Is it dysregulation or is it our biology?

Many nervous system patterns labeled as dysregulation are actually responses to chronic overstimulation.

Constant notifications. Artificial lighting. Noise. Speed. Emotional and informational input with no pause.

But our nervous systems evolved in rhythm with the natural world. Cycles of light and dark, sound and silence, movement and rest. What we’re living in now is a mismatch between our biology and our environment.

And no, this doesn’t mean we all need to run away and live in the forest. I hear that a lot.

But it does mean we need to come back to the natural world.

So much of modern healing asks us to calm ourselves in spaces that were never designed for embodiment, alignment, or coherence. We try to regulate inside artificial systems, through screens, fluorescent lighting, urgency, and mental effort.

When bodies are overloaded, digestion shuts down. Inflammation rises. Autoimmune patterns emerge. Not because the body is broken, but because it’s conserving energy in a world that never lets it rest. Many of us are living in a kind of collective collapse - high-functioning on the outside, yet deeply “dysregulated” underneath.

Many of my clients, when they first come to see me, are still trying to grow their capacity inside the very systems that are overwhelming them. The work here isn’t to “regulate” or simply grow capacity. No, it’s something entirely different. 

Something more empowering, where they realize, holy shit, I’m not the problem. I’m not broken. And for the first time, they give their own body the consent to say  “NO.”

This doesn’t always mean we have to leave those systems. Not everyone can, and that’s important to acknowledge. But it does mean we carry a responsibility to reconnect, to the earth, to nature, to the wild, to spaces that support our biology, physiology and meet us where we are at. 

And eventually…not today, maybe not tomorrow..but eventually, our bodies will lead again.