Hello Reader,

Before you read any further, please take a breath with me.

Think of one moment when your body did that thing again… you know… the heat rising in your face, the pounding in your chest, the jaw tightening. The moment you swore you were fine, but your body clearly didn’t believe you.

Now imagine, just for a moment, that nothing about that reaction was wrong.

We’ve been taught to regulate our nervous systems: control, manage, fix. Breathe through it, calm it down, make it behave.

But what if the thing you’ve been trying to control isn’t misbehaving?

What if it's been trying to protect you this whole time, and you've been at war with your best ally?

When your nervous system becomes the enemy

A client of mine recently told me, “The most annoying thing is the heat that rises in my face and neck. It happens out of nowhere, like when I’m talking to my boss, or even when I’m just ordering coffee… and suddenly I’m burning up. People notice. I feel humiliated. I tell myself, stop it, get it together. But the harder I try to make it stop, the worse it gets.” [shared with permission]

She isn’t alone. Most of us have our own version of that heat. I know I do. And if you're neurodivergent, like me… you know… We're already running hotter, already one step from overwhelm on a good day. Every meltdown becomes evidence we're broken. Every shutdown becomes shame. We're not just managing our internal noise… we're managing everyone else's response to it too. The margin for error doesn't exist.

The body responds. Those responses keep showing up no matter how hard we try to make them behave.

You may try to scold it, shame it, control it, regulate it, hide it, etc. all because, on the surface, you believe it’s WRONG. It’s not supposed to happen. But deeper down, you’re terrified of what it represents: exposure, rejection, dysregulation, being “too much,” or a host of other scary things you can’t bear to face.

So you double down. You perform calm. You overfunction. You fight your biology for control.

It's like screaming at a smoke alarm instead of checking for fire.

Right? How many years now?

How many times have you white-knuckled through a meeting, a date, a conversation with your kid… all while your system screamed underneath?

How many nights have you collapsed, exhausted - not from the day itself, but from the effort of holding yourself together through it?

The fight is costing you more than the thing you're fighting.

Fighting the body doesn’t bring peace… it just deepens the war.

When you turn your nervous system into an enemy… something in your way… you create the very tension you’re trying to escape. The body keeps sounding the alarm, not because it’s broken, but because you keep ignoring what it’s trying to say.

So I asked my client, “If you could talk to that heat… you know, like, if you could sit down next to it and talk to it - not to get it to stop, but to just be with it - what would you say?”

She thought for a moment and whispered, “Please stop embarrassing me. I don’t know why you do this. Are you trying to warn me?”

I nodded. “That’s beautiful honesty. Let’s stay there a second. If this heat was trying to warn you… what would it be trying to warn you about? What might it be trying to protect you from?”

Her voice softened. “Maybe from being humiliated again. From being laughed at. From the sting of someone thinking I’m too much.”

When she imagined the heat as a part of her that was trying to protect her, something shifted. The anger softened. The shame melted into sadness.

She quietly continued, “Of course. The heat is trying to keep me safe not only from being hurt again, but from all this sadness that I haven’t dealt with.”

She paused, eyes filling. "I've been so mean to this part of me."

That was the moment the war changed…

because when you meet the body with curiosity instead of control, it doesn’t have to fight to be heard.

Instead of trying to regulate her nervous system, we spent some time holding her sacred sadness - together.

How the war transforms

Imagine my client the next day… as a colleague approaches with her report in hand: her cheeks burning, heart pounding, the old reflexes kicking in… Smile. Deflect. Hold it together.

But this time, she doesn’t.

She pauses.

She places a hand on her chest, not to calm herself, but to make contact. The warmth of her own palm against her sternum. The slight give of her breath beneath her fingers. Small, but significant.

She says quietly to herself, “Hey… I see you. You don’t have to hold this alone.”

The heat doesn’t just vanish. But something beneath it does.

The bracing. The self-blame. The battle.

In their place: presence.

Because what her nervous system needed was not regulation…it was relationship.

Not control, but companionship.

Try This Now:

Place your hand somewhere on your body that is holding tension. Don't try to change anything. Just make contact with this part of you that is bracing in an effort to support you. Say (out loud or silently):

'I'm here. I'm listening.'

That's it. That's the practice. (Don’t forget to actually do the listening - not in an effort to fix - in an effort to truly hear.)

What’s to come…

Once the war quiets, there’s a strange stillness.

At first, it doesn’t feel peaceful… it feels naked and bare.

Without the battle, you start to see what the armor was hiding: all the ways you’ve been performing safety just to survive.

That’s where we’re going next… into the tender space between pretending you’re okay and finally letting yourself be.

With kindness, Steve Mattus

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P.S.: There are three ways you can express support for my work today... please choose whichever feels most accessible - all are very meaningful and make a world of difference:

1. Forward this to a friend who might need it, or recommend the Attunement Letter at: https://actualinfinity.com/connect
2. Reply to this email and share a reflection, insight, or kindness. (I read every email. I'm able to reply only occasionally.)
3. Send juicy, positive energy that people who need this work will find me with ease.

Whichever you choose - thank you. 🙏🏽

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