Coffee, Scrolling & Netflix: The Calm We Borrow But Never Keep

Are you trapped in the cycle of reaching for quick fixes to calm your stressed nervous system? That third cup of coffee, mindless scrolling, or end-of-day glass of wine might offer temporary relief, but they're actually teaching your body to outsource its sense of safety rather than build it from within.

The truth is, many of us have mastered the art of "borrowed calm" – those external solutions that feel fast but fade quickly. This borrowed calm may be socially acceptable and even encouraged, but it's quietly conditioning your nervous system to forget its innate capacity for self-regulation.

What if there was another way? In this episode, I introduce the concept of "earned calm" – the nervous system's love language that builds lasting resilience from the inside out. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Borrowed vs. Earned Calm
• 3:00 The Four R's Framework
• 5:44 Breaking My Coffee Dependency
• 8:03 Teaching Your Body to Drive
• 10:00 Episode Wrap and Call to Action

Transcript

Emily Feist: 0:00

Have you ever reached for that third cup of coffee and then just scrolled on your phone for an hour just so you're a little less present?

Emily Feist: 0:08

You're not alone, but here's something that we're rarely taught Many of us were conditioned to borrow calm from the outside without ever learning how to build it from the inside, and that's what matters, especially when you're navigating stress, anxiety and burnout that just won't go away.

Emily Feist: 0:29

Today, we are gently unpacking the difference between borrowed calm and earned calm, and why one gives you temporary change, while the other teaches your body how to actually feel safe again. Welcome to. It Starts at Vagus, where holistic health meets modern day living through the eyes of a massage therapist and that's me. I'm Emily, and I am a neuromuscular massage therapist that helps people calm their mind and their muscles, and I'm here to guide you through the philosophy of the vagus nerve. It's the body's ultimate key to calm, connection and overall well-being. So if you have stress, anxiety or you just feel stuck, you're in the right place.

Emily Feist: 1:16

So take a deep breath in, settle down and let's explore how we can use our nervous system to support our bodies

Emily Feist: 1:24

.

Emily Feist: 1:24

Let's start today's episode talking about borrowed calm. Borrowed calm is anything that outside of us that gives us that quick hit of I feel better now, but it wears off fast. Some of these things might include that glass of wine that you pour before your brain can even name why you're overwhelmed. Wine that you pour before your brain can even name why you're overwhelmed. It might be zoning out in front of a screen instead of checking in with how you feel, could be reaching for sugar or coffee or something stronger to just get you through the rest of the day, even relying solely on anxiety medication, without any internal tools to support your body. What you need to know is that borrowed calm is fast and is often encouraged, but here's the thing it doesn't teach your body anything. It doesn't build up that resilience. It's actually conditioning your nerve system to outsource its safety and over time, your body starts to lose trust of yourself, and that it loses its trust that it can settle down on its own, which is why learning how to calm your nervous system is so important. Now let's shift onto what I call earned calm. Earned calm is the nervous system's love language. It's the kind of peace that comes from the inside out. It's slower, but it lasts a lot longer. Every time you practice it, you're building your nervous system's capacity to handle stress, that it's grounded and in a healing way. So let me talk you through my favorite framework to have this earned calm, and there are four gentle steps that you can just do over and over again, especially when you feel like you're spiraling or checking out Four R's of earned calm Recognize, regulate and reflect and repeat.

Emily Feist: 3:21

First, recognize you need to pause and name what's happening in your body. Is your jaw tight? Are your shoulders creeping up? How is your breathing? Is it really shallow or really fast? Those are all ways that that vagus nerve responds to awareness. And when you name what's going on, you're telling your body okay, I'm listening, I'm here, you're okay and we can start settling down, which brings us into regulate. This is where we bring in the tools to help that vagus nerve calm down. Whether it's breath work or humming good stretch or simply stepping outside and noticing the ground beneath you or listening to the birds sing, it's just something that you can start reflecting on your surroundings. And these aren't just self-care tools. They are literally biological interruptions that signal to your nervous system to shift out of that survival mode.

Emily Feist: 4:22

Next step is reflect. When you feel even 10% calmer, ask yourself what just happened. What did I need? What was I actually feeling? Tools that help with this are journaling. I personally really like voice notes where I can just talk to my phone and it just jots everything down, because sometimes I talk faster than I can write. That's something that really helps me and you can even think through this while you're folding your laundry and that allows your body to help connect the dots about what just happened. Last step repeat this one's big. The nervous system learns through repetition. That one breath, it becomes five the next day to help slow down that kind of sketchy journal entry, that kind of wasn't really all put together as well as it could have been. It becomes the next insight. It tells you oh my goodness, what just happened? This is something that I'm repeating and you can learn from it and reflect, because you're not doing it wrong. You're just practicing calm in a world that's trained you how to be in rush mode.

Emily Feist: 5:34

One of the biggest crutches that I have been working through is to stop using coffee as an antidote to sleep. For years I got myself through the day by adding coffee. Less sleep equal more cups of coffee, and I hate to say it, but it worked. But it really didn't. I ended up relying on that coffee to help me through the day. It also supported my bad habit of revenge bedtime procrastination, where I purposefully didn't go to bed because now the coffee was keeping me awake and it was allowing me to stay up longer and longer, and so then I didn't go to bed, which then my body didn't have time to rest and rejuvenate, and then, all in all, it started taking a toll on my health. And when that started happening, I'm like okay, I need to look over my habits, because our habits are what make us today's version of ourselves. That's when I realized I needed to make sleep a priority to help my stress levels go down. I started implementing a healthy morning and an evening routine and now I go to bed earlier and I even crave going to bed early, which that was really weird for me at the beginning, because, just like losing habits were like, well, I used to like this, but now I don't. But I looked okay, which one is healthier for me, and so that encouraged me to go to bed earlier and earlier, even though it felt weird.

Emily Feist: 7:16

Now do I still drink coffee? Yes, I do, but I don't use it as a crutch. I often wait hours after I wake up before I drink the first cup. I do try to limit it to one and try not to drink it at the same time every day. I don't want my body to rely on it and anticipate it. And that's really working for me. It really is helping me enjoy going to bed. It's giving me better quality of sleep and that is how I kind of realized that I was using coffee as a crutch just to get through my day and now I rely on sleep just so much better. Overall.

Emily Feist: 8:01

Let's be honest, internal calm is a long road. Internal calm is a long road. Borrowed calm feels easier at first. Borrowed calm is kind of like the fast lane, and when your brain is screaming make it stop, the last thing you want to do is journal about it. But the fast lane never teaches your body how to drive. It just reroutes you until that stress comes back again. And it does come back again. So we stay on that hamster wheel of stress and then cope and then numbing it, and then we repeat that cycle and

Emily Feist: 8:39

it goes on and on. But you deserve more than that. You deserve a relationship with your body to where you

Emily Feist: 8:46

feel safe, grounded and capable"It and that starts with teaching yourself how to calm down, not through shame or even willpower, but through connection. We want you to connect to your body, to realize what works for you and what doesn't, and then tweak it through your day so that you can have Vagus. more

Emily Feist: 9:11

good

Emily Feist: 9:12

days than rough days and you can learn how to calm yourself down.

Emily Feist: 9:17

If no one's ever taught you how to soothe your nervous system from the inside out, that's not your fault. We were sold comfort in a mug, peace in a pill, calm at a checkout cart. But now now you get to reclaim it because your nervous system isn't broken. It's just been waiting for you to show it another way. So let's recap Borrowed calm feels fast, but it fades. Earned calm feels slow, but it sticks, and every time you use breath, pause or a moment of reflection, you're building something that can't be taken away. Thank you for spending part of your day with me. Remember to soothe your nervous system and reclaim who you are. Thank you for listening to. It Starts at Vegas. New episodes are released every Tuesday. If you liked this episode, go ahead and give it a subscribe button so that you get notifications and don't miss out on what's coming up next, and I truly appreciate it. Until next time. Remember wellness starts at Vagus.