153 ~ Reaching for Relief in an Overstimulated World

Your nervous system is not failing you. It is doing what it was designed to do: search for relief, steadiness, and homeostasis, even if the tools you reach for are messy. We unpack nervous system regulation as the everyday attempt to change how we feel and why “I just need to feel different” drives everything from scrolling and snacking to overworking and isolating.

We get practical and honest about what dysregulation can look like: anxiety, irritability, people pleasing, controlling, numbing, overthinking, and especially avoidance. Then we offer a simple question you can use right away: is this helping me return to my life, or helping me avoid my life? That one filter creates more agency without turning self-care into a rigid checklist or a performance of calm. Regulation is not about becoming a monk. It is about increasing your capacity to be present for your real life.

We also talk about modern stressors that hijack the body, especially information overload and violent imagery on social media and the news. Your mind may know something is happening across the world, but your body can experience it as danger in your bedroom. That is why boundaries matter: no scrolling before bed, curating your feed, and practicing self-parenting with what you consume. We share resets that actually work, including sleep, naps, walking, nature, Yoga Nidra, and making space for what you love so you feel nourished instead of depleted.

If you want a grounded, human approach to emotional regulation, attention management, and building a life led by desire, then focus on agency, boundaries, and the questions that cut through the noise: Does this help me return to my life or avoid it.  

Episode Nuggets:

• regulation as an attempt to shift state, conscious or unconscious  
• common signs of dysregulation like anxiety, irritability, people pleasing, numbing, overthinking, and avoidance  
• the return-to-life question as a practical guide for choices  
• sleep, naps, walking, nature, Yoga Nidra, and creativity as regulation resources  
• why constant information and violent imagery can make the body feel unsafe  
• self-parenting through boundaries with social media, news, and nighttime scrolling  
• choosing inputs on purpose, including music, TV, and what runs in the background  
• attention as a resource, including turning the phone off to stop feeling pulled in many directions  
• building capacity to be present so we can meet life with more choice  

Transcript

Desire, Responsibility, And The Hosts

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

On the Desire is Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked: being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, family, friends, listeners. Thank you so much for joining Brenda and I. Here we are in another episode recording for you.

Regulation As State Change

SPEAKER_01 1:35

This podcast is going to be about regulation, nervous system regulation. And I'm going to talk about it first from a different perspective, which is basically when we're regulating, if we're conscious or unconscious, we're just trying to change how we feel. We don't like it, whatever that it is, and we want to feel differently. So maybe we feel not motivated and we want to get motivated. Maybe we feel not disciplined and we want to be disciplined. Maybe we want a different perspective, like a perspective change about something. We want to see things, something different, feel something, like feel differently about something. And we go about it in strange ways. You know, like sometimes we grab food to feel calmer. Sometimes we grab treats for a dopamine hit. Sometimes we grab alcohol. Sometimes we participate in shopping therapy. Sometimes we exercise a lot. Sometimes we scroll. Sometimes we talk a lot to someone, or sometimes we even isolate. And so when we talk about this, it's not about looking at it what's the right way to regulate regulate or what's the wrong way to do it. Sometimes we dance, go to yoga, like move our body, screen. It's less like, do I regulate? You are most definitely regulating. You are a human being who is the body's always looking for homeostasis, like you do regulate. It's more of how do I do that? Like when I when we become dysregulated, it could look like anxiety, irritability, people pleasing, controlling, numbing,

Escaping Versus Returning To Life

SPEAKER_01 3:30

overthinking, maybe avoiding something. And avoiding something is a great indicator that we're off. Because avoidance is I don't want to be with my life right now. So usually what feels like, or sometimes when we're leaning towards regulating, we might actually be escaping. And so a great question to have in this uh location is am I helping myself return to my life or will this help me avoid my life? Will this have me like not look? And sometimes we need to not look. And sometimes we need to look. And there's like a look

Sleep, Walks, And Gentle Resets

SPEAKER_01 4:20

little space in between, looking, not looking. Like that bridge could look like some things that I mentioned before: movement, dancing, breathing. One of my favorite ways to regulate is sleep. If I'm like going through a really hard time, I'm like, you know what? I just need to take a nap. Or I just need to go to bed, and tomorrow's another day. Or maybe I go for a walk. Okay, I'm just gonna go for a walk for 15, 20 minutes. And I'm after 20 minutes, usually I can go to 30 or 45. It gives me such a sense of like a I'm able to really change my state. Air quotes, I'm able to regulate. Like I'm out in nature, I'm moving. Maybe I see people, I'm in community, nature. If I'm being still and not listening to anything, I might actually be touching on like creativity. And I'm not giving to the this to you like a checklist. It's just ideas, like it's just for a resource, right? Because the goal isn't for us to be super zen about something or like to be calm. It's just yeah, we're not, we're not becoming Buddhas out there, right? Or monks. Just for us to know, oh, this is about increasing our ability to experience life and be present to what is happening in our lives. And we could ask ourselves like what's overwhelming us, like what would be possible if I could stay present? But before we even do that, it it's am I present now? Right? Like, am I present and do I want to work on being present? Or am I still at the location that I need to escape a little? And you know, sometimes we need to escape a little.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Totally, like total permission for escape. Like you wanna go on your phone or whatever to escape, you want to go to the Bahamas to escape your life, go for it, right? But you're not gonna move there. I mean, maybe you are, right? But full permission, people, for just a little escapism here and there. That's not bad. It it isn't. It's just like when we're living our lives dysregulated, that's when it's a problem. It's a problem because we're not happy. Like people are unhappy, people are unwell, people are disconnected, they're violent. There's a lot of violence in our world today. People are not regulated.

Social Media Boundaries For Safety

SPEAKER_00 6:45

I mean, it's easy to become dysregulated in today's world. You know, when you think about, I I've had to work with myself a lot in the last few years on social media and what I consume in short form video, especially with like wars happening and a lot of violent images coming through my screen. And uh our bodies are not meant to see all of the images in video and the devastation that we're seeing. Our bodies don't understand that this is across the world. When it's on your phone in your bedroom, your body doesn't know the difference. Your mind does, but your body is having an experience of feeling unsafe or feeling upset or whatever you're feeling. So that was something that really hit me was how our body interprets that information. And so I've had to really have some good boundaries with myself on what I watch and what I don't, especially at night, because there's been a lot of instances in the last few years where I've just gotten downright dysregulated, triggered around images that I've seen on social media. And I had to have some good boundaries and parenting of myself to say, okay, we're not scrolling before bed. We're not scrolling in the morning. And it takes a lot of commitment to yourself and discipline with yourself, like parenting of yourself. This is something that we need to do for ourselves. Parent ourselves. So it's easy to become dysregulated in today's world. That is super easy. There's such an influx of information. Our bodies are not physiologically designed to have the amount of information that we have. Like every bomb, every war, every starving child, every crime that's committed, or what your middle school best friend had for dinner last night. Like bodies are not meant to have all of this information. It's true. And so we really need to work harder than ever to be regulated. And, you know, maybe in maybe that's not true. I don't know. I haven't lived in any other time. I haven't lived in a time where I was, you know, afraid of tigers? Tigers coming into my cave, kind of thing. But I think you really hit a really important point, which is how do we get regulated? Sleep is way underrated. That is a great reset of your nervous system. A nap, your your baby is cranky. What do we do? We put them to sleep. It's rest time, honey. You know, do that for yourself. Put yourself to rest. I've been doing so many Yoga Nidra lately. I'm so into that. Oh my God. I think it's like a quiet movement because everyone that I tell that I'm doing Yoga Nidra, they're like, oh my God, I love Yoga Nidra, including you. It's literally a nervous system regulator. It's amazing. So whatever it is that you're reaching for, do it. You know, the constant going and producing and chasing and driving your kids everywhere, being in your computer and tech and all whatever you're doing is great. But when you're overlooking, like I had a client once who was like, Oh, I just want to play the violin. I was like, Oh my God. And she had a hard time giving that to herself. Her and her favorite musical instrument was like, oh, it was so nourishing to her. So how do you create space for the things that you love? That's regulating.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

That's true. I love the story about your client and the violin. And I also love that you mentioned the middle school person when they're what they had for dinner. I'm like, I know what so many people eat. Like, like, was I really meant to know what everybody's eating? Was that meant to be part of my life?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

No, it was not.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

That I can regurgitate menus. I mean, sometimes it is cool because you I find a new restaurant or something like that. Like, I love those restaurant pages, but legit.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Wait, but did you ever see the funny meme about the grandmother in the future? Like us in the future, as a grandmother going, honey, let me show you the photos of what I ate on December of 19. Da-da-da-da-da. And she shows like all her food from the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

I haven't, but that's really funny. Oh my goodness. I um was a teenager when one of my roommates and I came home and she was like crying about something she saw on the news. And especially at that time, I was so numbed out to life for a gazillion different reasons, I'm sure many of which I've talked about on this podcast. And I just said to myself, oh, if the news causes this, like I don't want to watch it. It's so I've been very news averse for a long time. Just because I didn't understand the point, like Trump and I don't have dinner. He doesn't call me to ask me what I think. Miss Ocasio and I don't like share text messages. Like, I am not at the table of with people that are actually making decisions or immediately affecting policy. You should be.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

No, I mean, how much better would this world be? It would be. You'd be

Agency Over What You Consume

SPEAKER_00 12:40

like, what's reality?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

People. Thank you. I just mean I think the things that bother us should be proportionate to how we can actually impact them. So I don't spend that much time and attention on things that I cannot actually influence and be then, therefore, on a scale of one to 10, 10 bothered by something that I have zero on a scale of one to 10, zero ability to actually impact. Like it doesn't make sense. But if I'm impacted by something on a scale of one to 10 out of 10 and I'm dysregulated, well, I can actually change that. I can pause and be with myself. I can take myself from dysregulated to regulated. I can regulate how much input, how much consumption I have. I can look at how much of an influx of information I have or don't have. Like I can do that. I may not be able to really know if the world is any more dangerous today or more violent today than it was in the past, but I can decide what I'm willing to watch and not watch, what I'm willing to expose myself and not expose myself to. And in turn, I am directly contributing to what my body feels is safe, unsafe, upsetting or not upsetting. And part of today's conversation is am I regulated, am I dysregulated? And I think usually we're looking at it from the lens of this person triggered me, or this work environment is toxic, or this person is toxic. That's usually the way that we have this, we we speak about this. But what what you and I are pointing to today, Brenda, is what are we personally allowing in that's within our ability to allow in or not allow in? How are we curating our feeds? When are we allowing ourselves to see something, not see something? I don't know if you know this. I don't watch any horror movies at all. I'm sure horror movies are great. And I wish I could say the same about all the CSI and FBIs, but I don't. I love the CIA things. Like I love those kinds of movies, and they're probably not the best for my creation mechanism as a human being that creates their life. So I'm not saying that I have zero negative input, but there have to be some like we have to be able to limit them, I think. Like decide, okay, well, this is a yes, this is a no. Like this is regulating for me, this is not. Like it's probably not so regulating to eat out every single day.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

It's probably I've just been doing that in the last week. I've been eating out a lot. That was a choice. It was like a real deliberate choice in my nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

It is. But I am sure that you're not choosing McDonald's every day.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

No, no, no, I'm not.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Exactly. My point is we get to choose, like we're making a choice, and then within that choice, there's a bunch of choices.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

100%. And I think you're pointing to something that's so important that this is about responsibility to yourself. I don't think that people realize how much agency you have over your own life. You are allowed to make choices of what you want. People have the TV on all the time. People mindlessly watch the news because they think, oh, you watch the news. I grew up watching the news. Peter Jennings, Channel 7, ABC News. I grew up on that shit. News today is not what it was then. And I don't watch, I don't know. Was it? I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I didn't watch it then. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

I definitely watched it. I think that it's gotten way trashier. It's so trashy now. I think there was a level of respect in the world, in politics, in in the media that doesn't exist in all the news arenas today.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, but then those kinds of things have me question was it always trashy and we just didn't know? My assumption.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

I don't think so. You don't

Media, Respect, And Dehumanizing Conflict

SPEAKER_00 16:55

think so? No, I don't. Okay, here's the story. So FDR, president, FDR, he had polio. He was in a wheelchair. Do you know that when he was president, nobody knew he was in a wheelchair? Because the media respected him as the leader so much that they didn't show him or talk about him in a wheelchair. Because that was the belief system at the time, right? We might look at it differently now. But the point is nobody knew because they respected the president. There was like a level of respect that I don't think that level of respect exists these days.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

I mean, it could be argued that back then there was also a level of secrecy.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

But I'm not saying that today there isn't secrecy. Totally. It's secrecy in a different form. Yes. But nobody's allowed privacy anymore. Nobody, nobody has privacy, right? Because being in a wheelchair had nothing to do with him being a leader back then. But people didn't necessarily feel that way back then, right? So maybe it was a secret for whatever the belief system was at the time. But just for the point of that we're talking about, that the media respected this man and respected his privacy in that way. Maybe it was secret, maybe it was dishonest. I don't know. But I think that's kind of cool story.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

What's coming up for me, I think that the way people argue or deliver news or perspectives now could be called disrespectful, how you're saying. It could also be called very dehumanizing. I think I see people call each other names and be very derogatory towards each other. And you don't necessarily have to fight that way or argue that way or have or disagree in that form. But likewise, it could be shared, you know, you don't have to bring a gun to a knife fight. And it just feels like most people bring guns to all their knife fights now. Ultimately, circling back to regulation here, it's what are we allowing ourselves to consume? Like Brenda said, where do we have more agency where we don't really have to expose ourselves to certain things that are really not necessary? Can we be more mindful about the things that we can control? Because you can't affect or control somebody else's actions and how that influences you or triggers you. But you can put your attention on what you're allowing yourself to consume intentionally and unintentionally. When I say unintentionally, I mean you're doing the dishes and you're listening to music. And maybe that music is derogatory. Or you're doing the dishes and you're listening to the news, and that news is talking about like all the horrendous things that occurred.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Or you're at somebody's house and they have the news on. Well, my mother always has the news on, and I always ask her to change it. Hmm. You know, I'm like, can we turn this off? This is really upsetting to me. Because I don't watch the news. I find it awful and upsetting, and I don't watch the news at all. And she has it like on, running all the time. But, you know, people have choice. You know, Eckert Tolle in the book A New Earth, he used to say, somebody say says they want peace. I want peace. And when they're meditating, the phone rings and they answer the phone. They're like, see, I don't have any peace. And he's like, Well, you didn't want peace. You wanted to answer the phone. You know, it's like we get to choose and create our experience. And I don't think that people realize how much um agency they have to curate their life. You don't have to answer the phone. You don't have to put the news on. You don't have to listen to the news because your family always listens to the news. You can ask yourself, is this true? Do I have to do this? And you can choose. And like you said, I don't remember

Phone Boundaries And Becoming Resourced

SPEAKER_00 21:05

if it was this episode or another one. We were talking about phones where you put your phone on airplane mode or you turn it off when you're on a walk sometimes to just have that experience of being in the it being present in the world.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yes, I think one of the other reasons why I started doing that is that I started to feel not fully on a scale of one to ten, overwhelmed out of 10, but started to have the sensation in my body as if I'm being pulled in many directions. And the direction being like one direction is an email, the other direction is a text message, the other direction is a missed call, the other direction was, you know, a calendar notification. And I was like, wow, I just want to walk. And so can I turn this off? And then when I'm ready to be with it, I can. Just like if I were to meditate for 20, 25 minutes, I'm not meditating and pausing to answer an email or a text message, right? It's just me and me and curating more of those spaces and those moments for myself in my life so that I can be more resourced, so that I can then have more resources to regulate myself when dysregulation comes in. Because of course it's going to come in. I'm a human being and I am only responsible for my space, but there are other things that are happening in life that I need to respond to and be with. And there is nothing like perfection doesn't exist. But I get to be with how I curate that. And Brenda is obviously inviting all of you to see where your agency is. Where is your agency? Where are you regulating and feeling into what's within your capacity? Where can you ask yourself, like, am I avoiding my life or with what I'm doing, or can this help me return back to my life? Am I becoming even more resourced so that I can meet my life and have a really gorgeous and meaningful life, which I think is something that we all want. I can't imagine someone not wanting that for themselves. The question isn't do we want that? The question is, are we willing to do what it takes

Closing And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 23:20

to have it? Thank you so much for listening. Until next time. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast. Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.