From “Regulate” to “That’s Toxic”

The Algorithmic Whiplash Shaping How Women Are Told To Heal

For the last few years, “nervous system regulation” has been the hot topic on social media.

And now, right on cue with the usual pattens we find there, the backlash to the ‘nervous system regulation” topic is everywhere too.

I’m not here to argue on behalf of either ‘side’.

I’m writing this to name the whiplash.

For the last few years countless coaches, therapists, spiritual teachers (me included!) and even influencers on social media have been telling us to regulate our nervous systems — work on our vagal tone, tend to our dysregulation, heal our patterns.

And no, posts are popping up everywhere telling us the opposite: that nervous system work itself has become another mode of oppression, another system for controlling women.

And the thing is — both sides are naming something real.

This is what platform culture (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and adjacent social ecosystems) does best; it changes its mind on a dime, then sells the reversal as revelation.

The first directive said: tend to your nervous system, it matters.

The new directive says: nervous system work is wellness policing, it’s controlling you.

Both can be true — if we refuse to flatten things. If we hold nuance. If we use common sense in how we learn.

And if we keep outsourcing inner authority to those external ‘experts’ on a social media graphic with a short caption — we don’t become wiser.

We become reactive, fragmented, and easier to direct.

The issue isn’t awareness of the body.

The issue is external wisdom sourcing in bite sized flat pieces replacing internal discernment.

A Personal Note: Why This Matters To Me

The last two years have been an incredible deepening for me — attending to my inner voice, my intuition, and how deeply that’s rooted in my nervous system as it runs me.

Not just tending to my nervous system, but first sitting with the unconscious constant states I’ve been living in. The patterns I hadn’t integrated. The ways my body learned to survive that no longer serve me.

Here’s what I found:

As a small business owner, my nervous system has been in a near-constant state of holding. That drive has roots in hustle culture, yes, but deeper than that, it’s rooted in fear. In my parents being immigrants. In watching them work 10, 15 hours a day to make sure we were never left without. In the inherited knowing that you do whatever has to be done.

That’s not a critique of my parents. That’s love translated into survival. But it also became the water I learned to swim in — a nervous system always on alert, always bracing, always ready to hold more.

Ten years ago, nervous system work wasn’t part of the conversation. In the last five, it has become essential. And for better or worse, social media is the thing that alerted many of us to this and prompted us to learn more.

There is nothing wrong with tending to your nervous system.

The problem isn’t the attention.

The problem is what happens when we take prescriptives from social media and assume the information is as flat as the graphic we scrolled past.

Remember that anything we see on social media is an invitation to go deeper on your own.

We still bear responsibility for the information we receive.

Discernment isn’t taking things at face value. We need to remember that there is complexity and nuance in anything having to do with our spirit, our health, our embodiment, our nervous system, our trauma responses, our healing.

It’s not just the five points on a beautiful Instagram slide.

We have to take that information and go deeper. Find people to help us — yes. But also educate ourselves. Take that onus on ourselves. Really dive into something that called to us when we saw it on social, instead of taking it as a complete body of wisdom.

What Regulation Actually Is (And Isn’t)

Regulation is not a static state.

Regulation is an ongoing ebb and flow.

Regulation is attending.

Regulation is checking in, identifying, and responding.

Regulation is a conversation.

You may be utterly dysregulated by an impactful event — something you experienced, a conversation you had, something you witnessed. And being in conversation with your inner state in that moment? That’s what regulation is.

It’s not static. Nothing in life is static. Nothing in nature exists in a static state.

And as witches, we understand this. We are utterly cyclical. Everything is in flux. Everything is in movement.

We practice presence so we can respond to the truth of what is in each moment.

The Real Goal Is Not Perpetual Calm

Healing my patterns around hustle culture and the nervous system states they created doesn’t mean I’m now supposed to be “regulated” 24/7.

That was never the part of the healing map for me.

The response to identifying the stay of my nervous system has been relationship — so I can roll with the signals of my nervous system and respond in real time.

Not to impose calm.

Not to earn a “healed” badge.

To actually be in conversation with what’s happening inside me and respond in a co-creative way.

We’ve Taken The Word “Regulation” And Flattened It, Assuming It’s A Static State Or End Point

Let’s be very clear: maybe regulation isn’t always the most helpful word.

Sometimes it sounds finite.

Controlling.

Static.

Maybe what we’re actually reaching for is relationship and responsiveness — this ongoing conversation with our bodies.

So instead of asking, “How do I regulate right now?”

what if we ask:

• What is happening in my body right now?
• Am I clenched?
• Am I tense?
• Am I in reaction mode?
• Do I feel fight or flight moving through me?
• What is true in my body right now?

And then:

• What wants to happen here?
• What would I like to happen here?
• How would I like to feel?
• What is needed now?
• Is a response needed from me?

Because maybe your fight-or-flight is intelligent and necessary.

Maybe there is a real situation that calls for action.

Or maybe what’s happening is an old habituated trauma pattern surfacing — and the invitation is different: slow down, go deeper, ask your body what it needs, and move from responsiveness rather than reactivity.

And sometimes the answer is simple:

• say no to that invitation
• eat
• rest
• take a beat
• take a nap
• do less, not more

There is nothing cookie-cutter about nervous system reality.

From Regulate To Healing As Compliance

Nervous system work was never meant to be a commandment, but it’s easy to have read that as the messaging in social media posts.

It was never meant to be “stay calm at all times.”

It was never meant to become healing and self ‘improvement’ as compliance.

But online, that is exactly what happens.

“Breathe.”

“Regulate.”

“Cope better.”

“Don’t be reactive.”

The phrase just regulate gets used like a cure-all — and often like a quiet demand to become easier to manage.

That is not healing. But it can be another call to bypass.

What it actually is is outsourcing inner authority in therapeutic language.

The Self-Optimization Trap

Your nervous system moves through various states of being, always. It flows through:

Activation.

Settling.

Repair.

Return.

That movement is health.

But platform logic (algorithmic directives and trends that reward certainty, speed, and simplification) reframes this into a self-optimization trap:

• if you’re dysregulated, you’re failing
• if you’re struggling, you’re doing healing wrong
• if you’re angry, grief-struck, or exhausted, you need a better protocol

The body is not a machine with levels that we can rigidly set at will.

For Witches: Why This Matters Spiritually

We are spiritual beings.

We are in connection with all things seen and unseen around us. Which means we’re also in connection with ourselves.

Cultivating that connection IS relationship.

It’s engagement. It’s conversation. It’s call and response.

That’s why there’s nothing static about it. Moment by moment, that dialogue, that feedback loop, that engagement is influenced by whatever is true in that moment.

The way our nervous system is operating creates a particular frequency. A particular energy. A way of being, a way of moving, a way of interacting with the world.

All of those things relate intimately to who we are as witches because a witch’s life is one of engagement, interaction, and co-creation.

We don’t need to bypass our bodies to reach some higher state.

We are working through our bodies… with our bodies.

A dysregulated nervous system doesn’t make you a failed witch.

It makes you a witch in a body that’s holding something — and that something is worth tending, not transcending. That something is an invitation to engage, investigate… dialogue.

Performative Healing + Toxic Positivity in Trauma Language

A lot of what gets rewarded online is performative healing:

the right words, the right tone, the right rituals, the right video capture of us sitting peacefully on a porch with a cup of tea… the right nervous-system aesthetics.

Not depth.

Not context.

Not complexity.

And layered into that is toxic positivity in trauma language:

• “regulate and be grateful”
• “find the lesson”
• “stay in your highest state”

even when your body is signaling harm, injustice, overload, or grief.

That doesn’t expand capacity.

It erases reality.

The State Of Your Nervous System Is Not A Moral Score

Your nervous system is not a purity test.

It is not a report card.

It is not proof of spiritual worth.

You are not “good” because you’re calm.

You are not “bad” because you’re activated.

That framing turns the nervous system into a moral hierarchy, nervous system as a moral score, and women know exactly where that leads.

The Onus Is On Us

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not against regulation. I’m simply saying that if we read an Instagram post that suggests we need to learn how to regulate, that what we hear and pick from that should be that regulation is endgame, it’s a static state and that once we reach that experience, we’ll be there forever.

What I’m pointing to is simply and responsibly – don’t outsource your authority.

Anything you see on social media — including this essay — is an invitation to go deeper on your own. The onus of going deeper is squarely on you.

Real regulation is relational:

• with body
• with context
• with pace
• with support
• with truth

Responsibility begins with honest noticing in your own body — not algorithmic scripts telling you who to be.

Embodiment means presence, attunement, and relationship in motion.

An Invitation From The Holy Witch Path

This is an invitation to try something on and feel what fits.

What if, instead of forcing yourself into a “regulated” identity, you experimented with relationship in real time… as a practice?

Maybe, for a few days, you try this:

• pause and notice what your body is actually signaling
• ask what pace would honor that signal
• choose one small act of tending and see what shifts

Maybe the shift is subtle.

Maybe it’s immediate.

Maybe nothing dramatic happens at all — except you begin trusting yourself a little more.

That matters.

Because this path is not about regulating yourself into acceptability.

It’s about coming back into relationship with your own body, your own timing, your own truth.

Try it.

Keep what works.

Leave what doesn’t.

Let your body be part of the conversation.