A Reflection on Elasticity

Softness as Structure in a Culture of Hardness

Softness has a reputation problem.

In modern Western culture, strength is often coded as hardness — decisiveness, dominance, impermeability. From corporate language to social media discourse, we are encouraged to optimize, outperform, and outlast.

Efficiency is praised. Detachment is maturity. Speed is intelligence. Softness, in contrast, is frequently framed as excess emotion. But psychology and sociology tell a more complex story.

What we call “hardness” is often hyper-defense. What we call “softness” may, in fact, be regulation.

Emotional Regulation vs. Emotional Suppression

In clinical psychology, emotional resilience is not defined as the absence of feeling. It is defined as the capacity to experience emotion without becoming overwhelmed or fragmented by it.

Research on affect regulation — particularly in attachment theory (John Bowlby; Mary Ainsworth) — shows that secure individuals are not those who feel less. They are those who can return: return to baseline, return to coherence, return to self. This is elasticity.

Suppression, by contrast, may look composed but physiologically increases stress markers. The body remains activated even when the face appears calm.

Hardness often masks dysregulation. Elasticity requires nervous system flexibility.

The Window of Tolerance

The concept of the “window of tolerance,” introduced by Dan Siegel, describes the optimal zone in which a person can process stress while remaining present. When stress exceeds that window, we move toward hyperarousal (fight, flight, defensiveness) or hypoarousal (shutdown, numbness).

Elasticity is the ability to expand that window — to feel the impact, stay conscious, and return. It is not that nothing touches you. It is that contact does not equal collapse.

The Sociological Performance of Strength

Sociologically, hardness is often rewarded because it signals competence within hierarchical systems.

Erving Goffman wrote about social performance — how individuals present themselves differently depending on the “stage” they occupy. Professional settings frequently demand a curated persona: composed, unbothered, efficient.

But sustained performance without recovery leads to fragmentation. The persona grows stronger. The self grows quieter. Softness becomes risky not because it is weak, but because it disrupts expected scripts.

To remain emotionally open in competitive systems is countercultural. It challenges the belief that control equals superiority.

Vulnerability & Power

Contemporary research on vulnerability, particularly by Brené Brown, reframes openness not as exposure without boundaries but as courageous engagement with uncertainty.

However, vulnerability without elasticity can become self-erasure. Elasticity adds structure. You feel. You engage. But you do not dissolve.

This is the distinction between absorbing impact and absorbing poison. One registers information. The other internalizes distortion.

Sensitivity as Information Processing

High sensitivity has increasingly been studied as a temperamental trait rather than a flaw. Psychologist Elaine Aron describes sensory processing sensitivity as deeper cognitive and emotional processing of stimuli.

Highly sensitive individuals often notice subtleties, process experiences more thoroughly, and react strongly to social cues. In overstimulating environments, this trait can feel burdensome. In stable environments, it predicts empathy, creativity, and moral awareness.

The issue is not softness. The issue is fit. When elasticity is present, sensitivity becomes perception — not fragility.

Boundaries Without Bitterness

Psychological boundaries are not walls. They are filters.

Healthy boundaries allow connection while maintaining differentiation — a concept central to family systems theory, especially in the work of Murray Bowen. Differentiation means: I can remain myself while in relationship with you.

Elasticity supports differentiation. Hardness rejects. Collapse merges. Elasticity relates. It allows you to say, “This does not work for me,” without turning cold and without turning cruel.

Cultural Acceleration & Emotional Armor

Sociologist Hartmut Rosa writes about social acceleration — the increasing speed of modern life.

Acceleration rewards immediacy, reactivity, constant output. Slowness becomes suspicious. Reflection becomes inefficiency. In accelerated systems, softness appears incompatible with survival. But constant hardening leads to burnout.

Elasticity introduces rhythm: engagement, recovery, return. Without rhythm, systems collapse — biological and social alike.

Elasticity as Adaptive Strength

Resilience research increasingly describes adaptability — not rigidity — as the defining trait of long-term stability.

Rigid systems fracture under pressure. Flexible systems absorb shock. This principle applies to architecture, ecology, and the psyche.

Softness, when structured, is not decorative. It is adaptive. It allows recalibration without identity loss.

When Softness Feels Dangerous

It is important to acknowledge that there are contexts where softness has been exploited. For marginalized individuals, emotional openness has historically been used against them. In those spaces, temporary armor is survival.

Elasticity is not naïveté. It is selective permeability. You do not open everywhere. You do not close everywhere. You discern. And discernment is strength.

Returning to Shape

The film I Am a Marshmallow uses metaphor: sugar and air, lightness with form.

In material science, elasticity refers to a substance’s ability to return to its original shape after deformation. The key word is return. Identity remains intact.

In psychological terms, this resembles ego strength — the ability to tolerate tension without fragmentation. You feel the comment. You feel the exclusion. You feel the misunderstanding. But you do not rewrite yourself around it. You return. Not untouched. But intact.

Softness as Practice

To remain soft in a harsh culture is not passivity.
It is a decision about who gets to shape you.

You can experience impact without allowing distortion.
You can engage without calcifying.
You can protect without petrifying.

But elasticity is not only a concept.
It is a practice.

It lives in small, repeatable gestures.
It lives in how you end your day.

In whether you unclench your jaw before sleep.
In whether you step outside without your phone.
In whether you allow yourself to feel disappointment without turning it into self-criticism.

Returning to Softness

Softness can be returned to.

Through slowness.
Through breath that deepens instead of shortens.
Through leaving a room that hardens you.
Through choosing conversations where you do not have to perform competence.
Through eating without rushing.
Through saying, “I need a moment,” instead of overriding your limits.

Elasticity expands when the nervous system experiences safety.

So build safety deliberately.

Create one corner of your life that is not optimized.
Protect one relationship where you are not impressive — only honest.
Keep one ritual that belongs only to you: tea in silence, journaling before bed, walking without destination.

Notice the Armor

Notice when your shoulders rise.
Notice when your voice sharpens.
Notice when you begin to armor.

And gently return.

Not to naivety.
Not to exposure without discernment.

But to openness with structure.

A Daily Return

Softness is not something you either are or are not.
It is something you maintain.
Something you revisit.
Something you choose again when the world invites you to harden.

You do not need to become stone to survive impact.
You can learn to return to shape.

And sometimes, returning to shape is as simple as this:

Pause.
Breathe.
Unclench.
Speak honestly.
Leave when necessary.
Rest without earning it.

Elasticity is built in these moments.

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The conversation continues gently.

With care,
La Séance