Protection

The reactions you judge yourself for the most are often your nervous system trying to protect you, not sabotage you.

For a lot of women, that protection doesn’t look like danger or survival. It shows up in ways that are much quieter and harder to recognize. Overthinking everything. Feeling irritated by people you love. Trying to control situations so nothing goes wrong. Shutting down when things start to feel overwhelming. Or trying to find problems even when life is objectively fine.

Most women assume those reactions mean something is wrong with them. But what you're experiencing usually isn't dysfunction. It's protection.

In the first episode of this series, we talked about prediction and how your nervous system is always scanning your environment, comparing what’s happening now to past experiences and preparing your body before your mind consciously understands why.

But prediction is only the beginning.

Once your system recognizes something familiar that once required protection, it shifts to the next phase of the survival pattern. Your body mobilizes or conserves energy in ways designed to keep you safe, often before you have time to consciously understand what’s happening.

This is the second episode of the three-part Nervous System Series, and we break down what protection actually looks like inside the body and why so many women misinterpret those protective shifts as anxiety or overreaction.

Because once you understand what your nervous system is trying to do, the reactions that once felt confusing start to look like physiological intelligence and make a lot more sense.

Nervous System Series | Part 2

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey, Misfits. Welcome back to the space where we call bullshit on pretending everything's fine. I'm your host, Dr. Kristen Gross, a trauma survivor, doctor of natural medicine, and the founder of Misfit. Last week we talked about prediction and how your nervous system doesn't wait for a threat to happen before it starts protecting you. It anticipates. So it scans your environment, compares it to your past experiences, and then prepares your body before your mind has time to figure out what's going on. And we talked about how most women misinterpret that shift as anxiety or something being wrong with them. But prediction is just the beginning. Because once your nervous system predicts a threat, it doesn't just sit there and stay stagnant. It moves into protection. So a funny story, really quick. Everything was ready. I had everything planned out that I wanted to talk about. And then I got sick, like fever, congestion, coughing, the whole thing. I'm sure you could even hear it in my voice last week. So instead of recording, I was sitting there frustrated as fuck. Because my body wasn't cooperating with the plan I had for the week. But at some point, whenever I was laying on my deathbed, it hit me. My body wasn't sabotaging me, it was protecting me. My system shifted into conservation mode so it could redirect my energy toward fighting off whatever I had going on. So instead of forcing myself to push through and record and sound like shit, I conserved my energy so I could get healthier quicker. And I adjusted my plan a little bit. I worked with my nervous system instead of working against it. And part of my little remedy that helped me get better was making cinnamon crumble bread with Harper's eggs. And Harper is my beautiful turkey. We actually have two turkeys, and her partner is Ozzy, but we call him the great and powerful Oz. They're basically like the grandparents of our little flock, and it's so adorable. So anyway, there I was sick, making cinnamon crumble bread from turkey eggs, and realizing that my nervous system was doing exactly what it's designed to do, to protect me. And that moment where I shifted from frustration into awareness is exactly what today is about. Because most people think when their nervous system shifts, something is wrong. And then they blame themselves for it. But protection isn't overreaction or a personality flaw, it's your body redistributing energy to keep you safe from whatever threat it detected. And that protection usually shows up in two ways: mobilization or conservation. When you feel anxious, wired, restless, or like your mind won't slow down. Your system is in a mobilized state. For a lot of women, that looks like overthinking everything or replaying conversations in your head, or snapping at the people you love, or feeling like you need to fix, solve, and control everything. Your body has all of this energy and it's trying to move with it. And if you've listened to the earlier episodes, you know that I talk about this idea created by Isaac Newton. Energy can't just disappear, it has to go somewhere. So when your nervous system mobilizes and that energy doesn't have a clear outlet, it doesn't just vanish. It turns into the mental loops, restlessness, irritability, control, and anxiety because your body is preparing for action. But when there's nowhere for that action to go, your nervous system internalizes that energy. Now, conservation looks a little different. That's when you feel exhausted, burned out, or like you don't have it in you to deal with one more thing. You might cancel plans you were excited about earlier, or you have brain fog, no energy or motivation to do anything. That's not laziness, that's your nervous system conserving energy. Both states are protective, both are intelligent, and both get constantly misread. So when you misinterpret those protective shifts, you start personalizing with them and you start to think, what's wrong with me? Why am I so angry? Or why do I overreact all the time? And then you start to blame yourself for feeling the way that you do and push it down because you can't let it show. But when you understand protection, something really important happens. Awareness. You stop identifying with your responses and you stop seeing your body as being dramatic or dysfunctional. You realize your body is responding to your current situation combined with your past experiences. Your nervous system isn't out there trying to fuck up your life. The opposite, actually. It's trying to keep you safe based on what it thinks you might need in that moment. And when you understand that, you stop fighting your body and you start getting curious about what it's doing. You stop asking, what's wrong with me, and start asking, what's my nervous system protecting me from right now? And that question changes the lens you're working from. Instead of looking at your nervous system through a shaming lens, you look at it through a curious lens. And that's a subtle shift, but a very powerful one. Because when your nervous system stays in protection long enough, it starts feeling like who you are, like your personality, your identity, like the way that you've always been, right? But most of the time, what you're actually experiencing isn't personality at all. It's a pattern your nervous system learned through repetition. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about in the next and final episode of this mini-series. Thank you so much for hanging out and getting unfiltered with me today. I'll see you next time, Miss Fitz. And remember, take care of yourselves. That's Doctor's Orders.