The Three Nervous System States That Shape Your Performance and How to Shift Between Them
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Written by Anna Marson, Registered Psychotherapist
Anna Marson, PsyD, RP, CCC is a Registered Psychotherapist and founder of Heartfulness Psychotherapy. With a Doctor of Psychology and 14 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma and ADHD, she helps high-performing adults understand their nervous systems and create lasting change.
It is the meeting that went sideways, the decision you regret, or the day when everything required twice the effort and nothing landed right. You might attribute these experiences to distraction, a bad night's sleep, or simply an off day. But neuroscience offers another lens, and a potentially more useful one.
Your autonomic nervous system is constantly adjusting your level of arousal in response to internal and external demands. These shifts influence attention, emotion regulation, social engagement, and aspects of cognitive performance. Understanding what state you are in, and recognizing when your current level of activation is helping or hindering you, can be a valuable leadership skill.
The science
Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory offers one framework for understanding these shifts. The theory proposes a hierarchical organization of autonomic responses involving social engagement, mobilization, and immobilization. Importantly, this is a theoretical model rather than a universally established description of three discrete nervous system states. Some of its specific neuroanatomical and evolutionary claims remain contested.
The first state, often described within Polyvagal Theory as ventral vagal regulation, corresponds to a state of relative safety and social engagement. In everyday experience, this may feel like being grounded, present, socially connected, and able to respond flexibly to changing demands. These conditions can support the kinds of cognitive and interpersonal capacities that effective leadership requires.
The second is sympathetic activation, the mobilization system commonly associated with the fight or flight response. Increased heart rate, heightened alertness, and narrowed attention can be part of this response. Sympathetic activation is not inherently problematic. Increased arousal can help us mobilize energy, respond quickly, and meet demanding situations. The difficulty arises when arousal becomes excessive, prolonged, or poorly matched to the demands of the situation.
The third is immobilization, which Polyvagal Theory conceptualizes in terms of dorsal vagal responses. People may experience this as heaviness, disengagement, reduced energy, or brain fog. Polyvagal Theory conceptualizes this pattern as a “dorsal vagal shutdown” response that can emerge when a person experiences threat as prolonged, overwhelming, or inescapable.
The business cost
Stress can meaningfully affect cognition and decision-making. Research suggests that acute stress can impair working memory and cognitive flexibility, while its effects on inhibition and decision making are more nuanced and dependent on the task and context.
This matters for leadership. When a stress response or autonomic arousal becomes excessive, you may have less cognitive flexibility available for weighing competing perspectives, holding information in mind, considering alternatives, or expressing yourself clearly and skillfully. That does not mean you lose executive function altogether. It means that, under some conditions, the cognitive resources available to you may be less well matched to the complexity of the task.
Think of the last time you tried to lead a difficult conversation while exhausted, overwhelmed, or highly activated. That flatness or reactivity may not be a motivation problem. Your physiological state may be influencing how effectively you can access the cognitive and interpersonal capacities you normally rely on.
When your nervous system detects a significant threat, it shifts resources toward processes that help you respond to the immediate demand. Sympathetic activation increases heart rate and releases catecholamines such as adrenaline and noradrenaline, mobilizing energy and increasing physiological readiness for action. Attention may become more focused on potential threat, while cognitive resources can become less available for the flexible thinking, perspective taking, emotional regulation, and clear communication that complex leadership requires. These responses are adaptive when rapid action is needed, but they can become less helpful when the situation calls for deliberation, nuance, and connection.
A more regulated physiological state, by contrast, is associated with greater capacity for flexible attention, social engagement, and emotional regulation. Parasympathetic activity plays an important role in supporting recovery and restoration, including “rest and digest” functions, and a regulated state can create more favorable conditions for accessing the cognitive and interpersonal capacities that effective leadership requires. The goal is not to eliminate stress activation, but to develop the flexibility to move between states in ways that are responsive to the demands of the moment.
The effects are not necessarily contained to you. Research on emotional contagion and interpersonal synchrony suggests that people's emotional and physiological states can influence one another during social interaction. Emerging organizational research is exploring how these processes operate between leaders and followers. In other words: the state you bring into the room can become part of the social environment your team is responding to.
Three shifts to start this week
1. Learn to read the map
Before your next high-stakes meeting or important decision, pause and ask, "Am I wired and tight, flat and foggy, or grounded and present?"
Simply noticing your current level of activation can help you determine whether it is supporting or hindering your ability to meet the demands of the moment. That moment of awareness creates space between an internal reaction and your response, and that space can be valuable in leadership.
2. Use physiology, not just willpower, to influence your state
When you're highly stressed or activated, physiological strategies can sometimes help reduce arousal. One example is the physiological sigh: two inhalations followed by a longer exhalation. Experimental research suggests that structured cyclic sighing can reduce subjective stress and promote physiological changes associated with a calmer, more regulated state.
When you're feeling flat or underactivated, the goal may be different: upregulation. Gentle movement, stretching, rhythm, warm temperature, environmental change, or connecting with another person may help increase engagement and alertness. Physical activation can increase heart rate and breathing and promote circulation to working muscles, helping bring the body and mind toward a state of greater energy and readiness.
Match the intervention to the state you're in. The goal is not to be calm all the time, but to develop the flexibility to shift your state when the situation requires it.
3. Protect access to your regulated state
A regulated state is not a reward reserved for good days. It is a condition that can make flexible thinking, emotional regulation, social connection, and effective decision-making easier.
Pay attention to the relationships, environments, sleep patterns, movement, breaks, and daily rhythms that reliably help you return to a more balanced level of activation. Treat that awareness as a strategic leadership practice, not merely a lifestyle preference.
Your nervous system does not determine your leadership. But it is one of the systems that shapes how you think, feel, respond, and connect.
Learn to recognize the state you're in. Learn what helps you shift. Then lead from a state that gives you access to the widest range of responses.
Read more from Anna Marson
Anna Marson, Registered Psychotherapist
Anna Marson, PsyD, RP, CCC is a Registered Psychotherapist and founder of Heartfulness Psychotherapy, with a Doctor of Psychology and 14 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma, ADHD, attachment, brain injury and addiction. Her doctoral research established a trauma-informed framework for understanding ADHD's interpersonal neurobiological roots. Drawing on this work, she helps clients understand their nervous systems and build lasting pathways to change. She was a guest presenter on PESI's webinar, Rethinking ADHD with Gabor Maté and Terry Matlen: From Origins to Healing. She believes every brain holds the capacity to heal and that the right map makes all the difference.
