Feel Off? Start Here

What I learned about nervous system dysregulation—the hard way.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

I didn’t know I was dysregulated; I thought I was having a heart attack.

Panic attacks were my bread and butter when I first moved to university. A teenager, away from home for one of the first times, excited to learn in a sea of alcohol and terrible decisions I wanted very little to do with.

I had a housemate who tormented me (because I fundamentally didn’t agree with his 2am guitar practice), I moved to three different halls of residence within the first month, a cleaner mistakenly threw all my things in a bin…

I thought I had asthma; my lungs couldn’t fill with air properly, my chest was too heavy—like I was swimming through treacle in a heavy coat.

I thought I had a heart problem; the palpitations were frequent, too-quick, jarring.

I thankfully managed, alongside the privilege of parental support, to work my way into a flat on my own.

I lived on my own, for nearly four years, through one of the most defining times of my life; I lived on my own, while everyone else in my classes had bustling house-shares and stories of joyous flatmates;

I lived on my own, because my nervous system was screaming out in dysregulation.

But I had no idea. No one taught me this, much as I assume no one taught you this. I thought there was something wrong with me. I became somewhat of a social pariah; the girl who lives on her own? What a weirdo.

That was me. I was a weirdo. And this time healed me—I learned how to self-soothe, how to be on my own, how to (unwittingly) regulate my system.

Now, nearly two decades later, I can pull apart the story of my early twenties and see it for what it was: anxiety. I was—to my bones, to my core, in every fibre of my being—anxious, and I had no idea how to deal with it.

I started surfing regularly = nervous system regulation

I got into baking = nervous system regulation

A girlfriend and I started replacing shots with a lot of loose leaf tea = nervous system regulation

I got into healthy eating, reducing my sugar, going for long walks, singing in the shower, early nights, and a lot—I mean a lot—of yoga.

All of it was nervous system regulation, I just didn’t call it that. No one around me was using that language. I just knew it helped me feel better, more like a human being, so I kept it up.

I thought I was weird. Fragile. Overly sensitive. In reality, I was trying—unconsciously—to feel safe in a world that didn’t feel safe to me.

Most of us are.

Most of us are carrying nervous systems that are overstretched, under-nourished, and constantly bracing for the next thing. Most of us are trying to cope, without even realising we’re coping. We call it “just how I am” or “I’m bad with stress” or “I need to get it together”—but underneath all of it, our bodies are just doing what they can to survive.

I look back on those years now and realise:
I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t antisocial or dramatic or flaky.
I was dysregulated.

And my body—clever, resilient, quietly persistent—was trying to bring me home.

So much of what I do now—my work, my writing, my teaching—is rooted in this: the unlearning, the remembering, the naming. Nervous system restoration. Not as a trendy term or a luxury, but as a lifeline. A human need. A birthright.

If no one ever taught you how to feel safe in your own body, let this be your gentle permission to start.

And if something in this story made your shoulders drop an inch, if you felt a little seen, a little soothed—then know this is exactly the kind of space I’ve created inside Joy Unplugged. No pressure. No hustle. Just real support, real rest, and the slow, beautiful work of coming home to yourself.