The one where our nervous system reacts as if a tiger is chasing us—even when no tiger is anywhere close.
It's useful. But for many of the practitioners and clients I work with, it doesn't quite capture what's actually happening.
Much of our stress isn't about physical danger.
It's about people.
It's about belonging.
Contribution.
Rejection.
Disappointment.
Respect.
Connection.
We have a sympathetic nervous system.
We have a parasympathetic nervous system.
And, in many ways, we have a social nervous system too.
When we're under stress, what's often firing is the meaning we're making about our relationships.
Whether we're supported. Whether we matter. Whether we've taken up too much space—or not enough. Whether we might let someone down.
A delayed reply.
A look we can't quite read.
A room that suddenly feels different.
The body registers these signals, and the whole system shifts.
Research suggests that some of our strongest stress responses emerge not from physical danger, but from social-evaluative threat - situations where belonging, status, competence, or social acceptance feel uncertain (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004).
What we see from this reserach is that:
concerns about respect, contribution, and social standing are among the most powerful drivers of human behavior. (Yeager, 2024)
What often feels like an "overreaction" may actually be a nervous system responding to a perceived threat to connection or standing.
That doesn't mean the threat is real.
But it does mean the reaction makes sense.
And that distinction matters.
Because once we recognize the social strand underneath the reaction, we gain options.
An invitation for experimentation: Instead of asking:
"Why am I so anxious about this?"
We can ask:
"What social meaning is my nervous system attaching to this moment?"
What story about belonging, worth, contribution, or burden is moving through?
That awareness creates space (and new neural activity in the brain that helps us recognize patterns and self-regulate).
A space between the signal and the story.
A space where we can remember that our nervous system is responding not only to what is happening—but also to what it predicts might happen between us.
A quote from a Sufi poem I love:
"You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two,' because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'."
The "and" is the relational space between us.
It's where much of our stress, and much of our healing...lives.
Wishing you space, healing, safety and belonging..
Stefanie
P.S. If stress is often social, then regulation is too.
Teach the Nervous System explores what comes next: co-regulation, collective regulation, and the science of how one regulated nervous system can influence a family, a team, a room, or an entire culture.
Across nine modules, you'll learn the neuroscience of states, relationships, language, belonging, emotional granularity, and the social dynamics that shape human behavior.. so you can work not only with individual nervous systems, but with the collective nervous systems they create together.
Yeager, D. S. (2024). 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People. Avid Reader Press.
Dickerson, S. S., & Kemeny, M. E. (2004). Acute stressors and cortisol responses: A theoretical integration and synthesis of laboratory research. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 355–391.
