You’re Home, But Your Nervous System Isn’t

You made it home. You closed the laptop. You’re technically done. So why does it feel like you never left?

For millions of people, the end of the workday doesn’t bring relief. It brings a different kind of activation: the mind still racing, the body still wired, the ability to rest just out of reach. And no matter how many times you try to “just unwind,” it doesn’t quite work.

In this episode of the Neurowellness Series, Sheri Davidson explains why this happens and why it has nothing to do with discipline, willpower, or how much you love your job. It has everything to do with a nervous system that got very good at one thing: staying on.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why your nervous system doesn’t have an “off switch” — and what it has instead
• What sympathetic dominance is, and why modern work life keeps triggering it long after the workday ends
• How Traditional Chinese Medicine has understood this pattern for thousands of years, and what it’s called
• Why you’re not broken, undisciplined, or bad at relaxing. Your system did exactly what it was designed to do.
• What actually triggers the shift from activation to rest, and why willpower isn’t one of them

“There’s a version of you that’s been running in emergency mode since 8 am. And it has no idea the day is over.” — Sheri

Mentions: 

• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers — Robert Sapolsky (book)
• HeartMath HRV Biofeedback
• The Coherence Protocol — 12-week neurowellness program (Element 5 Acupuncture + Wellness)

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Transcript

Welcome And The After-Work Spiral

Sheri 0:20

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Wellness Inspired Podcast, a place where you can find inspiration, motivation, and empowerment in the pursuit of a wellness lifestyle. I'm your host, Sherry Davidson. I'm a wellness coach, acupuncturist, trailrunner, and former interior designer in Houston, Texas. And I am deeply passionate about health and well-being. And as always, I'm here with my co-host Finn. If you're new here, Finn is my Terrier Mix Rescue dog, trail running partner, and loyal companion. He is also a therapy dog and greeter at Element 5 Acupuncture and Wellness. And Finn is currently doing what Finn does best, which is looking deeply unbothered, which is a perfect observation for this episode. So in case you're new here, um we are in the middle of the neurowellness series. So today we're going somewhere I think is going to resonate deeply. We're talking about what happens after work. Not the concept of work-life balance, no, not productivity hacks or morning routines. I mean the specific experience of closing your laptop, walking away from the desk, sitting on the couch at 8 p.m., and still not being able to turn off. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. All right, so let's dive in. I want to paint a picture. So tell me if this sounds familiar. It's evening. The workday is technically over. You're home. Maybe you've eaten dinner, maybe you're on the couch, TV on in the background, phone in your hand. By every external measure, you're relaxing. But you're not relaxed. Not really. Your mind is still at work, replaying the conversation that happened at 2 p.m., running through tomorrow's to-do list, noticing a new email notification and feeling that familiar little spike. Your body is tense in ways you've stopped noticing, jaw slightly clenched, shoulders up, breath shallow. You're not working, but your nervous system doesn't know that. And here's the thing that makes it worse. You're trying the wine, the show, the scrolling, the bath, and you get a little relief briefly before the buzz comes back. And by the time you actually go to bed, you're exhausted. But you're not tired, not in the way that leads to optimal sleep. You're wired. Your mind starts back up the second your head hits the pillow. Sound familiar? I see this constantly in the clinic, not occasionally, constantly. It's one of the most common patterns I encounter in my practice, and it cuts across every demographic. Young professionals, perimenopause, menopausal women, caregivers, executives, teachers, people who love their work and people who don't. It doesn't discriminate. And almost universally, the person experiencing it has the same explanation for it. I'm just bad at turning it off. I'm too much of a type A. Or I need to be better at setting boundaries. Well, I want to offer you a different explanation today. Because what I've seen in 18 years of practice is that this isn't a character flaw. It's not a discipline problem. It's not even a mindset problem. It's a nervous system problem. And that's actually really good news. Before we get into the why, I want to acknowledge something.

Why Modern Work Breaks Recovery

Sheri 3:50

This problem is not getting better over time. If anything, it's accelerating. Gallup's 2025 Global Emotional Health Report found that 37% of adults worldwide reported significant stress the previous day. These aren't people in crisis. These are people living what we'd consider normal lives, who wake up the next morning and do it all again. And modern work life has created conditions that are genuinely novel for the human nervous system. We are not designed for back-to-back video calls with no physical transition between them. We were not designed for always on email culture, where the boundary between work and home has effectively dissolved. We are not designed for the kind of cognitive load most knowledge workers carry every day, the decisions, interruptions, the ambient low grade pressure that never fully stops. The nervous system was designed for a world with natural breaks, physical movement between tasks, natural light, actual dark after sundown, seasons, rest cycles baked into the structure of the day. Modern work has removed almost all of those. So when people come to me unable to unwind, I don't think this person needs more willpower. I think this person's nervous system is responding rationally to an irrational environment. And it needs help transitioning, not a lecture. So let's get into the mechanism.

Nervous System States Made Simple

Sheri 5:18

So let me explain what's happening in plain language. Your autonomic nervous system has two modes. Most people have heard of fight or flight. That's your sympathetic nervous system. When it's activated, your heart rate goes up, your breathing shortens, cortisol and adrenaline flood your system, and the blood moves away from your digestion towards your muscles. You're primed to respond. The counterpart is your parasympathetic nervous system. This is your rest and digest. This is where your heart rate slows, breath deepens, digestion resumes, and the brain shifts from reactive to reflective. You are primed to recover. A healthy nervous system moves fluidly between the two states. Active when needed, recover when the challenge is over. This is called nervous system flexibility, and it is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and longevity. But here's the problem: your nervous system doesn't have an off-switch, it has a transition. And that transition requires a signal, a genuine signal that the challenge is

Zebras Show How Stress Ends

Sheri 6:24

over. There's a book that I really like that I read a while back ago, and when I was writing the content for this podcast episode, it kind of popped into my head. And if you haven't read it, I want to put it on your radar. It's called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolski. I think I said his name right. Sapolski. He's a Stanford neuroendocrinologist who had spent decades studying stress. And the title alone tells you something important. But here's a core insight. Zebras face genuine life-threatening stress on a regular basis. A lion appears, and every system and that zebra's body activates. Heart rate spikes, adrenaline floods in, muscles fire, and the zebra runs for its life. That's the fight or flight doing exactly what it was designed to do. And then if the zebra escapes, which for the scenario, we're going to say he escapes, something remarkable happens. It shakes, literally trembles. You can watch it on video. I used to watch uh National Geographic all the time when I was young and into, I mean, all pretty much all throughout high school too. And and I remember seeing this happen. I remember seeing the zebra being chased and escaping, and then just having this moment of shaking. But the whole body shudders and vibrates for a few moments and then it and then it stops. And then the zebra goes back to grazing like nothing ever happened. But here's the point that shaking is not incidental, it's the nervous system completing the stress cycle, the physical discharge that moves the body from sympathetic activation, fight or flight, back to the parasympathetic recovery, rest and digest. The threat is over. We can go back to grazing again. Sapolski's point, and it's a profound one, is that zebras don't get ulcers because they complete the cycle. The stress response activates, does its job, and then discharges. And the nervous system resets every time. Now, here's where we diverge from the zebra. Humans face a very different kind of stress, not acute, physical, or resolvable, but chronic, cognitive, and unending. The 9 a.m. meeting doesn't charge at you and then leave. It's followed by the 10 a.m. meeting and the inbox and the budget conversation and the thing your manager said and the mental load you carry home. And here's the other piece. Even when the acute stressor resolves, we don't shake it off. We suppress it. We move on and we tell ourselves to just push through, get it together, be professional. We override the body's natural discharge mechanism because it feels inappropriate or weak or inconvenient. And so the stress cycle never completes. The activation builds layer upon layer, day upon day, week upon week. And that's why you can't turn off at 8 p.m. It's not that today was too hard, it's that the incomplete stress cycles from the last six months, the last six years, are still running in the background. And your nervous system never got the signal that it was safe to stop. And over time, this pattern becomes what we call sympathetic dominance, a nervous system that has been in activation mode for so long that the transition to recovery has become difficult or sometimes almost impossible without help. In the ancestral environment, the recovery signal was built built into the day. Physical movement between tasks, actual dark after sundown, community, fire, physical warmth. Your nervous system could orient, could look around and conclude it's safe. We can recover now. Modern work doesn't provide that signal. You close your laptop, but the notifications keep coming. You're still in the same physical space you work in, and the stimulation doesn't change, just the task. And your nervous system, which cannot read your calendar and understand that work is over, stays activated. It keeps monitoring, it keeps the cortisol simmering because as far as it can tell, nothing has changed. Now, let me tell you, because this is

Liver Qi Stagnation Explained

Sheri 10:50

always fun. Let me tell you what traditional Chinese medicine has been calling this for thousands of years. In TCM, the liver is the organ responsible for the smooth flow of qi, the vital energy that moves through the body's meridians. When life is balanced and the nervous system is flexible, liver chi flows freely. You feel clear, you can transition between states, and you have emotional resilience. But chronic stress, overwork, and the inability to downregulate create what we call liver chi stagnation. The energy stops moving, it gets stuck. And when the liver chi stagnates, you get a very specific constellation of symptoms. Tension, especially in the neck, shoulders, and the jaw, frustration or irritability that seems disproportionate, trouble sleeping, especially difficulty falling asleep or waking between one and three, digestive irregularities, a sensation of tightness in the chest or rib cage, and that relentless feeling of being on even when you're trying to rest. Does any of that sound familiar? Because it should. Both traditions arrived at the same conclusion. This is a flow problem. The system has lost its ability to move between states. And like the zebra, that never got to shake, the cycle never completed, and now the body is paying the price.

Distraction Is Not Nervous System Rest

Sheri 12:20

So I want to stop here and I want to acknowledge something important. If you can't turn off after work, you're not bad at relaxing, you're not too high strong, you're not fundamentally broken in some way that other people aren't. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It activated in response to real demands. It kept you alert, focused, and functioning through a full day of modern cognitive labor. That's not failure. That's the system working. The issue is that it's missing the second half of the equation, the recovery signal, the completion of the cycle. And without that, without an intentional physiological transition, it stays activated. Not because something's wrong with you, but because that's what nervous systems do when there's no clear cue to downshift. So I want to be honest with you about one more thing, too. So the common go-to's, the glass of wine, the TV, the late night scroll, don't actually provide that recovery signal. You think they do, but they provide distraction. And distraction is not the same as regulation. You can distract a nervous system for an hour, but you cannot convince it that the threat has passed by watching Netflix. What works is different. And I'll get to that. But first, a story. I had a patient, I will call her Sarah. She came to me in her early 40s, working in a senior leadership role at a fast-moving company. And by every external measure, she was thriving. But she hadn't had a genuinely restful evening in two years. She described coming home and immediately opening her laptop again, not because she had to, but because sitting with the activation felt worse than working. At least working gave the nervous system something to do with all that energy. Rest, believe it or not, felt more uncomfortable than stress. She had significant liver chi stagnation, tight neck and shoulders, waking at 2 a.m., digestive issues, and a feeling she described as coiled. Over the course of us working together, so we did acupuncture, we did herbs, and some very specific end-of-the-day practices, that coiled feeling began to soften. Not overnight, but progressively, little by little, she started to be able to feel the transition. And eventually, evening started to feel like evenings again. It's a process for sure, but it can be done with the right, with the right tools in hand. So I give you this story, and you're probably wondering, what's the path forward? What actually signals the nervous system that the workday is over? What creates the transition that modern life has removed?

Transition Practices For Real Recovery

Sheri 15:10

So I want to offer you a few practical things that I that I have seen work. This is not as a prescription because everyone's nervous system is different, but I want to offer this to you as a framework. So the first one is physical transition. The nervous system responds to physical cues. So a walk outside, even 10 minutes after closing the laptop, does something that sitting on the couch does not. Physical movement, especially outdoors, is one of the most reliable ways to begin shifting out of sympathetic dominance. It's not about exercise, it's about moving your body through space and letting your eyes scan the natural environment. That is genuinely regulating. And I think that's why so many people love being in nature. They love going on hikes. For me, I love trail running. When you're out there and you're you're running, you're running with nature, you know, you you are completely engaged and you are running up hills and running down them and jumping over branches and you know, sliding around a little bit if it's muddy, and you know, like hitting a tree. You know, I've I have done that. I've literally ran into a branch one time and almost knocked myself out. Um, but that doesn't that doesn't happen very often. But you are one with nature. You are completely engaged with nature. And um I know that if I'm stressed, that if I go for a run, I am completely a different person when I come back. I can just go on and on about running. So um, okay, so let's go to the next one. This one is another one of my go-to's. Uh, it's breath work. Your breath is the only autonomic function you can consciously control. And that makes it a direct on-ramp to the parasympathetic nervous system. Extended exhale breathing, where the exhale is longer than the inhale, directly activates the vagus nerve. I'm not talking about a 30-minute practice, I'm talking about even five slow intentional breaths with a longer exhale begins the shift physiologically. It's that direct and it's so simple. You can do it anywhere at any time. Five breaths maybe would take you a minute, two minutes. That's it. So easy. Okay. The next is a sensory transition. So change something in your environment that signals to your nervous system context has shifted. So dim the lights, change your clothes, make tea, light a candle. These aren't self-care rituals for their own sake, they're environmental clues that help the nervous system orient. So I um in my in my house, I never use overhead lights at night. I only use lamps. And most of the the lighting is a warm lighting. And so there's just kind of a glow coming from from my rooms at night. And I never use the harsh over overhead lighting. But I think it's really great because I have lots of windows in my in my space. And I always have my my blinds open. And around probably, I don't know, five o'clock, six o'clock, or when I come home, I turn the lights on, all the window blinds are open. And when the sun sets, there's this really great and slow sensory transition that happens in my space. Um, it's one of my favorite, one of my favorite things about my space, uh, because I do have so many windows. Uh, and um, I get the east and west. Uh, my my windows face mostly east and west. And so I get the sunrise and I get the sunset. Anyways, that is an example of a sensory transition. Something in your environment that signals to your nervous system context has shifted. And your body is always reading context. So the next one is acupuncture. So if it's always reading context, give it a different one. I'll be direct about this because this is my lane and I've watched it work for 18 years. Regular acupuncture does something that other practices can't fully replicate on their own. It changes the baseline. So instead of fighting to downregulate every evening, the nervous system starts to carry less accumulated activation into the day. And when I work on someone's nervous system, one of the main things I hear, and I I did mention this in one of the other episodes, is once I've been working with them for a little while, they'll come back and they'll tell me, well, actually, I've had it, I've I've done one session and they've come back and told me this. They will come back, and the number one thing that people tell me when I ask them, you know, how they've been doing over the past week, they'll say, you know what, my situation didn't change, but I handled it differently. And what that tells me is that their nervous system had the capacity to deal with things more. So they weren't as activated. So super cool. Um, and yeah, I've been seeing that for 18 years. Okay, let's move to herbal support. Um, I don't typically like giving formulas and single herbs because I don't want anybody to take it out of context. Uh, you have to remember Chinese medicine when we're prescribing herbs, it is a holistic medicine, and so we're taking in all the signs and symptoms, and then we could have, you know, five different formulas. We actually have more that treat stress. Um, and so it's really hard to, if you don't know the medicine, it's really hard to diagnose yourself and pick the right one. But for the fun of it, uh, I think it's cool that you guys kind of hear what we do from a Chinese medicine perspective. So there are specific herbs, uh adaptogens, and nervenes that support nervous systems' ability to move between the states. So things like ashwagandha, swansal rin, huampi, uh lingzhur, which is the Rishi mushroom. And there are also TCM formulas that we use. They specifically address liver chi stagnation. Shao Yaoan. Shao Yao One is a very popular one for what we call liver overacting on the spleen and the stomach. That is somebody who is stressed and also has digestive issues. And the cool thing about our herbs when we start treating stress and regulating the nervous system is these aren't sedatives. They're not knocking you out, but they are helping restore the capacity for the transition that chronic stress has eroded. And that's the beauty of our herbs. They work so differently. You know, people ask me all the time about the side effects of, you know, the the stress herbs, or when I say I'm calming, uh, calm, I'm gonna give you something calming, you know, they're like, oh, is it gonna affect, you know, can I dry? Um, you know, am I gonna be able to function at work and all of those things? And I'm like, yes, yes, yes. Herbs are so different. Um, you're not gonna have any any side effects from this, you know, it's not going to impair you cognitively, um, it's not gonna impair your motor skills. Uh, it's not the herbs are not addictive, it's it's nothing like that. Um, and that's really the the beauty of doing of doing herbs. They work in a subtle, accumulative, and profound way. Sometimes people don't notice, they're so subtle that people don't even notice until they quit taking the herbs. Um, there's one formula, it's an adrenal support formula that I give to a lot of people. I actually take it myself. And um they'll take it for a couple of months and then they'll decide, you know, to stop taking it. Then they're like, oh, oh wow, it really was working. So I don't know. Um, you know, it's it's interesting the the different experience of herbs and the experience of Western meds. And that's not to in any way um put down Western meds because I I'm I'm in both camps. Um, but it is, I think, a better option if they're effective for you. So sometimes people don't respond to them. Um, so they need something a little bit stronger. So something like, say, out of van, right, might be more appropriate for somebody who is experiencing um severe anxiety um with severe panic attacks. It might be the appropriate, appropriate thing in in in the acute phase, right? And then once they're out of that initial acute phase, I would address it through acupuncture and herbs uh for the the chronic phase of it. Um okay, well, I think it's about time to wrap things up here. So the key thing that I want you to take from this is none of these are hacks. They're not tricks to force relaxation. You just can't do that. They're genuine signals to a nervous system that has been running in emergency mode, saying it's over, you can recover now. And they work best not as one off, but as a consistent practice over time. A tool used once is a tool. A tool used consistently within a larger system of care becomes transformational. And that's the difference I've watched play out

Coherence Protocol Program Overview

Sheri 24:36

over two decades. So if you're resonating with everything I've just described today and you want all of this working together in a structured way, I want to tell you about something I just launched. I'm super excited about this program. It's called the Coherence Protocol. It's a 12-week neurowellness program designed specifically to reset your nervous system and build long-term resilience. It brings together practices that I believe in the most. So there's acupuncture, which is the anchor of the program. There's a heart math HRV biofeedback, and then there's HRV training, there's integrative coaching, herbal medicine supplements, and somatic practices, not as separate tools, but as an integrated system that works on your nervous system from every angle consistently over time. So we start with the adrenal stress test. That's that's that sets off the program. Um, and a cortisol curve will show us exactly where your nervous system is and what pattern we're working with. And throughout the 12 weeks, you will track everything in the coherence tracker. This is an online app specifically designed for this program. So you'll track your sleep, your energy, your HRV scores, and your weekly progress. So you can actually see your nervous system healing in real time, not just feel it, see it. So I like to say we don't fix broken people, we unwind them. So if that speaks to you, I would love you to learn more. The link will be in the show notes. Okay, everyone, that's a wrap.

Final Takeaways And Weekly Challenge

Sheri 26:05

So here's what I want you to walk away with today. If you can't turn off after work, that's not a personal failure. It's a physiological pattern. Your nervous system is stuck in a mode it learned because your life required it. And stuck is not the same as broken. Stuck is something we can work with. Your nervous system doesn't need more willpower, it needs a transition signal. And when you start giving it one consistently through the right combination of practices that support, something shifts. Not just in the evenings, in everything. Sleep improves, digestion improves, the emotional reactivity softens. You stop arriving at Monday already depleted from the weekend. Because when your nervous system learns how to recover, I mean really recover, you don't just feel better at night, you become more of yourself during the day. And that's what the series is about. And what's possible. I promise. In the next episode, we're going to go a little deeper into the recovery, specifically what it looks like when burned out has already taken hold and why reset alone is rarely enough. So if you've been trying to recover from burnout and you feel like you keep hitting a ceiling, that episode will be for you. Until then, I'd encourage you to try one thing this week: a real transition at the end of your workday. Not a scroll, not a glass of wine, a walk, five slow breaths, a change of environment, something that sends your nervous system a different signal. And notice what happens and let me know. So thank you for being here. I am Sherry Davidson. This is the Wellness Inspired Podcast. And Finn and I will see you here next time. Bye.

Subscribe And Connect With Us

Sheri 27:58

If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your family and friends. You can also give me a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. It helps others find me as well. To get updates on new episodes and wellness inspiration in your inbox, please join the wellness inspired community. Go to the wellness inspired podcast.com to sign up. I'll put the link to the website in the show notes so you can click and join. Also, there's a Facebook community at the Wellness Inspired, and you can follow me on Instagram at wellness underscoreinspired. If you're in the Houston area or just visiting and interested in our services, acupuncture, herbal medicine, cupping, zinshiatsu, or dry needling therapy, contact us. You can find out more on our website at element5om.com. That's element5thenumber5om.com. And again, I'll put the link in the show notes. If you're interested in health and wellness coaching, we can connect in the clinic or on Zoom. Reach out to us and we'll get you on the schedule. And as always, I would love to hear your feedback. I am dedicated to bringing you great content that is inspiring and informative with an artsy fun edgy spin. Thank you so much for listening. We'll meet here again next time. And remember, never stop exploring, learning, loving, and being you. Bye.