I know I’m not the only one who has lamented having a small nervous system capacity… I know because it’s a recurrent lament.

What I’m referring to is that when one does enough work to realize that they have been living in nervous system overwhelm, or dysregulation, freeze, or fight/flight, the next step is to find where one’s parameters are. How much can you activate without going over the proverbial top (psst, I almost guarantee it’s before you think it is)? How much can you settle without either freezing or reactivating? Then the thing to learn to do is to stay within those boundaries as much as possible.

For most of us, after spending some time there within our capacity, we find that we can’t do anywhere near as much as we used to. That can be literal—I truly can’t work more than about 17 hours a week!

So we see it as a problem.

Also, we can’t grow our capacity by staying outside of it. It can only expand by staying inside one’s capacity, and slowly, assiduously nudging the edges in both directions.

This is the number one reason I work with people long-term. Sure, of course, most of us who have decreased capacity are in that state because of a rather large and old trauma load, and we work on that in every session (whether it seems like it or not). But if we’ve spent a long time outside our capacity, it can take care and competent support to find, shrink to stay within, and grow those edges.

First, I will mention that having too small a nervous system capacity is a made-up problem, ableism at its finest. Just as differently abled humans are persecuted and shamed, we learn to shame ourselves because we cannot handle as much activation or settling as we think we should.  It’s also “made-up” because our society/culture/way of existing is overwhelming. It forces us outside our zone of confidence, or window of tolerance, or capacity, early and keeps us there (if possible) for the rest of our lives. When we are in a dysregulated state of fight/flight/freeze, we are easy to manipulate—into buying things, spending more time on screens, being malleable, voting a certain way, and ignoring human rights violations.

There’s something else here, though.

When we work within our nervous system capacity, we are more often “okay” than not. This is a big deal for scientific reasons related to the nervous system. It means that we can do things well when we aren’t doing them from a place of activation or freeze.  It also means we can think for ourselves…

I struggled to articulate this one today. It’s important, though, so I’m going to try.

Doing a lot of things badly when we are constantly outside our capacity, even if it’s what the world expects of us, is stressful and horrible in and of itself.

But when we live (mostly) within our personal nervous system capacity, we may not do as much, but it’ll be better, and even when it’s not, we don’t get stressed. We are present, okay.

Now that I have had the personal embodied experience of both, I’ve always come to the conclusion that I’ll take feeling okay (or, gasp!, good) over feeling badly or stressed any day. Every day. So if I’m doing less, it means I am actually aware of what I’m doing. I can be present for it instead of struggling through it, flying through it, or feeling like a mess!

Last week, I talked a little about the pain of having a subjectively small nervous system capacity.

I say “subjectively” because we tend to hold ourselves to some ridiculous ideal of ability and capacity. For the vast majority of us, the only way to reach our society’s and culture’s benchmarks is to spend all our time in overwhelm or a functional freeze.

It’s like the size 00 that we all see as the ideal. It’s just not possible to do it and be healthy.

It is a struggle to come to terms with our capacity, and we can’t do what we are socialized to think we “should” be able to do/handle. Being around others is one of the best ways to realize that we are normal in our decreased zone of confidence.

Not just any others, of course. But those who are either learning their own capacity or existing within their zone of confidence. This is where being part of a group can be helpful. I began to see that I was not aberrant during the Somatic Experiencing training. It’s a venue where the point is to become activated and help you learn to deal with it (in yourself and others).

The training has daily demonstrations of the techniques for fellow students.

Watching and participating in those demos hammers home the fact that we are all individuals, and even though we can seem to have it all together, sometimes we don’t.

But you don’t need training to learn this on an embodied level.

One of the most essential reasons I run groups is to help you see that you aren’t strange or deficient. I don’t do demonstrations because I’m not teaching techniques to practitioners. I’m assisting each participant in learning about and accepting their own nervous system.

A major part of that acceptance comes from seeing that they aren’t alone in their dysregulation around some things.

I switched to that language there and want to speak it a bit.

When we look at ourselves, we tend to see only that we can’t handle as much as we thought we could—a blanket statement. We come to see ourselves as having a small nervous system capacity.

But blanket statements don’t work here. I bet there are things you have nearly unlimited capacity for. Think about it…

Then there are things that you can barely manage to look at or think about without becoming overwhelmed.

So my switch from talking about a small capacity to realizing we have reduced capacity in some areas helps us see ourselves as whole, functioning humans, rather than making blanket statements. Again, putting yourself in a safe-enough space with others down for this work can be one of the best ways to understand that you aren’t abnormal. At all.

Just an individual in your makeup!