What Regulation Actually Feels Like (And Why High Achievers Miss It) - Episode 5

Most of us have never actually felt regulated — and that's exactly the problem.

In this episode of the Brain Dump, Sandy breaks down what nervous system regulation actually feels like in the real, lived-in, clinical sense — not the spa commercial version, not the Instagram version. If you've built your identity around competence, high performance, and showing up for others, this one is especially for you.

Sandy unpacks the biggest myth in the nervous system space: that regulation means being unbothered. Calm is a state. Regulation is a capacity. You can feel anxious, irritable, or deeply sad and still be regulated — because regulation isn't about the absence of activation, it's about your ability to come back from it.

In this episode, Sandy covers:

• Why high-functioning nervous systems are often the most dysregulated
• How growing up in stress makes activation feel like home
• What chronic dysregulation actually looks like day to day (hint: we call it "driven" and "resilient")
• Why improved regulation can initially feel like boredom, grief, or identity loss
• The difference between collapse and peace — and why so many healers confuse the two
• Why perfectionism is a trauma response, not a personality trait
• What it means to build capacity instead of chasing calm
• Modalities that can support nervous system healing: Somatic Experiencing, myofascial release, neurofeedback, and vagus nerve stimulation

Reflection questions from this episode:

• Where have you mistaken exhaustion for peace?
• Where have you mistaken productivity for safety?
• What would change first if your nervous system had more capacity?

You don't need to be unbothered. You need flexibility. And the good news is — your nervous system can learn it.

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Learn More About Neurofeedback: https://sandy-boone.mykajabi.com/opt-in

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Braind Dump with Sandy Boone. I am so glad that you joined me today, and I am looking forward to sharing this topic with you because I think it's really important to healers. The topic today is what regulation actually feels like, because most of us don't know. This is something that became more aware to me in my journey as I have been working to become a somatic experiencing practitioner. And I have said said before, and I'll say again, doing that training and beginning in that endeavor to become an SEP, uh, it felt like I had had a neighbor that I lived next door to for 40 plus years and that I never spoke to them. So suddenly I was very in touch with my body, and I thought that I was in touch with my body before. So as we begin this, I'd like for you to consider what if you've never actually felt regulated and you just didn't know it? High-functioning nervous systems often don't realize when they're dysregulated because they're not falling apart. They're productive, they're capable, they're responsible. And when you've grown up in stress or built your identity around competence, activation feels normal. Urgency feels normal. Overriding your body feels normal. And if you grew up in stress, regulation might not feel peaceful. It might feel boring or slow or even unsafe. Today we're making this concrete, not the Instagram version, not the sm the spa commercial version, the real clinical lived-in version. Because regulation isn't calm, it's capacity. There is this myth of regulation. And this myth is that most of us think regulation feels like being unbothered. Calm is a state. Regulation is a capacity. You can be regulated and feel anxious before a presentation. You can be regulated and cry. You can be regulated and get irritated. Regulation doesn't mean you don't activate, it means you can come back. And if you grew up in stress or with high expectations, your nervous system adapted. You learn to stay alert, to anticipate, to override, and to perform. And if your nervous system grew up in activation, activation feels like home. It's comfortable. You can be high functioning and profoundly dysregulated at the same time. Ask me how I know. Chronic dysregulation can look like constant urgency, difficulty stopping work, lingering irritability, crashing after productivity, and sleep that doesn't restore. We call this driven, responsible, resilient. Sometimes it's just a nervous system without enough safety. Regulation means you can move between activation and settling. You can feel stress without staying stuck there. Your recovery is faster. Your reactions are less sticky. Regulation is completion, not perfection. Improved regulation initially can feel like boredom, slowness, grief, or identity confusion. When adrenaline drops, fatigue becomes visible. When survival softens, grief surfaces. And I've I've learned a lot about this in my personal growth work with when, again, when I began that SEP journey, um, one of the requirements of receiving that certification is that you do your own work, that you receive personal sessions in addition to consultation sessions. And what I found and what I landed in was a lot of grief. And it was grief about the way things weren't. It was grief about what safeties weren't there. It was grief about large parts of childhood being lost. And it is impactful and at times crippling. And you question everything and you wonder how you didn't know things were like they were, and how could you not remember that? And you know, honestly, you feel like there's this space of insanity, um, because there's so much grief. Sometimes that regulation feels like losing your edge before it feels like gaining capacity, and this is the space that we often find ourselves in as we land into perimenopause or um as we go through just deconstruction. You know, capacity is the goal. You don't need to be calmer, you need more capacity. Capacity is margin, capacity is recovery, it's flexibility, it's your ability to come back into that restful state or that state of normalcy. Um, you know, our goal, the body's goal is to tolerate. We see this in the functional medicine arena, we see this in the mental health arena. You know, life is going to life, right? We're gonna have toxins, we're gonna have exposures, we're gonna have tragedy, but how quickly can we come back to baseline or to a place of um just sustenance? It can be so incredibly unreasonable to expect that um, you know, we're gonna have this easy peasy Skittles and unicorn life experience because that's just not the world we live in. And so we need to be prepared for things to go wrong. We need to be prepared for the unexpected within reason, not preparation to a point that we stay in hypervigilance. That's not that's not preparation, that's a nervous system and overdrive. So I'm wondering where have you mistaken exhaustion for peace? I know earlier in my work, and quite frankly, sometimes even now, uh, I will go at breakneck speed for days on end and just work, work, work, do the things, um, spending time with family, uh, going on vacation, traveling, and then I just collapse. And maybe I spend that weekend that I'm sleeping all weekend long. And there was a time when I would have told myself that that was peace. Um, that wasn't peace. That that's collapse, that's nervous system exhaustion. Also thinking about where have you mistaken productivity for safety? Um, for many of us, safety came when we did good things, when we showed up, when we were the good girl, when we were the high achiever. And too often um that perfectness led to a safety space. And so when people tell me that they are perfectionistic, I immediately look for childhood trauma. Perfectionism is a is a trauma response because again, we're not designed to move past our capacity to keep on keeping on when rest doesn't have to be earned. Rest is something that we need. Another thing I'd like for you to consider what would change first if your nervous system had more capacity? Would you spend more time with others? Would you take up a new hobby? Can you imagine what that might look like for you? How that might show up in your world? It's almost the question of um, you know, the song, What if today was your last day? You know, if if you had more capacity, if you knew that everything would be okay and you truly knew that, what would you do differently? What risk would you take? What businesses would you start? Um, what opportunities would you seize? You don't need to be unbothered. That's not reasonable. You need flexibility, you need the abil the ability to go into distress and come right back out of it. That is something that your nervous system can learn. And it can be learned through things like somatic experiencing, it can be learned through things like myofascial release, um, it can be learned through neurofeedback. There are there's lots of room here for things that where your nervous system can be taught that you don't necessarily have to show up in a way to do the work yourself. There are tools that can make this easier for you. So, on that note, um, I would encourage you to check out neurofeedback at sandyboon.com. I would encourage you to look into somatic experiencing. And additionally, I would encourage you to look at vagus nerve stimulation. Um, that is an area that there's a growing body of research there, and we're finding that a toned vagus nerve allows us to shift between states much more easily. Thanks for listening to the brain dump. I'll see you next time.