The Nervous System of the Nurse

As nurses, we carry a unique tension in the birth room. Our bodies have felt the joy of witnessing a triumphant VBAC, the disgust of watching a colleague pressure a family into an intervention, and the compassion in supporting a mother suffering in her pain while continuing to decline an epidural. While we may attach a moral judgement to what is occurring, whether these scenarios are inherently “right” or “wrong”, what matters is whether our nervous system registers them as congruent or incongruent.

When there’s a mismatch between what we sense internally and what’s being asked of us externally, our nervous system adapts. Over time, these adaptive strategies accumulate, showing up as burnout, moral injury, and systemic dysfunction in birth culture.

In this month's video, I'm exploring:

• The polyvagal ladder and how our states shift in response to cues of safety and threat.

• Clues in language and body behavior that reveal where we or our patients are on that ladder.

• Simple, practical tools for moving fluidly between states.

• How nervous system fluency can reshape not just our own resilience, but the culture of care we create together.
  
  

This is NOT about adding more self-care checklists.  This is about cultivating nervous system literacy so we can show up congruently, in our work and in our lives.

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