your nervous system might be cock-blocking your confidence

turns out it's hard to feel like a badass when your nervous system is cooked

You don’t have “low self-esteem” because you suck. You don’t lack confidence because you “just need to believe in yourself more.” You’re not a broken human who needs to be put back together because you were never broken in the first place. Your nervous system is just stuck in survival mode, and survival mode is no place to build a sense of self. You can’t feel confident when your body thinks you’re constantly in danger, even if the “danger” is just sending an email or making eye contact with someone hot.

Here’s the sciencey part, and I promise it won’t be boring. Your nervous system has one job: to keep you safe. It does this using a little system called the autonomic nervous system, which includes a few key states: sympathetic (fight, flight), freeze, dorsal vagal (shutdown) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). When your body is stuck in a dysregulated mode too often (because of trauma, chronic stress, or burnout), it becomes hyper-alert. That means you might interpret a basic comment as a threat, a minor failure as proof you’re worthless, or a new challenge as something you’ll definitely fuck up. Sound familiar?

This is where the connection to self esteem comes in. Confidence isn’t just a mindset, it’s a state of safety. When your nervous system feels calm and regulated, your brain isn’t busy scanning for danger. It’s open. You can access logic, creativity, social skills, and even a sense of humor. You know…things that make you feel like a bad ass bitch. But when your nervous system is dysregulated, you literally lose access to the parts of your brain that help you show up with confidence and feel like good AF. According to research, the prefrontal cortex (your decision-making and rational thought center) goes offline when you’re in survival mode. That’s why you “know” you're capable, but still freeze when it’s time to speak up in a meeting or send the damn application.

Confidence isn’t built by repeating affirmations while your body is in panic mode. It’s built by showing your body that it’s safe to be seen, safe to mess up, safe to try, and safe to rest. And that takes nervous system regulation. Things like deep breathing, vagus nerve stimulation, cold exposure, movement, co-regulation with safe people, and even just getting enough god damn sleep. These practices are basically like teaching your body to stop hitting the internal fire alarm every time life gets mildly spicy.

So let’s say you want to feel more confident speaking up in social situations. You can rehearse your script all you want, but if your body goes into fight or flight the second attention is on you, your throat’s going to tighten, your chest will feel heavy and your brain will go blank. You’ll call it “shy” or “awkward” or “bad at people-ing.” But really, it’s your body saying, “Last time we were vulnerable, we got hurt. We’re not doing that again” or something of the sorts. You don’t need to force confidence, you need to rewire the part of you that thinks visibility and vulnerability equals danger.

Now here’s the cool part. As you practice these small, consistent regulation tools, your nervous system starts to learn. It begins to associate things like rest, connection, or speaking up as safe, instead of threatening. Over time, you build what’s called interoceptive awareness which is just a fancy way of saying you actually start to notice what your body is feeling before you’re in full blown panic mode. And when you notice earlier, you can actually create enough space between you and the automatic reaction that always happens. You stop spiraling into shame every time you feel nervous or uncertain. You start to trust yourself. And that, my friend, is the real root of confidence.

You don’t become more confident by pretending you’re fearless. You become confident by knowing that fear doesn’t own you. That your body knows how to come back to calm and that you can handle discomfort. Confidence isn’t loud, it’s steady eddy. It’s the quiet knowing that even if you fuck something up, you’ll be okay. And guess what regulates the part of you that knows you’ll be okay? Yep yep yep. Your nervous system.

So if you’re tired of reading self help books and still wondering why you freeze, over-apologize (me), or shrink yourself in rooms where you want to take up space, start with your body. Confidence isn’t built in your head, it’s built in your mother forking nervous system. That shaky voice? That quick heartbeat? That instinct to shrink or over explain (me again) or run? They’re not signs you’re weak. They’re signs your body still thinks it’s unsafe to be authentically YOU. But the more you teach your body that you’re safe now, the more your voice steadies. The more your presence grows and the more your self trust expands.

And that’s when things start to shift. Not because you convinced yourself you’re amazing (even though you are you sexy queen) but because your nervous system stopped bracing for a re-run of a few shitty past experiences. And once you’re not bracing, you can finally be the badass hoe I know you are.

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