📓 Field Notes from the Nervous System:
How to Pause. Zoom Out. & Integrate: Protocol For Nervous System Regulation
Data Collectors,
How are you?
As we approach the holidays and face the many opportunities for nervous system exposure therapy. 👏🏽 This Protocol will surely be of use for you. A quiz will be provided at the end of this article. When you pass— you will receive your reinforcement.
Let’s get into it…
How to Stop Emotional Time-Traveling (and Come Back Into the Room)
Your mind starts sprinting while your body locks up. Your breath gets shallow.
Your chest tightens. Your shoulders brace. Your muscles hold tension as if something is about to hit you even though nothing in the room is actually happening. If you’ve experienced this, you’re not alone. Your amygdala has you time-traveling, But unfortunately not with Doc and the DeLorean— with your trauma and the physiological response that comes up with it.
What Is Temporal Flooding?
Clinicians often refer to this as temporal flooding, it occurs when the nervous system collapses the past and future into the present moment. It’s the embodied experience of reliving memory while simultaneously bracing for imagined threat. Good ol’ cognitive dissonance. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory explains this through autonomic cues of safety and danger: your system doesn’t wait for logic to assess the threat, it prepares to survive based on sensation and memory alone. Lisa Feldman Barrett calls this “the prediction machine” of the brain: it fills in emotional meaning before sensory data has even caught up. Then we have Bessel van der Kolk describes this as time collapse, where the body reacts as if a past wound is happening in that present moment— even if you are objectively safe. Dr. Dan Siegel’s integration model shows what happens next: without internal coherence, the system slips into chaos or rigidity, unable to flexibly respond to what’s in front of you. This is what is occurring all over society as we speak. Little puffer fishes and aunt Marges floating in the atmosphere dysregulated due to lack of self-awareness and accountability. Can you picture this? Imagine a bunch of aunt Marges causing secondary injuries in families everywhere because their dysregulation leaks out and infects others.
You’re Not Lacking Insight. You’re Lacking a Protocol
Most adults were never given a procedure for these moments. We forget this. Many of the generations before us were not given awareness language and the safety to speak.
There were no grounding hacks. No motivational Pinterest quotes and affirmations.
There wasn’t therapists providing strategies such as “try journaling.”
Nothing.
No real protocol.
One we should’ve learned at 10.
Practiced at 15.
Relied on at 20.
Mastered by 30.
But no one gave it to us. So we learned to regulate through control the same way those who raised us learned. The problem with this is… You are seeing the repercussions of coloring life with these out dated crayons.
Through:
Control the tone.
Control the conversation.
Control the outcome.
Control your partner. Your child. Yourself. We do these behaviors not because we’re controlling. (Some of us are and I can name that…)But because you didn’t know how to stay in the fire without burning someone else. The practice many of us avoid.
The SOP Protocol (Standard Operating Procedure for the Overwhelmed Nervous System)
This is the three-step protocol I teach in my clinical work and inside The Safety to Speak™.
Each step builds on the last.
PAUSE — Somatic Awareness + Emotional Inventory
ZOOM OUT — Cognitive Distance + Data Collection
INTEGRATE — Choice + Nervous System Leadership
This is not about becoming quieter.
It’s about becoming steadier.
Let’s break each one down.
STEP ONE: PAUSE
The First Muscle
Pause is not just “take a deep breath.”
Pause means locating the internal buildup before it becomes behavior.
It’s the moment you notice:
jaw clenching
chest tightening
stomach dropping
leg buzzing
thoughts racing faster than your mouth can keep up
This is somatic data — the language of your survival system.
From a clinical perspective, this builds:
Interoception (the ability to notice internal cues)
Window of Tolerance (the range you can stay regulated inside)
Impulse Inhibition (your capacity to delay reaction)
This is real-time exposure to your own body’s alarm. You are learning to stay with it long enough to collect information instead of obeying it.
STEP TWO: ZOOM OUT
The Loop Interrupt
This is the moment metacognition turns on.
Metacognition = the ability to observe your thoughts and feelings without fusing with them.
This step helps you separate:
Body alarm
Emotional memory
Predictive story
Ask yourself:
Is this a thought, a feeling, or an urge?
Is this about now — or then?
Am I responding as my current self — or as my wound?
These questions interrupt reenactment.
They create space. This is how you stop emotional time-traveling without abandoning yourself.
STEP THREE: INTEGRATE
The Decision Point
Integration is the return.
Your body has re-entered the room.
You’re back online.
Now you choose:
Do I delay the conversation?
Do I reflect aloud, but with a grounded tone?
Do I pause and co-regulate before proceeding?
This is the work of neuroplasticity.
Your brain will default to what it’s done before. Unless you interrupt it and practice the new pattern again and again. Integration isn’t about perfection.
It’s about integrity.
This Is Why You Need Reps, Not Motivation
You don’t need to “be better.” That is a quick trap into toxic productivity loops that get us doing everything but what we actually need to practice.
The world gives us plenty of opportunities to get these reps:
Social media comments
Family friction
That look your partner gave you
Your boss’s tone
A stranger’s silence
Your child’s tantrum
Most people try to avoid these moments, But when you do that you only avoid moments of closeness with yourself. This protocol teaches you to train inside those moments. Not perfectly, remember it’s not about that, it’s about learning how to do it without collapse that doesn’t teach suppression.
It teaches discernment.
The Worksheet (and Why There’s a Quiz)
There’s a printable multi page worksheet that walks you through this SOP. BUT before you download it, you’ll be asked to complete a short quiz. This is not to gatekeep, but to ensure you’re participating in the learning with intention not just collecting documents. One of the questions is open-ended. That’s intentional. There is no right or wrong in that area. Your answers are part of my ongoing ethnographic research on nervous system regulation, emotional conditioning, and embodied choice.
This entire corner of the internet is a playground.
You’re not being graded.
But you are being invited to grow.
Are you Ready?
Catch the full video over on YouTube. I will embed that video below…
If this work resonates, subscribe and stay close.
Starting in the new year, I’ll be going live and Sanctuary members won’t just attend, they’ll help curate what we explore together.🥳 The questions you keep circling, the moments that made you pause, the patterns you can’t unsee… that’s the material here. I’ll be waiting for you in the sanctuary.
I hope you all enjoy your holiday time, find the joy and the good with family moment even if challenging. That’s the mission I challenge you to. You can always find the joy in things even when you think you can’t.
Come as you are.
Where you are.
(The Quiz is Below)
Take The Quiz & Receive Your Reinforcement Gift 🫶🏽
Clinical References 📚
Porges, S. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made
Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself
Maté, G. (2022). The Myth of Normal
Craig, A. D. (2009). Interoception & Insula Cortex studies