What If Dysregulation Is Evidence Of Wisdom

I name the real reason calm can feel out of reach and why your nervous system’s intensity makes sense after sexual trauma, chronic stress, and neurodivergence. We break down fight flight freeze, reframe “dysregulation” as intelligent adaptation, and share practical ways to build safety without forcing yourself to be someone you’re not. 
• nervous system dysregulation as brilliant survival response 
• sympathetic versus parasympathetic basics and what safety feels like 
• signs of long-term survival mode like vigilance, insomnia, scrolling, burnout 
• neurodivergent nervous systems processing more input and carrying higher load 
• emotional intensity as depth, empathy, and advocacy fuel 
• hypervigilance as high-speed pattern recognition needing recalibration 

Work With Me Individually

I offer trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women navigating:

• Complex trauma
• Late-diagnosed ADHD or autism
• Nervous system dysregulation
• Relational pattern healing

If you’d prefer one-on-one support, book a free 15-minute consultation here:
http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub

Good Music for Healing

🎵 **Divine Woman Playlist (Apple Music):** https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/divine-woman/pl.u-leyl096uMoD885j

Episodes Mentioned in this Episode

LATE DIAGNOSIS SERIES: What The First Year Post-Diagnosis Really Feels Like And How To Move Through It

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467345/episodes/18461925-late-diagnosis-series-what-the-first-year-post-diagnosis-really-feels-like-and-how-to-move-through-it

BONUS EPI: Honoring Brigid The Triple Flame: Healer, Poet, Smith
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2467345/episodes/19471751-bonus-epi-honoring-brigid-the-triple-flame-healer-poet-smith

You’re not alone. 

We’re healing 

Transcript

Your Nervous System Is Not Broken

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there. Welcome back to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women. I'm Audda Moran, licensed professional counselor, life coach, yoga instructor, and also a fellow neurodivergent, late diagnosed neurodivergent, trauma experience woman. And we are in the rebirth arc of season two of healing after sexual trauma. And today I just want to talk about nervous system dysregulation/slash regulation and just honestly the truth that your nervous system isn't dysregulated for no reason. It's responding brilliantly to what it experienced. It isn't a malfunction. It isn't evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you. It isn't a disorder that needs to be eliminated or a weakness that needs to be overcome. It's simply brilliant. And I don't mean that in like a toxic positivity, like everything happens for a reason, Instagram caption kind of way. Like I mean it literally. Your nervous system is doing something intelligent, something that made sense giving what it was working with, something that once you understand it, you might actually be able to appreciate even while you're also working to regulate it, support it, and give it what it needs to feel safer. So I'm going to share about my experiences along with education and wisdom on nervous system regulation. I didn't always have the nervous system verbiage. I mean, I went through grad school in my 30s, and even in grad school, it barely touched on nervous system stuff. It was stuff I had to learn on my own, on my own research, doing my own trainings, my own studies, my not my own studies, but my own trainings and programs and books and all that stuff. So my own independent reading. But before college, well, before grad school, I didn't always have the verbiage for nervous system regulation. But I knew I felt ungrounded, flighty, anxious, untethered. Calmness, like real calmness in my mind and in my body, felt like something that belonged to other people, just not me. I didn't, I don't know. Even when I did yoga, it would, it would stretch me all in the right places and make me feel good, but I was still go, go, go. I was still perfection, perfection, perfection, like survive, survive, survive. I mean, I was, I have, I not now, but I was essentially in survival mode from my childhood. The chaos of my teen years, having kids starting at 21, at that time, being young, my brain not fully developed, being in a marriage with someone who couldn't show up for me, never could. Calmness eluded me because I never had the conditions for calm. I was always managing something, always on alert, always one thing away from the next crisis. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with ADHD in like my early 30s that I finally had a framework for understanding what was actually happening, that I was dysregulated, that I needed to essentially literally slow the fuck down, that I needed to stop expecting neurotypical performance from a nervous system that had never had the luxury of being neurotypical and had spent decades in survival mode. The diagnosis didn't fix everything. It just gave me language, and language gave me the beginning of compassion for myself. And that's what today is about understanding your nervous system well enough to have compassion for it and recognizing the brilliance hiding inside what you've been calling or feeling broken.

Fight Flight Freeze And Rest

SPEAKER_00 3:57

So let's start with the basics, right? What is what is the nervous system? Your nervous system is your body's communication and response system. It processes everything, every sensation, every emotion, every perceived threat, every moment of safety. It's constantly taking in information from your environment and your body and responding accordingly. Your nervous system has two primary modes. You have the sympathetic nervous system and you have the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal. That is your fight, flight, or freeze. And it's activated when there's perceived danger. Your heart rate will go up, your breath might go shallow, you might hold your breath, your muscles become tense, you might even instinctively clench your fist and not know it, curl your fingers in, maybe even curl your toes up, and your be and your body responds accordingly. So it responds to the threat, right? It responds to the perceived threat accordingly to the threat that it's perceiving. And then the parasympathetic nervous system is the break. It's rest, digest, and connect. It is activated when you feel safe. Your heart rate is normal, slow, regular. Your breath is deep and steady. Your muscles are relaxed, there's no tension, jaws aren't clenched. Maybe you're able to think clearly and able to connect with others. And a person moves fluidly between these states throughout the day. Activated when something requires it, returning to rest when the moment passes. That's what happens in a healthy, safe environment. In a traumatic or chronically unsafe environment, the nervous system learns to stay activated, to not return to rest, to stay on alert even when the immediate threat has passed. Because in a chronically unsafe environment, the immediate threat is always potentially coming back. So the nervous system stays ready. It doesn't do this to be difficult, it does this to keep you alive. So like it's, you know, when you, I don't know if you've seen it, but I'll share like the blips on social media where someone's like running up the stairs and then they like slow down and like, okay, there's not a lion behind me. Or like when you're brushing your teeth and it's like, okay, no one's got a gun to my head. Like I can slow down. So it's kind of like nervous system dysregulated, all kinds of crazy chaotic nervous system regulated, slowing down, breathing, being in the moment. And like for the neurodivergent nervous system, this is an additional layer because neurodivergent systems, their nervous systems, are often wired from the beginning to process sensory information, emotional information, and environmental input more intensely than neurotypical nervous systems. More input, more intensity, more processing required. Now add chronic stress, sexual trauma, survival mode on top of that. And you have a nervous system that has been working extraordinarily hard at extraordinary intensity for an extraordinarily long time. That's not broken. That is overwork, under tended. Running a marathon every day without anyone offering you a sip of water.

How Survival Mode Shows Up

SPEAKER_00 7:47

So I keep saying survival mode, right? What does that look like? So that's like a constant low-level vigilance. Maybe you're always scanning, you're aware of your exits, always tracking the emotional temperature in every room that you're in and make sure that you're saying the right thing, that you're doing the right thing, you're making the right facial expressions, the right body language. Maybe you have difficulty relaxing even when nothing is wrong. And that might feel like all your chores are done. You've done everything you're supposed to do, and now you have free time and you don't know what to do with yourself. You can't decide what to do. So you just scroll. So you just watch a show. Maybe survival mode looks like waiting for the other shoe to drop when things are good for you. Maybe that's what it looks like. It can be reactivity that seems disproportionate to what triggered it. So when someone says, like, geez, calm down, or like, whoa, that's not that big of a deal. It's like I'm in survival mode, bro. So what you see is a six, I see as a 500. So like you calm the fuck down. This is serious. Maybe you have difficulty sleeping because your nervous system doesn't feel safe enough to fully let down. Maybe you have difficulty being present. Part of your attention is always monitoring for the threat. Survival mode looks like exhaustion that doesn't rest until something like that rest doesn't fully fit. Like it's like exhaustion, like, no matter how many hours you sleep, no matter how many days you lay around on the couch, you're still exhausted because you're not actually resting. You're resting while still being vigilant, if not hyper-vigilant. And survival mode looks like difficulty staying grounding, that that feeling untethered feeling, just flighty, just not not not not based in reality, but somewhere almost in between that. Like you're in reality, but you're still like, whoa, like I just don't feel grounded. I don't feel connected. Your nervous system learned survival mode because survival mode was necessary. We have chaos in childhood. Maybe there's chaos in unsafe caregivers. We live in a world that constantly shows us danger. And you've largely been on your own to manage it. Your nervous system has adapted. It became very, very good at staying ready. It wasn't a mistake, it was the right response to the environment it was in, to the uh sexual assault that it experienced. Survival mode ignited when you were attacked, when you were abused. And staying in survival mode long term is exhausting. It uses enormous amounts of resources. It keeps you from being fully present. Joy, so fucking hard to access. It makes connections harder to sustain. It makes feeling it makes rest feel unsafe. And while your neurodivergent system is processing more than average, the cost of sustained survival mode is burnout. The deep bone-level burnout we talked about in the late diagnosis series. If you're not familiar, I will I did a late diagnosis series of neurodivergence, and I will link the first episode in the show notes if you want to do the late diagnosis series. So understanding that you've been in survival mode, not because you're broken, but because your survival mode was a rational response to your actual circumstances, opens the door to something different. It's not fixing yourself, it's not eliminating your responses, but gradually, gently creating the conditions that let your nervous system know the immediate danger has passed and you begin to rest.

Turning “Too Much” Into Gift

SPEAKER_00 12:14

So the brilliance, right? Let's talk about emotional intensity because it has been labeled a problem, maybe your whole life. You're too much, too sensitive, too reactive, too emotional. But emotional intensity is not a disorder, it's information processing at a high level. It's the capacity to feel deep, to care fiercely, to be moved by injustice, to connect with others' pain because you can actually feel it. My emotional intensity fuels this podcast. It fuels every session with every client. It fuels my desire to build a community, a platform, a voice that helps women live on their own terms, stop accepting red flags, and stop making themselves small for people who don't deserve them. My emotional intensity is not the problem. It never was. It was just mislabeled. It was inconvenient to people who needed me to be less. And I believe it's one of my greatest gifts. And the same is true for you. Your emotional intensity is your brilliance. It makes you a better friend, a more empathetic colleague, a more attuned parent, a more powerful advocate for yourself and others. The capacity to feel deeply is not weakness. It is the fuel for everything that matters. What about hypervigilance? Always scanning, always aware, always fucking tracking every fucking thing, moods, emotions, timelines, dates, appointments, responsibilities, conversations, what you said, what was said, what needs to be bought, what needs to be replaced. And from the outside, this looks like anxiety, like not being able to relax. But hypervigilance is pattern recognition running at high speed. It's your nervous system doing rapid threat assessment based on vast amounts of data, tone of voice, body language, microexpressions, the energy in the room, the slight change in someone's demeanor that most people wouldn't notice for another hour or so. You notice it immediately because your nervous system learned to. That's a highly sophisticated threat detection system. In safe environments, yes, it needs support and recalibration, but the underlying capacity, that depth of perception, that is a gift. It makes you a brilliant, trustworthy person who sees clearly. The freeze response, we talked about this in the rage season. In the rage arc of this season, season two. Sorry, I keep interchanging changing arc and season, and I don't know why. But in the rage arc, the body is going still, the voice is going silent, and exactly at exactly the moments you need it most. That's the freeze response. It's not weakness, it's not failure, it's a protective mechanism. When fight and when fight and flight are not possible, when you can't fight and you can't run, the nervous system freezes. It goes still, it makes you smaller, quieter, less visible. It's some situation, in some situations, this reduces harm. In animals, playing dead prevents predators from continuing to attack. Same thing with us. We just freeze, hoping the attack will stop soon. Your freeze response is not a character flaw. It is your body doing the best thing it knew how to do in a situation where better options weren't available. Understanding this is the beginning of compassion for every time you froze when you wish you wouldn't have. Every time your body went still when you wanted it to move. Your nervous system was trying to protect you with everything it had. What about sensory sensitivities? The sounds that feel too loud, the lights that are bright, the textures that are too uncomfortable, the overwhelming crowded spaces. It's often framed as a problem, something that limits you. But sensory sensitivity is the capacity to perceive with extraordinary detail. Your nervous system takes in more information than average, more nuance, more texture, more subtlety. This same sensitivity that makes certain environments overwhelming is also what makes you notice beauty that others walk past. What makes music feel transcendent, what makes you deeply attuned to atmosphere, to aesthetics, to the way a place feels. Your sensitivity is not a limitation, it is a precision of a perception. And the need to slow down. I said this, this is an actual need. It's one of the most important things that my late diagnosis revealed to me. It's your nervous system communicating. I process deeply, I need time. I do not function well when I am rushed, overwhelmed, or expected to perform at a neurotypical speed. That's not inefficiency, that's depth. The slowness is the quality.

Slowness As Real Medicine

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Understanding the brilliance doesn't mean you stop doing the work of support and regulation. Your nervous system needs care, specific intentional care. Slowness helps. But that's because it takes me, I got to do things, I got to get to where I need to be. Slow mornings that belong to you before they belong to anyone else. I cannot emphasize how important that is for a neurodivergent brain. You have got to do things for yourself before you spend your day working for the man. Whether you love that job, hate that job, or just tolerate that job, you need me time before you start giving into the demands of the adult world. For me, that's moving my body in some way. If I can wake up, have a cup of tea, and move my body in some way before I start doing anything else, I feel completely accomplished. So that is my priority. That is my non-negotiable most days. Not because I want to look a certain way, but because moving my body works out my extra energy, clears my head, makes me feel strong, makes me feel accomplished. I have transition times between activities. I don't do back-to-back things like when I have a full day, it is in the morning, a midday break, and then in the evening. I have transition time instead of doing a whole day. I'm not trying to be tone-deaf here. I know not everyone can create their work schedule what they want it to be. I'm just trying to give you some examples where I allowed myself and created an environment where I could. I had to work hard to get here. This was not given to me. I had a hella lot of hustle to have a caseload to start from scratch and to build it up over two to three years. So it's it's simple, not easy, but I am saying like this is kind of how I've learned to show up for myself. I still give myself permission to take longer than average to process, respond, and move through things. Sometimes I get a little kickback, like sometimes my son will be like, hello, and I'm like, I'm still processing, I'm still thinking. But that's the only kind of kickback I get. It's nothing rude, it's nothing natural. It's just like, are you gonna respond? And it's like, okay, yes, I'm still thinking. But essentially, slowness is medicine. For a nervous system that has processed that processes so deeply and has been in survival mode, slowness is medicine. Predictability and routine. Your nervous system relaxes when it knows what's coming. Not rigid, military-style routine, but a gentle, flexible structure that creates enough predictability to reduce the baseline level of alertness. Morning routines, evening windows, rhythms that signal your body that this is safe, this is familiar, you don't need to be on high alert right now. And please, when it comes to sensory issues, when it comes to sensory regulation, make your house full of lighting that doesn't overwhelm. Lamps, natural lighting, dimmer switches. Control the sounds around you, keep your phone on silent, have some noise-canceling headphones, have your chosen music or your chosen silence. Let your house be in a temperature that's comfortable, or if you happen to cohabitate and you're cold and everyone's hot, then bundle up buttercup. And if it's the opposite, then get some tank tops and little shorts. Meet yourself where you can. And then clothing, get the clothing that doesn't create sensory friction. If you are diagnosed, this is one of the things that are accommodation to ask for, like comfortable, more different material for your uniform if you have to wear a uniform. You have a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to clothing options. These aren't luxuries, these are nervous system regulating tools. And your nervous system holds what your mind processes: the activation, the stress, the freeze responses, they live in your body. Movement helps move them through your body. And I'm not talking about punishing exercise. I'm not talking about high impact. I'm not talking about performative yoga. I'm talking about movement that your body actually enjoys. Real gentle, strong, strengthening yoga, walking, dancing, anything that lets your body shake it off, that's what you do. Even 10 minutes of intentional movement shifts your nervous system state. That's not small. Set the alarm for 10 minutes and just move.

Simple Regulation Tools That Work

SPEAKER_00 24:59

So you're not broken. Your nervous system is not a malfunction. Your dysregulation is not evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with you. Your dysregulation is brilliant signs that you're overworked, under tendon. And it just means that survival mode was necessary up until now. Because now in the rebirths arc, learning that it doesn't have to work that hard anymore. This is where we teach the nervous system that safety is possible. Your emotional intensity is your gift. Your hypervigilance is perception. Precise perception. Your freeze response was protection. Your sensory sensitivities is depth of experience. And our need for genuine slowness is essentially the quality of your processing. The work now is tending to the nervous system, slowing down, creating the conditions that let your nervous system know, hey, we've made it through. We're building something new. You can begin to rest now. You don't have to perform calm. You don't have to eliminate your responses. You just have to keep tending the flame consistently, compassionately, with the same patience you'd offer someone you love. Because you are someone you love now. And your brilliant, complex, deeply feeling nervous system deserves that same love you give to everyone else.

Bridget Bonus And Healing Playlist

SPEAKER_00 27:06

In the bonus episode this week, we're going to continue on Bridget. We're going to tend your fire without burning out. How to keep the flame alive sustainably. How to resource yourself for the long work of rebirth. I'm so excited for I really like Bridget. There's more to come. If you're not familiar on what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Bridget, Celtic goddess slash saint. Good story. If you're not familiar, I did a part one to her last week, and I will clip that in the show notes as well for you to look on that if you're curious about goddesses and mythology and just some just some fun ways to incorporate mythology into our lived experience of sex healing from sexual trauma. All right, that's what I got. In the show notes, you can find a link to a beautiful playlist that's called Divine Women, and it is nothing but good, wholesome, positive, empowering music. So please feel free to follow, share, save some songs for yourself. The top 10 are my top 10 songs for healing. The first 10 on the playlist are my top 10 songs for healing. I did an episode on that. I may or may not link it. I'm not sure. But there's an episode out there about the top 10 songs that I that really worked for me through with my healing. All right, so we're gonna move right along into the rebirth season. I can't wait to see you Friday to talk about Bridget. Until then, take the gentlest possible care of your awakened heart and your brilliant nervous system. Take care. I'll see you soon.