Brad Schipke explains that nervous system regulation after PTSD means returning to your personal baseline after a trigger, not staying calm all the time. Tools like breathing, grounding, and journaling teach your body the danger has passed. Regulation is short-term balance; healing is processing trauma to permanently shift your baseline.
So what does it really mean to regulate your nervous system after PTSD? Well, regulation isn't about staying calm 24/7. It's more about recovering back to your baseline. So after you get triggered, regulation is doing those things to bring yourself back into a state of control. So after trauma, your body forgets how to return back to balance, and regulation really just means teaching it that the danger is over so that it can settle again. Sometimes it's breathing exercises, sometimes it's grounding or the butterfly hugs, or just crying it out or journaling. So regulation is very different than healing. Regulation just brings you back to the baseline, but healing and processing trauma at the root permanently that baseline over time and eliminates your symptoms. If you want to learn how to regulate and process trauma at the root, make sure to subscribe because I go into a lot more detail in my longer videos.
