When The One Who Regulates Everyone Needs To Be Held

It’s written for clients who are learning to listen to their nervous systems, and for therapists who quietly hold far more than is ever spoken aloud.

As a somatic therapist, I spend my days helping clients find and return to their window of resilience. I guide them back to steadiness, to safety in their bodies, to a place where they can feel without being overwhelmed. In doing so, I inevitably carry the emotional weight of their trauma with me, and I’ve had to learn how to tend to that weight with care.

Lately, though, the accumulation has felt heavier.

The intensity of this work and the intensity of the world seem to be colliding in a way that’s harder to metabolize. I notice that the tools I usually rely on aren’t restoring me as quickly, and there’s a kind of emotional residue that keeps building rather than releasing.

Yesterday, I heard a song that stopped me in my tracks. Something in it bypassed my training and went straight to my body. Not a message to forgive, but a sound of release, of something loosening without being resolved. It cut through the noise and reminded me that what I need right now is not another strategy, but a return to my own soul, a return to the deeper place beneath the work, beneath the quiet labor of steadiness.

The world feels loud, charged, and unrelenting right now. And I’m realizing that the way back to my own window of resilience is quieter, slower, and more intimate.

Less doing.

More being.

When “Self‑Care” Isn’t the Right Medicine

What I’m experiencing isn’t burnout in the conventional sense. I still love my work. I still feel connected to my clients. I’m not resentful, and I’m not depleted in the way people often describe.

What I am is tired of being the strong nervous system in the room.

Day after day, I sit with dysregulated nervous systems and offer co‑regulation. I track, contain, attune, steady. My body does an enormous amount of subtle work that isn’t visible: holding posture, tracking breath, softening tone, staying present, widening my own window so others can rest inside it.

At the same time, we’re all living inside a globally dysregulated nervous system. The news cycle, the pace of life, the collective anxiety in the air add another layer of charge that my system is quietly processing.

Normally, my practices help me discharge this. Usually, movement, rest, nature, or awareness restore flow.

But lately, they aren’t completing the cycle.

What I feel isn’t just stress. It’s residue.

A subtle accumulation in my jaw, my diaphragm, my eyes, my gut. A sense that something is being held that hasn’t fully released.

This isn’t a psychological signal. It’s a nervous system one.

And it’s pointing to something deeper than “better self‑care.”

The Difference Between a Therapist’s Window and a Human One

As therapists, many of us have trained ourselves to have a very wide window of resilience. We’ve built capacity to sit with intensity, to remain grounded in the presence of chaos, to be the steady one.

Many clients, caregivers, and highly attuned people develop this same widened capacity, not because they were trained, but because they had to.

But that wide, practiced window is not the same as our natural, human one.

The therapist window is strong, spacious, and resilient.

The human window is softer, narrower, more permeable. It is more easily moved by beauty, grief, slowness, and silence.

I realized I’ve been living mostly from the trained window.

And my system is asking to live from the human one again.

What I Don’t Need: More Strategies

When that song cut through everything, what it gave me wasn’t insight or technique. It bypassed the professional layers entirely and touched something older, quieter, and more personal.

It reminded me of who I am beneath the role of “regulator.”

I don’t need another tool.

I need experiences where no one is drawing on my steadiness.

Where nothing is being asked of me.

Where I am not holding anything for anyone.

Where I am allowed to be uncontained, unuseful, and unheld.

This is not therapeutic work.

This is soul work.

From Holding to Allowing

So much of what I do, professionally, is a form of holding:

holding space
holding safety
holding the frame
holding presence

Holding is muscular. It’s subtle but constant. It lives in the diaphragm, the jaw, the eyes, the spine.

What my body is asking for now is the opposite: allowing.

Allowing gravity to hold me.
Allowing the environment to set the rhythm.
Allowing myself to stop being the one who regulates.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Not self‑improvement. Not healing work. Not mindful practice. Just being a mammal again.

Letting Something Else Set the Rhythm

Sitting outside and letting ambient sound guide my attention. Watching trees move. Lying on the floor and letting gravity arrange my body. Walking with no destination and no insight to gain.

No‑One‑Needs‑Me Time

Periods of the day where no one is drawing on my nervous system. No messages. No conversations where I’m the thoughtful one. No tracking anyone else’s state.

Doing Something I’m Bad At

Painting badly. Singing badly. Gardening clumsily. Anything that removes me from competence and the posture of “doing it right,” and brings back play.

More Beauty Than Information

Music. Warm light. Textures. Good smells. Visually pleasing spaces. Beauty feeds the limbic system in a way information never can.

Being With Someone Who Regulates Me

Someone around whom I don’t have to make sense. Where I can be quiet, messy, or childlike without performing steadiness.

Letting My Body Be Unheld

Lying on my back, knees bent, jaw slack, exhaling through the mouth and feeling the back ribs widen. Not regulating. Just unholding.

A Completion Cue After Sessions

Washing my hands slowly. Looking out a window. Saying internally, “I release what is not mine to carry.” Giving my nervous system a clear signal that the holding is over.

Removing Meaning From Rest

If it feels useful, therapeutic, or growth‑oriented, it’s still the therapist self. Aimless time is the medicine.

This Is Not a Warning Sign

What I’m experiencing isn’t a sign that something is wrong.

It’s a very healthy nervous system recognizing that it’s been over‑functioning for a long time and gently asking for a deeper kind of rest.

If I ignore it, it becomes fatigue.
If I listen, it becomes renewal.

So I’m listening.

I’m letting myself come back to my own window of resilience, not as a therapist, but as a human being.

Less holding.
More allowing.

Less doing.
More being.

And, quietly, a return to my own soul.

If you’re a client, let this be permission to rest more deeply than you think you’re allowed. If you’re a therapist, let this be permission to be human again, without turning it into work.