Toxic People, Tense Bodies: How Negativity Affects Your Nervous System

Your nervous system has a hidden vulnerability that few people discuss: the company you keep. When you surround yourself with chronically negative people, your body's emotional radar—neuroception—picks up subtle cues that trigger a low-level threat response. Even while you're smiling and nodding, your vagus nerve (your body's internal peacekeeper) is struggling to maintain calm.

This podcast reveals the surprising connection between toxic relationships and physical symptoms that seem to appear without an obvious cause. 

Protecting your nervous system isn't just about nutrition, exercise, or breathwork—though these help. 

Your environment matters. Your energy matters. YOU matter. Subscribe now to continue learning practical ways to support your nervous system and reduce anxiety naturally.

Chapters

• 0:00 How Negative People Affect Your Nervous System
• 3:21 Your Vagus Nerve as Inner Peacekeeper
• 5:22 Physical Toll of Emotional Negativity
• 8:19 Protecting Your Energy with Boundaries
• 11:30 Self-Care After Difficult Interactions

Transcript

Emily : 0:00

Today we are going to be talking about something that affects your nervous system way more than you might realize. That's the people who you spend your time with, specifically, how being around negative people can actually mess with your vagus nerve, your mood and your overall mental health.

Emily : 0:17

Hi and welcome to It Starts at Vagus, where holistic health meets modern day living through the eyes of a massage therapist and that's me. I'm Emily, and I am a neuromuscular massage therapist that helps people every day relax their muscles, and I'm here to guide you through the philosophy of the vagus nerve. It's the body's ultimate key to calm, connection and overall well-being. So if you have stress, anxiety, have burnout and you just feel stuck, you're in the right place.

Emily : 0:51

But before we start, could you do a huge favor for me and hit that subscribe button? It encouraged me to continue to make time to create this podcast. I can't tell you how much it means and helps when you hit that like and subscribe button. We currently have listeners in over 130 cities and as the show grows and gets bigger, we can expand the podcast, bring in guests and continue to support your wellness journey, because I want this podcast to continue to be worth listening to and help people all over the world get stress and anxiety relief, naturally. Thank you to everyone who's already subscribed. I really appreciate it.

Emily : 1:33

Now take a deep breath in, settle down and let's explore how we can use our nervous system to support our bodies.

Emily : 1:41

Today's topic is about toxic people. Tense body. Now I know that sounds a bit dramatic, especially when we jump on the toxic people trend, but hear me out, the people that we spend the most time with shape who we become, and here's how.

Emily : 2:01

First off, your brain is constantly scanning for safety, especially in relationships. There's a term in psychology called neuroreception, and this is just your body's emotional radar. It picks up on your facial expressions, tone of voice, posture and even those micro expressions to assess whether or not someone feels safe or threatening. Now, when you're around someone who's chronically negative, maybe they're constantly complaining and always finding that bad, even in the greatest of good Well, your nervous system can go into that low level threatening mode. So even when you're smiling and nodding, you're doing that all on the outside. Your inside, your nerve system might be feeling like, hmm, something's off and says, hey, I don't feel safe around this person or in this situation. So, since your brain puts your safety on top priority. Your brain wonders why you're unsure about what's going on, guarded mode, which then we know, starts creating stress. Inside that emotional pressure tight muscles and it just cascades down from there.

Emily : 3:21

So this brings us to our vagus nerve, because the vagus nerve is your inner peacekeeper. It's the key to our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest side of things. It helps you feel safe, connected, calm, regulated, all those things that we're looking for. But here's the thing that calm connection is fragile. If you're spending time with someone who's emotionally just draining, your vagal tone starts to decrease. So what does that mean?

Emily : 3:57

That means that your ability to bounce back from stressful situations emotional or physical it starts to take a hit and it can't bounce back as often or as fast or as fast. And if that's happening often, your body starts to normalize that stress. Your brain starts to put a snooze button on that threat because you're not doing anything about it, you're still staying in that spot. So now it starts to feel familiar. And remember, our body likes to know what to expect. So when it starts to feel familiar, it says, okay, this is something we've done before and we can do this again, but it takes a toll on us. So now you might start to notice things like you're irritable more often, anxiety creeps in more often, fatigue lasts longer, and then you start having digestive issues like heartburn or tummy troubles and you're starting to think like what is going on?

Emily : 5:03

Because all of this is happening without an obvious big stressor. We can't quite pinpoint it to one thing. So just that constant drip of emotional negativity that you've been soaking in it starts playing a toll on your physical health. So just having that constant threat, it wears us down little bit by little bit. So if you've been around people who have that negative energy for a while whether it's a job, a relationship or a draining social group your body can start getting in that state of low level survival.

Emily : 5:45

Again, it's not something where we run from. It starts saying this is comfortable and it starts becoming like a comfort stress and it does take a toll on your body. Though. What happens to your body physically? You start having heightened cortisol, that hormone during stressful times. That starts affecting your body. So now you've got poor sleep and increased inflammation. Then you start having trouble focusing and can't stay on task, which is what we kind of talked about in our previous episode about that brain fog and we can even have that emotional burnout. So over time your baseline for how much stress you can handle it starts shifting and things that once felt manageable, okay, didn't really affect you, now it suddenly feels overwhelming and you just can't handle that load. And then you've got more bursts of anger, even because your system just can't handle the capacity anymore. It's saying enough. So this is why our nervous system health isn't just about nutrition, exercise or even breathwork, because breathwork is a great, great tool. It's one of my favorites. It's a great tool to help us.

Emily : 7:11

But if we keep putting ourselves in the same situations and that familiar piece remember the vagus nerve likes familiarity, it likes routines and if your routine is stress, it will start seeking it out, which again starts cascading all of our physical and emotional, mental well-being. So it's all about protecting your energy and we all have that battery inside us and when it's constantly working on that low power mode, your body can't do the high power tasks, it just gets overwhelmed. It's just like a computer where, if we have too many tabs open, it starts slowing us down and our brain is more effective than a computer, but again, when all those things happen, it can only do so much, your body can handle so much stress. So that is where we start talking about boundaries. Now, boundaries aren't selfish, they are non-negotiable. So just like when you wash your hands to protect yourself from germs, you also need emotional boundaries to protect your nervous system, your vagus nerve.

Emily : 8:35

So what does that look like? Well, it means spending time with the people that energizing you and spend less time around those people that just drain your energy. You start choosing when and how you want to engage with them. Now, sometimes we're not always able to pick and choose who we're around. Some of us have people that we have to be around, like coworkers, even family members. There's things like social engagements where you can't quite leave and sometimes you even want to be there for the other people around, to be there for the other people around.

Emily : 9:23

So this is where doing our mini resets really help after tough interactions where we can say, hey, body, mind. I know we just went through a stressful situation and here's how I'm going to rejuvenate you. So it's kind of like talking to yourself, but kind of realizing that if how you take care of yourself really does support the rest of your and remember you don't owe anyone your emotional bandwidth, especially when your nervous system is healing. It's okay to protect that, and I always love the quote by Jim Rohn that says you are the average of choosy.

Emily : 9:58

Who I spend my extra time with because I know how they react will also influence how I react internally. So if you've been, if you have been feeling drained down, just like that dysregulated feeling, take a moment to ask who is in my space right now and how do I feel after I spend time with them. Because your environment matters, your energy matters, you matter, and how you protect yourself is one way that you can encourage a happy life to live. That is one way that we can say, hey, here are the things that I like and let's focus on that and let's expand it. So this week I'm going to be protecting my peace by being mindful of who gets access to spend time with me and my energy, who gets to have the time when I need to have those breaks and I can say, hey, I need time just to go color or do those breathing exercises to help my vagus nerve, or have some quiet time, grab a cup of tea on my porch All those things I know that I like. I can then encourage myself to do more of that. So thank you for spending some time with me today. Remember to breathe and do at least one thing that makes you happy.

Emily : 11:35

Thanks for listening to It Starts at Vagus Vegas. New episodes are released every Tuesday.

Emily : 11:39

If you liked this episode, go ahead and give it a subscribe button so that you get notifications and don't miss out on what's coming next.

Emily : 11:48

If you'd like a step-by-step video on how to do a pain-free and easy vagus nerve exercise, grab my free Vagus vagus Nerve nerve Reset reset video in the show notes. It's what I do when I feel like I just not like myself. Until next time, remember, wellness starts at . vagus

Emily : 12:08

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