Stop Trying to Regulate Your Nervous System All the Time and Discover What Healing Is Really About
Written by Michal Cohen, Psychotherapist
Michal Cohen, LCSW, is a Columbia University-trained psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, and psychedelic guide with over 20 years of experience. Her work explores trauma, nervous system healing, self-compassion, conscious cannabis use, and personal transformation.
We have more tools than ever for calming ourselves, grounding ourselves, and regulating our nervous systems. But what happens when regulation becomes another thing we believe we should be good at? Perhaps healing is not always about getting ourselves back to calm. Sometimes, it begins with learning how to stay with ourselves when calm is not available.
What does it actually mean to regulate your nervous system?
Nervous system regulation has become part of our everyday wellness vocabulary. We talk about breathwork, meditation, yoga, cold plunges, exercise, grounding, and countless other practices designed to help us move through stress and return to a greater sense of safety and balance.
Many of these practices can be incredibly helpful. I use them in my own life and in my work as a psychotherapist. But I have begun to wonder whether our fascination with regulation has quietly created another expectation, I should be calm. I should know how to regulate myself. I have done so much healing. Why am I still getting triggered?
When regulation becomes another achievement, we risk turning a helpful concept into another reason to judge ourselves.
The emerging science of emotion regulation offers a more nuanced picture. Researchers studying emotional flexibility have found that healthy emotion regulation is not necessarily about choosing one “good” strategy or maintaining one preferred emotional state. Different situations may call for different responses, and our capacity to respond flexibly to what is happening may matter more than our ability to remain calm.
In other words, regulation does not have to mean calm all the time. Sometimes our nervous system is activated because something matters. Sometimes grief needs tears. Sometimes anger contains information. Sometimes anxiety is asking for our attention. And sometimes, the most compassionate thing we can do is stop trying to immediately change what we are feeling.
When regulation becomes another achievement
I know this pattern intimately. Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time learning what helps me when I am in a difficult emotional state. Yoga helps. Mindfulness helps. Cannabis has been a meaningful tool for me. Being in nature helps. Sometimes, pulling an affirmation card helps me stop long enough to reconnect with myself.
I am grateful for all of these practices. The problem begins when the practice carries an unspoken message. Get rid of this feeling.
That message can be surprisingly subtle. We might call it healing, regulation, mindfulness, or self-care, while underneath it all there can still be an old, familiar belief. Something about the way I am right now is wrong.
For people who have spent years judging themselves for being too emotional, too anxious, too sensitive, too distracted, too angry, or simply too much, healing can inadvertently become another self-improvement project.
I have written before about why understanding ourselves can be more powerful than trying to fix ourselves. The same principle applies here. When regulation becomes another attempt to correct ourselves, we may lose the curiosity that healing requires. We start trying to become the person who never gets overwhelmed, but perhaps that was never the goal.
Can we meet ourselves before we try to change ourselves?
One of the most important shifts in my own understanding of healing has been moving from the question, “How do I make this go away?” toward another question, “Can I meet myself here?”
There is research supporting the importance of this distinction. In a randomized study examining mindfulness and stress, researchers separated present moment awareness from acceptance. Participants who were taught to monitor their experience while also approaching it with acceptance showed lower biological stress reactivity than participants taught to monitor their experience without the acceptance component.
That finding speaks to something I see repeatedly in therapy and in my own life. Awareness alone is not always enough. We can be incredibly aware of our anxiety while simultaneously criticizing ourselves for having it. We can notice our sadness while wishing desperately that it would leave. We can understand exactly where a pattern originated and still judge ourselves every time it appears.
Acceptance changes the relationship. Acceptance does not mean liking what we feel. It does not mean resigning ourselves to suffering or deciding that nothing should change. It means beginning with what is true. This is what I am feeling right now. This is what is here. Can I stay with myself for this moment?
Compassion does not require us to like what we are feeling. It asks us not to abandon ourselves because we are feeling it.
Why positive affirmations do not always feel positive
This is also where my relationship with affirmations has evolved. I love affirmations. I created an entire affirmation deck.
But I do not believe that healing happens by placing a positive sentence on top of an experience we have not actually acknowledged. There is even research suggesting that positive self-statements are not universally helpful. In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers found that repeating a positive statement produced a small benefit for participants with higher self-esteem, while some participants with lower self-esteem actually felt worse afterward.
That does not mean affirmations are bad. It suggests that context matters.
Imagine that you are deeply anxious, and someone tells you to repeat, “I am completely calm and at peace.” Part of you may immediately respond, “No, I am not.”
Now there are two experiences happening. There is the original anxiety, and there is the feeling that you are somehow failing at the affirmation too.
What if we approached affirmations differently? What if an affirmation were not an instruction about how we should feel, but an invitation into a different relationship with what we already feel?
Before asking ourselves to believe something new, perhaps we can begin by listening.
Why art and imagery can help create a pause
Sometimes words are not the first doorway we need. Art has a way of interrupting our habitual stream of thought. An image can invite us to stop, notice, feel, remember, imagine, or simply become curious.
Research into visual art and stress is still developing, but the findings are intriguing. A 2021 review identified 14 studies examining the effects of viewing visual artwork on stress. Thirteen of the 14 studies measuring self-reported stress found reductions after viewing art. The researchers also emphasized limitations in the existing research, so it would be premature to claim that simply looking at art “regulates the nervous system.”
I think the more interesting possibility is simpler. Art can create a pause.
Organizations such as the Brain Health Applied Research Institute, or B+HARI, are also exploring the intersection of brain health with creativity, movement, sensory experience, self-awareness, and other aspects of everyday life.
This growing interest in art and the brain resonates deeply with me because sometimes we do not need another explanation of why we feel the way we do. Sometimes we need an experience that brings us back into relationship with ourselves.
A color, an image, a breath, a few words, or a moment of attention can be enough. Not everything that helps us has to begin with analysis.
Why I created Notes to My Nervous System
These ideas eventually became the foundation for my affirmation deck, Notes to My Nervous System. I wanted to create an everyday tool that someone could reach for in the middle of ordinary life, not only when they were calm, not only after they had meditated for twenty minutes, and not only when they were feeling particularly spiritual, centered, or healed.
I imagined someone coming home after a difficult day. Maybe their thoughts are racing. Maybe they are grieving. Maybe they are angry. Maybe they feel disconnected from themselves. Maybe they cannot even name what they are feeling.
They pull a card. First, they look at the artwork. They pause. They breathe. They notice what is happening inside. They read a brief meditation or practice. And perhaps something shifts.
Perhaps. That word matters to me.
The card is not a demand to regulate. It is not saying, “Do this and you will feel better.” It is saying, “Take a moment. Meet yourself here. See what happens.”
Sometimes the nervous system softens. Sometimes we see something differently. Sometimes nothing changes except that, for one moment, we stop fighting ourselves. That moment matters too.
An everyday ceremony for meeting yourself where you are
Each card in Notes to My Nervous System follows a simple sequence, settle, notice, practice, affirm. The order is intentional. The affirmation does not come first. First, we arrive. Then we notice. Then we engage with a small practice. Only then do we encounter the affirmation.
I think of these moments as everyday ceremonies. The word ceremony can sound grand, but I do not believe ceremony needs to require an altar, a retreat, or an hour of uninterrupted meditation.
A ceremony can be sixty seconds of deliberate attention. It can be placing your hand over your heart, looking at an image, feeling your feet on the floor, taking one conscious breath, or asking yourself, “What is here right now?”
The purpose is not to become a different person sixty seconds later. The purpose is to practice staying in relationship with the person who is already here.
What if nothing needs to be fixed right now?
There will always be moments when changing our state is useful. Take the walk. Do the yoga. Call the friend. Breathe deeply. Go outside. Move your body. Use the practices that help you come home to yourself. I certainly will.
But before reaching for the tool, I am learning to ask myself one more question, "Am I doing this because I want to care for myself, or because I cannot tolerate myself this way?"
There is a profound difference. Healing may have less to do with staying calm and more to do with learning how not to abandon ourselves when we are not.
I did not create Notes to My Nervous System to tell people how they should feel. I created it as a way of remembering how to stay with ourselves when we feel exactly as we do. Maybe that is regulation too, not controlling every wave, but learning that we can remain with ourselves as the waves come and go.
Begin your own everyday ceremony
The next time you notice yourself reaching immediately for a tool to change how you feel, try pausing first. Notice what is here. See if you can meet that part of yourself with curiosity rather than urgency. Then choose what you need.
If you would like a tangible companion for these moments, Notes to My Nervous System: Everyday Ceremonies was created for exactly this purpose. Each of the 44 cards combines original imagery, an affirmation, and a simple mindfulness practice designed to invite a moment of connection with yourself.
Not because every feeling needs to be changed, but because every part of you deserves to be met.
Read more from Michal Cohen
Michal Cohen, Psychotherapist
Michal Cohen, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, and psychedelic guide with more than 20 years of experience. A graduate of Columbia University School of Social Work, she helps people understand the patterns they judge themselves for through compassion, curiosity, and nervous system awareness. Her work explores trauma, anxiety, ADHD, self-compassion, conscious cannabis use, and psychedelic healing. She is also the creator of Notes to My Nervous System, an affirmation and practice card deck inspired by the belief that everyday life can become ceremony. Through her writing, Michal invites readers to slow down, listen within, and discover new ways of understanding themselves.
