What Happens in Vagus
Stay Alert. Stay Guarded. Stay Ready.
That wasn’t a philosophy. It was installed.
Recognizing fight or flight. The body remembers. It can flip the switch on you unannounced.
It’s hard to come back. Even when you slightly have what feels like normal, you can slip right back into hypervigilance.
Lately, I’ve been suffering heavily from dissociation.
Today was a bad day. Very disconnected.
It’s a rollercoaster ride of emotions.
Hyperarousal — alert, guarded, wired.
Dissociation — numb, detached, unreal.
Emotional release — tears, grief, anger, overwhelm.
I’m moving through all of it.
This isn’t random. It’s autonomic state shifting. The vagus nerve sits at the center of it.
Hyperarousal
When the sympathetic system dominates, I’m scanning. Tight. Ready.
Heart rate elevated. Muscles braced. Attention narrowed.
No immediate threats — yet everything feels triggering.
That’s a sensitized alarm system.
The vagus nerve isn’t regulating here. It’s overridden.
That’s the “stay alert” code running automatically.
Dissociation
When the intensity spikes too high, it swings the other direction.
Fog. Distance. Unreal. Robotic.
In the grocery store recently, I was functioning — walking aisles, picking up what I needed — but I wasn’t fully there. I’d forget what I came for. Lose my place mid-thought.
It wasn’t panic.
It was distance.
That’s dorsal vagal shutdown.
When the system feels overwhelmed and can’t fight or flee, it freezes. Perception dulls. Emotion dampens. Time distorts.
I even fell asleep with the EMDR therapy app running — bilateral audio moving left to right. It helps. It’s helped before.
But when I woke up, I fell right back into disconnect.
Mornings can shift autonomic state before cognition catches up.
The body moves faster than awareness.
Emotional Release
Then sometimes shutdown loosens.
And it’s not subtle.
Tears. Heavy ones. Painful ones.
Earlier tonight, while at dinner, I slipped outside to get air. I could feel the pressure building before it broke. I stepped away to calm down.
Next door was StretchZone — I’m a client there. I walked in and spoke with staff I know. Bon, one of the sales reps I’ve built rapport with, and Sefwon, one of the stretch specialists.
I asked if there was anything physically I could do — stretching-wise — that might help relax the vagus nerve.
They were honest. They said they weren’t authorities on that kind of regulation. But they listened. They spoke with care. They asked what was going on. They showed kindness. Shared some of their own experiences.
That meant something.
I tried to stay present while talking to them, but internally I felt like I was holding onto my body like I was a helium balloon. Light. Not fully anchored.
I gave them the short version — trauma, grief, losing loved ones.
Their words didn’t fix anything, but they extended the threshold. They helped me hang on a little longer.
When I walked back into the restaurant next door, it took only a few minutes.
Then it hit.
Waterworks.
Not dramatic. Not loud. Just sudden.
A small breakdown.
I later apologized to the wait staff. They were concerned. They told me it was okay. They understood.
Still, I hate when it happens. That feeling of no control once the emotion breaks.
Thirty minutes later, Robert called to check in.
At some point in the conversation he said something completely unrelated that caught me off guard.
We squeezed in some laughter.
That mattered.
Even inside dysregulation, there was still access to connection.
That’s ventral vagal tone flickering back online.
I don’t like when I can’t stop the tears.
But the fact that I can still laugh tells me I’m not gone.
The Loop
Sympathetic activation — hypervigilant.
Dorsal vagal shutdown — dissociated.
Partial ventral vagal return — emotional release.
That’s the cycle.
It’s a loop.
It’s hard to come back once it’s running.
Even when baseline begins to reappear, the system can revert quickly.
I am desperate to get back into my body.
Desperate — but not unraveling.
Struggling — but not defeated.
Physiological — but human.
I’ve been here before.
I got through it before.
I’ll do it again.
Regulation
Cold water on the face.
Downward eye holds.
Long exhale breathing.
Grounding.
Night walks at the high school track.
Yoga. Breath work. Silence.
Space
When the nervous system is overloaded, it seeks reduced input.
I need space to breathe. To ground. To regulate.
I have a tent set up in my front yard waiting for me and Monkey. I’m planning on using that all week to chill in.
And I got a new hammock I can’t wait to test out at the park.
Not abandonment.
Recalibration.
Closing
My focus is on the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic system.
When you know the source, you know where to aim.
This is state cycling.
Not breaking.
Recalibrating.
Milestone #50
I'm a Traumatized Human
If this entry resonated — if the language of hyperarousal, dissociation, autonomic cycling, and regulation feels familiar — then you’ll likely connect with the I’m a Traumatized Human series.
That series isn’t theory. It’s lived experience. It sits inside the same territory — trauma responses, grief, survival wiring, recalibration. Not from a distance, but from within it.
It’s raw. It’s physiological. It’s human.
If you want to go deeper, you can explore the series on Amazon here.
No performance. No polish.
Just the work.
All my books here.
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