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Tag Archives: Moderation

The Amygdala Is Not a Reliable Narrator

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Or: how my brain keeps shouting “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ALONE” during perfectly normal interactions.


There’s a part of my brain that is deeply committed to my survival.
Unfortunately, it is also extremely dramatic, wildly overconfident, and deeply uninterested in nuance.

This is the amygdala. Its job is to notice danger and react fast. It does not care whether the threat is actually happening now. It cares about patterns. Similarities. Vibes. A tone shift that vaguely reminds it of something that happened years ago and which it has never emotionally recovered from.

It is not subtle.
It is also not open to feedback.

Everything Is Fine, Except Apparently It Isn’t

In relationships, this manifests as volume.

A delayed reply becomes abandonment.
A change in tone becomes rejection.
A quiet evening becomes proof that something is wrong and I should emotionally prepare for exile.

Logically, I know this is nonsense.
Physically, my body does not give a shit what I know.

Because the amygdala doesn’t speak in sentences. It speaks in sensations. Tight chest. Clenched jaw. A sudden urge to either explain everything or disappear completely. Fight, flight, freeze, sometimes all three before lunch.

(Yes, a lunch I’ve probably forgotten to eat.)

This is the part of me that fears loss before it happens. The part that learned, early on, that connection could vanish without warning. It doesn’t wait for evidence. It doesn’t ask follow-up questions. It just hits the alarm and leaves me to deal with the emotional admin.

The truly irritating thing is that fear feels exactly like intuition when it shows up in the body.

For years, I mistook anxiety for insight. I thought I was being perceptive. Careful. Emotionally intelligent. In reality, I was just catastrophising with confidence and calling it foresight.


In Which I Am Actually Being Reasonable

What really adds insult to injury is that my behaviour is usually… fine.

I’m communicating.
I’m asking for clarity.
I’m noticing patterns without accusing anyone of crimes.

If someone else described doing exactly what I’m doing, I’d nod along and say, yes, that sounds healthy and proportionate.

My amygdala, however, loses her entire mind.

To her, this is not calm communication. This is escalation. This is exposure. This is the exact moment before everything goes catastrophically wrong. The same actions, viewed internally, are suddenly accompanied by sirens, flashing lights, and a voice shouting “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON.”

Abort mission.
Retreat immediately.
Or overshare wildly.
Possibly both.

She is not fair. She does not scale her response to the situation. She takes perfectly sensible actions and adds a dramatic soundtrack and spends the whole budget on fireworks, just in case.

The Double Standard, Featuring Spoons


Then there’s the double standard, which I find particularly offensive.

When I cancel plans because I’m out of spoons, it’s reasonable. When I realise that past me had wildly different ideas about what was achievable in a single day, that’s also reasonable. Annoying, yes, but reasonable. And in truth I should get a gold star for not pushing through and people pleasing. (But that’s a post for another day.)

I cancel plans. I apologise. I reschedule if I can. And crucially, I know that none of this means I don’t care. I still love these people. I still want to spend time with them. The desire didn’t evaporate just because my capacity did.

That part feels obvious to me.

When someone else does the exact same thing?

Obviously they’re pulling away.
Obviously they’ve bored.
Obviously they’ve realised something and are quietly planning their exit.

Never mind that I understand this perfectly well when it’s me. Never mind that I know, from the inside, how much love can exist alongside a last-minute cancellation. Context collapses. Compassion evaporates.

The rule book changes depending on who’s holding it.

Logically, I know this is absurd.

That this is not a threat.

Emotionally, my body is already packing a bag and rehearsing a sad little monologue about being abandoned and the smallest violin is playing just for me.

Again: not fair. Not evidence-based. Not even especially imaginative. Just a threat-detection system applying wildly inconsistent standards and insisting “this is vigilance, actually.”

Past Me Is a Terrible Project Manager


I think part of this is finally accepting that past me is not a reliable project manager. She is optimistic. She is ambitious. She looks at a day and says, yes, we can absolutely fit all of that in, and then disappears, leaving present me to deal with the consequences.

When I cancel plans, I’m often not choosing between people and rest. I’m correcting an earlier miscalculation. I’m adjusting reality to something my body, my brain can actually sustain. And that doesn’t undo the wanting. It doesn’t touch the affection. It just acknowledges that enthusiasm is not the same thing as energy.

I understand this when I’m the one making the call. I’m learning, slowly, to offer other people the same generosity. To trust that their present selves are also cleaning up after an overcommitted past version.

This, too, is not a threat.

Other People Exist, Inconveniently

I’m also learning, and this one really tests my patience, that other people have whole areas of their lives that exist without me in it. Friendships I’m not part of. Conversations I’ll never hear. Days that do not orbit my presence or absence.

And that this is, still, not a threat.

It’s not a withdrawal.
It’s not a quiet rehearsal of leaving.
It’s just… reality.

Other people having full, textured lives doesn’t diminish my place in theirs. It doesn’t mean I’m replaceable or forgettable or already on my way out. It just means I am not the sole load-bearing structure holding everything up.

Which, when I actually sit with it, is more relieving than frightening.

How wonderful it is that I have relationships with people who have rich, full lives of their own? How treasured it is to be chosen as part of that? Not by default, not by obligation, but intentionally. How rich it is to know that the people I love show up fully present when they’re with me, not tired, not overwhelmed, not running on fumes?

They come rested. They come willingly. They come because they want to be there.

Just like I do with them.

Other people having full, textured lives doesn’t diminish my place in theirs. It doesn’t make me replaceable or forgettable or already on my way out. It just means I’m not the sole load-bearing structure holding everything up.

And that, it turns out, is not a threat…
It’s abundance.

Updating the Operating System

And I think this is the real friction point: the crisis-management style of my amygdala doesn’t fit the life current me actually has.

That approach made sense once. Hypervigilance, over-preparing, scanning constantly for exits. Those were reasonable strategies in a life that felt unstable. But my life now is quieter. Safer. More ordinary, in the best possible way. The emergencies are smaller. The stakes are lower. The threats are mostly imagined.

My amygdala, however, has not updated the brief.

She treats minor emotional discomfort like a five-alarm fire. She responds to scheduling conflicts with the same intensity she once reserved for real danger. She cannot tell the difference between this is uncomfortable and this is unsafe, and she would very much like me to act quickly, while because she can’t see beyond the hill of this crisis.

I don’t need to dismantle the alarm system.
I don’t even need to silence her.

I just need to stop letting her run the day-to-day operations of a life that no longer requires constant emergency response.

Current me gets to choose tools that fit. Tools that assume continuity instead of collapse. Tools that trust that care doesn’t vanish overnight, that people don’t disappear because of one cancelled plan, that love can exist alongside rest.

So when the alarm goes off now, I’m learning to pause. I’m starting to check the facts. I remind myself that past me had a very different job, and did the best she could with what she had.

Then I thank her.
And I turn the volume down.

She hates this.

Lukewarm Tea & Other Disappointments

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A study in moderation, misquotes, and why I still prefer coffee.

When I was younger — young — back when I was still brave enough to actually write in notebooks instead of hoarding them like endangered artefacts, I kept a book of quotes.

Lines I thought were cool, or clever, or profound. You might call them “edgy,” but that wasn’t really a word in the late 1900s. Back then, you could be deep or weird, and I was just a ginger from Liverpool.

On the very first page of that notebook, in my best dramatic handwriting, I wrote a quote I found online. A quote I was convinced was ancient, wise, and philosophical. A quote I believed Socrates himself had penned, probably while staring moodily into the middle distance.

It went like this:

“Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation… is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew.”
— Not Socrates. Dan Millman.

At twelve years old, reading that? I thought I was the coolest thing alive.

I didn’t understand half of it, but it sounded intense, and I was absolutely certain a Greek philosopher had written it on a stone tablet or whatever.

Finding out years later that it wasn’t Socrates but Dan Millman, and that he wrote it in a book sold at Waterstones, was… humbling.

I’ve never read the book, but the quote stuck with me anyway. Partly because it’s dramatic in a way my teenage self adored, and partly because moderation actually is hard.

The Present Problem

Cut to now: a grown adult allegedly capable of responsibility, staring down the holiday season with the earnest hope of saving for an actual trip away. A real break. A proper escape. Something Future Me might thank Present Me for, if Future Me ever exists and isn’t replaced by an equally chaotic upgrade.

I want to be moderate. I do. I want to budget sensibly, make good choices, cook actual meals that don’t come in cardboard, and greet January with both memories and money. But moderation is so much harder than it sounds. Especially when December hits and executive function dissolves like a sugar cube in hot water.

This is the season where everything conspires to grind you down until you give in to hedonism. Suddenly every advert, every menu, every streetlight is whispering, “Go on. Treat yourself. You’ve earned it.”

And maybe I have. But treating myself often means opening a food delivery app with the resigned sigh of someone who knows very well that this is sabotage, but will do it anyway, because chewing joylessly on carrots doesn’t feel like survival.

The alternative isn’t noble, though. When I’m not giving in to hedonistic takeaways, I swing hard in the other direction.

Asceticism.
Punishment.
The monastic discipline of someone who has confused “stability” with “penance.”

Rice.
Instant ramen.
Vague resentment.

But it’s not balance. It’s a performance of self-control so dramatic that even my teenage “Socrates wrote that” self would roll her eyes.

And that’s the real problem: it is so easy to live at the extremes. To be all feast or famine, all indulgence or austerity.

Moderation requires something far more challenging:
making a reasonable decision when you’re tired, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and the algorithm is dangling a limited-time dessert pizza at you like a hostage negotiation.

A pull quote on dark green background "But it’s not balance. It’s a performance of self-control" The word performance is highlighted in bright pink

The Pivot

It turns out the extremes, the feasting and the fasting, are easy because they’re emotional. They give you something to inhabit. A mood. A story. A posture.

Extravagance says:
“Screw it, you deserve joy.”

Asceticism says:
“Suffer now, thrive later.”

Moderation says:
“Make a sensible choice.”

And honestly? I hate it here.

Because moderation requires presence. Attention. Consistency. The kind of quiet, ongoing effort that never gets applause and never generates dopamine.

A pull quote on a sage green background. "Boring us hard. Especially for a brain that craved crescendos."

It’s showing up for a future self I don’t always believe in. It’s making decisions that feel small and mundane and unheroic.
It’s choosing not to dramatically overspend and not to dramatically punish myself for wanting things.

Moderation is boring, and boring is hard — especially for a brain that craves narrative arcs and emotional crescendos.

But boring is also where the real life happens.
Not the fantasy life, not the meltdown life… the actual life I have to live day by day. The life I’ll be living in five years, ten years, the one I’m squinting at in those pension calculators. The life where taking a holiday requires saving slowly, repeatedly, without drama.

Moderation is the tiny bridge between now and the future I keep insisting I want.

The Release

So I’ll practice moderation.
For now. For as long as I can manage.

Until, inevitably, extravagance or asceticism seduces me again… because they’re dramatic, and messy, and far more fun.

But I’ll keep trying. I’ll keep saving. I’ll keep choosing the middle path even when it tastes like nothing.

Moderation is lukewarm tea, and I’ll drink it…
but I’d rather have coffee.

Sometimes the coffee. Sometimes the axe.

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On favourite cafes, small rituals and the quests that begin with a cup in hand.

The Nearest Cup

My favourite coffee shop isn’t just the closest, though that helps. It’s genuinely good. It sits a few minutes from my front door, right by the train station, perfectly placed between home and the town centre. I like to think I chose it for the beans or the vibe, but the truth is simpler: it’s on the way, and it’s there when I need it.

An americano in a pink cup with an almond croissant on a white plate, places on a speckled cafe table

The Atmosphere

From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. A handful of tables, a cute mirror sign, the steady shuffle of people coming and going. But it has its own rhythm. You hear the roll of suitcase wheels on the pavement, the chatter of office staff escaping their cubicles, the run club on some Saturday morning. The hiss of the steam wand cutting through it all, like they’re trying to take us back to the golden age of train travel. And inside, time does slow down just enough. Long enough to take a breath, to sip, to watch the world hurry past without you.

The Coffee Itself

And the coffee? It’s good. Not just good-for-a-train-station, but actually good. Smooth espresso shots, that taste like someone cared about getting it right. It’s the kind of place you could recommend to a friend and not have to apologize afterwards. Which makes it even better that it’s mine: close enough to be casual, but good enough to feel like a treat.

And then there are the pastries. Real pastries, not the sad shrink-wrapped kind that taste like regret. I’m talking about almond croissants dusted with sugar, the kind that leave a little trail of flakes across the table like edible confetti. Pair one with a cup and suddenly errands feel like indulgence. Coffee in one hand, pastry in the other and even I will concede the day doesn’t look half as daunting.

The Ritual

What I love most is that this place has become my starting line. The stop that marks the beginning of whatever comes next. Some days it’s just errands, other days it’s train journeys or something bigger, but the coffee is always the ritual that kicks it off.

It’s my Rivendell of coffee: a pause before the quest. Sometimes I’m off to the Undying Lands, sometimes I’m trudging toward Mordor, but either way, I start here . A cup in hand and the sense that at least I’m equipped for whatever’s coming. And sometimes it’s not just me. Sometimes there’s a council. A friend across the table, a small circle of confidence before we set off. Not quite the Council of Elrond, but close enough. Plans are made, jokes are shared, and for a moment the world feels steady. And when it doesn’t? Well, someone will loan me an axe.

Closing Sip

It’s not the best coffee I’ve ever had, that title still belongs to some rainy day in Wellington, memory-polished and unreachable, but it’s the best coffee I can get today. And that matters more. Because this place doesn’t just hand me caffeine; it hands me a beginning. A reason to keep moving.

A Rivendell in a paper cup.

And honestly? That’s magic.