The post-text shake: why your body panics after a boundary text

The somatic hangover and how to metabolize courage.

Image via Pinterest.

I was in a yoga class where the instructor had us shake our arms and legs for ten straight minutes. She said it was an excellent tool for regulating the vagus nerve. If you watch wild animals, she explained, they’ll often shake right after escaping danger; it’s how they exit fight-or-flight.

I immediately thought of the outdoor cats I grew up with, scrappy little things who’d get into brawls with raccoons or other cats and then vibrate afterward, like they were rebooting.

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, I suspect you’re also the kind of person whose nervous system sometimes launches into fight-or-flight over things that aren’t life-threatening.

Recently, a kind coworker, genuinely a gentle soul, asked me out over text. The thought of saying I wasn’t interested made me feel awful. I actually lost sleep over it. Full-blown fight-or-flight.

Even after I sent the text, I couldn’t focus on the book in my lap. Exiting panic isn’t that simple.

When we send a risky, boundary-setting message, our bodies interpret it as danger. Muscles tense, adrenaline spikes, everything prepares for a blow that never comes. If that energy isn’t released, we slide into the freeze phase and that’s its own kind of misery.

We know trauma lives in the body. Maybe part of the solution is to shake it out before it has the chance to settle.

So if you ever see me shaking my arms in public, don’t worry, I’m just honouring my primal urges.

xx

jas🖤

who was your last risky text to?

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If this post regulated your vagus nerve or made you laugh, feel free to shake a few coins my way