I Don't Want to Regulate Anymore. I Want to Feel

On wellness performance, nervous system obsession, and trusting your body.

The Day Wellness Stopped Feeling Like Care

I don’t want to regulate anymore.

I don’t want to optimize my nervous system, track my emotions, or perform calm like it’s proof that I’m healed. I don’t want to get back to baseline (what even is that by the way). I don’t want my healing to be impressive (see: likes, shares, etc).

I want to feel.

Somewhere along the way, wellness stopped being about listening and started being about behaving. We took ancient, embodied wisdom and turned it into a compliance system. Cold plunges became currency. Breathwork became math. Regulation became morality.

If you’re calm, you’re doing it right.

If you’re emotional, you must be dysregulated.

If you’re still angry, still grieving, still loud in your body… well so sorry to tell you, but clearly you haven’t done enough.

When “Knowing Your Body” Became Outsourcing It

Once upon a time, I wore an Oura ring. And I wore an Oura ring for a l year and some change. That year was 2024. Side Note: can I just say, wearable tech is absolutely hideous and should be enough for people to not want to wear it, but alas I found myself mesmerized by all the ‘benefits’.

I was genuinely thrilled when it arrived. I had been debating it for months and finally decided to treat myself to the device that was the least offensive, in my opinion, but seemed to be the most robust in data.

God bless the data.

However, this excitement quickly escalated to frustration when I realized I had fat fingers, according to Oura.

See, usually I’m a 5.5/6 on my ring finger, so naturally I ordered a 7 using the logic that all my other size 7 rings fit on my middle/pointer finger. But of course. Didn’t fit. Ordered an 8. Still didn’t fit. But I was so irritated that at this point I just decided to deal with it and wear it on my ring finger. Ugh.

Honestly? I’m scared to know what my actual Oura ring size is. Any guesses? I am thinking an 13 at this point.

But, for all of that hassle, I told myself I was learning more and going deeper with my body. I was going to understand why I still felt tired some mornings, why I was having problems losing weight, and why I just generally felt eh.

You all know the eh feeling. It’s our baseline. It’s not great, but it’s not bad, and somehow that’s comfortable. But all the marketing says if we know more we can do more. At least this is how I viewed the information I was about to get from my Oura ring.

I would have answers.

Then, I realized what was happening. And what was happening is actually subtler and way more dangerous that I could have ever thought.

When Data Gets Louder Than Intuition

Every morning, the first thing I checked wasn’t my breath or my body. Or even saying good morning to my husband or my dog. Or even getting out of bed, drinking water. None of it. It was my ring. I flipped that app open so fast, I would venture to guess that it was my top app next to Instagram.

I had to know my sleep score. Did I get above 85? Did I get enough REM? Did I match my chronotype… am I doing it right?

If my Oura said I didn’t sleep well, I must have done something wrong.

Never mind that I’d had a beautiful date with my husband.

Never mind the drinks, the laughter, the late bedtime.

Never mind that life happened.

Oura didn’t know any of that. They didn’t ask. And it wouldn’t matter if they did because all they would do is point back to the data. They didn’t care if I had a fantastic night with friends or I decided to enjoy a night in, all it cares about is the numbers.

Sound like anyone else’s boss?

And yes, I will say… if you don’t know your body at all, a tool like that can teach you a hell of a lot. In the beginning.

However, there needs to be a moment when you look at what the numbers are saying and then look inward, get a bit quiet and see what your body is doing, saying, feeling.

And if you do know your body?

If you’re already deeply attuned?

It can quietly train you to doubt yourself.

That’s when I realized… I wasn’t listening anymore.

I was checking.

Wellness Didn’t Make Us More Embodied. It Made Us Better at Overriding.

This is the part no one wants to say out loud.

We didn’t actually get freer. Or better.

We just learned how to override ourselves with better language.

We learned how to cold plunge instead of cry.

How to breathe through rage instead of letting it speak.

How to “self-soothe” instead of asking what the feeling was trying to protect.

At some point, my rituals stopped feeling reverent and started feeling required. Regulation turned into compulsion. Optimization turned into self-surveillance.

And my body, quiet at first, then louder, started whispering the same thing over and over:

Please stop managing me.

I’m Not Anti-Regulation. I’m Anti-Compliance.

Okay maybe not those exact words. And knowing me there was definitely some foul language at play, but the sentiment is the same.

To be clear: I’m not anti-regulation.

I’m anti turning the human nervous system into another productivity metric.

I’m anti the quiet pressure to prove you’re healed by how palatable you’ve become.

I’m anti the idea that the goal of being alive is to be easy to digest.

Feeling isn’t a flaw.

It’s information.

It’s energy.

It’s intelligence.

Sometimes that intelligence is soft and expansive.

Sometimes it’s feral, inconvenient, and loud.

Sometimes it doesn’t want to be brought back to center.

Sometimes it wants to be honored exactly as it is.

So no, I don’t want to regulate anymore.

I want to be in relationship with my body.

I want to let feeling move without rushing it toward resolution.

I want to trust that my nervous system isn’t broken. It’s responsive, alive and brilliant.

Healing, for me, is no longer about becoming calmer.

It’s about becoming truer.

If This Resonates, You’re Not Failing

If you’re tired of tracking yourself like a project…

If you’re exhausted by the pressure to be regulated, optimized, evolved…

If a part of you suspects your body isn’t dysregulated at all, just unheard

…

You’re not failing.

You might just be done performing.

And that might be the most honest place to begin.