Episode 104: How Your Nervous System is Controlling More Than You Think

Ever feel like no matter how hard you try to stay calm, you keep snapping, shutting down, or feeling completely overwhelmed? You’re not alone. In today’s episode, we’re diving into how your nervous system is running the show—without you even realizing it—and how this directly impacts your child’s emotions, anxiety, and stress levels.

Your kids are syncing with your nervous system whether you mean for them to or not. If you want to help your child handle pressure, anxiety, and overwhelm better, it starts with you.

Tune in as I break down:
✨ Why your nervous system reacts before you even think
✨ How your child’s emotions mirror yours (and what to do about it)
✨ Real-life examples of how stress responses show up in parenting
✨ 3 powerful tools to shift from stress to calm—so you can help your kids do the same

If you’re tired of feeling like you’re in survival mode all the time, this episode is a must-listen.

Resources & Links:
💡 Join Living CALM: Learn how to regulate your nervous system and bring more peace to your home → Living CALM Link
💡 No More Yelling Course: Break the cycle of yelling and create calmer communication → Harmony at Home Link
💡 Follow me on Instagram for more tools & support:  Instagram Handle

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The best thing you can do for yourself and your kids is effectively regulate your nervous system. And a great place to start >> to wire the brain for gratitude. Research tells us that gratitude increases happiness and a peaceful mindset. Make the shift and watch how things in your life start to change. Sign up today! www.pamgodbois.com/gratitude

Transcript

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Hey there, and welcome back to the peaceful home podcast. My name is Pam God voice, and I'm your host. And if you've ever felt like, no matter how hard you try to stay calm, patient and in control, you keep hitting a wall, whether it's with your own energy, your ability to keep your cool or your kids, never ending emotions. Then this episode is for you. Last week, we talked about hitting the wall and we picked apart the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response. And how these nervous system reactions shape the way we show up as moms. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend going back because today we're taking it a step further. We're diving into how your nervous system is running the show often without you even realizing it and how this directly impacts your child's emotions, anxiety, and stress level. Because here's the truth. Your child is syncing with your nervous system. Whether you mean for this to happen, Or not. And if you want to help your child handle pressure, anxiety, and overwhelm, it starts with you. So let's dive in. Your nervous system is running the show. That's just how it works. But let's start with the science behind why you and your child feel the way you do in stressful moments. Your nervous system is like the command center of your body. It's constantly scanning for danger. Or safety without you even having to think about it, which is great because that would take so much energy if you had to actually think about it. But this is the process called neuroception. It's your body's unconscious way of detecting whether you're at risk or safe. When it senses stress or overwhelm, your body automatically shifts into the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode to protect you. When it senses calm and safety, it allows you to feel regulated, patient, and connected. But here's the kicker. Your child's nervous system is learning how to regulate by mirroring yours. This happens through co regulation, which is the process of a child's nervous system syncing up with the calm or the chaos of their parent or caregiver's nervous system. And this is something that we don't just use in parenting. It's a therapeutic strategy. It happens in classrooms. And this is what a lot of child therapists and adventure programming or, um, adolescent or child resources for mental health are using to help your kiddos learn how to calm down. Now let's talk about how this may show up in your day to day life. Let's say it's morning chaos in your house. You're running late. The kids are moving at the speed of a snail. You can feel yourself getting more and more frustrated. You have to get to work. You have an appointment. You don't want them to be late for school. You need to get out of the house. Your heart rate starts to speed up. Your jaw tightens, your voice gets sharp. And then what happens? Your kids feel it. Even if you haven't said a word, suddenly they're more whiny, anxious, or reactive. Or let's say you have a tween who's struggling with big emotions. Maybe they come home from school on edge. They slam their backpack down, snap at their siblings and burst into tears over something seemingly small. You try to stay calm, but deep down, you're feeling overwhelmed too, and before you know it, you're both in a stress spiral together. This actually happens in my house with my daughter and my husband all the time. I'm the mom who talks about everything. My feelings, their feelings, me questioning if maybe I'm having feelings. I invite my family to call me out if I'm on edge, slamming things around or acting out of character. My husband, on the other hand, is someone who always says, I'm fine when he's not fine. I'm not slamming when he's slamming. And I'm not rushing around frantically when he is in fact rushing around frantically. And my daughter asks him point blank and he denies it. And then I watch their stress spiral happen. She's frustrated because she can feel and see how he's reacting differently than he normally is. And he's denying it. She's getting more and more frustrating because he's denying it. And she says, my eyes are telling me this is what's going on with you. There's something going on. And he says, no, no, no, I'm fine. And over and over and over as things escalate. She starts yelling, he starts yelling, and then he turns to me and says, can't you do something about this? That's co regulation in action. In this case, their nervous systems are feeding off of each other. And this is why as moms and as parents, we have to regulate ourselves first. In everyday parenting, this might show up in a bunch of different ways. Let's go deeper into what this might look like in your house. Scenario number one, what I like to call the homework meltdown. Your preteen has a big assignment due. They sit down, open their laptop, stare at the screen and they freeze. And maybe it's even something that they've been assigned for an extended period of time and they haven't started working on it and it's due tomorrow. Maybe they say, I don't know what to do. And you try to be encouraging. You'll figure it out. Just start somewhere. Take a deep breath. Can I go through the assignment with you? But instead of calming down, they just get more upset. You don't understand. I can't do this. I don't know how to do this. I'm stupid. At this point, your nervous system starts reacting to maybe your frustration rises. You're frustrated that they haven't been working on this project since it was assigned. You might be thinking, why are they overreacting? It's not that big of a deal. Or your anxiety kicks in and you start thinking, if they don't finish this, they'll fail. What does that mean about me? What does that mean about them? But what's really happening is your child's nervous system is in the freeze response. They feel overwhelmed and can't access their logical thinking. If you respond with frustration or urgency, their system perceives more stress and shuts down further. But if you stay calm, take a deep breath and say, I hear you. Let's take a break and reset together. You help their nervous system find safety and regulation. So I'm going to invite you to just be honest with yourself for a moment. Are you the mom that's amping them up because your stress, worry, or anxiety about their ability to be successful in the world or to be okay in their classroom has you on edge? Or are you the mom that's able to help them to step away, stay calm, break it down and get it done with ease. Which category do you fall into right now? No judgment. I don't want you to judge yourself. Just simply identify. Do you tend more towards category one or category two? Here's another example. And raise your hand if this one sounds familiar. You're trying to get out the door. You've asked your child five times to put on their shoes and they're still messing around or sitting on the couch on their phone. And before you even think you snap, just put your shoes on already. Put your damn phone down. What is wrong with you? Why is this so hard? We do this every single day. Why do I always have to ask you cue instant mom guilt. Here's what's happening inside your brain. Your nervous system hits overwhelm. You're frustrated. You're trying to get out of the house. You have things to do. They have to get to school on time. They've been late to school five times in the last three weeks. Your brain perceives the situation as a threat to your control and peace. You shift into fight mode and you lash out and guess what? This is not your fault. This is an automatic biological reaction. The good news is you can retrain your nervous system to respond differently. So how do I break this cycle? How do I help myself so that I can help my children? I'm going to share with you three powerful tools that you can start using today to make these shifts. Tool number one is to regulate first and then respond. So before reacting to your child's stress, pause and regulate yourself first. This means activating the parasympathetic nervous system, decreasing the cortisol by adding oxytocin. You can do these things by taking a few deep breaths, putting your hands on your heart. This signals safety to your nervous system. Drop your shoulders, soften your jaw, allow your body to feel relaxed. So this first pause so that you can regulate comes from a place of slowing the body down. This simple pause will shift you out of survival mode and help you model regulation for your child. Tool number two is a micro break. When you feel tension rising, step away for 60 seconds, walk into another room, shake out your arms, splash cold water on your face, get outside and get some fresh air. And where I live, it's very cold and very windy and very snowy right now as I'm recording this. So allowing that cold air on your skin as well, even for a very brief amount of time can really help to reset the nervous system. These tiny resets help your nervous system reset before it spirals into overwhelm, before it gets out of control. And tool number three is to teach your child to co regulate with you. Instead of telling them to calm down or to chill out or to take a break or to step away or to take a breath, we do this in collaboration, in connection. I can see you're having some big emotions right now. Let's take a breath together. Wow. It seems like we're both feeling some stress. Let's shake off the stress and start fresh. It seems like maybe you could use a hug. I could use one too. Can I give you a hug right now? And then we can start over. The idea here is that you're modeling regulation, but you're coming together to regulate together. You're not requesting or asking of your four year old or your 14 year old to figure it out on their own. You're actually coming together for this practice. And the more that you can do this together, the more they learn to do it for themselves. But for most of us, the pause, the shift, the co regulation, it's not as simple as taking three deep breaths and having all the stress, worry, overwhelm, mental load that you're carrying melt away. It may help in the moment, which is amazing. But honestly, I, myself as a mom have been doing this work for over 10 years. This is why I'm able to watch my husband and my daughter start to spiral together and not step into it with them. I'm able to be the voice of reason in the room, invite them to step back. Breathe, take a break. I offer to do it with them. It's why I can keep my cool when my daughter does have her infrequent meltdowns and frustrations towards me. And don't get me wrong. I love sharing these episodes and tips and strategies, but as humans, we are much more complex than just using a single breathing exercise to calm down forever and always, or to just be able to step outside and have that solve all of your problems. Because for many of us, we're carrying along baggage that we have been carrying for most of our lives. I am 48 years old. I have had a lot of baggage to carry. the more baggage that you're carrying, the more struggles that you've experienced. Before now, make it more challenging for you to step away, to breathe and to be calm in the now. It's not impossible, but it's challenging, right? And doing these exercises and practicing these tools is a great start, but it's just not a start. If you want to truly shift out of survival mode, you need the right tools and support. And that's exactly what I teach inside living calm, which is my program designed to help moms regulate their nervous systems so that they can parent with more ease, patience, and connection. Inside living calm, you'll learn how to retrain your nervous system so that your nervous system actually starts reacting the way that you want it to. So you stay out of survival mode, except when you need it, not just when your nervous system misfires. Do you learn how your brain operates and are able to start being in control of your thoughts and your experiences? How to retrain the subconscious mind, how to create a more peaceful home without yelling or constant stress. I teach you tools to help your child regulate their emotions better. And communication and self reflection strategies that allow you to support not just your children, but your spouse, as they struggle through this parenting journey as well. It gives you the opportunity and tools and resources and language so that when, if you have a similar experience that I do, your teenage daughter and your husband are in a stress spiral together, I'm not just stepping in to support her. I can step in and support him as well. So if you're ready to break free from burnout and actually enjoy motherhood again, click the link in the show notes and join living calm today because your peace starts with you. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. If this episode resonated, please share it with another mom who you think maybe needs to hear this and don't forget your peace is possible and I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for being here. Take care.