A Mother’s Guide To Understanding and Regulating Your Nervous System
Before I became a mother, I thought I understood “being calm” and “being stressed.”
But motherhood opened an entirely new world inside my body one where my heart could be pounding, my skin buzzing, my thoughts racing, and my whole being caught between wanting to run away and needing to stay present.
This is the language of the nervous system. And in motherhood, that language becomes louder, faster, and more complex because the stakes feel higher, the demands are relentless, and the love is so fierce.
Understanding Your Nervous System
Your nervous system is your body’s built-in safety and survival system. It’s constantly scanning for danger and safety, deciding whether you can rest, need to act, or need to protect yourself.
In Polyvagal Theory terms, we can think of three main states:
Ventral Vagal (Calm & Connected) — You feel safe enough to be present. Your breath is steady, your shoulders drop, you can meet your child’s eyes.
Sympathetic (Fight or Flight) — Your body prepares for action. This could be yelling in frustration or cleaning frantically, or feeling like you need to escape.
Dorsal Vagal (Shutdown & Freeze) — Everything feels too much. Your body might go numb, your energy drops, you feel disconnected or checked out.
You’ll move through all of these states, sometimes multiple times a day and that’s normal.
Why Motherhood Changes Your Nervous System and Regulation
Motherhood stretches the nervous system in ways we aren’t taught to expect.
Sleep deprivation erodes your baseline capacity to self-regulate.
Hormonal shifts change how sensitive you are to stress.
Matrescence (the transition to motherhood) reshapes your identity, which can feel unsettling.
Constant caregiving means your system rarely gets long, deep rest.
And because your nervous system is designed to respond to your child’s cues, you’re living in a heightened state of attunement. Their cry, cough, or even sudden silence can jolt you into fight, flight, or freeze before you’ve even thought about it.
When I was deep in the newborn trenches with my twins running on broken sleep, juggling feeding schedules, and naps I noticed my capacity to stay calm was so much smaller. A minor challenge could send my body into a state that felt completely out of proportion. I thought something was wrong with me. But really, my nervous system was doing its job AND it just needed more intentional care.
Listening to Your Body
In Somatic Therapy, we see the body as a living map of experience. Your nervous system isn’t just reacting to the present moment it’s shaped by your history, your emotional patterns, your relationships, and the meaning you’ve made from them.
When you notice you’re dysregulated, it’s not a failure. It’s an invitation to listen to your body’s story, to tend to what’s here now, and sometimes to offer compassion to parts of you that have been holding tension for a long time.
Regulation isn’t about “getting back to calm” at all costs. It’s about staying in relationship with yourself, your child, and your body even when things feel messy.
How to Notice & Name Your State
The first step in regulation is awareness. You might try:
Tracking sensations — “My chest feels tight, my jaw is clenched.”
Naming your state (with compassion) — “I’m in fight/flight right now.”
Checking your breath — Short and shallow? Or slower and fuller?
Sometimes just noticing and naming can help your system shift.
Simple, Body-Based Ways to Support Regulation
Here are a few gentle, mother-friendly ways to support your nervous system:
Orient to Safety
Look around the room and name five things you see. Let your eyes land on something comforting. This tells your brain, right now, I’m safe.Soften the Body
Drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, open your palms. Physical softening sends safety cues to your nervous system.Ground Through Touch
Press your feet into the floor or wrap yourself in a blanket. Feel the weight, the contact, the support.Breathe with Lengthened Exhales
Try inhaling for a count of four, exhaling for a count of six. Longer exhales signal your body to settle.Co-Regulate
Let your child sit in your lap, or call a trusted friend. Sometimes we need another nervous system to help ours find balance.
Normalising the Journey
Your nervous system is not a problem to fix it’s a living, adaptive system doing its best to keep you and your children safe.
Some days you’ll feel resourced and steady; others, you’ll be clinging to a few shaky breaths between meltdowns (theirs and yours). Both are part of the truth of motherhood.
If your system feels stuck in anxiety, overwhelm, or shutdown, know that support is available through therapy, somatic work, community, or a trusted professional. Sometimes regulation requires another set of steady hands and heart to help guide you home.
A Final Word
Regulation isn’t just about what you do, it’s about how you relate to yourself when you’re dysregulated. It’s learning to offer the same compassion to your own nervous system that you offer your child when they’re upset.
Because when a mother’s body feels safe, connected, and cared for, she can meet the world and her children from a place of deeper presence.
