When you have found your way out of the dark, letting others know where the light is, matters. - Shannon Eastman
Shannon's Story
Host of Who Turned The Lights On
Founder of The Nervous System Economy™
Founder of NB3.io Business Growth for Financial Services
Human Behaviour Expert, Preparing Regulated Firms to Meet The Regulator
I’ve spent most of my life high-performing, high-functioning—and secretly, not okay.
​
For over two decades, I worked in business growth, scaling startups and leading strategy across three continents in the tech and financial services industries. I was capable, fast-moving, and the one who thrived in creating clarity from chaos.
​
But inside? Inside I was secretly in despair, all the while searching for a way out.
That search spanned 15 years and a big 6-digit investment in all things personal development. I studied philosophy, psychology, Sufism, Buddhism, and Transcendentalism. I filled journals, read thousands of books, attended retreats and endless training, earned certifications, and worked with the best teachers I could find.
​
For me, personal development was a full-time side job.
There were breakthroughs—but nothing that would last. I'd feel better for a few days, then slip back into the same patterns: outwardly composed, inwardly exhausted. By 2019, I made a conscious decision to stop. Not because I’d figured it out—because I hadn’t.
​
I resigned myself to the idea that maybe this was just how it was going to be and my focus would be better invested in simply resolving how to manage better.
Inside that decision, I agreed to attend one more (final) webinar. It was Dr. Gabor Maté, showing two brain scans: one from a child raised in a healthy, connected home, and one from a child raised in neglect. The latter was about 30% smaller, with 40% less function.
​
Something shifted and while not dramatic, it was immediate.
For the first time, I saw a visual, biological explanation for something I had been trying to fix with intellect and mindset as I wondered - how do you grow back brain matter?
That moment sent me in a completely new direction.
Who Turned The Lights On?
In 2020, I left the boardroom for the classroom to study the nervous system. I went back to school—earning an MSc in the Neurobiology of Trauma, a diploma in Jungian Psychology, and certification in Polyvagal Theory. I explored 12 different modalities. And I began practicing nervous system regulation, not as a concept, but as a daily discipline.
​
Within 12 weeks, I experienced more tangible change than I had in the previous 15 years. My mind was clearer. My body, calmer. My reactions slowed. My focus returned. I was both deeply grateful and quietly furious. How could something so foundational to human experience be so hard to find?
I would spend the next three years trying to find doctors who would come into the business world and explain what had happened to me - to help my former colleagues discover a viable way out of their own sense of highly functioning, not fulfilled.
​
Despite 3 years of effort, I had very little to show for it.
I would write a book in June 2023, “C-PTSD at Work, Highly Functioning, Secretly in Despair” to help me more easily share what I was learning.
​
I started a podcast in January 2024, Who Turned The Lights On with minimal fanfare and no expectations. I would stumble across the dashboard in 2024 while showing someone else how to start a podcast and see 100k downloads despite parking the podcast earlier that summer.
It was Christmas 2024 when I had the aha moment: the person I’d been searching for to bring this work back into the business world… was me.
In January 2025, The Nervous System Economy™ was born. Its purpose is to organize a field that has long been siloed, fragmented, and misunderstood—into a coherent, credible ecosystem. One that legitimizes this work, creates space for companies delivering nervous system-informed solutions, and connects them with the people in business who need them most.
​
It’s a way to integrate nervous system intelligence into business and leadership—through trusted partnerships, contextual education, practitioner-led insight, and industry-level frameworks.
​
Who Turned The Lights On remains the voice of this work. It’s where I share my own lived experience—and invite others to do the same.
I don’t share this because I have it all figured out. I share it because you are not alone in your own inner conflict. And because it’s time for new models of how business gets done—where performance and wellbeing are no longer in conflict, and the nervous system becomes the foundation of growth.
