What Our Nervous Systems Were Never Meant to Hold

Retreat as resistance, and the strength to pause

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

We’re swimming in more than we can process.

It’s not just the daily weight of inboxes or errands. It’s something quieter. Heavier: the invisible hum of collective unease. Fear of war. Climate collapse. The sense that everything is unraveling just slightly faster than we can metabolize. Our nervous systems weren’t built for this level of input — this much grief, urgency, contradiction. It’s not just the news—it’s the whole nervous system of our world, always pinging, always alert. There’s no off-switch.

And yet we keep trying.

Systems—ours, and the ones around us—were never built to hold so much. The volume of incoming stimulation, both intimate and global, is overwhelming. And it’s rewiring us. We scroll and react and absorb until we’re maxed out. And when we can’t metabolize it all, we freeze.

There’s this tension — maybe you feel it too — between the feeling that we should be able to do more, fix more, hold more… and the truth is that most days, we can barely keep up. As if we missed some secret class where everyone else got their superhero cape and we were left with just skin and breath and good intentions.

And then comes the self-judgment: Why am I not doing more? Shouldn’t I be able to handle this? To fix this? To show up?

I think that’s why we love superheroes and their fantastic powers. Not just for the spectacle, but because the heroes represent something we deeply crave: freedom from the limitations of the body. Super speed. Flight. Invincibility. These powers are metaphors for what many of us long for in real life — to feel safe, powerful, expressive, and whole within our skin.

We imagine that if we were stronger, more evolved, more like the versions of ourselves we dream of, then maybe we’d be capable of showing up in all the ways we’re told we should. Every Marvel movie is secretly about the same longing: we know in our spirit, in our essence of essences, we are free. That there is something inside us strong enough to rise above all this mess. It’s dumbfounding that we can’t seem to be more impactful.

But we aren’t built with capes and lasers. We are built with cortisol, tears, tender hearts, and the need to sleep.

In reality we do have certain superpowers. We have access to more information than we could ever digest at our fingertips. We know what’s happening in real time in parts of the world we will never visit. We have the ability to keep track our children’s whereabouts and monitor their private conversations. We can see into our homes when we are away. We can become notified in real time when an aging parent falls, or when our own heartbeat fluctuates. We can video call someone who is traveling on a small boat on the other side of the planet in a remote chain of islands with no cell service and no wifi —I’ve enjoyed this superpower recently.

So what do we do with all of this information everywhere all the time?

The Discipline of Resistance

Often, we escape. It’s the path of least resistance. We know exactly how to numb—scrolling, bingeing, zoning out. We slip into the cultural trance that says: just don’t feel it. It’s easier. It's faster. It's normal. But it also leaves us more brittle than before.

In my yoga classes, I sometimes speak about the path of least resistance. How gravity wants to pull us deeper into our joints and how our movements tend to follow the laxity in our tissues. We work to develop the discipline of resistance—not as aggression, but as strength. The kind of strength that turns toward discomfort when needed. Not all the time. But when it nurtures resilience. Often resisting means not collapsing. But not always. Sometimes, it means choosing to go still when everything else is spinning.

That’s what retreat can be.
A pattern interruption.
A declaration: I will not abandon myself in this storm.

You may have noticed I haven’t written in a while. I guess lately I’ve been on something like a retreat of my own. Not an exotic or noble one. More like a domestic one. Quiet. A kind of hibernation. But not in a romantic or soulful way —no personal pilgrimage, no wood cabin unplugged. Rather I’ve been letting time lumber along while I tend to the small and the mundane. I’ve been thoroughly unimaginative.

I’m not sure if the pause is finished honestly. Or if I’m just getting old. I know it’s not apathy though. So today I’ll choose to think of it as the slow restoration of capacity. Yeah. Let’s lean into that. It’s where I’ll wait for the next clear call. Not the loudest one. The truest one.