Being “Regulated” All the Time is NOT the Goal
A healthy nervous system is NOT being calm, cool & collected all the time.
“Regulated” has become a buzz word in the self-development world and is often framed as the end point, the objective, where we’ll be once we’re fully “healed” and “enlightened.”
This is actually just a perpetuation of the conditioning we’ve received to remain poised and “appropriate” all the time. Another iteration of the “good girl” conditioning, if you will. And it’s a concept that is often sneakily perpetuated within healing and therapy spaces, as well. That the goal is to get rid of the discomfort, the big emotion, the true feeling. Because if you’re not feeling things as intensely, that must mean you’re getting better, right? Not necessarily…
There’s often an element of bypassing or avoidance with aiming to be “zen” all the time. And it’s fair that many of us were never taught how to actually FEEL the thing, so we’ve learned to move away from it as a means of coping. Many of us don’t know what embodied safety feels like. Because we didn’t learn this early on and/or it wasn’t modeled to us, we have a limited tolerance for distress. We want it to go away quickly. And our culture drives this point home. It’s all about selling a pill or providing a solution so that you don’t have to feel something that’s difficult. But is the goal really to be numb? No! Our feeling & sensation is our humanness, our aliveness!
So what is “the goal” then? I would argue the aim is to safely access ALL emotions & be able to meet the moment. To feel comfortable with the emotion/reaction enough to process it in our systems, so that we can respond to the situation, as warranted. It’s about being okay with the full range of emotion and reclaiming all of it. It does not mean every emotion is comfortable, but rather you’re able to tolerate it enough that you’re able to metabolize it. Different situations require different responses from us and our nervous system is eloquently designed to accommodate accordingly.
The sympathetic branch of the nervous system gets the most heat these days. I often hear people talk about the “fight/flight response” in a negative context, or talk about being “triggered” as purely BAD. In fact, the sympathetic branch is how we’re able to get up in the morning, how we’re able to get things done, and how we set boundaries. It’s also a completely normal reaction to something that is actually unsafe for us and something we need to act on/get away from/push back on! Our triggers also can serve as a compass to what might need more of our attention and care.
The parasympathetic or “the rest and digest state” as it’s phrased, is often portrayed as being the superior one; when, in fact, if you have too much down-regulation, it’s also not healthy. This can be indicative of a freeze state or dissociation. Often times women especially learned to shut things down or go into a collapse mode when they’re not able to express anger or don’t feel like their fight energy is allowed. In this case, we don’t need more calm or feeling less, we actually need things to come online more.
Now, we all have certain emotions that are especially uncomfortable for us or that we learned were especially unhelpful or even “unsafe” to express. So what we aim to do is not get rid of these (which would perpetuate the initial wounding itself), but to gradually increase our ability to sit with that experience.* We slowly inch toward it so that we don’t overwhelm ourselves and can learn, “Oh wait—I can handle this.” With different embodiment practices, we can learn to increase our window of tolerance so that we can have enough felt safety to be able to access the full range of emotions available to us.
The window of tolerance is what we’re in when things feel manageable and we’re at a point of homeostasis. When we experience chronic stress or trauma over time, the window of tolerance can become compromised or smaller, meaning we go into states of dysregulation more readily. It also means it takes us longer to return to homeostasis. So, when we talk about improving nervous system health, we actually are looking at increasing our window of tolerance. We’re not looking to get rid of any particular mood or physiological response; it’s about having access to the full range of emotion and each branch of the nervous system, as the situation at hand warrants. We need to be able to meet the moments in our lives appropriately, and then it’s about how quickly we can come back into that window of tolerance—how quickly we’re able to reestablish homeostasis being one indication of health. So while ultimately, yes, we do want things to feel manageable the majority of the time, this is not the goal as a whole.
The takeaway point: We need your full range! We want to feel alive, we want to fully enjoy life. But our capacity for pleasure is a direct reflection of our capacity for discomfort (a topic for another time...). Turn down the ability to feel one and you lose some access to the other, too. We need your rage, grief, sadness, joy, anxiety. ALL of it serves a purpose & is communicating something to you. This is part of what we explore in my 1:1 coaching container, so that you can have full access to your life.
*Disclaimer that many of our nervous systems are holding significant trauma, in which we likely need a trained professional’s help with approaching and processing the experience before we feel safe enough to access certain emotion states.
