The Art of Staying Series: Post 1 - Coming Home to Safety

Why Intensity Feels Like Connection When The Nervous System Doesn’t Yet Trust Calm

For nearly half my life, I lived dissociated— mostly unaware that I was doing so. And when that fog began to lift, and I became aware of this pattern, it didn't arrive with drama or revelation. It arrived as a quiet noticing.

I began to see a repeated pull toward intensity. Toward people, experiences, or emotions that lit me up - not because they always naturally appealed to me, or were true desires, but because the stimulation itself felt familiar in some way. What I was often responding to wasn’t attraction so much as a nervous system reaching for activation, shaped by unmet needs and uneven regulation. Learning to recognize that distinction — and to find pleasure inside steadiness rather than escape from it — has been one of the most subtle and transformative shifts of my life.

Many of us, with untended childhood wounding patterns can identify with this. That is why I am sharing it. Because until we do, we often mistake intensity for connection— and confuse nervous-system activation with intimacy.

And it’s important to be precise here.

When I use the word intensity, we’re not talking about passion, desire, erotic charge, excitement, creativity, or adventure.

Those are healthy.

Those are life-giving.

Those belong in a fully lived body.

The intensity I’m speaking about here is something quieter — and far more common.

It’s the kind of intensity that shows up when you feel more engaged waiting for a response than resting once it arrives— when a little uncertainty keeps you leaning forward, alert, and emotionally tuned in.

It looks like:

    •    feeling closest during conflict, crisis, or emotional processing

    •    bonding through late-night confessions or shared dysregulation

    •    feeling chemistry when something is unresolved or at risk

    •    tracking moods, waiting for responses, reading between the lines

    •    mistaking emotional charge (anxiety + hope) for intimacy

    •    feeling flat or disconnected when things are steady and predictable

This kind of intensity isn’t fantasy.

It’s activation.

And for a nervous system shaped by unpredictability, activation once meant:

I’m inside the connection.

I’m relevant.

I’m desired.

I’m needed.

I’m not being forgotten.

I have value.

For a long time, stimulation was how closeness registered in my body.

It was how I felt valuable.

How I felt chosen.

How I knew I mattered in real time.

So when calm appeared— steady, warm, uneventful— my body didn’t recognize it as safety.

It recognized it as absence.

As lacking.

Not because calm was wrong, but because my nervous system learned intimacy through alertness, not regulation. Calm didn’t feel reassuring because it wasn’t resonant with the baseline I developed when I was young. It felt dull. Empty. Disconnected. Like something essential had gone missing.

This is also where the roots of trauma bonding live— not in a love of pain, but in a nervous system that learned to associate connection with activation, rupture, and relief. When closeness repeatedly arrives after distress, the body begins to read intensity as intimacy, and calm as disconnection or boredom — even when nothing is actually wrong.

And this is where many people get confused.

Because when the nervous system begins to settle— when volatility fades and urgency softens— it can feel like something essential is lost or missing. Calm may arrive as restlessness, numbness, grief, or a craving for stimulation— not because safety is empty, but because it can feel dull or disconnected before the body learns how to live inside it. And until that shifts and regulation begins to feel safe, you will find yourself looping this pattern over and over again subconsciously. Each time robbing you of the very presence, peace, and real safety that you crave.

Because beneath that flatness — that feeling that something is missing— there’s often a quieter fear: that if nothing is happening— if no one is pulling, responding, or reacting— that the connection might fade and will not hold.

That you won’t hold.

If you learned early on to anticipate, attune, or manage emotional environments, your body adapted intelligently to help you survive.

It learned to stay alert.

To read subtle cues.

To associate depth with charge.

To feel most alive when something mattered in the moment and you were seen and your worth activated.

In that context, intensity wasn’t chaos.

It was purpose. It was action. It was meaning.

Calm, by contrast, offered no feedback loop.

No adrenaline.

No immediate confirmation of value or closeness.

Often, it was when you stood in the shadows, neglected or unseen.

Because in childhood dysfunction patterns, connection rarely comes in a healthy way, through moments of regulation, closeness, predictability, and safety.

So the body learned a quiet rule:

If it isn’t activated, it might not be real.

And real safety and regulation can feel foreign and amiss.

This isn’t about rejecting passion, excitement, or vitality for life.

We are not replaceing desire with neutrality.

We are not flattening aliveness.

We are not choosing calm instead of depth.

Healthy stimulation— attraction, adventure, creativity, eroticism— all belong in a regulated nervous system. I wouldn’t want a life without them.

But when intensity becomes the proof that we matter, it comes at a cost.

Because then closeness requires tension.

Desire requires urgency.

And calm feels like emptiness or disappearance.

And our nervous system continues its unhealed loops of dysregulation - leading to a whole host of adverse events we wish to avoid.

Staying doesn’t mean giving up intensity.

It means understanding why intensity once became the proof.

For many of us, intensity wasn’t indulgence — it was orientation.

It told us we mattered and held value.

That we were wanted.

That we were inside the connection instead of standing just outside it.

So staying asks something radical.

It asks you to stop outsourcing your worth to stimulation.

To remain present when no one is pulling on you.

When nothing is escalating.

When you are not being mirrored back in real time.

That moment — the one that feels boring, empty, or disconnected —

is not a lack of meaning.

It is the first moment your body is no longer being asked to perform for connection.

And yes, often, there is grief there.

Grief for the version of you who learned to stay visible by staying activated.

Grief for the charge that once made you feel chosen, alive, undeniable.

Grief for the intensity that stood in for value when nothing else did.

But, there is power there too.

Because when you stay — when you don’t rush to be wanted, desired, or intensified — something reorganizes at a deeper level.

Value stops coming from response.

Closeness stops requiring tension.

Desire stops needing urgency to exist.

Not all at once.

Not dramatically.

But irrevocably.

Calm becomes the ground.

Passion becomes the current.

And connection stops costing you yourself.

This is where regulation stops feeling like restraint

and starts feeling like self-possession.

Where presence replaces performance.

Where desire becomes choice instead of compulsion.

Where safety is no longer something you wait for — but something you embody.

This isn’t resignation.

It isn’t settling.

And it isn’t the loss of intensity.

It’s true, embodied sovereignty.

Reflections (to sit with, not solve):

    •    When I reach for intensity, what am I hoping it will confirm about me?

    •    Where did stimulation first become tied to feeling valuable, loved, or chosen?

    •    What happens in my body when nothing is escalating — and can I stay there without abandoning myself?

    •    How does pleasure show up for me in calm? How can I invite more of this into my life?

    •    What might passion feel like if safety were already here?

You don’t need answers.

You need honesty.

Because the deepest shift doesn’t come from calming the nervous system.

It comes from no longer needing activation to prove that you matter.

And that kind of embodiment — that kind of wholeness —

is a different order of power entirely.

One that doesn’t burn out.

One that doesn’t chase.

One that has the capacity to hold your deepest desires -

and support your greatest growth and abundance-

without losing yourself in the process.

Next in The Art of Staying series we’ll explore regulation vs. dissociation and escapism. Why “feeling calm” isn’t always a sign of healing.

Until then —With Much Love, Always.

Seraph

The Art of Staying: Series Introduction

Coming Home to Safety: Why Alcohol and Other “Opening” Mechanisms Feel Helpful When the Nervous System Isn’t Ready to Stay

This is not a post about quitting anything.

It’s a post about why your body learned to leave.

Long before we called them habits, coping mechanisms, or bypasses, these strategies were simply ways to survive.

A drink to take the edge off.

Staying busy so you didn’t have to feel the ache.

Keeping yourself just stimulated enough not to notice what’s asking for presence beneath it all.

Not because you were weak — but because being fully present in your body did not feel safe.

For many of us, that lesson was learned early. Nervous systems shaped in environments that were unpredictable, emotionally lacking, overwhelming, or quietly demanding learn one thing very well: don’t stay here too long. So they find exits. Some subtle. Some socially acceptable. Some even praised.

And they work — until they don’t.

Healing doesn’t begin by ripping those exits away.

That only teaches the body it’s about to be trapped again - which is exactly what it learned to avoid.

The work begins when we stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

and start asking, “What did my body need when it first learned this?”

Nervous system healing isn’t self-policing. It’s re-parenting.

It’s learning how to stay present without bracing.

How to feel without flooding.

How to be present — without abandoning yourself.

What follows isn’t about moralizing alcohol, distraction, or dissociation.

It’s about understanding why they made sense — and what becomes possible when safety is no longer borrowed.

The Lure

For a long time, I believed something that’s rarely questioned, or discussed (beyond the risks), in spiritual spaces:

That alcohol makes you more open.

More intuitive.

More relaxed.

More available to subtle perception.

Not in excess. Not destructively.

Just enough to take the edge off.

A glass of wine that softens the body, quiets the mind, and seems to make practices like scrying or divination come more easily.

And to be clear—something does happen.

But, what I’ve come to understand is this:

What’s happening isn’t spiritual opening.

It’s nervous system disinhibition.

And that distinction matters.

Especially for those of us who are intuitive, sensitive, or perceptive by nature.

Especially if you have a history of trauma, unpredictability, emotional neglect, or chronic stress.

What Alcohol Actually Changes

Alcohol doesn’t enhance or create intuition.

It doesn’t grant a deeper access to truth or your innate gifts.

It doesn’t open spiritual channels that weren’t already there.

What it does is lower the nervous system’s protective threshold.

It softens vigilance.

Quietly dampens internal brakes.

Temporarily quiets the part of the system responsible for pacing, containment, and discernment.

For a nervous system that’s usually alert—especially one wired for perception—that can feel like ease.

Like relief.

Like openness.

But what’s being lowered isn’t resistance to truth.

It’s resistance to overwhelm.

And its important to note the difference.

Why This Is Especially Confusing for Intuitive People

If you’re naturally intuitive, perceptive, or energetically sensitive, your nervous system carries a lot.

Subtle information.

Emotional nuance.

Pattern recognition.

Energetic input.

A vigilant nervous system doesn’t block intuition—it manages it.

So when something temporarily lowers that management system, perception can feel smoother. Faster. Less effortful.

Divination may appear to “open” more readily.

And the nervous system quietly learns the pattern: this feels easier.

But what’s actually happening is that the nervous system has stepped back from its post—not because it’s truly safer, but because its guard has been chemically softened.

That’s not embodiment.

That’s access without containment— and the nervous system knows the difference.

Access without containment is never the same as safety.

The Nervous System Is Not the Problem

This is where many spiritual narratives quietly go wrong.

We’re taught—often subtly—to override the nervous system in the name of openness or transcendence.

Vigilance is framed as resistance.

Slowing down is framed as blockage.

But the nervous system isn’t blocking truth.

It’s protecting capacity.

Its job is not to keep us closed.

Its job is to ensure that whatever opens can actually be stayed with.

At a very basic level, it’s always asking:

    •    Can I stay present with this level of sensation or information?

    •    Can I remain oriented without dissociating?

    •    Can what’s coming through be integrated safely and coherently?

When the answer isn’t yet yes, the system stays alert.

That isn’t pathology.

It’s intelligence.

And when we chemically quiet that intelligence, we don’t build safety— we bypass it.

That’s why it can feel easier.

Smoother.

More fluid.

But nothing new has been built.

We haven’t taught the body how to stay.

We’ve simply bypassed the part of us that was pacing and integrating the experience.

This is the difference between access and embodiment.

Between disinhibition and safety.

Between opening and integration.

Integration is what allows insight to become lived, not just experienced.

True nervous system healing doesn’t remove the guard.

It teaches the system that the guard is no longer needed.

What Changed for Me

What’s shifted for me isn’t abstinence or moral clarity—it’s understanding.

I’ve noticed that when I scry or connect without alcohol now, what’s required is different:

    •    more grounding

    •    more pacing

    •    more presence

    •    more trust in my body’s timing

The intuition doesn’t disappear.

The insight doesn’t vanish.

What disappears is the shortcut.

And in its place is something slower, steadier, more deeply connected, and far more embodied.

A Note

When bypass strategies loosen their grip, it can feel like something is dying.

And in a way, it is.

Not pleasure.

Not depth.

What’s ending is the job those strategies were forced to do.

They no longer have to dull the edges, rush the moment, or pull you out of your body so you can survive it.

What replaces them isn’t restraint.

What replaces them is capacity.

The capacity to stay with sensation without panic.

To experience pleasure without needing intensity to access it.

To sit inside quiet without collapsing.

To trust your intuition without dissociating from your body to hear it.

This is the part no one tells you: regulation doesn’t take anything away.

It’s what makes intensity survivable — and pleasure sustainable.

And the younger parts of you — the ones who learned to leave — don’t need to be corrected or managed.

They need to be met, consistently, by an adult nervous system that says:

I’m here now.

I won’t abandon you to get through this.

You don’t have to disappear for me anymore.

This isn’t about giving something up.

It’s about coming home — slowly, honestly, and without bypass — to a body that no longer needs escape to feel safe.

This Is the Work of Staying

This is the introductory heart of The Art of Staying. A new series piece that I am going to share on Nervous System Healing, Connection, & Spiritual Growth.

Not forcing openness.

Not numbing vigilance.

Not mistaking disinhibition for embodiment.

But instead, learning how to build the internal safety framework that allows intuition, perception, and presence to arise without leaving the body behind.

Alcohol is just one of many examples of how we’ve learned to soften the nervous system from the outside instead of teaching it safety from within.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be exploring other common “opening” mechanisms—especially the ones that are more socially accepted, spiritually praised, more subtle or rarely questioned.

Not to demonize them.

Not to remove them prematurely.

But instead, to invite a more honest question:

What would it look like to stay—without needing the edge taken off first?

A Gentle Reflection

I invite you to sit with this reflection, without forcing an answer:

Where in your life do you reach for something to soften, speed up, avoid, or take the edge off before staying fully present?

This could be with:

• a person

• a practice

• a habit

• a moment of discomfort

• or even yourself

You don’t need a full explanation.

There is no “right” response.

Just information and reflection.

Sometimes the most honest response is simply noticing where your nervous system asks for relief.

Awareness is how safety begins.

With Much Love Along Your Journey, Always -

xoxo

Seraph

Coming Next:

The Art of Staying – Coming Home to Safety: Why Intensity Feels Like Connection When the Nervous System Doesn’t Yet Trust Calm