Living with trauma, PTSD, or anxiety can feel like your nervous system is constantly on high alert. But you can learn how to counteract trauma behaviors with regulating habits. In this post I share 9 science-based daily habits for trauma and daily habits for anxiety that promote nervous system regulation. Now, healing your nervous system doesn’t mean you’ll never feel stress again—it means you’ll feel safer, calmer, and more confident in your ability to recover quickly. With small, daily changes, you can reduce anxiety, improve resilience, and support lasting recovery from trauma.
When Trauma and Anxiety Keep Your Nervous System Activated and Alarmed
Have you ever been around a car with an overly sensitive alarm? Maybe another car with a loud engine drives by and it sets off the lights and the horn. It’s probably the therapist in me who sees this kind of thing and wonders if the car might have anxiety or trauma! But seriously, when you have trauma or anxiety, it’s like your nervous system has an overly sensitive alarm system that goes off if anything gets too close. For someone living with trauma or anxiety, stress, hypervigilance, anger, and fear can seem to dominate your day and leave you feeling triggered, tense, jumpy, and eventually exhausted and burnt out.
With trauma it’s common for your nervous system to be what’s called “sympathetically dominant”. The sympathetic state is the activated state, the anxious state of your nervous system. And it’s fine for brief spells; but when it’s chronic, that can lead to some unwanted negative impacts on your mental and physical health.
The good news is that we can retrain our nervous systems to be healthier, to be parasympathetically dominant. That’s the calming state of our nervous system, where we feel safe, balanced, and confident. Then, when things get stressful, your alarm doesn’t get triggered as often; and when it does, you can come back to a sense of safety more quickly. But this retraining isn’t something we do in therapy. It happens in your daily living. So here are 9 micro habits you can work into each day to re-train your nervous system to be calmer and healthier.
1. Be proactive and set clear intentions
Usually when people say they want to manage their stress or their chronic hypervigilance, what they’re thinking is, “I don’t want to feel stressed. I don’t want to get triggered. I want these feelings to go away. I don’t want to be so reactive.” And we can get there, but the way we get there is somewhat counterintuitive. The harder you try to “just not feel stressed” the more stressed you’ll feel. Being anti-reactive is just another form of reactivity. You’re reacting to your stress instead of choosing what you do want, which leaves you feeling out of control. If you want to regulate your nervous system you have to be proactive. You need to take a moment to choose what you do want your day to look like.
Trauma behavior: Saying, “I don’t want to feel stressed today.”
Regulating habit: Set an actionable intention for the day
It’s important to choose something you will do, instead of something you wish wouldn’t happen. When we set goals around “less” of something or something we want to have go away, it doesn’t give us very much power to act. Instead, choose forward momentum, something active that you can choose.
Choose something simple and empowering, like “I will be kind to myself today,” or “I will notice when I feel overwhelmed, and then I’ll pause.” Write this intention down, or spend one minute visualizing this at the beginning of each day.
It’s better to take a moment and get a clear vision of what you want your life to be about rather than running around wondering why you feel out of control. And that takes us to our second micro habit for nervous system regulation.
2. Slow down instead of speed up
When you’re dysregulated, you’re going to feel rushed, hurried, perhaps a little scattered. And you’ll start moving in frantic, tight little jerking movements when you walk, when you eat, and even as you look at your emails. This mode of being rushed and frantic sends a message to your brain that you must be in danger.
A simple way to calm your nervous system is to slow down, to move deliberately. Moving slowly regulates the nervous system and sends a message of safety.
Trauma behavior: Rushing, frantic hurrying
Regulating behavior: Slow down and settle, create pause routines
Pause routines are mini habits that you can build into transitions:
- Before a meeting, pause and take 3 slow breaths.
- Before you eat, check in with your body.
- Train yourself to walk more slowly, eat more slowly, respond more slowly.
- With your kids say, “I’ll think about that for 5 minutes before deciding.”
Pausing is simple and powerful for nervous system regulation.
3. Set the tone for the day
How we start our day sets the tone for the hours that follow. Many people experience higher cortisol levels in the morning. If we start the day to a blaring alarm clock, or we lay in bed too long worrying about the day ahead, or maybe you’re exhausted from staying up too late the night before, or the first thing we look at is the news, or social media…any of this can make your nervous system react like it’s in danger. You’re primed to feel jittery and tense, and you feel like your PTSD or anxiety is running your day. And while you can put in the time to calm back down, it’s better to set a healthy tone for the day right at the beginning.
Trauma behavior: Start the day stressed
Regulating habit: Give yourself time in the morning to set the tone for your day
Meditation, prayer, and reading work for me—and I don’t mean reading the news. This usually looks like reading scriptures in bed, or listening to a meditation (e.g. One Heart One Mind) as I wake up.
Exercise is great, and a lower-carb breakfast can keep you from the roller coaster of high and low blood sugar. I know most people start their day with a cup of coffee, but I recommend taking it easy on caffeine, or cut it out. I promise, after a withdrawal period, you can get to a place where you don’t need coffee to jump start your day.
This post is mostly for people who need daily habits for anxiety or trauma because they get stuck in the sympathetic, or activated state. I’ll make another post with daily routines for people who get stuck in the dorsal vagal, or shut-down state. But, if you start off the morning feeling super low energy, like a lot of people do, look for ways to gently stimulate your nervous system. Maybe some happy music, or a funny podcast, or a lovely hot shower—or a cold shower (see #8).
4. Schedule time to rest
Trauma behavior: Filling every moment of the day with activity
Regulating habit: Schedule time throughout your day to rest, recover, regulate, check in
Research shows that we function best when 10% of the day is set aside for rest. That’s 2.4 hours. Now, you might say, “But that’s impossible with my kids, work, and packed schedule.” Really? Hmm…let’s question that.
How much time do you save by eating your lunch in a rush while watching shorts vs. sitting quietly to enjoy it and taste your food? You might be able to do lunch in 15 minutes either way, but the first way leads to nervous system dysregulation while the second is restful and regulating.
Or how many hours of screen time do you get each day? Most people average 4 to 8 hours outside of screen time needed for work. Screen time is dissociating, not regulating.
So let’s recover some of that time that is feeding your PTSD or anxiety and plan to use it in a way that will support your nervous system regulation. Here’s what scheduled relaxation might look like:
- 10 minutes in the morning to meditate or read. (See #3.)
- 15 minutes to go for a walk at lunch.
- A half hour before bed to wind down with a silly show.
- A few minutes snuggling and connecting with your child when she comes home from school.
- 10 minutes sitting on the porch to watch the sunset.
To be honest, 2+ hours of restful awake time is more than I usually get. As a parent it is really hard to find 10 minutes to rest. But when we get rid of our distractions (mostly our phones) we’ll find that we can restore our nervous systems—so I’m going to work on this one myself.
5. Check in with yourself
Another good daily habit for trauma is to check in several times with your body and emotions so you stay connected with yourself.
Trauma behavior: Disconnection from self
Regulating habit: Regular nervous system regulation
The routine that has worked best for my clients is to have them set a gentle chime on their phone using a free app like Lotus Bud or Mindfulness Bell. Schedule it to ding at least a few times a day. And when you hear that chime, it’s a reminder to just pause, and check in with yourself. If you’re severely dissociated, you may need to practice this check-in for one minute, two to four times per hour. Eventually it will come naturally to you.
Here’s what this quick check-in entails:
- Check in with your body, notice what sensations you’re feeling. Sometimes that leads me to get up and stretch for a few minutes because my back hurts or my legs are falling asleep. You might notice your posture, breathing, or emotional state.
- Get in the habit of gently naming what state you’re in: “I feel shut down.” “I feel anxious.” “I feel calm.” This builds emotional awareness without judgment. You can get good at this by also practicing in longer mindfulness meditations
- Check in with your needs. Ask yourself: “Am I thirsty? Am I hungry? Do I need rest? Am I holding my breath?” Meeting your basic needs supports nervous system regulation.
- And then just gently slow down and soften. (Yep, this habit will help to support #2 as well.)
6. Counteract hypervigilance by restoring your sense of safety
Another regulating habit for anxiety you can work on is to restore your sense of safety.
Trauma behavior: Hypervigilance
Regulating habit: Remind yourself that you are safe because you can trust yourself to get through it
There’s a super easy practice you can do in one or two minutes called Orient to Safety. The purpose is to ground yourself in the present moment because usually the present moment is safe enough.
All you do is gently turn your head and look around your space. As you do, name out loud 3 things you see, 3 things you hear, and 3 things you feel (e.g. the floor under your feet). This helps anchor your nervous system in the present moment, which, again, is safe enough.
Another way to restore safety is to carry an anchor object or have a mantra ready. You could carry a small object that reminds you of safety, or repeat a healing affirmation like, “I am safe (enough) right now.” Use it in moments of stress to condition your nervous system that you are safe, right now, right here.
7. Build skills to bounce back from triggers
Speaking of moments of stress, let’s admit that sometimes something is going to trigger our alarm. It’s not that healthy people don’t get dysregulated, upset or overwhelmed; it’s that they’ve built skills to come back to a sense of safety quickly. A person with a healthy nervous system might feel upset for a few minutes with a scary situation or an upsetting event. But with nervous system dysregulation, that same event might leave someone upset for days. They rage with anger, exacerbate the problem by fighting, numb out with alcohol, don’t sleep well the next day, continue to feel on edge, and so on.
Trauma behavior: An addictive, avoidant or reactive behavior when you get triggered; e.g. yelling, numbing, leaving, etc.
Regulating habit: You have a plan for when you’re dysregulated
Your plan might include:
- Something sensory;
- Something to help you process;
- Something to reengage your sense of safety.
Here are some examples.
Your something sensory might be to…
- Sip some ice water.
- Go for a walk.
- Wash your face.
- Listen to music you love.
For Processing, you could…
- Write it out, journal about it.
- Talk it out with a friend, therapist, or even just voice to text in your phone’s journal.
- Make a diagram.
And to restore your sense of safety, try…
- A reminder or mantra you can repeat: “Here in this moment I am safe. I’ve gotten through 100% of tough days in the past, so I can trust myself to feel my feelings and be okay.”
- Request support by letting someone know, “I’m having a tough day today. Can I have a hug?”
- Prayer: “God, can you give me courage to face the day? And be my protector?”
Social safety is a powerful regulator, so I encourage you to co-regulate when possible. Call a safe person, sit with a pet, or even look at a photo of someone who helps you feel connected and calm.
That’s a lot of examples. What I recommend is to take from this list what you think will work for you and make a plan. Then, the next time something bad happens, you go for a walk, write in your journal, call your friend, remind yourself that you’re capable—you act out your plan. And then you come back to face the problem with that sense of calm and connection. (Yay for nervous system regulation!)
8. Expand your window of tolerance
Trauma habit: Being frozen, low energy, numb, shrinking
Regulating habit: Move your body
Okay, I’ve mentioned a lot of dysregulated behaviors that leave you feeling tense or jittery, but a healthy, regulated nervous system isn’t calm all the time. In fact, if you feel too relaxed, too unmotivated, too low energy, you might be stuck in or dominated by the dorsal vagal response, which is what we call the shut-down state. In this case it’s great to expand your nervous system’s capacity by up-regulating through movement.
When you’re in hypoarousal, the way to get back to the regulated window of tolerance (what you can handle) is to go through activation so you can then relax into your sense of calm. And you activate by doing things that stretch your nervous system and expand your window of tolerance. I’m not talking about doing anything way beyond your capacity. You want to try things that are slightly stressful that lead to laughter and play.
So if you have a tendency to be dominated by shut down, incorporate more movement and high energy into your day. If you tend to be dominated by stress, busy-ness, and tension, incorporate more play into your day. This could look like playing sports, playing with your kids, playing a silly game that makes you laugh. You can also expand your window of tolerance by adding in some healthy discomfort, such as exercise, fasting (with your physician’s approval), or cold water exposure. All of these can expand your nervous system’s ability to tolerate stress.
9. Intentionally wind down in the evening
Trauma behavior: Avoidance
Regulating habit: An intentional evening wind-down
Okay, let’s think about the end of your day. When you’re stressed or anxious, it’s so easy to get stuck in a pattern of avoidance, just scrolling through your phone at night. You can give yourself a little time early in the evening to do this, but you’ll also want to create some soothing, intentional practices in the evening to calm down and end your day on a positive note. Here are some ideas.
- Journaling or voice notes
Reflect on your day: What felt good? What was hard? What helped you cope? This builds self-compassion and emotional processing skills. - Somatic release ritual
Gently tap or rub your arms and legs, or lie on the floor and breathe deeply to help discharge stress and reconnect to your body. - Gratitude or 3 Good Things exercise
Name three small things that brought comfort or peace today. Looking for the good in the world and in yourself helps retrain your brain to notice safety and goodness. - Progressive muscle relaxation or safe place visualization
Tense and relax each muscle group. Or for the visualization, before you go to bed, imagine a safe, soothing place to help ease your body into rest.
Healing Trauma and Anxiety One Daily Habit at a Time
There you have it—9 micro habits you can incorporate into your daily routine to help you regulate your nervous system if you have trauma or anxiety. Please don’t feel like you have to do them all. Perhaps start with one of your anxiety or trauma behaviors that is most disruptive and replace that one first. It’s better to start with small changes and practice them for a few weeks until they become habit, and then incorporate another new habit.
Also, if you’d like to learn more skills to regulate your nervous system, check out my free course Grounding Skills for Stress, Anxiety, and PTSD. In that course I teach you how to identify the various states of your nervous system and identify what you need to help you return to a state of centeredness and calm.
