One of my resets is popping in one ear bud and listening to an audiobook or podcast while my kids are playing and I’m tidying/doing chores. It filters out some of the noise, but I can still hear if they need something. I do it most often when I get home from work/they get home from school and I’m putting away backpacks and making lunches for the next day - it almost makes those tedious tasks enjoyable!
Thank you for naming overstimulation so plainly and without moralizing it. What resonated most for me is how grounded your reset list is in the body—sleep, water, touch, movement, warmth—rather than in aspirational ideals of calm. It feels honest about the seasons of life where regulation is about prevention, not perfection.
One thought your piece sparked is how many of these resets are really about restoring proportion. Overstimulation collapses perspective until everything feels equally urgent; a nap, a shower, or clearing one surface gently reintroduces scale. I wonder if what we call “losing patience” is often a nervous system asking, very reasonably, to be brought back into human-sized rhythms.
One of my resets is popping in one ear bud and listening to an audiobook or podcast while my kids are playing and I’m tidying/doing chores. It filters out some of the noise, but I can still hear if they need something. I do it most often when I get home from work/they get home from school and I’m putting away backpacks and making lunches for the next day - it almost makes those tedious tasks enjoyable!
Ok this is brilliant!!!
Thank you for naming overstimulation so plainly and without moralizing it. What resonated most for me is how grounded your reset list is in the body—sleep, water, touch, movement, warmth—rather than in aspirational ideals of calm. It feels honest about the seasons of life where regulation is about prevention, not perfection.
One thought your piece sparked is how many of these resets are really about restoring proportion. Overstimulation collapses perspective until everything feels equally urgent; a nap, a shower, or clearing one surface gently reintroduces scale. I wonder if what we call “losing patience” is often a nervous system asking, very reasonably, to be brought back into human-sized rhythms.