Can You Rewire Your Nervous System to Overcome Stress?

Once we’ve learned a skill like riding a bike or driving a car, it becomes second nature—we don’t even have to think about it. It’s ingrained in our nervous system’s automatic programming. But what happens when we want to change an ingrained response, like an automatic stress reaction?

Can we truly unlearn it?

Photo by Samuele Errico Piccarini on Unsplash

The Challenge of Changing Automatic Patterns

Think about driving. If you've spent years driving a right-hand drive car and then move to a country where they drive on the opposite side, switching to a left-hand drive car will initially feel unnatural.

Your instincts will default to old habits—grabbing for the gear stick on the wrong side, checking the wrong mirror, or even turning into the wrong lane. It's not that you've forgotten how to drive, but your nervous system is wired to follow familiar patterns.

But with repetition and practice, the new way starts to feel natural. Your brain rewires itself. Over time, reaching for the gear stick on the correct side becomes automatic. The old habit doesn’t disappear entirely—it still lingers, like an overgrown path—but it no longer takes precedence.

"Old habits die hard." — Proverb

Rewiring the Nervous System

This is exactly how we can rewire an automatic stress response. If your nervous system has learned to react to stress with anxiety, pain, panic, exhaustion, or shutdown, you don’t unlearn it in the traditional sense. Instead, you train it to respond differently.

At first, the new response feels awkward, even forced.

For instance, if your self-talk has always been negative—putting yourself down, focusing on what went wrong—then practicing self-encouragement and celebrating small wins might feel unnatural. Telling yourself, I did well today or I’m making progress can seem strange simply because you’re not used to it. You might slip back into old habits. After all, under stress, we instinctively follow familiar paths, and negative self-talk can creep back in.

The key is to notice when this happens and make a conscious effort to shift gears. Otherwise, those old pathways get reinforced. It takes time for the new path to become instinctive, but every effort strengthens the new response and moves us closer to lasting change.

The Science Behind It

Research on neuroplasticity supports this idea. Studies have shown that the brain has the ability to rewire itself through repeated experiences (Doidge, 2007).

Exposure therapy, a widely used technique in cognitive behavioural therapy, leverages this principle to help individuals gradually retrain their fear responses (Craske et al., 2014).

Additionally, mindfulness-based interventions have been found to help individuals shift away from automatic negative reactions by creating new neural pathways through conscious awareness and intentional practice (Hölzel et al., 2011).

Strengthening New Pathways

The goal isn’t to erase the old habit but to make the new one stronger. Once something is learned, it stays—that’s why changing a stress response can feel so difficult.

But with enough repetition, your nervous system will start choosing the new path automatically. This process, called neuroplasticity, is how our brains adapt over time.

A common example is someone with severe public speaking anxiety. Every time they spoke in front of an audience, their heart would race, their palms would sweat, and they would feel frozen in place. But instead of avoiding it, they practiced speaking in smaller, low-pressure situations, gradually exposing themselves to larger crowds. Over time, their nervous system adapted. The fear didn’t disappear entirely, but their new response—calm, controlled breathing and self-assurance—became the dominant one.

Research supports this process: A study by Hofmann & Smits (2008) found that gradual exposure to feared social situations can retrain the nervous system, reducing physical anxiety symptoms and making confidence the new default response.

Just like learning to drive on the other side of the road, retraining your nervous system takes practice, patience, and self-compassion. At times, you might slip back into old habits—reacting instinctively to stress or engaging in negative self-talk. It’s easy to feel frustrated, like you’re undoing progress.

But these moments aren’t failures; they’re part of the process. The key is to recognize when you’ve veered off course and gently guide yourself back. Every time you choose the new response, you reinforce the new pathway.

With time and repetition, it becomes second nature. And that’s the power of neuroplasticity—you’re not stuck with old patterns. With patience and practice, you can reshape your response to stress and take control of your nervous system.

References

• Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learning approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10-23.

• Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Viking.

• Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011). How does mindfulness meditation work? Proposing mechanisms of action from a conceptual and neural perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6), 537-559.