How Your Childhood Shaped Your Brain’s Stress Wiring (And How to Change It)

A few years ago, I visited home for the first time after becoming a hypnotherapist. By then, I’d done a lot of healing and rewiring. As I walked on the streets of my hometown, seeing the people who shaped my life, I looked at everything with completely new eyes.

They say change is so gradual that it’s hard to spot. But in this case, it was profound.

Growing up, stress management wasn’t really management at all. It was co-disregulation – eating feelings, passive-aggressively punishing others, bottling everything up until it burst out as anger onto someone else. That’s what I saw modelled around me. And that’s what I carried for so long.

But over the years, living quietly on a farm tucked away from the world, guiding others through hypnotherapy and transformative self-reflection, something shifted. Holding space for others to heal also meant holding space for parts of myself that needed kindness and attention.

This rewired my old approach to stress into something completely different. And standing there at home, I realised just how much can change with deep, science-backed inner work.

Today, I want to tell you why this rewiring happens, how our childhood shapes the way we cope with stress, and most importantly – how you can change it too.

Science shows that the way you handle stress isn't just about mindset or grit. It’s about the nervous system you grew up with – and how it learned to regulate itself through your earliest bonds.

Your nervous system didn’t grow in isolation. It was built in relationship.

The branch of your nervous system that helps you recover from stress, regulate your heart and breathing, and feel safe to connect with others developed through experiences – skin-to-skin contact, smiling faces, gentle touch, and soft voices. Your parents or caregivers acted as your external nervous system. Being soothed when you cried, or smiled at with warmth, built the pathways that help you self-soothe today.

Their mirroring made you feel seen, valued, and recognised as your own separate being, while still belonging to something bigger. And it’s no surprise that most sessions revolve around not feeling seen, valued, significant, or good enough – as you’ll see below, these patterns can be rewired.

The good news is that being perfectly attuned isn’t required. Studies show that “good enough” parenting is enough. Your nervous system needed connection most of the time, and repair when there was rupture. But as I’ve learned from my clients, a lot of the time that repair didn’t happen either. (Spoiler: this can be healed.)

If you feel emotional overwhelm or numbness, struggle to calm down after stress, or find it hard to integrate emotions, memories, and clear thinking under pressure (which, let’s be honest, is pretty much all of us at times), chances are your nervous system got stuck in dysregulation from not having enough co-regulation growing up.

These patterns aren’t just psychological. They’re physiological, rooted in the neural pathways that were (or weren’t) formed during childhood.

There is good news

The inspiring part of the story is that these areas remain plastic (meaning they can respond to change) throughout life. Through neurogenesis, the brain can grow new circuits and integrate them into existing systems. Building “vagal tone” (the strength and flexibility of your vagus nerve) helps you shift out of fight-flight-freeze and into calm, safe connection.

You do this by becoming a securely attached friend to your own distressed self – learning to attune to your nervous system, noticing its cues, and responding with care instead of judgement. I personally call this becoming your own best friend.

Co-regulation isn’t just for children.

Your nervous system still thrives on it. This is why therapy, deep friendships, healthy relationships, community, and even pets can help your nervous system recalibrate. These bonds create safety, and safety rewires you.

So, next time you find yourself overwhelmed by stress, remember: These are patterns – not life sentences.

I’ve seen this in my own life, and in my clients’ lives too. For me, it took years because I tried so many different modalities before I discovered hypnotherapy. For my clients, it’s taken significantly less time because now I know what works.

And that’s what I want for you, too – to know that change doesn’t have to take years when you have the right support.