Do small things feel like big things?

Can a short text send you into a spiral?

Do you "lose" hours to rumination, scrolling, or shutdown?

You might be experiencing chronic nervous system dysregulation.

In this episode, I'm breaking down 5 clear signs your nervous system may be stuck in fight, flight, or freeze even if you're high-functioning and holding it all together on the outside.

There's a big difference between occasional stress and living in a constant stress response. When your nervous system is dysregulated, neutral feels threatening, small stressors feel catastrophic, and peace feels… temporary.

We're talking about:

• Why everything feels like a big deal

• What it means to "lose time" when triggered

• Why you can't let things go (even when you want to)

• How stress spills over and ruins your whole week

• Why your regulation tools feel fragile or short-lived

If you've ever thought:

• "Why do I overreact to small things?"

• "Why can't I stop ruminating?"

• "Why does everything feel overwhelming?"

• "Why do I feel stuck in fight or flight?"

This episode will help you understand what's actually happening inside your nervous system.

We also talk about the difference between trying to regulate your environment… and actually recalibrating your nervous system.

Because peace isn't something you achieve only when the entire world cooperates.

It's something you experience when your nervous system isn't on emergency duty 24/7.

If you're recognizing signs of chronic nervous system dysregulation in your own life, this is exactly the work we do inside Calm AF Life.

We don't just talk about tools.
We recalibrate your nervous system so peace becomes your baseline — not a temporary blip.

Join the interest list and learn how to regulate your nervous system on demand (without trying to manage everyone else's mood).

Because confidence, emotional stability, and peace live on the other side of a regulated nervous system.

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs to stop sending the hazmat team to every text message.

Other ways to get Calm AF:

Love Letters: Change takes consistency. If you'd love a gentle nudge each day to stay on track while you're creating new patterns, grab my Daily Love Letters

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

**THE AUDIO HAS BEEN UPDATED**

Your nervous system is like an emergency dispatcher who's been on duty for five years straight. She's stopped filtering real emergencies from imaginary ones and now she's just patching every trigger through as a massive, all hands on deck emergency.

And instead of doing the right thing and giving her some TRUE time off, you just keep giving her more energy drinks and telling her to take 5.

You aren't solving the problem, you're trying to fix the symptoms.

This is what chronic dysregulation does. It's not just creating anxiety and hypervigilance...it's seeping into every area of your body and life...affecting your sleep, your digestion, your happiness, your immune system, your relationships and your ability to level up.

There's a big difference between being a regulated person who sometimes slips into dysregulation and being a person who is chronically dysregulated. If you keep treating the symptoms you will stay chronically dysregulated.

Calm AF Life is reopening soon. You can sign up to get early bird information here.

Get the free 7 Daily Reminders love letters.

MORE WAYS TO WORK WITH ME:

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

Love Letters: Change takes consistency. If you'd love a gentle nudge each day to stay on track while you're creating new patterns, grab my Daily Love Letters

Get the Daily Reminders private podcast

How much time did you spend this week analyzing why you do the things you do?

Reading about attachment styles, scrolling Instagram therapists, listening to podcasts about nervous system regulation, journaling about why you can't stop overthinking?

Now—how much time did you spend actually not overthinking?

Yeah.

Here's the thing nobody tells you:

All that analysis? All that learning? All that trying to stop?

That's not the new pathway. That's the old one.

You're standing on the old road—the one with all the potholes—staring at the potholes, trying to understand the potholes, researching how potholes form.

And you think you're building a new road.

But you're not. You're just making the old road more familiar.

I recorded a whole episode about this because I keep seeing the smartest, most self-aware people (my people—energy managers like you) trying themselves into the GROUND.

Trying to stop overthinking.
Trying to set boundaries.
Trying to not be so hard on themselves.

The trying IS the problem.

In this week's episode, I explain:

• Why 80% of your time is spent hardwiring what you don't want (and you don't even realize it)
• The spray bottle metaphor that'll make you go "oh shit"
• What it actually looks like to get on the new pathway (real client story that'll probably make you cry a little)
• How to flip the ratio so you're spending 80% of your time being calm AF instead of trying to be

Calm AF Life: Regulated is coming soon. This is where you will shift the identity from knowing how to regulated to REGULATED.

In the meantime, get the Daily Reminders private podcast that you can listen to on repeat that will recalibrate your nervous system (not just add to your tool collection).

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

Love letters: You need daily reminders if you want to shift your identity. I've got you. All you have to do is open the email and read. Sign up for Daily Love Letters

7 Reminders Private Podcast

You know what to do.

You've read the books, listened to the podcasts, practiced the breathwork. You know your attachment style, you've done the inner child work, you can meditate when you remember to.

So why aren't you calm yet?

In this episode, I'm telling you the hard truth about why all those tools you've collected aren't working—and it's not because you haven't found the right one yet.

This episode will sting a little. But if you're exhausted from working so hard to feel inner peace and it never seems to stick, this is the wake-up call you need.

What You'll Learn:

• Why having all the anxiety tools doesn't make you regulated (just like cookbooks don't make you a chef)
• The real reason you're still anxious even though you know what to do
• The identity shift from "high-functioning anxious person" to "regulated person"
• Real examples of what this transformation looks like over time (from my Calm AF Life members)
• How to stop wasting time, money, and energy on tools that only work in crisis moments
• The difference between knowing how to regulate your nervous system and being regulated

Calm AF Life: Regulated is coming soon. This is where you will shift the identity from knowing how to regulated to REGULATED.

In the meantime, get the 7 Reminders private podcast that you can listen to on repeat that will recalibrate your nervous system (not just add to your tool collection).

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

Love letters: You need daily reminders if you want to shift your identity. I've got you. All you have to do is open the email and read. Sign up for Daily Love Letters

Change takes consistency. If you'd love a gentle nudge each day to stay on track while you're creating new patterns, grab my Daily Love Letters

In this episode, we're revisiting one of the most resonant topics here at Calm AF: The Energy Manager.

If you're the calm, capable one everyone relies on...you can read a room, smooth over tension, and keep everyone's emotions balanced with one hand behind your back, but YOU are slowly losing your light..this is for you.

We're gonna break down how being "fine" on the outside while managing everyone else's emotional temperature isn't emotional intelligence, it's a survival pattern. And it's exhausting. We talk about what it looks like and what actually changes when you stop energy managing...where you feel the microshift in the room and instead of running toward it, you sit there. You let it be uncomfortable. You let THEM be uncomfortable. And eventually, your body learns that the firehose won't kill you.

Over the next couple months, we're diving deep into Energy Manager recovery. Subscribe so you don't miss a single episode because this pattern doesn't just go away on its own (unless everyone in your life suddenly becomes perfectly chill forever, which... sure, Jan).

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

Love letters: You need daily reminders if you want to shift your identity. I've got you. All you have to do is open the email and read. Sign up for Daily Love Letters

I am nipping some unhelpful thinking in the bud in this episode. YOU ARE NOT BEHIND. Just because you haven't solidified a plan or taken major action the first two weeks of January doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.

January comes with these absurd and unrealistic expectations that we should already have our goals mapped out, habits in place, and our "new self" fully activated. But that's not how it works.

In episode 343, I'm sharing why this season is better suited for reflection and getting oriented than performance and how identity creates habits (not the other way around)

If you're already feeling behind, rushed, or disconnected from your goals this convo is for you.

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

From the outside, you look steady.

People trust you. You handle shit. You neverrrrr let them see you sweat.

Inside, though, your mind doesn't stop.

Your constantly replaying conversations and second guessing decisions that you've already spent forever trying to make.

And you think that, surely by now, you'd be past this level of doubt.

This episode is for high-functioning, high-achieving people who aren't lacking confidence or skill but are exhausted from the constant mental vigilance.

We're talking about:

• Why overthinking increases after success, not before

• How managing perception erodes self-trust

• Why calm isn't about relaxing

• What it really means when things suddenly feel harder again

Calibration call: This isn't ongoing coaching. It's a single, focused recalibration session designed to get you clear when you find yourself stuck. Learn more here.

Private coaching: I work privately with a small number of clients who are tired of losing time and energy to overthinking, second-guessing, and energy managing. This is a high-level engagement for people who are operating at a high level and want to stop feeling like it's fragile. Find details and complete application here.

Get the full Future Self Course for $26

As we close out 2025, this episode is an invitation to pause before you plan.

If the year felt beautiful—amazing.
And if it felt heavy, disorienting, or unfinished—you're not alone.

Instead of starting the new year with goals, strategies, or fixing yourself, this episode begins where real change actually starts: identity.

In this episode, I'm sharing Step One from my Future Self Course: Dream Big.

Not as a vision board exercise.
Not as wishful thinking.
And not as a plan.

But as a necessary first step in identity creation.

Inside this lesson, we explore:

• Why starting with how keeps you stuck in your old identity

• How "being realistic" often means shrinking your desires before you begin

• Why getting your hopes up is not irresponsible—it's clarifying

• How dreaming big gives direction before you ever need a strategy

This lesson is about permission.
Permission to want what you want.
Permission to imagine without editing.
Permission to let the next version of you come into focus.

This episode is one lesson from the full Future Self Course, and to celebrate 2026, you can get the entire experience for $26.

You'll receive:

• The complete Future Self course

• A private podcast version you can listen to anytime

• The accompanying workbook to integrate the work

Learn more and get instant access at calmAF.com.

Let this be the year you stop shrinking what you want—and start becoming who you already know you're here to be.