087 The Wisdom of Your NERVOUS SYSTEM: From Burnout to Trust

Feeling “too sensitive” or like your nervous system overreacts? 

In this episode, Carly explores why this happens, especially in menopause, and reveals how your body’s signals can become your greatest strength. 

Rebuild trust, find calm, and feel safer in your skin.

Curious about working with me, or exploring how your nervous system could become a powerful ally in your midlife journey?

Reach out for a free clarity call and let's have a chat. Book HERE

 You can also access my free guide "Could it Be Menopause?" — which includes symptom checklists and key questions for your GP, just head to carlykillen.com

Thanks for listening to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast

If you'd like to get in touch to ask a question about today's episode or to find out how you can get support from my coaching, reach out on the following links:

hello@carlykillencoaching.com

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Thanks for listening to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast!

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

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Transcript

Carly: 0:37

Hello and welcome back to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Carly Killen, and today we are diving into something that comes up time and time again in the work I do with my clients and honestly. So, have you ever found yourself thinking like this, why am I reacting this way? Why does everything feel so intense when nothing really big has even happened? Maybe you've called yourself too sensitive or wondered why your body feels wired, overwhelmed, or shuts down when things feel too much. Well, if so, you're not alone. Then this episode is for you. We're going to talk about your nervous system, how it's not just a warning system, but actually a source of wisdom, power, and protection. And however, time with compassion and the right tools, we can learn to work with it, not against it. But before we go any further, I want to just give you a little disclaimer. This is a big topic, and what I'm sharing today is a very brief window into something that has so many layers. So my intention is not to give you all the answers in one episode, but to start building awareness, offer reassurance, and invite compassion, especially if you're navigating perimenopause and finding that your emotional, physical responses feeling heightened or more intense. That's very normal. Hormones shift and so do our thresholds for stress and stimulation. And while I'm also a coach and dietician, I'm not a therapist. Many of my clients have had therapy as I have two. This work is not to replace that, but to compliment it together, we blend what's known as a top down and bottom up approach for your supports, and that means we use thinking, reflection, intention, the top down approach, and we also engage the body through strength work, breath work, and movement. That's the bottom up approach to, because healing happens from both directions. So let's get started. So let's start with your nervous system as your protector. And I wanna share with you a little composite story based on many of my amazing clients I've worked with over the years. They have a lot of shared. Experiences. So these are women who have spent decades doing everything for everyone, building a life, raising families, caring for aging parents, and often pushing through exhaustion, ignoring their own needs. And when that finally becomes unsustainable, they reach that point of burnout. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It may show up as anxiety. It often shows up as illness and when they come through this, they know they want to do things differently. It's not something that they want to repeat in an ongoing cycle. So when we begin working together, they've often made progress. They've started to move towards peace through aware that they need to set better boundaries. Their priorities are start to shift, but then something surprising happens. It may have a minor setback, a change in plans, maybe a shut up email, an unexpected noise, and suddenly the heart's racing. The stomach's in knot, and the whole body is on high alerts. One client said to me recently, I feel like my reactions are too much. It doesn't match what's happening. Why is my nervous system freaking out when I'm doing everything right now? And it brought to mind a story of. Back in my younger days, the days I used to go out clubbing. I dunno if any of you relate. Still do it. Uh, my clubbing days are over. I like a nice quiet cup of tea. Decaf of an evening these days, but back in my twenties I used to go out for the nights outside the clubs and I would spend all night shouting over really loud music and I noticed that. When it's time to leave and we're in the taxi queue waiting to go home, we'd find that even though we were no longer in that loud music environment, we were still shouting. It took a bit of time to realize our voice doesn't need to be quite that loud. And I feel like there's such a mirror here with that and the nervous system, the years we've spent ignoring those cues, pushing through, not feeling our real feelings. Putting those bodily cues aside have meant that to protect us, our nervous system has had to shout louder and louder, perhaps to the point of taking you to complete exhaustion or illness, to get you to essentially slow down. So when we move to safety, when we do slow down, you start to show your body that you are listening, that there's another way to live. It can take some time for your nervous system to recalibrate its response, so it might still shout at a minor inconvenience. You might feel you're having a big response to something that doesn't feel like it warrants it. But the key here is to start to understand what's happening, to give yourself time and to build gentle strategies that will support you. As your nervous system starts to realize you are finally listening, you are sensing what you need to sense. To care for yourself before that point of shouting, burnout, or illness. And this is where I offer some understanding and pointing out that they may actually be making some progress here. So how do we understand what's happening? And this is a point of where we need to get super clear. Your nervous system in this type of response is not malfunctioning. It's doing its job. Your nervous system is a bit like your body's first responder. An early warning system constantly scanning for safety or danger. It works faster than your conscious thoughts, so if you spent years overriding these subtle signals, feeling tired, but pushing on being hurt, but staying silent, your system learns to shout louder to get your attention. This is where Polyvagal theory comes in, a framework developed by Dr. Steven Porges, and it explains how we shift through different states of safety or survival. So we have our calm, grounded, connected, ventral, vagal state. This is where we are able to socialize to feel safe, connected with others. With our, our sympathetic nervous system, a fight or flight. This is when we can feel activated, anxious, irritable. We not, might not want to speak to anybody in this state, and if we do think there's a risk of us being a little sharp, I. Misunderstood. And then when things can get a little bit too much and we can't change our situation and we feel stuck, we can move into this dorsal vagal shutdown. We can feel numb, frozen. You may also know it as your freeze response. This is where you might find yourself procrastinating, putting things off, feeling like those plans you made, just don't feel like something you can face right now. And just know that these shifts aren't conscious choices. They're automatic responses from your body, especially during menopause or perimenopause. When estrogen fluctuations can amplify your sensitivity of your nervous system, these responses can feel even more intense. So when I begin this work with my clients, we always start with assessments where you are right now. This is how we start to rebuild trust within the body. We look at what the patterns are, what are you feeling in your body? What helps, what overwhelms. This can take time, especially if you feel like you've lost connection with how your body feels. If the idea of finding or feeling a muscle feels completely alien to you, it did to me. For years, I really just felt like I was a floating head with some kind of body holding me up or barely holding me up. It felt like every part of my body malfunctioned, misbehaved. Body and mind just could not work together. It's something I wanted to happen for years. It took a lot of trying, a lot of trial and error to bring me to the point where I am now, which is why I share this with you. So when I work on my clients, we build practical support strategies to help you feel grounded rather than overwhelmed. Strength training is a fabulous place to start for many people, especially as it removes some of that emotional charge that can come with the body. It's an opportunity to build physical strength while also reconnecting with bodily cues. It's not just about your muscles, it's about noticing how does this feel in my body? It's a really safe place to relearn that self trust. Something that feels. Practical, doable. There's many levels from where you can start and where you can build to. Also there is breath work. I may have mentioned this once or twice, but we use the breath as a bridge, and the breath affects the nervous system in real time. Longer exhales, gentle nasal breathing, even self-soothing, touch like a hand on the heart or belly. They can tell your body you are safe now. The breath is an amazing tool that allows us to work with the nervous system by creating more awareness and even giving you some kind of agency over something that used to be so automatic now becomes in your power to make changes. We also like to focus on grounding practices, short walks, outdoors, time in nature, feeling your feet on the ground, or again, just placing your hands somewhere on your body that feels good. This can create safety in seconds. And of course, we make sure we're checking in with ourselves daily. And this can start with breath awareness, just checking in with how you're breathing. This can be a great tool to show you. How your body is responding right now. If you are taking shallow inhales, breathing at the top of your chest, there's a chance there that you might be feeling a bit anxious. If you notice you're breathing deep down into your belly, there's a chance that you're probably a little bit more on the relaxed side, and we get to journal on these things, write them down, maybe speak them out, and maybe finding a word to describe how you feel or maybe just simply asking yourself, what do I need? This just helps to reconnect the dots between the body and mind again, and all of this, of course, is guided by compassion, not just the soft kind. What I like to teach is the yin and the yang, compassion. The yin, the more potentially feminine side is the nurturing voice that it's okay, you are safe. And we have the yang, courageous, perhaps more masculine part, and let's take some action. Let's hold that boundary. Let's do what we really need. Even though it might feel a little tough. So here's the real truth of it all for you. Your nervous system is not broken. It's protecting you fiercely constantly, and with great wisdom. You might in time call comes to call it your superpower. And the good news is it doesn't always have to shout with the right kind of attention. Consistent, gentle, and responsive, your system learns that it's safe to whisper again. It becomes your guide. It tells you when to pause, when to rest, when something's not quite right, and just as beautifully, it tells you when you're home, when you're connected, when joy is present in your body. So let's wrap up with a short reminder that you are not too sensitive at all. You are not overreacting, you're not failing at life. You're tuning into a system that wants you to feel safe and connected. And the more you honor it, the more you'll find you can navigate life's ups and downs, not perfectly, but with more peace, more clarity, and more self-trust. So if you are curious about what it might be like to work with me or exploring how your nervous system could become your powerful ally in your midlife journey, reach out for a free clarity call. I'll put the link in the show notes. So until next week, stay strong and take care.