The Real Work with Maggie Sterling

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If you're living with chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, or a hypersensitive nervous system and you can't picture a future where you feel better, this video is for you. I share the realization that changed everything for me when I was at my worst, and the one thing I had to stop doing before anything could start to shift. My symptoms were horrific. Burning, stinging, insomnia, anxiety, OCD, anhedonia. I spent every day monitoring my body, trying to fix it, and grieving a future that hadn't even happened yet. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know your future may look very different from what you're imagining today.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If your nervous system always feels on edge, your phone could be keeping it there. In this video I share my honest answer on whether you need a digital detox, especially if you deal with chronic anxiety, chronic pain, or insomnia. I also talk about why I've never been a fan of detoxes, how I tell the difference between using my phone for work and using it out of hypervigilance, and what finally worked for me after years of making content online.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

In this anxiety recovery story, Brett shares how he went from being bedridden for months, believing he was dying every day, to working, working out, and taking care of his family again. Nervous system healing didn't look the way he expected, and he still has some symptoms today. Brett's symptoms started out of nowhere in May 2025. Over the next year he had panic attacks every day, made repeated trips to the ER, saw specialists, and paid for procedures hoping someone could fix him. In this conversation we talk about what got him to that point, the decisions that turned things around, and what his life looks like now.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If you have a hypersensitive nervous system, it can feel like your body is on high alert all the time. In this video, I share 10 tiny habits that help calm a hypersensitive nervous system, and none of them add more to your to-do list. Most of these are so small you wouldn't connect them to your nervous system, and some are the opposite of what you've been doing every day. Let me know in the comments which ones you're already good at and which one you want to start with.

14 day challenge (started 10/12/26): https://softregulationsystem.com/challenge

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If you've read all the self-help books and listened to all the podcasts and still feel stuck, this video is for you. Self-improvement burnout is real, and constantly consuming self-help content can turn into a compulsion that keeps you from actually living your life.

In this video, I share my own story with self-help, the signs that it's become compulsive for you, and the part of healing most people neglect.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If you've tried everything to heal your nervous system and nothing has worked, this video is for you. I dealt with chronic anxiety for 20 years, along with insomnia and a whole range of chronic physical symptoms, and I tried everything to make it go away. In this video I explain why nothing has worked for you yet and what I did instead once I figured it out.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If you have chronic insomnia, or you wake up at 3am and can't fall back asleep, there's a good chance your nervous system is sensitized and stuck on high alert. In my experience this is rarely a sleep problem. In this video I cover how your nervous system gets in the way of something your body already knows how to do on its own, what not to do when you're lying awake in the middle of the night, why I part ways with a lot of what CBT-I teaches, and how medication and medication withdrawal can factor into all of it. I also answer the four questions I get asked most about insomnia: How do I stop fearing not sleeping when the consequences are so real? Is this fear, or is it something physical? What if the thing keeping me up isn't fear? What if I recovered and I'm suddenly back to all nighters, am I at square one?

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

If you've had anxiety for a while, there's a good chance you've been making it worse without knowing it. It happens automatically the second a symptom shows up, and it's the reason your nervous system keeps sounding the alarm no matter what you try. In this video I break down the most common way people respond to anxiety, what that response has actually been doing to your nervous system this whole time, and what to do instead. This applies whether your anxiety shows up as racing thoughts and rumination or as a racing heart and shortness of breath.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

Anxious thoughts, intrusive thoughts, and rumination are symptoms of a sensitized nervous system, the same way physical symptoms are. In this video I explain why your thoughts get so loud, so dark, and so convincing when your system has been stuck in threat, and why you can't think your way out of them. I go into why your brain zooms in on one problem at a time, why quieting one thought just makes room for the next one, and what actually keeps the whole loop running.

Get my nervous system sensitization course

Take the nervous system sensitization quiz

Are your symptoms caused by your nervous system? Take the Quiz.

Your nervous system won't regulate, and the tool you picked isn't the reason. Meditation, breathwork, supplements, cold plunges: if you've tried all of it and still feel anxious and wired, there are three things underneath it that nobody put on the list. I go through all three in this video, including the one signal your system is actually reading every day while you're busy trying to fix it.