Nervous System Reset: Do THIS Every Day to Rewire Your Brain From Stress and Anxiety
Episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast · April 27, 2026 · 1 h 15 min
Mel Robbins talks with pediatrician Dr. Nadine Burke Harris about adverse childhood experiences, overactive stress responses, and buffering practices that help regulate the nervous system.
Summary
Mel Robbins interviewed Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, former Surgeon General of California and author of The Deepest Well, about how childhood adversity shapes adult biology and behavior. Burke Harris defined trauma as the body's biological response to overwhelming stress rather than the stressor itself, and described the case of a seven-year-old patient whose growth stopped after a sexual assault at age four and resumed with therapy.
Burke Harris outlined the 1998 CDC–Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, its ten categories, and its dose-response findings linking ACEs to depression, addiction, heart disease and lung disease. She explained 'buffering' using a teeter-totter model in which earlier adversity shifts the fulcrum and requires more support to balance, and cited rat studies showing that maternal licking and grooming altered epigenetic markers in offspring, including cross-fostered pups.
Both shared personal accounts: Robbins described decades of morning dread she connected to a childhood sexual incident, and Burke Harris discussed growing up with a mother who had paranoid schizophrenia and her own use of daily meditation, journaling and EMDR. Burke Harris described the 'I'm here' effect, seven evidence-based stress-regulation interventions from her Surgeon General's report, the fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses, how amygdala activation suppresses the prefrontal cortex and fuels procrastination and shame, and the role of corrective experiences. She closed by arguing that 'infrastructure is love in action.'
Chapters
- 0:00
Introduction to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
Robbins frames the episode around emotional reactivity and introduces Burke Harris's credentials and work on ACEs.
- 7:08
What trauma is
Burke Harris defines trauma as the body's biological response to overwhelming stress, not the event itself.
- 8:41
The boy who stopped growing
Burke Harris recounts the patient case that led her to study how stress hormones affect children's health.
- 13:11
How stress shows up in adult life
Burke Harris explains how an overactive stress response appears in relationships and in physical symptoms like headaches and autoimmune disease.
- 15:40
The ACE Study
Burke Harris details the ten categories of adverse childhood experiences and the study's dose-response health findings.
- 20:32
Buffering and the teeter-totter
Burke Harris explains buffering and how the age of adversity shifts the balance between stress and support.
- 29:01
Rat studies and epigenetics
Burke Harris describes cross-fostering research showing nurturing care changes epigenetic markers and stress reactivity.
- 36:32
Personal stories and the 'I'm here' effect
Robbins and Burke Harris share childhood experiences, and Burke Harris describes meditation, journaling, EMDR and the 'I'm here' concept.
- 48:35
Where to start: seven evidence-based interventions
Burke Harris lists self-regulation practices, safe relationships, therapies and medication as steps toward regulation.
- 57:07
Procrastination, fight-flight-freeze-fawn and shame
Burke Harris explains how the amygdala suppresses the prefrontal cortex and how shame compounds stress.
- 1:02:58
Corrective experiences and supporting loved ones
Burke Harris discusses corrective experiences, signs of progress, and how to support someone with an overactive stress response.
- 1:09:10
Parting words and wrap-up
Burke Harris urges people to examine their ACEs and build support infrastructure in advance, followed by off-air banter.
Key points
What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris argues that trauma is the body's biological response to overwhelming stress rather than the stressful event itself.
“At its core, trauma is the biological response to overwhelming stress. So a lot of us think of it as the stressor, the thing that happened to us”
Linked moment · 11:46Skip to 11:46 using a listen link in the info box.
Nadine Burke HarrisBurke Harris recounts that an endocrinologist advised psychotherapy rather than hormonal therapy for a boy whose growth arrested after trauma, and that his growth and asthma improved.
“the treatment, if that's the case, is not hormonal therapy. It's talk therapy, right?”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris reports that the ACE Study found two-thirds of people had at least one ACE and that the CDC's updated data shows one in six Americans have four or more.
“Now, nationally, it's one in six individuals have experienced four or more of these traditional ACEs”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris states that people with four or more ACEs had markedly elevated risks of depression, alcohol and opiate dependence, and heart disease.
“a person with four more ACEs was four and a half times as likely to experience depression, was seven times as likely to experience alcohol dependence”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris says health-damaging behaviors account for only about half of the added risk from ACEs, with the rest attributable to the overactive stress response.
“looked at what happens when you remove the impact of health-damaging behaviors. And that was only about 50% of the risk”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris explains that hugging a frightened child releases oxytocin, which inhibits the biological stress response.
“First of all, the hug releases oxytocin. Oxytocin directly blocks the activation of the biological stress response”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris argues that the younger a person is when adversity occurs, the more buffering is needed to restore balance.
“the younger you are when you experience a stressor or trauma or adversity, you need way more buffering on the other side to be able to balance that out”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris contends that early infant experiences shape stress wiring even when they are not remembered.
“So you may not remember the actual event, but the body remembers, right?”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris describes rat cross-fostering studies in which pups took on the stress reactivity and epigenetic markers of their rearing mother rather than their biological mother.
“they took on the stress reactivity of their rearing mother, not of their biological mother”
- Mel Robbins
Robbins recounts that after a fourth-grade sexual incident she did not disclose, she woke with intense dread every morning for three decades.
“But every single morning for three decades, I would wake up and have this intense sense of dread, no matter what was going on”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris says that through EMDR she had a corrective experience of her adult self comforting her childhood self, which she sums up as the 'I'm here' effect.
“adult me comes in and just sits down on the bed and says, I'm here”
Listen from 46:15 · Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris lists seven evidence-based interventions from her Surgeon General's report for regulating the stress response.
“these include sleep, exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, mental health, and healthy relationships, and time in nature”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris says that even a single safe, supportive relationship can be enough buffering.
“And sometimes it's one person and one person is enough, right? That's the good news. One person is enough”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris describes the fawn response, more common among women, as becoming compliant and people-pleasing for safety.
“So that means is that you become compliant. You people please for your own safety”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris explains that procrastination and disorganization can stem from an overactive amygdala suppressing the prefrontal cortex.
“we see that prefrontal cortex is really just having a really hard time engaging, right? Because the amygdala is on overdrive”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris argues that shame both increases stress and isolates people from the connection they need.
“Shame doesn't only increase our stress, but it also isolates us. So it makes us less likely to connect to the thing that we actually need to be successful”
- Nadine Burke Harris
Burke Harris urges people to build support systems before crises, calling infrastructure love in action.
“I believe infrastructure is love in action. What we build, the systems that we build in our personal lives for ourselves”
People
In the conversation
- Mel RobbinsAmerican author, podcast host and former lawyer who hosts The Mel Robbins Podcast
- Nadine Burke HarrisAmerican pediatrician, ACEs researcher and former Surgeon General of California
Discussed
- Frank AndersonClinician focused on internal family systems therapy, cited by Burke Harris on corrective experiences
Topics
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From the publisher
What you learn today will make you forever calmer and more in control of your emotions. If you’ve ever had a moment where you thought: “Why does one email, one comment…ruin my day?” “Why do I always get overwhelmed by the littlest things?” “Why am I like this?” This conversation gives you the answer. In this episode, Dr. Burke Harris explains why so many of the patterns you hate, like being reactive, shutting down, people-pleasing, not being able to follow through, and feeling dread for no reason, are not your “personality flaws” – and give you the truth. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, MD is one of the most important voices in trauma science and public health. She’s a pediatrician, who conducted pioneering research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), the founder of the Center for Youth Wellness, and the former Surgeon General of the State of California. She is here to tell you that your body is running an overactive stress response that got wired in childhood, and never got turned off. Dr. Burke Harris gives you research-backed tools that help your body re-regulate, calm down, and feel safe, so stress stops driving your life. You will be able to start rewiring your nervous system today, with one powerful, 3-word sentence you can say to yourself. It takes less than a few minutes and reverses the feelings that make life harder than it should be. In this episode, you’ll learn: -Why you shut down sometimes, get emotional, “triggered”, or overwhelmed (and why it’s not your fault) -Why you procrastinate even when it feels bad-How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime-Why trauma is (Mel had it wrong for decades) and how childhood trauma is keeping you stuck-How to help your body return to balance after being upset-The 3 essential words that rewire your nervous system-The 7 evidence-based things you can do to regulate your nervous system-How to support someone you love who’s stuck, shut down, or overwhelmed in their life This episode is hopeful, practical, and e…
Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on September 27, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.