Why You Feel Calm One Minute and Overwhelmed the Next: Understanding Nervous System Dysregulation
Online Therapy in Hermosa Beach and Throughout California
Have you ever had a moment where you feel completely fine, even grounded, and then suddenly something small tips you into feeling flooded, anxious, shut down, or overwhelmed? Maybe a text, a work email, a tone of voice, or even a thought is enough to shift everything inside you. One moment you feel capable. The next moment you feel like you are barely holding it together.
If this sounds familiar, you are not broken. What you are experiencing is very likely nervous system dysregulation. And it is far more common than most people realize.
In my online therapy practice serving Hermosa Beach and all of California, I work with many thoughtful, high-functioning people who feel confused by how quickly their internal state can change. You may understand your patterns intellectually, but your body still reacts in ways that feel out of your control. Therapy can help you learn what is happening beneath the surface and how to create more steadiness from the inside out.
What Is Nervous System Dysregulation
Your nervous system is your body’s built-in safety system. It constantly scans for danger and safety, even when you are not consciously aware of it. When your nervous system perceives safety, you feel calmer, more connected, and more present. When it perceives threat, it shifts into survival mode.
Nervous system dysregulation happens when your body stays stuck in patterns of fight, flight, freeze, or collapse even when there is no immediate threat. Instead of moving fluidly between stress and rest, your system gets triggered more easily and takes longer to return to a sense of calm.
This is not something you choose. It is something your body learned, usually through repeated experiences of stress, pressure, emotional unpredictability, or feeling unsafe earlier in life.
Why You Can Feel Fine and Then Suddenly Not
One of the most confusing parts of dysregulation is how fast the shift can happen. You might wake up feeling steady, only to feel anxious by mid-morning. Or you might feel calm during your day and then feel emotionally flooded the moment you try to rest.
This happens because your nervous system reacts to cues far beyond just logical thought. It responds to:
Tone of voice
Facial expressions
Conflict or perceived rejection
Deadlines and pressure
Fatigue and hunger
Memories and associations stored in the body
Your body may react before your mind fully understands why. You might tell yourself, "This is not a big deal," yet your heart is racing and your chest feels tight. That is not weakness. That is your nervous system doing exactly what it was shaped to do.
Signs That Your Nervous System May Be Dysregulated
Many people normalize these experiences without realizing they are signs of dysregulation. You might relate to:
Feeling chronically anxious or on edge
Swinging between productivity and shutdown
Difficulty relaxing even when you want to
Overthinking and mental looping
Emotional numbness or disconnection
Trouble sleeping
Feeling easily overwhelmed by small stressors
Being highly sensitive to other people’s moods
Needing constant distraction to feel okay
You may have learned to function well despite all of this. You may even look calm on the outside. Internally, it can feel exhausting.
How Nervous System Dysregulation Often Develops
Dysregulation often begins in environments where your system had to stay alert for long periods of time. This can happen in many different ways, including:
Growing up with emotional unpredictability
Feeling responsible for others at a young age
Experiencing chronic stress or pressure
Living in environments where your needs were minimized
Experiencing trauma, conflict, or instability
Being praised for being strong, independent, or low maintenance
Your body learned that staying alert was adaptive. It helped you cope. It helped you survive emotionally. The challenge is that the nervous system does not automatically unlearn these patterns on its own, even when your life becomes safer.
Why You Cannot Think Your Way Into Regulation
Many of my clients are highly self-aware. You might understand your triggers. You might know your history. You might even be able to predict when you are about to spiral. And yet, your body still reacts.
That is because regulation is not only a cognitive process. It is a physiological one.
You cannot logic your way out of a survival response. You have to work with the body that is holding the response. This is why insight alone often does not bring lasting relief for anxiety, overwhelm, and emotional reactivity.
Real change happens when your nervous system learns, through experience, that it is safe to settle.
How My Style of Therapy Helps Regulate the Nervous System
In my online therapy practice serving Hermosa Beach and clients across California, I use a somatic, relational, and trauma-informed approach. This means we work gently with both your internal experience and your body’s responses in real time.
Here is what that looks like in our work together.
We Build Safety First
Before anything can shift, your nervous system needs to experience safety in relationship. Therapy becomes a consistent, predictable place where you are met with curiosity, respect, and steadiness. Over time, this alone can begin to soften hypervigilance.
We Tune Into the Body Gradually
We do not force awareness. We gently notice what is happening inside your body in small, manageable ways. You learn to recognize early signs of activation and settle them before they become overwhelming.
This helps you feel more choice and less reactivity in your daily life.
We Slow Down Automatic Survival Patterns
Many of your reactions happen automatically and very quickly. In therapy, we slow the process down so you can observe what your system is doing with compassion rather than judgment. Once you can see the pattern, your system has more opportunity to shift it.
We Integrate Emotional and Relational Healing
Nervous system dysregulation rarely exists in isolation. It is deeply connected to relationships, attachment, and early emotional experiences. We explore these layers together at a pace your system can handle.
What Changes When Your Nervous System Becomes More Regulated
As your nervous system begins to experience more regulation, many subtle but meaningful shifts occur:
You feel less easily overwhelmed
Your anxiety begins to quiet
You sleep more deeply
You recover from stress more quickly
You feel more present in your relationships
Your emotions feel more manageable
You experience more moments of ease
You do not become a different person. You become a more settled version of yourself.
Why Online Therapy in Hermosa Beach and California Supports This Work So Well
Online therapy allows you to work with your nervous system from the place where it already feels most familiar. You do not have to rush through traffic or transition abruptly from your busy world into deep emotional work.
I offer online therapy to clients in Hermosa Beach and throughout California who want practical, meaningful change without having to push harder or perform in therapy. The work we do together is gentle, steady, and built around your capacity.
You Are Not Too Sensitive. Your Nervous System Is Trying to Protect You
Reach out today to schedule a free 20 minute discovery call!
If your internal state feels unpredictable, overwhelming, or confusing, nothing is wrong with you. Your body learned these responses for a reason. And just as it learned them, it can also learn new ones.
You do not have to stay stuck riding waves of calm and overwhelm.
You do not have to manage everything on your own.
You do not have to force yourself to be different.
In therapy, we help your system feel safe enough to settle, one small step at a time.
If you are looking for online therapy in Hermosa Beach or anywhere in California and you resonate with these experiences, I would love to support you in learning how to feel steadier in your body and your life.
You deserve a sense of calm that does not disappear the moment stress shows up.