Your Body Isn’t Broken: The World Is Just Designed to Dysregulate You

Dysregulation

1 Nov

You’re not lazy. You’re not unmotivated. And you’re definitely not bad at discipline.
You’re just living in a world your nervous system was never built for.

The average human nervous system evolved to deal with the occasional tiger, famine, or neighbour stealing your crops. Not 187 Slack notifications, 52 WhatsApp chats, and a running list of “urgent but non-essential” admin tasks that haunt you at 4 a.m.

The modern world keeps us in a state of low grade threat - overstimulated, under-rested, and convinced it’s our fault we can’t cope.

And I should know. I used to make a living inside that system.

The early lessons no one planned to teach me

At nineteen, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. It sounds dramatic, but what I learned from it wasn’t. By accident, I discovered that a predictable routine made my symptoms easier to manage. Regular sleep, consistent meals, familiar patterns… they became my way of keeping the daily chaos quiet.

Back then, I didn’t think of it as “nervous system regulation.” It was just what worked.

Later, when I completed my Masters in Psychology and Occupational Therapy, everything I studied - about stress, sensory processing, and behaviour - started clicking into place. I became fascinated by how safety shapes human functioning. How a brain that feels safe can learn, adapt, and connect, while one that doesn’t… simply can’t.

What I didn’t realise was that I’d spend the next decade working inside systems that ignored that entirely.

The irony of healthcare

Healthcare… the very field that’s meant to heal - runs on chronic stress.

I spent years as a paediatric occupational therapist, sprinting between caseloads that multiplied faster than I could write the reports, attending meetings that could have been two sentences, and trying to stay “resilient” while colleagues dropped like flies around me.

Resilience. Such a tidy word for survival mode.

The system called it dedication. My body called it a threat.

The result? The classic slow burn of dysregulation. My sleep got worse. My sinuses constantly flared. I lost patience, creativity, and any sense of humour that I once had. Each year the burnout came back, lasting a little longer every time.

Still, I told myself what everyone does: “I just need to be more disciplined and more resilient.”

I could no longer function.

And then I reached a point where I could no longer function.

The lie of discipline

If modern culture has a religion, it’s self-improvement.

We’re told to optimise, focus, biohack, meal-prep, meditate, time-block - all in service of becoming a more efficient machine. Productivity masquerades as purpose. And when it doesn’t work, we assume it’s a moral failing.

But the research tells a different story.

When the body perceives threat - physical, psychological, or social - it prioritises survival over strategy. Blood flow shifts away from the prefrontal cortex (where planning and focus happen) to the limbic system (where defence lives). Arnsten (2009) found that stress literally dampens executive function. The more threatened you feel, the less access you have to logic, creativity and willpower.

So if you can’t stick to your habits, it’s not a lack of discipline. It’s biology doing its job.

In occupational therapy, we see this constantly. Kids who “can’t concentrate” aren’t misbehaving; they’re trying to regulate. Adults who “lack motivation” often aren’t lazy; they’re depleted. But somehow, in the adult world, we forget that truth applies to us too.

A culture that keeps us on alert

Our nervous systems are meant for balance - short bursts of stress, followed by recovery. Modern life deleted the second half of that equation.

We’ve built a world that keeps us in perpetual activation:

Endless notifications that hijack attention before we even know it.
Perfectionism disguised as productivity.
Constant visibility - perform or be forgotten.
An economy that rewards burnout and calls exhaustion “drive.”

Even rest has become competitive. We don’t nap; we “optimise recovery.” We don’t go for walks; we “hit step goals.” We can’t even breathe without someone monetising the technique.

The result? A generation of people who feel guilty for being tired.

The World Health Organization now recognises burnout as an occupational phenomenon - not a diagnosis, but a pattern of chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed. But that’s only half the picture. The same stress response is baked into how we parent, socialise, and even rest.

We’re overstimulated yet under-connected.
We’re always on, but rarely present.

The moment it all made sense

In 2023, my mum became seriously ill with sepsis and a pulmonary embolism. I took eight months off to care for her.

It was the hardest, most uncertain time of my life - but here’s the strange part: my body felt better than it had in years. My chronic sinus problems disappeared. I slept deeply. My brain, for the first time in a decade, stopped buzzing.

How could that be?

Because for the first time, I wasn’t pushing myself past my limits. I was living predictably. My focus narrowed to what truly mattered: caring, resting, repeating. My nervous system finally had what it had been begging for all along - safety.

That’s when I realised: the burnout I’d been blaming on workload and willpower wasn’t just about the job. It was the by-product of living in a world that keeps us constantly activated - and ashamed when we can’t keep up.

The personal paradox

Even outside healthcare, I couldn’t escape the trap. I’d dreamt of building an online business since 2017 - one that combined psychology, behaviour and wellbeing. I had notebooks full of ideas, half-written blogs, business plans that lived rent-free in my head at 2 a.m.

But I could never do it.

The discipline was there. The knowledge was there. What was missing was capacity. My body was too busy protecting me to let me create.

As soon as I understood that - that dysregulation, not laziness, was the real barrier - everything changed. Supporting my body first brought my brain back online. My energy stopped leaking. My ideas started landing.

That’s the moment The Regulation Effect was born.

What “regulation” actually means

Let’s clear this up before someone writes it off as just another buzzword.

Regulation isn’t about being calm, meditating at sunrise, or living in perpetual zen. It’s about giving your body consistent cues of safety so your brain can access its higher functions again.

Sleep is regulation.
Eating real food on time is regulation.
Predictable routines are regulation.
Boundaries are regulation.
Doing something for joy (not content) is regulation.

It’s what lets you feel, think, and choose - not just react.

When you’re regulated, your prefrontal cortex gets the memo that it’s safe to plan, decide, and follow through. When you’re not, it’s all alarms and no architecture.

The research is clear: chronic stress (allostatic load) impairs immune function, cognitive flexibility, and emotional stability [McEwen & Gianaros, 2011]. Regulation restores the body’s ability to adapt rather than merely endure.

Why we’re all so dysregulated

Because the entire system benefits when we are.

Dysregulation makes you spend, scroll, and strive. It keeps industries alive that profit from your exhaustion - productivity apps, caffeine, fast fashion, supplements, “fix-yourself” courses.

If everyone suddenly felt safe and content, half the economy would collapse.

And yet, the cost of staying dysregulated - physically, mentally, societally - is enormous. Rising anxiety rates, chronic illness, disengagement, and burnout aren’t individual failures; they’re predictable outcomes of a system running on threat.

What comes next

The antidote isn’t quitting your job to live off grid (though tempting). It’s building micro-regulation into everyday life.

It’s reclaiming rest as a right, not a reward.
It’s designing environments - at home, online, at work - that soothe rather than stimulate.
It’s learning to notice what safety feels like in your own body and using that as your baseline for decisions.

Small, unsexy, consistent acts of safety are what rebuild capacity.

Regulation is what lets ambition coexist with health - and goals feel achievable without self-destruction.

Why I’m writing this

Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

You start recognising how everything - from the pace of your workplace to the pressure of your inbox - is engineered to keep you activated. You start noticing how many of your “bad habits” were actually coping mechanisms.

And you start realising that healing doesn’t mean changing who you are - it means teaching your body that you’re safe now.

That’s what The Regulation Effect is about. Not self-improvement. Self-preservation.