Embodied Confidence by Strengthening Your Nervous System From Within
- Jun 21
- 8 min read
Written by Johnna Key, Spiritual Guide & Teacher
Johnna Key is known for her calming and serene voice when guiding meditations. She is the author of the newly published book, Making Space to Breathe, and YouTube channel, Journeys with Johnna.
On a scale of one to ten, where would you rate your communication skills? Do those skills bring you confidence? Now, using that same scale, how would you rate your communication with yourself? If you were in a relationship with yourself, because you are, would you function well from your own communication patterns, or would there be confusion and arguments?
As a body, mind, and spirit guide, it's apparent that, on the whole, we’ve forgotten or lost the art of how to communicate and comprehend ourselves. We have externalized this skill for so long that most of us don’t notice when we aren’t communicating well with ourselves and therefore not communicating well with others, leaving one feeling less confident and losing trust in oneself.
Following a divorce over ten years ago, I began the work of communicating and comprehending, or getting to know myself. After a divorce, regardless of the circumstances, trust is broken, and self-confidence is lost. There’s a level of shame or regret that can arise for any number of reasons.
Whether you’ve been divorced or not, we have all had external experiences that have broken trust with another and with yourself.
While in the marriage and even years after the divorce, I can look back to see all the moments I didn’t honor my own self-communication and broke my own trust. This would sometimes lead to anger or self-hatred. I hadn’t known myself well enough to really communicate my needs because I wasn’t really aware of them. Like most of us, we’re hurrying through life and can really operate inside societal programming that blocks us from knowing ourselves better.
Every story is different in how one gets to the point of not knowing themselves and not being able to communicate those needs, either to themselves or others. It may begin in childhood, as it does for many of us, or in young adulthood when we’re really hungry to figure it out.
Through the practices of yoga and yoga nidra, one can, over time, develop the communication needed from within. In time, this allows you to regulate emotions better, feel more abundant or successful, and have an inner knowing that no matter what’s sent your way, you got this.
Examining communication with the mind and body heavily depends on the strength of the nervous system and emotional capacity to deal.
If your nervous system is in fight or flight, your words might be rushed, passive, short, or unclear. Why? Because if your body is trying to flee, think of it as running away and yelling over your shoulder, half of what you say is audible, and half stems from fear. Same concept in fight mode. When you’re prepping for a fight, you’re often on edge or shaky, and the words might come out angry, aggressive, or hurtful. If your system is frozen, you typically don’t have the words or energy to even speak or reply, so you can often become the yes or no person, avoidant altogether.
When your nervous system has some strength and continues to build, you’re more able to clearly, effectively, and concisely communicate with yourself and those around you. Your words won’t be too long or stemming from fear, you won’t be shouting over your shoulder, and you will feel confident in yourself.
If effective and clear communication isn’t where you are now, no worries, you’ll get there with time put in and diligent effort.
Think of your nervous system like the muscular structure of the body. For the muscles to be strong and limber, they need to move, they want to move, and so we do. We go for walks, to the gym, yoga, or another style of exercise that feels good for the muscles. Over time, the muscles in use become stronger, more reliable, and confident in holding the body. If one ever wants to build or tone their muscles, then intentional and dedicated work must be put in.
Your nervous system acts in the same regard, it needs to be exercised for it to grow in strength. Exercising your nervous system takes a lot of time and diligence, it takes a fair amount of intentional movement to grow and build.
Just like when one is building their muscles, there are many days you don’t feel like putting in the physical work. Sometimes, a break is needed from the gym or a regimen put into place to ensure you follow through. Same concept for the nervous system.
Let’s use an example we’ve all experienced and has rapidly become a plague across our communication platforms, ghosting. We have all been ghosted, either by a romantic date, a friend, the refrigerator repairman, you name it, we’ve experienced it. It’s become so common that most of us come to expect this type of response from a person.
I used to get a little worried or bent out of shape if I was ghosted, assuming that it was something I did, so wrong, so wrong. No one deserves to be ghosted, but it happens all the time because of dysregulated nervous systems and a lack of communication skills.
You have people out there excusing the behaviour, saying, I don’t owe them anything, and perhaps not, but don’t you owe yourself? You may not need to extend respect to the other person, but it sure as hell needs to be given to yourself from yourself. Ghosting is chicken shit behaviour, don’t be a chicken shit, exercise your nervous system and show up for yourself. Let’s start at home, where it all begins, with you.
Story time
You’ve developed a friendship with a new person in your life, congratulations, because building friendships in adulthood can be hard.
Y’all have been jiving for a few months, and something goes awry, your friend begins to cancel plans regularly without rescheduling, and even blowing you off for a scheduled meet-up they didn’t show up for. Your immediate knee-jerk, dysregulated nervous system reaction is to ghost them. You don’t like confrontation and don’t want to cause a scene, but are over being canceled on, so you slowly disappear.
You ghost, ignore a series of messages from them, you don’t owe this new friend anything, and they’ve already slacked off from the friendship.
Do you reply to say the truth or ignore them and hope they get the message? The latter has become the most common response, yet it does nothing for you, it doesn’t help you grow, it doesn’t help in communication, and it only puts up walls of caution.
Strength-building exercise
As humans on the planet, we all want to build natural confidence and better communication with ourselves and others, so this is a step to get you closer to that goal. It’s scary to be honest with yourself or with others, so start with yourself first, it gets so much easier from there.
If you choose to ghost them, you’re really ghosting yourself. Identify how you want to feel. Do you want to feel disregarded or confident? Do you want to feel like you can’t handle it, or I got this?
If confidence in yourself is the goal, then be honest. You can communicate on any platform that sets you up for success, text, call, or in-person meet-up, your choice, if they agree, of course.
Keep it short and sweet and factual, leave out the emotional details because that’s where we get lost. Send a message along the lines of, You’ve been busy and have canceled a bunch of plans. I need friends in my life who follow through with plans or reschedule when they need to. We’re not on the same page anymore. It was nice meeting you, but I don’t plan to meet up again.
Leave it there. If you don’t want to get involved in their rebuttal, that’s where you can not reply or choose to work it out to potentially solve the issue. If they’re a repeat offender, then a simple, I’m out will always suffice.
No matter the wording used, your goal is to build and grow within yourself, not to control the situation or even get bent out of shape about it. Their ghosting has nothing to do with you, it’s a reflection of their own nervous system and emotional immaturity.
Walking away from this scenario, having spoken up and exercised an emotional muscle, will leave you feeling shaky at first and perhaps a bit unsure, but over time, this will build an inner peace and self-confidence that’s unshakable by life’s lemons.
Exercise the same emotional maturity if you’re the one who’s ghosted. Accept where that other person is at in their life and let them. Let them show who they are so you’ll know if the communication and alignment are there.
If you are ghosted, sit with it, don’t rush off to the next event to avoid the painful emotion. Acknowledge that being ghosted sucks. It hurts, it can feel like rejection, abandonment, not chosen, all sorts of inner stories arise. Let them. Identify them and communicate with yourself lovingly and gently. Give emotional support to yourself or call a trusted friend to help get you started. Don’t ignore yourself and how this can feel, don’t ghost yourself because you were ghosted.
Learning to communicate with yourself and others can be a challenge if it isn’t already in your wheelhouse. Just like building muscles for the body, over time, this will build your nervous system muscles.
Beginning to communicate with yourself
This doesn’t have to be complicated. Start small with I like or I don’t like. Use this in everything you do, from your daily activities to something new and adventurous. This is the way to begin getting to know yourself better and communicating with yourself.
Your body and mind are already communicating with you. If you’re moving too fast, then you’re not able to listen to them. If you’re in frequent distraction mode, then you’re really not listening.
Allow yourself to channel your inner pre-tech era self. Regardless of when you were born, there was a time when technology and social media didn’t exist and weren’t our entire focus in life. Go back there as often as you can, be bored, look at the birds, feel the wind, let yourself be present with yourself, hear the inner communication that’s been whispering all along.
Remember that the nervous system is designed to keep you safe. Anytime you’re moving out of the comfort zone, even into healthier patterns, the nervous system and subconscious mind will protest. Listen to this too, hear what and why your body believes it needs to stay comfortable and is in fear of growth.
Hear yourself out. What’s the worst that can happen? You start to enjoy your own company. Is that really so bad? You deserve confidence, communication, and support. It would be so amazing for that inner skill of communication to be around an eight to ten regularly. Give it to yourself and watch the world repay it right back with aligned effort.
Get to know yourself because you’re probably pretty awesome. Those parts you discover you aren’t a fan of, resist the urge to push away, make conscious shifts to keep exercising the nervous system’s strong muscles. You got this.
The more you gently communicate with yourself, the more you comprehend who you are and what makes up those parts of you. Embodying confidence takes time, so enjoy the ride of the journey to that inner confidence. One day it’ll just be there, it’ll be a part of who you are from the inside out.
Read more from Johnna Key
Johnna Key, Spiritual Guide & Teacher
Johnna Key is a certified Yoga, Meditation guide, & Spiritual Teacher, leading others to calibrate their nervous system and ease overwhelm within the mind. Derived from her experience in the Western medicine system as a child and divorce from a narcissistic relationship as an adult, Johnna has learned and implemented tools to heal the mind, body, & spirit from traumatic experiences to exit karmic loops and generational patterns. Her passion is teaching others to find self-acceptance for their experiences and the emotions or perspectives that can surface. It's her passion to help others calm a busy mind, ease the tension in the body, and learn to meditate to find joy and self-worth in the journey we call life.
