Autonomic Bullying
How the Science of the Nervous System Invites Us to Honor Ourselves and Each Other
You’re going to have to confront your parents.
I was 27 and a new student in the mental health counseling program at my seminary, and I’d just started engaging my own story. Two supervisors said the same thing within a week, and their counsel shook me: I’d need to call my parents separately and detail the ways in which they’d hurt and neglected me. It was urgent.
I was in a vulnerable season. I was slowly growing in curiosity about the sources of my shame, anxiety, and deep unrest. And I wasn’t sure what to do. But the strong and certain counsel overwhelmed whatever intuition or instinct might’ve been there.
What I didn’t know is that I wasn’t ready. My body wasn’t ready. But I was prone to this—I’d learned in my ecclesial community and even now in my therapeutic community to trust the voices of the powerful instead of tuning in. This community knew elements of my history, but lacked attunement to my physiology. I lacked that attunement too.
Those hard conversations with Mom and Dad were profoundly disruptive, not just relationally, but internally. I did not yet have the internal safety and capacity for the self-regulation needed amidst the relational intensity. I remained dysregulated for weeks, maybe months.
Granted, this took place long before we knew as much as we do today about the autonomic nervous system, about safety, about pacing, even about the uniqueness of each and every person’s capacities. But I still hear things like this happening today, in therapeutic spaces and beyond.
In the process, I learned something that has stayed with me ever since: even well-intentioned people can pressure others to override their nervous systems in the name of something they value as important: emotional growth, justice-seeking, relational participation, spiritual growth, and more.
I’ve come to call this autonomic bullying.
What Is Autonomic Bullying?
Autonomic bullying happens when we presume authority over another person’s internal state and insist they override their embodied reality to meet our expectations.
It is when we demand emotional, relational, physical, or spiritual availability from someone without regard for what their nervous system can actually sustain.
It treats dysregulation as moral failure rather than embodied reality.
Implicitly, it says: Your body should be able to handle this. Try harder.
It may not sound harsh. In fact, it’s often subtle, respectable, even spiritualized.
But it asks you to blow through your body’s boundaries.
Where It Shows Up
Once you begin to notice it, autonomic bullying appears everywhere:
In Therapy and Helping Relationships
Like my own story attests to, I’ve seen it in clinical settings where people are pushed into trauma processing, confrontation, or emotional exposure before safety has been established. You might hear:
“You’re avoiding.”
“You have to face this now.”
The pace is set by theory, technique, or the therapist’s anxiety—not by the client’s capacity.
In Churches and Spiritual Communities
Many of us have heard the admonitions:
“Get busy. Souls are at stake.”
“Your feelings aren’t important—submission to God’s will is.”
Readers of my work are likely more familiar with the contours of spiritual abuse, but it’s important to see spiritual abuse through an autonomic lens, as well. Ignoring one’s inner signals, intuition, values, or needs is all-too-common.
In Activist Spaces
I’ve seen it in spaces where engagement is moralized and pacing is dismissed.
“Real Christians engage in this way.”
“Silence is violence.”
Here, nervous system limits are interpreted as a lack of virtue, moral courage, or compassion. Inner work is called bypassing.
In Schools and Institutions
I’ve seen it in classrooms where anxious, traumatized, or neurodivergent students are told:
“You have to present.”
“It’s not optional.”
“Everyone must do it this way.”
Performance is prioritized over presence. Compliance is prioritized over capacity.
In Mental Health and Disability Contexts
I’ve seen it in the casual dismissal of neurological and sensory limits.
“Everyone gets anxious. Just push through.”
“Everyone has to do it. No exceptions. You’ll be fine.”
Sadly, I’ve talked to students who’ve asked for accommodation and who are told they’re being lazy or making excuses. And sadly, I’ve witnessed the subtle sense of shame in them—“it’s probably my fault.”
What This Is Not
But let’s also be clear about what this is not.
Whenever I talk about honoring limits, some invariably say that I’m promoting fragility, cowardice, avoidance, or bypassing.
But this isn’t about fragility. It is not an argument against challenge, discipline, effort, participation, justice-seeking, peacemaking, hard conversations, moral courage, or growth.
Indeed, healthy stress is essential. It’s why we exercise, why we challenge ourselves to learn new things, why we stretch beyond comfort, why we turn toward the person we’re struggling with, why we show up for a protest for the first time in our lives.
But consider a few things about healthy stress.
First, it’s paced. You jog for 25 minutes rather than running all-out for 10. You learn to respect gradual progress over dramatic bursts, trusting that steady faithfulness forms strength that lasts.
Second, it’s accompanied. Your physical therapist walks with you through an injury rehab, or your pastor holds space for you as you navigate a conflict. You are not left alone with your struggle, but supported by someone who knows when to encourage and when to slow you down.
Third, it includes recovery. You take rest days seriously. You sleep. You stretch. You let sore muscles heal before you ask them to work again. You don’t interpret exhaustion as failure—you recognize it as a signal that renewal is part of growth.
Fourth, it builds capacity over time. It honors one’s unique capacity. You notice that what strengthens one person in six months may take another two years. One runner trains for a marathon; another is learning to walk without pain. Neither is “behind.” There is no room for judgment. Each is responding faithfully to the body they have been given.
It’s also not about excuse-making. It is not “My nervous system says no forever.”
It is: “My nervous system needs support, pacing, attunement, and safety in order to say yes.”
It recognizes that limits are not endpoints, but starting points for wise growth. And it trusts that, when people are met with patience and care, their capacity almost always expands.
And this is not spiritual bypassing in physiological form.
This is not a way of hiding behind biology to avoid growth or responsibility, and it’s not about reducing our lives to our nervous systems.
It is about learning to cooperate with the slow, patient work of grace in real human bodies—stretching without tearing, and trusting that each and everyone’s embodiment looks different.
Here, we can relax the comparisons that only lead to more shame, and make wise, discerning decisions that are congruent with our sense of call and capacity.
Not Coercion But Capacity/Congruity/Courage
Autonomic bullying in whatever form it comes in may produce compliance. But this sort of coercion ignores capacity, overrides congruity, and undermines real courage.
Capacity: While discerning one’s unique capacity is critical for growth and action, it asks people to perform, endure, confront, or expose themselves without regard for what their bodies and nervous systems can actually sustain.
Congruity: While integrity is critical for faithful action, it pressures people to act in ways that are misaligned with their deepest values, limits, and sense of self, trading integrity for approval or performance.
Courage: While the most courageous thing a person can do is act in accordance with their convictions, calling, and capacity, it undermines this courage by requiring conformity to another person or system’s standards.
We’ve all experienced some form of autonomic bullying, I suspect. But as we learn more about the science of embodiment, attunement, safety, and regulation, I hope we’re moved to better attune to ourselves and better honor each other’s biological uniqueness—so that we can engage the hard things in life we’re called to engage according to our own calling and capacities.
If you’d like to reflect further, ask:
Where in my life am I pushing myself to perform, comply, or “push through” in ways that my body is quietly telling me I’m not ready for?
Have I ever interpreted my own limits—or someone else’s—as weakness, lack of faith, or lack of commitment rather than signals of real human capacity?
If my body could speak, what would it tell me right now about how I’m listening or not listening to it?
In my relationships, work, church, or activism, am I more committed to outcomes and ideals, or to honoring the pace, dignity, and integrity of the people involved—including myself?