When You Stop Bracing for Everything to go Wrong
How a regulated nervous system helps you survive hard things AND makes you available for all the goodness in life.
I was standing at the mic—all eyes on me—when I realized something had changed.
Not the audience. Not the circumstances. Me.
I was at my first poetry open mic, reading my own words out loud to a room full of strangers. Words I had lost for twenty years. Words I had found through a poetry book project I’d thrown myself into—a project I felt I had no place in. And now on a stage I didn’t belong on.
Who am I? I’m not a poet. I’m barely a blogger. I dove into something entirely new, entirely public, entirely for me—and, yet, I could still breathe.
As I stood on that stage at the local Busboys & Poets, I felt my heartbeat and my blood pulsing. I felt my breath. Slow. Steady. From the belly. All eyes and ears on me, and my nervous system actually believed I was safe.
I’m going to tell you how I got there, because it wasn’t always this way. I use to pour sweat, shake, and stutter when put at the front of the room. The difference that night didn’t come from public speaking classes, or a liquid courage, but rather an inner knowing that I could be safe in the unknown.
The version of me who would have never walked in the door
For most of my adult life, new experiences—especially public ones—activated something in me that looked like confidence from the outside and felt like controlled panic from the inside. I could perform—from coaching Crossfit, teaching yoga, and teaching workshops. I could push through. I could talk myself into commanding the room.
But on the inside, I was still bracing, scanning, and carrying the activated hum of a nervous system that had learned—over years of starting and stopping, quitting and pivoting—that new things were risky and visibility was dangerous. Therefore, the safest move was to stay in preparation mode where nothing could actually go wrong.
That night, I showed up to that open mic alone. My husband couldn’t come. No safety net, no familiar face, no one to smile at me from across the room when I got uncomfortable.
An older version of me would have sat in the corner, disengaged, and left the moment it was socially acceptable to do so. But that wasn’t happening this time.
Manifesting support
I found my people—two women who came to the event with intention also trying something new. We sat together, ate dinner together, talked the way you talk with people you somehow already know. The MC for the even thought we were childhood friends!
These incredible women cheered me on while I walked to the stage (I was called up first!), shared my story about backpacking the Appalachian trail with my dad, and read one of the poems inspired from my experience.
Anytime I felt like the fear was creeping up, taking over, I looked to them smailing at me, tapped into my breath, slowed down my speaking cadence, and co-regulated with the audience.
Is this how Rupi Kaur feels?
Because a braced nervous system doesn’t let flow happen. When you’re in survival mode—scanning for threat, managing the perceptions of others, performing “I’m fine, everything’s fine”—you’re not available for connection. You’re too busy holding yourself together to let anyone in.
(keep reading, I share the poem I wrote, published, and read below)
Regulation isn’t all anxiety management. It’s about expanding what you can receive.
This is the part that doesn’t get talked about enough in nervous system work. We focus so much on reducing the bad—the panic, the shutdown, the spiraling—that we forget to talk about what opens up and becomes available when the threat response quiets down.
Spontaneous connection with strangers. The ability to move slowly through something new instead of rushing to get it over with. Speaking your own words out loud and feeling them land. Returning to an art—writing poetry— again after twenty years of silence because your body has the capacity to create, instead of constantly coping.
None of this would’ve been available if my nervous system was still bracing for impact. Putting my energy into what could go wrong. All of it became available when I expanded my capacity to hold more of the unknown.
That’s what you’re actually building when you do this work. Not just less anxiety or stress. A bigger life.
A regulated nervous system doesn't just help you survive hard things. It makes you available for good ones. The connection you've been craving, the creative work you've been circling, the version of yourself you keep glimpsing and losing—none of it requires more preparation. It requires less bracing.
If you recognize yourself in my story—if you’ve started the same goal so many times you’re embarrassed to say you’re trying again, if you live most comfortably in research and planning mode and anything-but-doing mode, if you’ve made real progress before and then silently dismantled it right before the good part—I built something for you.
ALL IN is a small group program for twelve women who are done wondering what’s wrong with them and ready to actually tend to the root of their restart cycle. We work at the level of the nervous system—not strategy, motivation, or another framework to follow and abandon. The body. The patterns. The capacity to stay.
→ Learn more about ALL IN here
From 100 Poems & Possibilities for Healing: Volume 3—
“Seeker”
I looked through the telescope
searching for stars beyond reach
yet
all I could see was a single eye
of a woman staring back at me
she
who syncs seamlessly with the moon
following her sacral ebb and flow
trust
her cyclical dance brimming with life
body gyrating from her head to her toes
speak
her throat lets out a wild scream
beneath the noise, she recalls a familiar song
remember
her breathing unlocks a mysterious door
to a truth that’s lived inside her all along
awaken
fourteen generations of grandmother teachings
forgotten recipes, song, and ceremony
listen
her ancestors whisper, beloved child
the galaxies exist in your blood
notice
her every breath is a constellation
stars are birthed, extinguished, then rebud
return
she crawls from the womb of creation
nursing from her deep well of pain
water
wildflowers who forgot how to bloom
and gather daughters to call in the rain
heal
with siren’s hymn they resew torn hearts
weaving in echoes of elders from above
see
her eye was not a mirror but an open doorway
to a rhythm rooted in sacred love
By Melissa T. Maxwell