Nervous System Cheat Codes: Why 'Self-Care' Is Not a Shortcut Through Trauma, Divorce and Chronic Stress

I love a scented candle. I really do.

I am not here to launch an unprovoked attack on baths, herbal tea, magnesium, walks, playlists called things like 'Soft Healing Era', or the increasingly ambitious claims made on behalf of a 5-minute guided meditation.

But I do think we need to say something more honest about what 'self-care' can and cannot do, especially in the context of divorce, trauma, chronic stress, or abuse, and the quieter but equally destabilising losses that come with relationship breakdown.

So here it is:

The nervous system does not accept cheat codes.

By that I mean this: when someone is living with fear, uncertainty, grief, hypervigilance, conflict, or prolonged instability, their nervous system is not necessarily going to settle because they have been told to 'do some breathing'.

That does not mean self-care is useless, but that it is very often asked to do jobs it cannot do.

And when that happens, what gets sold as support can start to feel like dismissal.

'Just breathe' is not always a kindness

So many people going through divorce and separation tell me that others 'don't get it'. They are trying to communicate that they are frightened; frightened about whether they will get to see their children, frightened about housing, money, what their ex-partner will do next, frightened about how long this process will drag on, and whether life as they knew it has ended for good.

What they receive in response is often some version of lifestyle advice... Take a walk. Have a bath. Get some sleep. Try mindfulness. Be kind to yourself. Just breathe.

Sometimes these suggestions are offered warmly and with love. Sometimes they are useful. Sometimes a walk really does help. Sometimes a bath is the only tolerable thing in a terrible day.

But there are moments when this kind of advice lands with a thud, because the person receiving it is not talking about ordinary stress. They are trying to describe a system under siege, a mind always keeping itself ready to respond to an attack.

And in those moments, 'just breathe' can feel less like care and more like being told to go away and deal with it, take it somewhere - or to someone - else.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Divorce is not just a legal process; it is often a whole-body experience

One of the problems with how divorce is often spoken about is that it gets flattened into paperwork, logistics, deadlines and decisions. And of course those things matter! They matter enormously. But divorce and separation are rarely just administrative events; most often than not, they are experiences of profound relational rupture.

Even in relatively amicable separations, people may be dealing with grief, rejection, shame, panic, loneliness, identity disturbance, disrupted attachment, changes in parenting arrangements, financial strain, practical dislocation, and an unnerving collapse of what used to feel known.

In higher-conflict situations, the picture can become much more intense. Add coercive control, economic abuse, post-separation abuse, intimidation, unpredictable communication, allegations, family court stress, or housing precarity, and what you often see is not just 'stress' in the casual sense, but chronic activation of the nervous systems' defence mechanisms.

That matters, because a person in that state does not simply need better lifestyle tips. They may need safety, clarity, containment, attunement, practical support, reliable relationships, better boundaries, and time.

In other words, they may need far more than what our culture tends to package under the glossy little label of 'self-care'.

The body is not being dramatic; it is doing its job

Years ago, I wrote an undergraduate psychology essay about chronic stress, inspired partly by Robert Sapolsky’s famous framing of 'why zebras don't get ulcers' - i.e. why animals don't tend to get stress-related illnesses in the way humans do. Re-reading it recently while thinking about this article was both fun and, in a mildly nerdy way, strangely vindicating.

One of the key distinctions in that essay was this: zebras mainly face acute physical threats, while humans repeatedly activate the same stress machinery in response to psychological and social stress. The book (and my essay) argued that zebras tend to deal with short-term crises that the body is well equipped to respond to, whereas humans often trigger the same protective systems in response to prolonged conflict, fear, uncertainty, and social threat.

That distinction is enormously useful in divorce and separation work.

Because when someone is waiting for a solicitor’s letter, worrying about a hearing, trying to interpret an ex-partner’s unpredictable behaviour, panicking about rent, or lying awake imagining worst-case scenarios, their body may respond as though something dangerous is happening.

And, in many cases, something is dangerous; perhaps not in the 'run from a predator' sense, but in the human sense of attachment threat, financial threat, existential threat, or actual ongoing abuse.

The body is not being melodramatic, but trying to protect the person carrying all of that.

Image sourced from International Student Insurance

Why zebras do not get ulcers, but humans often do

Here is the short science sidebar, without making everyone sit through an involuntary first-year biopsychology seminar.

The stress response evolved to help organisms survive threat. In acute danger, that response is brilliant. The sympathetic nervous system ramps up, adrenaline and noradrenaline help mobilise energy, heart rate rises, blood is directed where it is most urgently needed, and the body prioritises immediate survival. The science also shows us that there is a slower hormonal route involving cortisol-related processes, which broadens and prolongs the stress response when a threat is perceived.

That is all an extremely useful response when a zebra needs to outrun a lion. But it is much less elegant when a human being is living for months inside uncertainty, fear, grief, conflict, vigilance, or repeated relational threat.

The scientific core point is that the stress response is adaptive in the short term, but when it is activated too often, or for too long, it may contribute to problems affecting immunity, digestion, tissue repair, cardiovascular systems and reproduction.

That does not mean stress straightforwardly 'causes' every health problem, nor does it mean people are doomed. Bodies are more complicated than wellness slogans and more complicated than doom slogans too. But it does mean chronic stress is not trivial. It is not 'all in the mind'. And it is not something people can necessarily out-think, out-journal, or out-Yankee-candle. The body does not respond to branding.

What this means in divorce and separation

When people are moving through divorce, the threat is often not one thing. It is cumulative. It may be: the loss of a shared future; fear about children; fear about being erased from daily family life; economic instability; housing insecurity; prolonged negotiation; family court delays; the emotional whiplash of contact with an ex; social isolation; stigma; legal costs; or the sheer exhaustion of having to function while a central structure of life is breaking apart.

And because many of these stressors are ongoing, the nervous system does not necessarily get a clean 'all clear'.

This is one reason people can feel confused by themselves during divorce. They might say things like:

• 'I cannot switch off.'

• 'I know what I need to do, but I can't make myself do it.'

• 'I am exhausted but I cannot rest.'

• 'Everyone keeps telling me to calm down, but I feel like something terrible is about to happen.'

• 'I am doing all the right things and still feel awful.'

None of that is evidence of failure. Very often, it is evidence of a body and mind responding to prolonged instability in ways that make a great deal of sense.

Image credit: Pexels

The problem with self-care when it becomes a cure-all fantasy

I think the real issue is not self-care itself. The issue is what our culture has turned it into.

Self-care has become commercialised, moralised and oversold. It is often presented as a package of routines that a responsible person should be able to perform in order to remain functional, calm, productive and emotionally regulated through almost anything.

That is a very convenient story.

It is convenient for systems that do not want to address structural problems. Convenient for workplaces that want resilient employees rather than changed conditions. Convenient for social environments that are more comfortable recommending a bath than confronting abuse, precarity, injustice, burnout, or grief. Convenient, too, for professionals who may feel helpless and reach instinctively for something gentle, quick, and familiar.

But convenient is not the same as true.

Because self-care is often framed not as one form of support, but as the solution. And for people living with trauma or chronic stress, that can feel not only inadequate but vaguely insulting.

A bath may help you feel warmer. A walk may help discharge some activation. A meditation may slightly widen the gap between feeling and reaction. Great. Useful. Keep them!

But none of these things, on their own, are likely to resolve coercive control, stop post-separation abuse, produce affordable housing, guarantee a fair process, undo attachment injury, repair financial devastation, or substitute for being deeply seen and properly supported.

Sometimes what we call self-care is actually self-maintenance

There is a form of care that helps keep a person going, like sleeping enough to function, eating regular meals, going outside, moving the body, taking medication, going to therapy, drinking water, asking for help, limiting contact where possible, having small rituals that create moments of steadiness.

All of that matters. But a lot of it is better understood as self-maintenance or capacity support rather than cure... And that does not make it lesser. In hard times, maintenance is sacred.

Self-maintenance can help create the conditions in which healing becomes more possible. It can support regulation. It can reduce secondary distress. It can widen tolerance. It can help someone survive a brutal period with a little more gentleness.

What it cannot usually do is bypass reality; and that is what the phrase 'the nervous system does not accept cheat codes' is trying to get at.

Image credit: Pexels

There is a difference between soothing and safety

This is especially important in trauma-informed work. A person can:

• Feel briefly soothed without being safe.

• Appear calm while remaining deeply dysregulated.

• Perform competence while carrying enormous internal strain.

• Tell themselves they are fine because they have become highly skilled at functioning inside impossible conditions.

And in divorce, that gap between appearance and physiology can become very wide.

Someone may be answering emails, attending meetings, talking to schools, speaking to solicitors, making dinner, getting children to bed, and outwardly 'coping', all while their system is running on vigilance, adrenaline, shutdown, dread, numbness, or panic.

So when they are told, again, to light a candle or take a bubble bath, what they may hear is: 'please use a softer voice while your world is falling apart'.

No wonder some people want to scream.

A note for family justice professionals: your nervous systems are in the room too

This part matters to me a great deal, because the lessons here are not only for clients. They are also for the professionals working alongside them: lawyers, mediators, divorce coaches, financial advisers, therapists, parenting experts, court staff, and others in the family justice ecosystem.

Professionals in these spaces are often exposed, repeatedly, to distress, conflict, grief, fear, trauma narratives, coercive dynamics, relational breakdown, and the consequences of systems that can be slow, adversarial, under-resourced, and emotionally punishing.

Image sourced from Sage Journals

That exposure does something; not always dramatically, not always all at once. But over time, it can shape the body, the mind, and the professional stance. It can narrow tolerance. It can increase reactivity or numbness. It can produce cynicism, irritability, fatigue, dread, or a subtle deadening of responsiveness. It can make someone overly urgent, overly detached, overly managerial, or overly identified with a client’s pain.

That is not a moral failure. It is one of the ways vicarious trauma and chronic occupational stress can show up.

And here too, the nervous system does not accept cheat codes. A wellbeing webinar, a branded gratitude journal, or a generic reminder to 'look after yourself' will not on its own protect a professional from the cumulative impact of sitting with human suffering every day. Those things may help a bit. Fine. Lovely. But they are not a substitute for proper supervision, reflective space, manageable caseloads, peer support, trauma-informed organisational cultures, boundaries, rest, and honest recognition of what this work asks of people.

If you work in family justice, your own regulation matters not because you should aspire to saintly serenity, but because your nervous system affects your work. It affects what you hear. It affects how quickly you go into fixing mode. It affects whether you become defensive, flooded, dismissive, or over-involved. It affects the quality of your attunement. It affects whether your calm is genuine or merely performed.

Clients do not just receive your expertise. They also receive your state.

Why professionals sometimes reach for self-care language too quickly

I think there is also something uncomfortable, and worth naming, about why 'self-care' talk can become so dominant in professional spaces.

Sometimes it is because it is easier to offer manageable advice than to sit with the scale of what a person is facing.

Sometimes it is because practical solutions are limited, and offering something feels kinder than offering nothing.

Sometimes it is because professionals themselves are stretched thin and have internalised the same cultural script: regulate, cope, function, carry on.

And sometimes it is because institutions prefer interventions that place responsibility back on the individual.

"Employers can dangle workplace wellness initiatives to offset the stress they create in part because we’ve accepted the concept en masse: it’s our job to fix what’s “wrong” with us. Consequently, employers are always suggesting more ways to get well, yet never offering less work or more substantial help." - Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

Again, none of this means self-care is wrong. It means context matters. A self-care suggestion can be attuned and helpful when it is offered alongside validation, realism, and deeper support. But it becomes alienating when it replaces those things. The difference is everything.

What actually helps

Not cheat codes; conditions. What tends to help people through trauma, divorce, and chronic stress is usually not one brilliant intervention but a web of support that gradually reduces threat and increases capacity. That might include:

• clear information;

• trauma-informed legal or professional support;

• fewer surprises;

• better boundaries;

• financial clarity where possible;

• safer communication structures;

• trusted relationships;

• rest, therapy, community;

• regular food and sleep;

• grief that is allowed to be grief rather than rushed into positivity;

• compassion without condescension; and

• the relief of understanding that dysregulation is not the same thing as brokenness.

For professionals, it may also include:

• reflective supervision;

• collegial support;

• realistic caseloads;

• time to process difficult material;

• awareness of vicarious trauma; and

• the discipline of noticing when your own system is no longer quietly humming in the background but has grabbed the steering wheel.

In both cases, the question shifts from 'How do I fix this quickly?' to 'What does this person, or this system, need in order to feel less under threat?'

That is a better question. Less glamorous, perhaps. Less marketable. But far more useful.

Image credit: Pexels

Self-care is not the enemy; magical thinking is

To be clear, this is not an anti-self-care manifesto.

I am not trying to confiscate anyone's candles.

I am trying to push back against the fantasy that enough personal optimisation can override prolonged fear, injustice, precarity, grief, trauma, or relational rupture.

Self-care can matter enormously. Small acts of care can be stabilising, dignifying, restorative, and sometimes life-saving in their modesty. But their value often lies in support, not cure; in companionship, not magic; in creating conditions for survival and recovery, not in bypassing the need for larger change.

Sometimes a walk is wonderful. Sometimes a walk is what gets you through the next hour. And sometimes a walk is simply a walk, while the real work remains grieving, organising, resting, seeking help, setting limits, finding safety, engaging support, and enduring something very hard.

All of that belongs in the same picture.

"Self-care is not just something that we do or buy that exists outside of us, but rather a way of being in a relationship with ourselves." - Psychology Today

Image credit: me, a hypocrite (?!), as this is one of 97 results for 'candle' in my camera roll

Final thought

The nervous system does not accept cheat codes. Not because healing is impossible, but because healing is not usually a hack. Bodies are not productivity apps, but living, protective, relational systems. They carry what has happened, what might happen, and what has not yet felt resolved. They respond not only to immediate events but to patterns, histories, losses, and environments.

So when someone going through divorce or separation says they are not okay, the answer may sometimes include a walk, a bath, a meal, or a candle. But it should not end there. Because often what they need is not better performance of wellness, but more truthful support: safety where possible, community where possible, clarity where possible, and care that does not ask them to become more convenient while they are in pain.

And for those of us working alongside them, the lesson is not only to be cautious about offering self-care as a panacea. It is also to remember that our own nervous systems are not exempt from the realities of this work. No cheat codes there, either.