The Rosie and Roula Show

229: How to Regulate Your Nervous System After Emotional Triggers (Real-Life Tools That Help)

• Roula Abou Haidar and Rosie Burrows

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How do you calm your nervous system after a heated interaction, emotional trigger, or overwhelming moment?

In this episode of The Rosie & Roula Show, Roula opens up about what happens after emotional spikes — the sweating, racing thoughts, migraines, and the urge to run away from the feeling. Together, Rosie and Roula explore real, human ways to regulate the nervous system after conflict, stress, or emotional overload.

They talk honestly about what works, what doesn’t, and why sometimes “just calm down” makes things worse. From box breathing and movement to sitting with discomfort instead of venting, this episode offers grounded tools you can actually try — even when you feel exhausted and overstimulated.

This is a compassionate conversation for anyone who struggles to come back to baseline after emotional stress.

In this episode, we explore:

How emotional triggers dysregulate the nervous system

Why venting can sometimes keep you stuck

Box breathing and nervous system regulation

Sitting with discomfort instead of escaping it

Physical symptoms of emotional overload

Finding what actually works for you

🎧 Listen now and join the conversation.



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Roula (00:00)
Do I have a lot of light? I feel like there's a lot of light in my face.

Rosie (00:03)
Sort of. It's a bit fuzzy so I can't really tell. A little bit.

Just a little bit, ooh, a little bit more.

Roula (00:13)
sunny outside. It hasn't been sunny for so long so I closed the curtain.

Rosie (00:16)
really?

Roula (00:28)
Okay, wow, we recorded a few episodes that brought me to this one.

Rosie (00:37)
Okay.

Roula (00:39)
Because in the previous episode, we talked about a few things that would trigger our emotions, whether the school with the regulations or myself with my neighbor doing good and upsetting me or my interaction with someone who throw back at me things I confided at them. All this bring me back to this question. How do we regulate our nervous system?

after we've been in these high emotions so quickly and for such a quick period.

Rosie (01:15)
⁓

Yeah, I'm not a master at this. I don't know, where do we start with this topic? This is a big one. Because you're in that moment, the heated moment, there's really emotional and big reactions and feelings. And then you're left with all this adrenaline and the feelings afterwards. So what do you do? I'm curious Roula, what do you do?

Roula (01:40)
First, what do you feel? Like for myself, I feel I'm sweating, especially under my arms. ⁓ My head, like my brain is struggling with all the things that I should have said or all the things that I should have not said. ⁓

Rosie (01:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah,

I'm really highly strung. I'm angry. My thoughts are going a million miles an hour. I'm thinking over what I said, what they said and what should I have said or what did I do wrong? They're an asshole. just, yeah, it's not necessarily a very logical time for me. Yeah.

Roula (02:14)
No.

And the inevitable for me is a migraine.

Rosie (02:20)
Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Roula (02:21)
immediately. So I have to

manage that while I'm not able because my nervous system is so going all over the place and crazy. it's despite that I read and listen to podcasts and try to practice calming my nervous system down, I find myself time after time after an interaction or something that triggered me that I'm so ⁓

Rosie (02:30)
Yeah.

Roula (02:50)
that my nervous system is so messed up that I wish someone can hold my hand and pet my head and tell me it's going to be all right. Just calm down. No, don't tell me, calm down. I will be angry. Give it the space, you know, and I ask few, few people this question. What do you do to calm down your nervous system? And I got

Rosie (02:57)
what?

Yeah, I was gonna say, don't tell me that.

Roula (03:17)
I'm going to read them and I got a few feedback here. So here we go. And I think this is I get really pretty cool stuff.

Rosie (03:19)
Yeah, I'm so curious, yes.

Roula (03:29)
That was my question in a Facebook group. How do you calm your nervous system down after a heavy interaction? And I got really good tips that I tried few of them. The most common one.

Rosie (03:41)
Okay.

Roula (03:43)
is the 4-2-4-2 breathing or the 4-4-4-4 breathing. 4 time in, hold for 4, breathe out for 4. The box breathing, exactly. ⁓ So yeah, that one, I tried it.

Rosie (03:47)
Yeah.

Also known as box breathing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roula (04:09)
I already feel comfortable. And someone gave me the tip to to do the crisp dance.

Rosie (04:10)
Yeah.

is that? Yeah.

Roula (04:20)
So I went searching for it and I

don't know if people are watching us on YouTube, see me. I'm sorry, I don't have like professional big camera. It's like when you walk like this at your place and then you put your knees really high. It's like, I describe it as not give a fuck walk. You know?

Rosie (04:40)
Okay. See kind of walking

on the spot, but then doing silly high knees and yeah.

Roula (04:44)
high

knees and moving your arm really fast. So that was that was a very cool, cool thing because I really felt, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to walk. Can I keep doing this right when I'm standing? ⁓ And someone else, of course, go under the shower and try to relax, something I wouldn't do because I style my hair every morning. So I'm not the of spontaneous under the shower person.

Rosie (04:47)
Okay, okay.

Hahaha!

Yeah!

Roula (05:13)
to go under the shower. This will stress me even more. ⁓ Yes, listen to a podcast. Did you just yawn without opening your mouth?

Rosie (05:25)
I did

You saw nothing! Not because I'm bored, Roula Just saying. I yawn a lot. Damn it! I didn't hide that well, did I? And now you said you're an animal! Excuse me! See, I'm just relieving my nervous system.

Roula (05:35)
Okay, I'll never yawn while we're recording. This is the only moment I wouldn't yawn.

Yes, yawning.

Rosie (05:49)
Maybe that's

what it is. You know, have you ever seen, I don't know how much you've had to do with dogs, but when they are, like you might correct them or tell them off or they don't want to do what you're telling them. Often they will do a really big yawn or sometimes they shake, shake, shake, shake. And it's just like they're shaking off all that energy. there you go. Dogs do it. Yes. Yeah. So maybe that's what I was doing by yawning.

Roula (06:10)
crisp walk they do the crisp walk

Or they yawn. Yeah.

Yeah, you're releasing your nervous system. You're giving nervous system permission.

Rosie (06:22)
And now we need to stop saying yawning

because here I go again.

Roula (06:26)
I ought to get too.

conta gious yawning.

Rosie (06:32)
with the

conversation! No! my god!

Roula (06:36)
Okay, anyway, anyway, there were a of tips and it showed me that each one of us trying to find a way to calm our nervous system. And this time when I had my nervous system going like up to the roof, I decided to sit with it for a minute, do the box breathing and to sit with it, not to run away from it and to tell myself, Roula

Rosie (06:40)
Yes.

Mm.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Roula (07:06)
It's, you know, I'm trying to, you know, ⁓ flight when you're scared, you want to run away. I'm so scared from my nervous system at the moment, how it's reacting that I want to run away. I want like to leave it and, but there is no way I can go to it's in my body.

Rosie (07:16)
Yes.

you

Yeah. Right.

Good point. Yep.

Roula (07:30)
So I promised myself to sit with it and let it really consume me because I wanted to accept at this moment there is nothing I can do except keep breathing. But because I sent this question on Facebook, on this group, while I was in the bad moment, reading all the reaction just calmed me down completely.

lot of loving reaction about how to deal with the nervous system. And then afterwards I felt okay, there are so many tips that people can use like the box breathing, taking a shower, doing a crisp walk or go for a walk ourselves outside.

Rosie (08:03)
Mmm!

Yes, I find that helps, yeah.

Roula (08:18)
Even though at that moment I was like, no, I'm not taking a shower. And really, I don't have the energy to put on my shoes and go outside. I felt so broken from energy that I didn't want to go out. so I read these messages, they gave me comfort, and I went listening to my book. After I accepted the situation.

Rosie (08:26)
Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Roula (08:45)
And I

said, I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to call anyone to complain. I'm not going to put this. I'm not going to talk about it more. I just want to sit with it. So sitting with it and listening to a book helped me tremendously because what I realized, I really calm down. If I have called someone and talked about it, it would have.

Rosie (08:58)
Yeah.

⁓

Roula (09:13)
I would have been still in this rage or in this emotional distress telling the story, but calming down, which in the end, a few hours later, my daughter called me and I shared with her how I'm feeling. And she was very understanding and loving because it was my birthday on that day. So yesterday she was very loving. Oh, no, that was like a day after it happened. So a day after it happened.

Rosie (09:19)
Yeah.

Yes.

Roula (09:42)
I talked to my daughter about it and I wasn't in the emotion. I was calm, grounded. This is really, was the first time for me, Rosie, I forgot your name, it's Rosie, right? My brain fog My nervous system now. ⁓

Rosie (10:04)
You're so relaxed

you can't remember.

Roula (10:07)
The first time I sit with my discomfort and my sweat, my nervous system, like telling me you have to run away from this feeling, you have to run away, run away. And I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to remember all of this, to try it when next time it happens. It can happen anytime that my nervous system will tell me run, run, run.

Rosie (10:30)
⁓

yeah. Maybe I'll try the box breathing. Hmm. Sometimes I find it useful to call someone if there's someone who can just let you vent. When I'm in that heightened state, I do not want your advice. I do not want you to start asking self-reflection questions or getting me to take accountability. I just want to vent.

But is that the most helpful for me? I don't know. Should I just wait? I feel like I've got to get the energy out somehow. So being physical is helpful. So maybe, what did you call that walking on the spot thing? Crispwarp.

Roula (11:12)
Crisp walk.

Talking about venting, ⁓ my husband observing our behavior, all of us, the women in his life, and he has a lot of women in his life, his sister, his nieces, myself, my daughters. Yes, he has a lot of women in his life that he also take care of, not only in his life, he also take care of all of us. And he's making me so aware that venting is not fucking helping. Just stop venting.

Rosie (11:26)
you

Yeah

Yeah.

Roula (11:47)
It's not helping. What is it helping venting? You're just repeating this. You're talking about this issue again.

Rosie (11:50)
Gets feelings out though. Feelings.

Hmm. That's interesting. That's interesting. I feel like with venting it's, it's, there's a fine line. I find it helpful, but then you need to, there's a point you've vented. Now get on with it. You need to take accountability and figure this out and work through it. Don't just fucking keep complaining to me. That I agree is not helpful. And a lot of people do that. But I, yeah, I feel like a bit of venting is, is okay. And he's healthy.

Roula (11:54)
Yeah.

That's what he tells me.

Yeah, I don't know anymore what venting is because I'm so scared that venting will keep my emotions so high that I'm trying to find another way to deal with my distress. I don't want to call it stress. I want to call it distress in that moment.

Rosie (12:31)
Yeah.

Hmm ⁓

Roula (12:42)
But yeah, so this is what I wanted to talk about. How do my question to our listeners, please help me more and more because I want to make a whole list and hang it on my whiteboard. All the tips that can help to calm down our nervous system that will not involve me going under the shower after I have made my hair and my makeup for the day.

Rosie (12:59)
Mmm.

I'll chew it.

Yeah, I'm keen to hear suggestions and maybe even what hasn't worked for you in the past because what might work for me or Roula really might not work for you at all. It could have the opposite effect. I'm keen to hear people's thoughts.

Roula (13:21)
And you know what, Rosie, I'm gonna make this list and hang it on my whiteboard and I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee and stand and read it every day, even when I'm not stressed so that it gets embedded in my head and printed. And maybe the cup of coffee is gonna be bought to me by one of our listener. If you go to the Rosie, no, not the Rosie, rosianrula.com and buy us a cup of coffee, we will really appreciate it because you're supporting us. Thank you so much.

Rosie (13:33)
imprinted in your brain. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, that was smoothly done, very smooth plug. All right, listeners, we'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.

Roula (13:57)
Bye!