When Calm Is Over-Performance: Adaptive Dissociation, Over-Resourcing, and the Misidentification of Regulation

When Calm Is Over-Performance- Adaptive Dissociation, Over-Resourcing, and the Misidentification of Regulation

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. Containment. When emotional bypassing, flattening and avoidance are mistaken for regulation, we lose access to the very signals that make integration possible. But here's the catch. Containment restores adaptive capacity by meeting the experience at the pace the nervous system can actually sustain through continued coherence. In this episode, we'll explore how calm can be overperformed with breathwork facilitator Delaine Benson. Delaine shares why over-resourcing and cognitive control often mute adaptive feedback signals rather than integrating their data, creating short-term quiet and long-term signal loss. We'll also show you how containment and pacing builds capacity, reducing rupture and allowing coherence to emerge without interpretive intrusion. If regulation isn't about feeling better, but about staying present with what's activated, what happens when the calm you're relying on is actually keeping you disconnected? We'll unpack how false calm forms, how to recognize it in real time, and what containment looks like in practice, when we return to The Light Inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden costs or expenses. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big-name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile, and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for all of the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network with bulk savings on flexible plan options. Mint offers three, six, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can keep your current number or change to a new one if you like, and all of your contacts, apps, and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket, and with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. As you move through a fast-paced, productivity-driven world, you may notice how easily urgency turns into anxiety, and how your body stays braced even when nothing is inherently wrong. For example, you pause, take a deep breath, and feel momentarily calmer. Yet the tightness in your chest or the pressure behind your eyes never quite resolves. Pop culture often teaches that breathing calmly is synonymous with regulation and even with healing. But calm alone doesn't necessarily integrate unresolved emotional data. It can just as easily flatten or bypass it. So the question we're examining today is this, how do you tell the difference between true regulation and adaptive avoidance? Today we're joined by registered nurse and therapeutic breathwork facilitator, Delaine Benson. Delaine, thank you for joining us today.

D' Layne Benson: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm excited to look at how what we label false calm can often mask unregulated states and underlying unresolved psychological data. In this episode, we're going to examine what many call false calm, adaptive dissociation and over-resourcing strategies we create to bypass rather than engage attuned emotional regulation. Delane and I will break down how the freeze response often looks like steadiness from the outside while masking unprocessed internal shutdown. But first, Delane share with us a brief overview of your experiences as an RN and how these insights led you to explore the role overfunctioning plays in high-stress career endeavors like healthcare and how we apply that to emotional regulation.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, so this whole sense of false calm is something very near and dear to me. And it's really interesting because as a registered nurse, I feel like it is quite common within this field. Lots of people actually work in this state. And then I do have my own business now. And as I moved out of the hospital into seeing clients on my own, I started to draw lots of people within healthcare just because simply that was my network. And so that's kind of where I started. So I started seeing therapists, social workers, nurses, all of these people that I started to see the trend. Oh, it's not just nurses. It's all of these people in caregiving positions really have this tendency. And what I started to feel was that not only is this an issue, not only is this keeping us from performing in the best way possible, But also, it's really detrimental to our health. And the common theme is that all of these caregiving, really considerate, loving people, they're very kind, they're always thinking of others. They have this knowledge, even. They understand these concepts, yet they're not applying them to themselves. And so they're really not moving into the place that they need to be, to be just the happiest, most resilient person they can be. And then also, it affects their career as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: We just come off a conversation about looking at serial fixing or that urge to kind of jump in on someone's agency and fix or overcorrect for them rather than allowing that space to kind of allow them to find their own agency and their own connection point. So I feel there's a good deal of crosstalk here today as we look at that role of caregiver providers. So often we're driven to that urge to care, to nurture, to help that person transform and guide. So I think that's a great connecting point to make today.

D' Layne Benson: Absolutely. And that fixer part is so uncomfortable with other people's pain. So it is, we're just trying to fix it so that we don't even have to sit in that pain with them.

Jeffrey Besecker: Delaying many people mistake capacitated composure for calm, that regulated state of inner peace. Yet when our super system is in a state of functional freeze, it looks like regulation but is actually us conserving energy or muting sensation. So leaning in today, could you share how the nervous system sustains this illusion of coherence through adaptive dissociation, and what internal cues reveal when calm is actually bypassing or suppression, for instance?

D' Layne Benson: Yeah. There's a lot of people who look incredibly composed on the outside, but actually are in functional freeze on the inside. So as we said, it's an adaptive form of dissociation. The body keeps performing, but the volume is turned down on sensation and emotion. So functional freeze isn't a true calm. It's a sympathetic activation held under an immobilized shell. So research shows that in this state, people have muted awareness of internal cues. And they don't notice things like breath, heartbeat, tension. They have reduced interceptive accuracy. And that's combined with altered autonomic flexibility. And so it creates this very polished, steady exterior, even when there's real disconnect happening underneath. And personally, this is my default state when my sympathetic nervous system is activated. So within myself, I notice like a really shallow or held breath, emotional flatness, tight jaw, a controlled tone of voice. I say I'm fine all the time. I'm unable to answer questions about what I'm feeling in my body. And yeah, I just I think it's a it's very misleading and very confusing for people.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we're considering that as a caregiver provider, active attunement itself of observing our clients, of interconnection, of creating relational attunement is so essential. How do we start to notice when we ourselves might be leaning into a disruption or our own dysregulated patterns where we start to jump ahead and mirror and reflect that in others?

D' Layne Benson: I think so much of it is really a practice of starting to see when those feelings, like it's, okay, so example, like I was saying, all these physiological signs I notice in myself, but it's starting to kind of attach something to it. When I do notice that my breath is starting to get a little shallow, pausing and taking that moment to say, okay, yeah, but what's happening? Why is this happening? Like going a step deeper. Another thing that can be our tendency is just ignoring the fact of what caused this and just take some deep breaths. Let's get back to calm. Let's get back to where we want to be and bypassing what was the actual trigger that was causing that. And I think that can be really helpful is starting to build up that awareness with a person.

Jeffrey Besecker: So as we're observing that in our everyday practice dynamics, so often we do lean into that fixer appeaser model where we're getting anxious. We're starting to kind of feel a little bit of tension whenever we're interacting and noticing for me when we might start to brace. As our ventral vagal is kind of starting to tighten up as we move into some of that sympathetic activation, you know, that fight or flight energy starts to surface. I think that's kind of a key model of witnessing our clients and holding that observational space, you know, noticing when we are tightening in our breath, when we're starting to get that urge to move ahead instead of just pausing and keeping that channel open.

D' Layne Benson: Right. And definitely looking for patterns too. If you start to see certain things triggering that over and over again, that could be showing you work that you need to be doing in your own practice to kind of help deal with that discomfort that you're continually feeling.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think it's curious to observe how through our emotional reflection, mirroring each other, sometimes our state becomes that projection on the client where they are sensing that tension. They are observing where they might misconstrue that sometimes as we're starting to project back and forth. So I think that's kind of a key observational space to look at, you know, is realizing when we're both potentially moving through phases of that dissociation and checking out, or when we start to kind of lean into that and maybe rush ahead in our pacing. I think that's such a key aspect of finding that core relational attunement. Yeah, absolutely. So when we learn neural imprinted narratives about safety and threat, In our early childhood development, we're often modeled that idea that all of our nervous system is working for survival, which, you know, in some instances it is. In maybe the biggest instance or the biggest framing it is. But inherently, we learn subconscious scripts about safety and threat as that core state. How do you feel that subconscious script might start to influence whether or not we start to lean into anxiety, whether we start to lean into some of these rumination loops, and how can we benefit from potentially reframing that to the central nervous system's role of managing load, assessing our capacity, and determining where coherence is or where our attunement and alignment is?

D' Layne Benson: Okay. Yeah. I think that, man, I'm really having trouble with this one.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's a good one. Yeah. It's an observation I've been kind of toying with lately. And we hear this narrative culturally over and over and over that first and foremost, our nervous system is looking for safety.

D' Layne Benson: Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: What do we start to do? We start to project, you know, we're automatically looking for threat. yet there may not genuinely be a threat in the environment. There may not genuinely be a source of threat in our somatic embodiment of things. I'm trying to find a way to even frame this now as I communicate it because it's something I've kind of stumbled on recently and stepped into. We learn before the age of two or three what our parents are modeling. So we're constantly being told, we're looking for safety, we're looking for threat, don't do that. So we start to create that script that becomes the default neural imprint. Right. We start to mirror that throughout all of our language, culturally, as clinicians, as practitioners. Well, what's the nervous system doing? It's looking for safety. What do we do unconsciously? We automatically then start looking for threat rather than attunement. We start to predict that ahead of time. We start to forecast it. We start to project that forward. Now, what are we doing? We're monitoring each other. and we're making assumptions. Rather than being open and vulnerable, rather than genuinely attuning, rather than holding that space to realize when we start to activate, we're already projecting it forward and then we start to create that tension and that drama.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, I think it's very common, especially with social media culture being what it is. It is so focused on everyone needs to know that we're all in survival mode. And everyone needs to know we need to identify these threats. And so it's pulling up this as like the normalization, which, yeah, I mean, almost like you're saying it, it can push us into hypervigilance that can push us into all these states that we're not desiring to be in. Because it is putting such great emphasis on it. And so it reduces, like you were saying, it reduces, the focus should be on increasing capacity. And it shouldn't be on constantly worrying about, is this a threat? Is this not a threat? Identifying the threat and all of these layers that we get caught up in.

Jeffrey Besecker: So, often to me, that is an observable entry point where we do move into those recursive loops like rumination, what we label quote-unquote overthinking, other forms of reasoning and logic, cognitive bypassing, spiritual bypassing, where we, again, we're starting to predict, we're starting to assume, we're starting to jump ahead in a way where we're micro-functioning or micro-managing those stress states.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, we kind of move into stopping trusting what's going on in our body and further pulling us out of interoception and instead making us this micromanaging overthinking state.

Jeffrey Besecker: Now, I think it's essential to look at this point, ventral vagal polyvagal theory, and how that kind of existed in those three phases. Give us a little insight from your perspective of what those three phases of polyvagal state are and how you generally relate to them.

D' Layne Benson: I think that often when we're thinking about the autonomic nervous system, we're seeing that polyvagal ladder is one thing that often comes to mind. And so you picture like the top part of the ladder is the ventral vagal activation. And that's the goal place where you feel safe, you feel social, you're energized, you're functioning at your best. And then coming down another part of the ladder to the middle is the sympathetic activation. And that is what, in layman's terms, we often see people just referring to it as fight or flight. And it's that mobilized, agitated state, and you are Definitely feeling ramped up. You've got the adrenaline. All the things are going in that state. And then the next one down is the dorsal vagal activation. And that is the numb, collapsed, and shut down state. And one thing that comes to mind as we're discussing this in this topic of false calm is that I feel like false calm kind of exists as a combination between the sympathetic activation and the dorsal vagal activation. There's this sense of being frozen on the exterior, but on the interior, very much activated. The gears are going and things are happening and even our hormones, the cortisol, all of that is flowing. And so it's this really odd contradictory state that kind of bridges both of these.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we look at that, moving back again to that idea of how we micromanage, our system itself is functioning on those microfeedback loops. It's very complex, very dynamic, very emergent in nature, yet one of our core defensive mechanisms, and this might be a little bit controversial to look at, one of our core defensive mechanisms itself is that tendency to flatten that complexity. that drive to diminish that uncertainty or that ambiguity itself can become a protective mechanism. So again, considering that our body is constantly sending these feedback loops back and forth and operating on that micro level, So, as interceptive trust diminishes, the regulatory bounce shifts within our inner systems. Cognitive networks begin to over-function, again moving toward rumination and circular reasoning, creating an offset feedback throughout our body's subsystems and adaptive patterns. From that perspective delaying, what happens neurobiologically when cognitive overrides interception, and how does this feed overfunctioning or burnout?

D' Layne Benson: I think the big thing is when people stop trusting the signals coming from their body, like hunger, fatigue, anxiety, or emotion, the brain tries to take over and run the whole show. And that's what I call cognitive override. The thinking mind becomes the regulator because the body no longer feels like a trustworthy source of information. And neuroscience suggests that under chronic stress, the neural networks that help us switch between body awareness and problem solving get biased towards constant analysis. So clinically, that looks like over-explaining, over-analyzing situations, rehearsing conversations for days, or simply thinking instead of feeling. And these clients live almost entirely in their heads because their body feels unfamiliar or unsafe, and it absolutely fuels over-functioning and burnout. When the mind takes over the body's job, it's like a backup generator powering an entire building. It works, but it's not meant to run everything forever, and eventually, it exhausts its resources.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think a great way to frame that from a clinical narrative is to observe when we simply pause with someone. take a few breaths and hold that space and observe, witness and say, what's coming up for you? Can we stop and identify those core sensations? Or do we move into an explanatory mode where we are trying to define the story or the narrative or kick into a script of, well, this is the thing that happens and this is the thing that happens, rather than just holding that pause and saying, I feel the tension. I can feel that heat rising up. You know, I can feel whatever sensation is coming up underneath rather than moving toward that explanatory narrative of things.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful illustration of that. And I see it so often too with people who are prone to not being in the body. They might even give you the one little hint of how they feel, but then they still start explaining it immediately after. And I think that's beautiful, just staying in that moment, really keep talking about the feeling but not getting into the explanation and what you think is going on underneath.

Jeffrey Besecker: So often in our relational models themselves, as we're interacting with our family, as we're interacting with our spouse, as we're interacting just in general email conversations even, we move so quick to finding that answer, to explaining things, to giving a definition of something, rather than leaning into that curiosity of And this is something I've been studying lately as a behavior specialist, how in our relational interaction we pose a question. Is there that tendency to question back? Do we have a similar mirror of curiosity where, OK, here's what I'm experiencing. Can I present a question back? You know, so often we go right to here's my answer mode. Here's my analysis of things. Here's how I'm defining things. Yeah, I think that's completely accurate. That's really good. I'm all over the place. It's probably a good example of being over resourced right now or just simply moving into a bypass mode myself. You know, I'm leaning into these holidays. I'm like looking for my window just shutting down for a while, which itself might not be a bad thing. So I'm going to acknowledge that today. Absolutely. Sometimes it's all right to be in that mode. We don't have to necessarily guilt and shame ourselves into that submission. If we are a little bit misattuned, if we are a little bit bobble-headed because of circumstances, I don't inherently feel any stress, but I'm fibbing to myself when I breathe into that. I want to hurry up and get through this. I want to hurry up and move into that space of just letting go. I'm finding it difficult to truly attune with you. I'm finding it difficult to attune to myself and even acknowledge that. So framing that out, for many individuals, movement becomes a form of protection where stillness triggers what remains unresolved and busyness steps in as a form of shielding or over-functioning. Why do people who identify as high-performing individuals use associations related to productivity as a defense against emotional discomfort, and how can clinicians differentiate coping from coherence in that regard?

D' Layne Benson: A lot of people who define themselves as high performing learned very early that movement keeps them safe. So when life slowed down, that was when criticism landed, or chaos erupted, or feelings that they didn't have the support to handle came up. So without realizing it, they learned that staying busy was the safest place to be. If this pattern isn't addressed, busyness becomes a shield. Productivity offers control, a sense of worth, and maybe most importantly, a buffer from emotions that feel overwhelming or unwelcome. And from a nervous system perspective, this is a learned survival pattern. The body starts pairing stillness with activation and pairing movement with relief. And clinically, I look for the difference between movement that brings someone into themselves versus movement that distracts them. Movement tied to coherence feels grounded, intentional, and chosen. Their body has room for a breath, a pause, or a check-in. But coping-driven movement feels urgent, pressured, or compulsive, like the person is being pushed by an inner alarm. It seems like there's no internal space at all. It's just pure momentum.

Jeffrey Besecker: What a fortuitous question to throw out there.

D' Layne Benson: Right? Absolutely.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm going to ease into this one. As I ease in, I'm kind of speaking to my own pattern today. Why am I stumbling over things and what comes up for me? Am I holding some unconscious identity pattern there? Am I holding on to unresolved stress and anxiety?

undefined: No, absolutely.

Jeffrey Besecker: I had to giggle because it is so fortuitous today that it falls right in alignment with what we're talking about. I'm going to sit with this for a second and just reflect what might be coming up for me. Am I maybe moving into some of those identity patterns where I'm on the surface saying, well, yeah, I'm all right with messing up today. I'm all right with being a little messy, but under the surface. What part of me is also unconsciously saying, but how will people perceive this? Will this be taken in a different direction? What might people reflect upon this? And there's a little apprehension that comes up in me. I can feel my breath tightening. I can feel my chest tightening. There might be a part of me that's tuned out and saying, I'm not fully being honest and present with that.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, it's a really interesting observation. And you, and additionally, you even kind of knew this when we talked about recording this at this time, right before the holidays, right? You know, it's just when our brains do naturally have a lot of distraction. We have a lot of things going on. And even myself, tomorrow I leave to fly to go see my parents. Like, I'm in the same boat. Once this is done, I've got to pack, I've got to this, I've got to that. And so, yeah, I very much understand that. And then, yeah, what happens when you do acknowledge that? What's going on under the surface? I think it's very powerful.

Jeffrey Besecker: So let's unpack that a little bit as we move into that space. As everyday human beings, let's set aside our roles. Let's set aside our expectations. Let's set aside our family misgivings about what we're being kind of guided to as we lean into that. From a practitioner space and from a holistic breathwork space, what are some basic things we can do to just pause and hold that space?

D' Layne Benson: You know, I think that something that is so important, and this is really speaking specifically to the clients that I work with, these really high functioning people caught up in these patterns, it starts with scheduling rest, scheduling reflection, scheduling any type of time for yourself, because that is the very last thing any of these people do. And they are caught in such deep patterns of trying to get their external validation and their worth, everything comes from achieving and comes from over giving. And so it has to start with just stopping and they won't do it themselves and they won't make the time for it. So schedule it, schedule the time in to stop. and give yourself 20 minutes to reflect, to journal, to do a body scan and feel what's present in that moment, and then take some nice, deep breaths to really come back to center and start to refocus on where you need to head for the rest of the day or the week. But whatever it is will give you way more insight into how you want to be going forward, and it's going to be so much more effective and powerful for you.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, that perfectionism itself can serve as a relational attunement slash safety strategy. I'm going to slice that today and hold that with two frames illustrating how over control keeps at its core often shame at bay. Right. So as you're working with clients, as that guilt and shame cycle sometimes comes up, how do you bridge the gap between somatic attunement and where we might be going with narrative?

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, that's the heart of the work that I do with people is really trying to focus back into building that sense of worth and just feeling how exceptional and wonderful you are without all the external validation. And so I think that one of the things I try to do is we talk a lot about narratives. And so I often have someone write their story as they perceive it. And who they think they are right now. And then we kind of go together, like, kind of breaking that apart. And is that true? Is that what serves you? Is this something that you're doing because of others? Or seeking external validation? Or is this who you actually are inside? And as we start to break those stories down, we're able to rewrite a new narrative. of how they actually want to function in a more authentic way and by starting to even elevate their sense of worth to understand that they give a lot. Like, I have to reframe what they mean to their community, to their family all the time. Like, I listen for the parts in their story where they are highly valuable key members of their work group, their family, whatever. And then when I kind of reframe it for them and show them that, they can start to see their inherent worth in all of this and how special they actually are, because we just simply do not notice that in our own lives. And I think it's such an important thing for us to be able to see, to move into that space where we aren't just chasing the validation and can be more authentically ourselves.

Jeffrey Besecker: In what ways do you feel as therapists we can use titrated micro-experiments or little micro-experiments in capacity, like pausing before immediate problem solving and allowing that space again to tune in and bypass that uncertainty or acknowledge that uncertainty? Maybe I'm bypassing it. There again, subconsciously, what are we doing? We're bypassing it.

D' Layne Benson: It's so good because the, yeah, the micro experiments, they do a little bit of pattern interruption in the very beginning. And then instead of just diving deep into recreating the danger response, we're just giving them this controlled dose. And so, yeah, one thing that I have had is like, I'll ask a client to pause for 10 seconds before fixing something for someone else. or intentionally send an email without rereading it 10 times, or let a meeting end imperfectly and simply notice what sensations arise. These are tiny invitations for the system to register. I can tolerate this. Nothing bad has happened. I'm still safe. And I often invite the clients to pair that moment with a regulating cue, like a hand on the heart, a slow breath, or even using that grounding phrase, like saying, I'm safe enough to feel this. So the body learns to associate uncertainty with support rather than danger. And that's what the research tells us on exposure and capacity building. It's that tolerating small amounts of discomfort while anchored in safety is what slowly rewires the threat association.

Jeffrey Besecker: There again, we return back to that narrative of safety. You see how that starts to surface, how automatic we are about it, where everything we do to describe our internal load, our internal capacity falls upon safety, which automatically implies in a lot of instances, or might allude to threat and stress. I guess just curious to hold for a while today, you know, why that becomes so ingrained, how we just kind of learn that response as a cue, as a motivational factor. You know, sometimes we see motivation itself as a very flattened state, yet unconsciously we've got this story that over and over and over We enforce that we're looking for safety, yet you and I are talking in a very open, safe space. We have a very engaged relationship here. Where do we start to lean in and apply that before there's any real challenge or threat?

D' Layne Benson: That's such a good question, because it is. That's what I have to point out all the time to people. Okay, let's start with nurses. Nurses always really fire back at me when we talk about nervous system work and things like that, and trauma. I'm a nurse. I have a safe environment. I've never been traumatized. I've never had any. But then when you start to say, in any given day, you've endured someone potentially losing their life. You've endured the pressure that one tiny mistake could kill someone. And people don't identify that with danger. And that's on one end of the spectrum. And then on the other end of the spectrum, it's these little bitty things that we're making traumatic and misinterpreting what the actual system is. And so, it's really interesting spectrum of all of that because we're really dulling down some of these horribly traumatic things. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are things that are completely insignificant that we are making much more significant. I mean, public speaking, what threat is there with public speaking like we're doing right now? There's none. There is literally no threat to us. However, it's all of these internal stories that we're building up inside that it means everything. And then that's what puts the pressure, the stress and leads to all the cortisol and everything flowing in our bodies because we're on that other end of making things bigger than they in true survival state actually are.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm going to pause for a moment and hold that with curiosity because I realize now exactly where myself, I'm stepping into a marginalizing role there. I'm projecting a pattern that might trigger guilt and shame because I'm not considering all of those variables, because I am over predicting, because I am over functioning and over forecasting. It might not recognize where somebody is presently with that circumstance. Right. I'm going to pause and hold that for a minute because that itself becomes that point of stigmatization where we aren't being present, where we aren't being attuned, where we might step that line over a little bit and blur into what someone else is holding, what someone else is experiencing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm reflecting back, and again, this is what we tend to do. We pull back into that implicit memory. A few years back, whenever I had a traumatic back injury, going into the hospital, you know, I'm in some pain. I marginalized my own pain a little bit. I was in a significant amount of pain and in a significant amount of bodily injury. But going in, you know, I'm trying to maintain, maybe suppress a little bit, that attitude. You know, going in, sometimes when we're in pain, we're activated. Sometimes whenever we're in that stress, what comes up? but also observing going in, you know, how I'm trying to kind of manage that, but watching others, there's a nurse checking in and she's on the phone and there's somebody just berating her, you know, and it's being aware of that attuned and empathetic. Well, what state is that person in? How do you hold space for that as a practitioner and not move into that marginalization? How do you hold that space as an everyday human being in your normal roles or in your everyday roles and do the same?

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, it's a great question. It really highlights the layers of challenges that we face in all of this because so much of your perception can have a huge impact on that relationship and you have to be aware of all of that. Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think that's a great place to look at what's termed doxaxic reasoning. That's where we take that implicit memory and we reflect it on the present. We're taking that past experience and we overlay that feedback on this person or this experience or this situation, and it happens in such a subtle way that we're often not aware of it. We're often not breathing into that space and then reflecting and saying, when I pause and witness, what part of me or what pattern of me is stepping in here, maybe overstepping that bounds or starting to project it on another.

D' Layne Benson: I think you're really onto something. Honestly, that's one thing that for a while when I was doing a lot of my own work, I stopped taking male clients for a little bit because I felt I was pulling in some of that bias because of my own experience. At the time, I didn't fully realize it, but now I do. At the time, I felt like society had put a lot of pressures on me and certain things, and so it was just harder for me as a woman. And so when I was taking male clients and they were telling me their difficulties, instead of being able to really be present with that and hear those things, I was hearing things underneath that they were referring about, like all the stuff their wife was doing, all of the, you know what I mean? I was hearing all these things and it was so unfair to them that I realized because that was the work that I was doing in that moment, it wasn't fair to me because I literally could not be unbiased to them. And so I went through a break of just not taking male clients and continued to do my work. And then when I started taking them again and could really free myself from my biases and my experience, then it was so much richer and I could really see their pain and the hurt that they were feeling and things that they were expressing to me became so much more powerful because I had essentially, I didn't remove the lens we can never you know at least in my opinion i don't think you can truly remove the lens or the bias but i had done so much work on it that it it really toned all of that down so that i could truly sit with them in their experience and that felt so good when i was able to move through that and recognize that because it really had a huge impact on my interpretation of everything they said because i was i was doing the marginalization the minimization and everything of it because it was like yeah but do you know what your wife's going through right now And yeah, and especially if they talked about perimenopause, because at the time, I was going through that. And so, my husband and I are dealing with that shift, because everything shifts in my face. It's a challenge for everyone. But I was still, once again, really identifying with their partner and what they were going through as opposed to their personal situation, which is so challenging and everything in itself. But I wasn't giving him that credit because it was like, well, it's not happening in your body, so you don't know what you're talking about. That's so unfair, but I'm glad that I was able to realize that in that moment.

Jeffrey Besecker: I just think that's an integral place to notice where we can kind of shift that perspective and lean into that curiosity. You know, sometimes we're reluctant to just simply question each other in that very kind, compassionate way. And that itself can be kind of a predominant locking pattern that blocks relational attunement, that blocks that witnessing where we're not automatically jumping ahead, trying to assume, where we're not automatically trying to jump ahead and fix it. Again, holding that space and witnessing.

undefined: Right. Exactly.

Jeffrey Besecker: So looking at that role of bias, let's look at the bias part, you know, and I think it's kind of integral to relate to that and say that maybe it's not always in our best interest to completely set aside a bias, and can we do that? Sometimes those bias filters do kind of nudge us back on course, do kind of create that bound sometimes that we don't overstep lines, we don't blur our perceptions, and we lean into curiosity. How do we function within allowing them to play out in a way where we can also flip that bias on its head, rather than absolving ourselves of them, denying them, running away from them, distorting them? Just flip it on its head, you know? Let's reframe that. If I were to switch it and put myself in your shoes, for instance, what might I be more open and attuned to?

D' Layne Benson: I think you highlight something very important, which, and you've kind of mentioned this, this word comes up a lot with you, I've noticed, is curious. Remaining curious about your biases, because that can be, it can almost be a gateway to seeing something more deeply. And then as far as like, me specifically, I think that I have a… a unique lens in that I've been through an intense situation with my husband. I was his caregiver and he had two traumatic brain injuries very close together. And then additionally has PTSD and ADHD, which both of those were really magnified by the traumatic brain injuries. And so that gives me a really deep lens. to know the day-to-day struggles of someone going through these things and to know what life is really like for them, the struggles that they face and all of that. So while I might tend to be more compassionate and want to have a lot more patience for these type of people than the average person, that feels like a really good thing to have because I do. I have so much compassion for them, especially if they're going to the trouble to go to therapy, to do nervous system regulation, to do all these different things, to do breath work. They're doing the things that they're trying to get better. They're not choosing if it just so happens it's manifesting as being difficult, as being temperamental, all these things. They're not choosing this existence. And so, I know that on a deep level because I saw my husband working so hard to improve his life. And yet, the progress is just slow. It just is. That's the nature of all of this. And so, for me, that bias and that lens gave me extra compassion and extra patience. And that's also where I think people coming together, whether it be therapists, coaches, nurses, all of that, all of this relational time to come together and talk about these things, we can also educate each other on these. Like, I can tell you more about the TBIs and the and the PTSD and experiencing living with someone who has that, whereas you might have a whole nother lens that you can share with me and that will teach me a lot and help me have more compassion, more patience for another category of people or an experience. And that's a beautiful thing when we can all come together and do that.

Jeffrey Besecker: So looking at that experience specifically and relating that to your role as nurse practitioner.

D' Layne Benson: I'm a registered nurse coach, not practitioner.

Jeffrey Besecker: I just want to be specific. Yeah. There's a different framing there and a different label. So we'll verify that. That's a good example of how our category sometimes can be confused or confusing. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Looking at your role as a nurse, let's frame that very general because that's going to serve us to kind of broaden it up and flatten it right now, which is a good example of how loosening up that bound sometimes can serve us. So I'm walking myself down here today. Looking at your experience with your husband's brain traumas and your role as a nurse, how do you feel you bridge that gap? between the prescriptive part of healthcare and the interceptive part of just attuning and adapting to his needs. Oh, not well, not well at all.

D' Layne Benson: Honestly, that experience was the thing that led me into this work more than anything because I completely lost myself. And yeah, between being a nurse working in the hospital. And as a bonus, this was all happening, of course, during the pandemic. And in addition to that, my dad got diagnosed with two different types of cancer at the same time. So it was all of that at once. And as that person who feels into this false calm, high achieving role, who completely gets external validation from achievement and caregiving. I 1000% lost myself. I was just giving and giving and giving to the point that now I can look back and tell you I had zero interception. I did not know what was happening in my body at all. I could have had something serious going on and I wouldn't have known. And also, as you can guess just by my story, I have codependency themes as well that run through me. And so just all of that, I went so deep into that role, almost like a part itself of that hypervigilant caregiving role. And I got so deep in it that, yeah, I just completely neglected myself. I neglected my health. I gained a bunch of weight. I stopped moving. I was eating trash and everything fell apart. And so, kind of working my way out of that was actually the breathwork. And that's what I found powerful. And it's a unique place that I find so many people that get caught up in these traps of external validation for overachieving and for caregiving and just giving, period. They really have trouble moving into that introceptive space again. And breathwork, and I'm not saying this as a definitive thing by any means, but breathwork for me has been a really powerful way to get to start them safely moving into feeling things in their body again. Because it can be such a gentle, gentle process. And that's where the beauty lies. That I try to coach them and help them understand that they have full control of any experience, any breathwork experience. So we can just do that really gentle breath that's just helping them feel a little lighter. Maybe they get some warmth in their chest or around their heart. They may feel a little tingly, but it's these really safe sensations that come on. And then once they're feeling safe in those lighter sensations, we can move into deeper ones and do more of the activation, things like that. And it's all pendulating that and titrating that in a way that We slowly introduce it and then it's these beautiful profound experiences as opposed to, I just think we so easily, people like this so easily default into the overthinking and making it cognitive. And breathwork simply doesn't allow you to do that because you have to be physically breathing. And I can tell very easily whether you're doing it or you're faking it. So that's kind of the beautiful part of all of that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, it is one of those things where sometimes we get in that diagnostic space. Are we becoming prescriptive? Are we trying to project that fixer model or are we attuning again? Are we leaning in and witnessing things like bracing, or are we starting to move into that diagnostic analytic phase of, well, I believe this is their energy. I believe this is some other aspect where, again, you know, it's a very nuanced perception. Sometimes we believe we're tuning into the energy, but what we're really witnessing is our own unresolved pattern underneath. Right. Absolutely. Again, I'm floating today. Looking at that model of breath work and witnessing bracing and how our breath often mirrors that internal state of interception. How do we start to tune in and truly hold witness to witness and observe when somebody is in that shallow guarded state or when they tend to move into that more expansive attuned model of somatic relaxing of kind of easing into things.

D' Layne Benson: Right. Yeah, I think that I see it in a very common breath pattern within this false calm that we talk about. And it's that it's really shallow breathing. They don't use their diaphragm at all. Belly breathing does not exist at all either. It's all really held tightly up in the higher chest. And the thing that happens, too, with this is it's not just a that tends to be the way they breathe. It starts to lead to their diaphragm actually freezes. It really doesn't even start to be like I tried to tell them to take a belly breath or move that diaphragm and they physically can't even do it in the beginning. Or it feels like there's something kind of they'll describe it as stuck, like right underneath their rib cage. And they can have these sensations that It's not even possible to use the diaphragm, which is super interesting. And so again, we have to titrate because we don't want to just force against that and push against that, because that's going to just go right into that feeling of, again, unsafety. And instead, we need to be just gently helping them start to move the belly as they breathe. start to pull that breath down into more of an embodied experience as opposed to just really tight and held up in the upper breath. You can also use breath just almost diagnostically in that way. You can start to see, like you said, the bracing, watching for that bracing and then seeing it's a pretty fast indicator of what their internal state is like in session together as you're talking about something. You can even use it in the context that you watch what they're talking about. when they have a state change. So maybe they're really lively and chatting with you and then they start talking about a certain boundary and you see them brace, you see the breath go shallow, you see the shoulders rise up, the jaw tighten. It's a good way to even use the breath as a tool to see exactly what area do we need to maybe dive a little deeper into if they feel safe to do so. That's a good place to explore because we just saw it activate them physically.

Jeffrey Besecker: If I may bring in a personal observation here. For sure. So I'm sitting here reflecting a little bit. I've noticed something lately with myself. As I get involved with performative work, all of our work is performative. All of our behaviors at their core are performative. We're performing an action or carrying out a task. But as I get kind of in my own head, of deep thinking, deep logic. I'm doing a lot of deep study. I'm doing some client assessments. I'm going internally and doing some writing. I'm trying to bridge those bigger concepts. I notice when I've done that for a while, I'll start getting a little bit hiccupy or I'll be belchy. And it's like, why am I like this? I haven't had anything dietary that triggers this. Why, all of a sudden, when I come out of this state, I'm hiccuping all of a sudden, I'm belching, which might be a little bit too expository here of myself sharing my personal traits here, but I'm thinking about that. I'm like, from your perspective, how much of that, again, is when we move into that triggered state of suppression and we're not consciously aware of where those subsystems are going?

D' Layne Benson: I think that we do that all the time and I celebrate you for noticing that and and even commenting on it I think it's really appropriate because again we are so prone to just looking at the people that we deal with and not pulling it internally on ourselves and I think that's a hugely important observation that you've noticed because it gives you feedback on just what you might even be doing. It might not even be the intensity of the work or the work itself. It can even be the time that you're doing it. It's just you were sitting too long with doing it. I mean, there's all these different factors that can play in.

Jeffrey Besecker: Your body posture comes into play, you know, as I'm sitting there, I tend to hunch up and kind of hunker in. That itself, you know, what are we doing? We're tightening and kind of bracing. We're kind of constricting our chest. Yeah, to me, it's just a great observational point to hold on to, not to toot my own horn, but I'm tooting my own horn, which, what do I do? As I do that, I'm explaining away what I'm doing. I start to move into some of those bypassing patterns of reducing my actions and diminishing them, not holding them with vulnerability comes into play. I had a recent conversation with an associate. We were just having a casual call. I a couple times pointed out that, you know, I did this set up to kind of diminish what I was about to do and say, but you might look at this and judge it. Well, you know, you just told me where your pattern was. She pointed that out and said, you just told me where that shrinking pattern comes in. where you start to move into that identity association. You know what, that is a great cue. And so often we move into that binary bypassing where we're starting to kind of diminish the situation. We're starting to create a narrative around it and somehow move beyond it. There's a part that's under there that's not being acknowledged that's running away from that vulnerability.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, absolutely. I think in the end, we are the best healers of anything. There's no guru or anybody who can help you heal yourself. It's really getting to that attuned place where you can have awareness of what's going on with you. You can feel it, you can acknowledge it, and you can be curious about it without bypassing it. And then that's going to change everything for you. But it just takes time. It takes practice. It's a lot of nuance to get to that point. But then when you're there, it's a beautiful place to be because Yeah, that's where all healing occurs.

Jeffrey Besecker: So looking back again at polyvagal theory, and I don't know how deeply we dove in today, that idea of being in one phase of the other and how that is more of an emergent feedback loop. And I'm even struggling to frame it today. I had it all there, and in my perfectionist mode, I had it all rehearsed out. But as we're looking at those phases, whether we're moving through ventral vagal, sympathetic activation, dorsal vagal, and however that feedback narrative is unraveling, so often it's about that rhythm of the pattern or the depth of that pattern. So in that regard, from your practice, how do you feel rhythmic breathing helps us adaptively stabilize that? I'm gonna say stabilize, adaptively stabilize rather than normalize, which was my kind of go-to default of describing it.

D' Layne Benson: Yeah, so again, coming back into how powerful breathwork is, this is like the rhythmic breathing I think is such a key part of all of this. And I'm trying to think of the best words to get into that, but. Yeah, so the rhythmic breathing, it works because it gives the nervous system a predictable pattern to organize around and under chronic stress or trauma, the system loses its natural oscillation that healthy back and forth. between activation and settling. And instead, people get stuck on one side of the spectrum. It's either constantly revved up or collapsed and freeze. And rhythm helps restore the oscillation without flooding the system. And studies show that rhythmic breathing can increase bagel tone. It improves heart rate variability. It helps the salience network shift attention back into internal cues. This breath naturally brings up small waves of sensation, like warmth in the chest, tingling, emotion rising. But because rhythm is steady and predictable, the body can metabolize these waves without tipping into overwhelm. And I like to think it's the difference between a controlled tide gently rolling in and then a tidal wave crashing over someone.

Jeffrey Besecker: That gets such an interesting point for me to look at just as I'm holding it with observation here. Vagal constrictor where, you know, we're starting to reduce blood flow between top down, bottom up processing. We're starting to kind of bring that bracing online again. You know, what's our body posture doing as we're doing any kind of interaction work? Going back to my narrative I shared. how we're sometimes hunkering over or even when we're in that relational space where we start to tighten up and noticing that sometimes just pausing and allowing that breath to find its natural rhythm is a key element. Yeah, absolutely. I just floated completely off here. So looking at that myth of instant release, how so often throughout our self-help, our therapeutic cultures, we are inherently programmed with this idea that we release stress, we instantly rewire X, Y, and Z. In pop culture, breathwork is sometimes sold as a one-session reset or modeled as a finite healing to unresolved bio-data. I'm going to say bio-data because it is a feedback loop of information. Why does this narrative epistemically flatten the slow, iterative nature of natural plasticity and how our bodies reset and rewire? That's the big question.

D' Layne Benson: Yes. And the idea that one breathwork session can fix someone, like, sure, that's really appealing, but it oversimplifies how the brain and nervous system actually change. True healing isn't a single breakthrough. It's a process of repeated experiences that gradually shift neural pathways over time. And the research on neuroplasticity and adult myelination shows that sustainable change happens through consistent repetition and not one dramatic moment. So a powerful breathwork session can absolutely create insight, release, or a sense of emotional opening. And those moments do matter, but they're the catalyst, not the completion. So without ongoing integration, the nervous system tends to revert to its old patterns because those pathways are deeply myelinated and familiar. A cathartic session might feel transformative in the moment, but new neural imprints only stabilize when the experience is revisited again and again in a way that the body can metabolize.

Jeffrey Besecker: So thank you again for holding that space, Delane, for my disconnection today with grace and wisdom and for sharing those deeper insights again. You know, that's ultimately where I'd hope we'd kind of end up and step into is that idea that our breathwork aligns and attunes us. It helps establish that rhythm. It allows us that space for grace to, over the long haul, allow that change to transform and evolve.

D' Layne Benson: Right, exactly.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like somewhere within all of that messiness, inherently we'll find our connecting point. And I'm going to own my messiness today with grace and honor, and hopefully not lean too much into that pattern of guilt and shame that I know inherently can percolate under there. there to just acknowledge that, yes, there is a part of me that experiences that. There's a part of me that wants to kind of have that correctness and fix it. There's a part of me that is inherently concerned with the feedback of others and how they might perceive today. So thank you for allowing me that grace to just show up and be me.

D' Layne Benson: Absolutely. And I think that us showing up imperfectly models something that should be modeled more in society anyway. I think that it's all of the perfection that's modeled leads to everyone having these deep perfectionism tendencies. You know what I mean? And so it's almost like this feedback cycle. And so by us modeling, yeah, you don't have to be perfect every day. You just show up and you do the best you can do. There's something to that. I think that's a good thing to do in itself.

Jeffrey Besecker: I was not my quote-unquote normal, rehearsed, well-put-together self today, and that's all right. I think inherently, the message will speak for itself.

null: Yeah, absolutely.

Jeffrey Besecker: Well, I truly enjoy our conversations, and you are such a wonderful source of light and inspiration. Thank you so much.

D' Layne Benson: Thank you. This has been great. I've really, really enjoyed this whole process.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's do it again soon.

D' Layne Benson: Sounds good.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. We're thankful for the depth, grounded presence, and care Delane brought into our conversation. I left our recording with the distinct sense that we name things people have felt for years but haven't had the language to express. And that feels like meaningful work. A reflection on Functional Freeze touched me. That pattern shapes so much of our lives, both in healthcare and in personal spaces. And being able to articulate it with someone who not only understands the physiology, but also honors the lived experience, is truly a gift. In this episode, our conversation centered on helping people recognize how over-functioning and false calm are often protective adaptations, and how regulation begins when those embodied roles are met with attuned awareness rather than pushed away. When capacity and coherence are gently restored, the nervous system gains room to reorganize, allowing integration and healing to emerge adaptively. We're grateful this conversation resonates with you, our cherished community. If you found value meaning in this episode, please share it with a friend, loved one, or fellow care provider. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued community of therapeutic professionals. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.