111 - I Want Calm! (or do I?)

Many of my clients come to me craving calm — slower mornings, quieter children, less chaos in their day-to-day.

That sense of peace is a beautiful goal, but I also like to remind them: calm alone isn’t the full picture of nervous system regulation.

In this episode, we explore the pendulum between safety and activation — how to embrace life’s natural rhythms, rather than resist them. I also offer reframes for resonance, aliveness, and the tidal waves of life.

Tune in for an invitation to get curious about living in range. Life isn’t just about calm. That’s only one stop on the journey.

Episode Transcript:

Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:

Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. Recently I released a podcast saying I want to expand. And I'm actually really excited about that podcast because it was born from many requests and many sessions of those who really want expansion to expand the capacity to hold more money, more love, a bigger business, more visibility and just the reality that the way we do that is through expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. And then this one had a few different themes and feels and I was like, wait, this is really like I want to be calm.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:28]:

And I know that there are some listeners who are actually probably maybe even trying to move away from calm. Calm may be result of falling into freeze to appease and so on. Another one maybe we can look at what does that look like. I know for me, I can think about this morning with my kiddos and how I really dislike the rush and the friction that can come with getting them out the door. The feeling of asking a million times to brush their hair, brush their teeth, put their clothes on, and then the mom, don't rush me in the last five minutes. And then I'm like, okay, if I prepare more. And really what I'm coming up against here is my own discomfort with friction if they start fighting with each other, if we are having friction. And so now even as I'm saying this, I am finding that I'm more and more interested in the generative field, in this place of creativity.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:40]:

And it is very hard to get into the generative field, which is different than just staying calm. Stick with me, we'll get back to the calm thing. It's different than just staying calm. It is creative, it is playful, it can sometimes have some redirection to is deciding to be a part of it. It is truly the idea of connecting before correcting. And this is not just with children, it could be with partners and it can definitely be with ourselves when we try to start fixing our mood, if we can connect with our mood first. So I will go back to the beginning and just say that I often hear I just really want to be calm. I really want to be regulated.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:32]:

I'm working on nervous system regulation. And when we over couple the idea of nervous system regulation with being calm, we really take out the vitality that is available for us. And please don't get me wrong, because calm is lovely, calm tends to feel good. And there's a reason why dysregulation tends not to feel good. It tends to be our body saying like, ah, this is out of control and I don't feel safe. And it's trying to get us back to a place that feels safe. Some nervous systems, I will say actually really their dysregulation is when you come back down to calm. So they would feel most stable if it is always hyperactive, hyper focused, more to do, more to do, more to do.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:31]:

But whether it's calm or high levels of focus with dopamine hits that are giving people that feeling of safety, it's not necessarily the goal. In fact, sometimes chasing calm or chasing these high speed hits is what keeps us stuck. So today we're really going to look at the pendulum and looking at calm and saying like, oh, calm, safety, stability. These are really beautiful things to build in our system. These, they can be beautiful places to take off from when we want to meet an edge, when we are playing with activation and a great place to come back down to so we can swing from like, okay, stable, edge. Oh my gosh, I feel so alive. And then coming back to stable. And there is a place here for also growing our capacity to be with boring, to be with less rush, to be with more stillness, to be with more space.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:48]:

So this is a real spectrum here. Are you with me? Our nervous system is not designed to be calm all the time. It is designed to move, to rise and fall, to, to pulse, to adjust. Just like the ocean, just like the breath. When we try to flatten the natural movement to make our experience smooth, steady, always, then we often end up suppressing what is true. We often end up suppressing what is generative, what is creative. Because again, calm is not the full picture of regulation. Regulation.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:35]:

Nervous system regulation can include activation, recovery and neutral. It's your body's ability to move through things that are challenging and come back home again. It's not the absence of stress, it's your capacity to move with life and return to center. Let's even change the word to resonance, which I know I've said before that I first heard from Tel Darden to say, instead of using the word regulation that is often coupled with the sense of being controlled or controlling self. If we think about being in resonance, there is a vibratory feel to that of like, oh, I connect to that. I connect to myself, I connect to nature, I'm in resonance with another. And we start with connection and when we're in this vibration of connection, when we are in resonance, we are more able to pause, to feel into what's true and to choose and take micro actions on behalf of our truth. So right now, wherever you are, just notice your breath without changing it.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:01]:

This is one of my favorite practices. I imagine it like reading a friend, where you don't suddenly say to your friend, do this, do that, do this other thing right. It's just like, oh, how are you? What's it like to be you today, really? What's real, what's true? And how, even just by offering to pay attention to something real, something true, to be an observer and to be observed, things start shifting not for the purpose of being fixed, but simply by being witnessed. It's a sense of co regulation with self. And as you pay attention to your breath as it is, whether it is high in your chest or low in your belly, whether it is wide to your sides or if it meets the shores of the back of your body, can you feel where the inhale starts to crest and the exhale, where it draws you back to shore? That movement, that rise and fall is a mirror of resonance, of range. Your nervous system in rhythm with a world, with the polyrhythms around us. And I say polyrhythms to say that there is no one right pace, that the ash tree loses its leaves before the maple, that the pine tree does its thing at a different pace in a different rhythm than the bush beside it, then the squirrel jumping. And when we start to look at all of this as rhythms and polyrhythms, we can de shame ourself a bit, especially as we compare ourselves to others.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:42]:

What is a rhythm in which you feel that you are title? That you feel like you can come back to yourself, that you feel like you can come to an edge. And if dysregulation hits you, which often feels like no choice, all or nothing, the rude thoughts that bring you back to other times in your life that felt like failure, where you think that you're in a repetitive cycle that you'll never get out of, just know that that is also super normal. It doesn't feel good. That's normal too. As you work on your nervous system, your range will get bigger. There will be times where it naturally gets smaller. And getting dysregulated may happen less often, and when it does, you may come back faster. But as long as you're human, you're gonna play with your range expanding and contracting and going outside of the range and coming Back into it.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:57]:

When we've lived in chronic stress or trauma, our bodies start to believe one of two things. That movement itself is dangerous and that aliveness equals threat. Or that stillness itself is dangerous and slow equals threat. And as I said, that all or nothing thinking either or is a sign that we're out of our range. And having that recognition has been so powerful for me. I'm like, oh, yikes, Ouch. These thoughts like, oh, clearly I'm failing at this, and I am just gonna go mow lawns. Which, by the way, if anyone mows lawns, I am not putting this down.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:39]:

I'm like, that looks peaceful. It's outside. And then somebody who does it full time might be like, that's a nice way to look at it. But there are also challenges here. So all I am saying is, for me, when I see these thoughts, I go, okay, I'm in a state of dysregulation. I won't be here forever. It doesn't feel great. It is normal when we have that HPA axis, that hypothalamus, where a lot of our emotions are taking place, Pituitary adrenals.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:12]:

That is where we go into a narrowed vision. And our default mode, network, starts ruminating and again, connecting us with last time this happened. And, oh, never growing. It's the same thing. We start to clamp down. We stay small. We confuse not feeling much with being okay. Or we start thinking it'll never change.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:37]:

Ah, I just wish I was calm. Oh, I just wish I was regulated. That's not me. I don't get to have that. Or maybe I'll sign up for all the courses and then I can have that. In this survival mode, our systems narrow. Our creative thinking becomes almost unreachable. Vision, breath, possibilities, narrow, narrow, narrow.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:02]:

And everything becomes about getting through. So in this moment, as we start to broaden our idea of what nervous system work could be and what you might want to reach for, I'd love to even redefine aliveness. So I'm not saying, like, leave calmness. Go for aliveness. If I've kind of coupled in this episode, that aliveness has to do with adrenaline and edge. Now I would love to widen the range of what aliveness can look like. Sure. Yes.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:47]:

Wow. Beautiful. It can be a risky edge. It can also be an epic sunset. It can also be finding awe in the mundane, laying in a hammock, letting the trees watch you and you watching the trees. A slow, simple conversation, quiet moment, and even peace in the middle range. Creativity. This is Like a prayer for me right now, like creativity in the place where the middle starts to turn to activation that has imprints of times that weren't safe.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:40]:

So what I'm thinking again is like if I'm thinking about like children arguing, what I'm inviting in here when I invite in range is if I can find, if I can start to heal those parts of myself that didn't feel safe all at as a kid while arguing with my brother, if I can start to rework those parts, then I can be in these activated states with my kids too. I can notice it at the liveness, I can take the thread out and this is where I get to start playing more and getting more creative. I was just at a friend's house this past weekend. We did a mother daughter sleepover because our girls are still youngish for a sleepover. And it was so beautiful to watch her with her three kids who all really needed her and who all had challenges. And I just saw her continue to meet them, connect with them, find yeses in no scenarios, redirect them. It was such a calm creative flow that met activation. And so I come to you very humbly in this conversation to say yes, there are things that naturally no longer activate me.

Sarah Tacy [00:16:59]:

And also yes, there are still things that I'm so curious about. Moving away from the idea of calm is the only right way because calm is sometimes coupled with control. I will control others so I can stay calm, will control the situation so I can stay calm and starting to act or ask how can I be with this range of experience and feel safe enough in my body to stay creative. Healing is about expanding your capacity to be with it, be with what is real, without drowning. I would even say that when we do drown that we can crawl back out and try again. There can be a playful nature. Here is my invitation. I invite us to get curious about living in range, to think of our nervous systems as bandwidth, a space between highs and lows, where life can actually flow through you.

Sarah Tacy [00:18:18]:

And when we're experiencing trauma responses, where our range gets compressed and we feel on high alert, hypervigilant, tense, scanning for danger or collapsed, numb or disconnected. That our practice towards resonance is a practice of widening that range again, not by eliminating activation, but finding ways to move through it and return. Perhaps right now you could place one hand on your chest and one on your belly and just sense what is the tone here today in this moment, similar to tracking your breath? Are there any core feelings that are with you? Is there an up and out energy? Is There an anger energy of wanting to stomp? Is there a flight energy of just like, get me the hell out of here or I want to be alone? Is there a joy of wanting to skip sing Sorrow might also have sing song to curl up? Is there any little movement? Maybe it is just rolling your shoulders or thumping your heels or a jaw release that your body is curious about doing. This may not fix everything, but I am curious. Does it change anything? Noticing, adjusting, finding its own rhythm, remembering that the nervous system doesn't respond to fixing. It responds to listening, to care, to support, to attention, to relationship. It is so much like attuning again and again to the young one and giving it the attention and the speed. And when I say speed, that speed might be like the pace.

Sarah Tacy [00:21:00]:

The pace, the pace of the body, which is generally much slower than the mind that you may not have gotten when you needed it in the past. It's here that it becomes more apparent. You need more stillness or motion to cry or to laugh, to lean on a tree, to connect with an animal, to reach out to a friend. It's in the pause and the connection to self that we might not actually find calm right away, but we might find a need, an unmet need. We might find a connection to self. And the beautiful thing is that the more we do this work, the more we actually do get to have moments of calm, moments of joy, moments of silliness. Let's all take a nice, easy inhale together and a full exhale. My invitation to you is that next time you feel dysregulated.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:15]:

So therefore, it's an invitation to me too, next time I feel dysregulated. To not rush to calm ourselves, but instead to first notice. Ah. Activation is here. Ah. Re. Patterning is here. Ah.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:34]:

Then to name this feels like anger, this feels like grief, this feels like lack of control. And then to move gently, consciously, perhaps making a sound, to bring in a layer of support, whether it's a blanket or a tea or a friend. All of this not necessarily to get to calm first, but to let the feeling be felt first with enough support. And there may be a down wave which feels like calm, feels like home on the other side. Blessings to us as we explore this terrain imperfectly, humanly, and hopefully together. Yeah. Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure.

Sarah Tacy [00:23:41]:

If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it@SarahTacey.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful, so we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.