There’s No Such Thing as Calm

Well, not quite.

Of course, we can feel calm. We can have moments when our breathing slows, our muscles soften, and our thoughts feel quieter. But calm isn’t a fixed state that our nervous system reaches and then stays in.

We are constantly adjusting.

Responding, noticing, thinking, feeling.

Our nervous system is designed to respond to what is happening around us and within us. We might feel settled one moment and alert the next. A thought, a meeting, a difficult conversation, walking into a room full of people or simply remembering something we need to do can change how we feel.

This matters when it comes to anxiety, because somewhere along the way, calm can become the goal.

Trying to calm down can make us more anxious

When we feel anxious, we often want the feeling to stop.

So we might slow our breathing, try to relax, distract ourselves or tell ourselves to calm down. There is nothing wrong with any of these things. They can be genuinely helpful.

The difficulty comes when we start using calm as evidence that we are coping.

If our heart is still beating quickly, our hands are still shaking, or we still have that uncomfortable feeling in our stomach, we can begin monitoring ourselves:

Why is my heart still racing?

Why isn’t the breathing working?

Why do I still feel anxious?

Now we are not only experiencing anxiety. We are becoming anxious about being anxious.

The absence of calm starts to feel like evidence that something is wrong.

Perhaps the goal isn’t calm

Perhaps a more useful goal is regulation.

Regulation does not mean feeling relaxed all the time. It means being able to experience changes in our emotional and physiological state without automatically believing that those changes need to disappear.

It might mean feeling nervous and still speaking.

Feeling your heart racing and still walking into the room.

Noticing your hands shaking and continuing with the presentation.

Feeling uncomfortable and recognising that discomfort does not necessarily mean danger.

This is an important distinction, particularly with performance anxiety and social anxiety. If we wait until we feel completely calm before doing something difficult, we can inadvertently teach ourselves that anxiety must disappear before we are safe to proceed.

But we can learn something different:

I don’t have to get rid of this feeling in order to carry on.

Calm is a feeling, not a requirement

There will be times when we feel calm, and those moments can be lovely.

But perhaps we don’t need to make calm the measure of whether we are doing well.

Our bodies are supposed to respond. Hearts beat faster. Adrenaline rises. Attention sharpens. Emotions move through us.

The aim isn’t necessarily to flatten those responses or achieve some permanently peaceful internal state.

Sometimes it is about increasing our capacity to experience what is already happening without becoming frightened by it.

To notice the racing heart without immediately trying to stop it.

To recognise anxiety without handing it control of what happens next.

To allow ourselves to be human rather than perfectly regulated.

Because sometimes one of the most powerful things we can learn is not:

I know how to make this feeling go away.

But:

I can feel this, and I can still be OK.