Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to The Happy Stack Podcast, where
[00:00:03] Speaker B: we explore the science and strategies behind creating a happier, more fulfilling life. I'm Teriann Richards, and I partner with organizations to address the root causes of burnout, disengagement, and stress. Equipping leaders and teams with the tools they need to thrive, both organizationally and personally. Each episode, we dive into practical habits, insights, and strategies to help high performers like you level up from the inside out. Let's get stacking.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: I think humans wildly underestimate how much their nervous system is talking for them before they even open their mouth.
People think communication is words.
It's not communication is energy. It's tone and tension. It's your facial expressions and you're pacing, how fast or slow you're talking. It's your eye contact, it's your presence and its regulation.
You can say, I'm not mad, while aggressively unloading the dishwasher like you're auditioning for wwe.
Your body always tells the truth. First, humans feel each other. You know that you walk into a room and you can feel your spouses, your besties, your kids, energy. Before anybody ever announces what's going on on, nobody needs to explain it. You just feel it. Because your nervous system is constantly scanning, am I safe here? Am I accepted here? Can I relax? Is there tension here? Is this person calm or reactive?
Do I need to protect myself?
And this happens underneath conscious awareness all day long.
And honestly, I think a huge percentage of relationship problems are actually regulation problems disguised as communication problems. Because when we are overloaded, the way in which we communicate shifts. It changes. We start to interpret things differently. We take things maybe a little bit more personally. We might react differently, we hear things differently, and we respond differently.
A neutral sentence can suddenly feel hostile, or a delayed text from somebody you've been waiting for a response back might feel like rejection or feedback might feel like you're being attacked. Or somebody asks you a question, and instantly you feel like you're being criticized.
And then people say, well, we just communicate differently. And my answer to that is maybe, or maybe one or both nervous systems are just overloaded. And that's a big difference. And there's actually neuroscience behind this.
When the brain perceives stress or threat, the amygdala, your survival part of your brain, your brain's alarm system, becomes more active, while your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex, becomes less effective or less efficient.
And this matters because the prefrontal cortex is responsible for your empathy, your logic, your ability to make decisive decisions. It's your ability to regulate your Emotions, perspective, taking your impulse control.
What does that mean? The more stressed humans become, the less access they have to the exact skills healthy communication requires. So when people say things like, I don't know why I snapped, or I don't know why I shut down, or I don't know why I got so defensive, there is literally biology that's been involved there. So it's not just character. It's not just personality. And this shows up everywhere, all across the world. Eight billion people, in marriages, in teams, in parenting, in friendships, in leadership.
And what's interesting to me is research on emotional contagion shows that emotions spread through groups incredibly fast.
Humans, we mirror each other constantly. So one anxious person over here can disregulate an entire room. One calm person can settle it.
And I know you've experienced this.
Leader walks into the meeting stressed. Everybody tightens up. A parent is emotionally reactive. I know, I've been there, right? And the whole house feels tense. If mama's in a mood, my son literally will be like, I'm going to go downstairs and game, right?
Or, you know, one person starts spiraling emotionally in a relationship, and suddenly both nervous systems are completely activated.
Humans, we transfer our state all the time without knowing it, without wanting to receive it. And that's why your emotional state matters. It's why being aware of it matters so much more than we realize.
And to me, this is where it really starts to make sense. Most of us think that we're reacting to just the current situation, the current moment. But a lot of times, we're reacting to the accumulation, the accumulated pressure, or the old conditioning or the past experiences, the old patterns or emotional memory, what we call triggers, right? Because your nervous system is basically a prediction machine. It's constantly asking, have I experienced something like this before? And if yes, it reacts fast. And sometimes it does. So, as you've noticed in your own life way before logic catches up. And that's why certain tones can trigger people, certain personalities can trigger people, certain dynamics can trigger people because the body remembers.
And even when the conscious mind doesn't fully understand why, like if you grew up around criticism or chaos and walking on eggshells and unpredictability and raised voices and inconsistency in emotions, your nervous system may now interpret normal tension as danger.
So somebody saying, can we talk later? Does not feel neutral to you, maybe it can feel threatening. And that's important to understand because people often shame themselves for. For their reactions without realizing their nervous system learned those patterns somewhere else long before.
And now that does not mean we get to weaponize that, or weaponize our wounds, if you will, and make everybody responsible for our triggers. Because I do not believe that that's not being an emotionally intelligent human either. Healing is not. This is just how I am.
Right? It's not.
Part of emotional maturity is recognizing what our triggers are and what our patterns are without making them everybody else' responsibility to manage.
That's the real work. And honestly, I think one of the biggest missing skills in modern life is nervous system awareness.
People know their step count and their calorie count and their follower count, but they have no idea what dysregulation feels like in their own body.
So let's talk about it. Dysregulation can look like talking faster.
It can be interrupting. It can be doom scrolling, it can be tight chest or jaw clenching, withdrawing, procrastination, snapping at people.
It can be hyper productivity, needing constant noise, feeling emotionally numb.
It can be just withdrawing and being unable to rest without guilt.
Sometimes people are going through all of these things and the reality is they're just overloaded.
A lot of times people aren't actually rude people, they're just dysregulated.
And sometimes they are not bad communicator. It's just that their nervous system is in protection mode and those are different conversations and there's a different output and input that's needed from there.
And to me, this matters because humans make very different decisions depending on whether they feel safe or threatened.
Threaten. Humans will control more, listen less, blame more, defend more, attack more, avoid more. And when you're in a safe mode, you'll collaborate, you'll connect, you'll problem solve, you'll repair, you'll listen, you'll adapt.
And that's why psychological safety matters so much in teens and in relationships. Humans communicate best when their nervous system is not busy surviving.
And look, none of this means life should be stress free. It's damn near impossible to make it like that. Stress is a part of being human and pressure is a part of growth. That's how we grow and become better.
Hard conversations matter. Conflict matters, Discomfort matters. But there's a massive difference between healthy stress and chronic nervous system overload. One builds capacity and the other one erodes it. And I think one of the most powerful things humans can learn is how to regulate before they communicate, not during the explosion before it. Right? So learning to pause. And it sounds woo and it sounds too simple that most of you won't do it. But I promise you, it works. Pause, breathe, slow the pace.
Notice your body, get into the present moment, separate, you know, the assumptions from the facts, name what's actually happening to yourself internally. In my book, Success Takes Courage, I talk about a term that was coined in psychology called, you know, name it to tame it. Naming your emotions, bringing awareness to them.
Because regulated communication, it sounds a lot different.
It's slower, it's cleaner, it's less reactive, it's less performative, and it's more honest.
And maybe the shift here isn't how do I win this conversation, right? Maybe it's what state am I bringing into this conversation and how do I regulate so that I can at least steer my part of the conversation in a different way, in a different mode.
The reality is, is your nervous system, your energy enters the room long before you open your mouth, long before you do, every single time. And so being aware of who you are, what you stand for, what is helping or hindering you in terms of your nervous system regulation, and starting to shift that pattern, because the only person that can shift things is you. The only person that can heal things is you.
And so I think we need to stop looking externally and we need to start looking internally and taking responsibility for that. And I can promise you, you're gonna feel a heck of a lot better right, when it becomes a you problem and not a them problem, because you can't fix them, but you can fix you, right?
Anyway, I hope you have an amazing day, everybody.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for listening to The Happy Stack podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a little extra happiness in their life. Let's keep stacking those wins together. See you next time.
