Emonthebrain - A Dysregulated Nervous System Makes You Dumber - Here’s How to Fix It

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

In this episode, Emily breaks down the neuroscience of nervous system dysregulation and why a stressed, overwhelmed brain literally reduces intelligence in real time. She explains what happens when the amygdala becomes overactive and prefrontal cortex activity drops, which leads to poor focus, impulsive decisions, worse memory, and an inability to show up as the best version of yourself. Emily covers the difference between reacting and responding, and why every reaction is just an old automated program running from a past version of you. She also explains why stress distorts perception, why your brain scans for threats when you are dysregulated, and how that makes it nearly impossible to create a new future from that state. She then shares a set of practical tools to regulate the nervous system, including slowing down and stopping the habit of constant rushing, saying no to protect your energy, humming to tone the vagus nerve, practicing presence before you need it, and doing things purely for the joy of it with no outcome attached.

Science shows that a dysregulated nervous system actually makes you dumber. It reduces your intelligence in real time. And you've experienced this before. When you're in a rush or running late and you spill your coffee or forget something at home that you needed to pack. Or when you're in an argument and you say something that you didn't mean because you're in the heat of the moment and your emotions just take you away. Or when you're stressed or overwhelmed, then you just can't seem to think clearly. Maybe you haven't taken the time to recharge and your creativity, the ideas, the inspiration, is just, they're just not flowing. A dysregulated nervous system will keep you from creating the life

that you want to live. And sadly, the world is very overstimulating today. And more and more people are dysregulated every single day. And I want to talk to you about the neuroscience behind why this happens and exactly how to fix it. Because every single person deserves to understand how their brain and nervous system work and you deserve to create the life that you want to live. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when you're chronically stressed, overwhelmed, you're not sleeping, enough here. Maybe you're anxious, over-stimulated. These are all signs of nervous system dysregulation. When your nervous system is dysregulated, your amygdala becomes more active. And the amygdala is the known as the fear, anxiety, emotional memory storage. The limbic

system, the emotional centers of the brain. When your amygdala becomes highly active, what actually happens is activity in the prefrontal cortex starts to turn down. Your prefrontal cortex, the boss, the CEO of your brain, becomes less active. And so you are less able to be the CEO of your life. This is important for creating the life that you want, obviously. When your limbic system, your amygdala, you are dysregulated, your amygdala is overreactive, maybe you're anxious, stressed, and your prefrontal cortex activity starts to go down. This, of course, reduces your ability to focus.

Reduces your ability to pay attention to the things you want to pay attention to. It reduces your ability to follow through on the things that you know you need to do and get the things done that you know you need to get done, it can show up as procrastination. By the way, procrastination is often fear with a mask. It's a fear response. Your brain's protecting you from doing the thing that you know you need to do. And so not only are you less able to focus and be productive and follow through and do the things

you know you need to do. You're also worse at communicating, listening. You're worse at remembering things. Might be more difficult to make decisions. you might even make impulsive decisions. It's going to be really difficult to act as the version of yourself. It has it all, right? If you want to manifest the life of your dreams, you need to act like the version of you who has it all.

You need to act like your best self, right? Because your brain doesn't just listen to your thoughts. It listens to who you're being. So you actually have to make choices that match the version of you who has it all. And let's say, I'm dysregulated. I'm stressed. And someone comes up. to me in public and says something. I'm dysregulated. That might sit with me. That might loop in my head

if they say something rude. Weird thing happens to me in my own life where people randomly come up to me and tell me to get off the phone when I'm out in public. It's really strange. And in the past, you know, I actually was tested on this once because I was driving in the car on the way to the gym. And I had set the intention that I wanted to be love, spread love everywhere I went that day, go into the gym, I'm on the phone and this woman tells me to get off. Immediately, you know, I'm a little triggered in the moment. But because my nervous system is regulated, I'm able to take a step back, be the observer of the situation, and remember, oh, hey, this is a test to actually put into practice the intention that I just set, which was to be love. And so I walked across the gym, I looked at this

lady from afar, and I sent beams of love at her through my eyes. What did I do? I proved to my brain that I was that level of me. I was that version of me, right? I didn't just set an intention and say some thoughts I actually showed up as that version of me. And so when your nervous system is dysregulated, it becomes a lot more difficult to show up as your highest self. It becomes a lot more difficult to show up as the version of you who has it all. Your prefrontal cortex, the boss, the CEO of your brain that allows you to be the CEO of your life, I often refer to this as, you know, when your prefrontal cortex is on and you're feeling on top of things, this is creator mode. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when you are stressed, overstimulated, you feel like a leaf in the wind rather than being

the driver in the driver's seat. Oftentimes, you are in reactivity mode. You're in reaction mode. You react to situations. But if you want to create the life of your dreams, you need to respond in a way that matches the energy of who you're trying to be and what you want, not react. Because every, let me tell you something, this is something that most people do not realize, is that every single time you react to a situation rather than respond, you are running on an old automated program that matches a past version of you. Reactions are exactly that. They are reactions. They are automatic responses that your nervous system has saved based on your past. And if you're trying to create a new future, you're going to need to respond in new ways, not react based on old patterns.

One more really important note that I want to make about the neuroscience here before we go into the tools so that you can actually start to regulate your nervous system because we got to understand before we apply. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when your amygdala is highly active, when you are in fight or flight, that's really what nervous system dysregulation is, by the way, is just constantly being in fight or flight, not being able to adapt to situations, right? It is normal, by the way, to have a, to be stressed at times and maybe even feel anxious or feel fear in certain situations. Those are normal human emotions. Nervous system dysregulation is not just feeling stressed on a random Tuesday because you have a lot going on. It's an inability to regulate

yourself and bring yourself back to a balanced state. When you are stressed, and honestly, this isn't even just when your nervous system is dysregulated. This happens anytime that you're stressed or anxious, your perception of reality is not accurate. So you don't even need to be disregulated for your perception of reality to be altered by stress or anxiety. What happens when you're in fight or flight is that your brain starts scanning reality for potential threats to keep you safe. And this is really important because creating the life that you want to create requires that you're able to actually perceive and focus on the things that you want. And you might have experienced this before where maybe you're stressed or you're feeling anxious or maybe even you're

just tired or hungry. And logically, you know that everything's going to be okay. Like, logically, you know this, but your brain is just showing you and reminding you and telling you all of the reasons why things might not be all right. Things might go wrong, right? I had a friend who I was speaking to recently, and she even told me, she was like, consciously, logically, I know that nothing is really wrong here. But for some reason, my brain is just telling me all of these stories. This is what happens when your nervous system is dysregulated. This is what happens every single time. In fact, you're stressed or anxious. Your brain lies to you. It lies to you. And my friend asked me, she's like, well, how do I know when it's a lie versus when it's the truth? And I said to her, when you get back to the state of feeling good,

when you get back to that neutral state, at least a neutral position, when you can get yourself back to a neutral position where you're at least calm, then you can maybe start to trust your thought processes a little bit. And that brings me to another point, which is really just kind of the summation of what I started this video with, which was that nervous system regulation reduces your intelligence. It reduces your ability to think clearly. It reduces your ability to think logically.

It reduces your ability to focus on the things that you want so that you can actually create the life that you want. I heard a quote recently that said, one of the main kind of measurements for intelligence is really just whether or not you're able to actually create the life that you want to live. And I liked that because honestly like, yeah, cool, you can pass a test. You can get a 100. You can do whatever. But what good is book smarts if you don't have, if you can't create the life that you want to live, right? If you're actually living the life that you want to live. Anyway, regulating your nervous system is really the foundation for creating the life

that you want to live. Because if your nervous system is dysregulated, you're not going to be able to rewire your beliefs. You're not going to be able to focus on the things that you want. We don't really tap into the power of neuroplasticity and the ability to rewire our brain, learning, memory. All of that kind of gets thrown out the window when we're in, we're chronically disregulated. So let's talk about a few tools. A few tools to regulate your nervous system. I want to share some micro habits, some things that you can incorporate into your daily routines that will help in the long term, and then also some tools that you can use in the right now, in the present moment to bring yourself back to a state of calm.

Because I think all of those things are important. The first tool or habit that is really important when it comes to a regulated nervous system is taking your damn time. When you're brushing your teeth, take your time. When you're putting your shoes on, take your time. When you're driving, take your time. Stop rushing everywhere you go. If you are constantly rushing through everything in life, you're constantly in fight or flight.

Being in a rush all the time makes you dumber. That's why you forget things. That's why you spill things. Stop rushing around. Stop doing everything with this attitude of, oh my God, this is a punishment. I'm in trouble. Like, chill. All right?

I get that's easier said than done, especially if your habit is to constantly be in a rush. This used to be me. I used to actually jam pack my schedule with activities. My calendar needed to be completely full because I couldn't even sit with myself, which is a whole other topic, but I couldn't even sit with myself. I couldn't be in silence. I couldn't spend 30 minutes with nothing to do. I was way too dysregulated for that.

I get it. This is something that is the habit for you and this is the way that you live your life. It's going to be a major shift. So maybe just start small. start small and send it right now in your head. Think of something that maybe you rush through or maybe you pressure yourself when it's just not necessary. I was teaching a class recently, a live class.

And before I went into this class, I kind of just had a moment where I was like, where is this extra little pressure coming from? I'm like, why is this not just like the most fun blast thing ever when I'm about to go into it? And then I realized I'm just putting a little bit of pressure on myself and it's just not necessary. I get that's not exactly rushing, but it applies here as well. So where are you putting pressure on yourself where you can just ease up a little? It's just not necessary. What tasks are you rushing through or it's just not necessary? And if you are constantly in a rush, one,

start saying no to things. Start saying no to things. I mean, that's something actually when it comes to nervous system regulation that I wasn't even planning on talking about in this video, but start saying no to things. Have boundaries. Tell people no. If you are over-exerting yourself and overextending yourself, no wonder why you're drained or burnt out or overstimulated and disregulated and stressed. Please start saying no. Start saying no to people. It's going to be great. That's a difficult one to do at first as well. I used to be a chronic people-pleaser, so I get it if that's you. But I'm giving you. you permission to right now to start saying no to things and start small again. I think it's,

if you have people that are constantly asking you for things and you're nervous about what that will mean for your relationship, personally, I have found that communicating your boundaries before you enforce them usually sits with the other party really well versus all of a sudden somebody asks you for something and you're just like, no, and they're like, huh? But if you communicate your boundaries beforehand, then you let somebody know, hey, this is something that I'm working on. So I might not be, you know, so I might say no. I might have more boundaries.

And then they can show you how much they love you through respecting that. So start saying no to things. Stop jampacking your schedule with so many things to do. Personally, for me, when I have things I need, I have things to do all the time. But I like to plan for things to take more time than I know they will. just to give myself a little bit of leeway so I can have some ease with it when I go through the task when I need to do it like if I have an appointment I plan to leave maybe 45 minutes before that way I'm not stressed I can drive slow I can just be and vibe and have a good time obviously that can be

implemented in certain situations maybe not all of them but where can you just take your time with it how can you start to take your time with things more and that really leads me to another thing that I wanted to speak on here, another tool I wanted to share with you, which is recovery, especially parasympathetic restoration. So how can you maybe start to incorporate moments in your day-to-day life? Maybe not. It doesn't have to be every single day. How can you start to incorporate moments where you are intentionally shifting your nervous system into that arrest and digest mode? The parasympathetic nervous system and activating parasympathetic restoration. You know what happens when you do that? You actually build something called psychological richness and vitality. This is how you build life force energy.

Divine life force energy. This is how you charge yourself up. This is how you charge up your nervous system. There are many ways to do this. Meditation is my personal favorite way. You can do body skins. You can breath work. Not the breath work that makes you not that. Not that. Not that. breathwork, the slow breath work, the breath work that kind of just brings you into the presence, the breathwork that especially emphasizes the exhale. So when you are breathing, just from an evolutionary standpoint, kind of how we evolved, when you have a prolonged exhale, this signals safety to your nervous system. And that's just because if you have the luxury of breathing out slowly, right, you're in a safe environment. But if you're breathing out quickly, that way you can

get in the next breath, this kind of signals more of like, oh, nervous system, we got to get active. right? We're trying to deactivate when we're trying to restore the parisimpathetic branch of our nervous system. And so meditation is one of my favorite ways. Kind of slow breathing exercises are great. Going out into nature is absolutely fantastic. I try to get outside as much as possible as you can see. I'm outside. And you know what's really beautiful actually about being outside? There's something called panoramic vision. So what happens with us, humans, is that we are constantly staring at a point in front of our faces with these phones on computer screens. We're constantly focusing on a point in front of us. This is called convergent vision, convergent vision, where your two eyes are converging onto a point.

And now this kind of signals to the brain like, oh, hey, we're trying to focus on this thing. we are needing the lock in on this thing, right? Therefore, like, we should maybe get a little activated. We should be a little activated. But when you go outside, especially, you can also look out of a window, but going outside is the best way to do this. When you go outside and you just look at the horizon, you activate something called panoramic vision, right? If you go on your phone and you do the panoramic camera, does the whole panorama thing. You know what I'm talking about. When we do panoramic vision, we actually allow our nervous systems to relax. And so going out into nature and staring at a horizon is inherently relaxing to the nervous system.

So get outside. Get outside. I mean, nature is relaxing. I mean, grounding is absolutely incredible. The patterns found in nature, the fractal patterns in leaves, in flowing water, in rivers, and in the clouds, you know, just all sorts of patterns. Like for me, like, I don't know if you could see this, but the mountains, I can't zoom in. But the mountains that I'm looking at that are just the patterns found in nature, these fractal patterns, they actually resonate with our nervous system in a very unique way. And they've been shown in studies to reduce stress, reduce anxiety by up to 60% in certain studies. And I'm sure more in others.

But this is really cool because they think this is due to kind of the way that these patterns sort of resonate with the patterns in our eyes, which is so super interesting. But these fractal patterns actually boost alpha waves in the brain, which help to reduce stress. Alpha waves, they are associated with kind of that flow state, that calm, flow sort of feeling, which is great. Ltheonine also boosts alpha waves in the brain. I personally love Lthian. If you are somebody, and I guess that's another thing that I should mention, especially when it comes to caffeine and just wanting alertness, if you are somebody who is stressed and you feel that you are dysregulated and you are wanting to regulate your nervous system. Obviously, if you're still here, that's what you want to do.

Elthianine has been shown in studies to boost alpha waves in the brain. Also, it can enhance gaba urgic activity. Gabba is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. On this vibe of parasympathetic restoration, I would like to talk about toning the vagus nerve because the vagus nerve is also known as the 10th cranial nerve. It connects the brain to kind of the internal, like the heart and the gut. It is really important for regulating your nervous system. And so the vagus nerve, it's kind of cool. You can think of it like a muscle in that you can tone it.

And the more toned your vagus nerve is, the more regulated that you can be actually. So the more toned your vagus nerve is, the better heart rate variability that you will have. And heart rate variability is essentially just how adaptable your heart rate is. Like if you're very stressed, how quickly can it go back to sort of a normal heart rate rhythm? Essentially is what it is. It's just I like to think of it as adaptability, like heart rate adaptability, like how adaptable you are. And that really is a sign of a really regulated nervous system if you're very adaptable. Like that's really, it really is. And also, both of those things are linked to intuition as well.

Higher heart rate variability and increased or enhanced vagal tone have been linked to a more accurate intuition, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that when my nervous system is regulated, I am receiving downloads and insights and creative inspiration. And when I'm not, I'm not. Being relaxed and regulated really is a major key. And so toning your vagus nerve is amazing. Just one little tool to do that, so to not overwhelm and share way too much in this video. But humming is an absolutely amazing way to tone your vagus nerve. Humming has been shown to tone the vagus nerve and also there, I have this one device that I got sent.

It's absolutely not necessary, but it actually sits on your chest right here and vibrates And through bone conduction and that vibration tones the vagus nerve. Anyway, humming does the same thing for free. And that actually works in real time. And so if you are ever stressed, whenever I was on a call with the book publishers that I'm working with, though I think, I believe she was the publicist. She said that morning she was feeling really stressed. And she had seen my video on Instagram about humming to tone the vagus nerve and improve

intuition and nervous system regulation. And she said she started humming and immediately felt better. So that one is really great for real time, sort of regulating your nervous system and grounding yourself and calming down. Absolutely fantastic. Two more things that I want to share with you in this video before we wrap it up because we could be talking about this for probably 10 hours. The first is presence. I need you to practice being in the present moment and I know it's difficult at times, but I need you to practice it. Anytime that you can catch yourself mind wandering, over like overthinking in a negative way like bring yourself back to that present moment practice presence

and the best way to do that is practice it when you're feeling good so that way when you're not feeling good it's easier to get into that but it's so common for people to want to you know pray or do ratitude or meditate or try to do all of these things when they need it right but the way to go about this is to actually start now and do these things when you're not necessarily needing it when you're feeling good so that when you are not feeling good, your nervous system is already used to doing those things and you're not like forcing yourself or trying to do something that you never do. All of these things also help in the long term. They can help to regulate your nervous system so that your brain literally functions differently. You're not just making yourself feel better

in the present moment, but actually changing the way your nervous system functions. One more thing that I have been tapping into that will change your level. life, change the way you feel, not only regulate your nervous system, but help you tap into a new level of joy in your life, you will unlock a new level of joy in your life when you start doing things for no reason. When everything you do has a purpose, every workout, every walk, even your hobbies, when they have a purpose like getting enough steps or getting your cardio or doing this so that I, when everything has a purpose, you are, first of all, like, you're, you're, you're stealing your own joy and you are delaying dopamine and you're taking yourself out of

the present moment when everything that you do is for some outcome or some reason. You're stealing all of the joy away and you're taking yourself out of the present moment. And joy and fun are some of the best ways to regulate your nervous system. So start doing things for no reason. I realized the importance of this, again, for myself, about a week ago when I was on a hike. And for me, hiking is an absolutely incredible magical experience. It is otherworldly. And I was on this hike and I was just wondering, like, why am I not feeling magical? Like, why does this not feel as magical as usual? And I just kept hiking. And when I was about three quarters away to the top, I turned the corner on the

the switchback, absolutely beautiful view. Just an absolutely gorgeous, like, gorgeous view. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to sit down on this rock. And it was one of those moments where you round the corner, the beat dropped in my headphones, and then boom, the view. And it all just, you know, the synchronicity of it all was just incredible. And I'm like, let me just sit on this rock. So I sat on this rock and I just stared at the view. And after about a couple minutes of doing that, I realized that the reason I wasn't feeling magical was because I was so caught up in how long the hike was going to take. Was I going to finish the trail before the sunset? Was I what time I needed to get back so that I could film and make content?

I was so focused. I was getting my steps in. I was tracking my hike and how long is it taking me to walk a mile. I was so caught up in the details and the the details of what I was doing that it was stealing all of the joy and the magic from the experience. And as soon as I let go of all of that and threw all of that out the window and just started doing it for no reason, 10 minutes later, I start hiking again, I'm dancing on the mountaintop, dancing on the mountaintop. So I went from stress and just feeling this isn't, feel magical and overthinking and just not really feeling great to dancing on the

mountaintop. What happened? I let go. I let go of the expectations. I let go of the need for certain things to be certain way. I let go. I was like, you know what? If I don't even make it all the way, I'm just, I'll just turn around, whatever. I let go. When you loosen the grip and you let go of the things that you're just gripping and trying to have control over all the time, you allow your nervous system to relax. So maybe the tool here is to start doing things for no reason. Like, what can you do for no reason today? What can you do just for the fun? of it. I am sending you so much love. May your nervous system be regulated. I believe in you. You got this. I'll see you in the next video.