When Passion Equals Stress
Why can Passion, Excitement or Creativity Sometimes Feel Overwhelming?
Have you ever felt so excited about something only to realize you seemingly took it way too far, feel fried or burned out, and couldn’t stop yourself from taking breaks? It may feel confusing because if something is exciting, really enjoyable or feeling good at first, how did it start feeling so stressful? ✨ If we look at this from a nervous system perspective, we can see why this phenomenon makes sense, how it is not our faults, and how we can begin to find relief.
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In Steven Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, there are different states of our nervous system, depending on whether it senses danger/threat or safety. We can think of these states of our nervous system like a ladder that we move up or down, depending on how safe or unsafe we are feeling, with “ventral” at the top, meaning safe and social, “sympathetic” in the middle, meaning fight/flight survival, urgent, anxious, and “dorsal” at the bottom, meaning shut down survival, helpless, hopeless. (Here at the bottom of the ladder, we may not have access to any feelings of creativity or feel anywhere close to passion, and again, may wonder what’s wrong with us, when really, this is just the way our nervous systems are protecting us)
Accessing feelings of passion and excitement is actually a combination of multiple states. You can think of it like a few drops of stress chemistry (sympathetic) and a few drops of calm, safe and social (ventral). Play (and passion) is a blended state of both activation and calm connection. You can see how it could easily drop down to more activation (and less calm) if we are not used to this experience and don’t yet have the capacity to hold passion in a calm and safe way in our systems yet.
Our capacity is our nervous system’s window of tolerance. This is what our system can safely hold, without signaling danger/ threat and dropping us down the ladder into our survival systems. I should say however, that it is perfectly natural and needed to move up and down the ladder throughout our lives and even throughout each day. What we ultimately want though, is the ability to move flexibly rather than getting stuck down our ladders. This can come the more we notice our states, build a relationship with our autonomic nervous systems and signal to our systems that it is safe to be with any state.
Another perspective on all of this is using Cathy Malchiodi’s Expressive Arts and Therapy Model wheel to see how our nervous systems flow. Here is another visual that may bring some clarity as to how the state of passion expresses in the nervous system. You can see the bubble on the top right corner, (play, joyful, curious, impassioned, frisson) sits up towards ventral, but is already moving towards sympathetic. It Is right in the middle between ventral and sympathetic. It is still up top in the “attached and connected” area of the chart, but you can see how it could begin to tip down into “activated, anxious, hyperarousal” if we lose a little bit of that access to connection and safety while engaging in these activities.
All this to say- it’s okay if you find yourself feeling like you’ve overdone it, or become a bit fried or stressed during creative bursts. It’s also okay if you have no access to creativity and find yourself numb, flat, or with no ideas at all. There’s nothing wrong with you, and you can slowly show your system that passion can feel safe too, and your system will grow its capacity to hold even more energy 🥰
If you’d like some support in building your window of tolerance and your ability to be with each autonomic state, and move towards safe, calm and grounded passion and creativity, I offer 1 on 1 NeuroEmotional coaching sessions where we can do so together!