Your nervous system learned that isolation was safer than connection. When survival became your baseline, your body started equating "doing it alone" with safety. The very thing that could help you regulate—connection, presence, being witnessed—feels like a threat.
And here's what matters: none of this is weakness. It's brilliant adaptation in the service of your preservation and survival. All along, your nervous system has been protecting you from disappointment, from being let down, from the pain of reaching out and not being truly met. You can change this, slowly and gradually, building greater capacity, flexibility and resilience in your nervous system. True regulation becomes possible when we feel safe enough to let others in. Not all at once. Not perfectly. Just... incrementally, in small doses. What Dr. Levine, a pioneer in the science of trauma, calls 'titration and pendulation.'
You can start by simply noticing when connection helps you soften. When someone's calm presence makes your shoulders drop. When a shared moment of silence feels steadying and relaxing instead of dreadful. When you don't have to explain yourself to feel safe, held, seen, and secure.
That's your nervous system remembering it doesn't have to carry everything alone. Healing has never been about willpower. It's about safety slowly becoming real enough to allow connection again.
I wrote more about this in my new blog, 'The Vagus Diaries: The Science of Connection and Softening—Why Self-Regulation Isn't Always Possible: Understanding Survival Patterns and the Path Back to Connection.' Link: restplaylove.com/post/why-self-regulation-isnt-alw…
Dexter and Alessandrina
"Sometimes self-regulation isn't possible."
Your nervous system learned that isolation was safer than connection. When survival became your baseline, your body started equating "doing it alone" with safety. The very thing that could help you regulate—connection, presence, being witnessed—feels like a threat.
And here's what matters: none of this is weakness. It's brilliant adaptation in the service of your preservation and survival. All along, your nervous system has been protecting you from disappointment, from being let down, from the pain of reaching out and not being truly met.
You can change this, slowly and gradually, building greater capacity, flexibility and resilience in your nervous system. True regulation becomes possible when we feel safe enough to let others in. Not all at once. Not perfectly. Just... incrementally, in small doses. What Dr. Levine, a pioneer in the science of trauma, calls 'titration and pendulation.'
You can start by simply noticing when connection helps you soften. When someone's calm presence makes your shoulders drop. When a shared moment of silence feels steadying and relaxing instead of dreadful. When you don't have to explain yourself to feel safe, held, seen, and secure.
That's your nervous system remembering it doesn't have to carry everything alone.
Healing has never been about willpower. It's about safety slowly becoming real enough to allow connection again.
I wrote more about this in my new blog, 'The Vagus Diaries: The Science of Connection and Softening—Why Self-Regulation Isn't Always Possible: Understanding Survival Patterns and the Path Back to Connection.' Link: restplaylove.com/post/why-self-regulation-isnt-alw…
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