Have you ever watched someone receive (or have you been the person to say) the words "just breathe" or "calm down"...
... and then noticed defensiveness or reactiveness from the person being told to calm down?
Not because those words aren't caring. Not because there was lack of skill.
But because the nervous system doesn't always receive those phrases the way we intend them.
Here's what's actually happening when someone is in a high-activation state.
Their threat detection and survival-oriented neural networks have registered something — real or perceived — and have mobilized the body's resources in response. In that state, higher-order networks that support language, and intentional emotion regulation can be significantly less available.
Now into that state, we introduce a directive or "instructions" from the outside: calm down, take a breath.
For a nervous system that is already primed and scanning its environment for threat — that external pressure can sometimes register as one more signal to defend against. Not information. Not support. Another thing to brace for.
Not always. But often enough that it's worth understanding the conditions under which it backfires — and what to do instead.
Here is the shift that can help:
Our body - which is the first vehicle that receives signals from the external world in terms of vibrations - doesn't primarily process words. It processes frequencies— tone, rhythm, breath, pace, smell, presence, pattern, safety. It is continuously running a below-conscious scan of the environment, asking one question above all others: is it safe enough to open here?
And the answers it trusts most don't come from instructions.
They come from the nervous system (and the corresponding vibrations of the state and intentions) of the person standing in the room with it.
You are already transmitting. Every interaction you have with another human being is a moment where your nervous system is either creating the conditions for regulation — or quietly working against them*.
When we want to offer something helpful to the collective nervous system states around us, a reframe that can help us is...
... to not try so hard to talk the nervous system out of what it's doing. Rather, we can learn to tune in to what we are transmitting and reflect on what how our desire for someone to be different might close the very systems we are hoping to open.
*In Module 1 of my Neuroscience of Emotion Regulation micr0-course, I go into the neuroscience behind exactly why this happens — and how understanding it changes what you transmit. If that feels like something worth exploring, I'd love to have you inside. See below for details.
