When The Calm Feels Strange

Beneath the storms there is something quieter waiting for us.

When I was an intern many years ago, I worked at a halfway house for women coming out of prison.

Many of these women had lived through horrific childhoods. Sexual abuse, abandonment, neglect. Some had grown up in homes where violence and chaos were simply part of daily life. Later, as teenagers and adults, many found themselves caught in the familiar orbit of drugs, alcohol, and abusive relationships.

Looking back, what strikes me now is how little opportunity any of them had ever had to regulate their nervous systems. Their lives had unfolded in an atmosphere of constant intensity—survival, danger, volatility.

And yet they were some of the most honest, straightforward people I had ever worked with.

One day, during a group session, I asked them a question.

“What do you think would happen,” I said, “if you met a really nice man? Maybe he goes to church. Maybe he makes good money. He’s kind to you. He treats you with respect.”

There was almost no pause.

In one voice, several of them answered.

“We’d dog him.”

“Dog him” meant they would pick on him. Push him. Provoke him. Try to get him to start a fight.

The room filled with laughter when they said it, but beneath it was something very real.

I remember feeling curious about that moment.

Why would someone who had lived through so much violence push away the very thing they said they wanted?

Over the years, sitting with hundreds of people in constellation workshops, I have noticed something similar.

Many people come carrying the wounds of growing up in chaotic homes—houses where alcohol, rage, volatility, or deep emotional instability were part of the atmosphere. The ground could shift at any moment. A door might slam, a voice might rise, or silence might stretch across the room like a storm about to break.

Naturally, these men and women say they want something different. They long for calm. For safety. For a partner who is steady and kind.

And sometimes they find exactly that.

For a while, it feels wonderful. The relationship is stable. There are no eruptions, no walking on eggshells, no sudden emotional storms.

But after some time, something subtle begins to happen.

The quiet becomes uncomfortable.

Not consciously. No one wakes up and decides, Today, I will create a fight.

But the body remembers.

A nervous system that grew up in chaos learned to live in a heightened state of alertness. It learned the rhythm of unpredictability, emotional spikes, and sudden danger. Over time, that intensity becomes deeply familiar.

In some ways, the body can even become addicted to that level of energy.

Chaos carries a certain charge—an adrenaline-filled aliveness the nervous system once relied upon to survive. When that intensity disappears, the body does not always relax into peace right away. Instead, it can feel restless, agitated, or even bored.

Not boredom in the ordinary sense, but the uneasiness of a body that does not yet know how to settle into safety.

And so, in ways that are often subtle, the old emotional temperature begins to return. A small disagreement gets pushed further than necessary. A comment becomes sharper than intended. Suspicion appears where none existed before.

Slowly, almost invisibly, the nervous system recreates something it once knew very well.

From the outside, it can look like sabotage.

But from the inside, it is often something else entirely.

It is familiarity.

In constellation work, we sometimes see that people remain deeply oriented toward the emotional atmosphere of their family of origin. The body carries it. The system remembers it. Chaos becomes part of the inner landscape of belonging.

And so calm can feel strangely foreign.

I have also noticed something else.

When people find ways to channel that inner intensity into something embodied—martial arts, long-distance running, swimming in cold water, climbing, dancing, or another demanding physical practice—the relationship itself often begins to breathe more easily.

The body still has a place to release the energy it once needed to survive.

Gradually, something new becomes possible.

The nervous system begins to learn that safety does not mean emptiness. That stillness does not mean danger. That calm can be alive.

For those who grew up amid instability, this may be one of the deeper developmental steps in life: learning to live in peace.

It takes patience.

It takes kindness toward oneself.

And perhaps most importantly, it takes compassion for the child who once learned that love and chaos often lived in the same room.

Over time, something beautiful can happen.

The calm that once felt strange begins to feel like home.

And perhaps beneath all of this—beneath the storms we once survived and sometimes recreate—there is something quieter waiting for us.

Something patient.

Something steady.

Something that has been there all along.

The love underneath.

---

This piece is drawn from Bill’s forthcoming book, From The Love Underneath.

To receive notice when the book is released, you’re welcome to join the waitlist:
https://forms.gle/7rD2PEnHBRUuoiJ68

© William L. Mannle. All rights reserved.

---