Why You Still Get Triggered (Even After Healing) | A Nervous System Conversation

💛 Resources mentioned:

Regulate Your Nervous System in Everyday Life, A Guided Reflection

Our Nervous System Reset

You might think your healing is about your marriage, your trauma, your habits, or your body.

But what if it’s actually about your nervous system?

In this episode, Jessie and Maureen explore the profound connection between regulation and lasting change. Through personal examples — from reclaiming your voice to being unexpectedly jolted by a familiar sound — they unpack how the body stores protection long after circumstances shift.

This isn’t about never reacting again.
 It’s about understanding the difference between living in chronic stress and experiencing conditioned responses that briefly surface.

They discuss:

– Why the nervous system updates slower than identity
– How old adaptations can appear in new seasons of life
– The hidden cost of staying functional while overwhelmed
– Three pathways women use to begin regulating: body, voice, and environment

Healing doesn’t erase history.
It teaches the body it’s safe now.

This episode sets the foundation for the powerful healing stories coming in the weeks ahead; powerful discussions about the gateway to healing ~ the nervous system. 

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Transcript

Jessie B (00:00)
welcome to another episode of Next Chapter Women She Blooms in Solitude where life isn't falling apart but it's asking something new of you. Today, we want to zoom out for a moment before we bring on some upcoming guests that we're having that we're really excited about. And we want to talk about something that sits underneath every healing journey because you might think that your healing is about your marriage, your trauma, your body, your habits. But what if it's
about your nervous system. Real change doesn't happen when your body feels under threat and it doesn't feel safe. And that threat, it doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it could be a sound, it could be a tone, it could be a gesture, something that brings your system back to a time that you thought you already moved beyond.

Maureen Mansi (00:48)
You may have big reactions to things that don't match the moment that you're in. Like, why am I acting this way when it's really not that big of a deal? Or instead of responding you react because your nervous system's out of whack and it's just making you do this. It could be you're losing your voice in marriage or work, or you shut down, you suppress it. You don't know even how to address situations.

Because you've programmed your nervous system for so many years to react in different situations. maybe you're productive but not present. you're working but maybe you're unfocused and you're starting to make all these mistakes because your nervous system isn't allowing you to be in the moment for whatever's going on in your body.

You're feeling fine one minute and then you're just overwhelmed the next it just happens like that where does that come from well it all comes from the things that we've programmed our nervous system to feel over the years because of maybe past traumas or suppressing your voice because of certain traumas in your life

Jessie B (01:53)
When you think about your nervous system, your mind maybe goes to this physiological place. You don't think about in your everyday life those examples that you just gave.

For instance, feeling fine one minute and then all of a sudden you're overwhelmed. you just gave all these great examples that are completely different. And so the commonality there is all of those things, believe it or not, are tied to your nervous system

All different stories, all different symptoms, all different ways that you can feel, but one system, your nervous system. our immediate reaction, is we tend to blame ourselves a lot or think something's wrong with me. It's human, it's human nature, right?

Maybe you're thinking, I need more discipline. Why didn't I just leave this? I need to reinvent myself. But what if the first step isn't changing your thoughts? It's changing the state that you're in, the actual state that you're in, because what we're discussing is your state in a day-to-day basis, continuously changing as you're moving through the day.

This is what's going on with your nervous system. You could be regulated one minute and then dysregulated the next.

You can't access deeper healing if your body doesn't feel safe. That's what this is all about. Feeling safe, feeling safe in yourself, feeling safe in your environment, And so there's a difference between living in survival and having a survival response show up. So what does that mean? you can be on a healing journey, putting so much work in and doing so much stuff on yourself and still experience these snippets where boom, your nervous system is dysregulated. and it goes back to what you were just talking about that our bodies and our nervous systems have become conditioned and programmed by things that we've gone through or stayed in for years and years and years.

We were on FaceTime the other day and discussing this show and everything. I noticed you doing what you're doing right now, touching your throat, this gesture that you make. You make it all the time, something I've noticed forever, but I didn't really think about it until we were discussing doing this episode.

And so I kind of pointed that out to you and we got into this whole big conversation about this gesture of you touching your throat.

Maureen Mansi (04:22)
Right. So I've grown up a pretty nervous person using my voice, whether I've had to do a presentation in class, even just letting my voice hear. I'm very nervous and I had a lot of anxiety and it would all lay in my throat, start my throat and I would feel it in my head. And up until I started healing through, actually expressing myself and not suppressing my voice,

by talking on a podcast or getting to the heart of why I'm feeling certain ways in my life, letting go of a relationship, hearing my voice but never listening to it. I'm starting to heal because I'm expressing my voice that I've suppressed for so long. So I guess my hand goes to my throat in vulnerable conversations about what I'm going through when it comes to that part of my nervous system.

Jessie B (05:15)
like you're protecting,

you're protecting yourself. it's instinctual, right?

Maureen Mansi (05:20)
And I'm not even consciously doing it. it's just going there. It's like, wow, I'm finally using it. And I'm trying to keep it safe as it's still in healing from, you know, being in the survival mood, it's catching up with itself now. And it's kind of an amazing thing what our bodies do for us when we start to listen to them.

Jessie B (05:39)
Yeah. what was so cool about what we discovered was that You had made some, some major changes that were identity shifts, things that you were changing in your life that you were consciously doing.

whether it was removing something or a relationship or whatever it may be, and you were living it. And what we found was this statement that your nervous system sometimes updates slower than your identity, than these shifts that you've made.

Maureen Mansi (06:12)
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty insane that, you you come to these realizations as we're doing research on this stuff and, these things are being brought to our attention and it's mind blowing. The fact that everything's connected and our actions and our words and related to how our nervous system is healing you don't even realize it, that everything is connected and related and it's amazing. The physicality.

of your body and how will you start listening to your voice and you want to start making changes the things that your nervous system goes through

Jessie B (06:40)
Yeah.

what we've discovered as we were talking about all these amazing and dynamic women and guests we're having on is how their experiences and their healing journeys how the nervous system was tied into all of that and we just started uncovering all this information that like you said blew us away

to go back to what I was saying about this gesture that you're making and protecting your voice was that the gesture could have been a reflex, not your current truth. Maybe you don't even feel threatened, but that's just a reflex, something you're programmed to do to protect.

We're not doctors. We don't claim to be doctors. This is not medical advice. We're just here sharing our healing journeys and something that we noticed is a common thread along the way.

Maureen Mansi (07:37)
Exactly. I mean, we're just listening to our own bodies now as we're reclaiming ourselves through going through our own journey and reclaiming our voices and, letting things we suppress come out now that are affecting us in either ways we don't know or ways we're starting to embrace and recognizing this and actually saying, hold on, being aware of how our body is feeling now.

As we are doing a lot of research on our own healing. we want to share this with you because you're not going to sit there and say, well, wait, hold on, my nervous system's out of whack. Nobody asks those questions. But now if you're, resonating with this episode and this is really catching your attention, start, realizing or start recognizing some of the things that you're going through in your body.

Jessie B (08:10)
It is.

Maureen Mansi (08:30)
maybe triggering these things. what have you programmed in your body over the years that bring out certain emotions in you or anxiety or certain actions that you do or reactions to certain things.

Jessie B (08:46)
beautiful. Really well said. so to bring up

Another example being something in in my own life you have this thing going on with your voice in your throat. And so it made me think about how I have this situation that randomly will happen. And I didn't understand why I live a very peaceful life.

I used to be in situations where there was explosive anger, whether it was from childhood or relationships that I was in. I don't have that anymore. I meditate, my nervous system feels relatively regulated. I could be in the middle, of a meditation and just feeling so zen and so amazing and so in the zone and all of sudden, boom.

hear this loud bang that's my neighbor's door and my body in less than half of a second will just jolt. It'll take me completely out of this calm state. I freeze, my heart jumps. I feel fear traveling all through me. And I didn't understand what the heck was going on, after doing some research

I found that my body is remembering. anger was loud. That's what it looked like for me in my childhood and these other relationships. Anger was loud and my body remembers that and it's, being triggered by a sound. And so I don't live in that state anymore, but my body visits it briefly when

something like that happens. And so the big message here between the two of us and our stories is that healing, doesn't erase a reflex. We're talking about reflexes that we're having involuntarily. that doesn't change the fact that we're healing and recovering.

Maureen Mansi (10:30)
and Jess, when we were talking about this yesterday, we're talking about me reclaiming my voice and being silenced. And you're talking about the loud sounds that bring out a reaction of you. It was like, I'm the silence and you have the loud sounds, We made that correlation

Jessie B (10:45)
my god.

It's just amazing when you take time and slow down and start really reflecting and thinking deeply about this stuff in your own healing journey. It is truly amazing what you uncover.

let's go back to making a distinction between being stuck in survival and how that's different from a conditioned response firing. What Maureen and I are talking about are conditioned responses. And when you're healing, you recover faster.

what happens is, even though I have this blip, this little fast fleeting moment of fear that just is a lightning bolt that goes vvvv ⁓

And now that we've been really tapping into the power of our nervous system and why it's important and how we can regulate it on a daily basis. Now we understand more about what's going on we're staying with the identity that we've built and the life that we've built for ourselves now, we're not building an identity around this reaction. The dysregulation

doesn't define us or take over us.

Maureen Mansi (11:59)
Yes, because our nervous systems can play tricks on us each day. But it's just recognizing where you are on a regular basis. And we're constantly healing. We're constant in recovery mode. So we don't have to be in survival mode for the rest of our life. it's recognizing where you are and giving yourself the care that you need to get in a better state.

of these programmed waves you've been through the years, recognizing them, be gentle with yourself, care for yourself, do what you have to do to uncover why you feel off kilter why do you have anxiety, why are you not sleeping, why are you reacting to certain things

Jessie B (12:41)
because if you don't, you're staying in it and you're living it every day. And what happens to you when you're constantly living that way?

Maureen Mansi (12:51)
I mean, you stay functional while you're overwhelmed. You shrink truth to keep your peace. You override the exhaustion and you just keep going and going and going because that's just what you've always done and that's how you programmed yourself. You lose track of what you want because you're constantly, trying to meet other people's needs. So you, don't listen to your own needs because you're always taking care of somebody else.

Maybe you mistake your survival for your personality, which that's sad,

true, right?

Jessie B (13:21)
happens! It happens though! You just start to

think, hey, this is the way I am! This is how it is! I'm just living my life like this because there's no other way, right? I mean, I know I've had periods in my life where I felt like that.

Maureen Mansi (13:34)
Me too, I'm 52 now. You know, Jess, you're 46 and this is who we are. But there are reasons we are the way that we are. most women don't realize they're dysregulated. They just think this is who they are and who they're always meant to be. And it doesn't have to be them.

Jessie B (13:52)
and we're living proof to say that we've been there, we've lived our lives feeling like, this is just how it is. Because when there's tons of stuff going on and you have all these extenuated circumstances and external factors, you're just trying to get by, And so that's normal. we hear you.

Maureen Mansi (14:12)
Survival mood.

Jessie B (14:13)
yeah, I always wish there's another way to say it, but there isn't. one of the points of us having this conversation today is because over the next few weeks, you're going to hear from three women that we're interviewing and having on this show that we're so excited about to talk to these people one lady, Courtney, who's awesome, healed chronic inflammation.

Maureen Mansi (14:16)
Yeah,

Jessie B (14:35)
and chronic conditions in her body. Another lady, Eileen, worked directly with trauma through the body. She does these TRE exercises and this was part of her healing journey and she uses yoga and TRE exercises to heal herself. And then another woman, Joyce, who's a coach that we're having on, reclaimed her voice after divorce and she'll be on talking about

her methods and techniques and ways that she works with her clients and originally worked with herself to heal all different stories. They use different tools, but the same message, the same underlying thing here with the nervous system and your body feeling safe when you're healing. You constantly are working to keep yourself feeling safe.

Because if you think about in your life the amount of time you spent not feeling safe and living that way, it takes a while. And so today we're telling you and having this honest conversation that you could still, teleport really back in time, even though you're healing and experience those feelings all over again. But it's all about regulation.

and moving from living in a dysregulated state to prioritizing yourself feeling safe and moving towards regulation, which from that and building a life around that is the gateway to how you heal.

Maureen Mansi (16:03)
Absolutely, Jess. And, it's just listening to your body each day.

So, to, go off of what you're saying, Jessica, let's talk about regulation pathways. how, our healing is happening?

healing happens through your body, your voice and expression, or your environment. Every tool works because it signals safety. So whatever tool you're using to help you regulate your nervous system, whatever works for you, whether it's meditation, journaling, movement in nature, prayer, devotionals, soft music, meditation music,

Jessie B (16:21)
Yeah.

Maureen Mansi (16:38)
Whatever tool is working for you to help you figure out how you're feeling in your body and how you want to heal your nervous system, go for it.

Jessie B (16:48)
It can be many of those things at once, but the one thing that I notice is that it's something that every day you try to incorporate. I know for instance, you and I are all about setting up environments. We love this in our homes, at our spaces, working from home. We put on YouTube and we have

whether it's a meditation or soft music, beautiful music, scenery, just starting there, bringing things into your life and surrounding yourself when I listen to that stuff, it makes me feel safe and pleasant inside. I'm again, all about, and I know you are too, just creating this beautiful, peaceful environment in whatever way. Light a candle.

sometimes I use the videos where there's nature and birds are tweeting because it reminds me of when I'm out on a hike. so hiking is a tool that I use that regulates my nervous system. And so when I have to work and I can't be out hiking, that is a way that it makes me feel safer, reminds me of being on a hike and helps keep me regulated.

Maureen Mansi (17:51)
I have a whole morning ritual where I try to create peace from start to finish I give myself a lot of time I get up early I go to bed early I Send my devotionals off I read my devotional and then I reiki myself and that is the most peaceful time Because it's all about me and feeling the different energy chop choppers of my body and seeing where I'm feeling, you know

but I'm working on every part of my body and then I do a light workout and then I get ready for the day and then just write create the piece I'll put on music I will light a candle and I create a really great peaceful space for myself that feels good and safe I was on a call the other day with a new employee for our company and she's like all of your colors

remind me of like the Indian colors because she's from India and she's like wow that's so beautiful it was neat to see how she recognized the background of my my home and was commenting on all the lights and the colors and I said I love these colors and I have to create a really nice peaceful warm inviting place for me to work because this is where I am most of the time

Jessie B (19:06)
whatever you can do to really tap in, you know, create a sensory experience for yourself. Think about all your different senses and what can I do in this environment around me to tap in to all of my senses in a really calming way. And doing that on a daily basis, because we talk a lot about routines and I just heard you sharing your routine.

it's just like when you're a child and routines help children to feel safe for a reason. Well, that doesn't stop when you're an adult. It provides security and is the basis of keeping your nervous system regulated. It's something you're used to doing that's helpful when we've been looking at, working with our inner child and the importance of doing that. And so just trying to relate.

routines and how they create safety for you when you're a child or if you have children, it does the same thing for you as an adult.

Maureen Mansi (19:58)
it sure does. Routine is what drives me to get through my day. It's nice to have the same time you get up every day. Certain things that you do every day, they keep you focused and then get you prepared for your day. I think that with that said, when you're settled in your morning or your mind, try a light practice. notice your breath. Notice if your body feels brace or if it feels relaxed. how do you feel?

right now? Do I feel safe right now? Do I feel unsafe right now? It's not about fixing your body, it's just about awareness of how you're feeling.

Jessie B (20:34)
Yeah, when you talk about noticing if you're bracing or tensing, you can be so calm and so regulated and have no clue that you're doing that. So an example would be for me, I have TMJ and this has been bothering me a lot lately and I've been getting pains guess grinding my teeth at night. And so I remembered back to years ago when

the physician's assistant told me, you're clenching and what's happening is you're probably clenching all day long, not just when you're grinding at night. So try to notice that. And I thought about that and I try to bring awareness to and catch myself when I'm tensing up and clench, which you just do it. It's instinctual.

Maureen Mansi (21:14)
Like your body's programmed yourself to do that with your jaw all your life and I know when I lay down and meditate at night, whether a stressful day or not stressful.

Jessie B (21:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Maureen Mansi (21:22)
I'm unclenching myself. I'm like, relax. let your body just lay there and just, so some of the meditation is like, let the day go, let your body feel heavy. And I don't realize until some of these meditations say that, that I am like clenched. I don't feel completely soft in my bed. I'm starting to shake myself out and say, all right, time to relax. Let it go.

Jessie B (21:45)
Yeah.

You know what else used to help me feel safe? And I know you've seen this around my home. I still do it I still have it. Are affirmations that I would find. Whatever was going on for me at the time, sometimes they're evergreen. They're applicable to any time of life. But just putting them up in different rooms, affirmations that are written out so that when I walk into that room, I see it and

Even things like that can help regulate your nervous system and just again creating that really safe feeling and soul nourishing environment.

Maureen Mansi (22:19)
Well, I know one of them and I brought it up because I love the affirmations don't give your children what you don't have. Give your children what you do have.

Jessie B (22:29)
Yeah.

Maureen Mansi (22:30)
So many times

Jessie B (22:30)
⁓

Maureen Mansi (22:32)
we talk about lack in ourselves and things we don't have and the things that I hope my kids are going to be better than me. That was such a powerful, powerful thing because what you have, no matter whether you have, a lot of money or not, if you have a lot of love, give them that. That means more than anything. So that hit home to me as one of the affirmations in your place. Yeah, love that.

Jessie B (22:50)
Yeah.

Yeah,

You know, if this conversation resonates with you, we've created a free resource to help you begin regulating your own nervous system in everyday life. And you can also check out our identity reset guide, which takes a deeper look and offer

strategies for regulating your nervous system beyond what we discussed here today, but all tools and things that Maureen and I have used and that our program is based in. You can grab that in the comments below. I'm really looking forward to these upcoming guests. And this was a great way to open up conversation before having them on.

Maureen Mansi (23:29)
Yeah, I love this episode too. A great segue into these.

Jessie B (23:33)
Thanks for tuning in once again, and we can't wait for more of these conversations. So until next time.