14/08/2025
When being a buzy bee is safer than stopping to smell the roses. Hard relate. Seen at Jill Holly - NeuroDiversity University
Some people withdraw when they’re overwhelmed. Others lash out. Some freeze. And then there are those of us who do.
I clean, I plan, I reply to emails. I volunteer for things I don’t have energy for. I open new tabs, start new projects, fill the calendar, make another to-do list. Sometimes, I don’t even realise I'm doing it. I just know that stopping feels… dangerous. Like the moment I stop, everything I've been holding back might come flooding in.
To be honest, it simply is the best strategy I have when processing is too overwhelming in the moment, when there's no safe outlet to unpack emotions yet or when the current environment doesn't allow me to stop.
From the outside it looks like productivity and for me if can feel like regulation. But, invisibly, it’s avoidance - the distraction that feels like control.
There’s something compelling about staying in motion. When my nervous system is frayed or my internal world feels too big to hold, doing something, anything, is soothing. It gives shape to the shapeless. It buys time. It makes things feel predictable when my own mind doesn’t.
Keeping busy can feel like the only available alternative to spiralling.
The funny thing is, that this productivity, or this illusion of keeping it together, can just be a signal that dysregulation is being cleverly delayed.
What happens when I slow down? That’s the part I don’t want to find out sometimes!
Because what’s waiting in that silence? What needs haven’t been met? What emotions have been queued up with no exit? Sometimes, stopping means crashing. Other times, it’s a confrontation with sensory distress, emotional exhaustion or internalised pressure that’s been avoided by staying busy.
So, is it avoidance or adaptation?
It’s important to acknowledge the fact that sometimes avoidance is adaptive since it’s what keeps us afloat until we have the support or capacity to deal with what’s underneath.
Keeping busy is not to be demonised. It just needs to be understood for what it is. A pattern. A placeholder. A temporary strategy. By no means a substitute for safety or rest.
So how do you know the difference?
There’s no blueprint, but a few gentle questions might help:
Am I choosing this activity or trying to outrun something?
What emotions or sensations come up when I try to pause?
What would rest look like if it actually felt safe?
Is my body keeping pace with my busyness or quietly burning out?
Sometimes the answers are uncomfortable. Sometimes they’re unclear. But naming the pattern is a start.
Regulation isn’t always obvious. Not all dysregulation looks loud. Not all coping looks messy. Sometimes it looks like overachievement. Sometimes it looks like reliability. Sometimes it looks like someone who never stops. (Me. I'm someone!)
But nervous systems do need pauses. They need rhythm. They need safety alongside structure not instead of it.
