If you've ever had a thought or a background feeling of, I should be able to handle this by now, but in so many different ways, your body keeps saying no. Maybe it's anxiety running through your body. Maybe it's this feeling of like heaviness. Maybe you're feeling unwell. This episode is for you. We're gonna be talking about nervous system capacity.

Essentially how much your system can kind of hold before it goes into anxiety or shut down, or that flat really exhausted. I can push through, but actually inside I'm not, okay. So many people who. Well, you, if you want your work to take less energy than it currently does, it might be a sign that you're functioning at the edge of your capacity.

And so it can be really helpful to learn more about nervous system capacity because that means that you have a little bit more control over it and you're able to free up more energy for the things that matter most. For some of us being at capacity, it looks like getting through the day, ticking all the boxes, but by the evening you're completely drained and you don't have enough energy for your family, or you tell yourself that you should work less or rest more, but then when you do rest, it doesn't really fill you up and restore you like it used to.

Maybe your energy is just really unevenly spread, so you've got a couple of short bursts out there, but then you're depleted for two days and need to lay on the couch. Maybe it's more of this feeling like, I've gotta keep going. I feel like I'm chained to my desk. I'm always on urge I edge. It feels like everything is urgent, but it's not.

In all of these cases, you can increase the capacity of energy available inside of your mind and body by removing what drains you and then strengthening what supports you. And we're covering the eight domains of that inside of this podcast. This podcast is actually an excerpt of a training that I have inside of a group program that I've been running.

If you are curious about what it would look like to gather, um, group support or um. Learn more about this. Really, the five week course just goes really deeply inside of this and we, we do cover capacity, we cover sensitivity to capacity, and we cover, we create this somatic clarity, um, kind of audit of your energy that you can do.

Over and over and over and over in different phases of your life so that you always know how to create more energy for the things that you want and reduce burnout, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Or you're always welcome to inquire about one-on-one work. Those links are down below, but let's get into the training.

I'll see you soon. Actually, I, I guess I'll see you soon, but past me will be speaking to you in the training now. Okay, bye.

  📍 Welcome to Sustainable Success. If you are capable, thoughtful, and you care about your work, but by the end of the day you feel like it's taken too much energy, more than it should have, then you are in the right place. My name is Sheridan. I am a somatic trauma therapist and yoga therapist with a background and a specialization in behavioral psychology and how we relate with work, money and burnout.

My past experience has been working with individuals with Complex PTHD, neurodivergence and OCD, and this podcast explores why work can feel draining, uh, and how our bodies adapt to pressure and responsibility. And then what are the practical things we can do in our day-to-day lives without burning everything into the ground to bring back a bit more energy, a bit more agency, and a bit more joy.

We are not gonna talk about how to change your mindset or how to heal everything until the world is perfect again, or I don't know how to optimize your life to get there and be productive. We're gonna take an experimental approach with curiosity and hopefully a little bit of fun along the way.

 I have two things I've seen on the internet. Lots of people talking about like how, like it's about your nervous system, capacity to experience money or wealth or whatever. And I think for me that was actually really frustrating to see. 'cause I think it may, it makes it look like it's this, uh, uh, like very like.

Intangible thing that like, it's like, it's like a, it's like a muscle, right? Like, it's like a, there's like a, it's like a vessel of some sort, and I think it's helpful to think about it in that way. But the problem that I've had with a lot of the internet and the way that people have presented this is that it comes off super intangible and practical and it, for me, it's felt like it's been.

Kind of like seen as like you just meditate and that's what increases your capacity. Am I alone? I don't know. I mean, you've kind of felt off. Heard this. Um, and a couple of years ago I downloaded like a meditation about like increasing your capacity to have high income. And it was that, it was just like this meditation.

And I was like, well, that's kind of cool. That's cool. I like that. But like practically like in my life. What does that actually mean? What does that look like? Um, because then I've noticed that as I've done things like moving across the country, um, having more clients, having different types of clients, uh, studying, um, bringing in.

More people, like more relationships, more friendships into my life, uh, wanting to create, writing a book, watching a book. All of these things have been things that have kind of stretched me, and I've been doing them in other places that have also stretched me. And so it kind of got me thinking like, okay, cool.

I, I notice that I wanna do these things. These are the ways that I've naturally decided to increase my capacity. And then after that I was like, okay, cool. We can now do this little formula every time that we want something new in our life. So every time that you want something new in your life, probably you're gonna have to increase your capacity to receive it, which is really simple in that it means you don't have it.

So you need a place for it to kind of land. Does that make sense? Probably not. Maybe let's dive in. Let's see how you're, you're going to define it. Here's our little training nervous system capacity. Okay, so your nervous system capacity, it's not necessarily just how much you can hold, it's how much can you hold, how much can your life can occur, and you can be present, you can be flexible, you can be engaged.

Without being dissociated, without feeling overwhelmed, without being like really controlling and rigid and defensive. It's this bandwidth that you have to hold complexity. So two, two, true, two truths are they're 2, 2, 2 true things. Some people don't have capacity to believe that one thing is true and also the other thing is true at the same time or sensation.

Last week when I was speaking in front of a crowd, there was sensation in my body. And I've had to, and I've, I've, I think a lot of the awareness exercise that we do is just us learning to experience sensation, particularly if we tend to be a little bit more anxious. Um. A lot of the times, a lot of studies show that we feel that way and we get kind of panicky about it because we are more sensitive to the sensations inside of our body.

So in order for us to go into the world and, and feel like sometimes you can like feel that body-based fear inside the practice there is to feel the that sensation and remind yourself that's sensation I can experience sensation. This is true with people who have sex, who are trying to increase, like, better their sex life.

Okay? I can experience this sensation without, um, dissociating or without getting going into my tendencies, criticizing myself, um, getting rid of the other person, acting like I should act instead of how I truly want to act. So without becoming dysregulated. I wrote down here some of the, uh, you know, best and biggest teachers around nervous assisting capacity because this is how they would define it.

And some of them do not specifically define it. So I've kind of, that this is my definition of it, and you might have a different definition 'cause you might start thinking, okay, well what's capacity for me? But we've got things as like our ability to, uh, be in a sense of safety. Neuro reception of safety doesn't necessarily talk about like capacity, but it does talk about our ability to be more in our vagal system.

We've got Peter Levine who talks about your window of tolerance, which if you go all the way back to the trainings we've done, it's you or you've done them before, it's your ability, like the amount of arousal, stimulation that you can take from the inside, from the outside. I think that this is important and interesting because it's just like when you do not have a lot of capacity, when there's a lot going on, let's say your cup is full, like we say that, right?

Our cup is full. The smallest things can push you over the don the, what is the saying? The straw that broke the camels, the donkeys back, and so you guys are all doing things that are new to you. You're managing life in a different way. We wanna increase your capacity. Cool. So let's look at some of the science of it.

Uh, heart rate variability. So the, your body's ability to go from resting to aroused the heart, like slow heartbeat to a fast heartbeat and then back down is one way that we can. The capacity and function because there's all this amazing science that tells us that. That tells us that our nervous system is flexible.

I can do something that's stressful and hard and then I can relax afterwards and I can do so relatively quickly. So that tells us that we can emotionally regulate. That tells us that we can have flexible thinking. That is one of the greatest markers of resilience, and we're testing that like where everyone has rings and things telling us what, how HRV is.

And interestingly enough, compassion, one of the best ways to increase your HIV, um, meditation, deep breathing, something, these all increase your vagal tone. There's like funky things you can do. You can gargle. Struggling is a really weird thing. You can hum. You can talk, um, you can do deep trauma healing.

All of these things are really helpful as well. Um, but it's worth noting that all you have to do is be nice to yourself. Um, then we have capacity for change. We have capacity to experience life and be flexible to life, and then we have capacity to change. Your ability to adapt is your brain's natural ability to be shaped by its experiences, which means that we have the capacity to not be so overwhelmed by certain things that used to in the past.

Something that is really fun to think about is that introducing stress into our life in small ways, can you expand your capacity? So every time that you sit with that like fear in your body and you're like, okay, do this, and you just do a little bit more and then you come back in your kind to yourself, you now have a bigger capacity.

Um. But there's something important in that we're talking about. You've gotta come back to that base if you have, and, and that's, think about it as like a kid returning back to their mom at the beginning in the playground. The kid just wants to hang out with mom and it's like wrapped around her. Leg. He's like, and then he's like, okay, okay, I'm gonna go to the sand thing, just right there.

And he kind of goes out and he turns around and he looks at mom and he's like, you still here? And she's like, BA, I'm I, I got you baby. And she's like, okay. And so he goes at the sandbox and he plays for a little bit, and then he is like, it's too much. He's too far away from mom. He runs back and they have like a really nice moment.

Oh, okay. Yep. She's still here. We're safe. I'm safe. We're good. And the next time he goes and he's in the sandbox a little bit longer and he's like a little bit further away. Every single time he's increasing his capacity. So we are doing the same for you on a neuropsychological level. Okay. We're gonna do something a little bit.

It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. Ah, okay. And then we come back and I'm happy. And I'm safe and I'm doing the things that feel good to me.

One of the biggest parts of this is co-regulation. I was teaching this to somebody else and we were speaking about how, if you, if how incredibly important relationships are, it's co-regulating in, in a way that all of the practices in yourself, they cannot be so. When we have a secure social foundation, we have larger capacity to go out and do hard things.

When we know that we have a base that we can return to, that is ours, then we have that base inside of us, and then we have that base inside of one or many other people. This is not. Crazy to think about. We've all felt this, we've all spoken about the village. So what I hope that you're beginning to see here is that it's the ability to be dressed, do something hard, and then come back to base.

And that we're seeing this in the way that it's like mirrored in our self and also in our best relationships. 'cause our best relationships are not necessarily the ones that are stress free. They're the ones where we come back to each other.

Does anybody have any thoughts or questions before I move on to how to increase capacity now that we know what it is? Thoughts or questions or just like curiosities things that they're thinking about? Oh, okay, this is, this is what capacity is. Like, do you guys agree? Does this make sense? Does is Maybe there's something that I'm not seeing.

Cool. Cool. Love it. Great. All right. So how do we increase it? Because we want more of the good stuff. This is really simple. Um, I've divided this into two levers, right? So we've got

to increase your nervous system capacity. We have so many things that that decrease our capacity. I have a really difficult relationship where with lots of emotional triggers, I'm not gonna have a lot of emotional bandwidth for work tomorrow. So I can remove one of them, decrease one of them, and I'll have more capacity for the next thing, or I can strengthen in support.

Get a therapist, get a coach, do some education, spend some more time in nature, whatever. It's very simple. Whenever you want to do something new, you need to remove something that is depleting or out, and also strength something that it strengthens something that supports you. Let's look at the list. This is not a comprehensive list.

This is the beginning body. Increases capacity, good diet, sleep. Sleep is so incredibly important. We're gonna be speaking about that next week, next month sleep. Um, weightbearing activities are also incredibly good at increasing your capacity because, especially if you have a sensitive nervous system, because it increases, it puts stress on your body in a way that is not exerting yourself in an insane amount.

So it's like it's. The cardiovascular stress is not so big. Uh, usually when you're kind of lifting, you're kind of like going a little bit slower, so like weight lifting is so good for increasing your capacity to feel sensations, to do some, to know that you do something hard. There's also that like quite empowering element.

Um, I, I don't know, I used to be a year ago, but it's. Especially as women for our bones. It's so good to do some type of weight bearing activity. Um, but movement and stress. Stress, good stress. So like going in, going yourself in, um, cold water, not too cold, and please don't do it while you're on your period.

That's a different conversation. But like, even just like. It's just that feeling of like, oh, I can do something hard and I can be nice to myself. Somatic practices, trauma release, grounding, spending time on the earth, breath, work, all of this stuff, and balanced blood sugar, honestly, like eating good meals at a, at a certain time.

Um, yeah, increase, decreases capacity, caffeine, uh, 'cause it, it's not, you're not going in a balanced way. That being said, like. If you wanna have a coffee, cup of coffee, cup of coffee every day, like, great. I love coffee. That's good. Don't be so hard on yourself about it, but know that that might, um, decrease your capacity because of its effect on your sleep.

We'll leave it at that. Um, alcohol, nicotine, processed foods, they put your body in like a thousand things. I'm not a dietician, um, so I'm not gonna get elaborate on it, but. It's not good for you. Um, not sleeping over trainings like going too hard or not moving your body at all. Basic fundamental of our body.

Try to get them right, especially the sleep one. Then we have mind, right? So like maybe what increases you with self-reflection, journaling. I noticed brain dumps really help, like just get it all out on paper. Now I have more space in my mind and I can do a new thing. Um, mindfulness awareness, awareness.

Doing less. Like think about all the things that just make your mind feel real, feel really good. So maybe they're a little bit weird, maybe they're a little bit odd. Maybe you're like, oh, I don't know why I do that. It just like makes me feel like I have more space in my mind, or I can think clearer. Those things, um, decreases capacity, multitasking, um, self-criticism, rumination.

Uh, I'm not gonna read all of these 'cause you can read them and you can add to them, but a good question to ask yourself is, does this mental thing that I'm doing help me get to my goal? How does it make me feel? If it gives you an illusion of security and safety that it doesn't actually get you anywhere.

It might be. It's a high sign that it is depleting.

Soul stuff. Some people are not gonna love this, they're not gonna resonate with it. But you have that feeling, right? So like I think the one that's not written here that stands out to me based on the conversation I had recently was like spiritual doubt that is decreasing your capacity. When you were in a place where you feel like you can't trust the universe.

That's not a nice place to be. And that means that you don't have enough. You don't feel like you have strength or you know where you are. So I would look at that if you feel that way, or what makes you feel good? What are the spiritual things that are really important to you? Maybe it's self-reflection.

Maybe it's feeling like connected to community or the earth, or thinking about our future. I don't know. They're yours, but that helps. Um. I'll switch down to here because I think this is all very individualistic, right? Body, mind, soul, but we need to speak about society for capacity. We can't skip that conversation.

We've got. Like, what increases your capacity? I don't know. Like knowing that I can go to the hospital and I'll be safe, having clean water, having really good access to education, having trauma informed, uh, communities inside of me. Um, what, what decreases it over work culture? Um, like get all of these things right.

I don't need to say them to you, but I think what I wanna say is like, we need to recognize where you are starting from. So if you're experiencing something that decreases your capacity,

be mindful and aware that that means you're gonna have to call on other levers to compensate for that. So, yeah, I'll, I'll, Hmm. We're all white women in here, so there's like.

Something interesting about that because in some ways we have a lot of privileges and in other ways we don't. Um, and so I think it's helpful to notice where you do have that privilege and how you can lean into that

so that you can probably, hopefully do good. Um, but also notice where you don't have it. Notice what parts of the system and the culture that you are in don't feel good to you and be compassionate with yourself about how that affects you. The same for the Earth and your environment. How do you feel connected to your earth?

So do you feel good about it? Do you feel like the earth kind of like has your back? Do you have anxiety about that? Do you not have access to green spaces? Um. Where do you feel really good? What does, for me it's like there's a window here and I like to enjoy it and watch the rain that's accessible to me in the middle of the city.

That increases my capacity. Going for a walk does amazing things for your capacity. Um, and yours is gonna be so different once again. But my question for you is to start thinking what makes me feel like I can do more in the world and what makes me feel like heavy and like I can't. Community. Some people are more connectors than others.

Um, but essential loneliness, isolation is one of the hardest things in the world to experience on your body. And heartbreak actually decreases your heart rate variability more than many of the things that we know to occur.