Building Capacity: When Your Nervous System Can’t Absorb One More Thing

Lately, many of us are feeling it more—the anxiety, the tension, the emotional weight of the world. And for nurses, this isn’t abstract. We hold stress, fear, urgency, and responsibility every single day.

 “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” Isaiah 26:3 (NIV)

In this episode, we are continuing a conversation where I share honestly about navigating my own anxiety for the first time in a new way during perimenopause—and how a prolonged power outage became an unexpected nervous system check-in. What I noticed wasn’t weakness. It was capacity.

We explore:

• Why anxiety can increase during perimenopause
• How co-regulation causes us to absorb the stress of others
• What happens to your health when stress is absorbed or ignored
• Why nervous system regulation isn’t a one-time tool
• The difference between calm and capacity
• How building nervous system capacity protects long-term health
• A grounding practice using geranium and the feet to support regulation

This episode is an invitation to stop pushing through and start building the internal capacity to feel, regulate, and recover—without burning out or breaking down.

This is not about doing more.
 It’s about doing differently.

Transcript

0:00

I am gonna start today in a little more personal space'cause I've been navigating my own anxiety lately before perimenopause I had never experienced anxiety like this. I definitely am understanding a little bit more, panic attacks, an anxious feelings a little bit more than I did before. Now this is an occasional worry, not stress that I could power through, but a body level activation that doesn't respond to logic the way it used to. And it might just be that the way I experienced anxiety before was very obvious and maybe I was more reactionary. And so I didn't have that response. Where I internalized, I don't know what happened but it is different. And this past week has made that. All of that impossible to ignore. Now we deal with anxiety on a daily basis. Stress is normal and we can't really control where it's gonna come from, right? But how we respond to it and how we engage with it, how our capacity to feel it is all something that we're falls into our circle of control. So we were without power for three days. It was dark and cold, like 30 degrees inside the house. Did a lot of just piling on the blankets and trying to stay warm underneath the blankets. And same thing at night. it was giving camping in the wilderness in the winter. and then the power came back on. And with that, some relief and warmth. A nervous system, exhale. I do remember on one of the days it was actually warmer outside than it was inside. And it was nice for us to get out and get some sun and the roads had been cleared enough that we could go get a hot meal. And of course I shared that and people were of course immediately questioning our wisdom in going to a restaurant that possibly was using food that was questionable. But regardless, it was hot food, and it was nice to just sit in a warm space and eat hot food. Anyway, yesterday it went back off again. It was brief, but it was long enough for me to, for my body to react before my mind could intervene. I immediately thought of all the things that I needed to do before the house got cold. it was starting to get dark and I immediately just went into that mode where I had to think of all the things that I could do right now while I still had a little bit of light and a little bit of warmth. I used that moment then to assess my nervous system, I, and I was making my bed because I had all the sheets in the dryer, and fortunately they were dry and I was putting them on the bed and the power came back on I didn't even notice that I was such in a mode of, okay, I can do this. I am feeling this, I'm staying in the prefrontal. I was doing all those things, but really my body was my body was taking over. I was not in my prefrontal cortex like I thought I was. It wasn't good. Alright and it's not because. I didn't feel like I was failing. I felt like I'm feeling the feels, and I've come a long way in being able to notice what is going on in my body and how to process that because my system was already running near capacity. That moment wasn't about the power, it was about how much I was already holding. And that's the thing. When things happen to us and or around us, or when we're taking in the energy of others. We're taking all of that in. We've talked about that as nurses, we take that in all day long. It might be from leaders or coworkers or patients, but other people's anxiety, we absorb that, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is there and it is filling up that capacity for then when something happens, we notice then how much we're already holding by, how we respond to that. And this is why this is a daily regulation, not just when things happen. So Here's the piece that I really wanna talk about today is because when your nervous system is under chronic load, hormonal shifts, ongoing stress, uncertainty, caregiving, leadership, grief, global noise, it doesn't take much to push it over the edge. And then that's not because you're fragile, but it's because capacity has limits. And for nurses and caregivers, women in midlife especially, we often don't notice that we have exceeded capacity until our body forces the conversation and anxiety is that messenger. So in a way, we need to make friends with anxiety. All right. Let's talk about co-regulation, perimenopause, and why you are feeling more, let's layer in some science. So first of all, during perimenopause, we have estrogen fluctuations that impact serotonin. And GABA levels, Our stress tolerance narrows and recovery time lengthens sensory input hits harder and the nervous system becomes more reactive and more honest. and add to the reality that we are deeply interconnected nervous systems. Co-regulation is real. And what that means is that you don't just regulate yourself. You feel the fear of your patients, the tension of families, the urgency of systems, the anxiety of the collective. When you leave that morning meeting, you take all of that with you. Even if you're saying, no big deal, I should let it roll off. We have all of those things that we tell it we're telling ourselves, but we really need to be intentional about how that's really piling up. So right now, that collective nervous system is really loud. I've had to stay off social media and regulate my intake of screen time and news stories and things like that because it just keeps coming. So if you're feeling more impacted than ever, that makes all of that makes sense. and it's not just about you, it's about everyone around you and the situations and the circumstances and even your neighborhood. All right? Acknowledge that. Now, why regulation isn't about calming down. I used to get so mad when people would say, calm down. It was it. I still don't like to be told to calm down, those are fighting words for me. So here's a reframe that I've been sitting with myself. This isn't about eliminating anxiety. It's about increasing capacity to feel. And stay present because capacity isn't built around avoiding the sensation. It's built by meeting sensations safely over and over again. And that's why one-off tools don't work. Long-term capacity is trained. So when I introduce a ritual or a practice, I'm meaning for that to somehow maybe it's something to incorporate in the daily routine over time. I rely a lot on aromatherapy and every morning part of my morning routine, and that's important too, is that I'm doing the same things every morning and most of the same things in the evening. Now, sometimes the time varies and some things, some of the practices are cut out or taken on the road with me, but every morning I put lotion on, and so I use geranium. In my lotion. So I wanna talk a little bit about geranium because it's what I've been really, I've been reaching for even more. I've done some application during the day too, because geranium is often talked about hormonally, and yes, it does support hormone balance, but what matters here is the nervous system intelligence. Geranium is known to bring emotional extremes towards the center, which means that It supports that parasympathetic nervous tone without sedation, or without help of other chemicals, increases tolerance for emotional sensation and restores that sense of internal coherence. It's not numbing. Which is really important here is because we don't want to numb, we don't wanna use those things like food and alcohol and Netflix to numb. We do want to do that, but we can't do that exclusively. Some of it is okay. I am not, I'm not taking that away from anybody and I'm not laying that down. I was very heavily using Netflix yesterday for that. Anyway, it doesn't, but using these tools, breath work, or aromatherapy, this is a way to not numb, but organize. And that's exactly what capacity requires when anxiety rises, energy tends to rush upwards. That means thoughts race, the chest tightens, breath gets shallow and the body loses its sense of ground. So the feet are one of the fastest ways to restore that bottom up regulation. So it's, this is not forcing calm, but reminding your nervous system that I am here, I'm supported. And I am contained, and we could do that just by planting our feet on the ground. Now, I was thinking about this today as I actually massaged some geranium and lotion into my feet and just really spent some time. Centering on some of those reflexology points, but that's not what this is about. But so standing with your feet on the ground and just feeling the ground underneath your feet and reminding yourself that you are supported and that you are present, you're safe and supported I'm gonna share with you what I've been doing today. And this is not an escape from anxiety, but it builds, it's a work to build tolerance and regulation. So placing an oil of geranium in a carrier oil or I was using it in lotion, but you can use it in fractionated coconut oil or hoja oil. Any oil really and then massage that slowly into your feet with intentional pressure. And this isn't spot energy. It's not meant to immediately calm you. It might, you might not feel anything right away. And hopefully you love geranium. If you don't or you don't have it, just use your lotion and use that intention. But geranium will help physiologically as well by going right to the limbic system and sending those chemical messengers to set this in motion to regulate the nervous system. Now again, with breathing, if you don't have oils, then you could breathe and breathe without forcing. As you massage, breathe naturally. No counting or fixing. Just let your exhale be a little slightly longer than your inhale. And that'll tell the nervous system that there is no emergency right now. I use this a lot with my patients. It's just taking that, having them take a deep breath in and then just exhaling and making that exhale really long. Now, sometimes I will count for them and count to four, hold for two will breathe out for six or seven. And that's a rhythm that you can do if you wanna count. But in this moment, and when you're doing this a couple times a day. You can let accounting go. Just make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale. Now, this is when you can start to say out loud or silently However you, it feels safest for you is I can feel this and stay present, or I am increasing my capacity to regulate. And today I was just saying I am increasing my capacity. I'm increasing my capacity. Because I want to learn how to feel it and how to regulate without spinning outta control. But the important thing is just to know is that we are going to feel these feelings and they are normal. There's nothing wrong with us if we're feeling anxious and to know that sometimes it's not even our own. The energy that is bringing this on. So stay with that sensation for 60, 90 seconds, just for a couple minutes. if you start to get real uncomfortable, don't leave that moment. Just soften around it. Tell yourself you're okay, you're safe and you're loved. That's the training of it. So what I'm learning and this week, I've gotten a really good challenge, a really good reminder, a really good teachers as far as emotions go. but this week reminded me of something important that resilience isn't about how much you can endure. It's not about how well your nervous system can process and recover. It's not about how much you can let things roll off your back or not let them bother you.'cause sometimes the bravest thing we can do is just admit I'm at capacity and it's time to build some more. actually. That's where I am today. And. We don't do that through force and we don't do that through ignoring or toughening up or powering up. We do that through safety and rhythm and sensation and honesty and yeah, it's not fun and doesn't always feel good, but it's a whole lot better than the alternative to letting it close in on you and become inflammation or disease, high blood pressure. And this isn't really about just feeling better or because we can all, we're mature adults. We will go out into the world, we will go spend time with people, we'll go to work and we will, we can cover that up. We can go and just. Everything is okay. We can deal with it privately and let it roll off. We can ignore it. We can tell ourselves that practically, there's nothing to be upset about that we are bigger than this or whatever we messages or how you work through that. Yeah, everything's gonna be okay. if everybody would just calm down, it's no big deal. Those are the things that we say, but when stress and fear and grief and chronic activation isn't processed, it doesn't disappear. It goes somewhere, and the nervous system is the switchboard that determines where it lands. There are two common paths When stress isn't worked through, there's absorption and that's taking it into the body, and there's suppression or ignoring, pushing it down or bypassing it. Both of those have real health consequences, and that's really why we need to talk about it this is especially common in nurses and caregivers and high empathetic people I know because I get them in coaching conversations and they are just spent, and when they tell me their story or what they're taking on and they tell it as if this is just the way what everybody does, this is just the way it's always been, then you can start to understand why they're feeling so weighed down and sometimes they don't even know why. Because you don't just witness stress, you hold it. So nervous system impact chronic sympathetic activation, that fight or flight reduced parasympathetic recovery. We have increased baseline cortisol and adrenaline. Narrowed stress tolerance. mentioned that a little bit earlier. But this means that there's a smaller window of tolerance over time. That nervous system loses its flexibility and it can either be hyper reactive or exhausted. And that's usually where I talk to nurses, is that they're exhausted. So physical consequences though, and we tend to. Disconnect these because of a maybe because of awareness, but research links chronic unprocessed stress to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, chronic pain syndromes like neck and jaw and back and headaches. Think about when you are most stressed. Maybe you have some kind of pain that kind of tends to surface over and over again. I get a pain in the, my right shoulder and the, and neck. It's always in the same spot. as soon as I feel it, I recognize it as stress. It's not that I slept wrong, it's not that I was doing something or I don't go into the trying to figure out what I did to my shoulder and neck. I immediately recognize it as being a sign of stress that I need to dig into a little bit to find out why it's there. Maybe you have something similar, migraines, IBS or other gut dysregulation. That's a big one. There's autoimmune flares and inflammation, sleep disturbances, hormone disruption, including worsened perimenopause symptoms. this is also where weight fluctuations come into play with inflammation and emotional safety. All of those things play into this response, whether we know it or not. This ist a mind over matter kind of thing. This is biology, responding to overload. So then the second pattern is just as costly. Instead of feeling everything the nervous system learns to, I can't feel this. It's too much. So it numbs. So that means that dorsal vagal dominance, which means shut down, collapse, or disconnection, there's emotional flattening, reduced Interoception, which means loss of body signals. We start to not feel as much delayed stress responses until it suddenly explodes. This is that boiling pot syndrome. this, often looks like functioning well on the outside, fatigue and brain fog and apathy on the inside, feeling not like myself. Anxiety spikes that seem to come out of just nowhere. This is probably what I'm dealing with mostly, and is just really unpacking these things and noticing that they're there and finding out why. Now long-term health consequences of suppressing is depression and anxiety disorders, immune suppression, metabolic dysregulation, weight gain. Increased risk of inflammatory diseases, disconnection from hunger and sanity and fatigue cues sometimes we don't even hunger isn't part of why we eat or don't eat burnout that feels sudden, but was actually building for years. The body keeps score even when the mind avoids it. Then there's also the midlife factors. Perimenopause reduces that physiological buffering. So hormone fluctuations affect cortisol clearance and serotonin regulation, GABA mediated calming, sleep, architecture, stress recovery over time, and that's when the strategies that worked before stopped working. And for new nurses, this load is cumulative. We have moral distress. Chronic vigilance repeated exposure to trauma, lack of recovery between shifts. And sometimes we experience trauma and have to go just keep going. How many of you have had that where you are deal with a crisis situation and you just have to walk right out of it into normal interactions or maybe even another crisis situation? Nobody comes and asks us if we're okay. I was watching Called the midwife. And one Of the midwives experienced the death of an infant. And when she got back to the house, one of the one of the nuns told her to take hot chocolate and aspirin and go to bed So they held her until she could regulate and recover from that experience. We don't have that today. I don't think I've ever had that experience. I've gone from, an interaction with a physician, or maybe it's a family member or a patient. I've gone from trauma. I've gone from being in a code situation and had to go right next door and take care of someone else in a different situation, and it's nonstop and it's what's expected. So for nurses, again, the load is cumulative, that moral distress and chronic vigilance, repeated exposure to trauma and the lack of recovery between. Shifts. This isn't about resilience failure and this isn't about, oh, you need a resilience program or another routine or something else to do. It's about capacity that's exceeding supply, and it's something that we all go through and we all have to notice because this is physiological, this is the way we're wired and. There's nothing wrong with us for having these feelings and navigating this. This is all part of cell care. This is all part of loving and caring for ourselves. Now, the third option, The first being absorbing the stress when the body becomes that storage unit, and the second being, ignoring or suppressing that stress when the system goes quiet, but it's not really safe The third option is to that we process instead of absorbing or avoiding. So there is another path you guys And actually just talking about this is really helping me see some of the things that are going on and what I need to, as soon as I shut off the recording here, what I need to journal on, so there's this other path, is when stress is felt. Regulated and released. The nervous system learns I can experience intensity without harm, and this is how capacity grows and the health benefits to working stress through is improved autonomic balance, reduced inflammatory markers, better sleep quality, improved hormonal regulation, more emotional resilience, fewer stress related symptoms, and increased sense of agency and safety. And this is why regulation practices work when they are consistent, sensory and relational, not when they're occasional or performative. This isn't about showing up at work, a calmer person or a better nurse, or a better employee. This isn't about not speaking up or. Being more cooperative. This isn't about workplace. This is about your health and how you navigate through the different circumstances. This is about really being able to show up in the world in the way that you want to, which means caring for your loved ones in the way that you want to, being able to be there without sacrificing your own health and your self-care. This is about being able to work in those, in the workplaces that are very demanding and, increasing responsibility, decreasing resources, all of the things that are healthcare right now. It's about being able to show up there the way that you want to as the professional that you are fulfill your calling, to earn your income, to make the living doing what you love, or doing what you know you're good at. Whatever camp you're in the life that you know that is possible, the life that you dream of, the life that you were created for. Now, this is not about feeling good or feeling calm all the time. I think if you think you feel calm all the time, you're just, you're living in that suppressive situation where you're suppressing all of that and that's not healthy. So I think a good balance, 50 50, sometimes we're gonna feel like crap, and sometimes we're gonna feel great. But regulating practices work when they're consistent and sensory and relational, not when they're occasional or performative. So you're not doing this for just another thing to do. You're doing this so that you can show up. As your extraordinary self. if stress is not worked through the nervous system, the body will eventually express it. The symptoms will get louder, not quieter. And healing becomes complex over time, and that's not meant to scare you. It's meant to empower you to intervene early. I'm not trying to fix myself. I'm trying to reduce biological wear and tear, increase tolerance and recovery, protect that long-term health and honor what my nervous system Has already carried. And regulation is not self-care fluff, it's preventative medicine. So I'm gonna say some of this again because before we close, I want to name something honestly, because I think it really matters, I wanna say it again. When stress, fear, grief, chronic activation isn't worked through the nervous system, it doesn't just disappear. It goes somewhere. And for many of us, especially nurses and caregivers, it gets absorbed into the body. For others, it gets pushed down or ignored or overridden in the name of functioning. And both come with consequences. When stress is absorbed, the nervous system stays in a constant state of readiness. That fight or flight never really turns off. And over time, that shows up as inflammation, sleep disruption, headaches, digestive issues, chronic pain, blood pressure changes, autoimmune flares and hormonal dysregulation, The body becomes a storage unit for what never had a place to move through. Now when stress is ignored or suppressed, the nervous system doesn't calm, it goes quiet, numbness, fatigue, brain fog, anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere and emotional flattening. You might look like you're holding it all together, but inside your system is conserving energy because it doesn't feel safe to feel now. Neither of these paths mean you failed. They mean your nervous system has been doing its best to protect you under a sustained load, but here's the part I want. Us all to listen to. The unprocessed stress doesn't get smaller with time. It gets louder often through the body, and that's why this work really matters. Regulation isn't about calming everything down or making stress disappear. That's never happening. It's about building the capacity to feel and process and recover that. So stress doesn't have to live in your tissues, your hormones, and your immune system. Imagine if we all got this and we could support one another, and we could develop a common language that would help us to be able to express some of the things that we are sensing so that we can give ourselves. Some grace as we go through this because a lot of times we're going through it together and we don't even know it. This is preventative care. Really, this is long-term health protection. This is honoring what your body has already carried. And you don't need to do it perfectly, and you don't need to fix yourself. You don't need one more thing to master. You just need consistent, compassionate ways to let your nervous system complete what it starts. And if today all you did was notice, really notice where your system is. That would be a huge win. It's not failure, that's awareness. And awareness is the doorway to capacity. So take a breath. You're allowed to build this slowly, and you don't have to do it alone. I encourage you to join my mailing list and Join the Regulated Nurse Facebook group. This is a place where safety and honesty and working it through, not fixing, not figuring it all out, just. Journeying together. That's where we do that. Those are both free resources that I encourage you to take advantage of. I'd love to connect with you there. So again, take a breath. You don't have to do this alone. You're allowed to build this slowly as you go out every day and default to yes, your extraordinary self.