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Nonactivated peace is dull and unfamiliar. Our body and mind seek the familiar, even if it is painful, and many of us are left ultimately feeling ashamed about and confused by our behavior.

Instead of connecting authentically, we connected over drama and pain, frantically coming together over each new crisis (Mom’s health! A rude neighbor!).

It might be the only time we feel anything at all. Our body responds to those feelings by releasing hormones such as cortisol and dopamine that fundamentally change our cellular chemistry. We now need to seek out the same kind of emotional hit again and again. Even if an emotion makes us stressed or sad, it often feels familiar & safe because it provides the same type of release that we experienced as children.

Our body learns to engage in patterns like these to feel like our familiar self. Ideally, when we experience a powerful emotion, either our activation or our immobilization mode is triggered and we return to our baseline social engagement zone quickly. Those activation states are supposed to feel unpleasant and dangerous, and for those of us stuck in the loop of emotional addiction, the rush feels good.

The stressful crime show allows you to feel the same emotional spikes you’ve felt all day. You love the uncertainty and the way it leaves you on the edge of your seat. You feel somewhat content 👀👀👀

When T is not properly addressed it is left to drive our narratives and shape our autonomic responses. Our mind & body become reliant on the strong physical response that comes from the release of neurotransmitters associated w that experience & solidify it in the neural pathways of our brain. the brain learns to crave the feelings associated with the T response. This is the loop of emotional addiction.

generalize:My parents feel threatened. I am threatened because they are not attuned to my needs. The world is a threatening place. This “survival brain” is hyperfocused on perceived threats, thinks about things in hard-and-fast black and white, and is often circular, obsessive, and panic driven. We are very fearful about making mistakes. We thrash around, break down, or shut down when we fail.

If you lived in a chaotic house where overreaction, rage spirals, disengagement, or fear were the norm, your internal resources were likely tied up in the management of stress (survival, really) and could not freely return to the safe social engagement mode. As we’ve learned, children are dependent creatures. If a parent-figure provides a chaotic, stressful environment, the child will internalize that state and

When we’re stuck in a trauma response, our neuroception can become inaccurate. It misreads the environment, sees threats where there are none, and returns us to the overactive fight-or-flight state. Then the cycle of activation starts all over again.

In the end, all studies confirm this fact: racism, bias, and bigotry make their way into the body’s cells, changing the body in fundamental and destructive ways that are passed down through generations. The effects of racism exist in blood and bones.

When our needs are consistently unmet, our pain and disconnection are compounded. Self-preservation leads to self-betrayal. It’s a loop we can easily get stuck in. The cycle of unresolved trauma, repetition of maladaptive coping behaviors, and consistent denial of Self allows the pain to live on in our mind and body, where it can eventually make us sick.

When I continued to feel my emotional needs and deep desires for connection unmet, I would react, calling or texting too often, throwing tantrums, and picking fights. If I eventually did get an emotional reaction I on some level craved, I would then detach and dissociate, feeling overwhelmed—I’d become the ghost I learned to be as a child.

In and out of romantic relationships as a young adult, I kept finding myself in the push-pull dynamic of emotional reactivity and emotional withdrawal. I often picked relationships where I could remain emotionally distanced, removed, often emotionally unavailable.

When we have loved ones who shut down instead of managing their feelings, we are modeled an overall lack of emotional regulation and often do not develop coping skills that enable us to build emotional resilience of our own.

It is painful not to be heard. It is upsetting to be ignored. It is confusing to learn that we must hide our true Selves in order to be loved. Being acknowledged is one of the deepest human needs.

Begin to practice being kind to yourself and your loved ones, regardless of what comes up. How a parent-figure treated you as a child is not a reflection of who you are. Or even who they are. You do not need to be a reflection of their unprocessed trauma.

this lack of emotional connection in childhood leaves “a gaping hole where true security might have been. The loneliness of feeling unseen by others is as fundamental a pain as physical injury.”

Our perception of the trauma is just as valid as the trauma itself. especially true in childhood, when we are most helpless and dependent. T occurred when we consistently betrayed ourselves for love, were consistently treated in a way that made us feel unworthy or unacceptable resulting in a severed connection to our authentic Self. T creates the fundamental belief that we must betray who we are in order to survive.

I was so disengaged from myself, so far away on that spaceship, that ultimately I stored very few memories from my childhood and retained barely any recollections from my twenties. Just because my mind wasn’t present to what was unfolding around me doesn’t mean that my body doesn’t remember.

They called me the aloof one, the laid-back, chill child who was easy and go-with-the-flow. It appeared like nothing ever bothered me. That aloofness was a coping strategy, my mind’s protection from the stress: I would detach, distance myself, get into my “spaceship.”

There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Our minds are powerful tools, and if we do not become consciously aware of the disconnection between our authentic Selves and our thoughts, we give our thoughts too much control in our daily lives.

Do you withdraw, disconnecting from or becoming hyperaware of your body’s sensations, when you walk into an unfamiliar environment? Witness without judgment. Just observe. The path forward is to learn yourself. Learn how to spend time alone, to sit still, to really hear your intuition and witness your entire Self—even, and especially, the darkest parts you’d most like to keep hidden.

Instead of fixating on related negative thoughts—as studies show we do 70 percent of the time—I want you to try to witness your body’s sensations when you’re feeling threatened. In other words: I want you to become conscious. Do you see yourself growing defensive, with tightened shoulders and jaw muscles, when you FaceTime with your mother?

As she became more present, she was able to pause and witness her thoughts and behaviors for what they were: transitory states that could be managed. Her attention muscle helped her develop more awareness of her thoughts; then she learned how to sit through the discomfort of witnessing them, building a sense of resilience and empowerment.

This is why our habits and routines feel so comforting and why it’s so unsettling and even exhausting when our routines are disrupted. The trouble is, following our conditioned routine keeps us stuck in that routine.

The subconscious mind loves existing in a comfort zone. The safest place, it turns out, is one you’ve been before because you can predict the familiar outcome. Habits, or behaviors that we repeatedly return to, become the subconscious’s default mode. Our brain actually prefers to spend most of its time coasting on autopilot—it is best able to conserve its energy by knowing what to expect.

her thinking mind trapped her in a state of reactivity. It was impossible for her to get any clarity about what she wanted because she wasn’t tapped into her intuition.

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS

few of us have any real connection to who we really are, yet we want others to see through all of our layers of self-betrayal and into our core selves. But our attempts to do so have failed because we don’t understand our own minds and bodies. We don’t have the practical tools to understand how to create the changes we seek to make. We can’t expect others to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.