You wake up and the tension is already there. Jaw tight before your feet hit the floor. Small tasks feel heavier than they should. Some days you’re wired and irritable. Other days you feel flat, distant, like you’re watching your own life through a window you can’t open.

You’ve probably told yourself to push through. To be grateful. That you should be over it by now.

I want to offer you a different reading of what’s happening inside you. What you’re carrying from these last five years is your nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do. It learned to keep you safe under extraordinary conditions. The problem is it hasn’t gotten the signal that it’s allowed to stand down.

What I’m Seeing in My Patients Now

Patients arrive in my office describing symptoms that don’t fit any single diagnosis. Sleep that never fully restores. Digestion that turned unreliable. Pain that moves around. A background hum of dread that never quite switches off. The list looks scattered.

Under the surface, it all traces back to one mechanism: a nervous system that learned to stay on high alert and hasn’t yet received permission to stand down.

This is where I see conventional care fall short. A practitioner reviews the labs, finds nothing definitive, and reassures the person that everything looks normal. The distress gets filed under stress or anxiety, treated as a mood problem rather than a body-wide physiological state worth understanding. The person leaves with nothing that helps.

The collective trauma of recent years didn’t stay in our thoughts. It settled into our physiology. Research identifies the COVID-19 pandemic as a novel form of continuous traumatic stress [2], one that drains coping resources and imprints itself on the nervous system in ways that persist long after the acute phase has passed.

How Chronic, Unpredictable Threat Rewires the Nervous System

Your nervous system is built to detect danger and mobilize a response. When a threat is brief, you spike, you respond, and you return to baseline. That’s the design.

The last five years offered a different kind of threat. Chronic. Unpredictable. And for long stretches, inescapable. You couldn’t fight it or outrun it, so your body did the only thing it could: it stayed braced. Collective, prolonged trauma on this scale is likely to elicit symptoms consistent with PTSD, somatization, anxiety, and stress in the general population [3].

Held long enough, that braced posture becomes the new default. Researchers describe this as cumulative wear and tear across the body’s stress systems. Repeated or inadequate adaptation to stress over time results in dysfunction of the cardiovascular, immune, and metabolic systems [1]. Both the fast-acting stress response and the slower recovery response start to misfire.

Your body adapted to conditions that asked it to stay ready around the clock. That’s physiology doing its job, even when the job becomes the problem.

Key Point: Chronic, unpredictable stress trains the nervous system to treat high alert as the new normal. Once you understand it as a biological response, the self-blame starts to lose its grip.

How to Read Your Symptoms as a Map

Polyvagal theory gives us a useful frame here. In plain terms, it describes how your nervous system shifts between states of safety, mobilization, and shutdown. Developed by Stephen Porges, it proposes an evolutionarily informed neurophysiological framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system supports social engagement, emotional resilience, and adaptive physiological responses [4].

When you feel safe, you can connect, focus, and rest. When you sense threat, you shift into fight-or-flight: irritability, racing thoughts, physical tension. When threat feels overwhelming and inescapable, the system drops into shutdown: numbness, fatigue, that sense of watching your life from behind glass. Trauma holds the nervous system in these defensive states, leaving people stuck in sympathetic or dorsal vagal states without returning to the ventral vagal state of safety [5].

The Polyvagal Institute describes trauma as something that biases the system toward these defensive states and makes the return to safety progressively harder to reach.

The irritability, the fog, the numbness. These are readable outputs of a nervous system cycling through its protective gears. They are data. They are telling you something.

Why Some People Carry a Heavier Load

The load isn’t equal across the board. Women reported higher average stress than men in recent surveys. A third of parents of young children rated their stress at the ceiling of the scale. And many people were already carrying earlier hardship before this decade added its weight.

This matters clinically. When someone walks in with layered stress, I’m not looking at a person who failed to cope. I’m looking at a person whose system has been asked to hold a great deal for a long time.

Key Point: Brain fog, irritability, and emotional numbness are predictable outputs of a nervous system held in a defensive state. Reading them as data, rather than personal failure, changes what you do next.

What Talk Therapy Alone Often Misses

Insight is valuable. Understanding your history matters. And understanding alone rarely convinces a braced body that the danger has passed. I’ve seen this play out in almost every complex case I treat.

The reason is physiological. The states I described live below conscious thought. You can’t reason your way into safety when your body is still running a protection program. The message has to reach the body in the body’s own language, through sensation, breath, and felt experience.

This is why I treat safety as the first clinical intervention. Nothing useful lands until the system stops bracing long enough to receive it.

Key Point: Talk therapy works on thoughts. Somatic approaches work on the body state where chronic stress actually lives. Both matter, and order matters too.

Your pain and your distress are real. The work is teaching a protective system that it is safe enough now to soften.

Grounding Techniques That Actually Work

Grounding techniques are practical tools that pull your attention back to the present moment. They work by activating the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system, the part responsible for returning your body to rest after a perceived threat. Simple as they sound, the mechanism is real.

When you engage your senses in the present moment, you send your brain evidence that this moment is not the emergency. Done consistently, this rebuilds the pathway back to safety that chronic threat wore down. The research on grounding techniques points to exactly this mechanism.

A few starting points you can try today:

• Name your surroundings. Slowly name five things you see, four you can touch, three you can hear. This gives an alert brain concrete proof of the present.

• Lengthen your exhale. Breathe in for a count of four, out for a count of six. A longer exhale gently signals the calming branch of your nervous system. Research published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that slower respiration rates and longer exhalations phasically and tonically stimulate the vagus nerve, activating the parasympathetic “rest and digest” response [6].

• Feel your contact points. Notice your feet on the floor and your back against the chair. Weight and pressure remind the body it is held and supported.

💡 Start small and repeat often. A braced system responds to steady, gentle repetition far better than one intense effort. Two minutes several times a day does more than thirty minutes once.

Key Point: Grounding works because it delivers sensory evidence to the brain that the present moment is not an emergency. Consistent, small repetitions rebuild the pathway back to safety.

Why Self-Compassion Is Part of the Treatment

Self-criticism reads to your nervous system as another threat. When you scold yourself for struggling, you add fuel to the very state you’re trying to calm. Research shows that people with higher self-compassion show lower sympathetic nervous system activation and reduced inflammatory response following exposure to a stressor [7]. Self-criticism, by contrast, is rooted in the sympathetic nervous system and HPA axis, driving the secretion of stress hormones like cortisol [8].

Self-compassion is a learnable skill. Speaking to yourself with the steadiness you’d offer a close friend is a direct physiological signal of safety. It tells the system it’s not under threat from the inside. Neff and Germer’s research shows that self-compassion deactivates the threat system and activates the self-soothing system, associated with secure attachment and felt safety [8].

Key Point: How you talk to yourself during a hard moment is a physiological input, not just an emotional one. Self-compassion turns the threat system down. Self-criticism turns it up.

Building Capacity for an Uncertain World

The ground still feels unsteady for a lot of people right now. I won’t promise you that the outside world settles on anyone’s schedule. What you can build is a wider capacity to meet whatever comes.

That capacity grows through the body, with small grounding practices that teach your system to return to rest. And through connection, because a regulated nervous system nearby helps yours find its way back. Co-regulation is real. It’s one reason why isolation tends to make things harder.

Progress is rarely a straight line. You’ll have steadier days and harder days. A hard day is a system still learning new conditions. That’s not regression. Learning is uneven by nature, and the nervous system is no exception.

What these last years left in your body is a protection response that outlived the moment it was built for. It formed under real pressure. With patience, consistency, and the right support, it can reorganize around a different set of conditions.

Recovery begins by giving your body consistent evidence that it’s safe enough to soften the guard. That’s the work. And it’s work you can actually do.

Key Point: Resilience is built through repeated, body-level signals of safety, not through willpower. A harder day is part of the learning, not the end of it.

Key Takeaways

• The pandemic and political turbulence of recent years created a form of continuous traumatic stress that settled into physiology, not just thought.

• Symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, and emotional numbness are often the nervous system held in a defensive state. They’re data points, not character flaws.

• Polyvagal theory helps explain how the autonomic nervous system cycles through safety, mobilization, and shutdown. Sustained trauma biases it toward the defensive end of that range.

• Talk therapy addresses thought and narrative. Somatic grounding addresses the body-state where chronic stress actually lives. Both belong in the approach. The order matters.

• Self-compassion lowers sympathetic nervous system activation. Self-criticism raises it. The way you talk to yourself during hard moments has a measurable physiological effect.

• Recovery is built through small, consistent signals of safety repeated over time. Two minutes of grounding several times a day does more than one exhausting effort.

• Your nervous system adapted under real pressure. It learned one set of conditions. Given the right support, it can learn another.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I still feel anxious or burned out years after the pandemic?

Your nervous system doesn’t follow a calendar. When stress is chronic and unpredictable over a long period, the threat-detection system recalibrates to stay on alert as a default. That shift doesn’t automatically reverse when the external situation changes. It requires deliberate, repeated signals of safety to move the dial.

Are these symptoms psychological or physical?

Both, and that distinction matters less than people assume. The autonomic nervous system governs heart rate, digestion, sleep, immune function, and pain perception. When it stays in a defensive state, the downstream effects are body-wide. Treating these symptoms as purely psychological misses the physiological layer that’s driving most of the distress.

How does polyvagal theory explain what I’m feeling?

Polyvagal theory describes the autonomic nervous system as cycling through three states: ventral vagal (safety, connection, rest), sympathetic (fight-or-flight, mobilization), and dorsal vagal (shutdown, numbness, collapse). Sustained threat pushes the system toward the sympathetic or dorsal states. Grounding and co-regulation are tools for moving back toward ventral.

Why doesn’t talking about it make me feel better?

Insight and understanding happen in the prefrontal cortex. The defensive states that drive chronic stress symptoms live in subcortical structures, below the reach of conscious reasoning. The body needs its own form of evidence that the danger has passed. That evidence comes through sensation, breath, and felt experience, not narrative.

What are the most effective grounding techniques for nervous system regulation?

The three most accessible starting points are extended exhale breathing (four counts in, six counts out), sensory orientation (naming what you see, hear, and feel right now), and contact grounding (noticing the weight of your body against a chair or floor). All three activate the parasympathetic branch through bottom-up sensory input rather than top-down thought.

Is self-compassion actually supported by research?

Yes. Studies show that higher self-compassion is associated with lower sympathetic nervous system activation and reduced inflammatory response to stressors. Self-criticism activates the HPA axis and drives cortisol secretion. Neff and Germer’s work shows that self-compassion deactivates the threat system and activates the parasympathetic self-soothing system. This isn’t soft psychology. It’s measurable physiology.

How long does nervous system recovery take?

There’s no universal timeline. Recovery depends on how long the stress lasted, the presence of safe relationships, consistency of practice, and whether any underlying structural contributors are being addressed alongside the nervous system work. Steadier periods and harder periods are both part of the process. Neither is the whole story.

When should I seek professional support?

When symptoms are significantly disrupting sleep, work, relationships, or daily function. Or when self-directed practices feel too overwhelming to start on your own. A trauma-informed provider who addresses both the somatic and psychological dimensions will generally produce better outcomes than one working from the psychological layer alone.

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About the Author:
Dr. Zev Nevo is a double board-certified physiatrist, chronic pain survivor, and founder of the Body & Mind Pain Center. He helps people with persistent pain rebuild capacity and confidence using an evidence-based, trauma-informed mind-body rehabilitation approach.

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Medical Disclaimer:
The information in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this article. New or changing pain symptoms should always be properly evaluated by a medical professional.

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References

[1] Gallagher, S., Sumner, R., Creaven, A.-M., O’Súilleabháin, P.S., & Howard, S. (2021). Allostatic load and mental health during COVID-19: The moderating role of neuroticism. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity – Health, 16, 100311.

[2] Kira, I. A., Alpay, E. H., et al. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 traumatic stressors on mental health: Is COVID-19 a new trauma type? International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 20, 2346–2360.

[3] Tran, T. D., Hammarberg, K., & Fisher, J. (2022). A cross-sectional time course of COVID-19-related worry, perceived stress, and general anxiety in the context of post-traumatic stress disorder-like symptomatology. PLOS ONE.

[4] Kolacz, J., & Porges, S. W. (2025). Polyvagal theory: Current status, clinical applications, and future directions. PubMed.

[5] Poli, A., Gemignani, A., Soldani, F., & Miccoli, M. (2021). A systematic review of a polyvagal perspective on embodied contemplative practices as promoters of cardiorespiratory coupling and traumatic stress recovery for PTSD and OCD. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(22), 11778.

[6] Gerritsen, R. J. S., & Band, G. P. H. (2018). Breath of life: The respiratory vagal stimulation model of contemplative activity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 397.

[7] Breines, J. G., et al. (2014–2015). As cited in: Self-compassion and physical health: Exploring the roles of perceived stress and health-promoting behaviors. Health Psychology Open.

[8] Neff, K. D. (2023). Self-compassion: Theory, method, research, and intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 193–217.