Does This Give More Than It Takes?

Amanda shares the nervous system framework behind a real family decision — getting a puppy with three kids under five — and why saying yes to something stressful can still be the regulated choice.

Using the seesaw model (stress bucket on one side, supporter blocks on the other), she introduces a simple filter for everyday decisions:

"Does this give more than it takes?"

She walks through two examples, the puppy she said yes to and the ceramics class she said no to, and names the two hardest directions this question cuts.

If your season doesn't allow you to reduce stressors, the question becomes: where can you add more supporters? Hit play for a simple decision-making filter for anything you're considering adding (or removing) from your life.

3 Takeaways:

1. The goal isn't less stress, it's better balance. Supporters on your seesaw let you carry a heavier load without exceeding your window of tolerance.
2. Run decisions through the filter: Does this give more than it takes? It works for big commitments and small ones alike, and the answer is always season-specific.
3. The filter cuts both ways. Saying no to things you want and saying yes to things that aren't "productive" can both be hard, and both are part of more regulated living.

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Transcript

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.

Hey friend, welcome back. Today I want to share with you something that came up in my real messy, one of those life is just happening kind of moments. And in sharing this, I'm also going to share one of the most practical nervous system filters that I use for decision-making in my life.

Sometimes this is for small everyday decisions. really big life-changing decisions, and this particular decision, which I would put somewhere in between, which is we got a puppy.

If you are one of the OGs and you've been around for at least the last year and a half or so, you know that I lost my sole dog of 12 years, about a year and a half ago, November, and our family is just a dog family. We want that experience for our kids. My husband and I both really love dogs. The question was never whether we get another dog. It was just when. When, when, when. And it's been when pretty much for the last year and a half. And we've always had

really good reasons to push off this decision. Now, despite me posting on Instagram a couple weeks ago. in a crash out that like, I have no business getting a dog. My life is already so full and so chaotic and young kids. And I asked all of you to talk some sense into me, to convince me out of getting a puppy or a dog right now. Um, you all failed miserably at that task. I think I got 50 plus messages and out of those messages, only two of you, only two of you tried to talk some sense into me and the rest of you. Well, You officially got your way in what looks like an 11-week-old, we think golden retriever, German shepherd, something else, mixed puppy, whatever. It was the rescue's best guess. He's going to be a big boy. And we added that to our already chaotic life with three kids. Five-year-old, two-year-old, and a six-month-old. So right now in our house, we are dealing with overlapping potty training and teething experiences between our collective children and this puppy.

Now, how this share is relevant for you is I want to talk about why we said yes. to adding more to our lives right now. Why we said yes to a dog now, because it wasn't impulsive. It was actually a really intentional nervous system informed conversation between my husband and I. So one of the things you have heard me talk about often on the podcast is your stress bucket. So this is a visual we use at Regulated Living to represent your nervous system. Your nervous system's carrying capacity and how your nervous system catches and holds all of your life stressors. Now there's another visual that I come back to often in coaching, which is a seesaw. 

So I want you to imagine a child's playground. Seesaw. And on one side of that seesaw is your stress bucket. But on the other side of that seesaw are supporter blocks. So imagine blocks, kids blocks, in whatever way you want to imagine blocks, those represent your supporters. So you have your stressors on one side and your supporters on the other. Because here's the thing that I think gets missed in a lot of healing conversations. It's that the goal is not to have as little stress as possible. Some stressors we don't choose. There's chronic health stuff, caretaking demands, financial pressures. Those just exist as part of life. What we can work with is the balance. Because you can hold more weight when you have someone helping you carry it.

When you have enough supporters to counterbalance the stressors in your life. Your nervous system can perceive a load as safe enough. It can put you within your window of tolerance rather than it being so overwhelming. So yes, sometimes we need stress management to be part of our healing journey. If you are constantly living a 300 pound life with the capacity to only carry 200 pounds, you're going to be dysregulated. And until something changes about the way you're living your life or the stressors coming in, you're going to stay in. In a chronic stress in survival mode. But a lot of times what we need to look at isn't just stress management, but it's this balance of what does my supporters and my stressors, what does that equation look like? 

So when I am considering opting into something that will add stress to my life, a new work project, signing the kids up for something, even a personal hobby. This is the question that I sit with. I ask myself, is this going to give more than it takes? Now for the dog, my husband and I had been circling this conversation for months and months and months, and we kept landing it not yet, right? We just had a new baby. The cabin that we're building for future regulated living retreats is a year behind schedule. My husband's heavily involved in that. We've got a toddler in the middle of potty training. We're figuring out child care, no child care, child care, no child care. My husband's job might be shifting. And every time we would ask this question, we would look at each other and just say, I think right now it's going to take more than it gives. But this past weekend, something shifted. We like it is our extreme sport. to look at a couple of our local rescues, what dogs are available, what events they're having. We went to an event a couple weeks ago just to see what the events were about, what it was like, whether there was a dog that really spoke to us or not. Right at this point, we're like, maybe we're looking at that CSOM. We're like, it kind of teeters back and forth for us. Then this past weekend, something shifted.

We saw a particular litter of dogs, mostly my husband. I communicated to my husband early on in this process. And I said, this dog, this next dog is your dog. Obviously I'm here. I'm going to help train. I'm going to support it. It's our family dog, but like it's yours. I lost my soul dog and my heart is not ready to like claim my next dog. And I want this experience for you. And I think he wanted that experience for him too. He's never gotten to pick out his own dog. showed me a picture and he said, I think I want to go see this one. And we just looked at each other and both said, like, I think, I think we can get to a place where this gives more than it takes. And so we got in the car, we drove to that adoption event. I watched my husband agonize. This is the guy who spends like six weeks just to make sure that we get the right toaster. do his research.

If I am impulsive, he is as far away from that as you can possibly get. He wants to do his research. He wants to do a pros and cons list. And I just looked at him. I said, honey, you don't get that with this. You've got to look at that creature and just know in your heart that now is the time and that that's the right one. And so he circled the event, circled the event, tried to change his mind a bunch of times. Maybe we were going to do one of the other puppies in the litter that was like smaller because this one looked like it was going to get really big. And ultimately, the puppy in the picture that called him to this event is the sweet little boy that we went home with. 

And so again, from this story in my personal life, the question, the filter. that takes your nervous system, that takes your stress levels, that takes your capacity into account is when you're considering a decision, is this going to give more than it takes? Now on the other side of that same filter, I said no to a ceramics class that I really wanted to take. Ceramics and clay is something that's been on my radar for years. My mom does it, my sisters have done it. There was a class nearby and I wanted to take it. But when I ran it through this filter, The class that I could get into, it was a 25 minute drive away. It was in the middle of the day, which was going to pull me from some of my work time during a season of life where my childcare is very, very limited. And I kept asking myself, like, is this going to give more than it takes? Is this going to give more than it takes? And the answer just kept being not right now. Not right now. Not because it's a bad idea, but because right now in my life. It would take more than it gives.

And another example of this that's so trivial just on the daily basis is folding my kids' clothing. We don't do that anymore. My kids just have these drawers with pictures of short sleeve shirt, long sleeve shirt, pants. Laundry gets sorted. My five-year-old sorts his own laundry and we yeet, throw them into the drawers unfolded because folding laundry does not give more than it takes from me. 

Now, sometimes when you apply this filter, the answer is going to be obvious. The answer is going to be an obvious yes or an obvious no. But I think there are some times where this filter presents you with two really hard directions. This filter can cut both ways. And I want to name them explicitly because I think both of them can be genuinely hard. So the first is saying no to things that you want. things that are already on your calendar, things that you opted into with really good intentions, but might be quietly asking for more than you have to give in the moment. Or like the ceramics class. This is something I really want to do. I really want to do for self-care, for a moment away. I need that. I desperately need that to be able to show up in my business in the way that I want to, in my motherhood in the way that I want to. I also need to take time for myself. But for right now, taking time in the way of a 30 minute away from me, two hour weekly ceramics. I just, that was a no. So I defined a different way for this season of our life. But I think one of the things that this question, one of the hard things this question asks of us sometimes is to say no to the things that we want to do. For me, I tend to think that I have unlimited capacity.

I think that I can keep adding things without consequence to my life. And we can't.

And so sometimes when I find myself in a season of chronic overwhelm, I look at my calendar, I make a list of all of the things that are my responsibility in my home, in my business, in my relationships. And I look at it and I say, what is taking more than it's giving right now? Another filter that we encourage our clients to take to their stress bucket is like, what can I delete? What can I do differently? What can I delegate? Because Right now, there's just too much there. 

Now, the second kind of hard that I think that this filter can present, or maybe this is just personal to me, but it is sometimes saying yes to the things that aren't objectively productive, right? Back to the ceramics class. Ceramics doesn't build my business. It doesn't clean my house. It doesn't take care of my kids. For a lot of us who have spent years pouring from an empty cup. When people are like, you can't pour from an empty cup. I'm like, girl, you can. You can. I did it for so long. But the reality is that does take a toll. You can only do it for so long. And for somebody who has been a chronic empty cup pourer, learning to say yes to things that are just fun or nourishing that don't have any tie to productivity or to real accomplishment. That is also its own kind of hard sometimes, its own kind of work. 

So here's what I want to leave you with. I invite you to look at your week, to look at your calendar, to look at your commitments, the things in your stress bucket. And for the ones that you have control over, I want you to ask, does this give more than it takes? And maybe consider putting some of those objects on their own seesaw. This is kind of a visual pros and cons list. Maybe I'll come back to the puppy. Looking at the puppy. Okay, what are the things that would add to my stress bucket about a puppy? Okay, oh my gosh, so much. So much. The things that he has tried to teethe. I'm on like 24-hour house surveillance to make sure that he doesn't ruin everything in sight. We've got to invest in… different foods and resources and toys. Again, we've got a puppy proof the house. Then we have to go to the vet appointments, right? There's a lot that goes into the training. Oh my gosh. I've got to remember it's been 15 years since I trained a puppy. I don't remember how to do it. And I'm sure as a 21, 22 year old, 19 year, I don't know. How old was I when I got my puppy? Uh, I'm going to do some things differently this time around. Those are things that go in the stress bucket of the puppy seesaw. And then what part of this feels supportive, right? For me and for my husband, there's an energy in the house that changes for us when there's a dog present. Seeing our kids with a dog, having a dog to take with us to the cabin, to play in the creek, to go camping, to do the things that our family loves to do. And for us, we finally got to the point where that scale shifted. Enough for the stressors to be worth it. 

And so looking at some of these things that are already in your life or things that you are thinking about or have the option to opt into and putting them on this scale. What part of this is a stressor? And what part of this would be supportive or nourishing or fill my cup? And then let me look at my life right now. What decision do I want to make? If something is taking more than it is giving, can you adjust how you're doing it? Can you step back from it in some way for now? And if your season is one where you genuinely cannot remove stressors, where the bucket just keeps getting filled and filled and filled and filled and filled. then I want to invite you to shift your question from, oh my gosh, how can I better manage my stress to where can I add more supporters? Because sometimes healing, sometimes life is not about lowering the weight. It's not always about less stress. It is about finding more hands to help you carry it. Finding ways to build your strength and your capacity to carry it better. That is discernment. knowing what to invite in and what to let go of, at least for now, and where you can turn to for support when managing stressors just doesn't seem to be possible or doesn't seem to be approach that's working for you. That is nervous system regulation work. A question like this is a simple filter that can have life altering results. when you apply it with intention. Far too often, we are letting our old default patterns make decisions in our everyday life. And a question like this can help create some pause and a filter for you to be more intentional about saying yes or no, and really creating what looks like your unique way of more regulated living. 

All right, friend. Today's conversation was short enough. I'm going to skip the three takeaways and until next week, I'm sending so much hope and healing your way. 

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.