The Regulation Collective

You are not “bad at coping.” If you can move from sharp focus to tears, numbness, irritability, or total mental blankness in the same day, this guide to nervous system states explained simply is a way to name what is happening in your body – and why working motherhood can push those shifts harder than most workplaces recognize.

For many mothers, the problem is not motivation or resilience. It is load. Matrescence changes the brain and body during the transition into motherhood, increasing sensitivity to threat, care demands, and social evaluation while also reshaping attention and identity (Orchard et al., 2023; Barba-Müller et al., 2019). Add paid work, fragmented recovery, constant decision-making, and low-control job conditions, and the nervous system starts doing exactly what it is designed to do under sustained demand – adapt, compensate, and eventually signal strain (McEwen, 1998; ISO, 2021).

A simple guide to nervous system states

When people talk about nervous system states, they usually mean patterns of activation in the body that shape how you think, feel, and function. These are not personality traits. They are temporary physiological states influenced by stress hormones, sleep loss, cognitive load, safety cues, and accumulated demand.

In plain language, there are three broad patterns many mothers recognize.

The first is regulated. In this state, you can think clearly, switch tasks without too much friction, and respond rather than react. You may still be busy, but your system has enough capacity to process demands. Attention, memory, and emotional control are more available because the load is within range.

The second is activated. This is the state of urgency, vigilance, tension, and scanning. You may feel wired, impatient, snappy, or unable to settle. Your mind jumps ahead to what could go wrong. This is not random. It reflects stress-system activation, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sympathetic arousal, which prepare the body to meet demand (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009).

The third is depleted. Here, the system stops pushing and starts conserving. You may feel flat, foggy, detached, heavy, or unable to start simple tasks. Words are harder to find. Decisions feel expensive. This state often follows long periods of activation without enough recovery. In occupational health terms, this is consistent with cumulative allostatic load – the wear and adaptation cost of repeated stress exposure over time (McEwen, 1998; Guidi et al., 2021).

Why working mothers shift between states so fast

This is where the usual workplace story fails mothers. It treats stress as an individual coping issue when the exposure is structural.

Working mothers are often managing multiple named psychosocial hazards at once: high job demands, low job control, poor support, role conflict, low recognition, and emotionally demanding work. Safe Work Australia identifies these as psychosocial hazards because they can cause psychological and physical harm when not managed properly (Safe Work Australia, 2022). ISO 45003 also makes clear that organizations must identify and control work-related factors that create sustained strain, including workload, remote availability expectations, inadequate support, and role ambiguity (ISO, 2021).

Motherhood adds another layer. The mental load of anticipating appointments, school logistics, food, illness, emotional monitoring, and household coordination is not just “a lot to think about.” It is continuous cognitive labor. Research shows that mothers disproportionately carry this invisible planning and monitoring work, which increases fatigue, stress, and role overload (Daminger, 2019). When that sits on top of paid work, the nervous system has fewer true off-periods.

That is why you can feel competent in one meeting and completely unable to answer a simple message an hour later. Capacity is state-dependent. It changes with total load, not just work skill.

What each state can look like at work

A regulated state does not mean calm in a soft, idealized sense. It means enough physiological stability to prioritize, remember what you were doing, and tolerate minor disruptions. You can recover from a hard email without spiraling. You can hear feedback without your whole body reading it as threat.

An activated state often looks productive from the outside. You answer everything fast. You over-prepare. You cannot stop thinking. But the quality of that productivity can be expensive. Attention narrows. Threat detection increases. Small changes feel bigger than they are. Over time, this state is associated with fatigue, sleep disruption, irritability, and reduced cognitive flexibility (Lupien et al., 2009).

A depleted state is frequently misread as disengagement. In reality, it can be the predictable outcome of prolonged overload. Working memory suffers under chronic stress. So does concentration and decision quality (Shields et al., 2016). If a mother is forgetting routine items, staring at a screen, or feeling emotionally blunted, that does not automatically indicate low commitment. It may indicate a nervous system that has been carrying too much for too long.

The five neuroscience pillars behind these shifts

Matrescence is the first pillar. Becoming a mother involves major neurobiological, hormonal, cognitive, and identity change. It is a developmental transition, not a lifestyle adjustment (Orchard et al., 2023). That matters because workplaces often expect women to return unchanged.

Nervous system dysregulation is the second pillar. Under repeated demand, the body can spend more time in activation or depletion and less time in regulation. This is not a moral failure. It is a load response shaped by stress physiology (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009).

Allostatic load is the third pillar. It explains the cumulative cost of adapting to chronic stressors. The issue is not one bad day. It is repeated exposure without adequate control or recovery (McEwen, 1998; Guidi et al., 2021).

Mental and cognitive load is the fourth pillar. When the brain is constantly holding unfinished tasks, anticipating needs, and tracking multiple domains, capacity drops. This affects memory, attention, and emotional bandwidth.

Neuroplasticity is the fifth pillar. The good news is that nervous system patterns are changeable. But neuroplasticity does not mean “just think differently.” It means repeated conditions shape function over time. If workplace conditions remain unsafe, the brain keeps adapting to threat. If conditions become more predictable, supported, and sustainable, capacity can improve (Kolb & Gibb, 2011). The trade-off is simple: individual effort can help at the margins, but system conditions still matter most.

Why this matters for employers too

If you lead people, this is not private wellbeing content. It is a psychosocial risk issue.

Under ISO 45003:2021, employers are expected to identify hazards that can harm psychological health and to implement control measures proportionate to the risk. Safe Work Australia takes the same position in its model guidance on psychosocial hazards (Safe Work Australia, 2022). In Victoria, the Psychological Health Regulations 2025 strengthen the expectation that psychosocial risks are managed proactively and documented, not handled informally after harm has accumulated.

That matters for maternal workforce retention because mothers are often exposed to overlapping risk factors without those risks being named, measured, or controlled. Generic training misses the point. The problem is not lack of awareness. The problem is unmanaged exposure.

This is where a compliance-grade approach matters. Amanda Doggett, Founder of The Regulation Collective, positions maternal workforce strain correctly: as measurable neurobiology interacting with workplace design. That framing gives mothers language for their experience and gives employers an auditable pathway for risk identification and control.

What this guide to nervous system states explained simply should change for you

If you are a mother reading this, the useful question is not “Why can’t I stay on top of everything?” It is “What state is my system in, and what loads are driving it there?” That shift matters because it moves the story from self-blame to observable physiology.

If you are an employer, the useful question is not whether a mother seems resilient enough. It is whether her work design includes known psychosocial hazards that increase activation, depletion, and cumulative load. If the answer is yes, that is a risk management issue.

There is no single nervous system state that defines you. States shift. Capacity shifts. What looks like inconsistency is often an entirely consistent biological response to chronic overload.

And when that overload is predictable, the response cannot be left to personal endurance. It has to be addressed where the risk sits – in the conditions of work itself.

References

Barba-Müller, E., Craddock, S., Carmona, S., & Hoekzema, E. (2019). Brain plasticity in pregnancy and the postpartum period: Links to maternal caregiving and mental health. Archives of Women’s Mental Health, 22(2), 289-299.

Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609-633.

Guidi, J., Lucente, M., Sonino, N., & Fava, G. A. (2021). Allostatic load and its impact on health: A systematic review. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 90(1), 11-27.

International Organization for Standardization. (2021). ISO 45003:2021 Occupational health and safety management – Psychological health and safety at work – Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks.

Kolb, B., & Gibb, R. (2011). Brain plasticity and behavior in the developing brain. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 20(4), 265-276.

Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434-445.

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171-179.

Orchard, E. R., Rutherford, H. J. V., Holmes, A. J., Nguyen, T. V., & Mayes, L. C. (2023). Matrescence: Lifetime impact of mothering on cognition and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(4), 302-316.

Safe Work Australia. (2022). Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work.

Shields, G. S., Sazma, M. A., & Yonelinas, A. P. (2016). The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 68, 651-668.

Ulrich-Lai, Y. M., & Herman, J. P. (2009). Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 397-409.

WorkSafe Victoria. (2025). Psychological health regulations and employer obligations.