I Didn’t Know My Nervous System Was Stuck “On” Until I Locked Myself in a Cupboard

A while ago I locked myself in a cupboard and started throwing things.

I’m not proud of it. But I’m telling you because it’s the most honest picture I have of what a nervous system stuck “on” looks like from the inside. I didn’t know how to help myself. I didn’t know how to feel better. It felt like I was going to explode, and then I did.

The thing is, it didn’t come out of nowhere. It had been building for days, probably weeks. My heart had been racing. My tics were worse. I was snappy, catastrophising about everything, and running on nothing. I just didn’t see any of it as a sign. I saw it as me being a mess.

I didn’t see it coming until I was already in it.

So this post is the one I wish someone had handed me before the cupboard. The signs your nervous system might be stuck “on”, what’s actually going on underneath, and why “just calm down” was never going to work.

Quick note first: I’m sharing my lived experience and what I’m learning as a Level 2 Trauma Healing Practitioner working towards Level 3. I’m not a doctor and this isn’t a diagnosis. If something on this list is new or getting worse, please get it checked.

What “stuck on” actually means

Here’s the simplest way my training explained it to me.

Your nervous system has an accelerator and a brake. The accelerator is your stress response: fight or flight. When your body senses danger, it floods you with stress hormones, your heart speeds up, your muscles tighten, digestion goes on hold and your senses sharpen. It’s designed to get you out of trouble fast.

The brake is the part that brings you back down once the danger has passed. Heart slows. Breathing deepens. Your body goes back to digesting, healing and resting.

That system is brilliant. It’s meant to go up and come back down, over and over, all day.

But if you grew up somewhere that never felt safe, or you’ve spent years sick and not believed, or you’ve just been holding everything together for too long, the accelerator can get stuck. Your body stops getting the message that the danger is over. So it stays on. Not at full emergency level all the time, but humming away in the background, ready.

I grew up in a house where I never knew when the yelling would start. As a kid I’d lie in bed with my heart racing, too scared to sleep, and be told to grow up. My nervous system learned very early that it had to stay on guard. It just never got the memo that I’m an adult now.

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8 signs your nervous system might be stuck “on”

None of these on their own means anything is “wrong” with you. But if you’re nodding along to a few of them, it might be worth paying attention.

1. You’re exhausted but you can’t switch off. Bone tired, and yet the second you lie down your brain starts running laps. For me it looks like this: I’m sitting in bed yawning, barely able to keep my eyes open. Then I close them to actually go to sleep, and I can’t. I picture bad things happening. Things I need to do. Problems I’ll have to deal with. Whole made-up stories playing out in my head. The noise never stops. You might hear this called “wired but tired.” Your body is begging for rest while your nervous system is still standing guard.

2. Your heart races for no obvious reason. This one is a big one for me. Sitting on the couch, nothing happening, and my heart is going like I’ve just run for a bus. (Get anything cardiac checked by a doctor, always. But if it’s been checked and it keeps happening, your nervous system might be part of the picture.)

3. Your brain jumps straight to the worst case. A text that says “can we talk?” and you’ve already planned for the end of the world. That’s catastrophising, and I’m very good at it. In my training I’ve learned it isn’t negativity. It’s a nervous system scanning for danger so it can get you ready in time.

4. Small things set you off. A dropped cup. A kid asking for a snack for the fourth time in ten minutes. And suddenly you’re yelling, or crying, or both, and you don’t even know where it came from. Anger and outbursts are on my own list. When your system is already running near the top, it doesn’t take much to tip it over. That’s what the cupboard was.

5. You’re always on alert. Scanning the room. Reading everyone’s tone. Bracing for the next thing to go wrong. Loud bangs make me jump out of my skin. Violence on TV, someone being hit or thrown down, even when I know it’s fake, startles me every time. And when someone near me gets aggressive, my whole body shakes, and it can keep shaking for half an hour after the aggression is over. The danger has gone. My body hasn’t caught up. A lot of us learned to live like this as kids because we had to. It’s called hypervigilance, and it’s exhausting, because you never actually get to put your guard down.

6. Your body is yelling about it. Tight jaw. Shoulders up around your ears. Gut problems. Headaches. Pain that gets louder when life gets harder. For me it’s tics and spasms. When I’m dysregulated, my FND ramps right up. A few months ago, just worrying about who might be at a family visit was enough to set off a tic and body jerking episode (I wrote more about that in my post on chronic illness and trauma). My body knew I was stressed before my brain admitted it.

7. You can’t see anything good, even when people tell you to. “Just think positive.” Honestly, fuck off. When I’m in a bad place I genuinely cannot see the positives. That’s not me being ungrateful. When your nervous system thinks you’re in danger, it narrows your focus onto threats. It’s not a mindset problem. You can’t positive-think your way out of a body that’s braced for impact.

8. Then one day you just… stop. This is the one nobody talks about. If the accelerator stays down long enough, a lot of bodies hit a different kind of emergency brake. You go flat. No motivation. You don’t know what you should even be doing. You stare at the to-do list and nothing happens. In my training this is called a freeze or shutdown response, and it’s often what comes after “on” has gone on too long. It’s not laziness. It’s a system that’s run out of road.

Why “just calm down” doesn’t work

If you’ve been told to calm down, relax, or “just breathe” in the middle of all this, and it made you want to throw something, I get it.

Here’s why it doesn’t land. Your stress response doesn’t run on logic. It lives in the older, faster parts of your brain and body, the bits that react before your thinking brain even catches up. You can’t talk them down with words, the same way you can’t talk yourself out of flinching when something flies at your face.

Something I’m learning in my training is the idea of a “window of tolerance”. It’s the zone where you can feel stress and still cope with it: think clearly, respond instead of react. When your system has been stuck on for years, that window gets really small. So things that wouldn’t bother someone else knock you straight out of it. That’s not you being too sensitive. That’s a nervous system with no buffer left.

What actually helps isn’t being told to calm down. It’s giving your body small, repeated signals that it’s safe right now. Over time, those signals can widen the window again.

What I’m doing about it (the honest version)

I don’t have this nailed. I’m writing a post about nervous system regulation while still struggling to do it myself, and some days I feel like a fraud for that. But I’d rather be honest about where I’m at than pretend.

Here’s what I’m actually doing.

Catching it earlier. The cupboard taught me that by the time I explode, I’ve missed about a dozen earlier signs. Now I’m trying to notice the racing heart, the extra tics, the short fuse, and treat them as information, not a personal failing. Some days I catch it. Some days I don’t.

Tiny doses of safety. ADHD means I’m never going to stick to a 30 minute daily practice. So I go small. A sensory tube with little jellyfish floating in it that I can just watch. Sitting outside for a few minutes. Looking for tiny glimpses of okay in a rough day. None of it fixes anything on its own. Each one is a small “you’re safe right now” for my body.

Borrowing someone else’s calm. Texting a friend when I’m spiralling. It sounds too simple, but nervous systems settle around other safe nervous systems. My training calls this co-regulation. I see it every night with my son, who gets scared at bedtime the way I used to. I lie with him until he feels safe, which is exactly what I needed and never got. Turns out it helps me as well.

Dropping the shame. This is the big one. My nervous system didn’t get stuck on because I’m weak. It got stuck on because it was doing its job in a life that kept giving it reasons to. Being angry at myself for being dysregulated just adds more threat to the pile.

If this sounds like you

If you read that list and saw yourself in it, I want you to hear this. You’re not broken, you’re not dramatic, and you’re not failing at life. Your body learned to stay on guard because at some point it had to. It’s been trying to protect you.

And what a nervous system learns, it can slowly unlearn, with the right support and a lot of small moments of safety.

If you want somewhere to start, grab my free 60 Second Nervous System Reset Cards. They’re quick, practical tools for the moment you notice yourself starting to tip, made for tired brains and bodies that don’t have room for a long routine.

Get your free Reset Cards here

Signing up also gets you onto my email list, where I share the stuff I don’t always put on the blog. If you want to go further, my Nervous System Reset Guide walks you through bringing a stuck-on system back down, step by step. And if you’d rather have a deck of tools to keep on the bench for the harder days, that’s what my Calm in Chaos Card Deck is for.

I’d love to know: which of these signs hit closest to home for you? Tell me in the comments or reply to one of my emails. I read every one.

If this hits you hard….

You’re exactly who I write for. You don’t have to go through this alone.

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Briony Bianca

I’m Briony – the woman behind She Shines Abundance. I’ve lived through trauma, chronic illness, and a lifetime of being misunderstood. Now, I’m here to turn my pain into purpose. This space is for women who feel unseen, exhausted, or broken but still want to heal, grow, and find light again – in real, imperfect ways. Around here, we don’t fake positivity. We do honesty, healing, and small steps that actually make life better.