Introduction: When Something Doesn’t Feel Like Home

You know how sometimes you work really hard at something—to build something that you love. Maybe it’s a business, maybe it’s a mission of some kind that you have. Maybe it’s a dream that you’ve held and you are living, working your business. You are fulfilling your mission.

You are living the dream, as they say, right? And yet something in your body makes it feel like it’s not that it’s wrong or that it’s not good, or that it’s not whole, or that it’s not complete or anything like that. It’s just not quite home.

That’s what I’m experiencing. I’ve been experiencing that for a number of years now. So I’m making a change, and I’m gonna share this transition that I’m in the middle of right now with you in hopes that if you’ve built something but it doesn’t quite feel home to you, maybe something here will help you to move through that process—either to find your home or to find your way towards what is home for you.

Personal Background and Business Journey

Hello and welcome to the actualinfinity Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Mattus, and today I want to share a story about where I’m coming from, where I am, and what I’m moving towards—and I’m doing so from a place of wholeness, of completeness, of a healthy relationship with my nervous system.

In the past, when I’ve gone through big changes like this, it was full of drama for a wide variety of reasons. This time, while there is some healthy unknown, there is some healthy fear, there is some healthy uncertainty, there’s also a lot of stability and there’s a lot of love. Even though parts of my circumstances are less stable, less certain, less structured, and more fragile than ever, I feel safer than ever in making this change.

So let me start from where I’ve been for the past 15 or so years. I have been running my own business as a coach for business owners, working primarily with financial advisors at the start, and then I morphed into helping heart-centered entrepreneurs.

I do finger quotes when I say heart-centered entrepreneurs, which are generally ethical, sensitive, thoughtful, caring, sincere people—sometimes with a spiritual connection—trying to do business in a way that doesn’t hurt themselves or the world.

At the beginning when I first started my coaching, I was very much in the conditioned, capitalistic, traditional mindset of productivity and high performance and all those kinds of things. And as I moved into the more heart-centered place, I began to see through the conditioning and into more of the humanity of these gentle, beautiful, sincere hearts that were trying to do good work in the world and trying to survive—trying to make their way financially without manipulating or coercing or taking advantage of others, and actually bringing healing to the world in their own unique, special way.

And I was helping people to do that. I had extensive experience to do that—I’ve run my own businesses in the past and I had lots of training—and it was really a special interest of mine (an autistic special interest) to explore business over the years.

I got to witness so many people build meaningful things, run businesses that were gifts to the world, that were gifts to the clients that they served, whether in the financial realm or in the healing arts. So many beautiful souls helping so many other beautiful souls.

I often said business is not that complicated, and I think it’s true. Business is not that complicated—but so many people struggle with it. It’s not because business is hard or complicated—it’s because we, the human, are hard and complicated.

It doesn’t matter—you could have the best business strategy, the most robust marketing—but if your heart isn’t cared for, if your human isn’t cared for, if your beingness isn’t attended to, none of it matters. It’s not gonna work, or you’re gonna end up burnt out and collapsed.

So I started the business in the conditioning of capitalism—all the productivity, the bro culture, all that kind of stuff—and I moved into this more spiritually oriented, heart-centered space, attuning to your heart and attending to sensitivity. That felt really, really good. But there was still more that I was longing for.

What I realized is that I began to not care about business at all. In fact, all the clients that I have now—we work on the business, yes—but what we’re really working on is the human running the business, and the human getting right with how they run the business. Getting right with themselves is really the key to the work.

Discovery of Nervous System Work

In my own developmental process, I came upon what is becoming very popular out in the world—nervous system regulation—and I began to make that a hyperfocus of my own. I took training on polyvagal theory and read everything there is to read, watched everything there is to watch about the nervous system and how it works and how to regulate and all the kinds of things.

And very quickly I began to see the flaws—and the same unhealthy, capitalistic perspectives showing up in nervous system work that I saw in business work. But underneath that, if I stripped away that unhealthy stuff—and I’ll just use the word regulation as the core identifier of dysfunction—the idea of regulation itself, by definition, is talking about control.

Regulation is about ruling, order, directing, law, command, requirement, policing, management.

And while, yes, there are instances and circumstances where your nervous system gets dysregulated—meaning it gets artificially stuck due to trauma, PTSD, whatever it might be—the way it’s talked about in the world is that everybody is trying to control their nervous system and make their nervous system be something, do something, act in a way that it was not designed to do.

I began to notice that almost across the board, nervous system regulation was just another performance metric. It was another productivity practice.

Introducing the ANSEM Model

And so I built a new model—a new model that was inclusive of our experience with our nervous system, respectful of this wisdom, this innate wisdom that our nervous system carries to try to keep us safe.

The realization that our main goal as human animals is to be safe, to survive—that’s all our nervous system is trying to help us do. We don’t have to control it. It simply needs attunement. It doesn’t need regulation—it needs attunement.

Even the idea of regulating your nervous system is actually what would be considered by most a dysregulated nervous system response—it’s a sympathetic response to a sympathetic experience, which doesn’t help anything.

And so I designed this new model called the ANSEM—that’s the acronym: A-N-S-E-M—the ∞actualinfinity Nervous System Experiencing Model that holds your entire experience, and it goes very deep.

There are some spiritual elements to it. I say spiritual not from a religious perspective, but because of the depth that they have. One of the other misnomers of most nervous system work is that we are either in parasympathetic or sympathetic. The truth is that we are in blended states almost always—in fact, I would say always—but nobody talks about that. The model that I’ve created demonstrates that.

A New Approach to Nervous System Work

And what I want to do—what feels so important for me now, what feels like home for me, what feels like the thing I’ve been talking about my entire life (it’s been a long process to finally get here)—is to plant the flag.

To encourage people to stop treating your nervous system like an enemy. It’s an ally.

To think of your nervous system as a relationship—not a project to complete or a problem to fix.

To be in relationship with it—not to change it, not to control it.

That regulation isn’t earned. It’s not earned through practices and effort. Regulation is remembered.

It lives in your system. In fact, it lives in your nervous system. You don’t have to control parts of your nervous system so that you can access the other parts—you simply attune with it and remember.

The peace and the ease, and the spaciousness and the stability that you long for is already within you. It doesn’t come to you from outside. It exists within you. It’s already there waiting to be remembered.

And this is the work that I want to do.

Imagine what you could do in your business, on your mission, or with your dreams if you were coming from—and coming with—a nervous system where you had the capacity to allow all of it to exist without being swept away.

Where you understood how to navigate in your nervous system without trying to control it.

Where you could be in healthy relationship with yourself as you are.

You could still function, you could still move forward, you could still accomplish, you could still pursue, you could still have ambition—but doing so from a place that was grounded, centered.

And I’m really longing to do that work with—

Focus on Neurodivergent Experiences

Neurodivergent folks—people who are highly sensitive, maybe they’re autistic, maybe they have ADHD—much of the work out there has been founded upon neurotypical standards.

One example is what we often hear in nervous system training about the window of tolerance.

I hate that. Because as an autistic person myself, I have been conditioned my entire life, I have been abused, and I’ve gone through therapy as a child—and much of it was targeted to try to help me tolerate more.

This world is not designed for neurodivergent people, obviously, and we’re asked to tolerate a lot. I’m not in favor of encouraging us to have to tolerate even more.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t end up tolerating more—but the way I talk about it is about increasing our capacity for safety. Because what matters is not how big your window is—it’s whether your system believes safety is possible inside whatever window you have.

The end result might be the same for us, but the way we approach it matters when you’re neurodivergent.

One of the most beautiful depths of the model comes from what I call the three characteristics of autonomic tone. This is the deepest, richest, most practical exploration of your nervous system experience.

It’s really the key set of characteristics that allow you to move in your nervous system and to guide and direct you back toward love. Those three characteristics are self-containment, surrender, and sovereignty—and these all move within you through your life through a rhythm.

And when you can be in relationship with it—when you stop chasing regulation as a goal and start recognizing safety as a relationship—everything changes.

Business Transition and Future Direction

Starting here, I’m shifting my business and shifting my website and shifting my communication—and there’s all kinds of shifting going on—to talk about these things. I think there’s a lot of harmful information out there—information that will actually keep us stuck in cycles of dysregulation.

I’m going to bring something new. I’m going to bring something more whole, more complete—something that encapsulates the nuance necessary to actually heal in relationship with your nervous system, and that attends to those who are neurodivergent.

Now, my approach also works for neurotypical folks, and so they’re included as well. I’m not creating a false bifurcation here between the two. It’s actually a much more compassionate, gentle, holistic process for both neurodivergent and neurotypical people.

And the result, when you do this nervous system work the way I’m going to be teaching it, is that you wake up—and maybe for the first time ever—your body feels like home. Your nervous system feels like it’s okay. It’s not a problem to solve before you can start your day. You actually feel like you’re home.

In today’s world where things are so intense and so chaotic, when you encounter the news and you feel what you feel and you stay present with your experience, you learn how to do that without collapsing into it, without numbing out from it, without being swept away by it. You can hold what matters without it holding you hostage.

Benefits of an Attunement-Based Approach

When you do this work, you can attune to your needs without guilt for having them. When your nervous system gets activated, you can realize that there’s wisdom there—not weakness—and you know how to be with that.

And in the being with it, it shifts. In so doing this work, your capacity begins to expand—your capacity for safety. You’re able to feel a sense of safety in more situations. You don’t have to tolerate more situations. You actually feel safe in them—not because you’re working harder or forcing yourself through them, but because you’re no longer hemorrhaging energy and effort while you fight yourself to become “regulated.”

You can care deeply about what’s happening in the world. You can feel empathy for the suffering around you—and still maintain your groundedness.

The paralysis that many of us feel between the depth of care we hold for the world and the overwhelm that care can trigger—that dynamic dissolves because we finally develop the capacity to hold both.

This is living from a place of attunement instead of survival. You don’t have to perform wellness anymore. You don’t have to perform being okay—because you can actually experience it.

Closing Invitation and Contact Information

My invitation, if you’re willing, is to follow along. I’m going to be going through all the different aspects that you might be familiar with out in the world. If you’re familiar with nervous system regulation type teachings and trainings, what you’ll hear less of here are the little rescue things you can do—tips and tricks and tools and practices and “breathe this way.” Those things are band-aids.

They’re great, but they don’t help you shift long term. In fact, just doing those things can deepen the cycles you get into. You end up constantly having to perform the practices and tools to stay “regulated,” instead of being attuned with what’s actually happening in your nervous system.

When your system goes into fight or flight, it’s for a reason—and that reason deserves your attention. Your nervous system senses a threat. Maybe your mind knows there’s not a real danger, but your system is detecting something that needs to be faced more fully, more thoughtfully, more mercifully.

When we attune to the nervous system, we can actually resolve what’s causing the sympathetic response in the first place—so that it’s no longer a threat in your system.

And the next time it comes along, you don’t have to “do the breathing practice,” because you never went into sympathetic activation in the first place.

So if you’re feeling the anxiety of your life or the world—the chaos, the pressure—and you have any interest at all in understanding your nervous system in a way that creates more freedom, more capacity, more love… please stick around.

Please listen and subscribe. You don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to—you’re welcome to simply follow along. I write attunement letters; I’m also on Substack and YouTube. You can find me there.

Through the rest of 2025, I’ll be providing an overview of what I’m exploring from here on out. And if you’re listening to this, now is the time to tune in. This is the foundation for everything that’s coming.

And here’s my request: if you know anyone—anyone at all—who’s feeling scared right now, uneasy, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, or who simply wants to understand why they’re experiencing life the way they are and sincerely want support, please recommend this podcast to them, or send them to https://actualinfinity.com/connect.

Invite them to come along.

Thank you for trusting me with your attention, your heart, and your willingness to grow. I believe what’s coming is desperately needed in the world. It is different from 99% of what’s already out there about the nervous system.

And it matters—because our hearts can’t open if our nervous systems don’t feel safe.

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where everyone’s hearts are closed. I think we need our hearts to open. And we need to understand how to walk with our nervous system.

And that—that is home for me.

So I welcome you into my home as we start this amazing journey forward.
Thanks so much for being here.

I wish you more love, not less – all-ways.💜™