Some of you have been here long enough to know Marley. Our rescue.
Mr. Marley Lunchbox. The sweetest, softest, most anxious little soul I have ever loved.
And some of you are brand new here. So let me catch you up on why I spent a full day this week getting absolutely hosed in golden showers by my own dog.
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Let me rewind.
I'm going to spare you the full saga — I already wrote about it once and if you want the whole ugly beautiful thing, it's right here → [What My Rescue Dog’s Submissive Pissing Taught Me About Nervous System Regulation].
Short version: the first few months with Marley were rough. Something about me — my energy, my movement, who knows — set off his submissive urination. And I mean set. it. off.
There was one weekend I was sitting on the kitchen floor crying, phone in hand, straight-up begging our vet to medicate both of us just to get to Monday. Three months in and I was quietly starting to wonder if Mr. Marley Lunchbox was going to end up with a new family after I maaayybbeee might cut a hole in the fence...
That's how bad it got. I want to be honest about that.
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And then it got better. For months we were in the clear. Clean floors. Confident dog. I thought we'd graduated.
Then this week — no warning — something quietly broke loose in that sweet little brain of his and we backslid. Not all the way. Just the one trigger: he jumps up on your knees for head rubs, you give him the head rubs, and the golden shower commences. Every time.
So I did the thing that worked the first time. The thing that makes zero sense until you understand what's actually happening.
I let it flow.
I kept rubbing his head. I stayed soft. I let him leak all over me (outside of course...) until he couldn't leak no mo — no flinch, no scold, no big reaction. I just let his little body do its thing while I quietly told his nervous system the only thing it needed to hear:
You're safe. Nothing bad is going to happen. Even now. Even like this.
Because here's what I finally understood → submissive urination isn't disobedience. It's not a training gap. It's a nervous system talking.
Marley's body hits an alarm, floods with the "I might be in danger" signal, and dumps the pressure the only way a scared animal knows how. He's not being bad. He's being terrified and loving me at the same time.
You cannot punish that out of a body. You can only make the body safe enough to stop firing the alarm. And every time he pees on me and nothing bad happens — no yelling, no cold shoulder, just head rubs — his system logs one more piece of evidence: this is safe. That's how his confidence gets built. Not from control. From safety, repeated.
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Now. Here's where I need you to stop reading this like it's about a dog.
Because your nervous system runs the exact same program.
You, overachiever. You with the racing brain and the 2 a.m. spiral and the "I'll rest when it's done" and the body that literally cannot sit still in a quiet room. That's not a discipline problem. That's not you being lazy or dramatic or behind. That's a nervous system stuck in threat — dumping pressure the only way it knows how.
And what do we do with it? We try to discipline it out. Hustle harder. Optimize. White-knuckle. We clamp down on the alarm and call it drive.
But you can't grind your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You can't logic a scared body into feeling safe. Marley didn't calm down because I got firmer with him. He calmed down because I gave him safety, over and over, until his baseline moved from danger to okay.
Same. Program. As. You.
Rest isn't the reward at the end. Rest is the signal. When you actually rest — and the ceiling doesn't cave in, the emails don't detonate, the whole thing keeps standing — your body logs the evidence: I can stand down. Nothing bad happens here. That's the rep. That's how a nervous system learns it's safe. That's real confidence — the kind that lives in your body, not the kind you have to talk yourself into.
Rest is the rebellion. But it's also the head rub. It's the thing that tells your terrified, loyal, overworked little system → you're safe now. You can stop bracing.
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This Week's Practice: Let it Flow
Next time the alarm hits — the racing, the tight chest, the urge to do something — try this instead of clamping down:
- Catch it. Name it. Out loud if you can. "Oh. There's the pressure." No judgment. You're not broken. Your body just hit an alarm.
- Stop trying to shut it off. This is the backwards one. The clamping down is what keeps it stuck. You're not here to fix it.
- Send one safety signal. Feet flat on the floor. Hand on your chest. One long exhale — longer than the inhale. Whatever tells your system: I'm here. We're not in danger. I just recommend no golden showers on anyone...
- Let it move. Shake, cry, breathe, sit in it. Let it run til it can't run no mo. You're not fixing it → you're finishing it.
- Notice what didn't happen. The ceiling didn't cave in. You didn't die. Nothing bad happened. → That's the rep. That's the evidence. That's how your body learns it's safe, and that's how confidence actually gets built — not from a pep talk, from proof.
Let it flow. Then let it go.
🎧 This Week on the Hustle Rebels Podcast
🎙️ If You're New Here — Catch Up: Last week's solo episode is about what happens when you ignore the alarm for so long it stops registering as an alarm and just starts feeling like a regular Tuesday. I tell the story of pushing through pain until my leg went dead on a ladder — in the middle of a fire — because push through was the only setting I had.
And I call out the trap I watch burned-out overachievers fall into constantly: believing the only way out is to quit the job, end the relationship, blow up the whole life. Nine times out of ten that's just avoidance in a decisive costume. The real change starts with the harder question sitting underneath it → which is exactly what Brainspotting is built to go after.
Watch on YouTube:
Listen Here: [Signs You're Burned Out (Even If You Think You're Fine)]
New here? Or feeling nostalgic?
Want to read previous newsletters?
Check em out here: [Read Previous Editions of The Weekly Recharge]
Go easy on your nervous system this week. It's not misbehaving. It's just scared and trying to love you at the same time.
Let it flow, Renae
P.S. — This — teaching a bracing body that it's finally safe — is the whole entire point of Burn the Blueprint: Identity Reset. It's not mindset fluff. It's the rewiring that makes rest possible in the first place. First week's free if you want to feel what I'm talking about → [Week One of Burn the Blueprint: Identity Reset].
- Renae
Wayward Wellness Coaching
Hustle Rebels Podcast
