There’s No Toilet for the Nervous System
We all understand that food goes in and, at some point, waste comes out. We drink water, and our body finds a way to release the excess.
If we don’t, there are consequences—discomfort, imbalance, even mess.
But most people don’t realise that our nervous systems need a similar process.
Our emotional, sensory, and cognitive inputs—everything we feel, think, see, hear, and experience—also build up.
And when that build-up isn’t discharged consciously, it finds other ways to escape.
In our house, this idea found its shape through lived experience—particularly with my youngest child, who, from early on, showed a clear digestive sensitivity tied to dental changes, emotional shifts, and nervous system load.
As a baby and toddler, the early signs of teething weren’t just drool and irritability. They’d often have sudden digestive distress—episodes of diarrhea that seemed wildly out of proportion to what they’d eaten.
At first, this was confusing. Eventually, I saw the pattern: nervous system activation would tip over into their gut.
And of course, for a little person, this has a cascade of impact: discomfort, mess, hygiene challenges, and physiological overwhelm.
So, I found ways to help.
I don't have specific clinical training, but I followed instinct, observation, and a desire to connect.
I played games that would engage their nervous system in release:
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the “shocked meerkat” game, where they’d whip their head around to exaggerated cues and laugh in surprise—moving their neck, engaging their eyes, resetting their vagus nerve in the process
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we’d find pictures of startled animals and mimic them
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I’d yawn in dramatic, theatrical ways to elicit mirrored yawns, tapping into their parasympathetic system through mimicry
These small games didn’t “fix” any problem, but they helped.
They softened the intensity. They gave their body another way.
As they grew, so did the methods.
We’d stretch together, breathe in patterns, compete in who could do the most breaths or the deepest triple breath.
But—as with any parenting dynamic—what worked at five years of age no longer works at ten.
As they stepped into later childhood, my invitations started being met with resistance or dismissal.
“I’m busy!”
“Not now.”
"Not again!"
Completely normal. But also, frustrating.
Because their body hadn’t outgrown its need for release—it had just evolved.
After a particularly rough day—multiple urgent bathroom trips, discomfort, tears, needing to change clothes and shower—they were very much feeling that this extent of discomfort was not fair and so exhausting.
They asked:
“Why is this happening?”
And of course, I didn’t have a single neat answer.
But I knew what I could say.
I told them that, just like the digestive system needs to eliminate what it doesn’t use, so does every other system.
Our kidneys, liver, skin, lungs, and yes—our nervous system—all have forms of release.
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Our skin cells, both inside and outside our bodies, shed constantly and make room for the new.
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We release CO₂ constantly after the lungs draw it out of our blood, to make room for the O₂ needed.
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And when we don’t give the nervous system ways to offload, it borrows from or uses other systems.
It hijacks the gut, speeds up sweat production, shifts bowel movements, or brings tears or rises of anger and shouting we didn’t plan.
Even on days when we think we’re doing nothing—no homework, no challenges—the nervous system is absorbing.
It’s collecting micro-stresses, emotional residue, noise, and especially—as we are both autistic—a lot of sensory inputs.
All of that needs somewhere to go.
“There’s no toilet for the nervous system,” I said.
“So we have to build one.”
That conversation changed something.
They began—tentatively—to re-engage with the idea of nervous system care.
Not because I told them to, but because they noticed the effect.
A few days later, they said:
“I’ve been doing more stretches. I think it’s helping.”
And it seemed to be.
There were fewer bathroom stresses, fewer moments of distress.
They were learning the powerful truth:
The body always finds a way.
But we can influence whether that way is helpful, disruptive, or confusing.
This story isn’t about parenting.
And it’s not just about children.
Most adults I work with—friends, clients, even professionals—have never learned to take their nervous system to the toilet.
We know how to eat and eliminate, but we don’t know how to:
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stretch
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shake
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breathe
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cry
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sing
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yawn
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move our eyes
…as active and conscious acts of emotional and neurological hygiene.
For many people, their ability to numb, explode, suppress, overthink, or quietly suffer is practiced so much that suppression has become the adult equivalent of expert level when in some ways, many humans are barely babies out of nappies when it comes to absorption and release mechanisms for the nervous system.
The idea of “release” becomes medicalised or pathologised instead of normalised.
What if we changed that?
What if we taught ourselves and each other that:
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Crying is a form of excretion.
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Laughter isn’t frivolous—it’s regulatory.
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Stretching your neck and moving your eyes isn’t silly—it’s neural maintenance.
Rome changed the course of civilisation through aqueducts and sewage systems—transformative innovations that protected public health and shaped how cities were built. Later, the discovery of waterborne disease prevention and the invention of modern sanitation revolutionised medicine and urban life.
Bodies are brilliant—they will always find a way.
Let us continue to build better ways of gaining awareness and building strength and options for better health. It is again time for humans to build a version of a toilet for the nervous system—organically, intentionally, and with the same respect for wellbeing. Just as we learned to manage physical waste, we must now learn to support emotional and neurological release.
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