Will Therapy Make Me Lose My Edge?

Will Therapy Make Me Lose My Edge?

That sharpness you've built your career on? It might be costing you more than you realize.

You've always been the one who sees things coming. The one who's three steps ahead, who notices the shift in tone before anyone else does, who's already preparing for what could go wrong. It's part of what makes you good at what you do.

So when someone suggests you might benefit from "calming your nervous system" (“whatever that means,” you might think to yourself), there's a reasonable question underneath the resistance: What if I need the vigilance? What if letting my guard down means losing the thing that's kept me safe, kept me sharp, kept me successful?

It's a fair concern.

What hypervigilance actually is

That always-on alertness isn't clarity. It's contraction.

When your nervous system is locked in threat mode, your focus narrows. You're scanning for danger, which means you're tuned to one channel. You might catch the thing you're bracing for, but you're missing everything in the periphery. The opportunity. The nuance. The information that doesn't fit the pattern you're expecting.

This is the paradox: hypervigilance feels like awareness, but it's actually tunnel vision. You're not taking in more. You're taking in less, filtered through a lens of anticipated threat.

What it costs

The body can't sustain that level of alertness without a price.

It's like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. You're still moving, still performing. But you're grinding down the engine without realizing it.

You're tired in ways that don't make sense given how much you sleep. Your reactions are faster than you'd like, sharper than the moment calls for. You catch yourself snapping, or shutting down, or unable to be present even when nothing is wrong.

You might notice you're never quite off duty. Even on vacation, even when you're supposed to be relaxing, some part of you is still scanning.

This isn't strength. It's depletion dressed up as competence.

What real alertness looks like

A regulated nervous system doesn't mean a dull one. It means a flexible one.

When you're not braced for impact, your peripheral vision opens. You read rooms more accurately. You respond instead of react. You have access to more of your intelligence, not less, because you're not routing everything through a threat filter.

The sharpest people in high-stakes environments aren't the most anxious ones. They're the ones who can stay calm enough to see clearly and act deliberately. That's not the absence of alertness. It's alertness without the constriction.

What this work offers

Somatic therapy isn't about becoming passive or checked out. It's not about lowering your standards or losing your edge.

It's about trading a rigid kind of alert for a responsive one. Learning to access that sharpness when you need it, rather than running it constantly at a cost you've stopped noticing.

Most people who do this work don't become less capable. They become less exhausted. The vigilance that used to run in the background starts to feel like a tool they can pick up and put down, rather than a permanent state they can't turn off.

If this sounds familiar

I work with people who've always relied on their ability to stay ahead. Many of them come in wondering if something is wrong with them for feeling so worn down, when they're still performing at the same level.

Nothing is wrong. The system that protected you is just asking for something different now.

If you've been wondering whether your sharpness is sustainable, or whether there's another way to stay effective without the wear of always being on, this might be worth a conversation. If that's where you are, I'd be glad to talk.

Margaret Sigel is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) in Santa Monica, California, specializing in somatic therapy for anxiety, trauma, and burnout. She works with adults in person and online throughout California.