Nervous System Glossary | Somatic Experiencing Terms Explained
If you’ve ever read something here and thought, “wait… what does that actually mean?” you’re not alone.
A lot of the language around nervous system regulation, Somatic Experiencing, and anxiety can feel confusing or overly technical.
This page breaks down the terms I use most often in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
Just clear explanations to help you better understand what’s happening in your body, why you might feel stuck, anxious, or shut down, and how this work actually helps.
If you’re looking for something specific, you can jump to a term here:
Nervous System States
What’s Actually Going On
How We Work With This
The Work Itself
You don’t need to understand all of this to start feeling better.
This work is experiential. And while it can be helpful to understand what’s going on, real change comes from learning how to work with your nervous system in a way that actually fits your life.
If you want support with that, click below.
Nervous System States
These are the different states your body moves through depending on what it perceives as safe or unsafe. You might recognize yourself in more than one of these.
Anxiety
Anxiety is your nervous system in an activated state, trying to anticipate, solve, or prevent something. It can feel like racing thoughts, urgency, restlessness, or not being able to relax, even when nothing is actually wrong.
Fight Response
The fight response is when your system moves toward confrontation or control. It can show up as irritation, anger, frustration, or a strong urge to push against something.
Flight Response
The flight response is the urge to escape or get away. This might look like busyness, overworking, restlessness, or feeling like you can’t slow down.
Freeze Response
The freeze response is when your system slows everything down. It can feel like stuckness, overthinking without action, low energy, or numbness. This isn’t laziness. It’s protection.
Fawn Response
The fawn response is when your system tries to stay safe by keeping others happy. This can look like people-pleasing, over-accommodating, or ignoring your own needs. It’s a survival strategy, not a personality flaw.
Shutdown
Shutdown is a deeper version of freeze. It can feel heavy, disconnected, or exhausting, like your system has pulled the brakes completely.
Ventral Vagal
This is the state where you feel safe, connected, and more like yourself. You might feel calm, present, and able to engage with others and your environment.
Dorsal Vagal
Dorsal vagal is the state connected to shutdown and collapse. It can feel like heaviness, numbness, exhaustion, or disconnection. Your system is conserving energy because something feels like too much.
What’s Actually Going On
These are the underlying patterns and concepts that explain why your body responds the way it does.
Nervous System Regulation
Your body’s ability to return to a more steady, balanced state. Not perfectly calm, but able to feel, think, and respond without getting overwhelmed. Regulated nervous systems move in and out of activation with flexibility.
Vagus Nerve
The vagus nerve is a key part of your nervous system that helps regulate how your body responds to stress and safety. It plays a role in things like heart rate, breathing, digestion, and your sense of calm or connection. When people talk about “supporting the vagus nerve,” they’re usually talking about helping the body shift into a more regulated state.
Dysregulation
When your nervous system is outside of that steady state. You might feel anxious, reactive, shut down, or overwhelmed.
Capacity
Your ability to handle stress, emotions, and life without getting overwhelmed. As capacity grows, things feel more manageable and you recover more easily.
Window of Tolerance
The range where you can handle what you’re feeling without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. When you’re inside it, you can think clearly and respond instead of react.
Survival Response
Your body’s automatic ways of protecting you. Fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown are all survival responses. They aren’t wrong. They’re protective, we just don’t want to get stuck in them.
Trauma
Trauma isn’t just what happened to you. It’s what your nervous system wasn’t able to process at the time and lives unprocessed within your system. It often shows up as patterns, reactions, or sensations.
Safety
Safety isn’t just something you think. It’s something your body feels through sensation. You can logically know you’re safe and still feel anxious or on edge.
How We Work With This
These are the ways we gently support your nervous system to shift and settle.
Grounding
Helping your body connect to the present moment. This might be noticing your surroundings, feeling your feet on the floor, or touching something solid.
Orienting
Orienting is the practice of gently noticing your environment. Looking around, taking in where you are, and letting your body register that you’re here, in this moment. It helps your nervous system shift out of stress and into a sense of safety. It’s using your senses to show your body it’s safe, rather than telling it.
Pendulation
Gently moving between something uncomfortable and something neutral or okay. This helps your system process without getting overwhelmed and builds a sense of safety with activation.
Titration
Working with your experience in small, manageable pieces. Not too much, too fast.
Stabilization
Helping your system feel more steady and supported before going deeper. This simple practice is often where nervous system change begins.
Self-Regulation
Your ability to support your own nervous system. Through things like breath, movement, awareness, and enjoyable activities.
Co-Regulation
When your nervous system settles in the presence of another person. Feeling comfortable and safe helps your body relax.
The Work Itself
These are the approaches and frameworks behind this work.
Somatic Experiencing
A body-based approach to working with stress, anxiety, and stuck patterns. Instead of only talking, we work with what’s happening in your body to support real nervous system shifts.
Polyvagal Theory
A framework that explains how your nervous system responds to safety and threat. It describes different states like safe (ventral vagal), fight/flight (sympathetic), and shutdown (dorsal vagal).
Felt Sense
The physical experience of something in your body. Not the thought, but the sensation itself. This is where deeper shifts happen.