Fall: Why Your Nervous System Feels Urgency

The season changing from fall to winter can often give us a sense of urgency or overwhelm that’s hard to pin down. That’s because there’s an unconscious effect on our emotions coming from an ancient fears that the limbic brain still senses: getting the crops gathered up so that nothing goes to waste, getting things organized and stored to make it through the winter, and wondering about all the seeds you planted during the spring.

I know this may sound silly — most of us aren’t living out on the prairie — but the survival area of your brain isn’t much different than it was a thousand years ago. It still gets the same signals that a caveman would have: hurry, gather, secure, prepare.

Evolutionarily, humans may have been more alert during this season to gather and store resources, and our limbic system — which governs emotion and threat detection — can still create echoes of that ancient readiness today That subtle pressure can translate into restlessness, anxiety, disrupted sleep, or that general feeling of “I should be doing something,” even when you’ve already done plenty.

The Nervous System’s Ancient Memory

In Ayurveda, this time of year is associated with Vata — the energy of air and movement. Vata season (late fall into winter) brings cold, dryness, and wind. Inside the body and mind, that same quality shows up as busyness of mind, dryness in the skin, things feeling ungrounded, and a kind of internal scattering.

You don’t have to believe in Ayurveda to be experiencing it. You can feel it when your thoughts start skipping around, or when your calendar fills up even though you swore you’d slow down. You can feel it in the way your body tightens at night — as if it’s bracing for something.

The truth is, this “seasonal anxiety” isn’t just psychological. It’s biological. It’s your nervous system responding to a collective memory that says, winter is coming, prepare to survive.

What Helps

The invitation now isn’t to do more. It’s to reassure your system that you are safe, provided for, and allowed to rest.

Here are a few simple things that help me (and might help you too):

1. Eat grounding, warm foods. This is not the time for cold salads and smoothies. Think soups, roasted vegetables, oatmeal, tea. Your digestion needs warmth to balance the cool, dry energy of the season.

2. Slow down transitions. Don’t rush from one task to the next. Take five slow breaths when you move from your workday to your evening. Let your body register that the pace is changing.

3. Bring in rhythm and weight. Vata loves routine. Go to bed at a consistent time. Wrap yourself in something heavy while you rest. Weighted blankets, warm baths, and steady schedules are all ways of telling your body, you’re safe to settle.

4. Touch the earth, literally if you can. Even a short walk outdoors, feeling your feet on the ground, recalibrates the part of your nervous system that’s scanning for threat.

5. Name it. Just telling yourself that your limbic brain is scanning the environment like a caveman can help to calm it down. Reminding yourself that this area of your brain is ruminating over the actual or metaphoric seeds you planted in the spring this year and judging if you've picked all the ripened growth can release tension from your mind and body.

Balancing Over Controlling

You don’t need to fix or outsmart these ancient instincts. You just need to balance them. Ayurveda reminds us that health is less about control and more about rhythm. When the world around you speeds up, your job is to gently slow down.

So if you’ve been feeling off, anxious, or a little unmoored, try not to pathologize it. This is the body remembering something ancient. And you have the ability — right now — to show it that you’re safe, fed, and supported.