A label that feels 'right'

I’m not much of a label person. The tidy little words or categories we’re supposed to shrink ourselves into so other people can file us away usually make me itch. But every so often, one comes along that doesn’t feel like a box at all. It feels like something true. ‘Nervous-system-informed coach’ is one of those.

Nervous system-informed coaching. Sounds nice, right? But what does it even mean?!

Depending on how you found yourself here, you’ve probably heard me talk about the nervous system. But I’m not sure I’ve ever explicitly told you why I call myself a nervous-system-informed coach. So I thought I would welcome myself back to posting (it’s been a while) with this.

Since my brain loves crossing off information it doesn’t need, let’s start with what it’s not.

It’s NOT a technique I do to you. It’s not a breathing exercise I hand you so you’ll calm down. And it’s not a framework you follow to be productive in all the ways. (That last one is something else I also want to write about. Some other time.)

It’s coaching that supports you at your core. Because here’s something I’ve learned over the years: you can’t think your way out of a situation your body believes is a threat.

If you’re like me, you’re probably pretty aware of your patterns. The people-pleasing. The perfectionism. The avoidance. You journal, read the books, listen to the podcasts. You likely have some awareness of how you react when stressed. How it doesn’t serve you. And yet, in an instant, when the next stressful thing happens, you find yourself doing the exact thing you swore you wouldn’t. You might even catch yourself later going, dude, I KNOW reacting like that doesn’t help me. I know better!

So let’s get this out of the way: while your inner critic would love for you to believe otherwise, you are NOT weak, too emotional, a wuss, or undisciplined.

And yes—despite your best efforts, it will probably happen again. No matter how much you criticize yourself or how good your pep talks are. Why? Because your physiological fear response is online and in action faster than your thinking mind can process what’s even happening.

Long before your thinking brain weighs in, your nervous system is scanning your environment for cues of safety or danger. Your loved one crossing their arms in frustration. Your dog suddenly barking at the door at night. Receiving a ‘We need to talk’ message. Before you consciously understand what’s happening, you’ve probably already felt your body tense, your heart rate climb, or your breath catch in your throat.

The official term for this is neuroception. Neuroception happens beneath conscious thought in order to guard you against possible threats. And when it detects one, it sends signals through your body to mobilize in whatever way it needs to keep you safe.

A mobilized nervous system is laser-focused on the threat in front of it. And when your system is focused on survival, it reroutes your resources toward fast, automatic, threat-reactive responses. Energy that could go toward creative thinking, complex problem-solving, or, say, digesting your lunch, gets redirected to help you fight, run, or freeze.

Under acute stress, research shows that activity in the prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain responsible for planning, reasoning, weighing options, and taking someone else’s perspective) actually drops.

What this means is that when stress is high, you often can’t think your way out of the bind you’re in. In that moment, your ability to think clearly and problem-solve has partly gone offline. Which is great if you need to sprint away from danger. Not so great if you need to communicate clearly under pressure.

When we’re in survival mode, we stare at the obstacle in front of us with a narrow, tunnel-vision kind of focus. We react instinctively. No matter how hard we try, we usually don’t have the capacity to get the perspective we need to see a clear path forward.

This is why nervous system-informed coaching is so powerful. It recognizes that trying to solve our stuckness from survival mode gets us nowhere fast. So instead of reaching first for external tools and frameworks to fix the problem, we look inward. We explore what you need to step out of survival mode and back into presence, so you can address your current challenge with your full capacity.

Because if we chase our goals from survival mode alone, we may reach them, but we’ll have arrived still in survival mode. I’ve seen it so many times, and felt it within myself as well: feeling relief rather than celebration, and looking immediately to where I ‘should’ be next. It’s a vicious cycle.

It also means that nervous system-informed coaching doesn’t meet your stuckness by trying to fix it. It meets it with curiosity. Because your resistance, your protective habits, and the stories you tell about why you can’t are NOT something we need to move out of the way. They are where the work begins. Every one of them took shape to protect you from something. If we dismiss them, override them, or shame them into submission, you might get a week of white-knuckled change. Or a month. But eventually, willpower fades, and your patterns reemerge because you never actually addressed what they were protecting.

Real change comes from turning toward the resistance, not away.

So instead of managing your fear, we work with it. And slowly, something opens. You become more able to feel a hard thing without being completely run by it. You get more room to choose. Your stress response—those physical nervous system signs—becomes vital information you can use.

Which is what you have to gain. It’s not about finding more calm, more control, more structure…though you may feel like you get more of these too. It’s about feeling more presence, more creativity, more connection, more agency, and more love. More of YOU.

That’s what nervous system-informed coaching means to me. It’s not about helping you calm down. It’s about helping you come home.

If you made it this far, here is my invitation: Recall a recent moment when you snapped or did the automatic thing that makes you cringe, even when you ‘knew better.’ Notice if you’re still judging yourself for your behavior. What if, instead, you met that reactive behavior with a ‘Hey, I know you were doing that to protect me. What were you afraid would happen if you didn’t act that way?’

I’d love to hear what you find!

xo, Beth