Hello Reader,

Years ago I was attending a board meeting for the condo association where I live (I'm the secretary). We meet on a call for an hour once a month. This meeting was on Zoom and it went on for ninety minutes. There were two new members, including one who drives me bonkers in ways I can't quite name. I was the only one on camera. And I stayed on camera the whole 90 minutes… by myself… not because I wanted to, but because that's what I thought I needed to do to be "professional." Engaging. Supportive. Accessible. Better. I was trying to be enough. Trying to be good. Trying to have it all perfect as proof I was worthy - someone the new members could trust, lean on, turn to.

In hindsight, I realize all of it was just a performance.

By the end of the 90 minutes, I was a puddle. Spent, deflated, barely functional. Not because anything bad happened but because even my competence was curated.

And here's what that little performance cost me: The rest of the night was gone. Not just tired: derailed. I couldn't think clearly. Couldn't fix food. Couldn't take Connick (my dog) for a walk. I just sat there, staring at nothing, my nervous system in complete shutdown while my mind berated me for trying to be enough for a bunch of people who don't care and didn't need me to be "enough" in the first place.

I'd bypassed what was actually happening in my body during that meeting: the tightness, the heaviness, the mounting overwhelm, the sense of being a house of cards just one harsh exhale away from total collapse, because I believed I needed to appear capable. And the price for that was the next six hours of my life in a hole of autistic shutdown, and the sleepless night that followed as I replayed it all on an endless loop.

Maybe you know a similar feeling?

Does It Ever Feel Like Even Your Calm Is Performative?

Maybe you're the professional who wakes at 2am. No emergency… just that familiar tightness behind your sternum… something's wrong but you can't name it. So through the blue glow of your phone, you check your team chat and emails scanning for anything that could go sideways while you're not watching. During the day, you're crushing it. You seem unstoppable - confident presentations, strategic decisions, clean suit, quick wit. But your jaw stays clenched through every meeting, shoulders welded up near your ears, and by evening that familiar ache at your skull's base says your body's been threat-scanning for twelve straight hours.

Or perhaps you're the parent who loves your kids fiercely. And still, by 3pm, when she asks "Mom, can you..." for the fourteenth time, your whole body recoils. Just for a second. That full-body flinch you pray no one sees. You smile, say "Sure, sweetie," but underneath you're counting hours until bedtime. Not because you don't care but because the intensity of small humans has maxed out your system. Their noise feels like like sandpaper on your eardrums. The questions pelting like hail. The constant touching that makes your skin want to crawl off your bones. Your system begging for just one square foot of quiet. And when everyone's finally asleep, you lay on the couch holding your phone above you as you scroll for hours - trying to distract yourself from the incongruent experience of loving your kids more than anything, and the unbearable brutality of being a parent… until you finally nod off and drop your phone - on your face.

Maybe you're the one who meditates… sitting for forty minutes without moving. Perfect posture. Steady breath. The whole time, you're somewhere above your body, watching it breathe. Using the practice to empty yourself… to not feel. To rise above. To transcend. The whole time, there's a grinding knot in your solar plexus that you're breathing around instead of with. Using the practice to rise above it rather than turn toward it. You use meditation as the most sophisticated escape hatch you've ever mastered. And still, as always, like clockwork, it’s never more than a few minutes before that steadiness evaporates into the turbulence of real life again. It never lasts, and so you keep trying… maybe you’re still not doing it right, or long enough. Maybe 90 minutes would work better? Maybe doing a retreat in Costa Rica would help? It’s only $2,800.

You might be the entrepreneur who gets a third text today from a client asking a question you already answered. Twice. In writing. That hot flash starts in your chest, moves up your neck, skin prickling, jaw tightening. Your thumb hovers. You want to type "I ALREADY ANSWERED THIS. SCROLL UP." Instead: smiley emoji, perfectly pleasant rewrite. Then that exasperated exhale nobody hears, eyes rolling at the screen, imagining how satisfying it would be to throw your phone across the parking lot. (You don't. But damn, you want to.)

Maybe you're in a relationship, working hard to stay financially afloat. You're earning, hustling, managing… but barely keeping up. And it's not just the bills you struggle to cover or the school supplies you put on your card. It's what the constant juggling is costing you. You haven't touched your partner with real intimacy in weeks… just exhausted collapse into bed, bodies side by side but miles apart. No real conversation except logistics and food choices. You see the look in their eyes when you're physically there but somewhere else entirely, and it guts you. You used to laugh together. Used to have Saturday mornings that felt easy. Now every moment has this low-grade panic humming underneath: Did I pay that? Can we afford this? What if something breaks? What did I forget? And lately, your partner has that careful tone, like they're talking to someone breakable. You can't remember the last time you felt joy that wasn't immediately followed by guilt for not doing something “more productive.”

Do you see yourself reflected in one or two of those examples?

If so, take a brief pause. Make contact with what’s moving in you, having it named so plainly. It can be tender. Give yourself a moment to feel it gently.

This isn't your fault

I have to pause too, because there’s something I can’t gloss over. It’s not the exact point of this letter, but it lives beneath all of it.

If you relate to any of those examples, we need to name the truth: we didn’t set this pace - we’re just living within it.

Our culture… capitalism, colonialism, ableism, and more, was built on extraction: of labor, attention, productivity. It rewards those whose bodies and minds fit the system’s demands: the ones who can keep performing even while their hair is on fire. It calls that professionalism. Resilience. High performance. A wide window of tolerance. It’s how masculinity is usually measured.

So we adapt. We brace. We play the part. Not because we want to… but because we have to. We are ensnared within an abusive culture, and survival is the only option.

And if the culture itself is anchored in violence, isn’t it strange that the solution we’re offered is personal composure?

While the world keeps its foot on the gas, we’re told to breathe slower. To calm down.

This is why I don’t advocate for regulation. I advocate for attunement - through relationship.

Attunement isn’t about calming down when the house is ablaze. It’s about noticing the fire and remembering how to stay human as you find safety.

Now that the collective issue has been named, let's return to your experience.

The Pattern Your Body Already Knows

Your stories and experiences might be different than those I described earlier, but the threads are the same.

Somewhere along the way, your system learned that your real responses: shutdown, overwhelm, anger, anxiety, the need to disappear for days at a time - weren't safe. They would get you rejected, abandoned, seen as too much or not enough.

So you translated yourself. You smiled while your chest compressed like a vice. Said "I'm fine" while your body screamed. Performed the version that works for whoever's in front of you.

And you got good at it. So good you forgot where the performance ends and you begin.

Until your body reminds you… and it always reminds you... through the only language it has left: The insomnia at 3am, mind racing through tomorrow's catastrophes. Chronic pain and fatigue that doctors can’t make sense of. Mood swings that startle others, or such a lack of a mood everyone is always asking if you’re okay. Every sound inside your skull: the fridge drilling into your brain, someone chewing turning your stomach, your own heartbeat becoming a drumbeat you can't escape.

You tried box breathing and it made you more anxious. Meditation felt like you were trapped inside a box full of bees that you couldn’t escape. Journaling for you is just staring at blank page for an hour, then feeling like a failure for not even doing that right.

That's not failure. That's communication.

Your body has been speaking this language all along. You just haven’t been taught how to listen.

The Fix That Keeps You Stuck

Right now, if you’re like most, part of you is already reaching for the exit.

Not because this isn't true. But because it is.

That familiar itch rising within, “Okay yes, I see myself here, but it’s depressing… what do I DO about it? ”

The impulse to skip ahead to the fix, the technique, the five-step framework that'll make this stop hurting.

I get it. I know that itch intimately. It's the same system that kept me performing through that 90-minute Zoom call. The same one that has you scrolling at midnight instead of crying. The same one that translates "I'm fucking drowning" into "I'm fine, thanks for asking."

That urgency to fix it? That's not a character flaw. That's your nervous system trying to get you the fuck out of danger.

And right now - really feeling how hard this has been, how long you've been performing, how bone-tired you actually are - your system reads that as danger.

Because feeling it fully means admitting how much it's cost you. How much of your life you've spent braced. How lonely it's been to perform calm while drowning alone.

And that admission? Terrifying.

If you let yourself really feel it, you might fall apart. You might not be able to keep showing up the way everyone needs you to. The whole carefully constructed house of cards might collapse.

So your system does what it's always done: reaches for the escape hatch. The fix. The solution. The technique that'll let you skip the feeling and get back to surviving.

But here's what I need you to hear:

The regulation you're reaching for? It's not earned. It's remembered.

And it can't be remembered while you're still fighting what's here.

What Gets Revealed When You Stop Running

Here's what nobody tells you about stopping the survival fight:

The first thing you notice isn't relief.

It's how brutally exhausted you are.

All those years of holding it together, performing calm, translating yourself into something palatable… the bill comes due the moment you stop running. And it sucks!

You see how hard you've been working. How much energy you've burned just trying to appear okay. How much of your life has been performance instead of presence.

And that seeing? It's brutal. Tender and brutal and necessary.

Your chest might get heavy. Your throat might close. You might need to cry and yet can't, or you start crying and can't stop.

That's not breakdown. That's your body finally believing it's safe enough to tell the truth.

And underneath the exhaustion, underneath the grief of all those years spent fighting yourself...

There's something else.

The Relief of Being Found

When someone names your exact experience… not to fix it, not to explain it away, not to spiritually bypass it with "just breathe" bullshit, but just to name it…

The tension and bracing that comes from your nervous system starts to release and relax like an exhale.

Not the controlled exhale you've been performing. The real one. The one that drops your shoulders an inch and softens your jaw and makes your eyes water because fuck, someone finally sees it.

That moment when you realize you're not alone in this anymore? When you can stop explaining yourself because someone else just got it?

That is what safety actually feels like.

Not the absence of activation, but the presence of recognition.

It’s the moment your nervous system realizes, I’m not invisible anymore.

This is the work.

Not regulating harder. Not perfecting calm.

But learning to stay when you're found.

Your nervous system isn't a project to manage. It's a relationship to tend.

And that relationship? It starts with the one person who's been waiting to meet you all along...

You.

With kindness, Steve Mattus

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P.S.: Understanding how and why our nervous system works this way is jaw dropingly supportive… and we’ll start to get into that next week.

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If you are appreciating my work, there are two ways you can show support:

1. Send this to someone you care about. (If this was forwarded to you, sign up to receive your own Attunement Letter at https://actualinfinity.com/connect)
2. Reply and let me know what meant something to you. (I read every reply, although I can't always respond.)

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