The Comfort of Storms: Understanding Emotional Regulation and the Nervous System

There are times when the things we are usually encouraged to do in order to feel better seem pretty difficult, or impossible, to access. A quiet room, a mindfulness exercise, a few slow breaths, or a peaceful walk can all be valuable ways of regulating ourselves, yet there are moments when distress feels too large, too immediate, or too alive for these approaches to fully meet us. Many people describe a different experience during such times: a pull towards the sea when the weather has turned, a desire to walk in strong winds, or a wish to sit and watch dark clouds gathering overhead. What is striking about these experiences is that they are not calm in any obvious sense. The landscape itself may appear turbulent, unpredictable, and full of movement. Yet many people find them deeply soothing.

At first glance, this can seem counterintuitive. If we are already anxious, overwhelmed, angry, or distressed, surely we should be seeking calm rather than more intensity. Yet there may be something psychologically significant about encountering a landscape that reflects, rather than contradicts, our internal experience. When we feel emotionally activated, there can often be a subtle sense of disconnection from the world around us. Other people may appear composed and steady while we feel anything but. The pace of ordinary life can continue as normal while internally we feel as though we are being swept along by forces that are difficult to name or contain. In these moments, standing beside a rough sea or beneath a storm-filled sky can create a surprising feeling of recognition. The turbulence no longer belongs solely to us.

When the world outside mirrors the world within

The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas wrote about what he called transformational objects, experiences that alter our emotional state not through conscious understanding but through encounter. Certain places, pieces of music, artworks, and landscapes seem to affect us in ways that are difficult to explain rationally. They do not necessarily provide answers, yet they leave us feeling different after spending time with them. Bollas was interested in the way these experiences can resonate with aspects of ourselves that exist beyond language, and perhaps this helps explain why wild weather can feel so regulating. It does not soothe us by removing intensity. Instead, it may soothe us by allowing intensity to feel recognised.

There is something profoundly reassuring about being reminded that movement, force, and unpredictability are not unique to us. A stormy sea is not trying to become calm. The wind is not apologising for its strength. The weather changes according to conditions, and we tend to accept this as part of the nature of things. Yet when emotional states move through us with similar force, we often respond very differently.

The assumption that something has gone wrong

Many of us have absorbed the idea that emotional wellbeing should primarily consist of feeling calm, balanced, and in control. While these states are undoubtedly valuable, they can sometimes lead us to regard all forms of emotional turbulence as evidence that something has gone wrong. Anxiety becomes a problem to eradicate, and anger becomes something to suppress. Even grief sometimes becomes something to move beyond as quickly as possible.

Yet if we look carefully at the natural world, intensity appears not as an exception but as part of its ordinary functioning: Pressure builds and releases, seasons change drastically, and rivers sometimes overflow their banks. Trees bend under strong winds before becoming still again. We do not experience these phenomena as signs that nature has failed, as we can understand them as expressions of a living system responding to changing conditions.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued that emotions are not irrational disruptions to life but meaningful responses to it. From this perspective, emotions tell us something about what matters to us, what we fear losing, what we long for, and what we care about. They are not always comfortable, and they are not always accurate, but neither are they arbitrary. When we become distressed, it is often because we have been affected by something significant. The emotion itself may not be the problem.

Learning what different weather requires

Perhaps this is why regulation is often more nuanced than simply calming down. At different moments, our bodies may require very different things. There are times when regulation involves slowing our breathing, finding stillness, or seeking reassurance. At other times it may involve movement, expression, tears, anger, creativity, or simply allowing a feeling to exist without immediately trying to alter it.

Donald Winnicott's writing repeatedly returned to the importance of environments that can hold emotional experience without demanding that it disappear. In many ways, a stormy coastline can provide precisely this. It asks nothing of us. It does not require us to feel differently. It simply offers a space large enough to accommodate what is already there.

Over time, one of the most valuable forms of self-knowledge may be learning the weather patterns of our own emotional lives; noticing what happens when anxiety begins to build, recognising the difference between sadness that needs solitude and sadness that needs company, and understanding when frustration requires expression and when it requires reflection. This is not about controlling emotions so much as becoming familiar with them, developing trust that they can be experienced without either becoming trapped within them or needing to escape them.

Remaining ourselves through changing conditions

Perhaps this is one of the most important lessons offered by wild weather. The sea does not resist its own movement, nor does the sky apologise for changing. Both remain entirely themselves through periods of calm and turbulence alike.

As human beings, we are often encouraged to view emotional steadiness as the goal, yet there may be wisdom in remembering that a meaningful life will inevitably contain periods of disturbance. The task is not always to create calm where none exists. Sometimes it is to find ways of remaining connected to ourselves while the storm passes through.