296. When the World Feels Unsteady, Choose Intention Not Panic: Nervous System Tools for Physicians

We are not here to pretend this is fine. We are here to help you get steady enough to choose how we respond.
When fear narrows your thinking, you can come back to the body first. 

Regulate first. Respond second.

In this conversation, Ni-Cheng and I name the moment without bypassing it: collective fear, grief, exhaustion, and moral distress. We also name minority stress and racial trauma as real, lived experiences that shape safety in the body.

When we are activated, our wise brain is harder to access. 

That is when we send the text, make the decision, or take the action from urgency instead of intention. The “future self” question is a grounding anchor: how do we want to remember how we showed up?

This episode offers practical micro-tools that work in real life: breath as a home with a longer exhale (blow out the birthday candles), box breathing, 4-7-8, pranayama, STOP (Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed), orienting to safety by feeling the ground under our feet, and hand to heart as a physiological downshift. We also name movement and yoga as a form of regulation.

We end with two powerful reminders: 

• Choose your lane of helping without judgment, and sometimes that lane is rest. 

• Hold space without fixing—active listening, consent-based sharing, and avoiding advice, intrusive questions, and minimizing-suffering phrases. The goal is not to be “fine.” The goal is to be available to our values.
  
  

PEARLS OF WISDOM
• A dysregulated nervous system makes urgency feel like truth. Regulation gives us back clarity, choice, and values-based action.
• Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are adaptive responses. We can name our default without judging it, then choose the next step.
• Moral distress, grief, anger, numbness, and exhaustion are normal human responses to instability. Nothing is wrong with you.
• Trauma and minority stress live in the body. When safety feels threatened, hypervigilance and shutdown make sense.
• We do not have to do everything. We choose a lane of helping that matches our capacity and sustains us over time.

Reflection Questions
When you feel activated, what is your default—urgency, over-functioning, numbness, shutdown, or fawn?
What helps you return to the green zone —long exhale, feet on the ground, hand to heart, movement, nature?
Which lane of helping feels like desire and alignment, and which lane feels like guilt or over-responsibility?
If your future self looks back five years from now, what do you hope you feel proud of in how you showed up?

If we want to practice these tools in community, especially in nature, explore Jessie’s offerings here:

www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats
www.jessiemahoneymd.com/coaching
www.jessiemahoneymd.com/speaking

The Healing Medicine Podcast was formerly known as the Mindful Healers Podcast
Nothing shared in the Healing Medicine Podcast is medical advice.