking out your limbs
Taking a brisk walk to discharge energy
Screaming into a pillow (yes, really)
Emotion is energy in motion. Giving it an outlet, in a safe, intentional way, allows your system to reset.
Step 3: Shift — Tools for Regulation
Once expression has moved some of the stress out, you can support your return to safety and regulation with intentional tools. Think of these like bridges. They help you cross back into your window of safety:
Boundaries: Knowing where you end, and others begin, then using that information to set limits around what you allow into your space — physically, emotionally, or energetically — protects your system from unnecessary input.
Meditation: Quieting the mind gives your body space to be heard. Even a few minutes of stillness can help recalibrate your system.
Breathwork: Conscious breathing, especially slow, deep belly breaths, directly signals your nervous system that it’s safe to relax.
Hypnotherapy: For deeper or recurring patterns, exploring subconscious belief systems can reveal what’s keeping you in a dysregulated loop.
Gratitude Practice: Shifting attention to what’s already safe and abundant right now roots your awareness in the present, counterbalancing threat perception.
Surrendering Expectations: Letting go of how things should go and focusing on aligned effort rather than control can relieve immense internal pressure.
Each of these tools invites your system back into coherence. They don’t force regulation; they allow it. They remind your body of what safety feels like, and give it permission to return there. These tools also expand our window of safety when we use them as practices. It’s like going to the nervous system gym: the more we practice awareness, expression, and these conscious lifestyle tools, the more capacity, flexibility, and resiliency our nervous system builds.
You don’t need to do all of these every day. Pick what resonates. Trust your body’s feedback. With consistency and care, these small choices compound, and over time, they rewire your baseline for safety.
Your Body is Innately Intelligent
You were never meant to be on high alert all the time. Your body is wired for safety, regulation, and connection. It just needs the right awareness and practices.
When you begin to notice the subtle stressors, name what’s happening, and support your system with small, consistent choices, you build a relationship of trust with your body. You move from reacting to responding. From bracing to breathing. From coping to choosing. From wondering "what's wrong with me" to feeling free and sovereign.
This isn't about fixing yourself. It’s about understanding yourself. Because once you understand how your system works, you stop fighting it and start working with it. And that’s when everything begins to change.
If you’re ready to explore this work more deeply, or need support identifying and unwinding your own hidden stress patterns, I invite you to book a free Strategy Call. Together, we’ll explore where you’re stuck, what your nervous system is really asking for, and how to move forward with greater alignment and ease.
