April was expansive.

We hosted our most-attended free workshop of all time to rave reviews and enrolled our largest Relaxed Money cohort so far.

Behind the scenes, Mike, our team, and I played full out in a way we never have before.

It’s been largely glorious and we’re so grateful for all of our existing community who were part of it and for all of the new folks who are here (if that’s you…hello! Welcome!)

If you were part of Wide Receiver or if you’ve been listening to Plenty or reading this Dispatch for a bit, you also know I keep it real.

And here’s what’s real:

Expansion comes with a downside.

And when you don’t know why it’s happening (or that it’s supposed to happen) and you don’t know what to do about it, sometimes you go back to your previous level and the new growth doesn’t stick.

Ok so here’s why so many people have come to expect the other shoe to drop when something really good happens:

According to our nervous system (which mitigates how we feel and what we think and believe, and therefore our behavior), anything that’s unfamiliar is unsafe.

So when you have something really great happen that’s beyond your previous experience (like our biggest enrollment period of all time), your nervous system will experience it as a threat.

For me, this showed up as me sitting alone in the dark in my bathroom on Saturday night while Mike watched the InterMiami game on TV scrolling Instagram obsessively for about 30 minutes, with a feeling in the pit of my stomach like I was gonna die.

(For context, there were a few accounts who’d tagged me in some judgemental commentary on our Relaxed Money campaign.)

Luckily, by now I know enough about how we’re wired to see precisely what was going on.

I’d expanded and my nervous system was doing its thing to find a way to bring me back to a level that felt more safe, ie. smaller and less joyful.

So what did I do?

I leaned into signaling safety in my body by:

messaging one of my best friends and asking for support (co-regulation)
doing one of my favorite nervous system healing drills

I felt better enough to fall asleep with zero issues (a total miracle for someone like me who has a history of anxious insomnia) and I was able to return to savoring the expansion the next morning.

Listen: expansion will never be without its shadows.

But knowing that they’re totally normal, and healthy even, and then feeling our way (not thinking our way) through them is the key.

I would imagine I’m not the only one who noticed some contraction on the other side of all of the expansion this community has experienced in the past couple of weeks so I hope this was medicinal for you, too. ❤️

Xo,
Kate