Your nervous system is trying to protect you

April 1st, 2025. I was on my couch. Terrible pain shot through my right knee. Thirty minutes later, I could barely walk.

That was the beginning. I didn’t know it yet, but that was the day my nervous system started screaming at me and it didn’t stop until my body made sure I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

WHAT THIS SERIES IS

This is going to be a series. This is the overview, the big picture. After this, I want to go layer by layer into the specific ways I learned my nervous system was trying to protect me: performing for other people, making myself small, hiding so I wouldn’t be judged or projected onto. Today’s just the foundation. If this resonates, stay for the rest of it.

THE SPIRITUAL BRIDGE

I want to talk about the nervous system, in spirituality, and in general, because I think it’s one of the most important things nobody talks about enough.

Your nervous system is the bridge between your physical body and your spiritual consciousness. It’s the gatekeeper for peace, for intuition, for divine connection. We like to think spiritual growth happens purely in the mind, or purely in the heart. But your body has to feel safe before your soul can actually expand. That’s not just a spiritual idea, there’s real research behind it.

Nervous system scientists talk about something called neuroception, your body reading safety or danger before your conscious mind even catches up. It’s happening constantly, underneath your awareness. That’s a lot of how we actually pick up on energy. Not woo-woo. Biology, working exactly the way it’s supposed to.

There’s even a place for this in astrology, if you look at it. The nervous system is tied to Gemini. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the planet of the mind, communication, and quick nerve impulses. Gemini is a mutable air sign, which means fast mental activity, constant information processing.

That tracks exactly with what your nervous system’s job actually is: take in information, process it, respond.

WHEN IT BREAKS DOWN

Here’s the part that matters most. When your nervous system never gets to heal, when it lives in hypervigilance long enough, it starts to malfunction with your brain.

Your brain stops being able to just observe. It stops being able to wait, and respond, and stay the conscious witness of what’s happening around you. Instead, it starts interpreting everything as a threat.

Everything.

A tone of voice.

A silence.

A text that takes too long to get answered.

None of it gets processed calmly anymore, because your system forgot what calm was supposed to feel like.

For me, that looked like performing for other people. Making myself small. Not being my authentic self, hiding, so I didn’t get judged, or projected onto, or have to carry everyone else’s perception of who I was.

That’s one layer. There are more, and that’s what the rest of this series is for.

MY STORY

I have FND, Functional Neurological Disorder. What I’ve learned, living inside it, is that it’s mainly my nervous system malfunctioning, my body producing symptoms to try to protect me. Sometimes that’s something energetic impacting my nervous system. Sometimes it’s just physical.

Both are real.

Both matter.

From April 2025, it got worse slowly. By August, my body really stopped working. I struggled with speech. Intermittent paralysis. Days I lost function in my limbs completely. Days I couldn’t eat because swallowing felt like swallowing glass. Days my hand didn’t work, so someone had to feed me because I couldn’t hold a spoon. I couldn’t shower, or brush my teeth, or wash my face without getting dizzy or passing out.

Simple tasks felt like climbing Everest.

I still have those days. I use a motorized wheelchair, a walker, or a cane, depending on the day.

Watching and monitoring my nervous system isn’t occasional for me, it’s daily. It’s constant. I’m always in my body, paying attention, while I let my personal spiritual practice help me hold it.

SPIRITUALITY AS SURVIVAL, NOT PERFORMANCE

When I first started practicing spirituality, I didn’t understand what was happening in my life yet. I felt lost. Without purpose. Without love or support, even though I was seeing and feeling spirits daily.

My practice was never just a practice. It’s how I live. How I love. How I survived everything that tried to break me.

It’s part of my story now, not my testimony.

It’s part of me, not all of me.

It’s how I co-exist on this planet while still being able to move forward. I refuse to stay stuck, because I already have been, and I know what that costs.

WHERE I AM NOW

I’ve been in FND treatment since March. Huge progress from where I started, but I’m not who I was before April 2025. And that’s okay. I’m adjusting to a new version of myself. My 100% might not look the same as it used to.

I used to train Muay Thai. I was hoping to fight. Now some days I just hope I can stand long enough to try.

It’s painful to look at how much I’ve lost since the day this started. But I’m proud of where I am. I keep choosing myself. I refuse to abandon myself chasing connection. I refuse to give up when I’ve had every reason to.

THE GRATITUDE TURN

We take so much for granted without realizing how much we actually have to be grateful for. My story isn’t the worst one out there, but there’s a lot you don’t know just from looking at me.

The people who really know me know how much I’ve had to overcome.

This is just one more thing I get to grow from, learn from, manage every single day, because it’s part of my life now. Maybe one day I won’t have to monitor it so closely. For now, I do.

So be grateful you woke up today and you could walk. Be grateful you can feed yourself without pain. Be grateful you get to exist without your body protesting its own existence.

WHY I’M SHARING THIS

I trust myself now more than I ever have. I trust what my body tells me, and I actually listen. I pay attention to the signals my nervous system sends, because, without me even realizing it at the time, my discernment and intuition were trying to guide me the whole way through.

This journey has never been easy. I learned to listen because I was forced to. Don’t wait for your body to force you. Don’t make your nervous system repeat itself.

I didn’t have a Pharos to help lead me through this. I’m hoping my story can be that for someone else. A lesson, a turning point, something that lands at the right moment.

Listen the first time. Not the tenth. There may not be a tenth.

I’m sharing this to be a guide, to show you what happens when a nervous system is constantly exposed and never cared for. Your body can keep you warm. It can’t keep you protected.

That’s not its job.

That’s your job, and your brain’s job.

Your nervous system just responds.