The Power of Self-Regulation
Have you ever wanted something so clearly, and still found yourself unable to move toward it the way you expect yourself to?
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And yet, the closer it gets, the more you overthink it. You feel unsure. You shy away. You overpower. You run. Or you convince yourself it’s just not possible for you.
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Even though you want it and you know it’s possible for you.
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THE JOURNEY OF BUILDING A DREAM
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If you’ve experienced this, I want you to know you’re not alone. There is more than one part of us involved in wanting what we want, and they don’t always agree.
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This IS the journey of building a dream. Wherever you are on the path, there’s nothing wrong with you.
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We tend to think that building the life we want is mostly about discipline, strategy, and mindset. But for many of us, that isn’t the whole story.
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Sometimes we are building from a more regulated, integrated place in ourselves—and sometimes we are building from protection and an urgency to reconcile deeper feelings that we are often unaware of.
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Not everything we create comes from wholeness, and that’s okay. We create so we can see the contrast between what looks successful and what actually feels true.
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At a certain point in our growth, we touch our authentic soul desires—the ones that feel alive in the body. And suddenly, there’s a gap.
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The distance between where we are and what we want can feel like standing at the edge of a cliff with no idea how to get to the other side. This is often where dysregulation shows up. Because the gap is not just mental—it is nervous system deep.
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This is where anxiety, shutdown, urgency, numbness, and self-doubt often arise. Not because you’re doing it wrong. But because your system is doing exactly what it was so lovingly designed to do: protect you from disappointment, exposure, humiliation, and failure.
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WHAT I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND FOR A LONG TIME
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I wish it were easier—and quicker—to get the body on board with the dream. For some people, it seems to be. But that hasn’t been my experience. As a highly sensitive person, I know what it feels like to hold deep desires while also carrying parts that shut it all down.
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For many years, I felt fragmented inside. I didn’t have language for it at first. Now at least I can see what I’m working with.
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One part of me wants deep connection. Another likes to hide.
One part believes in my deeply caring nature. Another insists it’s safer not to feel so much.
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What’s been most frustrating is that my mind is often very clear, but my body doesn’t always feel safe enough to move at the same pace. It’s maddening at times. Like I’m fighting myself while trying to build a life I genuinely want and believe in.
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More than anything, I want all parts of me to feel like we’re working together as a team rather than judging, criticizing, and pulling me in different directions.
CHANGING HOW I UNDERSTAND MYSELF
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Through therapy and coaching, I’ve discovered and studied two frameworks that have profoundly changed the way I understand myself:
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Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic model developed by Richard Schwartz.
Polyvagal Theory, the science of how the nervous system organizes around safety and connection.
What I discovered were two different languages describing the same experience.
INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS: We are a system of parts
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IFS is based on a simple idea: we are not one unified self. We are a living system of inner voices—different ages, emotions, and instincts moving within us at the same time.
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Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many parts of myself more intimately.
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There’s seven year old Jillian with big bangs running around the countryside free and happy as can be playing with her neighbors. Ten-year-old Jillian with short hair, navigating the uncertainty of her parents’ divorce. Twelve-year-old Jillian with a high ponytail, orchestrating the logistics of moving between two homes while keeping an eye on her sister and dad. Seventeen-year-old Jillian with black hair, an eyebrow ring, and a fake tan, wanting to do something meaningful with her life.
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All these ladies are still alive inside of me, some forgetting it’s 2026 and I’m now 40 years old.
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Some parts are protective. Some are vulnerable. Some get along. Some don’t. And none of them are bad. I love them all. In IFS, there are no bad parts—only parts that are trying to help in the best way they know how.
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When we look closer, we can start to see the types of roles parts fall into.
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Managers are the proactive parts that try to keep life under control. They often show up as perfectionism, planning, people pleasing, hyper-responsibility, and overthinking. Their role is to keep us away from what feels too vulnerable.
Firefighters are the reactive parts that rush in when emotional pain breaks through anyway. They numb, distract, criticize, overwork, scroll, binge, or shut us down—anything to quickly reduce intensity and restore a sense of control.
So between them, there is often very little space to actually meet what is underneath—the exiles.
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Exiles are the younger, more vulnerable parts of us that carry emotional wounds, beliefs, and experiences that once felt too overwhelming to fully feel. They are often the parts that had to be pushed away in order for us to function, belong, or be accepted.
We are all born with a unique set of curiosities, sensitivities, and desires. But over time, some of these parts are welcomed and expressed, while others are shamed, unmet, misunderstood, or abandoned. Those are the ones that become exiled.
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So, naturally they are also the parts we spend much of our lives trying not to feel. Even though they are the parts that most deeply want to be seen, witnessed, and met with compassion.
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One of the most profound shifts in this work is that it replaces shame with understanding. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” we begin asking, “What is my system trying to protect me from?”
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Because no protector part can truly soften in a lasting way until the part it is protecting has been met, witnessed, and felt with enough safety that it no longer has to carry it’s burdens and fears alone.
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INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION
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I’ve come to experience these parts not just as thoughts, but as sensations in my body. One of my manager’s feels like tightness in my right shoulder. A firefighter makes me feel empty and blank. My youngest exile shows up as a burning in my heart.
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When these parts are not in relationship with one another, we experience what I think of as internal fragmentation. The system starts to tip out of balance and parts begin to take over.
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One part strives forward. Another holds back.
One pushes. One collapses.
One hopes. One protects against hoping.
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From the outside, it can look like high achievement, inconsistency, procrastination, or self-sabotage. But internally, it is a system trying to hold conflicting needs at the same time: safety and expansion, protection and desire. It can be exhausting.
POLYVAGAL THEORY: How this shows up in the body
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Sometimes we first notice a part through the thoughts in our mind. Other times we notice it through sensations in our body. Either way, both are pointing to the same internal experience.
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Polyvagal Theory is often described as the science of safety. It helps us understand how the nervous system shifts depending on whether we perceive ourselves as safe or threatened.
A favorite chart I share with clients
We can think of it as three primary modes, like a ladder:
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Ventral Vagal (the green):Â When we feel safe, we are grounded, connected, curious, and open. There is a sense of ease and possibility.
Sympathetic (the yellow):Â When we feel threatened, the body mobilizes. We may feel anxious, urgent, restless, or driven to fix something immediately. This state also supports general movement, focus, performance, and response to challenge.
Dorsal Vagal (the red):Â When things feel overwhelming, the system protects us by shutting down. We may feel numb, disconnected, flat, or stuck. This state also supports rest, recovery, and integration of experience.
A healthy nervous system moves fluidly between these states throughout the day, like rungs on a ladder. Energized and focused, then activated and urgent, then briefly withdrawn or tired, and back again.
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This flexibility is often referred to as nervous system capacity. Regulation is not about staying in one state. It is about developing the flexibility to activate, recover, and return to a grounded state.
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So instead of asking “What is wrong with me?” try asking: Where am I right now? Am I open and connected, activated and urgent, or shut down and withdrawn?
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From there, you can work with your parts more easily:
Recognizing the autonomic state— name what is happening without judgment.
Respecting the response— understand it as adaptive, not wrong.
Regulating or co-regulating— support the body back toward safety through breath, movement, grounding, or connection.
Re-storying the experience— remember that the nervous system is telling us how we are, not who we are.
WHY CAPACITY MATTERS
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One of the most important things I’ve learned is: The life you are able to build is limited by the capacity of your nervous system to hold it.
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Where a lot of us get stuck is that we deeply want something, but when we orient toward it, we lose regulation. We start to feel behind, and that sense of urgency pulls us out of the very state we need to move forward from.
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So capacity is built gradually, through regulation and small, supported steps toward what we desire. It can feel painfully slow—but that’s what builds real, lasting stability.
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When capacity is limited, we can get caught cycling between activation and shutdown, or staying chronically in one or the other without realizing it. This is what often gets interpreted as burnout, inconsistency, or lack of discipline. But internally, it is often just a system trying to stay regulated while holding more desire than it currently feels safe to carry.
SELF ENERGY: The inner capacity to lead
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In IFS, there is a state called Self. Self is not another part. It is the calm, compassionate center within us that becomes available when our parts are not in extreme roles.
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It is characterized by what Richard Schwartz calls the 8 C’s: calm, clear, curious, compassionate, confident, courageous, creative, and connected.
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When we are in Self energy, we are no longer reacting from fear or urgency. We are relating to our experience rather than being consumed by it.
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From this place, we can separate from our parts and say:
“I see you.”
“I understand why you’re here.”
“You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”
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And over time, that changes the internal system. Because parts don’t transform through force. They soften through trust.
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This is the work I’m still doing with my own coach: learning what it feels like in my body when Self is leading and how to notice when a part has taken over.
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I’m continually learning how to stay with the parts that are afraid. To witness them. To understand them. To love them. To care for their needs. To set boundaries.
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This work is not quick. It asks you to meet the parts of yourself you’ve spent years trying to outrun. But it is the most meaningful work I’ve ever done.
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WHAT I’VE COME TO KNOW
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The real work of building a dream is not forcing yourself into expansion.
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It is expanding your capacity to stay present with yourself while you expand. To hold the parts that are afraid. To listen to the parts that resist. To lead the parts that protect.
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And over time, it becomes a great honor to learn how to love yourself and lead your own growth.
