"You are the Answer" is a podcast about returning to your body, regulating your nervous system and remembering your own inner wisdom. Each episode blends storytelling, science and spirituality to help you feel calmer, more connected and more empowered in your everyday life.
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Your brain does not “switch off” in fight or flight, and that tiny difference can change how you handle stress, anxiety, and conflict at home. I’m taking on a set of popular nervous system one liners many of us repeat because they’re memorable and useful, then gently myth busting them so you walk away with a deeper, calmer understanding of what is actually happening inside you.
We start with the classic claim that your thinking brain goes offline. The truth is more nuanced: under significant stress, the balance of communication across brain systems shifts. The prefrontal cortex is still there, but abilities like planning, flexible thinking, impulse control, and long term reasoning become less effective while threat related signals get prioritised. That’s why logical questions land badly in heated moments, and why the real skill is learning to turn down the volume on panic and turn up access to perspective.
From there, we reframe the “reptilian brain takes over” story. Instead of labelling stress responses as primitive or irrational, we treat them as protection. We also explore why your body can react strongly to anticipation, memory, and imagination even when you are physically safe, and we clear up dopamine myths by separating wanting from enjoying. Finally, we revisit “your body knows the answer” with compassion: sensations are valuable information, but they are not infallible instructions, so fluency matters more than obedience.
If this helped you make sense of your own signals, subscribe, share it with someone you care about, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to their body.
And ultimately trust that you already have far more of the answers than you think. Hello and welcome to episode 44 of You Are the Answer, and this week I am bravely stepping into the world of nervous system myth busting. Because if you've listened to this podcast for a while, maybe you've been to one of my events, read my book, or maybe even you're a client of mine, then you've probably heard quite a few things said both by myself or other healthcare professionals and scientists that I would really like to dig a little deeper into. You might have heard me say something like, when you're in fight or flight, your thinking brain goes offline because I'm recognizing we're going into that limbic system, that's that chimp mentality, that survivalist system. You might have heard your brain doesn't know the difference between a real threat and an imagined one. And possibly your body knows the answer. Because that's one of my favorite things to say. And so here's the awkward bit. Not all of these things are completely true. And I think it's really worthwhile saying in the world of science and health, it's very difficult for anything to be 100% completely true when we are trying to get a lot of these very complex pathways, these complex ideas across to you in a way that's simple, it's relevant, it's easy to understand. And actually, the way they teach you in chiropractic college, which I always found to be a really useful way of teaching, it's called spiral learning. So they would teach us something one year, and then the next year we'd come back around again, and they'd be like, Well, it doesn't quite happen like that. Here's another layer of detail. And then you come back a third time. Well, yeah, that is more detail, but actually, here's the nuance. And so I guess that's what this podcast is. You know, we're almost a year in, we're definitely nine months in. And I feel like it's time to circle back on some of the things you might have heard from me or from other people, and just to add an extra layer of detail and nuance so that you can have a deeper understanding of how your body is wired and what's happening in your life. And I use these examples all the time. I use simplification because I really want somebody to understand that their complicated nervous system can be quite simple without them needing a degree in neuroscience. But let's have some fun today and clear up a few nervous system myths. And including several that I probably perpetuate myself.
So let's go back to the first one I gave an example. Your thinking brain goes offline when we're in fight or flight. So our survivalist one comes in in our logical long-term thinking brain goes offline. Now, let's be real, your prefrontal cortex cannot pack a suitcase and leave the building of your skull. And what's really happening is more nuanced. And I wanted to start with this one because it actually forms the basis of a lot of my clinical work. And we've talked about it a few times on the podcast when it comes to adults and also teen brains. So when we're under significant stress, the way different brain systems function and communicate does change. And so some of the abilities that we associate with the prefrontal cortex, like long-term thinking, flexible thinking, planning, impulse control, they do become less effective. While at the same time, the information that's relating to the threat that you are perceiving, that comes up in importance within the brain. So if your teenager's absolutely furious and you kind of go, Well, what do you think is going to happen in the long term? Like, how's this going to affect your life? And actually, we probably don't actually say that to our kids, but we're thinking it. We're just angry at them, thinking, Well, that's the decision you're making today, but what's this gonna look like when you're 30? Yeah, it doesn't go well, does it? And so your teenager's brain hasn't stopped working, that logical long-term part hasn't shut down and gone. But their brain is prioritizing something completely different from what we are asking it to do in that moment, which is we'll think about what this is going to do in the long term. So while I might still say your logical brain goes offline, now you actually know what I mean. And it's that nuance of one part of the brain being prioritised over the other, like one volume gets turned way up in that survivalist limbic system, while the prefrontal cortex noise gets turned down, which is also let's just think about how when we shed awareness on that and as we grow into our adult selves, we can also recognize that. And when you get the tools and a bit of practice, sometimes that does allow you in those moments to in your brain turn down the panic, going, that's panic and fear. I see you, panic and fear. I'm gonna turn that volume down on you, and I'm gonna turn the volume up on my prefrontal cortex. I'm gonna still apply some logic, some long-term thinking, some creativity to this in a way that looks different if I allow that survivalist part of my brain to be prioritized.
So here's myth number two: the idea that your primitive brain takes over completely. And you probably have heard of people, not just myself, talk about the reptilian brain or the emotional brain, and then there's this idea of like a clever human-thinking brain sitting on top. And that's a really easy picture, and like I say, that's a good level one neuroscience, like super simple, but it could be introducing you to a topic that you've never given any thought to, and that's great. But our brains haven't evolved, like you're adding an extension to your house type of idea. Older brain structures haven't stayed primitive, while more modern ones have added clever new bits on top. Our brain systems have always evolved together and are enormously interconnected. So, a more accurate way about thinking about how your brain is responding in any given moment, especially one of stress, is that your nervous system is prioritizing protection. And I actually think that's a lovely way of looking at it because primitive can sound like it's broken or irrational. Whereas the idea of protection makes sense. And it's something I use a lot where I'm working with teens who are maybe experiencing a lot of anxiety. They might be in what I would call full fight, flight, or even shut down. And I make it very clear to them that there's nothing broken, wrong, or irrational about what's happening. Every part of you is prioritizing safety. And so what we need to do is give your body the signal that it's safe. Because protection makes perfect sense.
Myth number three, that your brain can't tell the difference between a real threat and an imagined one. And I don't know if you've heard the studies and the stories where people do actually show clinical signs of shared trauma if they've watched, or trauma bonding, I should say, if they've watched some really terrible things together in a film, for example. And I think I've talked about it sometimes with people in context of going back to television, if you're watching something that's repeatedly stressful, sad, emotional trauma, or other violent trauma, that some of that will become wired into your nervous system because your brain is watching that and it can feel as though it's actually happening to you. But of course, the real nuance with this is that your brain can tell the difference between what you're watching on television and what you're experiencing in real life. But the useful bit underneath this simplification is that something doesn't have to be physically happening right now for your body to respond to it. And so if you just think about what happens if you're lying awake in the middle of the night and you're imagining a conversation you're going to have the next day, absolutely nothing is happening in that moment when you are lying in bed. You're safe, but yet your heart might beat faster, you might have racing thoughts, your stomach might tighten, your breathing could change. Because anticipation, memory of past experiences, and your imagination will still generate a very real physiological response in your body. And so perhaps the detail we need here is that our bodies can all respond to anticipated or remembered threat, even when we are physically safe in the moment. Which I admit is less catchy, but it is more accurate. And I think it's interesting to marry that up with two episodes ago where we talked about the brain and its ability to anticipate pleasure and how that can be received differently in the body. So, what we're doing with these episodes is really giving you some real-world little details that I hope will help you understand yourself at an even deeper level than you do now. So, myth number four.
Let's talk about dopamine. Because you might know dopamine as the pleasure chemical. We see this everywhere, and you can get a dopamine hit from chocolate or Instagram or shopping. But dopamine is not simply a chemical that makes us feel pleasure, it's also heavily involved in motivation, in learning, and in reward, which is what I find really interesting. Because didn't I just link back to my two episodes ago podcast that was all about this one? That wanting something and actually enjoying it are not necessarily the same thing. So you can anticipate a beautiful glass of wine at the end of your day, and your brain may have learned what that represents, and the switching off and the relaxation and the socialization or the connection. It might represent Friday night, good food, time with somebody that you care about. But actually, if you follow through and go to have that glass of wine, it doesn't always feel as delicious, as relaxing, as good in your body as you expected. It may even affect your sleep or how you feel the next day. And so what we learn through that is that your anticipation is not the same as your lived experience, which is really fascinating because your brain isn't trying to play a trick on you, it's trying to give you a prediction, and then what you feel in your body is what's giving it new information.
And myth number five fight or flight makes you crave sugar, is a really big one, or crave wine. But you'll see versions of this all over social media. And again, with all of these things, there's something real underneath it, but there's a deeper level of nuance and detail that we would benefit from right now. So stress does influence appetite and food choices and our reward seeking. But it's not that we just get stressed and then suddenly we are craving all certain types of food. Because some people, me, eat more when we're stressed, and other people like digestion shuts down, so they eat much less, and anybody can respond differently and over or under-eat, but just depending on what's happening or who they are that day. So, what I think is useful is you coming to notice whether and how overwhelming stress changes the way that you seek rewards. So again, to hark back to a couple of episodes ago when I shared the one question that I'm really finding helpful to help me differentiate between whether something's gonna feel good when I do it or have it or not, is am I feeding joy or am I feeding overwhelm? Because a beautiful piece of cake eaten with friends because it looks absolutely delicious is one experience. But if you're stood up in the kitchen eating it on your own, that is a very different experience. And neither are good or bad, but they are giving us very different pieces of information that we can learn from. And
so the last myth of the day that your body always knows. Well, I can say that because I still believe that you are the answer. I believe that the whole purpose of you listening to this podcast and me delivering this work is because we have with great in my experience with greater knowledge means that you have what you need to create the health and life that you desire. But your body always knowing I'm not sure. Do I believe we need to become much better at listening to our bodies? Absolutely. But does every sensation in your body give you an infallible instruction? No. Because your nervous system learns. Remember, it predicts, it remembers, it protects, and sometimes it will give you an alarm that feels uncomfortable, but you're fine and you're perfectly safe. My heart might pound if I'm about to step onto a stage, and it doesn't mean, oh Naomi, you should not do this. It probably means this matters. My nervous system is preparing for it. This is a big moment. Just as pain doesn't always mean damage, and fear doesn't always mean danger, and a craving certainly doesn't always mean that I'm hungry. Tiredness doesn't always mean you need to lie down, and discomfort doesn't automatically mean no. We have gone in depth in a lot of these statements over the preceding episodes. But it is where I think nervous system work becomes really interesting. Because when I'm saying listening to your body, we don't mean blindly obey every sensation, every impulse, every feeling that you have. What I'm leading you towards is how do we become more fluent in the language of my body? So I understand what's happening, what happened before this feeling came? What does it normally mean for me? Is this my protection or a boundary? Or is it excitement? Is it overwhelm? Is it hunger? Is it boredom? Does my mouth just want something interesting to do? Because frequently with me, I just would like to put something in there, and I'm not even hungry or bored, it just would like some sensations. So perhaps you are the answer. It doesn't mean that somewhere in your body there is a tiny little oracle that's giving you the perfect instruction on what to do in this moment or in this day. But it does mean that you have an extraordinary amount of information available to you. Our sensations and our experiences, our patterns, our history, our thoughts, and how our nervous system is functioning in that moment. And when we become curious about all of this rather than fearful, or for most people, just not knowledgeable, not understanding how it's all connected, then you get to become better at understanding yourself. So I am probably going to completely continue oversimplifying things and maybe driving some people a little bit mad with that. But I think it's so important that we make this information accessible. And I probably going to keep telling people that their fight-flight response is taking over their body because that is what it feels like in that moment. What I mean is that your nervous system is constantly making predictions, responding to your environment, and trying to protect you. And your job, and my job, is neither to try and control it or to blindly obey it and just go, okay, that's how I'm gonna be then. But it's to get to know it. And the more we do that, the better skills we get in that area, the easier it is to get to know what your body is trying to tell you. And for me, that is what it means when I say you are the answer. Thank
you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparks something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey to www.arheanswer. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember you are the answer, and you always have
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