Nervous System Dysregulation in Athletes: Causes, Symptoms, and Impact on Athletic Performance, Recovery, and Stress
What Is Nervous System Dysregulation in Athletes? (Part 2 of the Series)
This blog is part 2 of a series called The Athlete’s Guide to Nervous System Training for Performance, Recovery & Regulation, where we break down how the autonomic nervous system shapes athletic performance, recovery, and long-term well-being in a way that is practical and relevant to sport. You canread Part 1 HERE where I break down what the Autonomic Nervous system is as well as why working with it is so important for athlete health, well being and performance enhancement.
In this second part of the series, we’re exploring one of the most important factors impacting athlete performance today: chronic nervous system dysregulation. When athletes struggle with consistency, recovery, confidence, stress tolerance, or burnout I often find nervous system dysregulation underneath.
How Nervous System Dysregulation Develops in Athletes
As discussed in Part 1, the autonomic nervous system is designed to keep us safe. Our safety and threat detection system prioritizes survival above everything else.
Importantly, the nervous system does not always distinguish clearly between real, perceived, or remembered threat. Because of this, even subtle cues of stress or pressure can shift an athlete into a protective state automatically.
This system is highly adaptive in the short term. It’s designed to detect threat, shift the body into protective responses such as fight, flight, or shutdown, and respond until the stressor resolves. Once the threat passes, the nervous system ideally returns to safety and regulation, allowing the body to restore homeostasis.
Dysregulation happens when this return to safety becomes difficult, delayed, or incomplete.
When stress is chronic, repetitive, or too overwhelming to fully process, the nervous system doesn’t get enough opportunity to complete the stress cycle and return to baseline. Instead, it remains in protective activation for extended periods of time.
Over time, this creates an imbalance between regulation and protection, which is what we refer to as nervous system dysregulation in athletes. For athletes, this can lead to a variety of challenges that impact both performance and well being.
Symptoms of Nervous System Dysregulation in Athletes
Nervous system dysregulation can show up differently in every athlete. However, there are common patterns that often emerge across mental, emotional, and physical domains.
Mental and emotional symptoms of dysregulation in athletes
Chronic Anxiety (that seems to just always be there)
Chronic Stress / overwhelm (with little to no relief)
Loud inner critic and perfectionism (really hard on themselves, never feel like they're good enough, can’t acknowledge success or wins, Struggle to let go of mistakes / failure)
Inability to control or work with self talk (spiral , ruminate, cant stop worrying, 0-100, down the rabbit hole)
Drastic Mood swings, irritability, hypervigilence
More specific performance related anxiety that is pervasive and really impacts daily life and performance
Low confidence, self esteem, self worth
Frequent dissociation or zoning out
Challenges with cognitive functioning (processing information, learning)
Physical symptoms of nervous system dysregulation in athletes
Struggle with sleep - falling asleep, staying asleep, sleeping well
Challenges with gut and digestion
Chronic sickness or illness
Nagging injuries and longer recovery time or never feel recovered
Increase inflammation
Cycles of burnout (physical, mental and emotional exhaustion and depletion)
Struggle with slowing down, stillness, rest (actually have an aversion to it, its uncomfortable)
Chronically feeling restless and hypervigilant
Why So Many Athletes Experience Chronic Nervous System Dysregulation
What I find is that today's athlete is spending far too much time in their stress response without adequate and consistent regulation to their system.
Over the last 6 years in my work with athletes I find the majority of them are walking around and attempting to reach and sustain peak performance with a dysregulated nervous system. Their nervous system is experiencing dysregulation and more often than not dysregulation is actually at the root cause of many of their daily struggles.
Why is that the case? It's complicated and never just one thing. Here are a variety of reasons that can contribute to chronic dysregulation…
Genetics, biology or underlying medical conditions
How an athlete identifies
Social determinants of health
Sport culture (Increased pressure to perform, social media, relationship with coaches, unsafe or prejudice environment, pay to play system, sport injury)
Navigating life load which often leads to chronic stress (school, family dynamic, social, extracurricular sport)
Chronic poor sleep (which is also a result of dysregulation)
Overtraining and inadequate recovery
Home life, family dynamic and parent attachment
Overarching systems of oppression
Trauma (individual, systemic, collective)
Although we tend to focus on the individual when it comes to mental health, performance enhancement and nervous system regulation, it's important to recognize dysregulation is never just an individual experience. Athletes' dysregulation is often caused by things outside of their control and they’re a part of a larger system that feeds dysregulation. A main system or environment for athletes is sport culture itself.
I find both athletes and sport culture often don’t take any of this into consideration. Sport doesn’t really address or acknowledge the importance of the nervous system, so many athletes don’t even know the importance of it or how to work with it.
Addressing Nervous System Dysregulation in Athletes
The goal is not to eliminate dysregulation entirely. Human life includes stress, challenge, uncertainty, and at times real threat. Dysregulation is not a failure of the system. It’s a normal and adaptive response designed to keep us alive. The goal is a flexible nervous system.
A flexible nervous system is not a nervous system that never experiences dysregulation. It is a nervous system that has the capacity to shift between protection and safety states without getting “stuck” in protection. In other words, it’s not about avoiding dysregulation, it’s about the ability to move through it and return.
Many people refer to this as a “regulated” nervous system, but I prefer the word flexible. I first heard this from Jessica Shaffer (Nervous System Reset).
On social media, the phrase “regulate your nervous system” is often used. More often than not, this gets interpreted as needing to quickly return to a calm or relaxed state. But regulation is not always about calm.
To me, regulating your nervous system is about first understanding what is happening in your present moment experience, meeting your nervous system where it is, and then supporting it through that response. Sometimes this may look like crying, anger, or emotional expression. Sometimes it may look like grounding or self-soothing. Regulation is not about fixing dysregulation as quickly as possible. It’s about supporting the system in a way that allows it to complete the response and eventually return to a more integrated or balanced state.
In an ideal performance environment, athletes develop the ability to move fluidly between activation and recovery based on demand. This flexibility supports not only performance enhancement, but also long-term health, resilience, and sustainability in sport
Final Thoughts on Athlete Performance and Nervous System Health
The nervous system plays a critical role in health, well-being, and an athlete’s ability to perform. Chronic dysregulation can have a pervasive impact on all of these—but the good news is, you’re not stuck.
There are things within our control that can help. We need to help athletes understand their nervous system, build awareness of it, and then take steps to build nervous system flexibility.
In part 3 of this blog series, we’ll explore how athletes can start to actually build nervous system flexibility for optimal health and performance.
Training, Lineage & Acknowledgements
I acknowledge that this work is informed by formal clinical training, ongoing professional education, lived experience, and integrative healing traditions. The concepts in this series reflect a synthesis of multiple lineages of knowledge, including trauma-informed care, somatic psychology, and mindfulness-based practice. Many foundational principles of nervous system regulation and embodied healing also have roots in Indigenous traditions and ancient Eastern healing systems, which continue to inform and shape contemporary clinical approaches today.
Polyvagal Theory (originated in the 1970s) developed by Dr. Stephen Porges
Polyvagal Clinical Training with Deb Dana, LCSW
Level I and II, Advanced Trauma Training, The Ferentz Institute
Polyvagal Yoga and Complex Trauma Training, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, PhD
The Hakomi Method, Manuela Mischke-Reeds LA, LMFT, CHT
Help for the Helpers, 2023, Babette Rothschild
Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, 2018, David Treleaven