By Amanda | Deeply Rooted Balance
I thought I was just a tired mom.
Two kids under two. A colicky firstborn who wouldn’t sleep unless I was nursing him — and the second I moved, even a breath too deep, he’d wake up and we’d start all over again. I drove him around every single day just to get him to nap. He wore a helmet for nine months because he’d slept so long on my arm trying to fall asleep that his head had flattened. I couldn’t put him in a stroller. I couldn’t lay him in a crib. I couldn’t move.
And I watched other moms — their babies dozing in strollers at the park, napping in cribs, sleeping through the night — and I thought: what is wrong with me?
Nothing was wrong with me.
But something was very wrong with my nervous system. What I didn’t know then was that I was living with a fully dysregulated nervous system — and I had no idea what that even meant, let alone that it had a name.
I Thought It Was Just Motherhood
I was a new mom, newly married, newly out of my career, home alone while my husband traveled for work. Over nine years, we moved eight times. I was rebuilding my sense of home, my sense of self, over and over again — in new cities, new houses, new versions of a life that never quite felt like mine.
I wasn’t aligned with who I was. Not even a little.
And still, I told myself: this is just what motherhood is.
A good friend even said it to me once — lovingly, genuinely — “This is what it is. Watching a baby. That’s it.”
And I remember thinking… maybe I just want more. Maybe I just want to enjoy it more. Maybe something is wrong with me for not being able to settle into this.
But here’s what I know now: I wasn’t failing at motherhood.
My nervous system was stuck in survival mode — and it had been for a very long time.
What It Actually Felt Like In My Body
A dysregulated nervous system doesn’t always look like a panic attack.
Sometimes it looks like this:
- 🌀 Heavy, painful periods that you’ve been told are “just hormonal”
- 🌀 Sleep that never comes — or sleep so light that one sound pulls you back to the surface
- 🌀 A body that is always braced — shoulders up, jaw tight, chest shallow
- 🌀 Crying sounds triggering something primal in you — even years later, even when the danger has passed
- 🌀 Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix
- 🌀 A feeling of watching your life from the outside, like you’re going through the motions but not actually there
I believe I had PTSD from the sound of my children crying. My firstborn was colicky. The crying was relentless. And even now, years later, that sound can pull me right back into that place — heart racing, body bracing, nervous system screaming danger.
That’s not weakness. That’s a nervous system that learned to protect you — and never got the signal that it was safe to stop.
What It Looked Like From The Outside
My second baby was different. She slept when she was tired. She giggled. She lit up a room.
My firstborn didn’t really smile until he was one year old.
And I carried that. The weight of wondering if I was doing something wrong. The isolation of going through something no one around me seemed to understand. The loneliness of being left to figure it all out — mostly alone.
So I found ways to cope.
When we were building our next house — kids around five and six — I remember hiding wine in the pantry. Pouring a glass at 3pm while we played board games, just to take the edge off. Just to feel something softer than the constant hum of stress that lived in my body.
I wasn’t broken. I was dysregulated. And I was doing what humans do when their nervous system has no other off-ramp: I was numbing.
The Moment Everything Shifted
It wasn’t a breakdown. It wasn’t a rock bottom moment in the dramatic sense.
It was a lump.
One night I rolled over to sleep on my stomach and felt it — hard, solid, not normal. My heart stopped. I didn’t wake my husband. I just lay there for a moment, and then I went downstairs and opened my laptop.
I started searching. And somehow, in the middle of that fear, I landed on something I was reading at the time — The Root Cause of Cancer — and it said something that stopped me cold:
Stress causes dis-ease. Keep calm.
So I prayed. Right there, in the quiet of my kitchen, in the middle of the night, I made a deal. If this isn’t cancer, I’ll stop drinking.
It was a fibroid.
And I stopped drinking.
Not because someone told me to. Not because I hit a wall anyone else could see. But because something in me went quiet that night — and then got very curious. I started asking questions I hadn’t let myself ask before.
Why is my body holding this? What has it been carrying? What has it been trying to tell me?
That’s when I found breathwork.
I don’t have words that fully capture what happened in that first session. But I felt things move. I felt things release. I saw my life differently — not from inside the storm, but from somewhere quieter, steadier, more like me.
The breathwork gave my nervous system something the wine never could:
A real off-ramp. A moment of genuine safety.
And from that place, I started integrating. Started healing. Started coming back to myself.
So What Does a Dysregulated Nervous System Feel Like?
It feels like:
- Exhaustion that lives in your bones
- Periods that feel like punishment
- Sleep that never comes easy
- Snapping at the people you love most and not knowing why
- Reaching for something — wine, food, scrolling, busyness — just to feel okay
- Watching other moms seem fine while you’re barely holding it together
- Wondering if you’re just not cut out for this
- Feeling like you’ve lost yourself somewhere between the diapers and the dishes and the driving around the block for the fifteenth time hoping they’ll just sleep
It feels like what you’ve been calling “just life.”
But it isn’t just life. It’s your body asking for help.
There Is Hope
I want you to know that — wherever you are right now, whatever you’re carrying — there is hope.
Not the kind that requires you to overhaul your entire life overnight. Not the kind that asks you to be someone different than you are.
The kind that starts with five minutes. With one breath. With the simple, radical act of getting curious about what your body has been trying to tell you.
Your nervous system isn’t broken. It’s been doing its job — protecting you, bracing for impact, keeping you going.
But you don’t have to stay in survival mode forever.
🌿 Ready to Start?
Your body has been sending you signals. Maybe for years. This is your invitation to finally listen.
Download my free guide: “Why Your Body Won’t Calm Down” — and begin to understand what your body has been carrying, and what it’s been waiting for you to hear.
Want to experience breathwork for yourself? Sometimes the fastest way to understand what your nervous system needs is to feel it. Book a breathwork session and let your body show you what words never could.
[Schedule a Breathwork Session →]
Or if you’re ready to go deeper — Calm Your Storm is coming soon. An online program to help you see where you need to shift, where you don’t feel safe, and how to begin finding your way back to yourself.
[Join the Waitlist →]