How to Calm the “F” Down
As we step into December—the last beautiful arc of 2025—I’ve been reflecting on how much growth this year has asked of me. And you know what? Most of that growth has come from learning how to listen to my body in an entirely new way.
This week on The Sober Edge Podcast, I’m sharing something deeply personal and deeply foundational: how to “Calm the F Down.”
And yes… I mean that F, but I also mean the four Fs: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
Over the past few months, I completed a robust trauma-informed nervous system certification taught by Jessica McGuire—an experience that turned so many lights on for me. I went into it wanting to better support my clients, and I came out realizing just how much of my own nervous system story I had been bypassing.
Alcohol-free living exposes what alcohol was numbing.
Ten years ago, I would have told you I was calm, chill, upbeat.
In reality? I was dysregulated, hypervigilant, controlling, buzzing like a live wire inside my own body.
Alcohol created a fog that kept me from feeling my body’s distress signals. Once the fog lifted, all that dysregulation became impossible to ignore.
And here’s the honest truth I wish more people understood:
👉 We cannot create lasting change from a dysregulated nervous system.
Not because we’re weak.
Not because we “should try harder.”
But because our prefrontal cortex—our decision-making, planning, long-term thinking brain—is offline when the body believes it’s in danger.
When that happens, we automatically drop into:
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Fight (anger, control, irritability)
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Flight (anxiety, overworking, restlessness)
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Freeze (shutdown, fogginess, withdrawal)
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Fawn (people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, losing our voice)
These states aren’t personality flaws.
They’re survival strategies wired into our biology.
The key isn’t willpower — it’s safety.
One of the most powerful things I learned is that self-trust begins in the nervous system, not the mind.
We cannot access intuition, deep listening, long-term decision making, or relational safety until our body feels safe.
This is why so many people say:
“I don’t know what happened—I just started drinking.”
Because their nervous system hijacked the moment, and old patterns took the wheel.
The good news? Regulating your nervous system is simpler than you think.
We don’t need degrees in neuroscience to regulate ourselves.
We need:
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simple breath patterns,
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grounding tools like feeling our feet or rubbing our thighs,
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co-regulating with another person,
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noticing our environment,
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and tapping into the body before the mind.
These “bottom-up” tools create just enough safety to bring our powerful brain back online.
This is the real work of becoming alcohol-free.
Not just stopping drinking…
but learning the language of your body,
recognizing old patterns for what they are,
and slowly guiding yourself back into a grounded, centered state where actual freedom becomes possible.
If you’ve been feeling anxious, shut down, hyper-alert, or stuck in people-pleasing, you are not doing anything wrong.
Your nervous system is sending you messages.
And you can learn to understand them.
I’ll be sharing more tools—and some video demonstrations—over the coming weeks to support you in building this inner safety. If you’re curious about nervous system work or want support in beginning your AF journey from a place of grounded regulation rather than survival mode, I’d love to talk.
Here’s to at least one “Calm the F Down” moment for you this week.
You deserve that sense of homecoming inside your own body.
Warmly,
Teri 🤍
