Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

Why Safety Can Feel Scary After Trauma (Simplified)

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 115

Share episode

This is a simplified version of the conversation we had last week about how it's common for trauma survivors to feel anxious or scared when they finally experience moments of calm or regulation. This episode explores why this paradoxical response happens and offers gentle ways to help your nervous system learn that regulation doesn't have to mean danger. We dive into the "safety-danger equation" and how to build your capacity for feeling safe, one small moment at a time.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why your nervous system might interpret safety as a threat after trauma.
  • How past experiences can make you feel like you've "lost your ability to protect yourself" when you relax.
  • Practical strategies to start feeling safer with regulation, even when it’s uncomfortable.

3 Takeaways:

  1. Feeling anxious when calm isn't a sign you're broken; it's a learned protective response from past trauma.
  2. Your nervous system is always balancing "cues of safety" against "cues of danger"—trauma can make safety feel unfamiliar and thus threatening.
  3. You can teach your nervous system that safety is okay by starting with small, anchored moments of regulation and validating your protective instincts.

—

Looking for more personalized support?

*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

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  
This week on the podcast, I am doing something I have never done before, which is to actually have the same conversation that we had last week, but in what I feel will be a simplified or more approachable and accessible way. A main goal of mine with this podcast is to meet people where they are, to teach these concepts and the science thoroughly but also simply. And while last week's conversation met many of you where you are, especially those of you who are providers or practitioners, I also know it felt way too long, way too complex for others of you, and to me, these concepts of post traumatic healing, post traumatic growth, some of the frustration, some of the pain points that we experience along the way, these conversations are too important to not give them a chance to reach and resonate with as many people as possible. So if last week felt a bit heavy, a bit dense, but something you were still curious about, today's your day. 

Amanda Armstrong  1:31  
So just a reminder, we are going to talk about something that often surprises people on their healing journey, and this is when they start to do nervous system regulation work, they start to get support in their healing journey. They start to notice that these moments of safety or regulation that they now have access to actually feel really scary. They actually trigger dysregulation. These are some shared experiences of you know, what happens when you finally do feel a little bit more regulated, but it doesn't feel good. Or what happens when you're no longer living in actively stressful or harmful environments or situations and yet your nervous system won't let its guard down? Or what happens if moments of calm or regulation, moments when anxiety or shutdown seem to pause, it's that pause that actually triggers discomfort, fear or even more anxiety. This is something so many of our clients go through, especially those who have experienced traumatic or overwhelming life experiences. It's this phase where they feel anxious about no longer feeling anxious all the time, and so that's what we're going to talk about today. 

Amanda Armstrong  2:39  
Why safety sometimes feels scary, why regulation can feel terrifying if you have experienced trauma, why it might not feel safe to feel safe or feel calm, to feel calm again, especially if you are somebody who has lived with trauma, chromatic stress or long term dysregulation, this is likely going to be part of your healing journey, part of the recalibration of your nervous system. And let's start with something called the safety danger equation. In short, regulation happens when cues of safety outweigh cues of danger. So that's the equation. That's the balance your nervous system is constantly assessing for moment by moment without your conscious awareness. But there's a twist for many trauma survivors, safety can actually feel dangerous, and this is a really disorienting experience for many of our clients. So let's unpack it just a little bit more. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:36  
If your body has learned that being relaxed means being unguarded, and that being unguarded means being vulnerable, and that vulnerability leads to harm, then calm won't feel safe. It's going to feel disorienting. It's going to feel threatening. You might find yourself feeling anxious after a moment of peace, or suddenly panicky when nothing is wrong, and you might think, oh my gosh, I should feel good right now. Why? Why do I always want to crawl out of my skin? Why does feeling good make me feel so bad? And that is your nervous system trying to protect you based on your past lived experiences. 

Amanda Armstrong  4:16  
When you have been stuck in chronic states of fight, flight, freeze or shut down, that becomes your normal. It's familiar, it's functional, especially if dysregulation was necessary for survival. So when your system shifts into more regulated states, when those cues of safety finally start to get bigger, there is often a part of you that doesn't trust it. When you find yourself in moments of regulation, there's a part of you that might whisper, you know, if I let my guard down, I'll get hurt again. If I feel good, something bad is probably around the corner. If I stop being vigilant or scanning for danger, I'm going to miss the threat, and that is what we mean when we say that regulation can feel. Terrifying regulation can feel like a betrayal of the self protective parts of you, the parts of you who did a really good job doing their job of protecting you in past experiences. 

Amanda Armstrong  5:15  
So coming back to this safety danger equation, one of the things that can help you shift this equation is when you find yourself in a moment of calm. When you do find yourself in moments where you feel just a little bit more safe or a little bit more regulated than normal, ask yourself what cues of safety got bigger or came in and and, or what cues of danger faded or resolved? So remember, we can only access regulation, or basically, what happened that allowed us to access a moment of regulation or groundedness was that our safety cues exceeded our danger cues. And so when we are trying to make this shift from a life that's always in survival mode, to one where we get to experience more connection than protection, where we get to experience more regulation, we might actually want to pay attention to and dissect a little bit what contributes to our unique nervous system feeling safe enough to have a moment of safety or regulation. And we can do that by asking those questions. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:22  
So again, you can do this in the moment when you notice regulation, or even pause right now and just reflect. Can you remember the last moment where you felt a little bit regulated, more grounded, more calm, and what were the cues of safety that got bigger or came in that allowed you to feel more regulated in that moment. And remember, these cues of safety can come from internally, externally or relationally. Can you identify some of those safety cues that got bigger or that came in that allowed you to feel safe enough within this equation and or maybe it wasn't about adding more safety. Maybe it was about removing some of the danger. What were the cues of stress or threat or danger that faded or that resolved that allowed this equation to balance in a different way? And this is the reflection that can help you start recognizing the specific things big or small that help your system to shift. So was it the way that someone looked at you with kindness, a warm blanket, a cup of tea, a beautiful sunset, a song that connected you to a good memory, a moment of silence when your kids finally went to bed. So reflecting on what contributed to that moment for you. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:37  
You can also ask, What danger did my system think was still there? What stories or sensations popped up as soon as I softened? So this is specifically for those of you who are having the experience of there was a moment of regulation, there was a moment of calm, and then almost as quickly as I got that, it was replaced with more anxiety, more shutdown, like, Nope, we can't go there. Why did that happen? Why did that pendulum swing so far the other way? Or at least what felt like that? What danger did my system still think there was what stories or sensations popped up as soon as I softened, as soon as I shifted into more regulation or safety. And these moments can give you really valuable insight into what we sometimes call like the invisible rules or the stories of your protective parts that your nervous system is still operating under, whether they objectively are true to your current reality or not. 

Amanda Armstrong  8:33  
Now, another concept we can revisit with this conversation is what Bessel van der Kolk called islands of safety, or what we talked about a couple weeks ago as regulation or safety anchors, both follow this idea that we don't need to feel safe everywhere all the time. What we need most, especially when shifting out of seasons or experiences of chronic stress or trauma, is that we need small, consistent experiences of safety to begin to rewire our nervous system so these anchors of safety could be a certain person, a room in your home, a morning routine, a quiet corner at work, a regulation practice that's reliably helpful for you, a memory of a time you felt safe, and then over time, you allow these anchors to grow as you notice them, as you pay attention to them, you build new neural pathways in your brain that allow you to notice them and pay attention to them with more frequency for a little bit more duration. This builds familiarity in your system, which makes feeling safe, feel and be less unsafe. 

Amanda Armstrong  9:44  
So let me put it this way, your nervous system is hardwired for protection. It will always choose familiar dysfunction over an unfamiliar ideal. It will choose familiar anxiety activation shutdown over. Unfamiliar regulation, because something that is unfamiliar registers automatically as unsafe to our nervous system. So if we want regulation to feel safer to our nervous system, if we want regulation to be something that our nervous system isn't triggered by, we need to build familiarity with being in a regulated state. Our nervous system learns more through frequent small experiences than by big, oftentimes what can then be overwhelming experiences. So these small glimmers, micro moments of safety regulation, anchoring over time have a much more beneficial effect on rewiring your nervous system than trying to do like a single deep, deep meditation or long plant medicine retreat or, you know, not that those things can't be beneficial and aren't transformative for people, but for the most part, the rewiring of your nervous system comes in these micro daily moments by beginning to notice the small things that feel safe enough right now and then expanding from there. 

Amanda Armstrong  11:19  
And I want to give you a few practical ways that you can get started softening into regulation, even when it might initially feel scary. 

Amanda Armstrong  11:27  
So number one is to name what's happening. This calm feels unfamiliar. My body thinks I'm unprotected. So what we're doing here is we're just narrating, and in that narration, we're normalizing that response, reminding yourself it's not wrong. This is a biological adaptation. It's learned, as you notice, that the regulation immediately triggered dysregulation, instead of shifting into a place of frustration. Can we just neutrally narrate? Yep, this calm is unfamiliar. My body thinks I'm unprotected. It's shifting me back. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:00  
One of the second things you can do is try to stay anchored to the present. So when we have experienced trauma, the time stamping, part of our brain goes offline. So when something in our present environment feels familiar to a time in our past, we in our in our senses, we have a really hard time separating between then and now. We don't know what is real and what is not, what is past and what is present. And so when we can anchor to our senses in the present, it can help us orient to what is real and what is safe right now. So this can be through visual orienting or color spotting tools I've mentioned often here on the podcast, some sensory things. It could also be through a more verbal narration, I'm sitting on a soft couch, the window is open, I can hear birds. Nothing is threatening in the moment. So helping yourself just anchor here and now to help your system orient or reorient between then and now, here and there. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:03  
A third thing that you can do is to just let regulation be small. You do not have to stay in a regulated state all day. You just need little moments, 10 seconds here, a few minutes there. The goal is to build familiarity with regulation in small, frequent moments. We are trying to build capacity for regulation, not a constantly calm life. So it's normal, it's okay, it's human of you to not be regulated all the time. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:33  
A fourth thing is to practice both. And so many trauma survivors operate from an either or perspective, either I am vigilant and safe or I am relaxed and vulnerable, when in reality, oftentimes mature regulation includes both the openness and boundaries. It includes both connection and protection. So can you practice this both and approach and this could sound like simple phrases. I can be both regulated and aware, both open and boundaried, both connected and self protective. I can be both vulnerable and strong, and this can help to reshape the fundamental belief that being in a regulated state, being in that green zone means abandoning your protection. It doesn't have to be either or. It can be both and.

Amanda Armstrong  14:26  
And the fifth practical way that I'll offer to start softening into regulation is through parts work is through validating your protective parts, sometimes just simply turning to that part internally and saying, Hey, thanks for protecting me. I see you, and I'm going to try to do something different for a moment. Hey, thanks for protecting me. I see you. If you weren't so afraid that X, Y or Z would happen, what might you like to do instead? Do. What would I need to do as this adult, regulated self to convince you this younger protective pattern, in part in me, that we actually could try something different for just a moment, and hopefully this is enough to help this guarded protective layer soften even just a little bit.

Amanda Armstrong  15:19  
In closing, if regulation has ever felt scary for you, if you've ever felt anxious about not feeling anxious all the time, or dysregulated when you notice that you felt calm or more regulated, even for just a moment, I want you to know that you're not wrong. I want you to know that nothing is going wrong. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was wired to do to protect you, and it is learning slowly that there is another way to live, that you don't have to be in constant survival mode to be safe, to be seen, to get your needs met, and safety takes practice. It's not something that you do all at once, and so whether you are building your own anchors of safety, or whether you are working with a trauma trained practitioner to build out those anchors and that awareness and familiarity with safety. I want you to remember that regulation does not mean that you're letting your guard down forever. It just means that you are giving yourself permission to rest, permission to be in moments of connection, rather than constant protection. And that's really a brave and beautiful thing, the path from where you are right now, 

Amanda Armstrong  16:40  
if this is an experience that feels familiar to you, to getting to a life where you can be in a regulated or connective state more often, I want to offer you the promise and the hope that you can feel more regulated when your nervous system feels safer With regulation and your nervous system begins to feel safer with regulation by becoming more familiar with regulation. And your nervous system becomes more familiar with regulation through experience, and you give it that experience, first with frequency and then with duration, first with micro moments of regulation, and then you allow your system to go back to its old, familiar patterns of protection without judgment. And then, over time, the frequency of those micro moments of regulation, these small anchors to safety, build familiarity. So now when you access a moment of regulation or safety, your nervous system doesn't immediately go, oh no, we're vulnerable. Here it goes. Oh, we've done this before. We've been here before, and bad things don't always happen when we let our guard down. And it's with this familiarity that your nervous system will allow you to begin to be in those moments of connection, of calm, of groundedness for a little bit longer, and then a little bit longer and a little bit longer, and then those three uncomfortable moments of trying to relax turn into five, turn into seven, turn into 15. And someday you sit on your porch and you watch your kids play, or you go on a long hike, and you don't worry about being hyper productive or perfect or constantly looking over your shoulder, and it's been hours, and you take a deep breath and you remember this podcast, and you see this trail of context and validation and Curiosity and working with your nervous system to see how you got there, and what a beautiful journey it is to understand your nervous system enough to work with it to create more safety and regulation in your life. 

Amanda Armstrong  17:35  
Now for today's three takeaways. 

Amanda Armstrong  18:31  
Number one, feeling unsafe when you are actually safe is a normal trauma response. If calmness or regulation makes you anxious, it's not because you're broken. It is your nervous system trying to protect you based on past experiences where letting your guard down was dangerous. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:14  
Number two, your nervous system constantly weighs cues of safety against cues of danger. Trauma can skew this balance, making safety feel unfamiliar and therefore dangerous, therefore threatening. So understanding this can help you see why your body reacts the way it does. It can give you that context that can give you access to a little bit more compassion as you navigate this 

Amanda Armstrong  19:39  
and number three, start small and be patient when trying to feel safer with safety, when trying to feel safer with regulation, you do not need constant calm. Focus on tiny, manageable moments, those small anchors of safety name what's happening without judgment. To anchor to the present moment and acknowledge that you can be both regulated and protected. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:07  
And for those of you who tuned in both last week and this week again, thank you for indulging my duplicate conversation. It is so important to me that these conversations get to and are accessible for the people who need them most. And while I love to often deep dive into the neurobiology and the science and the research that can often feel like too much to consume for systems that are already overwhelmed, and this particular conversation, this particular lived experience that almost all of our clients go through in some degree, some flavor or another, just felt like a really, really important conversation for me to reiterate and potentially to make more accessible to even more folks out there. So as always, friend, thank you for being here. Thanks for continuing to courageously step into your healing. Share this episode with anyone else that you think might benefit. And a shameless ask is that if you are getting something from the podcast, if you could take just a few minutes to leave a five star rating and review, because those truly help get these conversations, these concepts, these tools, out to even more people who need them. And until next time I am sending so much hope and healing your way. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:23  
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