When Your Nervous System Remembers

This week, my son officially weaned off a medication that was once considered life-saving for him.

We have every reason to believe he will tolerate this change well. He has grown, his heart is in a very different place than it was before, and he has since had another open-heart surgery. His medical team believes he is ready, and logically, I know all of that.

And still, somewhere inside of me, I am terrified.

Because we've tried this before. The last time he came off this medication, we ended up back in the hospital.

I can list all the reasons why this time is different, but my nervous system doesn't particularly care about my logic.

It remembers.

It remembers what happened last time, and it would really like to make sure I don't forget. It wants me to watch closely, stay alert, and prepare myself just in case.

This is one of those moments when I can feel the difference between what I know and what my body knows. I know his circumstances have changed. My body knows that last time this happened, it wasn't okay.

Both pieces of information are coming with me this week.

What our nervous systems remember

This is where understanding the window of tolerance has been really helpful for me.

Our window of tolerance is essentially the space in which our nervous system has enough capacity to experience emotions, stress, uncertainty, and the demands of everyday life without becoming completely overwhelmed.

When we're within that window, we can still feel anxious, sad, frustrated, or scared. Being within our window doesn't mean we're calm or happy all the time. It means we have enough capacity to experience those emotions while still being able to think, connect, problem-solve, and respond to what's actually happening in front of us.

When we move outside of that window, things can start to feel very different.

For some of us, our nervous system goes into overdrive. We become anxious, irritable, restless, hypervigilant, overwhelmed, or consumed by everything that could go wrong. For others — or sometimes for the same person at a different time — we shut down. We feel numb, disconnected, exhausted, foggy, or like we simply cannot deal with one more thing.

Trauma can narrow our window of tolerance, and ongoing stress can leave us with less capacity at certain times.

And sometimes the things that activate us aren't objectively dangerous in the present moment. They're simply close enough to something our nervous system remembers.

The phone rang with bad news before. The routine appointment wasn't routine before. The baby really did go to the NICU. The doctor really did find something. The medication change really did land us back in the hospital.

Your nervous system took notes. Of course it did.

Sometimes your fear has evidence.

Healing doesn't require pretending those experiences didn't happen or convincing yourself that your fear is ridiculous. Instead, part of healing can be learning to recognize the difference between this happened before and this is happening again.

Those are not the same thing.

Our nervous systems can learn from what happened without every alarm meaning that the past is repeating itself.

And right now, as I watch my son come off this medication, that's part of my work: allowing my nervous system to remember what happened before while continuing to bring myself back to what is happening now.

Sometimes your window is just smaller

Something else I've learned is that my window isn't the same size every day.

There are days when I have a lot of capacity. I can handle the noise, the kids needing me, work, the dishes, uncertainty, an upcoming appointment, and whatever unexpected thing inevitably gets thrown into the day. Then there are days when one more person asking me for one more thing feels like it might send me over the edge.

Sometimes I know exactly why. Maybe I'm waiting to see how my son's body responds to coming off a medication, there's an appointment coming up, someone is sick, work has been heavy, or I haven't slept enough.

Other times, I don't necessarily know why. I just notice that my window is smaller.

I'm more irritable. The noise feels louder. I'm having a harder time making decisions, my thoughts are moving faster, I'm checking things more, and things I can normally handle suddenly feel like too much.

A smaller window doesn't necessarily mean I'm going backward or that the healing I've done has somehow disappeared. Sometimes my nervous system is simply carrying more right now.

I've learned that those aren't necessarily the days I need to try harder. Sometimes they're the days I need to take better care of myself. And what helps me isn't usually extraordinary.

Sometimes it is genuinely a McDonald's drive-thru Diet Coke.

That's it. Not meditation, an elaborate morning routine, or an hour of yoga. Just a Diet Coke — but there is intention behind it. It's me noticing, I'm having a hard day. What would make this day feel 5% easier?

Sometimes it's telling my husband, "I need a break," and going upstairs until bedtime. Sometimes it's dinner with friends, asking for help before I'm completely depleted, or deciding that whatever I planned to accomplish that day can wait.

And sometimes, for me, it's leaving the downstairs messy when I go to bed.

That one might actually require more nervous-system work from me than the Diet Coke, because taking care of ourselves isn't always about adding something soothing.

Sometimes it's tolerating doing less.

It might mean leaving the dishes, saying no, asking someone else to take over, or letting "good enough" actually be good enough. It's recognizing that your capacity is diminished and adjusting your expectations instead of demanding that your nervous system somehow produce more capacity because you think it should have it.

Working with your window instead of against it

Understanding your window of tolerance isn't just about recognizing when you're outside of it. It's also about learning to work with yourself when you notice that window narrowing.

Maybe today isn't the day to have the difficult conversation. Maybe you need to eat something before figuring out the next problem, go outside, text the friend who makes you feel like yourself, find some quiet, move your body, go to therapy, or hand your kids to your partner and disappear upstairs for a while.

And yes, maybe you need a large Diet Coke from McDonald's.

There doesn't have to be anything particularly profound about the thing that helps. What matters is being able to notice, I'm struggling today, and then, instead of judging yourself for struggling, asking, What do I need to help myself through today?

I think that's an important part of nervous-system work that sometimes gets skipped. We can become so focused on expanding our capacity that we forget we're also allowed to care for ourselves within the capacity we have right now.

And slowly, the window can expand

Expanding your window of tolerance isn't about seeing how much discomfort you can force yourself to endure. It's not white-knuckling your way through triggers until they stop bothering you, and it's definitely not another way to measure whether you're "healed enough."

Expansion happens slowly — with care, intention, help, time, safe experiences, relationships where you don't have to carry everything alone, and sometimes therapy. Part of building that capacity is learning that activation isn't permanent, that we can move toward the edges of our window, sometimes move outside of it, and find our way back.

Every time I notice I'm activated and give myself enough space to ask, Is something happening right now, or is my body remembering what happened before? that's practice.

So is asking for help instead of pushing myself until I break, allowing something to remain unfinished and tolerating the discomfort of leaving it, or noticing when something reminds my body of the past and gently bringing myself back to what is happening now.

Even letting myself enjoy something good without immediately preparing for its loss can be practice.

Over time, things that once felt intolerable can become more tolerable — not necessarily because we've convinced ourselves that the world is completely safe, but because we've developed more trust in our ability to care for ourselves when things are hard.

And sometimes you don't realize how much your window has expanded until you look backward.

A year later

My daughter turns one at the end of this week.

As her birthday has gotten closer, I've found myself thinking about the version of me who was pregnant with her and how scared she was.

I remember worrying that somehow they had missed something on her 20-week anatomy scan. I remember being afraid that when she was born, I would have to count down the seconds I was allowed to hold her.

Thirty seconds.

Because that was what I knew.

I knew what it was like to have a baby and then be separated from him. I knew what it was like for pregnancy, birth, and bringing a baby home to look nothing like I had imagined. No amount of But everything looks good could erase that knowledge.

And I worried that my son might need another surgery sooner than we expected.

He did.

That's the part I keep coming back to now.

Because if I could go back to that version of myself, I couldn't honestly tell her, Don't worry. None of the things you're afraid of are going to happen.

Some of them did.

My son needed another open-heart surgery sooner than we wanted. There were hard days. There was anxiety and uncertainty. Our life did not suddenly become predictable just because we had already been through enough.

And yet, here we are.

My daughter is turning one.

If I could sit next to that version of myself now, I don't think I'd tell her to stop worrying. I wouldn't tell her that everything was going to be fine, and I wouldn't try to reason her out of being afraid.

It makes sense that she was terrified.

But if I could tell her anything, maybe it would be this:

You are going to make room for more than fear.

Not immediately or easily, and not because you'll suddenly become really good at convincing yourself that bad things don't happen.

You'll make room for hope, too.

You'll hold your baby without counting down from 30 seconds. You'll watch your son go through another surgery you desperately wished he wouldn't need yet, and you'll somehow keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You'll ask for help. You'll go to therapy. You'll have people who show up. There will be days when your window is tiny and days when life feels surprisingly ordinary.

You'll learn when you need to push yourself a little and when you need to stop pushing altogether.

You'll learn to make room for fear without giving it the whole room.

And yes, sometimes you'll get yourself a Diet Coke and call that enough for the day.

Giving our nervous systems something new to remember

Our nervous systems learned from the scary experiences, but they can learn from new experiences, too.

One good experience doesn't erase a traumatic one, nor should it. Instead, little by little, we get to collect more information.

We went to the appointment, and we came home.
I didn't check my phone for an hour, and everything was okay.
I felt overwhelmed, and I asked for help.
I left something unfinished, and the world kept turning.
I felt afraid, and I stayed.
I hoped anyway.

Sometimes the evidence of healing doesn't arrive in some big, transformative moment. Sometimes your daughter turns one, and you look at her and realize that a year ago you were terrified to believe you would get to have this.

If only I could have known then what I know now.

Not that everything would be easy, because it wasn't. Not that nothing scary would happen, because it did.

But that fear wouldn't be the only thing there.

Maybe that's what healing has looked like for me more than anything else: not becoming someone who no longer knows how badly things can hurt, but becoming someone who can know that and still make room for what is good.

Healing happens in moments, not all at once — in one safe experience, one request for help, one night of leaving the downstairs messy, one moment of noticing this is different, and one moment of letting yourself hope without demanding certainty first. One ordinary Tuesday at a time.

That's the work: not forcing the window open, but taking care of ourselves inside of it and, with care, intention, support, time, and healing, gently giving it room to grow.