What Your Nervous System Knows About Change (That Your Calendar Doesn't)
There's a particular feeling that shows up every year around this time. The light starts hitting the kitchen window at a different angle. The air loses that thick, lazy quality it had in July. And somewhere in your body — before you've even glanced at a calendar — you know: summer is ending.
I love this moment. I also used to dread it.
For years, September meant one thing to me as an educator: the slow, invisible tightening that started sometime in August and didn't fully release until winter break. New routines. New pressure. The particular exhaustion of getting everyone else settled — students, staff, my own kids — while nobody asked whether I was settled too.
What I didn't understand back then was that this tightening wasn't happening in my head. It was happening in my body. And once I started paying attention to that, everything about how I moved through transitions changed.
Your body doesn't wait for permission
Here's something I've learned, both from my own path back from burnout and from the doctoral research I've spent the last few years doing on how leaders actually experience stress: your nervous system doesn't distinguish between a season change and a major life pivot. Both register as things are different now. Both can trigger the same stress response — the shallow breath, the tight shoulders, the low hum of dread — whether the "change" is your kids going back to school or a reorganization at work.
That means small transitions, like this one, are actually a gift. They're low-stakes. Nobody's job is on the line because September has arrived. Which makes them the perfect place to practice something that matters a lot more the next time a big transition shows up.
Three signs your body is resisting, not moving through
In coaching sessions, I watch for these patterns constantly — in clients navigating a new leadership role, a hard conversation, or yes, sometimes just the return of the school-year calendar. See if any of these sound familiar:
1. Tension that doesn't have an obvious source. Your shoulders are up around your ears, and you can't quite say why. Your jaw is tight during a meeting that isn't even stressful. This is often the body holding a "no" or a "not yet" that your mind hasn't yet consciously caught up to.
2. Sleep that gets lighter, not deeper. You're in bed on time, but you're waking up at 3 a.m. with your mind already sprinting. This is a classic sign of a nervous system that's bracing for something, even if you can't name what.
3. Irritability that spikes over small things. Suddenly, the dishwasher being loaded "wrong" feels like a personal offense. When your baseline patience drops sharply, it's rarely about the dishwasher. It's usually about capacity — you're already spending most of yours managing the transition underneath everything else.
None of these are signs that something is wrong with you. They are signs that your body is doing exactly what it's built to do: noticing that things are shifting, and trying to get your attention.
Resistance is data, not a character flaw
This is the piece I really want to land, because I think it's the most useful reframe I know: resistance to change isn't a character flaw. It's data.
Most of us were taught to push through these signals — to override the tight jaw, ignore the 3 a.m. wake-up, apologize for the snapping, and move on. But every time we override and don't listen, we miss the chance to actually work with what our bodies are telling us. We just accumulate it instead. And accumulated, unprocessed stress doesn't stay quiet. It shows up later, usually at a worse time, often as the kind of burnout I lived through myself.
The alternative isn't to eliminate the resistance. It's to get curious about it. When you notice the tight shoulders or the sharper edge in your voice, the question isn't "how do I make this stop?" It's "what is this trying to tell me?" Sometimes the answer is I need more structure right now. Sometimes it's I'm not actually ready to let go of summer yet, and that's allowed. Sometimes it's simply I'm carrying more than I've admitted out loud.
You don't have to solve it in the moment. You just have to notice it without judgment. That noticing, on its own, starts to change your relationship to the transition.
A small practice for this season
If you want somewhere to start, try this the next time you feel that low hum of September dread: pause, and do a quick scan from your jaw down to your feet. Notice — without trying to fix anything — where you're holding tension. Just name it, even silently: tight jaw. shallow breath. clenched hands.
That's it. That's the whole practice. Naming a sensation is often the first step toward settling it, because it moves you out of autopilot and back into choice. From there, you get to decide how you want to respond — instead of your nervous system deciding for you.
Practicing this in community
If this is resonating, I want to name something: this exact skill — noticing your body's signals and responding deliberately instead of overriding — is the whole foundation of the work I do, whether that's in 1:1 coaching, inside the Becoming AWARE cohort, or during a weekend like the Serenity Women's Wellness Retreat coming up September 18–20.
You don't need a big life transition to start building this capacity. A change of season works just fine. The practice is the same either way: notice, name, and choose your response — moving, as I like to say, from stress to strategy.
However this month is landing in your body, I hope you meet it with curiosity instead of override. That's where the real shift begins.
