Understanding Your Nervous System as a Professional in a Helping Career

When I was a young teacher, 5’2 in my 20s, I knew that my presence as an “authority figure” wasn’t something I couldn’t rely on when walking into a room of 35 teenage students. Due to my age and youthful appearance, I faced classroom management challenges that other teachers didn’t and the techniques I was taught didn’t work for my pedagogical style or personality. For the first few years as a teacher, I was often in a state of “freeze” or “fawn” - and it was hurting me.

I went home every day weighed down by sense of doom. Everything I did felt heavy, like I had done something wrong and was about to be in big trouble. Going to work every day, I had such anxiety that I would forget to breathe. My body felt like it was about to fight a war at any moment.

And the key to me becoming a truly GOOD teacher, one who could manage my classroom environment with consistency and humanity, was being able to regulate my own nervous system.

Your nervous system is constantly reading for danger—financial pressures, high stakes decisions, emotional labor, and systemic challenges all register as threats. When you stay in fight, flight, or freeze states too long, your ability to teach, lead, or support others diminishes.

And nervous systems are contagious. When you are around other humans, your nervous systems synch up. This means that being able to reach a state of authentic calm is a powerful tool in a chaotic environment. It also means that if you get activated, you are likely activating others. Being able to shift your nervous system state in the moment is a highly underrated leadership tool. AND! You once you become comfortable doing it, you can narrate and model this process for your students, equipping them with tools to be able to shift themselves, too, and normalizing that this is something that we, as humans, should be doing.

Awareness of your own nervous system is the first step toward sustainable service. By noticing tension, shallow breath, racing thoughts, or avoidance, you can begin to intervene before stress turns into exhaustion or resentment.