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feeling safe in your body

woman pausing in her car before a holiday family gathering while managing chronic pain

October 20, 2026 · In: Nervous System Regulation

Holiday Family Stress and Your Nervous System: Why Gatherings Can Trigger Fight-or-Flight

Holiday family stress and chronic pain are linked through your nervous system. Before you walk into a family gathering, your body can already be bracing, tensing, and turning up its…

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Woman experiencing the freeze response, a dorsal vagal shutdown pattern linked to chronic pain and nervous system dysregulation

August 4, 2026 · In: Nervous System Regulation

The Freeze Response in Chronic Pain: When Your Body Shuts Down Instead of Fighting Back

The freeze response in chronic pain is a dorsal vagal shutdown state, not a discipline problem or depression. It shows up as exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch, paralysis over small…

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reconnect with your body

November 25, 2025 · In: Holistic Self-Care and Sustainable Healing, Navigating Long-Term Pain

How to Reconnect With Your Body (When You’ve Felt Disconnected for Years)

When you’ve lived in chronic pain, stress, or burnout, it’s easy to feel disconnected from your body. You might stop trusting its signals or feel like it’s constantly working against…

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nervous system overload

November 4, 2025 · In: Nervous System Regulation

Nervous System Overload: What It Is and How to Calm Your Body

Do you ever feel tense, overstimulated, or completely drained, but unable to rest? That’s a sign your body might be in a state of nervous system overload. This happens when…

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stress muscle tension relief

August 26, 2025 · In: Nervous System Regulation

Stress and Muscle Tension Relief: How to Ease Tightness and Restore Calm

Stress doesn’t just live in your head. It shows up in your body; the tight shoulders, clenched jaw, an achy back. For many women, that tension becomes the quiet background…

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diaphragmatic breathing

August 5, 2025 · In: Nervous System Regulation

Diaphragmatic Breathing: How to Breathe Correctly

When stress, fatigue, and chronic pain play a part in your daily life, something has to change. I’ve been there. I understand the struggle. It’s hard to find our way…

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Meet Tera

Meet Tera
hi, i'm tera!

I'm a licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy and the founder of PT Complete. I built the Regulate and Rebuild Method because most people trying to get back into their body after chronic pain are told to either push through it or rest completely, and neither one actually works. I write from the clinic and from my own body, since I'm working through my own chronic pain story right now, too. When I'm not working, you'll probably find me managing the regular chaos of life or curled up with coffee and a dessert I can't seem to quit.

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Featured Posts

woman pausing in her car before a holiday family gathering while managing chronic pain

Holiday Family Stress and Your Nervous System: Why Gatherings Can Trigger Fight-or-Flight

woman deciding how to reply to a holiday invitation while managing chronic pain

How to Say No During the Holidays With Chronic Pain and Handle the Guilt

woman testing a gentle movement baseline during a slow walk

What is Gentle Movement? (And Why Most Advice Gets It Wrong)

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@teravaughn22

terasandona

Chronic pain coaching • Ditch the push-crash loop
Licensed DPT • Regulate first, rebuild second, then layer
👇🏻 Free nervous system workbook

I currently do not squat, lunge, or deadlift. I g I currently do not squat, lunge, or deadlift.

I get why everyone defaults to these movements. They’re efficient, they build strength, and if your body can tolerate them, there’s nothing wrong with having them in a program.

For a long time, I assumed that if I pushed through it, my body would eventually catch up. That’s not how it works when you’re dealing with chronic pain. Pushing through leads to a setback fast.

Your back is tied directly into what your hips and legs are doing. Careful form can only take it so far out of the equation, especially when weakness is involved.

A few months ago, I was doing bodyweight versions of these same exercises at home. Every time, it aggravated my back. So I stepped back to isolated machines instead.

Here’s what made it click. I couldn’t even tolerate a leg extension machine at 30lbs. I weigh about 120. There was no version of me safely squatting my own bodyweight and that’s still true right now.

Isolated machines do exactly what they’re built for. They isolate one muscle group and take my back out of the equation so I can still train and progressively add weight at a pace that’s safe for my body.

If a compound lift keeps interfering with your back, this is where I’d start looking instead.

Send this to the friend who keeps getting told squats are non-negotiable.
It was a Sunday and I woke up feeling good, better It was a Sunday and I woke up feeling good, better than I expected after lifting the day before. I went on a 40 minute walk, did laundry and vacuumed, and had a home leg workout planned for later.

Then around early afternoon, my energy tanked. I could still putter around the house, but the thought of starting that workout felt like more than I had left.

If you’ve had energy for everything except the one thing you planned, I know how much that one can sting.

Looking back, it was hot, I’d barely eaten, and I hadn’t slept well most of that week. Each of those can pull from the same energy you’d use to train, and that day, I had all three. What felt like a motivation problem was my body showing me what the day had already used up.

So I moved the workout to Monday instead of forcing it (and let myself have the day).

Send this to the friend who feels guilty every time a planned workout doesn’t happen.

#chronicpainlife #chronicfatiguesyndrome #lowenergy #paceyourself #functionalcapacity
Nothing about chopping vegetables is urgent and my Nothing about chopping vegetables is urgent and my jaw was still clenched like it was.

If you just checked and your teeth were touching, you’re not doing anything wrong. When you’ve been running on alert for a while, your nervous system can start treating ordinary moments like urgent ones, and your jaw braces right along with it while you scroll, answer emails, or cook dinner.

Over time that can stack into headaches, jaw pain, and neck tension.

You don’t have to fix it the moment you catch it. Right now the goal is to notice it in the everyday moments it tends to hide, so it stops being something your body does without you knowing.

Save this and check your jaw the next time you open your inbox.

#jawclenching #jawtension #nervoussystemhealth #stressandpain #chronicpainawareness
Happy 1st anniversary to my other half 💕 Getting Happy 1st anniversary to my other half 💕

Getting to relive the best day ever, reminiscing through these photos, and visiting our favorite place is more than I could ask for. Can’t wait for many more of these years to come ❤️
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