Why Your Nervous System Turns You Into an Asshole (Sometimes)
It’s easy to spot someone else’s mess when you’re not living in it. You get the highlight reel—the tantrum at the store, the eye-roll at pickup, the one-off comment—and suddenly you’re Dr. Phil with a verdict. That’s the gift of distance: not enough context to complicate the narrative.
But when you’re up close and personal with someone’s chaos? That’s a different beast entirely. Suddenly, the emotional puzzle has a thousand pieces, none of them fit right, and someone threw out the box so you don’t even know what picture you’re trying to make anymore. You’re not just reacting to what they said... you’re reacting to how they said it, the face they made, the thing they didn’t do—for the fourth time this week.
“Familiarity breeds contempt” isn’t just some throwaway phrase—it’s your nervous system waving a little red flag and whisper-screaming, “I can’t hold all this shit at once.”
When you’re close to someone, your system picks up on every cue—tone, posture, micro-expression, emotional whiplash—and starts stockpiling it like you’re prepping for an invisible war. It’s not judgment. It’s overload. And contempt? That’s just your last-ditch armor when empathy taps out.
Let’s Talk Parenting (AKA: Evolution’s Full-Time Job)
This hits hardest in parenting. We’re not just raising kids—we’re trying to keep the species alive on three hours of sleep and a leftover juice box. The autonomic nervous system constantly scans the environment (and other humans) for signals of safety or danger—a process called neuroception. Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011) breaks down how this scanning process runs the show behind the scenes, often without us realizing it.
So when your toddler’s toast isn’t cut into the exact right shape and they respond like you just burned down their village, your body doesn’t register “minor inconvenience.” It sees threat. Your system flips into survival mode. You yell. Then you feel bad. Rinse and repeat.
And it’s not just your kid. It’s partners, coworkers, parents, friends. The more emotionally important someone is, the louder your body listens. Their nervous system becomes part of yours. So when they’re off, you’re off. And if you don’t know how to spot that, you’ll think they are the problem when really, it’s just your body waving a “low safety signal” banner.
What Happens When You’re Always Scanning for Safety?
Short version: your nervous system fries itself like a gas station microwave. Long version? You become hyper-alert, relationally rigid, and emotionally cooked.
When you're always scanning, even minor shifts (a delayed text, a sigh, a slightly off tone comment) trigger a whole-body warning siren. And it doesn’t feel like worry. It feels like certainty. Like you're seeing something clearly... when in reality, your body just hit “repeat” on an old threat pattern.
The amygdala lights up, hijacking your nervous system, while the prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for reflection and reason) gets temporarily booted offline (Goleman, 1996; Arnsten, 2009). That’s when you stop thinking and start reacting. Logic takes a smoke break while your body reenacts whatever trauma script it thinks fits the moment.
Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis (1994) explains how emotional memory gets tagged onto decision-making—so under stress, you’re not pulling from what’s real, you’re pulling from what hurts. It’s fast. It’s primal. And it’s often dead wrong.
So How the Hell Do You Counter It?
First off... you don’t out-think a nervous system that’s convinced the world’s about to fall apart because someone blinked at you sideways. You can’t logic your way out of survival mode. Your brain might speak in words, but your body speaks code red. Trying to “positive thought” your way through it is like duct-taping a smoke alarm and pretending the fire’s out. It’s cute. It’s also useless.
What actually helps?
You co-regulate. Which means you need to get around people whose nervous systems aren’t breakdancing in a dumpster fire. People who feel like safety in your body—not just people who seem nice. Nervous systems link up. So if yours is fried, find one that runs cooler and borrow it for a bit.
Then go bottom-up, because your body needs more than talk.
What the FUck Is “Bottom-Up”?
“Bottom-up” is just a fancy neuroscience way of saying: start with your body before trying to fix your thoughts.
Here’s the deal—your nervous system isn’t waiting around for your insight. If you’re anxious, flooded, or spiraling, your body is already in motion. Your heart’s racing, your muscles are tight, your jaw’s locked... and meanwhile, your brain’s trying to convince you that everything is fine or everything is ruined. Neither helps.
“Bottom-up” means you stop trying to reason with your panic and go straight to the operating system—your body.
Think of it like this:
Top-down = "Let me think my way through this." (Good luck if your prefrontal cortex is offline and your amygdala is screaming like a car alarm.)
Bottom-up = "Let me regulate first, then think." (Because you can’t problem-solve if your body thinks you’re being hunted.)
Examples of bottom-up work:
Deep breathing (not the Instagram version—real, long exhales that cue your vagus nerve)
Walking, pacing, shaking it out
Stretching, grounding, cold water, weighted blankets
Tapping, drumming, humming... anything rhythmic and sensory
It’s about calming the body so the brain can come back online.
Because when your system is jacked up, trying to use logic is like asking a smoke detector to write you a poem. It’s not the right tool. Bottom-up work speaks in the language your body actually understands: movement, sensation, rhythm, breath.
You regulate first. You reflect second.
And most importantly? Fucking pause.
Because between the cue and the chaos, there’s a crack. A sliver. A breath. And that’s the difference between reacting like a live wire and responding like someone who’s had at least a snack today.
Also, for the love of whatever god you believe in (or don’t), get help. EMDR, somatic therapy, neurofeedback, acupuncture, martial arts, scream-singing alone in your car…whatever lets your nervous system stop dragging its trauma playlist into every new situation like a DJ who never got the hint.
You’re not broken. You’re just running on a system that never got to shut off. And it’s creatively improvising how to keep your ass alive. Respect it. Then learn how to help it chill.
-Matt
References:
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton & Company.
Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Bantam Books.
Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam Publishing.