Your Nervous System Is Trying to Get Your Attention

Welcome

Hi, I'm Teresa Zuvela, and I'm a licensed mental health counselor. I've been doing this work for over 25 years, and I built the Woodland Pathways Model for women who are exactly where you are now.

Before anything else: your camera is off, and it's going to stay off unless you turn it on. No one can see you. You don't have to say a word. You can cry. You can get up and walk around. You can lie on the floor. This is not the kind of room where you have to be seen.

This isn't a lecture about trauma. I'm going to explain, in plain language, why your body won't settle — and why understanding it hasn't been enough. I'm going to name four things you've probably been told to do that are making it worse. I'm going to give you the three states you've been cycling through, so you can name which one you're in. Then we're going to do one practice together, live, and that's the part you'll take home and use tonight. I'll tell you what getting better actually looks like, because nobody tells you and it isn't what you think. And I'll show you where all of this fits in the larger path.

One more thing, and I mean it. This is education. It's not therapy, and it's not a substitute for your own care. If at any point something gets too big, you have my permission to close your laptop or your phone. That's not failing. That's your nervous system telling you the truth — and listening to it is the whole point of what I'm about to teach you.

One word

One word. Just one. What is your body doing right now, as you sit here? Is it racing? Is it numb? Is it tight? Do you not feel anything at all?

Say it out loud in the room you're in. Out loud. It counts, and I'll explain why.

Racing. Numb. Tight. Braced. Hold on to those words. In about half an hour, you're going to know exactly what each one of them means.

Betrayal is first a nervous system event

Betrayal is first a nervous system event. Before it's a marriage problem, before it's any sort of decision, before it's anything you have to try and figure out — your body is registering danger. And it is correct. Something was dangerous.

The person your nervous system had filed under safe — the one it stopped scanning years ago because it didn't have to — turned out to be the source of the threat.

That's why this doesn't feel like other hard things. Your body doesn't have a category for the danger is the safe one. So it does the only thing it knows how to do. It stays on. It scans. And it won't calm down.

So you wake at three in the morning with your heart already racing, before your eyes are even open. You read the same text fourteen times, looking for the lie. You check his phone, and you hate yourself for checking, and you check again. Your chest is braced like you're about to be hit. And some days you go cold and flat and you can't feel anything at all — and that one scares you the most.

Here's what I need you to hear. Not one of those is a sign that something is wrong with you. Every single one is a sign that your body is doing its job. The racing, the checking, the bracing, the waking at 3 a.m. — that's a nervous system that correctly detected danger and has not been given a reason to believe the danger is over.

You're not broken. You are responding correctly.

The problem is that nobody ever taught you how to read your body's signals, or what to do with them. That's it. That's the actual gap. And that's fixable — which is more than I can say for most of what you're dealing with right now.

You can't argue an alarm out of going off

Now I want to say something about all the work you've already been doing, because most of you have done a lot and it hasn't paid off the way you expected.

You've read the articles. You've listened to the podcast at two in the morning with one earbud in. Maybe you've read a whole book about this. You can explain what happened to you in complete sentences. Some of you could stand up and give a lecture on it.

And you still wake up at 3 a.m.

That's not because you didn't understand it well enough. It's because understanding happens in one part of you, and the alarm is going off in a different part of you — and they don't speak the same language.

The part of you that reads books thinks in words. The part of you that's braced doesn't have words at all. It's older than words. It doesn't know what year it is. It doesn't know what it's called. It can't read. It knows two things: safe, and not safe. And it is not going to change its mind because you found a really good explanation.

That's why just tell yourself he's not going to do it again has never worked.

You cannot argue an alarm out of going off. You have to give it different information — and the information it accepts doesn't come in through your ears. It comes in through the body.

So if you've been sitting there thinking there must be something wrong with you, because you understand this completely and you still feel like this — no. That's the most normal thing in the entire room. Your thinking has already done everything thinking can do. It deserves to stop being asked to do a job it was never built for.

Which is why everything we do today, we do in the body.

Four things that make it worse

Everyone in your life has advice for you right now. Most of it is well meant. Some of it is actively making this harder. I want to name four, because you're probably doing at least two and blaming yourself for how badly they're going.

One: "Stop thinking about it." Try this. Don't think about the color red. Right. Pushing a thought away doesn't turn the alarm down. It turns it up — because now you're braced against your own thoughts on top of everything else. That's two jobs instead of one. When the loop starts, you don't have to argue with it or shove it out. You put your feet on the floor and let it be loud while you do something with your body. The loop gets quieter when the body gets quieter. Never the other way around.

Two: "Find out everything, and then you'll be able to move on." The detective. Reading the messages. Rebuilding the timeline for the ninth time. One more question at eleven at night. And here's the honest part, the part nobody says: it works. For about twenty minutes. You get a hit of certainty and your whole system calms. And then it comes back higher and larger than it was before — because you just taught your nervous system that checking is what produces safety. So it asks for more. That's not weakness, and it isn't obsession. That's a system repeating what worked.

I'm not telling you never to ask a question. There is a real place for full disclosure — done deliberately, with support, usually with someone trained to hold all the big feelings. That is a completely different thing from three in the morning on his phone. One of those is structured. The other is bleeding.

What I'll ask you to do is notice which state you're in when you ask. A question asked from a revved body isn't really a question. It's a search for a feeling — and no answer he gives you is going to produce it.

Three: "Just make a decision. You'll feel better once you know." We're coming back to this at the end, so one line for now. A decision made to end a feeling isn't a decision. It's a painkiller, and it wears off.

Four: "Give it time. Time heals." Time does not heal this. Time plus repeated experiences of safety heals this. Time on its own just moves you further away from the date. I have sat with women five years out who were as braced as they were in week two, because nobody ever taught the body anything new. They just waited — and waiting is not a treatment. And I've sat with women at four months who were genuinely settling, because they were practicing. It isn't the calendar. It's the reps of safety.

So if you've been doing these four faithfully and getting worse, hear this clearly. You weren't failing. You were following instructions. They were just the wrong instructions, given to you by people who love you and don't know how a nervous system works.

Three settings. Nobody handed you the map.

Your nervous system has three settings. You've been cycling through all three of them since the day you found out, probably several times a day. And nobody handed you a map. So here's the map.

Revved. This is your body with the gas pedal down. Heart going. Jaw tight. Can't sit still, can't stop moving. Wanting to run, wanting to fight. This is where the obsessive thinking lives — the loop, the same four questions circling and never landing. What really happened. Did he really love her. Was I not enough. Revved is also where rage lives, and where the checking lives.

Here's what revved is actually trying to do: it's trying to get you certainty. It believes that if it can gather enough information, you'll be safe. That's why you can't think your way out of it. It isn't a thinking problem. It's your body hunting for safety.

Shut down. This is the one that frightens women the most, and the one nobody warns you about. Flat. Numb. Far away, like you're watching your own life from across the room. You can't get off the couch. You can't cry — you want to cry, but it won't come. Some of you have thought, what is wrong with me that I don't feel anything?

I want to tell you: nothing is wrong with you. Shut down is what a nervous system does when revved has been running too long and the system is out of fuel. It isn't weakness. It's a circuit breaker. It's your body protecting you from a level of alarm it can't sustain. And it usually arrives right after a stretch of revved. So if you had a hard few days and now you're feeling nothing — that's not backsliding. That's the pattern.

Settled. Not happy. Not fixed. Not over it. But settled. Settled is the state where you can hear something without your chest going tight. Where you can be in a room with another person and actually be with them. Where you can think in a straight line long enough to finish a thought. Some of you have had ten minutes of it in the last month and didn't notice, because it doesn't announce itself.

This is the state where every good decision you will ever make gets made. And it's the only one of the three you can deliberately move toward — which is what we're about to do.

So whatever the word was that you said out loud at the start — racing, numb, tight — now you know which state each one of those is. That's not a small thing. Once you can name it, you stop being run by it, because the naming itself is your thinking brain coming back online.

The practice

We're going to do this together right now. It takes about ninety seconds, and you can do it anywhere — in a parking lot, in a bathroom at work, at three in the morning without waking anyone up.

I want your eyes open the whole time. Closing them sends some nervous systems in the wrong direction, and we're not going to do that today.

If at any point this is too much, just stop. Look at something ordinary — the wall, the corner, the door. Come back when you want to, or don't. Nothing about the rest of this hour depends on it.

Put both feet flat on the floor. Feel the floor pushing up on your foot.

Now, without moving your head very much, let your eyes go where they want. Look around the room you're actually in. The corner of the ceiling. A door frame. Something on a shelf. Let your eyes land on three ordinary things.

Now let your head turn slowly to one side, all the way. Let the eyes lead and the head follow. And then come back to the center, and go to the other side.

Now the breath. Take a breath in through your nose. Then take a second small sip of air on top of it — a little more in. And let it go out through your mouth, long and slow. Longer going out than coming in.

Again. In. Small sip more. And out, long. One more. In. A little bit more. And out.

Now stop working at it. Just sit for a moment and notice whatever your body is doing. There's no right answer. Some of you feel a small drop, or a lightness. Some of you feel more heavy, not less — because your body finally got permission to have a feeling. Both are fine. Both are just information.

If nothing changed

Nothing changing is not a failure of the practice, and it's not a failure of yours. A system that's been running high on revved for months does not drop because a stranger on a screen asked it to. It takes repetition.

And what it responds to is doing it when you don't need it — not only at 3 a.m. when you're desperate. Two reps on a calm Tuesday will teach your body more than ten reps in a crisis.

Why it works

Turning your head and looking around tells your body it's allowed to check the room — and finding nothing dangerous is data. That's the piece your body will actually accept, because it came in through the eyes and not through an argument.

And a long exhale is a lever you have direct, voluntary access to that talks straight to the part of your nervous system that decides whether you're safe. You cannot decide to lower your heart rate. You can decide to make the out-breath longer than the in-breath, and your heart rate follows. That's not a metaphor. That's how it works.

So you're not calming yourself down. You're signaling safety. There's a difference — and the difference is why this works when just relax never did once in your entire life.

What getting better actually looks like

Nobody tells you what progress looks like. So most women assume it looks like the feelings going away — and then the feelings don't go away, and they decide they're failing at healing on top of everything else.

Let me give you the three real measures. They're honest, and you can actually watch them.

One: the spikes get shorter. Right now you get hit and it takes the whole day. Later you get hit and it takes an afternoon, then an hour. The hit still comes. It just stops taking your whole day.

Two: the gaps get longer. There will be a Tuesday when you get all the way to two in the afternoon before you remember, and your first feeling about it will be guilt. Don't. That gap is the system standing down for a while. That's the thing we're working for.

Three — and this is the one I actually watch — the time it takes you to come back gets shorter. You do not measure this by whether you spike. You will spike. You measure it by how long it takes to get your feet back underneath you. Two weeks becomes two days becomes twenty minutes. That's the whole graph. That's what recovery is.

It goes in waves, not in a line

Here's the part I want you ready for, because it takes women out at the knees when it isn't expected.

This does not go in a straight line. You'll have a good week, and then a Thursday that flattens you, and you will be certain you've lost everything you gained. You haven't.

Healing goes in waves. And the wave that knocks you over at month five is genuinely a smaller wave than the one in week two. It just hits a body that had started to relax, so it feels enormous.

Anniversaries do this. The date you found out. His birthday. A song. A season. The light changing in October. Your body keeps a calendar you never agreed to.

Knowing that in advance is worth a great deal. It's the whole difference between I'm back at the start and oh — it's October.

Where this fits: the Woodland Pathways Model

What we did today is the first stage of the Woodland Pathways Model. It's called Stabilize, and it's the ground everything else stands on. There are five stages.

Stabilize — calm your nervous system, create safety.
Clarify — sort truth from confusion. Name what happened to you accurately, and without softening it.
Reclaim — rebuild self-trust. Start living from your own knowing instead of everyone else's expectations.
Integrate — make meaning. Carry forward what's true and leave behind what was never yours.
Live Well — and that's where you live in post-traumatic growth.

They're in that order for a reason, and here's the reason. Right now, people are asking you what you're going to do. Maybe your mother. Maybe a friend who's already decided. Maybe him. And you feel enormous pressure to answer.

Do not make permanent decisions from a temporary nervous system state

Whatever you decide about your life — that's yours to make. I'm not going to tell you, and neither should anyone else. But you deserve to make it from a settled body.

A decision made from revved isn't your decision. It's your alarm system's decision. And a decision made from shut down isn't a decision at all. It's a collapse.

Stabilize first. Not because the decision doesn't matter — because it matters so much that you deserve to actually be present for the making of it.

Calm is a boundary choice. Sometimes that boundary is with a person. Sometimes it's with a timeline somebody else set for you.

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Questions

How long does the healing take?

I'm not going to give you a number, and I'd be careful with anyone who does. What I'll give you is a shape.

Most women I work with feel the ground start to firm up within the first few months of actually practicing — not months of waiting, months of practicing. It isn't a finish line. It's a slope. And watch the three measures I gave you: shorter spikes, longer gaps, faster returns. Those start moving before the feelings do, which is why they're worth watching.

The other reason I can't give you a number is that I don't know what's in your nervous system — and you probably don't know either. Nervous systems need safety in order to bring forth the material that needs healing. So we go at the pace of your nervous system. That's how fast you can go.

I had a good week and now I'm wrecked. Am I back at the start?

No. And this is the single most common reason women think they're failing.

A body doesn't heal on a ramp. It heals in a spiral — you keep passing the same spot at a different height. There's almost always something. And finding it turns I've lost everything into oh, that's what that was, which is completely different.

He says I should be over it by now.

Most of the women I've talked to have asked this question.

Anyone who tells you your timeline is telling you about their own discomfort, not about you. He wants you to go back to how you were before — and that's not possible. You can't un-know that he acted out.

Your nervous system calms down when it has had enough evidence of safety, meaning trustworthy behaviors that stick over time. Pressure to hurry is not evidence of safety. It's the opposite. It's one more thing to brace against.

I'd also say that if you're hearing that a lot, that's a good reason to have someone of your own to talk to about it privately — someone who can meet you in your own state.

I keep checking his phone and I hate myself for it. How do I stop?

First, you're not crazy and you're not a controlling person. Checking is your body hunting for certainty, and it works for about twenty minutes, which is exactly why it's so hard to stop.

So try this before you go looking. Feet on the floor. Three ordinary things with your eyes. Long exhale. Then see whether you still want to check. Sometimes you will — but you'll be deciding instead of being driven. That's the actual win.

Should I ask for all the details?

There's a real difference between trickled disclosure and a structured disclosure led by a trained therapist. One is done deliberately, with support, with someone trained to do it. Asking him questions at eleven at night in the kitchen can be triggering and costly to you.

You're asking from a revved body, and a revved body cannot be satisfied by any answer. So after you get an answer, you have another question, and then another question, and then another. It just leads to looping and continued questioning.

If you want the details, want them from a settled body — and get someone to help you work through it.

I compare myself to the affair partner.

That is not vanity, and I want to take that off you.

That's your body doing threat math — trying to work out what made you unsafe so it can prevent it happening again. It's a reasonable instinct that picked a question with no answer inside it.

So notice it as revved doing its job badly, and do something with your body instead of feeding it another photograph. The comparing quiets down as the body settles. It almost never quiets down by being argued with.

I did the practice and nothing happened.

That's completely normal on the first try, and it's not a verdict on you.

A system that's been running high on revved for months doesn't drop because a stranger on Zoom asked it to. This works on repetition. And the reps that count the most are the ones you do when you don't need it. Do them when you're feeling calm — that teaches your body far more than doing them at two in the morning.

You'll have more success if you practice on a daily basis when you're not triggered. Then, when the time comes to calm a trigger down, you'll be able to use it.

Can I use this during a panic attack?

Of course — and lower your expectations of it in the moment, because during a full panic wave most people can't do anything complicated.

Feet on the floor and eyes moving around the room is the part that still works when nothing else does. The long exhale usually comes back online as it crests.

If the panic is happening regularly, that's a good reason to have someone of your own to work with — not a sign that you're failing.

What I see a lot is people who don't want to have a panic attack, so they have anxiety about getting a panic attack, and then anxiety about the anxiety. It just gets bigger and bigger. The more you can say to yourself, oh, this is a panic attack, it will pass — and do these few little things that tell your body you're safe — the sooner it will be over.

I can't sleep. What do I actually do at three in the morning?

Don't fight it. And don't reach for your phone either — a screen at 3 a.m. hands your revved system exactly what it's hunting for.

Do this practice lying down. Feel the mattress instead of the floor. Let your eyes travel the dark room. Make the out-breath long.

If you're still awake after a while, get up in low light and do something dull.

And if this has been every night for weeks, tell your doctor. Sleep isn't a side issue in this. It's the very floor everything else stands on.

Is this PTSD? Do I have trauma?

I'm not able to diagnose anyone from a workshop, and I'd be skeptical of anybody who offers to.

What I can tell you is that what you're describing — intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, numbness, sleep coming apart — is a recognized trauma response. Which is precisely why why can't I just get over it was always the wrong question to be asking yourself.

If you want a real answer to the diagnosis question, that's a conversation with a clinician who can actually meet you and talk with you about it.

Do I need therapy, or is this enough?

This is education, and it's genuinely useful on its own. A lot of women can stabilize considerably with exactly what we did today. It's not therapy, and it doesn't replace it.

My honest rule: if you're not sleeping, not eating, not functioning at work, or you're frightened of your own thoughts — get a person. A therapist. Not because you're worse off than everyone else, but because it goes faster with help, and you have already spent enough time alone with this.

Should I stay or should I leave?

I'm not going to answer that, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who would. What I'll say is: whatever you decide, decide it from a settled body. That's the work in front of you first.

I've had many clients come to me and say, "I told my previous therapist about it, and she just said run, get away from him as fast as you can." And then I quit going, because I didn't want to do that at that time. I was too scared.

I will never say that to anyone, and I hope no one else ever does either.

What do I tell my kids?

I won't give you a script for your own family. I don't know your kids, and this room isn't the place for that.

The principle I'll give you is this. Children handle honest and simple far better than they handle a cheerful adult who is obviously not okay. They already know something's wrong. What they don't have is a reason — so they'll write one. They'll make one up. And the reason a child writes is usually about themselves: I'm not good enough. I did something bad.

And your own regulation matters more than your wording — which is one more reason to get your own feet on the floor first.

Can I work with you?

My counseling practice is in Washington State only. The workshops, my writing, the Model — those are open to anyone, anywhere, and you never have to be my client to use any of it.

If you're in Washington State, on the physical ground in Washington State, I can work with you. That's the only caveat.

What if it isn't over? What if he's still lying, and I know he's lying?

Then your body is right. Trust yourself. It's going to keep saying so, and I'm not going to talk you out of that.

Nothing I taught today is a technique for making yourself calm about something that isn't safe. That would be gaslighting with a breathing exercise attached.

Stabilize doesn't mean accept. It means getting settled enough to see clearly what's actually in front of you — because you can't see straight from inside an alarm, and you deserve to see reality.

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What I want to leave you with

You're not broken. You're responding correctly to something that actually happened to you.

You have three states, and now you can name them.

You know what getting better actually looks like — shorter spikes, longer gaps, faster returns — so you'll be able to see it happening instead of waiting for a feeling that was never coming.

And you have one practice. Feet, eyes, long exhale out. You can do it tonight, or at three in the morning, or whenever your heart races. Do it then — and do it tomorrow at two in the afternoon when you don't need it, because that's when it's actually training your body.

Calm is a boundary choice. This is one of them.