How Do You Know Your Body Is Out of Survival Mode? (Transcript)

Episode transcript, ShelbyRADIO · 61 minutes

Short answer: You know your body is finally out of survival mode when it stops bracing for the next hit: your muscles soften, you breathe deeper, you sleep more soundly, digestion calms, there's less urgency and reactivity, decisions come more easily and your intuition gets quieter and clearer. Leaving survival mode isn't instant. Your body downshifts gradually, often releasing the last of the adrenaline through a burst of tasks and then a day of doing nothing. What gets labeled anxiety is often long-term conditioning of the nervous system, not brokenness, and what was trained can be retrained. The body is usually the last to know you're safe, and peace can feel unfamiliar at first.

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Key takeaways

• Survival mode is living braced for the next hit. You're not thriving when you're always bracing, even when the moment is good.
• Much of what we call anxiety is long-term nervous system conditioning from life circumstances. It was learned, so it can be unlearned.
• The nervous system downshifts gradually, like a stick shift going from fifth gear down to first, not straight to a stop.
• Stored stress lives in the fascia, muscles, jaw, hips and shoulders, so the body may need touch and movement, not just talking, to let go.
• Signs you're coming out: softer muscles, deeper breaths, sounder sleep, calmer digestion, less urgency, easier decisions and a clearer intuition.
• Peace can feel strange at first because chaos was familiar. Settling down isn't laziness. It's regulation.

Full transcript

Lightly edited for reading.

Finally out of survival mode (00:00)

Have you ever felt a calling, something deep, something you can't quite explain, that's urging you to step into a higher version of yourself? Hello, welcome to ShelbyRADIO. I am Shelby Carino, and today's topic is how you know your body is finally out of survival mode.

I am so excited to finally get to an episode about this, because it means I have gotten there in my own world, and it has been a long journey. This isn't a hypothetical conversation. This is probably happening to you, has happened to you, or is going to happen to you at some point, even if it doesn't seem reachable right now.

I'm building on the last several episodes about everything I've experienced since I resigned from my teaching job in December 2025. That also coincides with a ten-year cycle in my own life with Joe: merging our lives, clearing a lot of my masculine shadow parts and, for him, feminine shadow parts as a couple. Tied into that were individual pieces that had nothing to do with each other, and death energy in there too. It's been a lot.

My body was defending itself (02:48)

I've come to the realization that for years my body hadn't actually been living. It was defending itself. Somewhere I knew that, but I didn't know how to change it. I only knew how to get up every day and keep going.

When I met Joe, I was no longer single, looking only at my own stuff. I was looking at it through another person. All the way back into childhood, I was defensive, because I always felt picked on or misunderstood, defending myself against my sister in those sibling dynamics. Then Joe would say, "My whole life I've had to defend myself. I've always been on the defensive." This masculine part outside of me was speaking about being defensive, and I had to realize that in my feminine part, growing up, I was always defensive too.

So here we were, in a relationship of over a decade, working through these defense mechanisms in ourselves. Our bodies went into a defensive posture energetically, through the spine, and that pushed a lot of energy into the stomach. I felt like I looked pregnant all the time, and Joe did too. That's the defensive energy in the nervous system, always bracing for the next fight-or-flight response. It wasn't really about us. It was a lot of external things we were having to defend ourselves against, not defending ourselves from each other.

Quitting a war within me (06:04)

As my body shifts into a new normal, I've realized it was never really relaxing. Not just emotionally or physically, but biologically, my body has been under stress, honestly since I was born. Sometimes you don't realize the survival mode you're in until you're no longer in it. Then everything collapses in on itself and you see a new perspective of what's really been going on.

When I resigned from teaching, I didn't just leave a job I'd had for six months. I was quitting a war within me. Not even within the job, within me. It was just showing up outside of me to show me I was done with the war.

I never realized how long my body had been bracing for life until it finally began to stop. Over the last four weeks it's been this odd feeling: I'm not as tense. I'm not as on guard. I'm not scanning the room with my psychic field the way I used to. I'm settling. As I said last time, when peace comes in, it settles. It's a subtle energy of settled peacefulness, and it's happening more often than it's not.

Preparing for the next hit (08:52)

Survival mode may not look the same for you, but for me it meant always preparing for the next hit, the next energetic hit. Back in 2011, when my Kundalini energy flipped and my energy changed overnight, I didn't realize how much my psychic energy was on alert, because I didn't know enough yet to understand it.

When we were going through a lot with Joe's mother and that side of the family, Joe said, "I've never been able to relax, because I've always had to prepare for the next hit." I remember thinking, "Who thinks that way?" It didn't make sense to me. I was wearing rose-colored glasses: "I never did that." Then I realized, wait a minute, maybe that explains what I've been doing. He finally put it into words, and I started noticing it.

I also understood that he'd been dealing with this his whole life. He was separated from his dad as a child and grew up feeling that the women around him had tried to take him down mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Over time, that's how you learn to brace for survival. This is coming in and hitting me. This is coming in and hitting me.

Bracing isn't thriving (12:08)

Think about people who have been physically abused. In my early twenties I was in a relationship with someone who, I didn't know at the time, was an alcohol and drug addict. After he was physically abusive and hit me a couple of times, I learned to brace myself: if he got irritated, or if he was coming down off a high, I went into bracing mode.

That's survival. You're not thriving when you're bracing, because you're preparing for something to come in and hurt you. That brings tension. You're always holding on, always staying alert and sharp to your surroundings, because you can't afford to let your guard down. You're on edge all the time, even when the moments are good.

How many of us do that? Often this isn't anxiety as much as very long-term conditioning of how our nervous system has had to react. It's not that we're broken. We were trained by our life circumstances, and then we labeled it anxiety, because we learned, "I must stay ready, because something is always coming that I need to defend myself against."

What was trained can be retrained (14:00)

When you move through those processes in yourself, you don't have to stay ready anymore. It takes time for the nervous system to learn new conditioning. But if it learned to be on alert, it can learn not to be.

If you were truly in danger, or something legitimate needed your attention, that information would still come in. Once you've moved through your own personal defense mechanisms, your intuitive channels for hearing, seeing and feeling what's necessary get heightened when it matters, and you pay attention, because now it isn't mixed with all your personal stuff.

That's why ascension is beautiful and messy at the same time. You have to break down how your nervous system was trained in the past in order to reinvent it, and it takes going through the experiences that make us feel so broken so we can reharmonize. Did you feel that one? I felt that one.

The body hadn't caught up (16:20)

I had to learn there was this invisible way I'd been bracing myself, and I didn't even know I was doing it. I thought I was just living life, being an empath and being sensitive. And I was. But going through a deep purge of yourself is different.

When I resigned, school was out for Christmas break, so nothing changed at first. I was just on break like everyone else. But when school started back, my body still thought I was going back. It immediately braced for my return, even though my mind was moving away from the situation. My body hadn't caught up to what my mind was already moving through.

My nervous system had been running on a pattern of memory I'd installed over six months, day after day. None of it was logical. Even as the need to brace for impact was leaving my system, my body was saying, "I don't know about this. We don't have enough new patterns built yet for me to come down off my watchtower." This is why it can be hard to relax when you've left something and you're finally okay. There's a gap between the two dynamics of your world that you haven't filled in yet.

Installing new patterns (19:08)

So for those first two weeks of school being back in session, I was still tasking, but tasking differently. The night before school started, I told my husband, "Call your best friend who has the marketing firm. I'm ready to market my company." That's what I installed as my new pattern. Instead of going back to the brick-and-mortar school building, I was taking my business to another level.

I put back in my daily morning Pilates, my nutritional supplements and massages. We were going to Isla Mujeres, so I started pulling in the energy for the trip, getting the reef-safe sunscreen and the suitcases out. I was bringing in things that were more pleasurable, less stressful, less intense.

By week three, it landed: I'm really not going back into the school system. This really is my new life. The belief became reality, and that started changing how my body felt. I didn't feel constantly on guard. My stomach wasn't as bloated. By the third and fourth week, I didn't feel so much like a puffer fish. It's been a slow progression of my energy body letting its guard down, so I don't have to carry that energy, which honestly made me carry weight with it.

Here's a piece of wisdom from this. I had put three weeks' worth of energy into the school through the lesson plans I prepared for the next person. I took that last bit of energy and used it to organize my life now, completing projects and cleaning up loose ends I hadn't been able to handle in the last six to eight months, when my energy was tied up in the job, and honestly in the last decade of everything we'd been moving through. That's how I drew the energy back.

Downshifting out of survival (23:20)

This is a very common nervous system experience when you begin to downshift out of survival mode into thriving. It's like driving a stick shift. You're cruising in fifth gear, and you don't go straight to first, because that would be an intense drop. You downshift: fifth, fourth, third, second, first, and then you stop.

The nervous system is the same. You downshift your patterning while your body releases the last drops of adrenaline, because we use adrenaline to survive. That's what I noticed in those first two weeks: the adrenaline leaving in a last wave of being very productive and very task-oriented. My system was saying, "I need to finish this mission."

That was my reframe. I was burning through a specific season of my life that had to do with teaching, and I was doing it in a powerful way, because I was bringing my power back. I was letting go of survival and putting things in place that were powerful for me, instead of giving that energy out to others and to situations the way I always had in the past.

Why my body needed touch (26:36)

This is why my body has needed to move through a physical letting-go process. When I felt it in my intuition, I scheduled massages with an amazing massage therapist. She isn't a traditional Swedish massage person. She's so connected to your body and your energy, and she does deep fascia work that really gets things out of the muscles. She works the hips, the glutes, the spine, everywhere you store stress. I knew I needed at least three sessions with her before our trip, because my body needed to be touched and to move things physically that I couldn't move energetically.

I balanced it with our subtle chiropractor, who does energy clearings and gentle adjustments so your body naturally goes back into its normal positioning. I'd do the massage first and the chiropractor a day or two later, and it worked together. Then I had Joe start doing it too, because if I was releasing things that were probably some of his energy in me, he probably had things of mine to release in him.

Energy stores itself in the body: in the fascia, the muscles, the jaw, the hips and shoulders. These are the nervous system pathways where it's all held. I knew I couldn't talk my way through this. My body needed touch. It needed movement. All the safety signals needed to be addressed. It wasn't about being pampered. It was about discharging everything my body had been on alert for.

The ear that closed, and the mother line (30:20)

Here's where I knew things were really changing. Joe and I officially got together in March 2016, and we moved in together at the end of May that year, into a rental house with three teenage boys living with us. There was a lot going on. When we merged and began living together, my right ear began closing up. I started not being able to hear out of it, and it felt like an energetic closure.

My mentor always told Joe, "You need to listen to your female." Through our whole time together, I had to sit in his world and understand what he'd experienced with women, the constant defensiveness and not being able to trust them. He had developed a survival mechanism of shutting off hearing women so nothing more would be taken from him. He'd say, "You understand, in my past, any time I listened, I got hurt." So it took a journey for him to get to that level of trust with me, and for me with him, on a higher spiritual level.

And I realized that over a decade, I had closed off my own ability to hear on my masculine side. While I kept telling the man outside of me to listen to his female, I had closed that ear myself.

Maybe a year ago, Joe had a back tooth that was really bothering him, and I kept saying I thought it was more energetic than a cavity. Then, a little over a week ago, I had intense jaw pain starting at my jawline and running down my face, and my face broke out, angry, on my forehead and cheeks. I already have rosacea, but this was different. I thought, "What just let go out of my inner ear that created this surge of rage my face is showing?"

Then I noticed a subtle hum in that ear, not ringing, more like I could tell things were moving energetically, and it moved down my jawline. I began seeing my mother, who had TMJ, and things with her mother, and the time my mom dislocated her jaw at a karate camp we went to. A lot of mother energy was coming up, which made sense, because I was preparing for our trip to Isla Mujeres, the island of women, the mother island.

I told Joe I hadn't been able to hear out of that ear since we moved into that rental house. It made sense that I'd closed it off energetically for protection, so I could go through all these reframes over the last decade. Now that things are done, safe and harmonized, that pathway is opening back up, and I'm getting my hearing back on that side. I hadn't even realized all these years that it wasn't there, because I could still hear out of the other one.

The collapsing day (37:48)

As the massages continued, things kept releasing and relaxing. Then, after a massage one Friday, I had intense nerve pain in my right jaw and back molar for maybe eight to twelve hours. A sip of cold water felt like every nerve on that side was exposed. It was the most excruciating pain. I lay down and it turned dull and aching, and I could feel it in my ear. I even wondered if this is what babies feel with ear problems, that overstimulation of spiritual energy coming in. Being psychic and very open to energy, I'm going to have the experience in some form so I can learn the energy.

I rested for several hours, took some aspirin, made hot tea, didn't eat, and sat on the couch binge-watching a reality show I hadn't watched in a long time. Joe asked why we were watching it. For me it was letting my nervous system let go while putting pictures of luxury and expansion into my visuals.

I called it the collapsing day. My body decided, "We're not doing anything today. Your system is finally going to stand down." After a very long, intense survival cycle, my nervous system needed a day of doing nothing. There was nothing depressive or lazy about it. It was a decompression of my nervous system. I could zone out in another reality while my own reality recalibrated. As a Pisces, I know how to escape, and I've learned to stop escaping and instead step away from certain realities intentionally, at certain times, so I can finish a reality I've been living in. My body realized this was the day. I no longer needed to stay alert. I was coming home to myself.

Weight as energetic protection (44:20)

During that time I began hearing differently in that ear, and my spiritual communication channels heightened again. I heard in my head, "Now you're going to start losing weight." When you're in heightened survival mode, your body holds a lot of energetic protection, and you can put on weight. For me it wasn't a fat problem. It was an energetic issue. Let go of the energy, and the body can go back to its normal state, which I'm noticing is starting to happen.

My nervous system was no longer asking, "How are you going to survive?" It was asking, "How are you going to thrive, Shelby? What is your body going to help bring to you now?" So I was doing all these reframes: the trip, the massages, the chiropractic, taking care of myself, hiring help for marketing my business. Losing weight now is the symbolism of "I'm safe in my body." I'm softening back into who I am. Things don't seem so hard anymore. And I didn't change my diet. I told Joe, "Until the energy changes, my body won't change."

When I got married at 26, I gained 30 pounds, mostly in the second year, without changing anything. I was teaching, eating balanced meals three times a day and doing cardio. When I got divorced, those 30 pounds came off within about a month. That's how I knew it was energetic protection. I was on guard. When Joe and I got together, we both gained weight, and our mentor told us long ago that it was protection, and that it would loosen at the right time, once we moved through what our nervous systems were protecting against. With a twin partner who reflects all your shadows and mirrors, it takes time, because it's a soul-evolving process.

Signs my body is standing down (50:24)

I'm already noticing my muscles aren't as tense. The first time I went in, my massage therapist said, "Shelby, you're so tight." She said the same to Joe. By the second massage my muscles were very different, and the third was even better. Each one got better as my muscles softened.

It's easier to take deeper breaths. I'm sleeping more soundly, and that's been a big one. Digestion has changed too. I used to eat and then feel nervous and have to rush to the bathroom, because I was feeding my emotions, and your digestion is where you digest the energy of emotion. That urgency is gone. The inflammation in my face is going down, and the light therapy device I use is helping, though when the ear and jaw flare-up happened, nothing I did mattered. The anger was going to show.

Emotionally there's less urgency and less reactivity. I'm less guarded, more present with myself, and I feel more like myself. Mentally my thoughts are calmer. There's no doom and gloom, which Joe used to run a lot of, and now it's almost nonexistent. Decisions are easy. We talk about something and the decision moves through. My intuition is heightened and quieter, because the channel is clearer. There's a lot less psychic noise around me. It feels like my own vibration now, which gives me an awareness that's grounded instead of unstable, a deeper embodiment of me. I'm moving away from protection and into creation.

Peace feels unfamiliar at first (54:36)

I have to admit it does feel strange. When peace comes in, you feel quieter. You slow down. You can feel a little disoriented, like you don't know where you're at. Chaos was familiar. You knew how to function in it, because in survival mode you're always in the chaos. Peace is unfamiliar at first. You're not losing your edge. You're gaining more of your life.

The body is the last to know (56:28)

To sum all this up: I had to learn, in my deeper truth, that my body has been the last to know I'm safe. Even if my soul knew, even if my mind knew, even if I knew my life was changing, the body is the last to catch up. It was only going to stand down from war when it knew it was no longer in one. And now I see that my body really is standing down. It's breathing again, and all my channels are harmonizing.

When you have a partner, you're doing a whole other level of this work, because you're so intimate with them that more comes up. What I've talked about for over a decade, I'm finally stepping into. So I told myself: none of this is laziness. I'm becoming regulated. Thank you, God. None of this is about collapse. I have arrived at this next level of myself, and this is what actual healing looks like, whatever layer of the onion you're on.

I hope this resonated with you, and that whatever you're going through or have gone through, this gives you extra cushioning and integration. When we share our stories, we share the frequency of our experiences, and that frequency helps other people. I hope you can take in whatever I was able to transmit and integrate it into your energetic body, so it helps harmonize things in you that you may not even know need harmonizing. Then your next step gets even easier. Remember, the journey doesn't end here. It's only the beginning. I'll see you on the path.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know I'm out of survival mode?

You stop bracing for the next hit. Muscles soften, breathing deepens, sleep gets sounder, digestion calms, there's less urgency and reactivity, decisions come more easily and your intuition feels quieter and clearer. If you have ongoing sleep, digestive or pain symptoms, please also talk with your doctor.

Is survival mode the same as anxiety?

Often what gets labeled anxiety is long-term conditioning of the nervous system from life circumstances. It doesn't mean you're broken. If your system learned to be on alert, it can learn not to be, though it takes time. If anxiety is affecting your daily life, please also talk with your doctor.

Why do I feel exhausted or want to do nothing after leaving a stressful situation?

The nervous system downshifts gradually and releases the last of the adrenaline, sometimes through a burst of tasks and then a day of doing nothing. That rest isn't laziness. It's decompression. If exhaustion lingers, please also talk with your doctor.

Why does peace feel strange after years of stress?

Because chaos was familiar. In survival mode you know how to function in the chaos, so when peace comes in, you may feel quieter, slower and a little disoriented at first. You're not losing your edge. You're gaining more of your life.

If you are in an abusive relationship, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.

Where to go next

• Start here: my free 16-minute audio, When You Don't Feel Like Yourself
• The course: Out of Survival Mode, gentle tools to calm your nervous system and feel safe in your body again
• Listen next: How to Calm Your Nervous System, With a Simple Reset
• Work with me one-on-one: private sessions