Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
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I’m Dawn Wiggins, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and EMDR specialist. I draw on decades of experience to help women navigate the emotional rollercoaster after ending a marriage. Using a little bit of science, a few alternative remedies and emotional release techniques, a whole lot of love, and zero BS, we step out of the victim mindset and into building a new life after divorce.
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Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
236. 3 Mistakes You Are Making With Nervous System Regulation After Divorce (& What To Do Instead)
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Everyone’s talking about nervous system regulation these days, but are you actually helping yourself—or accidentally bottling up stress that your body desperately needs to release?
If you find yourself reaching for breathing exercises, meditation, or magnesium every time big emotions bubble up, you might be using “regulation” when your body is actually crying out for something totally different—like a good shake, a deep cry, or real rest.
When we keep trying to calm ourselves instead of letting stress and emotions move through us, we risk getting stuck in cycles of anxiety, physical symptoms like chronic sweating or high blood pressure, and long-term burnout—all too common for those processing divorce and big life upheaval.
In this episode, you’ll learn the real difference between regulating your nervous system and discharging stress, discover what your body is truly asking for in moments of overwhelm, and gain the tools to finally break free from the cycle of suppression and unfinished stress.
Tune in now to find out the essential steps for actual nervous system health that can help you recover emotionally, physically, and mentally as you move through divorce—because your system deserves more than just “calm down.”
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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
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We've all heard you need to regulate your nervous system, but what if what you actually need is to shake, cry or rest? This episode is all about learning whether or not you've been using regulation wrong. Hi love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. In today's episode, we're going to talk a bit about what regulation is and what it's really meant for, and then we're also going to look at the other things that your body might be calling for, which is discharge or to complete a stress cycle or rest in order to restore a depleted system. So let's dig in. So this episode is really inspired by a question I got from someone. Well, they were telling me a story, right, about how they were using nervous system regulation to cope with big, big emotions, and I've been seeing this happen more often, like in session with clients, hearing listeners' feedback and just on the internet, hearing people talk about nervous system regulation right, and it's such an amazing time to be live that we're having this conversation about nervous system regulation on social media, because most people didn't even know what it was or that it existed 10 years ago. So, like, how cool is this? But also, now that we know what a nervous system is and we have a decent idea of how to regulate it, we can get into the more nuanced or contextual conversation of when it's appropriate. So very, very often, when we're having big, big emotions, people are now reaching for nervous system regulation as a way to create this sort of mindfulness response. Right, in order to get to a calm or balanced state. And when we're having big, big emotions, most often what we need is some sort of discharge. Right, regulation is the process of bringing something to a calm state or a balanced state, as opposed to when we see major nervous system activation, we're either looking at a heightened state of arousal or a very low state of shutdown, right. And so when we think about nervous system dysregulation as either a exceptionally heightened state or a exceptionally low state, we're thinking about regulation as bringing us somewhere to the middle, to a balanced state, right. But what I'm seeing go wrong is when we are using the word regulation and what we're actually doing is suppressing or bypassing or dissociating from what our body is experiencing.
Speaker 1:Now, perhaps you are in public and you're having big, big emotions and it's not appropriate to discharge those emotions in that moment, and you may use some intentional suppression or dissociation in order to avoid dealing with it right then and there. But then, as soon as is humanly possible, the next best call would be to discharge that emotion, and discharge is what the body needs in order to complete a stress cycle, right? So let's say, someone comes up behind you and they scare you. You are going to immediately feel like this rush of adrenaline through your body, your heart's going to race and you're going to probably shriek or have some sort of startle response. And that startle response, that scream that you do when someone frightens you like, let's say, they come from around the corner or whatever you're going to immediately have a discharge response. It's going to be reflexive. You're not even going to, I think for most people, right, unless you're like military trained you're going to have some immediate discharge response and that's how the system is designed.
Speaker 1:When you experience stress whether that's sitting at work all day or it's getting a crazy call from your lawyer or getting a horrible message from your ex. Your body needs to discharge that stress. This is why fitness is so exceptional for having a well-regulated nervous system. This is why pillow throwing or screaming into a pillow, or crying Crying is one of the most beneficial things we can do. Ps, did you know that crying helps detoxify your liver? So there are these very, very essential elements of completing a stress response called discharge. And when we're responding to stress cycles with what we're calling regulation, we're missing a very, very essential component and what we're actually ultimately doing is bypassing or suppressing, which is causing physical symptoms in your body. That's why you're experiencing high blood pressure, tachycardia or hyperhidrosis.
Speaker 1:Do you ever experience like this, where you sweat in all sorts of places in inappropriate times, like all the time, like either your upper lip or your pits or your feet or your palms, or you name it right Hyperhidrosis? That is a nervous system response, friend. Did you know that? That's your nervous system saying I'm overstressed here and you're not letting me feel or discharge or complete the stress cycle. So it's coming out sideways, right Through stinky pits or whatever, like hyper wet pits, and then you're going to medicate those pits right, like I've heard so many people try so many things like oh, I got Botox in my armpits because I have hyperhidrosis.
Speaker 1:Well, what you need is to complete your stress response, friend. And then the other thing so right, like a lot of times in EMDR sessions, I'll have people get up and literally shake out different sets of bilateral stimulation in session. Have them shake out of their hands, their feet, I'll have them stretch. I'll have them verbalize, I'll have them hum or voo or you name it, to like discharge the stress that gets kicked up in an EMDR session. Have them do that several times in session. So just know, right, crying, shaking, vocalization. These are essential parts of a regulated nervous system that don't involve suppression. All right, all right.
Speaker 1:The next thing is, very often, when we experience nervous system dysregulation in the form of like a collapsed state, right, like, let's think of like a shutdown state, very often we will try to use things like deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation to try to get out of that shutdown state, when what we really need is rest right. So I want you to really take a look at the idea that there's no amount of breath work or journaling or meditation that is going to have this nervous system shut down when you really are so depleted that you need rest. Right, there's no amount of this sort of mindfulness work that is going to provide what deep rest can do for you. So I want you to just this is a call to action to just notice the next time you're feeling something and you say to yourself or someone tells you that nervous system regulation is a good plan. I think another thing people have been using lately for nervous system regulation is CBD, magnesium, melatonin for sleep.
Speaker 1:What are some other things that people use for nervous system health? I think magnesium, right, maybe hydration packets, cbd I think that's like one of the most common, popular. Anything else that I'm missing? Producer Joy, maybe even right, because we're going to talk about in an upcoming episode, one of my favorite tools for stress relief when you're in public, right, so maybe even certain tools that I would talk about for nervous system regulation. They can't replace the need for discharge or completing a stress cycle and rest. So just notice. This is the invitation. What is your body asking for in order to actually have a flexible, well-oiled nervous system? Be careful that you're not calling regulation regulation when what you're really doing is suppression or dissociation. All right, today's episode where I am staring into the camera has been inspired by Anita. Anita, thank you so much for being part of our community and for keeping me grounded in the camera while I am learning how to do hard things. I love you so much. Peace, peace, dear. Divorce Diary is a podcast by my coach, john. You can find more at mycoachjohncom.
