Staying Positive in the Face of Challenges

The autonomic nervous system is adept at keeping us safe using survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and fainting. But with trauma—which Piper says is “any experience that overwhelms the nervous system’s capacity to cope”—the nervous system gets “stuck” in survival mode.

Trauma can be due to childhood physical abuse or emotional neglect, a car accident, infidelity, a chronic condition, or another devastating event.

Unresolved trauma can later lead to disproportionate reactions to events, such as shrinking in your posture when a safe person raises their voice, or panicking when your partner forgets to call you after work. In these situations, your nervous system is functioning perfectly, but it is misreading cues as potentially dangerous, based on past traumatic events.

Healing by releasing trauma

Piper helps people heal trauma and other stress-related disorders by “directing them to look inward for the answers—knowing that their body is designed to self-organize and self-heal—rather than looking to the outside world for quick fixes.”

“What we do is first discharge their nervous system [activation] pattern, and then create the capacity for them to feel more regulated in their body and nervous system, followed by creating new patterns,” she says.

This therapy is slow, but can be effective. Research has demonstrated positive effects using Somatic Experiencing to treat patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and those who treat them, and also in reducing trauma experienced by toddlers following surgery.

“We work at the outer edges of the trauma vortex,” says Piper, referring to the most intense trauma energy in the body. This might mean first moving through recent moments of frustration, before processing a past assault. “Slowly over time, you work with the vortex until you come into the middle,” she says.

State shapes your story

Piper also uses nervous system regulation with clients. This often focuses on the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to the heart, lungs, and digestive tract.

Eighty percent of information on the vagus nerve travels from the body to the brain, which “is why you can’t just will your way into happiness, joy, or healing, or think your way out of anxiety or depression,” she says. “You also have to ‘feel’ your way out.”

In fact, the state of your autonomic nervous system shapes the story told by your mind. Thoughts in the “sympathetic state” lean toward angry or fearful, while in the immobilized state, thoughts often begin with “I can’t.”

“As we shift into a more ‘ventral state’ [of], our thought patterns also start to change,” says Piper.

Remaining positive can also be challenging due to the brain’s negativity bias, which developed to help early humans quickly recognize dangers. That’s why you remember rainy Saturdays and forget sunny ones, or notice the few times your partner isn’t paying attention.

Negative thoughts can be especially intrusive at bedtime. One technique that can help is cognitive shuffling, where you visualize random scenarios: for example, playing with a dog, riding a merry-go-round, watching a sunset. Research suggests cognitive shuffling may improve sleep quality.

Growing stronger relationships

Body-based therapies can have even more profound effects on your relationships with others and with yourself. “Healing through a somatic lens helps you rediscover who you were, or who you were meant to be, before the trauma told you who to be,” says Piper.

When it comes to external connections, this could look like “creating healthier boundaries with people, being able to repair after a rupture, or forming deeper connections,” she says.

While Piper is excited that nervous system regulation is popular, this work is about more than staying regulated. It’s learning to sit with the discomfort, welcoming those feelings, and allowing yourself to be upset or sad.

“When we do that, the discomfort moves through us much quicker,” she says. “That’s our lifetime work—how do we relate to these very natural things when they emerge in the body?”

This article was originally published in the October 2025 issue of alive magazine.