Navigating Dysregulation as a Caretaker: What I Thought Was an Enemy Was Actually my Body Protecting Me
- rachel stokes
- Nov 20
- 6 min read
Relearning my relationship with safety and rest while caring for others.
The body needs soothing. It needs room. It needs a leader. It needs you — not the version of you trying to fix everything, but the version willing to stay.
The Myth of the Inner Enemy
For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me. Like I had this enemy inside of me that sabotaged every moment of rest or ease. Especially when I was caretaking. My brain would get loud, my chest would tighten, and I’d feel like I was living on my last nerve — even when nothing “bad” was happening.
It was hard enough being alone with myself, much less with animals, who live and communicate entirely through their nervous systems. They are pure need and pure expression, nonstop, with no shame or hesitation. This is why animals are always babies — they don’t strategize their needs, they just have them.
My body struggled under the weight of interpreting those needs. What I didn’t understand was that I was already at capacity — always strung out, already bracing. So of course I spiraled into guilt, tightness, and hypervigilance the moment I sensed an animal wanting something from me.
But it wasn’t about the animals at all. It wasn’t even about pet sitting.
To understand what was actually happening, I had to go deeper — into the unseen.
The Real Issue: Collapsed Capacity from Old Conditioning
What I’ve learned is that I never had an enemy. I had a nervous system with a low capacity because I spent years learning that needs and safety don’t belong in the same sentence.
If you grew up hiding your true self to make others comfortable — or shrinking yourself to belong — then you might recognize this, too. My body equated being needed with pressure, responsibility, and the risk of overwhelm. So of course it reacted.
My nervous system wasn’t responding to the present moment. It was responding to an old job description:
“Manage everyone’s needs so nothing goes wrong.”
“Hold everything together or you’ll lose safety and connection.”
This theme lives entirely in the body.
My body isn’t upset about dogs.
It’s upset about the role it still thinks I have to play in order to be safe.
This showed up so clearly this morning. I was trying to feed three dogs — all of them with different food, all of them trying to eat each other’s bowls. One of them refused to eat her own food at all, and I genuinely didn’t know how to get her to eat (she has a strict diet).
Suddenly my shoulders were tight.
My breath hitched.
I caught myself glancing up at the camera on top of the fridge, imagining the family judging me.
What if the dog never eats?
What if I fail?
Why am I already overwhelmed?
What’s wrong with me?
My mind was spiraling, and I was angry with myself. I had just woken up — shouldn’t I be fine? Why can’t I just have a “normal” nervous system?
But these are the words of judgment, not curiosity.
This is the old relationship I’ve had with my own conditioning — one where I treat my body like a problem to be fixed instead of a developing relationship to be understood.
So the real question became: What would a new relationship with myself look like? And who would I be if I stopped trying to “fix” every sensation inside me?
What's Actually Happening in the Body
My body wasn’t fighting me. It was fighting for me — just using outdated instructions.
According to polyvagal theory, the science of how we experience safety, reactions like hypervigilance, collapsing capacity, and chronic self-“fixing” aren’t character flaws. They’re signs of a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe enough to stay in regulation.
When we can’t rest in ventral vagal (the state of grounded connection), we drop into fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. The sympathetic nervous system handles mobilizing — the “do something now” energy — while the dorsal vagal system handles shutting down, withdrawing, conserving. These states are not moral judgments. They’re survival strategies.
As kids, we’re emotionally exposed. Our frontal cortex — the part that sets boundaries, contextualizes feelings, and keeps perspective — comes online much later. So the nervous system learns protection strategies before we ever learn language or reasoning.
If belonging meant shrinking, our body learned to shrink. If connection meant managing everyone else, our body learned to manage. If showing our needs led to disconnection, our body learned to hide them.
So in adulthood, when we want to live differently — with openness, rest, presence — our body isn’t “resisting change.” It’s just following the instructions it learned first.
This has been my exact experience. And what I’ve learned is that the body doesn’t respond to logic, pep talks, or shame. It responds to presence. It responds to tone. It responds to curiosity and space.
The body needs soothing.
It needs room.
It needs a leader.
It needs you — not the version of you trying to fix everything, but the version willing to stay.
And with the endless avalanche of self-help information out there, this can feel impossible. It did for me. But with patience, attention, and a lot of openness, I’ve started developing practices that actually help my body relearn safety in real time.
Relearning Safety in Real Time
Once I understood what was actually happening in my body, the question became: So what do I do with this?
And the answer wasn’t another strategy or another self-improvement plan. It was learning how to meet myself differently — in the moment, in the body, in the actual sensations that used to terrify me.
Here’s what I’ve been practicing:
Letting my body have sensations without pathologizing them.
A tight chest is just a tight chest. A spike of heat is just energy moving. I’m learning not to make every sensation a crisis or a character judgment. Most of the time, the moment I stop fighting it, it softens.
Taking 30-second resets.
This is a simple format I use when I'm triggered - on the spot. These tiny moments have become anchors for my nervous system. The format is always the same, but it can be applied to any situation in real time. You can even copy & paste it into ChatGPT with whatever you're dealing with, and it will walk you through it.
Here's an example of the 30 second reset format I used for the 'morning overwhelm' situation I described earlier.
1. Breathe.
Slow, through the nose. Exhale through the mouth like you’re letting air leak out of a balloon — quiet and gentle. Your body needs that slow exhale to come out of “I’m trapped” mode.
2. Feel (without fixing).
Notice the tightness in your stomach. Notice the “leave me alone” impulse. This is your body saying:
“I can’t handle any more input. I need space.” Let that truth exist for a moment.
No judgment.
Just sensation.
3. Name your intention.
“I’m safe. I don’t have to respond right now. It’s okay for me to take space. I can move slowly. Nothing is urgent.”
4. Feel for the shift.
Maybe your belly loosens 2%.Maybe your breath drops a little. Maybe the pressure in your head softens. Let that tiny shift be enough.
Whisper inwardly:
“I hear you. You’re overwhelmed, and I’m here with you. You don’t have to fix anything. Just breathe.”
Naming what I feel so I don’t get swallowed by it.
“I’m overwhelmed.”
“I’m bracing.”
“My stomach is tight.”
Naming something doesn’t amplify it — it contains it. It gives me a place to stand in the middle of it instead of drowning underneath it.
Letting myself not entertain animals 24/7.
This one felt radical.
Animals don’t need me to be “on” all the time. They’re not asking for performance — they’re asking for presence. And presence doesn’t require constant doing. Sometimes I sit on the couch and let them just…be themselves.
Realizing that rest is part of caretaking, not a violation of it.
I used to think resting while caretaking meant I was failing. Now I’m learning that a rested body is a regulated body — and a regulated body is the safest place for animals to be around.
Letting my capacity be what it is, not what I think it “should” be.
This one is still unfolding.
But I’m starting to trust that my capacity isn’t a moral issue — it’s a biological one. And it changes. And I’m allowed to meet myself where I am, not where some imaginary “perfect caretaker” version of me would be.
These aren’t quick fixes. I have found micro acts of relearning, overtime, to be much more sustainable and effective in creating actual change in my body. Tiny but mighty ways of telling my body, again and again:
You’re not in danger.
You don’t have to perform.
You get to rest here.
Comments