The Intersection of Grief, PTSD, and Neurodivergence: The Story Behind Wild and Regulated

Welcome to Wild and Regulated. This will be a personal and professional space — a place where I share my own journey alongside the tools, insights, and practices that help people work through stress, heal from loss, and learn to regulate their nervous systems. Here, we’ll talk about things you can do in your own home to complete the stress cycle, experiences that help you reconnect with your body, and ways to recognize the signs of dysregulation before they snowball. This is a space for everyone — whether you live with anxiety, depression, PTSD, grief, neurodivergence, or simply the day-to-day overwhelm that comes with being human.

Over the past two years, my life has been a series of losses. One after another. Some expected, most not. Each one chipping away at the sense of stability I had worked hard to build. By the time my dog Lacey died — suddenly and traumatically — it wasn’t just another loss. It was the moment the weight of it all came crashing down. The straw that broke the camel’s back.

Lacey training for shows, she was 10 points away from her show champion title when she passed away.

The Day Everything Collapsed

Lacey’s death wasn’t a quiet goodbye. She had been bitten by a brown recluse spider, though none of us realized it at first. The vets believed she had mastitis, so for three days I cared for her around the clock — monitoring her, medicating her, trying to comfort her. On the third morning, she collapsed and lost consciousness.

Neighbors came to help me carry her to the car, and we rushed her to the vet. She died and was revived three times that morning. It wasn’t until later, after specialists reviewed her injuries, that we knew what we were truly dealing with. The venom had already done irreversible damage.

I chose to let her go in my arms, peacefully, rather than prolong her suffering. It was the most loving — and most gut-wrenching — decision I have had to make. As a Breeder, I had seen death before, I had seen injuries, but nothing prepared me for this.

When Loss Reshapes the Mind and Body

Grief like this doesn’t just live in your heart. It changes your brain. Neuroimaging studies show that intense loss can disrupt hormone production, shrink parts of the hippocampus (the brain’s memory and emotional regulation center), and over-activate the amygdala — the alarm system that constantly scans for danger.

The result? Emotional regulation becomes harder. Concentration fades. Sensory processing shifts. And the body holds the score — in chronic tension, pain, digestive issues, inflammation, and a thousand little signals that something inside is not okay.

In the months after Lacey’s death, I became hypersensitive to smells, light, and sound — sensations I had either ignored or pushed through before. My executive functioning — the ability to plan, organize, and follow through — faltered. My body ached in new ways. My existing health issues flared, and new symptoms appeared.

This wasn’t “just” grief. It was grief layered on anxiety, layered on chronic stress, layered on two years worth of loss and change, layered on top of complex PTSD from my childhood and adult experiences. And my nervous system had finally had enough.

The Overlap of Trauma, Anxiety, Depression, and Grief

You don’t need a diagnosis to know what it’s like for your body to betray you in the wake of loss or fear. PTSD from a single event, complex PTSD from years of stress, generalized anxiety, depression, and deep grief — all can manifest in the body. The nervous system doesn’t draw neat lines between them.

When the body perceives a threat — whether that’s a traumatic memory, a wave of grief, or an overwhelming situation — the same physiological processes kick in. Heart rate spikes. Muscles tense. Breathing changes. Digestion slows. Over time, living in that state rewires the brain to be on high alert all the time.

The problem is that our culture teaches us to override these signals. We push through. We compartmentalize. We tell ourselves we’re fine — until we aren’t.

Finding Somatics (Without Realizing I Needed It)

When I first started exploring somatic practices, my motivation was professional. I wanted to develop new, body-based service dog tasks that could help clients regulate before they reached a full-blown meltdown or shutdown.

But in learning these techniques, I realized I needed them just as much as my clients.

Somatics works by re-engaging the parts of the brain that go offline when we’re stressed — areas like the prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making and impulse control) and the hippocampus (responsible for memory, learning, and emotional regulation). By pairing movement with breath and awareness, somatic practices can help reset the nervous system, stimulate the vagus nerve, and release “feel-good” neurochemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. Over time these practices can completely rewire our nervous system, help with chronic pain and fatigue and ease anxiety and depression. Traditional trauma therapy is often very talk-focused, and while talking can be powerful, some wounds can’t be spoken away — they are stored so deeply in the body that words can’t reach them. When someone has been in talk therapy for years but feels stuck, it’s often because the trauma is still living in their nervous system, waiting to be released through body-based work. This is the position I have found myself in. After years of intensive talk therapy, nothing prepared me for this.

Ancient Practices for Modern Healing

Dancing. Drumming. Singing. Storytelling. Rhythmic movement. These aren’t just creative outlets — they are nervous system regulation tools humans have used for thousands of years. Our ancestors grieved in community, moving, singing, crying together. They didn’t just talk about their pain; they moved it through their bodies.

Today, we’ve replaced that wisdom with a productivity-obsessed culture. We’re glued to screens. We reward emotional suppression. We treat a breakdown after loss as something to “get over” instead of something to move through.

I believe we’ve never been more disconnected — from each other and from our own bodies — and we’re paying the price in rising rates of chronic illness, mental health struggles, and burnout.

Why This Blog Exists

Wild and Regulated was born from this intersection — my personal losses, my professional training, and my belief that nervous system health is for everyone.

Here, I’ll share:

• Insights from neuroscience and somatics

• Practical tools you can use at home to regulate your nervous system

• Ways to identify dysregulation before it escalates

• Reflections on grief, healing, and the messy process of becoming whole again

This is an inclusive space. You don’t have to be neurodivergent. You don’t have to have a diagnosis. You just have to be human — and ready to explore what it means to feel safe in your own body.

Where I Am Now

I am still in the middle of my own journey. I am still learning what my body needs. But I am also discovering that regulation isn’t about “fixing” myself — it’s about coming home to myself, over and over again.

I believe somatics is the future of trauma-informed care. And I believe I’m exactly where I need to be to learn it, embody it, and share it with you.

Here’s to getting wild and regulated — together.