Have you ever caught yourself saying, “Why can’t I just chill?”
Maybe you finally get a day off, but your brain won’t stop scanning for what’s next. You sit down to rest, and suddenly remember ten things you “should” be doing.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not broken — your body’s just stuck in a pattern called sympathetic dominance.

When stress becomes your baseline

Your nervous system has two main gears:

• Sympathetic: the gas pedal — energy, focus, alertness.

• Parasympathetic: the brake — calm, digestion, repair.

We’re built to switch between those gears all day long. But when stress becomes constant — things like your boss texting you on your personal phone at 9 p.m., Slack messages lighting up before you’ve even had coffee, your husband yelling from the kitchen that he can’t find the ketchup, your kid asking where their shoes are — your body starts to believe that being on alert is the new normal.

Over time, your system forgets how to fully come down.
That’s sympathetic dominance — when your body lives mostly in the fight-or-flight state, even when nothing’s actually wrong.

The science behind why you can’t relax

When you’re in sympathetic dominance, your body is flooded with signals that say “Stay alert, something’s coming.”

That means:

• Your heart rate and cortisol stay slightly elevated.

• Your digestive system slows down.

• Your muscles stay semi-tense (hello jaw, shoulders, neck).

• And your mind constantly looks for the next threat — or the next task.

So when you finally try to rest, your body doesn’t register it as safe. Stillness feels foreign. Calm feels like something’s missing. You might even mistake peace for boredom.

This is why you can’t think your way into relaxation.
Your nervous system needs to feel safety.

The goal isn’t to eliminate stress (that’s impossible) — it’s to re-train your system to trust calm again.

Start small:

• Lengthen your exhale. Inhale for 4, exhale for 6. It signals safety to your vagus nerve.

• Ground in sensation. Feel your feet, your breath, the weight of your body in the chair.

• Pause between tasks. Even a 30-second reset helps your body learn it’s safe to slow down.

• Seek co-regulation. Calm energy from others (a hug, a pet, a conversation) rewires you faster than isolation ever could.

Over time, these moments start to rebuild your baseline. Your body learns that calm isn’t the same as danger — it’s the new normal.

Take some time today to remind your body what peace feels like :)