You’re Not Overreacting: Your Nervous System Is

Most people try to make sense of their emotions by thinking harder. It’s one of the only models most of us were taught: if you’re stressed, analyze it; if you’re overwhelmed, reason with yourself; if you’re anxious, talk yourself down. But here’s the actual physiology: your nervous system shifts before your thoughts even show up. By the time your mind has formed a sentence about what you feel, your body has already adjusted your breathing, muscle tone, heart rate, and sensory awareness.

This means a lot of what you label as “overreacting,” “shutting down,” or “being dramatic” is actually your system doing its automatic job. Understanding this is not therapy speak. It’s literacy. When you understand your state, you understand your reactions. When you understand your reactions, you gain the ability to change them.

All three shapes come from one system shifting between Activated, Deactivated, and Disconnected states. When you can see the state clearly, your reactions stop looking like flaws and start looking like information.

There are three core states your nervous system cycles through every day.

An activated state looks like fast talking, tight muscles, shallow breathing, irritability, pacing, or a sense of urgency you can’t explain. This is your sympathetic system doing its job. What helps isn’t thinking differently, but slowing your physiology: longer exhales, less sensory input, slower movement.

A deactivated state looks like fatigue, fogginess, numbness, low motivation, difficulty initiating tasks, or a sense of heaviness. This is often mislabeled as laziness. What actually helps is gentle activation: standing up, moving slowly, a warm shower, or light stimulation that brings the system online without pressure.

A disconnected state looks like zoning out, blankness, losing track of time, or feeling detached from yourself. This is dissociation in its everyday form. It’s a protective response. The most effective support here is sensory orientation: cold water on the hands, naming five objects in the room, or engaging with texture or temperature.

You’ll notice none of these are “think harder” strategies. That’s because your physiology sets the stage long before your mind gets the script.

One body, three states: Activated, Deactivated, and Disconnected. Seeing these patterns inside yourself turns “What’s wrong with me?” into “Oh, this is the state I’m in.”

Research backs this up in ways that sound like they came from a lab with oak-paneled walls, wool blazers, and professors who smell like pipe tobacco. A 2025 review in Frontiers in Psychology summarizes decades of work showing that the vagus nerve, the body’s primary parasympathetic highway, regulates heart rate, respiratory patterns, inflammation, and emotional reactivity in real time. Higher vagal tone is associated with better cognitive control, sharper attention, faster stress recovery, and more stable emotions. In both recreational and elite athletes, stronger vagal regulation predicts better decision making, greater resilience to pressure, and quicker physiological reset after intense demands.

The review also highlights how simple practices change the system directly. Slow, diaphragmatic breathing around six breaths per minute increases vagal activation and improves executive functioning under strain. Cold-water facial exposure activates the same reflex that free divers rely on, lowering heart rate and increasing vagal activity within seconds. Structured HRV biofeedback enhances interoceptive awareness and emotion regulation. And although the study didn’t specifically test “splashing water on your face before a stressful meeting,” the physiology is identical. Science is catching up to what your grandmother may have already knew.

The important takeaway isn’t that you need to become an expert in cardio-respiratory neuromodulation (hallelujah). It’s that your nervous system is always shaping your thoughts, decisions, and behaviors, often more than your psychology is. Your body reacts first. Your mind narrates whatever state it finds itself in. The stories you tell yourself are downstream from the state you’re in.

When you know your state, you stop taking your reactions personally. You realize they’re patterns, not problems. You intervene earlier. You get less confused by your shifting moods. You argue less. You recover faster. You communicate more clearly. And you stop using shame as your primary self-help strategy.

This is the foundation of everything we do at Wellness Dynamics and Movement Lab. Not optimization. Not performance culture. Not spiritual aerobics. Just real nervous system literacy for real human lives. When you work with your physiology instead of against it, things become workable. And when things become workable, change becomes possible.

If you remember nothing else from this entire article, remember this:
you’re not overreacting…your nervous system (possibly) is.
Learn your state. Then support the body you live in, and let your mind (may) catch up. But we will get to that part soon.