Nervous System Regulation Isn’t Always Comfortable (Stop Waiting for It to Be)

Ever since I can remember, I thought safety meant feeling calm. 

I grew up believing that if nothing felt overwhelming, then everything was fine. No anxiety? Great. No strong emotional reaction? Perfect. That must mean I was safe, regulated, and on the right track.

For years, that belief shaped my decisions. I stayed in jobs that didn’t challenge me because they felt familiar. I avoided risks that could have led to growth because the discomfort was too loud. I didn’t speak up when I wanted to, didn’t pursue things I cared about, didn’t disrupt routines, even when they bored me. I told myself I was being wise, patient, and intentional.

But the truth is, I was just afraid. (holding grief and compassion for this damn hard realisation)

And I was confusing comfort with safety. 

The relationships I tolerated, the goals I never chased, the patterns I kept repeating. I thought I was creating a safe life when, in reality, I was recreating a familiar one. I had been using my body’s sense of calm as a compass, without realizing that the compass was trained by survival patterns, not actual well-being.

There’s a name for this: neuroception. It’s your nervous system’s way of scanning the environment and deciding what’s safe or dangerous before your conscious brain gets involved. It operates on pattern recognition, not logic. And if your past taught you that chaos is normal, or that shrinking yourself is what keeps you loved and accepted, then your nervous system will interpret stability as boring and expansion as a threat.

What I had to learn was this: your body isn’t always telling you what’s true, but what it’s practiced. What it knows and it’s rehearsed for years, even if those rehearsals came from pain, not choice.

The more I chased calm, the smaller I became. And eventually, I realised that some of the biggest opportunities in my life came disguised as nervous system alarms. The shaky hands before I said yes to something bold. The tight chest before I told my truth and risked people judging me. The racing heart before I made a move that didn’t make sense on paper, but felt aligned in my gut.

Those moments weren’t signs to retreat, but they were showing me I was stepping outside the limits of who I used to be. And I wasn’t unsafe, I was just unfamiliar with freedom.

Push the Edge, Don’t Break the System

This is why I always tell people: get outside your comfort zone, but don’t ignore your nervous system capacity while doing it.

There’s a huge difference between a stretch and a snap. You don’t grow muscle by staying comfortable. But you also don’t grow by maxing out on every lift without rest or form. If you tear something, you end up back at zero, or worse.

The same applies to personal change. Yes, your comfort zone is often just a holding pattern for fear. But your nervous system isn’t the enemy and if it’s overloaded, it won’t help you grow. It’ll shut you down. Safety is a biological need all people have. 

This is why most “just do it” advice is bs, pardon my french. We are not one dimensional beings. 

Our mind might be ready to leap, but our bodies still remember what happened the last time we felt exposed, unsupported, or out of control.

If you don’t learn to get your body on track too and support it when you do things that scare you, it will stop trusting you altogether.

“Get outside your comfort zone” is not a aapitalist plot (unless you hate your dreams)

Last week, someone told me that encouraging people to get outside their comfort zone is just another way capitalism tries to brainwash us.

That it’s a trick. A subtle way to convince people to do more, hustle harder, consume more, upgrade everything. And I get where they’re coming from.

There’s a version of “pushing limits” that does feel like a marketing strategy in disguise. One that tells you to feel ashamed for resting and turns your goals into constant productivity metrics. One that never lets you feel like enough.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not here to convince you to strive for more if you’re already living the life you want.

If your dream is to work a stable 9-5, pay your bills, and go on two holidays a year, honestly, I respect that. And if you genuinely feel fulfilled doing that? Please, don’t let some coach on the internet shame you into believing you’re “settling.”

But I’m not talking to those people. I’m talking to the ones who feel restless.The ones who lie in bed at night and wonder if they’re wasting their potential. The ones who daydream about doing something meaningful, but freeze every time it feels risky or new.

Those are my people. And for them, staying inside their comfort zone doesn’t feel like rest, but tastes like regret.

So no, I’m not here to feed the machine.

I want to help you stop gaslighting yourself out of the life you actually want.

The safety paradox

True safety is the result of not always feeling safe. Hang on, I’m about to explain.

We are evolutionarily wired for safety and survival. That means our brain prioritizes what’s predictable, not what’s meaningful. It flags anything unfamiliar as a potential threat, even if that “threat” is finally going after what you want.

The problem is that the more we obey this wiring without questioning it, the more we shrink. We start calling numbness peace. We label procrastination as intuition and convince ourselves that the stuckness is a sign to pause, when it’s actually a signal that we’ve outgrown something.

And this is the paradox: the things that make us feel uncomfortable in the short term, like change, expansion, visibility, or challenge, are often the things that lead to true emotional safety in the long run. The kind of safety that comes from knowing you can handle life, not hide from it.

You don’t create a regulated nervous system by avoiding everything that activates it, but by slowly expanding what it can hold, and here’s the key part: without going into shutdown. 

That’s how you build real safety. Not by staying small, but by stretching in ways your system can integrate.

The myth of comfort

If it feels good, it must be right. That’s what we’re taught, right? Follow what feels good. Trust your gut. If something feels “off,” it probably is. We turn discomfort into a red flag and comfort into a compass.

But is your nervous system a compass? Not really. It’s more like a memory bank that doesn’t point you toward your potential, but toward what’s worked before. Even if what “worked” kept you small, silent, or stuck.

So when you try to break a pattern—speak up, rest without guilt, launch something bold—your body might freak out. And you might say ‘This must be wrong, my body is alarmed.’

But because it’s actually new. A new way of behaving. And new doesn’t feel good right away.

This is how comfort becomes a trap. You start to believe that the discomfort of growth means you’re on the wrong path and fear is your intuition. ‘Hmm, this tension is a message to stop.’

But most of the time, it’s not. If you listen closely, it’s your nervous system asking, “Are we sure we’re safe here?”And your job is to answer this question honestly and gently.

I learned this the hard way.

There was a time I thought I was doing everything right, eating clean, meditating, journaling, planning. My routine was dialed in, my to-do list color-coded. On paper, I should’ve felt amazing.

But I didn’t. Every time I tried to expand, launch something new, raise my prices, step up my visibility, I’d feel it. That low-level panic. That sense of being “off.” My body wasn’t on board.

So I backed off. Again. And again.

What was happening was my body didn’t feel safe doing the very things that would create the life I wanted. And I thought, if the path to what I wanted made me freeze… how was I supposed to move forward?

It took me months to realize I was dysregulated, but I didn’t need to stop, just support myself more.

So I stopped asking, “Why can’t I handle this?”And I started asking, “What would make this safer to try?”

I learned to approach my edges with care, not force. I built capacity the way you'd train a nervous rescue dog, gently, with repetition, presence, and zero punishment for fear. And just like that, things started shifting.

The resistance softened and I could stay with the fear longer. I could take a step without spiraling. I could feel discomfort and not abandon myself in it.

That’s when growth started to feel sustainable. Did I become fearless? Not possible (maybe if you have your amygdala removed or it stops working). 

I didn’t rely on comfort to feel like I was on the right path. (I turned this into a mantra by the way.)

The window of stretch

Just like there’s a sweet spot between too light and too heavy at the gym, there’s a range of challenges your system can tolerate without tipping into shutdown or self-sabotage. Too little stretch, and you stay stagnant. Too much, and you snap.

This is what I call the Window of Stretch.

The Window of Stretch is where real transformation happens. It’s where your discomfort is present, but not overwhelming. You can feel the fear without getting consumed by it. It’s not a comfort zone, but it’s not chaos either. It’s tension with capacity and challenge with support.

You don’t get stronger by lifting what’s easy but you also don’t walk into the gym and deadlift 200kg on day one. You start with what activates you, but doesn’t break you. 

Same with emotional capacity. Same with visibility. Same with putting yourself out there in a bigger way.

The mistake most people make is assuming they’re either “ready” or they’re not. They wait to feel calm, regulated, perfectly aligned. But you don’t wait for readiness. You build it.

And the tool for that?

It’s your Window of Stretch.

How to expand your window of stretch

If you constantly feel unsafe while growing, it’s not growth. It's a reliving old survival patterns. 

If every step forward feels like survival, your system won’t let you keep going. You’ll sabotage, stall, or numb out. You’re training your body to associate progress with pain.

Your goal here is to become trustable to yourself.

And that means learning how to stretch without slipping into panic. How to meet discomfort with regulation and how to build the life you want without betraying the body that has to live it.

Five ways I do this all the time:

1) Stretch Small, Not Wide

The best way to expand your Window of Stretch is to do it gently and gradually.

If you want to become more visible, don’t start with a live webinar to 200 people. Start by sending a voice note to a friend you trust. Or posting one honest paragraph online. Then do it again.

You want to make the stretch just uncomfortable enough to feel like growth, but not so overwhelming that your system hits the brakes.

Because if you go too far too fast, your body won’t integrate the experience. What it will do instead is armor up. And next time, it’ll resist even harder. You don’t need more armor, you’ve been holding on to that all your life.

To grow capacity, think reps, not revolutions.

2) Anchor Before You Stretch

Before you do the thing that activates you, make sure to ground yourself and build a resource that gives you strength. 

That might be a breath pattern, a mantra, a song, or even a person you trust who reminds you who you are.

For example, the way I anchor every time I start filming a new video is by shaking my body and saying to myself ‘You are safe to be yourself and show the world your whole self.’ This puts me in the right state of mind and body to start talking in front of the camera. 

Stretching without anchoring is like lifting weights on a shaky floor. You might get through the rep, but your form will suffer. Your body won’t trust the process, and you’ll hesitate to come back.

When you build a pre-stretch ritual that signals safety, the discomfort becomes something you can meet without the need to escape. 

3) Don’t Confuse Regulation with Readiness

This is actually the main idea of this article. I’ve heard from many of my clients the false belief that I should always feel calm when I’m regulated. I’ve written this article to explain why that is not the case.

A regulated state sometimes means activation, aliveness, and a little edge, but you’re still with yourself. You don’t put the mask on. You don’t hide parts of yourself. You show up fully. 

This is where a lot of people get stuck. They think, “If I’m still anxious, I’m not ready.” But readiness doesn’t mean absence of fear. It means your system can stay present with the fear long enough to move.

You don’t need to be Zen to take action. What you need is to stay inside the window where your body can process what’s happening in real time.

That’s regulation. And it often shows up more like intensity than peace.

4) Track Safety, Not Progress

Most people track how far they’ve come based on outcomes. Followers. Clients. Revenue. External wins.

But if you’re expanding your Window of Stretch, your progress is internal. It’s nervous system-based. Did I stay present during the hard conversation? Did I notice the fear and still take one small step?

That’s the real metric.

The safer your body feels during stretching, the more likely you are to return to it again. Safety creates consistency. And consistency builds momentum.

If you keep stretching from fear, you’ll keep stopping from fear too. Please, write that down somewhere. 

5) Celebrate Capacity, Not Just Courage

We love celebrating the big bold move. The launch. The leap. The moment you “finally did it.”

But what about the moment you didn’t shut down? Or the time you paused instead of pushing? Or when you asked for support instead of pretending to be fine?

These don’t look like wins on the outside, but damn, they ARE THE FOUNDATION of every real transformation.

If you want to expand your Window of Stretch, you have to stop waiting for applause and start noticing what your system used to see as unsafe… but no longer does.

That’s capacity. That’s the work. Celebrate it.

Build a Life Your Body Can Stay With

Growth that betrays your body isn’t growth. It's self-abandonment in disguise.

You don’t need to force yourself to do scary things every day to prove you’re evolving. Yes, you need to get out of your comfort zone and deal with the discomfort of that to grow faster.

But the most important thing is to become the kind of person your nervous system can trust to lead the way. Calm when it counts, present when it matters, and able to stretch and come back to center.

That’s how you change sustainably and stop swinging between burnout and stagnation.

So if your body rejects what you want, don’t shame it. Don’t override it. And definitely don’t interpret the fear as a red light. Start smaller, ground deeper, and keep returning to the edge with gentleness.

This is my message for you: You’re not lazy and you’re not “resisting your potential.”

You’re just waiting for someone—you—to make safety part of the plan.