The Long Rolling Boats of Anxiety
Chronic vigilance, nervous systems at sea, and the quiet cost of never docking
Anxiety isn’t always a storm.
It isn’t always panic, racing thoughts, or a sudden sense of danger that pulls attention inward and demands immediate action. Those moments are visible, dramatic, and relatively easy to name. But for many people, anxiety lives somewhere else entirely. It becomes quieter, longer, and harder to point to.
Sometimes, anxiety is a boat.
A long, rolling boat that never quite reaches shore. You are not drowning. You are functioning, coping, and often appearing calm to those around you. But you are always adjusting your balance, subtly shifting your weight, staying alert to movement beneath you. Nothing catastrophic is happening, yet your body never fully settles. You live at sea.
Much of our cultural understanding of anxiety is shaped by acute stress models. Historically, this makes sense. Early physiological research focused on immediate threat — moments that required rapid mobilisation of energy in order to fight or flee. Walter Cannon’s description of the fight-or-flight response framed stress as an emergency state, one that prepares the organism for decisive action in the face of danger (Cannon, 1929). But Cannon was not describing the kind of anxiety most people now live with.
Modern anxiety is rarely about a single, identifiable threat. It is about accumulation. Duration. Load.
Hans Selye later recognised this shift when he introduced the concept of General Adaptation Syndrome, noting that prolonged exposure to stress does not strengthen the organism but gradually depletes it. As he observed, stress is not simply what happens to us, but how our systems are required to respond over time (Selye, 1956). In other words, it is not the size of the waves that matters most — it is how long you are asked to keep rowing.
Contemporary stress science gives this experience a name: allostatic load. Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen used this term to describe the cumulative wear and tear on the body that occurs when adaptive systems are activated too frequently or for too long. The same physiological responses that protect us in the short term begin to exact a cost when they never stand down. As McEwen put it, “the price of adaptation is allostatic load” (McEwen and Stellar, 1993).
This is what long-term anxiety looks like in the body. Cortisol rhythms flatten. Heart rate variability reduces. Inflammatory markers increase. The system remains organised around readiness, even when no immediate danger is present. The boat stays afloat, but the effort of staying balanced becomes a constant, background demand.
From a nervous system perspective, this is not a failure. It is a learned strategy.
Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory helps us understand why vigilance can persist even in objectively safe conditions. The nervous system, he explains, is constantly and unconsciously assessing whether a situation is safe, dangerous, or life-threatening (Porges, 2011). These assessments do not rely on logic or reassurance; they are shaped by lived experience. If safety has historically been unreliable, the system learns not to wait for proof. It prepares in advance.
This is not fear in the conventional sense. It is anticipation. The body continues to row because stopping once had consequences.
Many people living in this state do not experience panic attacks or obvious anxiety symptoms. They work, care for others, and remain outwardly composed. Internally, however, their systems stay organised around monitoring. Carl Rogers captured this dynamic when he wrote that “the organism reacts to the field as it is experienced and perceived” (Rogers, 1951). Not as it objectively is, but as it is felt. If the internal field never registers full safety, vigilance becomes rational, even when the external world appears calm.
Over time, this state stops being something a person notices and becomes something they identify with. “I’m just wired this way.” “I don’t switch off.” “I relax by staying busy.” What began as adaptation slowly becomes identity. Rogers warned of this process too, noting how individuals introject the values and conditions of their environment and come to experience them as intrinsic to the self (Rogers, 1951). When vigilance is rewarded — through safety, approval, or survival — it becomes selfhood. The boat becomes home.
This is why rest can feel strangely threatening for people with chronic anxiety. Stillness removes the strategy. Without the familiar effort of rowing, the nervous system does not immediately feel calm; it feels exposed. Telling someone in this state to “relax” misunderstands the problem. Relaxation without safety feels like letting go of the railing in rough seas.
Healing, then, is not about eliminating anxiety or forcing calm. It is about offering the nervous system new experiences of safety that do not require effort. Small, tolerable pauses where nothing needs to be managed begin to update the system from the inside. Even brief moments of rest matter, not because they fix anything, but because they gently challenge the belief that vigilance is always necessary.
This is where the Mammoth enters the picture.
The Mammoth does not survive through constant alertness. It survives through weight, contact, rhythm, and proximity. It moves slowly, rests heavily, and trusts the ground because it has learned what support feels like. For humans, safety is also relational and embodied. Rogers captured this paradox beautifully when he wrote, “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” (Rogers, 1961). Change does not come from rowing harder. It comes from experiencing support without performance.
Anxiety carried many people through difficult environments. The long rolling boat was never a mistake. It was a solution. But solutions are allowed to expire. Growth does not require abandoning the sea overnight. It begins with noticing when the water calms and allowing yourself, gradually, to stop rowing.
You were never meant to live at sea forever.