Activating Calm: Understanding the Parasympathetic Nervous System and Healing Through Therapy in Redondo Beach
There’s a moment I see often in therapy when a client who is sitting across from me in my Hermosa Beach office take a slow breath, their shoulders drop, the tension in their face eases, and they quietly say something like, “Oh… I didn’t realize how much I was holding.” That shift you feel in your body? That’s the parasympathetic nervous system switching on. It’s the part of your nervous system that restores calm, safety, connection, and groundedness – all the things that feel impossible when you’ve been stuck in survival mode for years.
Most people don’t realize how rarely they access this state. Especially if you grew up in chaos, walked through trauma or have lived in long-term conflict, your body learns to stay braced. Calm doesn’t feel familiar. Sometimes it even feels suspicious like you’re waiting for the next thing to go wrong. The parasympathetic nervous system becomes something you hear about, not something you feel.
What the Parasympathetic Nervous System Actually Does
The parasympathetic nervous system is the body’s natural “rest and restore” mode. When it’s active, your breath deepens, your heart rate slows, digestion picks back up, and your body gets the memo that it’s safe enough to downshift. This is the state where you think clearly, respond thoughtfully, and feel emotionally available, so basically the version of yourself that doesn’t snap, spiral or shut down.
But if you’ve spent years living in stress or relational tension, your body may not access this state easily. Instead, the sympathetic nervous system, the fight-or-flight system, takes over and stays on. If you’re always on alert, if you startle easily, if you have trouble relaxing or feel “wired tired,” this is your body letting you know it’s been stuck in survival mode for too long.
How Trauma Makes It Hard to Relax
Trauma makes the parasympathetic nervous system harder to access because your brain starts treating safety as unfamiliar and danger as normal. When you’ve lived through emotional neglect, betrayal, unpredictable caregiving, constant conflict or relational trauma, your nervous system becomes highly sensitive to cues of danger even when nothing dangerous is happening.
This often shows up as a body that refuses to calm down. You might notice racing thoughts, shallow breathing, irritability, emotional shutdown or a sense of dread that pops up without any clear reason. Trauma teaches your body that letting your guard down is risky. So instead of dropping into rest-and-digest mode, your nervous system stays in a heightened, protective state. And the longer you live this way, the more “natural” it feels even though it’s exhausting.
Why This Matters So Much in Relationships
This is one of the biggest things I notice when working with couples in Hermosa Beach, the South Bay, and throughout California: nervous systems are in the room with us. If your body is stuck in a threat response even a neutral comment from your partner can feel like an attack. You stop hearing each other clearly. You react faster than you intend to. You take things personally, brace for conflict or shut down completely.
But when the parasympathetic nervous system is accessible, something shifts. Your body softens. You’re able to stay open instead of defensive. You can tolerate discomfort instead of escalating it. You can actually listen instead of preparing your rebuttal. You feel safer, and safe people communicate differently. They connect differently. They repair differently.
This is why nervous system work is foundational in couples therapy. Before communication skills, before strategies, before scripts… we have to help the body recognize safety again.
Rewiring Your Parasympathetic Response with Therapy in Redondo Beach
The best part? The parasympathetic nervous system is incredibly trainable. Your brain and body are not stuck the way they are. Through corrective experiences, repetition, attunement, and intentional practice, you can build an internal experience of safety that becomes stronger and more automatic over time.
In therapy, we pay attention to the subtle shifts. The breath that slows when you say something difficult. The jaw that relaxes when you feel understood. The way your posture softens when you finally stop bracing. These aren’t small changes; they’re nervous system rewiring happening in real time.
Breath work, grounding, mindfulness, somatic awareness, and co-regulation with a partner all help strengthen the pathways that bring you back to calm. Eventually, your body remembers how to settle. Stress becomes easier to recover from. Triggers lose some of their grip. Your baseline shifts from survival mode to something steadier, softer, and more connected.
Creating a Body That Feels Safe Again
You don’t need to be calm all the time- that’s not the goal. Life is still life. But what you can build is a body that knows how to return to safety. A body that doesn’t treat every conversation like a threat. A body that allows connection instead of blocking it. A body that feels like home instead of a battlefield.
When we work together in therapy whether you’re in Hermosa Beach, the South Bay, Los Angeles or somewhere else in California, and we’re not just talking about stress. We’re helping your nervous system relearn what safety feels like, one session at a time. And when your body has access to calm, everything else becomes easier: communication, connection, conflict repair, emotional intimacy, stress tolerance, and even self-trust.
Rewiring your parasympathetic nervous system isn’t just about feeling relaxed. It’s about creating a life and a relationship where your body isn’t fighting you every step of the way.
