Identify your current nervous system state, log energy, stress, and sleep, and track which regulation techniques actually work for you — all in one daily log.
One unread message and your heart is suddenly going like you sprinted up stairs, jaw tight, brain narrowed to a single anxious loop — over an email. The threat-detection system does not check whether the threat is real before it floors the accelerator, and 'just calm down' has never once worked on a body already in fifth gear. Regulation is the practical skill underneath that: noticing which gear you are actually in, and having tools that fit it. This toolkit is built on polyvagal theory — the idea that the nervous system runs in three primary states: ventral vagal (safe, connected, able to think and engage), sympathetic fight/flight (revved, alert, anxious), and dorsal vagal (shut down, frozen, checked out). Each state feels different from the inside, and each responds to different techniques.
You log your nervous system state daily, along with Energy (1–10), Stress (1–10), and Sleep Quality (1–10) using sliders, plus your active Triggers and the Regulation Techniques you used. The tool produces a Regulation Score and tracks which techniques you use most — and over time, which ones correlate with state shifts. The goal is a personalized toolkit that is evidence-based on your own data, not just a list of well-intentioned suggestions.
The three nervous system states — recognizing where you are
Ventral vagal activation is the state where connection, creativity, problem-solving, and calm presence are available. You can hear someone's tone of voice clearly, hold a nuanced conversation, make good decisions, and feel generally okay. From this state, regulation feels easy because it is not needed urgently. Most regulation work is about returning to this state after dropping out of it.
Sympathetic activation — fight/flight — is the state of mobilization. Heart rate elevates, muscles tense, digestion slows, and the perceptual field narrows. This is useful for genuine threat response; in contemporary life, it is often activated by emails, deadlines, traffic, conflict, or hypervigilance from past stress. The experience includes anxiety, irritability, restlessness, or the feeling of being unable to settle. Regulation techniques that work here typically involve discharge of the mobilization energy — movement, shaking, vigorous exercise — or slowing the physiological activation through breathwork.
Dorsal vagal shutdown — the state most regulation guides skip
Dorsal vagal activation is the shutdown or freeze state: numbness, disconnection, flatness, inability to care, heaviness, or the experience of going through the motions without being present. This state is common in trauma responses, severe burnout, depression, and chronic overwhelm. It is less visibly activated than sympathetic arousal, which makes it easy to misidentify as laziness or depression when it is actually a nervous system protection response.
Regulation techniques for dorsal vagal states are different from those for sympathetic states — the goal is gentle activation rather than calming. Light movement, cold water on the face, orienting exercises (slowly looking around the room and naming what you see), or mild social connection can begin to shift dorsal shutdown toward ventral vagal. Tracking which state you are in before applying a technique helps you match the intervention to the actual state rather than using a calming technique on a shutdown state.
Energy, stress, and sleep — the three daily sliders
The Energy, Stress, and Sleep Quality sliders each run from 1–10 and form the daily quantitative backbone of the log. Energy captures your sense of available capacity — not productivity, but the felt sense of whether you have something to bring to the day. Stress captures your current threat-activation level. Sleep Quality captures whether last night's sleep restored you.
These three numbers often tell the nervous system state story before you consciously identify the state. A day logged as Energy 3, Stress 8, Sleep 3 is almost certainly a sympathetic-dominant day before you have even thought about it. A day logged as Energy 2, Stress 2, Sleep 5 with a flat affect likely reflects dorsal state. The combination of numbers with the state label you select creates a cross-validating record that becomes informative over weeks.
Trigger tracking and the personalized trigger map
The Triggers section lets you add, name, and check off your personal triggers each day. Common triggers include conflict, isolation, sensory overload, physical illness, certain environments, financial stress, social media, or specific people or situations. The tracker builds a frequency chart of which triggers appear most often across your logs — the ones that reliably move you out of ventral vagal activation into sympathetic or dorsal states.
The practical value of trigger tracking is not just awareness. When you know that a specific type of interaction reliably pushes you into fight/flight, you can prepare — having a regulation tool ready before the interaction rather than scrambling after the fact. The tracker charts trigger frequency across the Analysis view, making your personal top triggers visible as data rather than as a vague sense of 'everything feels hard lately.'
Regulation techniques — building a personalized toolkit
The Techniques section presents a library of evidence-informed regulation approaches and lets you check off which ones you used each day. The toolkit includes approaches from across the polyvagal and somatic tradition: physiological sigh (a double inhale through the nose followed by a long exhale), extended exhale breathing, cold water face immersion, body scan, movement-based discharge, bilateral stimulation (tapping), orienting exercises, co-regulation (connecting with another person), and self-compassion practices.
The Techniques view shows your top three most-used techniques alongside a comparison grid. Over months, your most effective techniques — the ones that reliably correlate with state shifts toward ventral vagal — become visible in your data. Many people discover that two or three specific techniques work reliably for them while others feel like going through the motions. That personal discovery is the point of the toolkit. Get this plus 266 other interactive tools with a single 14-day free trial.
How to use it
- Open the Daily Log view and identify your current nervous system state — Ventral vagal, Sympathetic fight/flight, or Dorsal vagal/shutdown.
- Adjust the Energy, Stress, and Sleep Quality sliders to reflect today's experience on a 1–10 scale.
- Check off any active triggers from your trigger list, adding new ones as they emerge using the Add Trigger button.
- Log which regulation techniques you used today by checking them in the Techniques checklist — only count ones you actually practiced, not ones you intend to use.
- Review the Analysis view weekly to see your nervous system state frequency, trigger patterns, and technique effectiveness trends.
Who it's for
- Person recovering from burnout — Tracks nervous system state daily through a three-month recovery period, documenting the gradual increase in ventral vagal days and decrease in dorsal shutdown days as capacity returns.
- Someone with anxiety working on daily regulation practice — Logs stress slider and state alongside daily technique use over eight weeks, identifying that physiological sigh and cold water face immersion consistently produce faster sympathetic-to-ventral shifts than breathwork alone.
- Therapist or coach using the tracker with clients — Introduces the toolkit as a between-session homework tool, reviewing state and trigger pattern data at each session to guide the therapeutic work with actual data rather than reconstructed memory.
- Person with complex trauma history building a somatic toolkit — Starts with the orienting exercises and co-regulation techniques (lower activation demand), tracking which approaches feel accessible and which produce overwhelming activation — building a safe, graduated toolkit.
Key terms
- Ventral vagal state
- The nervous system state of safety and social engagement, supported by the ventral vagal complex. Associated with calm, connection, creativity, and capacity for nuanced thinking.
- Sympathetic activation
- Fight/flight mobilization driven by the sympathetic nervous system. Characterized by elevated heart rate, muscle tension, narrowed attention, and the felt experience of anxiety, urgency, or irritability.
- Dorsal vagal shutdown
- A freeze or collapse state driven by the dorsal vagal complex, representing an ancient protective response to overwhelming threat. Experienced as numbness, disconnection, flatness, or inability to engage.
- Co-regulation
- The process of regulating one's nervous system through safe connection with another person — a regulated nervous system can help regulate an unregulated one through social engagement cues.
- Physiological sigh
- A naturally occurring pattern of a double inhale through the nose followed by a long exhale, which effectively deflates the air sacs in the lungs and rapidly reduces physiological arousal.
Frequently asked questions
What is polyvagal theory?
Polyvagal theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, describes the autonomic nervous system as having three hierarchical states regulated through the vagus nerve. The theory has influenced trauma therapy, somatic psychology, and nervous system education significantly. It provides a framework for understanding why different situations produce different physiological and behavioral responses.
Do I need to understand polyvagal theory to use this tracker?
No. The tracker includes a description of each state and what it feels like from the inside. Many people recognize the states — mobilized and anxious, shutdown and flat, or calm and connected — without needing theoretical framing. The theory is background context; the practice of noticing and logging is what produces the data.
How is this different from a mood tracker?
A mood tracker typically captures emotional valence — good, bad, happy, sad. This tracker captures physiological state — how the nervous system is functioning — alongside specific triggers and interventions. The distinction matters because dorsal shutdown can coexist with low emotional expression (not feeling sad, just feeling nothing), and sympathetic activation can feel like excitement or anxiety depending on context. State is more granular than mood.
What if I spend most days in sympathetic activation?
That pattern is common and worth tracking rather than judging. Identifying which triggers most reliably shift you into sympathetic state — and which techniques most reliably bring you back — is the core work. If sympathetic dominance persists despite consistent technique use, working with a somatic therapist or trauma-informed practitioner may provide additional support.