More is Not More

I used to be addicted to intensity. I thrived on a back-to-back schedule of meetings and project deadlines. I loved the rush of adrenaline powering me into the next thing on my to-do list. I enjoyed the self-satisfaction of efficiency and achievement.

It wasn't until I hurtled headfirst into serious sexual trauma that I started to see my preference for intensity as a stress response. To be specific, rushing everywhere and trying to get an improbable number of things accomplished was an exaggerated and ongoing form of the Flight response.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn are the primary stress or trauma responses, but Flight is the most socially rewarded one for overachievers, leaders, and changemakers. We escape into our work by optimizing productivity or we growth hack our jobs. And overworking is so often celebrated and glamorized.

We can safely hide in the intensity of overactivity until we burn out. And when burn out arrives, we point to our workload with self-importance, blaming our external environment for a martyrdom we could easily have avoided if we had only known how to slow down.

I hope to show you that More Is Not More. That in fact, all the good stuff in life happens when we slow down enough to be present for it. And that living in a perpetual Flight response will not only burn out your adrenals and overtax your nervous system, but it will make you miss the best that life has to offer.

And I know you don't want that for yourself.

Let's explore.

Mapping the Window of Tolerance

When we're navigating stress or trauma, we often say we want relief. But we're always accelerating. Trying harder. Doing more.

We want to meditate, so we spend days in a silent meditation retreat white knuckling our way to self-awareness. We want to learn about personal development, so we read stacks of self-help books, diligently applying their solutions. We want to be healthy, so we quantify our every moment with wearables and wellness apps. We over-exercise and don't give ourselves enough rest or down-time.

We think that if some is good, more is better.

But our bodies and our nervous systems don't work that way.

To thrive, we need to keep ourselves within a Window of Tolerance (a term coined by neurobiologist Dan Siegel) to avoid getting overactivated or so overwhelmed that we shut down.

The body's response to overactivation isn't to keep going. When we push ourselves past our thresholds, we collapse into exhaustion. Then we start to guilt ourselves for not doing more, wondering why we have zero motivation. 

That middle zone between overactivated and shutdown is the Window of Tolerance, and it's where all the best stuff happens. It's where we're at our most productive, creative, and thriving.

The Window of Tolerance is also where trauma healing happens because the nervous system is in an optimal state of awareness and engagement. We feel safe enough to tackle challenges without getting overwhelmed.

When we're feeding ourselves with nonstop intensity, we often won't notice that we're above of our Window of Tolerance. We don't recognize our racing thoughts and ongoing anxiety as a sign that our mind is overactivated. We don't see our lack of emotional regulation and quick tempers as signs that we have gone beyond our threshold for emotional regulation. We don't see our fast-paced movements and rushing as signs that our body needs to slow down.

When we feel shutdown, we blame ourselves instead of recognizing that we're simply below our Window of Tolerance. When our thoughts turn negative and depressed, it's a sign that we've been overriding our need for rest and relaxation. When we feel hopeless and pessimistic, when our body feels so heavy that we don't even want to move, these are signs that we're below our Window of Tolerance.

We can start to see these moments as signals from the nervous system that we need to care for ourselves. Then, rushing and overdoing become opportunities for change. Feeling collapsed and shutdown simply means we need more self-care.

The Paradox of Slowing Down

When we have unresolved trauma in our nervous systems, the last thing we want to do is slow down. It feels like something bad might happen. That’s why it’s a Flight response — all this activity is an attempt to escape the feelings that await us when we slow down.

It's far preferable to lose ourselves in the frenetic energy of overactivity and bypass the pain. But eventually, we collapse and the numbness sets in.

With unresolved trauma, we're often ping-ponging back and forth between states of nervous system overactivation and shutdown, well outside our Windows of Tolerance. We chase high-intensity experiences as if they'll heal us or at least distract us enough to get by.

The tragedy is that when we're outside the Window of Tolerance, we're going too fast to enjoy the good stuff. We miss the feelings and sensations that are slower to come into conscious awareness, and don’t hear the needs that are quieter but equally important.

Slowing down introduces us back to the body and its sensations. And that can be scary. After all, the body is where the original trauma happened. Why would we want to go back there?

We’d rather keep going and skip feeling the body. Even if it means running from the only true home we'll ever know. 

When we see overactivity as a trauma response, it can help us to slow down. Here are some ways to experiment and allow you to titrate slowness into your system.

5 Ways to Stop Overdoing It

1. Pause.

Before you start the next thing, pause. Before you pick up your phone to check your messages or scroll social media, pause. Before you respond to a comment that hooks you into a stress response, pause. Give your nervous system a moment to register your sensations. Bring your body into awareness for a moment. Notice what is around you. Feel yourself breathe. There is so much information in the present moment that we miss when we speed by. Pausing can feel like reversing the momentum of a projectile hurling through space but interrupting your flow in those moments is worth it.

2. Breathe slower.

We often over breathe or even hold our breath when we're stressed and overdoing it. An overactivated nervous system has telltale signs in the body — an elevated heart rate and a higher dose of stress hormones. We can reverse that just by slowing down the breath. Breath is a constant indicator of when we're pushing too hard and need to slow down. 

3. Schedule blank space.

When we get caught in the ongoing anxiety of an adrenalin-fueled to-do list, it feels impossible to imagine just letting ourselves have space. At first it may feel lazy, or wrong, or unproductive, or any of the other words hustle culture likes to use to deride non-doing. But doing nothing is also a state of being — one that requires focus, awareness, and presence. Giving yourself unstructured time, alone or with people you care about, starts to shift perspective away from action and towards more pleasure­­.

4. Mindful walking.

Sometimes, the best way to settle an overactivated nervous system is through gentle movement. It can feel like too much to suddenly just stop. The mind can shift into overdrive, and it feels difficult to sit still. Walking with mindfulness will gently coax the nervous system to down-regulate. It will also help to discharge excess tension and attune your awareness to the sensations of movement and your surroundings. Whether you have access to Nature or a city street, mindful walking helps to reset the body, mind, and emotions.

5. Practice Trauma Navigation skills.

There are six foundational Trauma Navigation skills from somatic psychology that we trauma resolution practitioners use in our work with clients. You can read about containment, grounding, and orienting here. And you can read about resourcing, pendulation, and titration here. I'll be teaching an online workshop covering these skills in early November. Sign up here to get notified (and if you can't make it, have the recording sent to your Inbox).

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I hope this has helped you see why More Is Not More. And how slowing down is essential to access our deepest awareness and intelligence. So we can enjoy our lives and truly thrive.

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Thank you for reading.

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I work one-on-one with people who have unresolved trauma from relationships and sexual abuse. If you’re curious, you can learn more about my work here or reach out to schedule a chat.