Why You Can't 'Just Trust Yourself' When Your Nervous System is on High Alert
Learn why "trust your gut" advice can mislead you when your nervous system is dysregulated by past trauma. This guide helps you distinguish true intuition from fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses
The "Trust Your Gut" Myth & The Deeper Truth
Mama Bear, you're at a crossroads, a big decision looming, and everyone's telling you, "Just trust your gut! You know what's best."
But for you, that "gut feeling" might not be a clear compass. It could feel more like a tangled ball of anxiety, a frantic urge to escape, or that familiar brain fog and paralysis. You've probably tried to "push through," to "listen to yourself," but the choices you make leave you feeling more stuck, more overwhelmed, and less confident than before.
It is absolutely true that learning to trust yourself is the foundation of a peaceful and empowered life. But what if the very thing you're being told to trust—your internal signals—are currently being intercepted by something far more primitive and automatic than intuition? What if your "gut feeling" isn't always your inner wisdom speaking, but something else entirely?
My Journey: Shrinking to Survive, Growing to Thrive
For a long time, I responded to life by trying to keep myself small and quiet to keep the peace. Over time, I lost 136 lbs – literally a whole person – an unconscious attempt to maintain peace and make myself smaller, a tendency that seeped into other areas of my life. As a stay-at-home mom, I often kept quiet when my partner wanted to relax after a long day of work with video games, even though I'd put in the same amount of work keeping our home together, meals prepared, and our neurodivergent child content and alive. It felt like I was keeping the peace, like I was "fawning," but in reality, I was shrinking myself. I knew that whatever I wanted for my daughter – for her to understand her immense value, feel confident being her authentic self, speak her mind, to put herself first, and never people-please or settle – I had to embody that first. This ignited my own self-trust journey, guiding me to listen to my intuition rather than my trauma responses.
Intuition vs. Trauma Response: Decoding Your Inner Signals
What is True Intuition?
True intuition, for a Mama Bear, is a calm, inner guidance that often speaks to you in a subtle, yet profound, way. It's a quiet knowing, a gentle nudge from within that feels deeply aligned with your authentic self and your fierce desire to protect your cubs (and yourself!). When true intuition is at play, you'll often experience a sense of peace, clarity, and even a quiet certainty. It's the wisdom that arises when your mind finds a moment of quiet, offering insights that might not follow a step-by-step logical path, but just feel right.
The Loud Roar of Trauma Response: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn
In contrast, a trauma response is a primal, automatic survival mechanism. We usually hear about these as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. This isn't a conscious choice you make, Mama Bear. It is your amazing body and brain reacting to a perceived threat, whether that threat is truly immediate (like a car swerving) or a ghost from the past, triggered by a present situation.
When you're in a trauma response, your nervous system is on high alert, flooding your body with stress hormones. This "loud roar" often feels urgent, panicked, and constricting. You might experience an overwhelming urge to escape a situation (flight), to aggressively confront it (fight), to simply freeze and feel unable to act (freeze), or to appease and people-please in an attempt to quiet the perceived threat (fawn). Unlike the peaceful certainty of intuition, a trauma response is driven by fear and a desperate need for safety, often leading to a racing heart, shallow breathing, and that constricted feeling in your body that makes logical thinking impossible.
I want you to imagine a blaring smoke alarm versus a gentle whisper. Both are signals, telling you something needs attention. However, their source and meaning are very different. The smoke alarm warns of immediate danger, demanding a reaction. The whisper offers subtle insight without panic. Your intuition is the whisper; your trauma response is the smoke alarm. Knowing the difference is crucial for truly understanding yourself and making empowered choices for you, and your family.
The Dysregulated Nervous System: Clouding Your Judgment
How Survival Responses Impact Decision-Making
When your nervous system is stuck in a state of dysregulation—meaning it's perpetually on high alert due to past experiences or perceived threats—it floods your body with a powerful mix of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. For a neurodivergent brain, this profoundly impacts cognitive function and executive skills. In this state, your brain prioritizes survival, effectively bypassing the prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for logical reasoning, critical thinking, impulse control, and long-term planning.
Instead of thoughtful consideration, your brain activates primitive responses. This can manifest in several ways:
Impulsive Reactions: You might find yourself making quick, unconsidered decisions driven by an urgent need to escape discomfort or confront a perceived threat, only to regret them later. This can feel like a sudden, overwhelming urge that overrides your rational thought.
Avoidance: You might completely shut down and avoid making any decision at all, even when a choice is necessary, causing you to stay stuck. This can feel like an insurmountable wall when faced with a task.
Indecision & Overthinking: Conversely, you might get trapped in endless loops of overthinking, analyzing every possible outcome until you're completely overwhelmed and unable to arrive at a conclusion. The fear of making the "wrong" choice becomes paralyzing.
Feeling Frozen and Unable to Act: Similar to avoidance, this is a profound sense of being stuck, unable to move forward or make any meaningful progress, even on simple tasks. It's not laziness, it is a nervous system response.
People-Pleasing & Submission: In a fawn response, you might make choices that sacrifice your own needs or boundaries to appease others, believing this will keep you safe or prevent conflict, even if it leads to resentment or harm. Your Mama Bear instinct to keep the peace can backfire.
Essentially, when your nervous system is dysregulated, your wise, rational Mama Bear self takes a backseat to your primitive survival brain.
Why "Trusting Yourself" in This State Can Be Dangerous
This is why the common advice to “trust your gut” can actually be detrimental when your "gut" is roaring from a place of fear and dysregulation. Acting from a place of panic, freeze, or desperate appeasement can lead to choices that are profoundly not in your best, long-term interest, or the best interest of your family.
You might:
Make impulsive career changes that don't align with your true desires, only to find yourself in another stressful situation.
Stay in unhealthy relationships because the thought of leaving triggers immense fear and executive dysfunction makes it feel impossible to navigate.
Avoid necessary confrontations, allowing problems to grow and create more stress for your family.
Say "yes" to things you desperately want to say “no” to, leading to burnout and resentment, making it harder to be the Mama Bear you want to be.
Consistently making decisions from a dysregulated state keeps you in a cycle of anxiety, self-doubt, and often, reinforces the very trauma responses you are trying to overcome. You end up feeling like you can't trust yourself, not because your intuition is flawed, but because its voice is being drowned out by the alarms of a nervous system stuck in survival mode.
The Essential First Step: Nervous System Regulation for Mama Bears
Building on Solid Ground: Why Regulation is Key
Imagine trying to build a beautiful, sturdy den for your cubs on a foundation of shifting sand or crumbling earth. It wouldn't matter how well-designed the den was; it would inevitably crack, lean, or even collapse. The same principle applies to self-trust. Genuine, lasting self-trust—the kind that truly guides you toward your highest self and helps you care for your family with strength and clarity—cannot be built on a nervous system that is constantly in a state of alarm or overwhelm. It will always feel shaky, unreliable, and prone to collapse under pressure. This is precisely why learning to regulate your nervous system is not just a step, but the essential first step toward truly trusting yourself. It's about laying a stable, secure foundation within your own den.
What Nervous System Regulation Means
Nervous system regulation is the process of gently guiding your Mama Bear body and mind back to a state of calm, balance, and a felt sense of safety. It's about moving out of the heightened states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, and into a more grounded and present state where your rational brain can function best, helping with clarity and executive function. This doesn't mean eliminating stress or big emotions entirely; it means cultivating the capacity to return to a state of equilibrium after a challenging experience. For neurodivergent moms, this is particularly important because our nervous systems can be more sensitive to external and internal sensory input and change, making us more prone to dysregulation, even from seemingly minor triggers.
It's not about eliminating the "alarms" altogether, but about learning to discern which alarms are signaling true, present danger and which are echoes of past threats. It's about building your capacity to tolerate discomfort and uncertainty without being immediately thrown into a survival response.
My Personal Practice: Labeling and Adjusting
For me, learning to regulate my nervous system and trust my intuition has been a journey of labeling my thoughts and reactions, and then adjusting. Growing up, anytime I wanted to say something, it felt like a knot in my throat – what needed to be said was there, but I was terrified of the response I might get. This was especially true with my partner when he played video games after work to decompress. Not saying anything to him about helping or jumping right into "dad mode" was a response rooted in my childhood, where my father would react in a rage if I asked for anything when he was off work. I stopped approaching him and kept myself small in a fawn response.
I noticed that knot in my throat growing each time with my partner and realized he was not my father. My partner is a completely different man. Armed with this insight, one day, I asked him if before he played he could do something for me (I can't remember exactly what I asked - it had to do along the lines of dishes, cooking dinner, something like that). All I can remember is that he did what I had asked without any anger. My fear, rooted in past experience, proved unfounded. The feeling of the knot I had, slowly dissolved, replaced by a sense of calm empowerment.
I realized from that moment, any time I feel that knot in my throat, I stop to ask: is it my true inner knowing needing to speak up, or is it a response of my conditioning? This pause gives me the space to choose a different, more aligned response, perhaps by using a regulation tool first, allowing me to respond consciously instead of reacting automatically. It transforms the impulse from a reaction into a conscious choice, not about ignoring the feeling, but understanding its source. If it's conditioning, I can choose a different response than the automatic fawn. If it's my inner knowing, I can trust that voice and speak up, even if it's uncomfortable. This practice of labeling and adjusting has been crucial in building my self-trust and moving from a place of reaction to a place of conscious response.
Practical Steps for Mama Bear Regulation
So, how does a busy Mama Bear begin this essential process of nervous system regulation? It's not about adding another overwhelming task to your plate, but about weaving small, consistent practices into your daily rhythm. Here are a few starting points, keeping in mind that for our neurodivergent brains, consistency and finding what works for you are key:
Mindful Breathing: This is your most accessible tool. When anxiety surges, your throat tightens, or you feel the urge to escape, simply pause and focus on your breath. Inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a moment, and exhale slowly through your mouth. Even a few conscious breaths can signal to your nervous system that you are safe in the present moment. The 4-7-8 breathing technique (inhale 4, hold 7, exhale 8) is highly effective for this.
Body Awareness: Our bodies often store trauma and stress. By gently tuning into your physical sensations, you can recognize when your nervous system is becoming dysregulated. Are your shoulders tense? Is your chest tight? Is your heart racing? Simply observing these sensations without judgment is a form of regulation. Releasing stored tension can be achieved through practices like gentle stretching, yoga, or a short walk. Try a head-to-toe body scan, noting any areas of tension without judgment.
Grounding Techniques: When overwhelmed or feeling disconnected, grounding techniques can bring you back to the present moment. Simple methods include focusing on your feet on the floor, touching a comforting object, or engaging your senses with the 5-4-3-2-1 technique (noticing five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste). These sensory anchors are powerful tools for interrupting a spiraling trauma response.
Establish Boundaries: A key aspect of self-regulation, particularly for individuals with a fawn response, involves learning to say "no" and establishing healthy boundaries. This practice conserves your energy and communicates to your nervous system that your needs are valid. Begin by setting small boundaries, such as politely declining a minor request or scheduling 5 minutes of personal quiet time, and gradually work towards more significant ones.
Connect with Nature: Spending time in nature has a profoundly calming effect on the nervous system. A walk in the park, sitting by a tree, or simply observing the sky can help reduce stress hormones and promote a sense of peace.
Creative Expression: Creative outlets such as journaling, drawing, painting, or playing music offer a potent means to process emotions and calm your nervous system. These activities provide a secure space to express feelings that may be difficult to verbalize.
Seek Support: Mama Bear, you don't have to navigate this journey by yourself. Connecting with other neurodivergent moms, a reliable friend, a therapist, or a coach offers incredible support, understanding, and guidance for regulating your nervous system. It also provides fresh perspectives and helps you feel less isolated.
The Path Forward: Empowered Choices from a Regulated State
Discover Your Inner Sanctuary
As you consistently practice nervous system regulation, you will gradually build your capacity to respond to life's challenges from a place of calm strength, rather than automatic survival. The "gut feeling" you learn to trust will no longer be the loud roar of trauma response, but the gentle whisper of your true intuition – your inner Mama Bear wisdom.
From this regulated state, your decision-making will become clearer, more aligned with your values, and less clouded by fear or past conditioning. You'll be able to set healthy boundaries, communicate your needs effectively, and make choices that truly serve your highest self and the well-being of your family.
The good news, and the most empowering takeaway, is the profound impact of nervous system regulation. By learning to bring your body and mind back to a state of calm and safety, you're not only managing stress; you're building a stable internal den, an inner sanctuary for yourself. This stable ground is where your true intuition can finally flourish, allowing you to make decisions from a place of clarity, wisdom, and genuine alignment – the kind of alignment that helps you protect and nurture your family, and yourself, with fierce calm. Ready to start building your stable inner sanctuary and discover this clarity? Join ‘Your Inner Sanctuary’ by clicking the button below to learn more.
This journey takes time, patience, and self-compassion, Mama Bear. There will be days when the alarms feel deafening. But with consistent practice and a commitment to understanding your inner signals, you are building a solid foundation for authentic self-trust. You are becoming the empowered Mama Bear you were always meant to be, capable of navigating the wild with grace, clarity, and unshakeable inner peace.
Stay fierce Mama Bear.