Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

dYsReGuLaTiOn & Activation Are Not The Same Thing

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 133

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I (Amanda) signed up to chaperone my kindergartener's field trip. Then childcare fell through. Suddenly I'm responsible for my feral 2-year-old AND five other 5-year-olds. My nervous system panicked—heart racing, adrenaline spiking, pure chaos mode. But here's the thing: I wasn't dysregulated. In this episode, I'm using my chaotic morning to show you what nervous system regulation actually looks like in real life (hint: it's not about staying calm).

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • Why activation and dysregulation are NOT the same thing—and why confusing them keeps you stuck
  • The real questions that determine if you're regulated: Can you reset? How quickly? How long do you stay stuck?
  • What to do when life throws you a curveball and your nervous system ramps up
  • Why building capacity matters more than eliminating stress


3 Takeaways:

  1. Activation is not dysregulation. You can feel stressed, overwhelmed, or burnt out and still be regulated—regulation is about whether you can reset and move through it, not whether you feel it at all.
  2. The real markers of regulation are flexibility and resilience. Ask yourself: How long do I stay activated after the stressor passes? What's my capacity for discomfort or change without spiraling? Can I still access choice when I'm activated?
  3. A regulated nervous system isn't a calm nervous system—it's a flexible one. It can access energy when you need it and release it when you don't. That's a skill you can build.

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

Email: amanda@regulatedliving.com

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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  
Hey friend, welcome back. Happy Halloween Week. If that is something you're participating in, I do Halloween easy style. We are big, big fans of just onesie costumes. In my family, I have a tiger onesie and a cow onesie and just, you know, flip a coin and take my pick every year. My youngest, my two year old, is going to be, I guess not, my youngest, my baby. I look at people who do all out family costumes and go, you I think that they're rad. They're super ambitious, and I am just never gonna have my life together enough around this particular thing to make that happen for our family. So my youngest, my little new little girl, she is just gonna wear a sweater that we bought one of her brothers at one point that has a ghost on it. My two year old is gonna be a chicken. My five year old wants to be a chimp again. All of these just whoop zip up onesies. I will be a cow, and my husband will either wear his cow onesie or his Ghost Shirt. TBD, he's an adult. He gets to make his own decisions, but hopefully you feel good about your plans or lack thereof, or if you are one of the many, many people who listen to my podcast, who don't live in the United States, and Halloween, just like is not really a thing for you guys. Just happy this week. Happy this week, whatever it is for you. 

Amanda Armstrong  1:53  
Now, today, I am going to tell you a story about my morning, and it involves a pumpkin patch, because tis the season. But what this story, I hope, illustrates, is what nervous system regulation can actually look like in real life, because I think that there is a massive misunderstanding about what it means to be regulated or dysregulated, and I don't think we always use those words properly. Now the story. 

Amanda Armstrong  2:23  
So to preface, I think I am just referring to the stage of my motherhood as quote, just whisper crap and rally end quote, except usually it's the less PG version of the word crap, and it's not always a whisper. Sometimes it is an exasperated yell of the word and this morning is a really good example of what I mean by that, like Crap. Crap, okay, is what it is. But let's go. Let's get it done. So I signed up to be a chaperone for my five year old's kindergarten field trip to a very big, very busy pumpkin patch, and the school had a really clear policy. No siblings allowed. They were going to make an exception for my breastfeeding baby. They just said, amazing, but you can't ride on the bus. You have to follow along behind. Awesome. No big deal that's preferred. Got the baby carrier. Got the snacks packed. I got this. I've got childcare for my two year old, except it is 10 minutes past when my childcare is supposed to be there, and 10 minutes until I need to be at the school. I make a quick phone call, and it becomes very, very clear, there is no childcare. They are not coming. They are no showing for the day. Awesome, awesome. So now I have my two year old, a very feral, very energetic two year old, and I've got to leave in five minutes. So I make a quick call to the school, and I'm like, Hey, childcare, no showed. What do you want me to do? Do I need to bail on chaperoning? Do you still want me to come? If I am going to come, he's got to come with me. And they're like, Hold on. Let us talk to the person who can answer this question. They get back on the phone, and they're like, just bring him. We'll see you in five minutes. Oh, yeah. Cool, cool, cool. So let me get this straight. I am going to be responsible for keeping track of my completely unpredictable two year old and five other five year olds at a very busy pumpkin patch. 

Amanda Armstrong  4:25  
Okay, at this point, I'm like, yes, just send thoughts and prayers. Send thoughts and prayers. So in that moment, I realized, like, my day is not going to go as planned. This is not just going to be like a cute baby wearing get to know the moms and dads and kids of my son's classroom, and my system activated like full adrenaline spike. My heart is racing that like, Oh, crap. Feeling in my chest I have this mental scramble of like, Okay, wait. Like, what do I need for him? Where are his shoes? Does he need a change of clothes? Are there snacks? I guess he can eat my lunch. I don't know what I'm going to eat, 15 meat sticks and a cheese stick and a bottle of water. Sure. Fine. We got five minutes. We got to be out the door. My nervous system is activated fast, hard, sympathetic energy is flooding my body, mobilizing me into action. And here is the point that I want to make, I wasn't dysregulated. That spike in adrenaline, that surge of sympathetic energy when I realized plans were changing, was actually exactly what I needed to pull this off. It fueled swift focus. It helped me to pivot. It gave me the energy to tear through my house packing for another kid with just five minutes to spare. I needed that activation. My body read that situation correctly. Something unexpected just happened. I need to move fast. Let's mobilize our resources. And it did its job perfectly. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:08  
So a lot of times I think when we are like, I'm in the yellow zone, I'm activated. I'm dysregulated. Nope, I wasn't dysregulated in that moment. I was activated. And there is a huge difference. Dysregulation would have been if I stayed stuck in that panic, if I spent the rest of the day snapping at my kids, if I would have spiraled into overwhelm, being unable to really think clearly enough to pack the bag, if I had gotten to that field trip and spent the whole time feeling frantic and reactive and unresolved, unable to really be present, if that morning had derailed my entire day, if I had been unable to reset, then, okay, sure, maybe we would call that dysregulation. So the real questions aren't did I activate? Did I feel overwhelmed? Did I have a moment of like crap? The real questions are, can my system reset from this? How much can it reset? How quickly can it reset? Does this derail me for the rest of the day? Does it keep me stuck in frustration, overwhelm and reactivity, or can I move through this and come back to feeling present, feeling capable, feeling capacity, feeling regulated, and that is what I mean when I talk about nervous system regulation. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:36  
Nervous system regulation, having a regulated nervous system is not about never activating. It's not even about never feeling overwhelmed or stressed to the point of burnout or shutdown. It is not about being calm in every situation. It is not about never having a stress response. It's not about maintaining some sort of Zen, like peace no matter what life throws at you, that's not regulation, honestly, more often than not, that's a form of dissociation or denial, toxic positivity, perhaps a checked outness. It's robotic regulation, more than anything, is about flexibility. It's about resilience. It's about your capacity to move through hard things and then come back to yourself, to reset from that experience so regulation. It's about asking, How long do I stay in activation after stressor has passed? How easily can I reset my nervous system, what's my capacity for discomfort or change without spiraling? Can I access conscious, intentional, aligned choices even when I'm feeling activated? And I'm going to repeat some of those questions, because I think this is a good gut check for you on where where is my baseline of regulation or dysregulation right now? So as I go through these questions again, maybe asking them to yourself and just seeing what your gut answer is. 

Amanda Armstrong  9:11  
So how long, how long do you stay in activation after a stressor has passed? Like, does a tiny thing kind of throw off your whole day? 

Amanda Armstrong  9:19  
How easily does your system reset? And if you're like, not very easily. I don't know how to do that trick yet. Okay, that's really good information, reflecting for a moment on what is your capacity for discomfort or for change, maybe last minute change without spiraling. And if you're like, Yeah, I'm pretty good at going with the flow. Okay? Or New I'm definitely going to spiral with a last minute change, or I might go with the flow, but it's, it's not a I feel good about this. It's like I've checked out. I've disconnected. 

Amanda Armstrong  9:50  
Even when you're activated, do you feel overwhelmed by that? Or do you feel like you can still be present, activate choice, because, again. A regulated nervous system doesn't mean that you are not going to feel stressed, that you are not going to be overwhelmed. It simply means that you can feel stressed and not get stuck there, that you feel stress and appropriate level of stress in response to the situations and the circumstances that are being presented in your life. 

Amanda Armstrong  10:27  
So coming back to my my morning, here's what happened next, after this initial kind of panic and tear through the house, grabbing the snacks, the shoes, the changes of clothes, I got in the car, took a couple deep breaths not to make the stress go away, but just to signal to my body, like, okay, like we did it. We are moving now. We did the first hard part, like both kids are buckled in, and we're gonna make it to the school on time. Okay, then we drive to school. We're there. We actually beat the kids to the busses. So I had a moment to breastfeed my daughter, get her well fed. Hopefully she'll sleep. It's like a 40 minute drive to this pumpkin patch. Okay, we're here. We're doing the thing. It's gonna be what it's gonna be. I'm giving myself this little pep talk. Then my five year old gets on the bus with all the other kindergartners. We're in the car, following behind, and I have my personal dopamine hit playlist. So I let my two year old pick a song or two, and then it's like, okay, Mommy's turn. And I get into my headspace. We're dancing, we're singing. He's asking me 7000 questions, because I have a very verbal two year old. He's insistent that we're gonna see a horse, which luckily, we did, and also we're doing a little bit of role play, because I am kind of worried that my two year old is gonna crash out and, like, have a meltdown while we're here, or that he'll be doing his thing. My baby's gonna lose her mind, and then I'm responsible for these five year olds, and so I'm doing some role play with him. And I'm like, Hey, okay, we're gonna be with the big kids, and what do we need to do? Listen. Now you say it. Listen. What are you gonna say? Okay, mom, okay, mom. And most importantly, what are we gonna do? Have fun. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:16  
And so I'm giving him this script. I'm trying to help prepare him for and hey again. I don't know how much this is really getting through. He's two, but I'm trying, and it makes me feel good. We're gonna practice this script. Okay. Mom, okay. Mom, okay. Mom, we're gonna listen. We're gonna stay close to Mom. Mom's gonna hold your hand helping him contextualize. Look, I'ma need some things for you, and when I ask you for them, I want your system to feel familiar. Mom told me she was going to ask these things of me, and honestly, it went fine. Dare I say it went fine. I, last minute, swapped out for the big stroller. I had my daughter strapped to my chest, which was great, because she still would crawl back into my womb, probably if she could. She slept 90% of the field trip. She woke up at the towards the end of it, and I can breastfeed while walking and pushing a stroller. So that's what we did. My two year old, he got out to do the activities, the petting zoo, the hay ride, he went right back in. I again, he's in the phase where he's like, don't buckle me up, mom. And I was like, before we got out of the car, I was like, okay, Mom, is gonna buckle you up? No, mom. I'm like, if you want to come and see that horsey, we gotta buckle up. So he complied, and it went really well. There was little light defiance, but I was able to take that breath look in his eyeballs, and you know what? It was good. My two year old had a blast. I ended that and got in the car and was like, okay, big exhale, big unwinding on that 40 minute drive home. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:56  
But the rest of my day was fine. We got home, I played with the kids. I made dinner. I did not stay in that heightened place. I can truly say that my system fully reset. I enjoyed parts of the field trip. I was present there. I was not overly snappy with the kids, and that would not have always been possible for me. 

Amanda Armstrong  14:19  
Something I say often that resonates with a lot of our members, is that stress is either processed or it's stored. There's not really a whole lot of in between. And it was really awesome to experience my system fully activated, like fully activated adrenaline coursing stress response, and the way that that was metabolized, the way that that was processed was I used that activation to get into motion, to take action. I then when action. When we're sitting in the car, I'm allowing my system to kind of settle. I'm contextualizing too. Okay. Yeah, we've done we've done the first hard thing. Then comes the actual field trip. Then there's that hard thing. And while I'm there, I am trying to, well, a I'm walking around so that energy is being utilized. It's being moved. I'm connecting with some of the parents. I'm chattering with the kids. And then I get in the car and I allow my system to fully decompress. That stress was processed, it was metabolized, it was moved, far too often we feel the stress response in our body, and then modern day life requires us, or we lack the tools or the skills or the know how to process that reaction. And so instead, we just stay sitting in our desk, or we shove it down because we need to respond or take care of something else. 

Amanda Armstrong  15:46  
We're so busy, we're moving at such a fast pace from one stressor to the next that we don't allow our system to be able to metabolize it. And so again, that's what regulation looks like. It's not about never getting activated. It's about getting activated when it is appropriate to be activated, and being able to use that activation when you need it, and then to be able to release and reset from it when you don't it's being able to recognize, okay, my system is really ramped up Right now. Does that make sense given the context of what's happening in my life right now? If no, okay, what's up? What do I need? How do I reset? What's here? If, yes, okay, what do I need to do? How do I utilize this? How does it settle? How do I turn to connection? How do I turn to rest, to reset? And that's the work, that's the skill that's learnable, that is what we talk about and what we do every single day inside the regulated living membership when we work with clients, one of the things that we focus on is building capacity, not eliminating stress. 

Amanda Armstrong  16:57  
Yes, sometimes we do need to assess the stressors in our life and edit and audit those. But our big focus is, how do we build capacity? Because eliminating stress is not possible, and honestly, it's not even desirable. None of us actually want to live a stress free life. We think we do, but we activate when things matter to us, when they're important to us, and we want to live a life engaging in things that matter and are important. And a lot of times, what we are lacking is the skill, is the capacity to hold as much as we say yes to to hold what life hands us, to be able to move through more, to reset faster, your capacity for stress, for discomfort, for change, for the unexpected. That is not something that's fixed. This is something that's often referred to as a window of tolerance, and we know that chronic or traumatic stress can considerably shrink somebody's window of tolerance, meaning that you are more sensitive to change, to discomfort, to unexpected. But that's not fixed. It's not like you're either resilient or you're not it is a skill that you can develop. These are circumstances and situations that you can gain context and choice around. And the way you develop this is exactly the stages, the phases that we walk our clients through, learning how your nervous system works, recognizing and practicing the tools that work for your unique nervous system, assessing the stress load, and then figuring out what helps you reset and what are the other things that keep you stuck, and where is the accessible and The meaningful place for you to start. We teach you how to work with your nervous system instead of fighting against it, how to build this flexibility, this capacity and this resilience within your system, how to actually regulate in real life, not in an ideal life, not in theory. What each of our members brings to the support calls to the Q and A calls is their messy, very real life. And then we talk about how to find regulation within that. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:11  
There is no universal six step process to regulating your nervous system. I wish there was. It would be so much easier to heal to do this work. There is simply working with your unique nervous system and figuring out your next step, your unique blueprint for healing, given the context of your very real life circumstances, which is going to look very different depending on whether you are a teen, whether you are a parent to adult kids, to young kids, whether you're coupled or single and childless in grad school, whether you're part of a marginalized group, whether you're in retirement. And we have worked with every single one of these examples that I've just shared and what reg. Related living looks like for each of them is so beautifully unique and different. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:07  
All right. Bringing it back in, this was kind of an impromptu episode, pretty unscripted, if you haven't been able to tell, it's not quite as linear or deeply educational as some of my others. But here's what I want you to take away most from this conversation, the next time you feel activated, the next time something unexpected happens and your nervous system ramps up, I want you to ask yourself some of these questions. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:32  
Number one, is this activation serving me right now? Is it an appropriate response? Does it make sense? Could I use this to help me focus, move, pivot, take action, or is this just me spinning out? Okay, you don't need to do anything with that question. Just start to filter. How often you're feeling activated. Does the intensity match what you're facing? Other question, do I have flexibility? Okay, so I'm activated. Do I have some flexibility here? Can I access the thinking part of my brain? Am I still making conscious choices, or do I feel completely stuck in this stress response again? Or am I spinning out? 

Amanda Armstrong  21:14  
Next question is, what does my nervous system need right now? And this probably isn't going to come in the moment of activation. I did not find out about child care canceling, needing to pack up my two year old in the next five minutes and pause to be like, What does my nervous system need in this moment? No, I'm like, crap. Okay, let's go, go, go, go, go, go, go. But I did find a moment of pause when it was available, when we had gotten to the school and we had a little lull for time while we were driving afterwards, where I did very intentionally, because I built the practice to do so, to check in and say, Oh, all right, nervous system, what do you need right now? Do you need to move a little bit more through this? Do we need to settle? Is there some connection? Do I need to just, like, rant about this in a voice memo while driving to a friend when I get home? Do I give myself permission to, like, put on some episodes of bluey so I can take a beat? What do I need? How am I feeling? 

Amanda Armstrong  22:17  
And then the fourth reflective reflection question that I'll offer is finding a time, maybe even now, to say how long am I staying in this state? Is my system resetting after the immediate stressors have passed? Or do I carry that activation for hours or even days after something like that happens? 

Amanda Armstrong  22:40  
And just see where you land with those questions. And depending on where you land, is going to let you know, yeah, I don't have a whole lot of capacity. I am mostly dysregulated, meaning I am oftentimes feel like I'm overstressed or overreacting to small things, little things spiral me out. I have a hard time resetting. And if that's where you find yourself right now, okay, it makes sense, I promise you, if you and I sat down and had a 10 minute conversation barely scratching the surface on your past lived experiences and your current life circumstances, I'd be like, Yeah, this is why your nervous system is hyper vigilant. It makes total sense that there's this hypersensitivity and now what? What do you want to do about it? What support do you need to do those things? 

Amanda Armstrong  23:25  
So that's it. That's my episode today. Sometimes regulation is just about whispering crap and then you rally. It's about feeling the panic and still being able to pack the bag. It is about using the adrenaline when you need it and then letting it go when you don't. Regulation is about building your capacity to hold more, to reset faster, to stay connected to yourself, even when life gets chaotic. And if this capacity is not something that you feel like you currently have, it is something that can be learned, and this is the work that I do every single day with our members inside the regulated living membership. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:10  
So our three takeaways from today. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:12  
Number one, activation is not the same as dysregulation. You can feel stressed, you can be activated and still be what I would call regulated, because it's an appropriate response to what you are facing. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:25  
Number two, the real questions are, can I reset? How quickly? How long do I stay stuck here? 

Amanda Armstrong  24:31  
And takeaway number three is that regulation is about flexibility and capacity, not about staying calm all the time. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:42  
All right, that's what I have for today. Thank you, friends for sticking with me through what I know is more frequently than usual. Some of these just chaotic pull back the curtain behind the scenes looks at my very real life right now, which is less than three months postpartum. Am juggling a lot of things, unpredictable, childcare, being one of them, and still wanting to show up and give you something. I know these aren't my best podcast episodes. I know it, I know it, I know it, but I am trying to practice what I preach and to put something out in the world that is just something. Something is better than nothing, and I promise you more polished educational episodes will return. Just let me invite you into my lived in mess for a bit longer. And thanks, as always, thanks for being here. And until next week, I am sending so much hope and healing your way.

Amanda Armstrong  25:44  
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