Build Your Mental Gym Part 1 of 13 : Wired But Tired? Start With Your Nervous System
We’ll break down how a dysregulated nervous system impacts your daily life through fatigue, poor focus, and even hormonal chaos and why it’s crucial to address this before anything else.
Introduction to the series:
Build Your Mental Gym: A Brain Health Protocol for Women in Tech (in 13 parts)
You’re ambitious, driven, and focused. You’re constantly climbing, always pushing yourself, and you’ve learned to navigate a world that demands relentless hustle. But lately, things aren’t adding up the way they should. You’re “wired but tired,” struggling with the fog, fatigue, and hormonal chaos. No matter how much you optimise, there’s a nagging sens…
What to expect: If you’re feeling burnt out, foggy-headed, constantly “on” but somehow never caught up—you’re not broken. You’re likely running on a dysregulated nervous system.
It’s the invisible engine behind that 3 PM crash, the irritability that sneaks up when Slack pings won’t stop, the way your brain blanks out in the middle of a meeting, even though you’ve prepped for days. It’s what makes you overthink simple decisions, feel wired but tired at night, or snap at someone you love for something that wouldn’t normally bother you.
Your nervous system isn’t just about stress. It’s the silent regulator of your energy, focus, hormones, digestion, sleep, immunity, and even your menstrual cycle. And if it’s stuck in a state of hypervigilance or collapse, no productivity hack, supplement, or mindset shift will truly stick.
This guide is here to help you understand exactly how that works, through a lens that honours your biology, your cultural and social context, and the very real time constraints you live within. I’m not here to preach about “work-life balance” (whatever that means), guilt you into waking up at 5 AM, or pretend like bubble baths solve systemic burnout.
This is about practical, grounded support for the version of you that’s ambitious and exhausted, capable and overwhelmed. You’ll learn how to create internal stability, even when your external life feels like a high-speed juggling act.
Throughout these 13 posts, I’ll also be sharing my own story. How I went from a frustrated, burnt-out founder who felt too depleted to even look her reality in the eye, let alone change it… to someone who now feels deeply anchored in the present. I no longer obsess over what’s next or spiral about what’s already passed. I’m not “done” or perfectly healed—no one is—but I’m resourced, clear, and no longer living in constant survival mode.
If you’re somewhere on that path too, I hope this series becomes a small turning point. The kind that makes it easier to take your next right step.
Let’s begin where it actually matters: your nervous system.
How Does The Nervous System Work?
The nervous system is the body’s command centre. It includes the brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves that influence nearly every process in our body: movement, digestion, hormones, immune response, and emotional regulation.
To understand stress, burnout, and energy management, we can break the nervous system into two key players:
Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): Think of this as your internal security guard. The SNS activates your “fight-or-flight” response when it detects a threat. Evolution built it to help us survive immediate danger like running from the bear (or you know who), hiding from an invading army, or protecting your child in a war zone. It floods your system with stress hormones to help you fight, flee, or freeze.
Today, most of these threats are rarely life-or-death, but your nervous system can’t always tell the difference.
Let’s say your boss pings you on Slack at 9:03 p.m. with a passive-aggressive “Can we hop on a quick call?” Or your child’s school sends a last-minute request for parent volunteers. Or your in-laws subtly imply that your career ambition is coming at the cost of being a “good homemaker.” Your heart races, your breath shortens, your mind spirals, your body reacts as if it’s under siege (we’ll talk about biomarkers in Part 2).
And if you grew up in an environment where stability felt conditional on achievement, obedience, or emotional containment, your SNS may be particularly sensitive. What someone else can brush off might activate your full-blown stress response. (I’ll share some resources for childhood trauma at the end of this series.)
Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): This is your built-in repair system. The PNS supports “rest-and-digest” functions. When it’s activated, your body slows down, your digestion improves, your immune system resets, and you feel grounded again. Your defensive responses dial down. Your breath deepens. You can actually think clearly.
But here’s the catch: to reach this state, your body has to feel safe, not just logically, but emotionally and physiologically.
For example, a Saturday afternoon with no meetings sounds relaxing in theory. But if your phone keeps buzzing, if your mind is spiralling about Monday’s investor update, and if you’re guilt-scrolling Instagram wondering how other women “do it all,” then your nervous system never actually switches off.
Source: https://psu.pb.unizin.org/psych425/chapter/744/
The SNS evolved to save your life. And it has done it well so far. But in today’s world, it’s firing way too often.
On a side note, a really fun read: Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think.
Quick example: Some people are born with a reasonably tame mammoth (i.e., SNS) or raised with parenting that helps keep the mammoth in check. Others die without ever reining their mammoth in at all, spending their whole lives at its whim. Most of us are somewhere in the middle—we’ve got control of our mammoth in certain areas of our lives while it wreaks havoc in others. Being run by your mammoth doesn’t make you a bad or weak person—it just means you haven’t yet figured out how to get a grip on it. You might not even be aware that you have a mammoth at all or of the extent to which your Authentic Voice has been silenced.
Modern life—especially for high-performing women in India—has stacked the deck against ease. From running high-pressure startups or climbing corporate ladders, to being default household managers, elder caregivers, emotional anchors, and social coordinators...we’re functioning like command centres ourselves. Constant vigilance becomes the norm.
Consider these real-life moments:
You’re the highest earner in your matrimonial household. And you’re still expected to plan the family holiday, track your parents’ medications, remember your cousin’s birthday, and coordinate Diwali gifts for the extended family. No one asks how you're managing it all. They assume you just will, and it’s your primary duty.
You're at a leadership offsite, and during a discussion on mentorship, a senior executive jokingly suggests that women have a "natural advantage" in nurturing roles, implying you're better suited to supporting others than leading boldly.
Or your period arrives on the same day as a product launch, and you’re expected to “push through” like it’s nothing.
You’re the go-to daughter for everything—bank work, doctor appointments, tech support, emotional support—because you’re “so good at handling things.” But your actual job? Somehow always comes second in family conversations, because “you’re just on your laptop anyway.”
You’re juggling your work calendar, your partner’s parents’ medication schedule, the househelp’s leave plans, your own parents’ endless paperwork, and still being told, “He’s got that big presentation, na? Just adjust this week.”
At your partner’s family gathering, you're introduced as “the one who works in tech” with a vague hand wave, even though you lead a team of twenty, closed three major deals last quarter, and are mentoring two women for leadership roles.
You’re back from a 12-hour workday—client escalation, deadlines, 8 PM calls—only to be asked if you could quickly prep dinner because "he’s had a long day too" and “you know what everyone likes.”
You take a few hours on a Sunday to map your quarter’s goals and deep-focus tasks. Your mother calls twice to say, “You’ve become so work-obsessed. Take it easy, beta. What’s the rush?” No one questions the late nights your brother pulls for his job in finance.
And because you’re good at what you do—smart, resourceful, self-aware—you do push through. That’s where it gets tricky. Your nervous system begins to normalise chronic overdrive. Exhaustion gets rebranded as productivity. Hypervigilance masquerades as competence.
Add to that the cultural conditioning many of us grew up with: being agreeable, not making a fuss, handling everything gracefully. Holding it all together without disrupting anything around you, even if it means quietly disassembling yourself in the process.
All of this means that your sympathetic nervous system is switched on way more than it should be. And the longer it stays that way, the harder it becomes to drop into the parasympathetic state of rest, recovery, clarity, and joy.
💡 This resource is not suitable for nervous system regulation to manage the impact of an existential threat, such as famine, war, death, or more. For this, it’s best to meet a licensed medical expert.
This Isn’t About Saying It’s Hard for All Women, All the Time
Some women’ve found their rhythm. Women who have support at home and work, who’ve nurtured equitable partnerships, who have colleagues who amplify their voice instead of talking over it, managers who respect their no, and communities that celebrate their wholeness instead of just their output.
And if you’re one of them, I’m genuinely glad. It means you don’t need this resource in the same way.
But for every woman whose environment supports her power, there’s another who is still building the scaffolding of that safety, sometimes with shaky hands, sometimes with stubborn grace, often alone. She’s still figuring out how to say no without guilt. How to rest without self-judgment. How to push back without backlash. How to feel like a leader, not just an overachieving doer in prettier packaging.
She might be the daughter who is expected to show up for every family need, no matter her schedule. The woman managing two households—hers and her in-laws’—while her own career is treated like a hobby because she "works from home." The team player who’s always praised for being dependable, but never quite positioned for the next leadership leap. The one whose calendar has no time for herself, but plenty for everything and everyone else.
And yet, she keeps showing up. She stretches, contorts, negotiates with herself and the world, hoping that if she just manages it better, things will feel better. That productivity will somehow earn her peace.
This is who I created this for. Not to fix her. But to stand beside her and say: you’re not crazy, you’re not alone, and it shouldn’t be this hard.
I was her. And the truth is, many of us cycle in and out of that version of ourselves across seasons of life and career.
But once you begin crossing over—when you’ve named your nervous system for what it is, when you’ve learned to create internal spaciousness even if the external world doesn’t shift right away—everything begins to move. You start to choose opportunities that fit you, instead of shrinking to fit them. You protect your energy like it’s your most valuable asset—because it is. You know what alignment feels like, and you’re no longer willing to trade your integrity, health, or joy for temporary validation or a fragile sense of achievement.
You build from calm, not chaos.
And that version of you? She’s not a fantasy. She’s already in you, waiting for the noise to die down so she can speak.
This guide is here to turn down that noise and help you make a new kind of sense of your world.
How Does A Dysregulated Nervous System Present Itself?
Nervous system dysregulation refers to an imbalance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, the two branches of the autonomic nervous system responsible for regulating involuntary bodily functions. This imbalance may manifest in various ways, affecting both physiological and emotional aspects of health.
Physiological, Functional, or Somatoform Illness: In some cases, nervous system dysregulation can manifest as physiological symptoms that are not linked to any discernible diseases. These symptoms arise due to the intricate workings of the nervous system and can include conditions such as chronic pain, seizures, bladder and stomach issues, and partial paralysis.
Emotional Symptoms: Nervous system dysregulation can also manifest in emotional symptoms, affecting mood, behaviour, and overall mental well-being. These emotional symptoms may include depression, anxiety, a persistent sense of exhaustion or depletion, irritability, and extreme reactions such as tantrums or shutting down in response to stressors. Individuals may also struggle with shifting out of negative emotional states, leading to prolonged periods of distress.
This chart is designed to help you recognise how nervous system dysregulation may be showing up in your life. It’s not just about physical symptoms. Dysregulation impacts your emotional landscape, your mental clarity, and your overall capacity to function and feel well. Each entry point on the diagram represents a different window into how imbalance can manifest, whether through chronic fatigue, emotional overwhelm, brain fog, or hormonal disruption.
In this section, we’ll take a whole-person approach addressing nervous system dysregulation across physical, emotional, and mental dimensions. These aspects of our health don’t exist in silos; they interact, amplify, and influence each other every day. Through this 360-degree lens, we’ll work toward restoring balance in your autonomic nervous system so you can feel more grounded, more resilient, and more like yourself again.
Each of these nervous system states is part of a natural, cyclical rhythm as we move through life. Ideally, once a real or perceived threat has passed, the body activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), helping us return to a state of safety, calm, and restoration. But when the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) stays switched on for too long—without enough opportunities to downshift—our system begins to malfunction. This is what we call chronic dysregulation: when the body, unable to properly regulate, remains stuck in survival mode.
Over time, this prolonged state of perceived threat affects more than just our energy levels—it chips away at our emotional resilience, mental clarity, and physical vitality. You may experience:
Chronic exhaustion and burnout, even after rest, because your system never truly powers down
Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep, a result of persistent hypervigilance
Increased emotional reactivity, where even small setbacks feel overwhelming
A lingering sense of doom, dread, or foreboding, with no clear source
Disconnection from others, even when you deeply want to feel close
Left unaddressed, this dysregulation can become the lens through which we view our lives. We begin making fear-based choices, constantly second-guessing ourselves, losing touch with our inner wisdom, creativity, and capacity for meaningful connection.
What Causes A Dysregulated Nervous System?
There’s no single reason your nervous system may be dysregulated. It’s rarely about one “big” trauma or event. More often, it’s the accumulation of small, repeated experiences—especially in our early years—that shape how our system learns to respond to the world.
Leading neuroscientists, psychologists, and trauma-informed physicians suggest that many of our nervous system patterns were formed in childhood. During this time, we adapt our personalities and coping mechanisms in response to the emotional and relational environments around us. Whether it was needing to be the responsible one too early, constantly trying to avoid conflict, or learning to stay invisible to stay safe. These are nervous system strategies to keep you safe, not just behaviours.
These early adaptations may have served us well in the past, helping us survive or succeed in specific environments. But over time, what once protected us can begin to limit us. As we move into new phases of life—whether it’s leading teams, managing households, or stepping into visibility—we often find that the same old strategies don’t work anymore. They leave us overstimulated, under-supported, and deeply depleted.
Add to this the reality of modern life: relentless digital noise, productivity culture, performance pressure, and inadequate rest. Whether you’re overexposed to chronic stress or underexposed to true safety and care, the result is the same: your nervous system stops knowing how to regulate itself. It gets stuck in patterns of overdrive or shutdown.
And unless we learn to consciously build in regulation, rest, and support, our system keeps spiraling in the wrong direction, no matter how much we “push through.”
Chronic Stress: Stress isn’t inherently bad (more in Chapter XX on interoception as an integral component of your mental gym.) It’s your body doing what it was designed to do: protect you. But when stress becomes a constant hum in the background of your life, your system never gets the memo that it’s safe to relax.
The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), responsible for our fight-or-flight response, stays switched on. Over time, this exhausts not just the SNS but also the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the part that’s meant to bring us back to calm. Eventually, your body may enter a freeze state: a deep fatigue, brain fog, or a flatness that feels like burnout.
And in many cases, it’s not just the stress but the beliefs we carry around it. The guilt of saying no. The fear of being perceived as weak. The pressure to prove ourselves again and again. These patterns amplify our stress response, keeping us stuck in dysregulation.
Trauma—Both Big and Small: Trauma doesn’t have to be catastrophic to be valid. Dr. Gabor Maté distinguishes between “big T” trauma (like accidents, abuse, or medical emergencies) and “little t” trauma—seemingly smaller experiences that still leave lasting imprints. An emotionally unavailable parent. Being constantly compared to others. Feeling unsafe expressing anger or sadness.
Especially for women raised in high-performance, high-responsibility environments, emotional neglect often masquerades as strength. But the nervous system doesn’t forget. When these experiences go unprocessed, our system learns to stay in hypervigilance, or numbs out completely.
Genetic Sensitivities: Some of us are wired with a more sensitive nervous system. Genetics can influence how we metabolise stress, how quickly we bounce back, and our baseline tolerance for stimulation. But genetics is not a life sentence—they are just one part of the equation.
What we do with our wiring—through rest, routines, nourishment, and support—shapes how much it impacts us. The more resourced we are, the more regulated we can become, regardless of predisposition.
Lifestyle Habits That Deplete Rather Than Nourish: This one’s straightforward, but often underestimated. Poor sleep. Erratic meal timings. Skipping movement because “there’s no time.” The three cups of chai a day that keep us going but leave us jittery. Even the constant scrolling in bed that we convince ourselves is “downtime.”
All of this taxes the nervous system. It keeps your internal environment noisy, even when your external environment seems calm. Over time, these lifestyle patterns erode your system’s ability to recover, focus, and feel safe.
Underlying Health Conditions: Thyroid imbalances, gut health issues, chronic inflammation, or hormonal disorders can all impact nervous system function. In women, especially, these imbalances often go unnoticed until they become too loud to ignore because we’re taught to tolerate pain, adjust, or “deal with it later.”
Your nervous system and your health are in a constant feedback loop. Ignoring one means misunderstanding the other.
Environmental Stressors: Sometimes, it’s not just internal or emotional—it’s environmental. Toxins from mold, pesticides, or heavy metals can create systemic inflammation that disrupts neural function. The same goes for noise pollution, crowded commutes, or even living in a home that doesn’t feel like a sanctuary.
When you’re constantly surrounded by stimuli that your body perceives as unsafe, regulation becomes harder. And if you’re someone who’s navigating responsibilities across multiple homes—your family’s, your in-laws’, your own—it’s even more critical to create moments and spaces that signal safety to your system.
Understanding the many layers that contribute to nervous system dysregulation isn’t just intellectually important, it’s personal. It’s the first act of self-honesty many of us are rarely encouraged to take. When we begin to see that our burnout, brain fog, irritability, or inability to slow down aren’t character flaws—but biological signals—it changes the conversation entirely.
By recognising the interplay of stress, trauma, lifestyle, environment, and even inherited patterns, we begin to reclaim agency. Not to “fix” ourselves, but to better support the brilliant, adaptive systems within us that are simply asking for care.
This is the foundation of true, sustainable well-being. And from here, we can begin to build strategies that restore—not just regulate—our nervous system. Not for a productivity boost, but so that we can live with more clarity, ease, and grounded power.
Reflection Questions:
What does “safety” feel like in your body, and when was the last time you truly felt it?
What signals—subtle or loud—does your body send you when it’s overwhelmed or stretched beyond its limits?
What beliefs about rest, boundaries, or emotional expression did you learn growing up, and how are they serving or sabotaging you now?
Where in your life are you overexposed to stress, and where might you be under-supported?
If you had permission to stop proving, fixing, or anticipating, what would you do differently this week?
Section 1: Nervous System Regulation
Part 1 of 13: Wired But Tired? Start With Your Nervous System
Part 2 of 13: What Kind of Dysregulation Are You Experiencing?
Part 3 of 13: Holistic Regulation Protocol for Fight-or-Flight (For When Your System is Stuck in Overdrive)
Part 4 of 13: Holistic Regulation Protocol for Freeze (When You Feel Numb, Stuck, or Shut Down)
Part 5 of 13: Holistic Regulation Protocol for Overall Menstrual & Brain Health (Part 1; Part 2)
Part 6 of 13: Understanding Your Type of Tired
Part 7 of 13: Restorative Protocols for the 7 Types of Unrest
Section 2: Build Your Mental Gym
Part 8 of 13: Neurotransmitters: The Gut-Brain Axis and Fuelling for Nervous System Regulation
Part 9 of 13: Neuroplasticity: The Vagus Nerve
Part 10 of 13: Neurogenesis: Interoception and Exposure to Hormetic Stress
Section 3: Work Less & Better to Earn More
Part 11 of 13: Peak Performance Training
Part 12 of 13: The Power of Creative Flow
Part 13 of 13: Productivity 101
Disclaimer: Understanding Research in Female Health and the Female Brain
The content provided in this series, "Build Your Mental Gym: A Brain Health Protocol for Women in Tech (in 13 parts)," is intended for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information presented here is based on existing and available research in female health and the female brain, but it is essential to recognise that scientific understanding in these fields is continuously evolving.
1. Limited Scope of Information: The material covered in this series offers a general overview of topics related to nervous system regulation, with a focus on how it pertains to women in the field of technology. While efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the information presented, it is not exhaustive and may not encompass all aspects of female health or brain function.
2. Individual Variability: It is essential to recognise that individual experiences and health conditions may vary significantly. Factors such as genetics, lifestyle, medical history, and environmental influences can all impact an individual's nervous system regulation and overall well-being. Therefore, the information provided should not be applied universally without consideration of individual circumstances.
3. Consultation with Healthcare Professionals: Participants are encouraged to consult with qualified healthcare professionals or medical experts regarding any specific health concerns or questions they may have. While the content presented in this series may offer valuable insights, it is not a substitute for professional medical advice or personalised healthcare recommendations.
4. Evidence-Based Practices: Where applicable, the series content may reference evidence-based practices or findings from scientific research studies. However, it is important to recognise that research findings may be subject to interpretation, replication, or revision over time. Participants are encouraged to critically evaluate the evidence presented and consider the credibility and relevance of research sources.
5. Gendered Nature of Research: It is crucial to acknowledge the historical and ongoing gender biases present in scientific research, which have often resulted in a lack of comprehensive understanding of female-specific health issues and brain function. The underrepresentation of women in clinical trials and research studies has contributed to gaps in knowledge regarding the unique physiological and neurological characteristics of women. As such, participants should be aware that certain aspects of female health and brain function may not be fully understood or adequately researched.
6. Legal and Ethical Considerations: The creator of this series has made reasonable efforts to ensure that all content complies with applicable legal and ethical standards. However, the information provided should not be construed as medical advice.