You are listening to the Less Drama More Mama podcast, episode 394: Nervous System Terms Every Mom Should Know
This is Less Drama More Mama, the podcast for moms who want to feel calm, in control, and confident about how to handle anything life throws their way. If you’re ready to go from feeling frazzled and disrespected to feeling calm and connected, this is the podcast for you. I’m your host, Pam Howard.
Hey, Mama. Welcome back to the podcast. Last week, I think I may have gotten a little too deep into nervous system language without slowing down to translate what it actually looks like day to day. A listener reached out and said some of the words felt a little clinical. Like…what does regulated even mean in real life? I’m so grateful that she said that because when I went back and listened, I realized she was right. Over the past 18 months, I’ve been immersed in nervous system work where phrases like window of tolerance and trauma renegotiation get used all the time. Words like activation and dysregulation have become part of my everyday vocabulary with colleagues and clients. Today I’m going to break down the nervous system terms I used in last week’s episode so they feel more clear and practical.
So, first, when I say “nervous system,” I’m talking about your body’s built-in system that constantly scans for safety and danger and shifts how you feel and respond. In mom life, it’s often the difference between feeling frazzled and disrespected…or feeling, say it with me, calm and connected. Let’s start with the big picture. Your window of tolerance is the range where your nervous system is settled enough for you to think clearly, stay present, and respond on purpose instead of reacting automatically. When you’re inside your window, you can handle stress, problem-solve, and stay connected to yourself and your kids. You might feel challenged or emotional, but you still have access to your thinking brain. Like when your child spills juice right before you have to leave for school. You feel annoyed, maybe even frustrated, but you grab a towel and clean it up. You’re outside your window when the exact same spill happens and you hear yourself saying something you wish you could take back. Same situation. Different nervous system state.
For some moms, their window is pretty wide and they can handle a lot before they move into survival mode. For others, trauma, meaning experiences that were too much, too fast, or too soon for the body to process, can narrow that window over time. So it doesn’t take much. A tone of voice, a slammed door, a snide comment from your kid. And suddenly you’re outside the window. Now, inside that window, your nervous system is always moving up and down in energy. That rising energy is called activation. Activation simply means your system is turning the volume up in your body. It’s your body getting more alert and mobilized in response to something that feels important, stressful, threatening, or even exciting. Activation itself is not the problem. You need activation to focus, get things done, and respond to your kids. You’ve probably felt it when you’ve heard your child yell “Mom!” from another room or you’ve seen an email from the school pop up on your computer. That quick surge in your body is activation.
Let me give you an example from one of my clients. Last week, she made her kids a homemade Valentine’s Day pizza. It was heart-shaped, with homemade dough, and their favorite toppings. She was really proud of it and so excited to give it to them. When she asked what they thought, one of her sons said, “Eh. I think I could’ve done better.” Immediately she felt pressure in her head and something rising in her throat. Her feelings were hurt. Her nervous system was activating. And then her protection pattern kicked in. Her system went into a fawn response. She held it together on the outside, kept the peace in the moment, and then fell apart later. From the outside, she looked completely fine. Inside, her system was working very hard.
This brings us to regulation. Being regulated doesn’t mean you’re calm all the time. It doesn’t mean never getting triggered or being endlessly patient. Regulation simply means your nervous system can experience activation and stay present, or come back down after it spikes. You still feel hurt. You still feel frustrated. But you don’t get hijacked by it. Regulation in real life might sound like: “I’m getting really frustrated right now. I need a minute.” Or it might look like pausing, feeling your feet on the floor, taking a deep breath, and choosing your next words carefully. In my client’s situation, once she was more settled, she went back to her son and said, “I want you to know my feelings were really hurt when you said that to me.” And he didn’t get defensive or argue. He said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t realize.” That’s what often becomes possible when your nervous system comes back to regulation. You can say what’s true for you without it coming out sharp or reactive.
Dysregulation is when that stops being true. When you’re yelling and part of you is watching it happen and thinking, why am I doing this? When you shut down in the middle of a conversation and can’t find your words. When something happens at 10am and you’re still stewing over it and replaying it in your mind at 10pm. Sometimes dysregulation looks loud, like yelling or slamming a cabinet. And sometimes it’s quiet, like going numb, checking out on your phone, or smiling on the outside when you feel flooded inside. That’s dysregulation. Your nervous system gets more activated than it can comfortably handle and has trouble settling back down.
This is where capacity comes in. And that’s what we started talking about in last week’s episode. Capacity is how much activation your system can handle without getting overwhelmed. Picture a mom whose child is having a full meltdown. Screaming, crying, kicking. A mom with lower capacity might feel her heart pounding, jaw tightening, heat rising…and before she knows it, she’s matching her child’s intensity or shutting down completely. A mom with more capacity may still feel activated. She’s not perfectly calm, but she can hold that activation and stay present with her child. For some moms, it’s not just stress that’s hard to hold. Calm can feel uncomfortable, too. The good news is capacity isn’t fixed. It can grow over time as your nervous system learns it can experience discomfort and still be safe.
This brings us to one more important piece: completing responses that got interrupted. When we’re kids and something scary or overwhelming happens, our bodies want to respond — run, fight back, or hide. But many times we can’t. This is exactly what happened to my client. When she was young and her dad would criticize her or tell her her sister could do it better, her body wanted to yell back or run away. But she would have gotten into trouble, so she didn’t. That response got interrupted. And the energy from it stayed stored in her body. Fast forward to her kitchen last week. Her son said, “I could’ve done better,” and suddenly she’s flooded with emotion because her nervous system was reacting not just to that moment, but to years of holding back responses her body never got to complete.
This is why somatic, or body-based, work can be so powerful. When the body finally gets to complete what it started, that stored survival energy can release. Moms often tell me they feel calmer, more steady, and less overwhelmed by moments that used to completely unravel them. So now when you hear words like activated, regulated, dysregulated, capacity, or window of tolerance, I want you to recognize these as real things happening in your body every single day.
Now, before we wrap up, I want to say thank you again to the listener who reached out and shared her feedback with me. I really do take your messages seriously, and this episode came directly from that conversation. If there’s something you’ve been wondering about, something you want me to break down, or even something that didn’t quite land in a recent episode, I’d love to hear from you. You can always reach out to me on Instagram or reply to one of my emails. I read every single one, and your feedback genuinely helps shape what I create here. Finally, if you want to go deeper into this nervous system stuff with me, come to my free two-day workshop, It Ends With Me. It starts today, and over two days I’ll walk you through the process I use with my clients to help heal reactive patterns at the body level so you can stop passing them down to your kids. You can register at lessdramamoremama.com/free-workshop. I would love to see you there. I’ll talk to you again next week. Bye.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, and you’re ready to feel calmer, more confident and more at peace in your family and life, I invite you to sign up for a free consultation with me to learn about how my coaching can help you achieve the exact life you want. You’ll take the concepts and tools I share in the podcast and apply them to your own life, and as your coach I’ll be there to support you every step of the way. Go to lessdramamoremama.com/mini and sign up now.
