When Your Nervous System Suddenly Calls the Shots at Work

You're not tired—you're actually stuck in leadership survival mode

Jun 12, 2025

woman in front of white board about to teach on the nervous system at work — Original image by Author designed in Canva; No AI prompting or AI used

P.S. Want to go deeper? I made a short companion workbook to help you spot and shift your nervous system responses.

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Before I quit my last job I struggled with migraines multiple times a week. I carried an absurdly heavy caseload in my job for years. So heavy it took three people to replace me when I transferred from my last position. My anxiety lived in my gut. Doctors diagnosed me with IBS. Looking back though, I’m not so sure.

I think my body was just running in crisis mode.

Since leaving that role the migraines vanished. I’ve barely touched migraine meds in three years. My digestion finally settled into a normal schedule with no drama or flare-ups.

Why?

Because my nervous system stopped sounding false alarms.

Nobody tracked this on my performance review. Nobody asked How’s your nervous system doing? But it was running the show.

↳ Every email ↳ Every meeting ↳ Every moment of dread ↳ All magnified

These weren’t problems with performance. They were nervous system responses being set off by everything going on all around me in the workplace. Stress in disguise.

I think my body was just running in crisis mode.

Think about the last time you froze during a presentation, overreacted to a minor challenge, or micromanaged your team when the clock was ticking. We label these moments as bad leadership and chalk them up to weak character or stress overload.

But maybe they are just survival instincts misfiring under pressure.

Your leadership style is not simply a reflection of who you are or what you consciously choose to do. It is what your nervous system delivers before your conscious brain even gets a say. What if your decisiveness is actually fight mode. Your calm under pressure, a freeze response. The overwork flight in a suit. While your team player persona is fawn dressed in corporate chic?

Why the workplace rewards survival mode

Here’s the worst part and what many of us already know: The workplace often rewards those survival moves.

The hyperproductive flight leader stays late every night, juggling dozens of tasks to avoid conflict, earning praise for their relentless grit and dedication.
The authoritarian fight type pushes aggressively for their vision, cutting through objections with forceful confidence that others admire as visionary leadership.
The people-pleasing fawn agrees with everyone in meetings, smoothing tensions and collecting brownie points for being the team’s peacekeeper.
The freeze type holds back from taking a side during heated debates, their silence seen as thoughtful neutrality rather than the nervous system hitting pause.

It’s a survival masquerade ball and everyone’s dancing to their nervous system impulses. But no one’s talking about the biology behind the behavior and what it’s costing us.

The biology behind your leadership

Our nervous system has a social engagement system, explained by Polyvagal Theory, which helps us feel safe enough to connect and collaborate. Essential for better leadership. But when safety is compromised survival circuits kick in and we fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

What most leaders don’t realize is how these survival mechanisms hijack their behavior in the boardroom. They blame stress or personality.

When I was taking counseling classes, we often discussed how sometimes when you brushed up against someone who reminded you of a difficult parent or sibling, you’d react to them the same way without even realizing it. Back then, we didn’t connect it to our nervous system.

But that’s really what was happening: your body is reacting to that person as if they were the original source of conflict.

And it’s not just about people. It can happen with emails, meetings where you can’t speak, or other situations that trigger those same old responses. That unconscious replay is exactly what’s happening in many of your leadership moments.

Consider your last tough meeting. Were you really present and clear? Or was your nervous system hijacking your responses? If you don’t notice it you can’t change it.

Managing up and nervous system traps

Here’s a real-life example. I had a boss who would randomly pop into my office. When she did it was never good. She mostly avoided me but once she tried to get me to send out a survey designed to collect feedback from people who hadn’t even interacted with me. She was fishing for reasons why they might avoid seeing me.

I pushed back.

I said that survey made no sense because some individuals might confuse me with others or might not even know me. She got upset, stormed out, and told me to think about how I would send one out.

Later she pressed me again but I had already created a one targeted to people who actually visited me. The feedback was great. Not what she wanted. She dropped the whole thing.

This wasn’t just office politics. It was a classic fight or fawn nervous system moment. She was triggered by something deeper but didn’t recognize it. I had to manage my own response while managing her reaction. This kind of managing up is what happens when leaders are dysregulated and employees have to pick up the slack.

Employees often spend half their time managing up. That’s code for handling a boss stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Imagine how much less energy the whole team would waste if leaders were just regulated.

According to Harvard Business Review, Nearly half of a knowledge worker’s time (45%) is spent managing across or managing up. That’s not strategy, but a way to compensate for fuzzy leadership, unpaid emotional labor, and reactive systems.

Self-regulation isn’t a fluffy leadership perk. It’s the foundation. Without it you’re just a nervous system in a suit.

The roots of these survival responses often reach back to childhood trauma. If speaking up was dangerous as a kid, freezing might be your default. If you learned to please others to stay safe, fawn could be your fallback. Understanding this isn’t an excuse but a crucial starting point.

You can’t fix what you don’t recognize.

Recognizing the signals

So how do you stop your nervous system from running amok? You want to become more self-aware and notice your patterns:

When do you snap?
When do you avoid?
When do you freeze?
When do you say yes even when you mean no?

If you tend toward fight mode, try pausing before reacting. Take a deep breath, keep a stress ball handy, and channel that fiery energy into clear decisions instead of burning bridges. Practice saying, “I need a moment,” when your temper flares.

If flight is your default, start by naming what you’re avoiding. Break overwhelming tasks into bite-sized chunks and practice asking for help instead of fleeing. Your team doesn’t need a superhero; they need a human, flaws and all.

For freeze types, breaking paralysis happens one small step at a time. Grounding techniques like snapping a rubber band on your wrist or using the 5-4-3-2-1 method, where you name five things you see, four you can touch, three you hear, two you smell, and one you taste, can help you reconnect with the present moment. Rehearsing tough conversations beforehand also builds confidence.

If you tend to fawn, work on setting boundaries. Saying no is a muscle that grows stronger with use. Own your needs, and let people be disappointed. They will survive.

Regulated leadership benefits everyone

It’s important to remember the nervous system isn’t fixed in stone. People can shift these automatic survival patterns over time through intentional practice, therapy, or coaching. That means even leaders who feel stuck in their physical reactions have room to grow and change.

And it’s more than the bottom line at work that benefits.

Research shows that leaders who actively regulate their emotional responses perform better than those who suppress them. Mindfulness reduces emotional exhaustion and improves job satisfaction, by minimizing the mental load of pretending to stay calm under pressure.

The ways our nervous systems respond also affect how we perceive and interact with others, especially across cultural or identity lines. A leader’s reactivity might unintentionally trigger bias or microaggressions, or cause misunderstandings that ripple through the team.

When you learn to regulate your nervous systems, you perform more effectively and contribute to healthier team dynamics. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Who’s really in charge?

So, the million dollar question is? Are you in charge of your team? Or is your nervous system in charge of you?

Next time your jaw tightens in a meeting or you agree to something you dread ask yourself What’s really running in the background? Your nervous system is talking. It’s time you listened.

Simple tool: breathe like your leadership depends on it

One practical technique to quickly calm the nervous system during moments of tension is deep, slow breathing. Controlled breathing exercises activate the body’s relaxation response, making them effective tools for managing anxiety and restoring calm. Try these:
🩺 The 4-7-8 breath cycle, where you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds
🩺 Simple box breathing, which involves inhaling, holding, exhaling, and pausing for equal counts, can help reduce stress almost instantly.

🎁 Get the Full Nervous System Leadership Snapshot ($49 value) — Free for Paid Subscribers

If you want to understand more about how your nervous system impacts your behavior, I’ve created a companion tool to take it further.

The Nervous System Leadership Snapshot is a comprehensive self-assessment to help you identify how your nervous system patterns.

You’ll get:

A 40-question diagnostic with scoring breakdowns
Clear descriptions of how each pattern shows up in leadership
Reflection prompts to connect the dots to early conditioning
Micro-regulation tools to shift your response in real time
Leadership-specific scenarios to build awareness and traction

Normally, I’d price this at $49 if I were selling it as a standalone PDF but I’m giving it away free to paid subscribers.

That means:

$5/month gets you this full tool + all other paywalled content
Or get it with a $50/year subscription— basically the price of the tool itself + all other paywalled content

You can access the workbook once you're a paid subscriber.

If you’ve ever walked out of a meeting thinking “Why did I react like that?” then this tool will help you answer that question. And more importantly, help you do something about it.

Involved Leadership 📈

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