When Safety Feels Scary: Why Regulation Can Be Terrifying After Trauma

Have you ever felt anxious about not feeling so anxious? Or had a moment of regulation trigger anxiety? In this follow-up we explore a counterintuitive but common phenomenon in trauma recovery: when finding safety and regulation actually triggers fear and anxiety. Drawing from research by Bessel van der Kolk, Stephen Porges, and Deb Dana, we examine why the regulated "green zone" can feel threatening to trauma survivors.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

→ Why trauma survivors often feel most vulnerable when regulated

→ How to identify what specific cues of safety and danger influence your nervous system

→ Techniques for building regulation capacity without triggering protective responses

→ The importance of "both/and" thinking: maintaining protection while exploring regulation

Three Takeaways:

1. Regulation happens when cues of safety outweigh cues of danger—but trauma rewires this equation, making the nervous system hypersensitive to potential threats and misinterpreting safety cues.
2. The fear of regulation isn't a failure or resistance—it's an intelligent adaptation that protected you in the past and deserves respect even as you work to expand your capacity.
3. Recovery isn't about eliminating protective responses but gradually creating reliable "islands of safety" that demonstrate regulation is survivable and eventually beneficial.

—

Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE discovery call for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program (HSA/FSA eligible & includes comprehensive bloodwork)
• Join me inside Regulated Living, a mental health membership and nervous system healing space (sliding scale pricing available)
• Order my book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!

*Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Transcript

Amanda Armstrong  0:00  
Amanda, welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here now. Let's dive in.

Amanda Armstrong  0:27  
Welcome back. In our last episode, we explored how to find moments of safety and regulation when living in unsafe circumstances, situations work or home environments, and today we are going to talk about a common experience that individuals find themselves in when they are on the other side of those traumatic or overwhelming or stressful situations. Today we're going to dive into something that might actually seem counterintuitive, but it's again, really, really common in trauma recovery, and it is the experience of feeling safe, actually feeling threatening, of feeling safe, actually feeling dangerous. 

Amanda Armstrong  1:10  
So I want you to think for a moment if you have ever experienced a moment of calm or relaxation or regulation only to be immediately hit with anxiety panic or the urge to create chaos. Or if you've ever noticed that whenever things start to go well, you find ways to stir the pot or sabotage or if you have ever felt deeply uncomfortable as you enter a regulated state that when you notice you're in the green zone, you're immediately like, Oh no, back out if you answered yes or any of that feels familiar, this episode is for you, especially if you are somebody who has lived with trauma, chronic stress or long term dysregulation. This might feel all too familiar. It's something that many of our clients go through. It's a phase where they almost feel anxious about no longer feeling anxious all the time, or where their system pushes them back into states of shutdown anytime they start to feel more regulated. And this can feel and be really confusing. This can be really frustrating, like what the heck like? This is what I'm working so hard for. I'm trying to feel more regulated. Why can't I feel good about being more regulated? And this paradoxical response to safety is something that we have witnessed countless times in our work with our clients, it's also a pattern that's really well documented in trauma or post traumatic growth research. 

Amanda Armstrong  2:48  
For many trauma survivors, safety itself can feel like the most dangerous state of all, at least at first. So today, we are going to take what's going to feel probably like a pretty deep dive into exploring why regulation can feel threatening, especially to trauma survivors, the safety danger equation and how it shapes our nervous system responses. We're going to talk about the biology and psychology behind this paradoxical response to safety, we'll talk about practical approaches to making regulation feel safer over time, and how to expand your anchors of safety with intention and compassion. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:32  
So whether, again, you're a practitioner working with trauma survivors, or somebody navigating your own trauma healing or recovery journey understanding this oftentimes contradictory feeling response to regulation can be a really, really crucial piece for creating more sustainable healing and also providing the context to normalize this part of the journey, this part of your experience. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:56  
So let me start with a story that I think, illustrates this phenomenon, this experience pretty perfectly. There was a client that I was working with, let's call her Maya. Now, Maya lived through years of unpredictable violence and just emotional dysregulation in her childhood home. As an adult, she built a pretty stable life for herself, supportive partner, fulfilling work, and yet, every time she started to feel truly relaxed or at peace, she'd be hit with overwhelming panic attacks. And she once told me, quote, it's like the calm is more terrifying than the storm. At least in the chaos, I know what to do. I know how to survive. But when everything is peaceful, that's when I find myself feeling most afraid. End quote, and this isn't unusual. This client experience is not unique to Maya. It is such a common pattern across trauma survivors, particularly those who experienced long term. Developmental trauma, or who lived in chronically unsafe or unpredictable environments. 

Amanda Armstrong  5:06  
here's why this happens from a nervous system perspective, regulation, that ventral vagal state we often call the green zone. It is meant to be our default state. It is the state where we can rest, digest, connect, thrive, be creative. We feel capable. But for somebody whose nervous system developed in an environment where danger or even mild but consistent unpredictability was the norm, dysregulation, protective Nervous System States become their baseline. Their nervous system organizes around stress or threat, their or maybe your neural pathways strengthened around protection, not connection, hyper vigilance, anxiety shutdown. These become the familiar states, the quote home to their nervous system, the one that they know how to navigate best. So when regulation happens, when they enter a state that feels more calm or connected, it doesn't actually register as like, Finally, I'm safe. Instead, it registers as, oh, this is unfamiliar, and therefore it's potentially dangerous. And beyond the unfamiliarity, there's often a deeper fear at work here, the fear that regulation means letting your guard down. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:26  
So again, sharing another quote from Maya, she said, if I relax, who's watching for danger, if I'm not hyper vigilant, I'm vulnerable. What a realization of this internal belief, this internal operating system that was true for her experience for a really long time. If she relaxed who was looking over her shoulder, if she wasn't hyper vigilant, she became more vulnerable. And so many trauma survivors describe this exact feeling that entering a regulated state means abandoning the protective responses that kept them alive, that got their needs met, that even just minimized stressful experiences. It's almost as if when they're in that regulated Green Zone state, their brain thinks, Oh, nope, this means that we've lost our ability to protect ourselves. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:15  
And something I want to reiterate is that this reaction makes perfect biological sense. Our nervous systems are designed to prioritize survival above all else. They will always default to a familiar dysfunction over an unfamiliar ideal. If hypervigilance or shutdown were your go to in the past, your system will be extremely reluctant to abandon those strategies even when they're no longer needed, and understanding this paradox is the first step towards shifting or resolving. It is the first step in post traumatic growth, in helping your nervous system sort between then and now here, first there. These responses often to our clients feel like failure or regression, and one of the things that we consistently reiterate is that they are not they are intelligent adaptations that need to be understood and honored as you work to expand your capacity for regulation and Healing and connection over protection. 

Amanda Armstrong  8:20  
And another thing to acknowledge at the heart of this kind of paradoxical response is what I have heard be called the safety danger equation. So this is a concept that helps us understand why regulation happens for some people easily and naturally, while for others, it might feel impossible or terrifying. So simply put, regulation happens. You can access that green zone when your cues of safety outweigh your cues of danger, when your nervous system perceives more signals of safety than threat in your combined internal, external and relational environments, it can begin to shift towards a more regulated state. So for somebody with a limited trauma history who grew up with more consistent safety or support, this equation balances out easily, their nervous system readily recognizes and trusts cues of safety while then also appropriately categorizing and responding to actual danger. But for trauma survivors, this equation is fundamentally altered in several key ways. The first way is that the threshold is different. It takes far more cues of safety to outweigh even minor danger cues, and this is because trauma rewires the brain's threat detection system to be hypersensitive, which, again, makes sense and is a natural adaptation to survive in dangerous environments. It's also likely that your internal system. Developed a lot more protective parts that jump in and make meaning out of current circumstances through their lens of past experiences. The second thing to note why this equation is fundamentally altered for trauma survivors is that their perception of cues are altered so things that might objectively signal safety can be misinterpreted as danger cues due to past association. So for example, someone offering to help that can be a cue of connection, of feeling supportive, of being safe, but for someone who has experienced unhealthy dependency, for somebody who has been punished for not being able to do things on their own or for needing help, somebody offering help could trigger warning in their system, or physical touch that's intended to comfort might activate memories of a boundary violation. So a third thing to consider is that internal cues often get confused with external reality, so the sensation of regulation themselves, right? Think about what happens physiologically when you become more regulated. Your muscles relax, your breathing slows down, your mind stops racing. Your vigilance is lowered. These things that signal to us we're moving up that nervous system ladder into a more regulated state when we've experienced trauma can be misinterpreted as a dangerous vulnerability rather than healthy safety. So again, it could be your brain being like, Oh, nope, we're letting down our defenses. Put the walls back up, put your armor back on. It's not safe. It's not safe. To let that down and understanding this equation, the safety danger equation, can give you a practical framework to work with. It can give you some awareness and understanding for the dysregulating response that you often have to feeling regulated, but it can also help you assess what contributes to you being able to access regulation. It can also give you context that allows your system to feel more okay about that state over time. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:19  
So let me give me a moment turn orient to this in my brain. Let me try to make this more tangible. The next time you find yourself in a moment of regulation, or even maybe you want to just take a moment now to hit pause and reflect on the last even brief moment that you felt a little more calm, a little more regulated or grounded. This happened, you will find yourself in a moment of regulation, or you have found yourself in moments of regulation because you had more cues of safety than danger. You can pause in that moment of noticing or simply reflect back on a moment and ask, what happened? What happened to allow me to feel regulated, even if I didn't stay there that long? What cues of safety got bigger or came in? And remember those cues of safety can come internally, externally in our environments, relationally with other people. So what cues of safety got bigger or came in and or what cues of danger or stress resolved themselves or faded away, so that I was in a position where there were more cues of safety than danger, and this reflection can help give you something more tangible to work with in navigating and reorienting to feeling more safe and regulated after trauma. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:51  
And if you are a practitioner, how can you help your patients, your clients, these individuals, reflect on those questions, either in moments where you notice them shift into more regulation in session, or reflectively when they mention when they notice one. Can you help them be in that and savor that? Let me give you a more tangible example from therapeutic practice, and this is something that I actually got from a recent conversation with a therapist friend. So they had a client, let's call him James, and this particular client, or patient of theirs, noticed that whenever his therapy sessions started feeling helpful or connective, he suddenly became angry and distant, and in session, they explored this pattern using the safety danger equation framework. So what they discovered, I thought, was really fascinating, the cues of safety that were growing for him included feeling understood by his therapist, experiencing emotional validation. The warm, calm environment of the therapy room, and beginning to trust that therapeutic relationship. So these were some of the cues of safety that allowed him to feel a little bit more regulated, to feel like these sessions were helpful and connective. But these were also the very same cues that triggered danger signals in his system, there were protective parts of him that showed up in response to these with stories like, if I trust I'll be betrayed. If I let my guard down, I'll be taken advantage of. If I need somebody, they'll just eventually abandon me, and so the increase in safety cues are actually what activated his danger detection system, and this is a perfect example of this paradoxical experience that we're discussing. But by recognizing this pattern, James can now start to make sense of his responses, rather than judging himself or the term he uses, like I just feel like I keep sabotaging therapy. And so this awareness itself reduced some of that secondary shame or confusion that then makes it easier to work with, and ultimately shift and soften these protective patterns and parts within us, and the research supports this approach, showing us that bringing conscious awareness to your autonomic or automatic responses helps to create space between the sensation and the reaction, and it's that space, it's that Moment of noticing, of pause, that oftentimes allows for new, more adaptive responses to emerge over time. 

Amanda Armstrong  16:46  
So in more plain human speak, simply understanding that your fear of regulation is a normal, predictable response to trauma or overwhelming life experiences can be the first step towards changing that response, towards being able to feel safer, feeling safe, and eventually to living a life more frequently in the green zone, more frequently in states of connection versus protection. 

Amanda Armstrong  17:15  
Okay, now stick with me, because I'm going to take an even deeper dive for a little bit into the biology of what is happening here, what is happening, when and why we are experiencing feeling unsafe with safety, why regulation feels dysregulating. And then I promise, I'm going to come back out of the weeds and bring it together in a more simplified and accessible way. 

Amanda Armstrong  17:44  
So what is happening at a neurobiological level? When regulation feels threatening, your autonomic nervous system operates largely outside your conscious control. Your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety and danger cues through a process we've talked about before that Steven Porges, the founder of the polyvagal theory, calls neuroception. So a reminder, this is not conscious perception. Neuroception is happening at a level below thinking it is a constant background assessment that shapes your nervous system states. It is how you can dodge a ball from hitting you in the head without consciously telling your body to duck. Unconscious awareness that creates automatic physiological responses. And for trauma survivors, this neuroception system has been calibrated in environments where danger was frequent and oftentimes unpredictable. So this can create three key biological adaptations that help explain this frustrating fear of regulation and safety. And the first of these biological adaptations is something that neuroscientists call reconsolidation, which is that every time we recall a memory or experience a familiar state, the neural pathways associated with that experience are activated and then reconsolidated, so they're essentially rewritten with any new information. So for somebody whose experiences repeatedly linked safety with subsequent danger with Ooh, maybe I'm okay today. Oh, definitely I'm not. Ooh, maybe it won't be the same as yesterday. Oh, definitely it is so for somebody whose experience has repeatedly linked safety with subsequent danger or stress or overwhelm, these pathways have become reconsolidated around the pattern that is now a belief safety leads to harm their biology has. Has literally learned that moments of safety are often preludes to more stress or trauma. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:07  
The second biological adaptation here is the amygdala response. So the amygdala is a key part of your brain's threat detection system. So what can happen here is this amygdala becomes overactive. An analogy that I often use is I want you to imagine a car alarm, right? A car alarm serves a really important purpose. It protects your car. It protects the things in your car. But now I want you to imagine a car alarm so sensitive that it goes off not just when somebody tries to jiggle the handle to your car, but anytime somebody walks by your car anytime somebody even looks at your car. That is an annoying and inefficient system. That's how the amygdala in our brain develops to work, especially after chronic or traumatic stress. It would rather give you 1000 false alarms than miss the opportunity to give you the real one. And so this hyperactive amygdala floods our system with stress hormones, even when we are in more or objectively safe situations. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:13  
And the third biological adaptation is an interoceptive component. So interoception is how you perceive sensations within your body, and research has shown that trauma often disrupts interception, making it difficult to accurately interpret internal sensations. We know that individuals who have experienced trauma oftentimes don't appropriately or effectively notice their hunger cues or their emotional cues. A lot of times, they become really disconnected from their body. They live in their head. When you ask them about sensations in your body, there's just not a whole lot of data or input coming up from that space. What this can also mean is that the physical sensations of regulation, again, muscle relaxation, slower breathing can be misinterpreted as dangerous vulnerability, rather than that shift into regulation. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:08  
And so understanding these different biological mechanisms of protection can help you approach this experience with more compassion rather than frustration, or at least, maybe hopefully, a little bit of compassion with the frustration when regulation feels dangerous again. It's not a character flaw, it's not self sabotage. You're not going backwards in your healing journey. It is often the result of these neurobiological adaptations that once served a really protective function. And the good news here is that the same neuroplasticity that created these adaptations is and can be used to create new patterns. Your nervous system is so so, so capable of learning and reorganizing throughout your life and with these understandings, with this context and with the right approaches, you have the ability to gradually shift from experiencing regulation as threatening to experiencing regulation as nourishing and grounding. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:14  
So the natural question, I think, that follows this is, how, how do we help the nervous system recognize regulation as safe rather than threatening. The key principle here, or one of the key principles here, is something called titration, and what this means is working in small, manageable doses that don't overwhelm the nervous system's capacity when regulation feels dangerous, diving straight into a deep relaxation practice can backfire considerably. When my anxiety was at its worst, I had a number of people suggest meditation, and while meditation is now something that I can better access and utilize for regulation and benefit from at that point in my life and in my healing journey, the physiological downshifting that often happened during meditation was a huge threat signal for my nervous system, and it gave me awful what I used To call like whiplash anxiety after trying to meditate, what we need to do instead is to try to have smaller experiences with regulation, building capacity gradually, with full respect for the protective responses that kept us safe. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:35  
Here are a handful of specific approaches or suggestions that might make regulation feel safer over time. S

Amanda Armstrong  24:44  
o number one could be to practice what I call state tracking or state mapping. So this is just the process of naming your nervous system state without judgment or pressure to change it so throughout your day. I i often, sometimes will prompt clients. I'll call them toilet check ins. I'm like, anytime you sit on the toilet, I want you to just simply know what, what state is my nervous system in right now. I'm noticing activation right now. I'm feeling some regulation coming on. I'm feeling a little exhausted or shut down. What state Am I in? Where am I on that nervous system ladder without immediately trying to change or to maintain that particular state, just it is what it is you're just noticing. And what this practice can help you do is to reduce this like all or nothing thinking rather than thinking something like, I'm either in danger or I'm letting my guard down completely. You can recognize that there are subtle spectrums of these states. There are natural fluctuations between these states throughout your day. 

Amanda Armstrong  25:51  
Second approach to consider is to work with your state duration rather than your state depth. So maybe instead of trying to achieve deep regulation, focus on just tolerating brief moments of slight regulation or neutrality. Can you stay with a small sense of ease for just 10 seconds more before you let your panic kick in again? Can you gradually extend that to 20 seconds or 30? Can you notice moments where you don't necessarily feel ease or calm, but maybe where you're just more neutral or less anxious than normal? Because what this does is this helps your system to build some familiarity and frequency in these micro moments of being more regulated or simply less dysregulated, and every time that you're able to notice or introduce one of these micro moments of regulation, it builds the nervous system's familiarity with regulation and confidence that regulation is survivable, that letting your guard down is not going to lead To imminent doom. 

Amanda Armstrong  27:00  
The third practice is something called pendulation. This is also something we've talked about on the podcast before, and this is something that I often do a guided experience with, and in my monthly nervous system regulation classes, which you're always welcome to join. And I'll drop a link in the show notes for you to learn more about that. If that's something that you'd like to explore and add to your healing journey. But pendulation is the gentle movement between slight activation and then slight regulation. So rather than trying to eliminate activation completely, you instead learn to move between these states, and it creates increased flexibility within your internal system. And psychiatrist and trauma expert Janina Fisher describes this as dancing with the nervous system So respecting its need for both protection and connection, rather than forcing it to abandon protective responses before it's ready, 

Amanda Armstrong  28:04  
another approach that I want to offer that can help to make regulation feel safer over time is to create conscious recognition of the ways that you remain protected even during regulation. And I know that that that may not make immediate sense, so I'll give some examples, and I do want to note that this is something that might be best facilitated or explored with a trauma trained practitioner, but what it could look like is acknowledging boundaries that remain in place, even in A moment of more regulation, identifying specific alert systems that remain active, recognizing your adult capacity for self protection. A lot of these protective patterns within us are from much younger versions of us. This could look like naming resources available to you now that weren't available to you during past traumatic or overwhelming experiences, and through an ifs or a parts work lens, these internal conversations or these you know, conversations that you might have with your protective parts could sound like you know quote, even as I allow some relaxation while out to dinner with friends, I still have clear boundaries. I can still say no. I can still leave this situation if needed. I have resources now that I didn't have then. And so this is that both and here, I can allow myself to be more at ease in this situation, because I know I can say no, because I can leave, because I have resources that I didn't have then, and these can directly address the fear that regulation means vulnerability by explicitly connecting regulation with protection opportunities. Rather than seeing them as these mutually exclusive experiences. And again, I know that this might feel like a really tricky concept to grasp, so let me see. 

Amanda Armstrong  30:12  
Here's one more example. Let's say that you are someone who has deep productivity based self worth. You have spent a lot of your life in, go, go, go, go, go, do, do, do, do for one reason or another, and you are now in a place where you are, maybe voluntarily or involuntarily, realizing that that pace is not sustainable. It is wrecking your nervous system. You're getting burnt out. You want a life that feels more spacious, and actually you even have a life that has more space for slow mornings, porch sits reading a book, but you notice that even though that's a possibility, it doesn't feel good. Anytime you sit down with a book, it takes you all of three minutes before your brain starts to race and spiral out your antsy to get up and do the dishes, to be more productive, to reply to work emails, anything, anything than just like sitting here and reading because your old system is like, what a waste of time. There's so much you could be doing right now. Why are we sitting? Why are we resting? And as you bridge the gap between the life you lived, thinking or experiencing that productivity was the only acceptable way to be, to get your needs met, to feel seen, to be about, validated, and what you now want, which is a life where it's true for you, that it's okay to rest, you don't have to earn it, that life is to be enjoyed, at least for a little while. Can we let a little bit of both be true? So what this might look like is the next time you sit down to read a book, and when inevitably, three minutes in, your stress response is activated, your brain is spiraling. Can you take a deep breath and simply respond to this internal system something like quote. I know we are not used to this yet, but it is okay to just be for a little while longer. Maybe let's read just two more pages, and then we can get up and be productive. We can get up and do the dishes, respond to emails, whatever end quote, what was helpful for me when I was untangling my debilitating productivity based self worth, was treating this default urge to rush away from anything that was leisurely or calm or grounded or spacious, I just wanted to rush away from all of those things, towards more business towards the activation inside of me was to treat this like a different part of me, and I could meet this part with compassion and understanding and validation. And instead of trying to push them away as being wrong or bad, I instead tried to work with them in a new way. And that is at the heart of what ifs or parts work is that's a lot of the work that we do with our clients is helping them to recognize and sometimes externalize these protective patterns that they've developed within them, their protective parts within them. 

Amanda Armstrong  33:16  
And this ties into, and maybe even overlaps with the fifth approach that can support making regulation feel safer over time, which is again to work with the both and of regulation. Many trauma survivors operate from an either or perspective, either I am vigilant and safe or I am relaxed and vulnerable, either I am productive and worthy or I am leisurely and a waste of space. And the reality is, oftentimes mature regulation includes both openness and boundaries, both connection and protection, and we can practice this both and approach with simple phrases like, I can be both regulated and aware. I can be both open and boundaried. I can be both connected and self protective, both vulnerable and strong. And what this does over time is it can help to reshape the fundamental belief that regulation means a reckless abandonment of protection. 

Amanda Armstrong  34:21  
The final approach, or suggestion that I want to offer here that can make safety and regulation feel safe and regulating over time is to work with the felt sense of safety. And this is a concept that was really developed by Dr Peter Levine in somatic experiencing. So the felt sense is your body's internal experience of safety, not just the intellectual knowledge that you're safe, but the visceral, embodied feeling of safety. For many of our clients, this is something that is only possible to explore at first in. The CO regulated container of sessions, where the practitioner is able to lend some of their regulated presence to the client. But you can also try to cultivate this more on your own by simply noticing moments when your body naturally feels at ease, and then attending to that sensation with just a little bit more intention, where is it in my body? How does it feel, if I was to explain it to somebody, does it have a color? Does it have a texture? Is it moving? Is it still this can help us develop a somatic vocabulary for what safety feels like in our body, which can help us to recognize it more frequently to be more familiar with it, and when we're more familiar with it, our nervous system allows it at a deeper level or for a longer duration. And this felt sense of safety can create anchors that can help you reconnect to that felt sense more often, again, longer durations or at a deeper level. This is another thing that folks often share, that they can access in that monthly experiential regulation class that I teach. It's the moments to hit pause on the rest of the world, to come into a safe, co regulated container and practice being in conversation with your body, remembering here that for many trauma survivors, the felt sense of safety may be unfamiliar or accessible only in fleeting moments. That's okay, even brief experiences of this felt sense of this embodied safety can begin to reshape the nervous system's understanding of regulation and its willingness to spend more time there before it sounds the alarm. 

Amanda Armstrong  36:44  
And some of the concepts that we can carry over from last week's conversation into this week's conversation is this idea of cultivating and proactively practicing and turning to those regulating or safety anchors. So in conclusion, understanding why regulation can feel threatening is such an important piece of the healing puzzle for many of our clients, and maybe for you, when we recognize that this seemingly contradictory response actually makes perfect sense given your past experiences, this allows you to be able to approach it with more compassion and maybe a little less frustration, because the reality here is you will feel more regulated more often, with more ease, when your nervous system feels safer with regulation. And how does your nervous system begin to feel safer being regulated by becoming more familiar with regulation. And how does your nervous system become more familiar with regulation through experience? And you give it this experience, first with frequent micro moments of regulation, and then you just allow your system to go back to its old, familiar pattern of protection. And over time, the frequency of these micro moments of regulation, these small anchors to safety build familiarity, and with that familiarity, your nervous system will begin to allow you to be in those moments of calm or groundedness. Just a little longer, those three uncomfortable moments trying to relax with a book on the couch will turn into five and then seven, and then 15, and then someday, you will find yourself at ease on the couch with a book An hour later, and you're going to take a deep breath. You're going to remember this podcast and see the trail of titration and pendulation, validation and curiosity and support that got you there, that helped your nervous system learn that now is different than then, that it's okay to let our guard down. It's safe that we have a regulated adult self with tools and resources to take care of ourselves now in a way that we might not have had then. And this is the power of understanding your nervous system enough to work with it in your healing journey. 

Amanda Armstrong  39:00  
So in summary, the three takeaways from this conversation is, number one, regulation happens when cues of safety outweigh cues of danger, but remembering that trauma rewires this equation, making the nervous system hypersensitive to potential threats and misinterpreting safety cues. So we need even more safety cues as somebody trying to heal post chronic or traumatic stress. 

Amanda Armstrong  39:27  
Number two, a fear response to regulation. It's not a failure. Nothing's going wrong. It's not a step backwards in your healing. It is actually an intelligent adaptation that protected you in the past. Let's acknowledge it as we work to expand your capacity. 

Amanda Armstrong  39:45  
Number three, healing is not about eliminating protective responses, but instead gradually creating reliable anchors to safety, micro moments that can demonstrate to our nervous system that regulates. Regulation is survivable and eventually even beneficial. So just remember that this isn't about forcing yourself to feel safe when you don't. It is about creating conditions where your nervous system can gradually discover that regulation doesn't have to mean extra vulnerability, that connection doesn't have to compromise your protection, that presence doesn't have to mean abandoning your vigilance.

Amanda Armstrong  40:23  
I hope that today's exploration helped to normalize this common experience and offer you at least some practical pathway forward. And if you're looking for more personalized support in this work, we would love to support you inside restore, which is our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program. Also consider looking at finding a therapist in your area who is somatic and trauma trained. There is something so special that can happen in the context of a trauma informed therapeutic relationship when it comes to healing and regulating the nervous system. 

Amanda Armstrong  40:58  
So as always, thanks for being here, and until next week, I am sending so much hope and healing your way.

Amanda Armstrong  41:05  
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai