Data Collectors,

I hope you are all doing well. Since being back home, I have been connecting with nature, and my heart is feeling so full. I have also been doing a lot of reflecting alongside my own spiritual study, and there was something in Chapter II, Part II of the A Course in Miracles text that really stuck with me. The question is:

I had to really sit and think about it. In today’s society, especially as a clinician working with couples and families, from what I can see and hear, it could easily feel like many people treasure being “right.” But I wanted to examine this even deeper, at the heart and soul level—and y’all know me: I see things through a trauma (imprint) lens. So let me apply this question to myself, and I hope you will do the same as I provide examples from my own life and nervous system. When I think about the journey we are on with Rewiring Out of Resentment (ROR), I think about relationships, of course—whether that is with family, with my husband, or within relationships outside the home. I sit and ponder the ache I feel when I am caught in shitty tennis matches, going back and forth, and I feel that activation inside.

Am I trying to be right?

That question hurts because, for me, it’s never about being “right.” Okay, Sav—so then what’s all the fuss about? Why do you get so activated inside or upset when XYZ doesn’t do ______? I pause here. I wonder if what I am about to say fits for many of the readers out there. You see, being right is not what I treasure. When I think about resentment and how I get shipwrecked on Resentment Island, it typically occurs because I treasure the need to be heard. So, it’s not that I treasure being right; I treasure being acknowledged. That has been at the forefront of my reflections throughout our ROR series. I think about conflicts with family, my husband, and others. The grief comes from being misunderstood or misperceived.

Now, I know that people are committed to misunderstanding you out here in the streets of the wild, and some are committed to trying to drain your prefrontal cortex energy. But if treasuring being heard is something that has been at the forefront for me, what often follows is a pattern of trying to get people outside of ourselves—with fundamentally different brains and nervous systems—to acknowledge or hear us. We all have different brains, different nervous systems, and different perceptions. So, trying to get another person outside of yourself to hear, perceive, or understand you can become like beating a dead horse. It only drains—you.

Okay, so then what’s all the fuss about, Sav? I ask myself this again. What we treasure has the ability to create disruption within us. But when we treasure peace—no disruption. So, what does that look like exactly? Now, I am no guru, and of course, I do not have all the answers. I simply am doing the work alongside us all.

I recently posted a video talking about the human unconscious addiction to chaos. I mentioned the power of statements—the power of suggestion—and how that alone can pull us back into the chaos Jenga tower, even after we remove ourselves from it. I speak in analogies and metaphors. The Jenga tower is often the system we are all a part of within our families and relationships. I discuss how important silence can be. Remember how I said my goal is to channel my inner Cillian Murphy through non-reaction and intentional response? I tend to overexplain in an attempt to get people to meet me across the bridge to connection. Do you see how draining that can be?

When we think about our role in creating the resentment we struggle with, I have to acknowledge that much of my own drain comes from trying to overexplain things to my husband—trying to get him to “see,” to “understand,” what it is that I am attempting to convey to him. What I am learning is that what we say with our mouths is not nearly as powerful as what we say through our behavior. Literally. Think of WNBA player Sophie Cunningham…

All she did through her behavior was point a finger, and it sent DeWanna Bonner into an activated frenzy. Why do you think something as small as pointing a finger has that much power to activate someone? Don’t even reach for the race-war narrative. That can become a distraction from this work. Think nervous system here. Even in the interview, Sophie stated that she kept doing it simply because she saw how much it annoyed DeWanna. Now, think about your family and the things they do—or maybe even your partner. What do you think DeWanna treasures? What we treasure has power over us. So, if we treasure money, fame, material possessions, etc., those things can begin to control our lives. I will assume that DeWanna may treasure winning, and if she treasures winning, well, even a distraction as small as someone pointing a finger can cause her focus to drift—which is exactly what we saw.

When I work with high-conflict families, what I often hear is, “They just want to be right.” Well, my question is: If that’s the case, why go back and forth with someone who just wants to be right if being right is not something you care about? We can all be petty. I think the petty part of us—the ego mind—is what causes us to engage with people who activate us because the interaction does something to our ego. We feel as though we need to “stand on business,” which is just another way of saying that we become defensive because how dare they disrespect us? Now we feel compelled to prove something. But if we truly did not treasure being right, would we need to engage back?

Whatever DeWanna says is the reason she became so activated by Sophie’s finger-pointing, the story itself is not the most relevant part. Why? Because the story is being processed through her filtration system, and if its dirty or tainted (think Brita filter here) it will drift her. Sophie is a white woman, so the narrative can easily become “racism,” which is a vine we tend to grab onto instead of entering the shadow work everyone talks about. A finger being pointed during a basketball game, by itself, has little to do with racism and everything to do with nervous-system behavior, imprints, and how dirty DeWanna’s filter may be—meaning the lens through which she internalizes and assigns meaning to Sophie’s finger being directed at her. When we drink the dirty water, we avoid the portal within. That is why family and couples work can be so difficult: We feel justified in our hurt because sometimes people really do and say hurtful things. I think about the statement, “No one can make you feel anything.” This was hard for me to grasp, and it used to make me so frustrated. What do you mean no one can make me feel anything? They clearly did or said XYZ! But when we channel our inner Cillian Murphy, we practice remaining unfazed by what occurs outside of us.

Back to my point about acknowledgment. When I look back at the times I was reactive, defensive, or severely pissed off, it didn’t come from a need to be right or agreed with. It came from—grief. A wound had been touched—the wound of being bypassed instead of heard. When we have deep imprints throughout our timeline of being ignored, interrupted, dismissed, etc., and our partner or family does it to us, it can make us feel invisible. So we talk louder, get louder, or become reactive and defensive in an attempt to get acknowledged. But all that does is move us away from the deeper discomfort of feeling ignored. You know, when I was an MFLC (Military and Family Life Counselor), I worked in the school system with military kids. I spent time in high schools, which reminded me of being out in the wild. I would observe their behavior and notice just how often fights broke out over some of the dumbest things. “They were staring at me.” Okay, and? So now you have to get violent?

We have no idea why people look at us. It could be because they like your hair or your outfit, or because they think you are attractive. You could also be dressed in a way that draws attention—this happens even with adults. We dress in ways that attract attention and then go off when people start looking. The point I am trying to make here is this: Is all it takes for you to lose your power and become the one who looks like the clown for someone to stare or point at you? What do you think people are treasuring in moments like that?

I have realized that treasuring acknowledgment can be the first step toward getting a one-way ticket to Resentment Island. Now, I am not saying that acknowledgment isn’t important, because, for me, it is. I also think it is a significant part of human connection. When I am willing to sit in the heat of the Expression Highway, but others are not, they may avoid that heat by exiting onto the Logistics Highway—ignoring what happened, acting as though nothing happened, or engaging in behavior that feels like gaslighting. It hurts. It feels like rejection. Trust me, I am not denying that. Remember, we all have different brains and nervous systems, and we are all holding on to something. We must be careful not to play Mad Libs with other people’s intentions if we are unwilling to check whether what we used to fill in the blank is accurate.

But let’s zoom in closer to ourselves here. I tell myself all the time, I wish I could do that thing Dumbledore does where he pulls out his memories and places them into that well-looking thing. I feel that way about neural pathways. If only I could just pull them out of me, then maybe my body would not respond so quickly to things that truly hold no importance to me.

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Have you ever reacted to something so intensely, only to cool down later and feel a little wacko for reacting the way you did? It happens to me a lot. I don’t think most of us are fighting to be right as much as we are fighting to be heard—and being heard does not require being agreed with. This makes it understandable why so many people do everything but acknowledge us or hear us. They may believe that acknowledging our perspective means agreeing with it— Many do. That’s part of why gridlock happens so much. There was a comment on my TikTok from someone telling me that I needed to be more compassionate. She wrote an entire paragraph explaining why my behavior needed to change, overgeneralizing my entire existence based on one clip because it made her feel something. Some women love telling other women what to do, but let a man do it and it’s, “F*ck the patriarchy! “Toxic masculinity—Misogynistic La la la!” Yet here women are, doing the same thing to other women.

Now, I responded by mentioning projection and the problem with assuming who I am outside of one clip. But do you think she acknowledged what she did or even what I said? Absolutely not. She flipped it and made the conversation about how I assumed and projected onto her. Do you see the shitty tennis match that could easily begin there had I continued with a back and forth? Y’all do this at home, too. There is no point in going back and forth with people, especially online. Especially in the comments of social media. That’s asking for a drift session. I don’t need people to get me or understand me simply because they have misperceived me. That misperception has nothing to do with me and everything to do with their filtration system. Think Brita filter here like I said before. If someone has a dirty-ass filter from 1980 and refuses to change it, you make that filter your responsibility when you begin overexplaining, reacting, defending, etc.

Let them.

If people want to assume I am not compassionate simply because I am not online to be liked, but to speak what I believe needs to be spoken, that’s fine. I’m channeling my inner Cillian Murphy.

My husband often misperceives me, too. And you know the algorithm is quick to tell you to find someone new. But again, you aren’t you when you’re hungry—Snickers commercial reference, LOL—but you also aren’t fully yourself when you are activated, tired, stressed, grieving, full of resentment, or carrying unmet needs. The goal is not always to throw out the person. Sometimes the goal is to learn how to bridge the gap with the person you chose and made vows to. That is part of the problem with society today. The enemy is quick to tear families, couples, and friendships apart, and so much of it is rooted in, Well, what would people think of me if they saw this behavior? Who gives a f*ck? It is not their relationship. It is yours. We often forget how snappy, snooty, and ugly we can become simply because we are in a particular emotional state. We are all state-dependent, and our emotional state can temporarily change the very things we treasure. That is important for all of us to understand.

When my husband misperceives me, trying harder to force him to understand me usually makes everything worse on my end because I first need to check my own undercurrent. People have no clue what kind of undercurrent they give off when they feel defensive or misunderstood. We can become condescending, snippy, snooty, sarcastic, rude, or dismissive. We all can. No one is exempt. That is why this is the work. The work is not only identifying how someone else failed to hear me. The work is also becoming aware of what begins leaking out of me while I am fighting to be heard. People online misperceive me all the time based on how I reply to them in the comments—literally, the comments. People will take text written on a screen and create an entire story about who you are based on the meaning produced by their own filtration system. I have a tendency to write very matter-of-factly, not because I am trying to be right, but because I become extremely overstimulated when I am online. I truly do hate social media—to an extent—because that is where the Rugrats and mob mentality members live. So many people discharge on those apps while expecting you to become a vending machine for their needs.

When I am online, my nervous system comes online, too, and I begin to feel a sense of panic and urgency. It has nothing to do with being afraid of anything. I couldn’t care less if I get canceled, especially in today’s climate. It could be an ADHD thing. It could be a Rushing Woman’s Syndrome thing. It could be a variety of things. The fact of the matter is that I try to hop on and hop off. But I do not need to “LOL” and smiley-face my way through every comment just to prove that I am safe for people. That is ridiculous. It coincides with the expectation that we should shrink ourselves to make other people comfortable. At the same time, self-leadership asks me to check my undercurrent—not automatically confess to the undercurrent someone else has assigned to me. Maybe there is some spice underneath my words that I need to acknowledge. Maybe there isn’t. We live in a damn gotcha culture where people are always looking for the next piece of language they can use to redirect the focus back onto you and your behavior. Now someone can say, “See, it’s your undercurrent,” as another way to deflect from the actual point being made. The possibility that my delivery contains an undercurrent does not automatically make the message itself untrue, nor does someone feeling something in response to me prove that their interpretation of my intention is accurate. Read that part again.

This is where I return to the question: What do I treasure here? If I treasure being accurately understood, I can find myself back on the shitty tennis court, writing dissertation after dissertation to prove what I meant. Or I can simply say, “That was not my intention,” check within myself to see whether there is anything useful for me to acknowledge, and leave it there. Self-accountability is not the same as accepting every accusation, interpretation, or projection someone places upon me. I can examine myself without putting someone else in charge of narrating me.

The important distinction here is:

Checking your undercurrent is self-inquiry. Being told what your undercurrent “really” is by someone committed to their interpretation is narration.

This is where I am beginning to understand the teaching in A Course in Miracles differently: What do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? Because whatever we treasure enough, we can begin organizing our lives around protecting it. If I treasure acknowledgment so deeply that I cannot have peace until someone understands me correctly, then I have handed that person power over my nervous system. My peace now depends upon the cleanliness of their Brita filter. That does not mean I stop valuing acknowledgment. It does not mean I become silent, tolerate mistreatment, or pretend that being misunderstood does not hurt. It means I am learning not to chase acknowledgment at the expense of my own peace. I can express myself, clarify where clarification is useful, and then allow people to do whatever they are going to do with what I said. Their perception belongs to their filtration system. My responsibility is deciding whether I am going to drink the dirty water with them.

So, what do you treasure? And how much power has protecting it been given over your life?

Let me know.

Till next time data collectors.

Come as you are where you are.🫶🏽

Data Collectors,

I’m sitting here going for a walk right now, listening to FKJ Radio, surrounded by so much lush beauty. I mean, this is the City of Trees, and I am so grateful to be from the City of Trees and have the luxury of getting to come back and visit. I’m getting to walk in such beauty. It’s so painful at the same time because I miss home. Military life has taken us away from this beauty. So I’m thinking to myself because I live in the desert now, and the thought that came to my mind was the word “disorder.” As I am walking, I am thinking to myself, Okay, Sav... what does disorder actually mean? Well, first we have to look at the word order for there to even be a disorder. I am going to take us all on a semantics journey.As I contemplate this, we have to use word choices. For me, I internalize this curiosity as if there is disorder, it almost implies something is wrong. And if there is order, then that means right? Meaning there is a correct order? Is that the right order? And now, when I dive deeper, I start to think, Okay, what does “order” mean? To be right? To be wrong? Or to be incorrect? I think of order as sequence. If things are in order, they are in sequence. Okay, so then what sequence? To me, sequence is like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You don’t go 1, 5, 7, 8, 9. It’s in order.

Okay, so if you go back to order real quick, it can be in order chronologically. It can be in order by height. It can be in order by birthday. The order is dependent on what the context is, meaning what we are looking for that we want to be in order. So with that being said, back to sequence—sequence of what? See how we did all of this digging just from the word disorder? So sequence of what order?

And as I sit here, filling up my cup with my preferred drug of choice, which is nature walks, parts of me want to grieve and be upset. Be frustrated because I’m living here, meaning El Paso, not my home city of Sacramento, or at least back in California. I’m here—in this dry, crusty desert that I have so much resentment toward. This isn’t necessarily where I want to be, but it’s where we are currently living as of now. And as I’m visiting back home, I try to soak up as much of the nature and weather as I can. I could be constantly thinking about the grief of it all, or maybe even a little resentment because my husband’s military career is why we had to leave our home state. I could spiral and loop in my mind with thoughts of whyyyyy.

Going through this beauty in the emotional energetic frequency (think David Hawkins here), the state of pissed off, resentful, bitter, angry—those are low-vibrational emotional states. That low-vibrational state definitely is impacted by my husband, who I am going to use as the external factor in this behavioral equation. For those of you reading, it could be your partner, location, your kids, work, etc. It can be your external family, and when we are vibrating at low-vibrational states because of whatever the external factor is for you, in return it is causing us to operate in such a state that it becomes our baseline for functioning. A constant state of panic. Fear of abandonment. Fear of not being chosen. Fear, fear, fear. And there’s a sprinkle of a weekend here and a trip there, and maybe a month or two here of joy or connection, but a lot of it is dopamine. The sugar I get from the Trolli Sour Gummy Worms or the Nerds Clusters that I know I can’t be eating because if I eat them consistently over time—or binge eat them in one sitting (don’t judge me, I have my months 😫)—that candy f*cks my shit up. 😅

They literally make me so inflamed. You can see it in my face. You can see it in my body. I can feel the brain fog. I can feel the sluggishness. When I’m consuming things through my food that do not bring life to me, this happens. We don’t acknowledge it because it gives us that feel-good comfort.

Now, you can replace the candy with food. You can replace food with sex. You can replace sex with shopping, shopping with alcohol or weed, or even doomscrolling and posting pictures of yourself. The key idea here is: pick your poison—suffer the side effects. The problem with whatever poison you choose is what determines the circuit in the brain with how long that high lasts. So it might last—meaning the duration when you consume it—and then you’re high on it for X amount of seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc. What I mean by this is I consume XYZ, and I feel the dopamine high of that for ____ amount of time. I am enjoying the high of said ___ thing. Then, because of that high and the duration of it, we realize that amount of time becomes smaller and smaller. Meaning the amount of time I am high, enjoying that dopamine spike, gets smaller and smaller every time. As a result, if the high is very temporary— meaning it does not last a long time, you end up repeating usage to experience that dopamine high longer.

So I eat Trolli Gummy Worms and feel good, “pleasure” in that moment for, let’s say, I’m fulfilled for that hour. Until the next day, or maybe even later that night, when I am craving more sugar from those sour worms. Maybe it’s weed or a cigarette, and you get relief and pleasure during the duration of smoking it. Maybe you are high for a good 1–3 hours. Then you come down and crave more, so you take another hit. So if you are getting the sequence of what I’m trying to flow here, if I continue to eat these Nerds Gummies, these Trolli Sour Worms, and I’m eating them every day—and sometimes it’s the first thing I eat right when I wake up—I learn I can’t keep them in the house because I will stuff them places. I’m being silly here, but we do the same thing with our poison of choice. People do it with marijuana, alcohol, shopping, scrolling, etc. My point in saying all of this is—over time, I’m consuming it more and more and more, and it’s making me sicker and sicker and sicker. Then, over time, we live in that sickness. A week, a month, a year, two years, three years, four years, five years, 10+ years. That sickness is no longer sickness anymore. It is our baseline for functioning.

Sickness is all we know. So now it’s not even registered by the brain as sickness due to being so accustomed to that baseline. So maybe my skin is breaking out because of all the sugar, the brain fog, the ADHD symptoms, the weight gain, and the inflammation. All of those symptoms are my body trying to alert me—Savannah, the higher self—that something is wrong. But over the course of time, I bypass those signals, and I keep eating the sugar. I notice the changes but do nothing about them because I am getting relief from the dopamine the sugar provides, even if it lasts a short duration. I learn I can and will just consume more. Now, if it’s our baseline for functioning, the modern world says, ding, ding, ding—disorder. Whether that’s depression, anxiety disorder, ADHD, psychiatric disorders, personality disorders, based on the poison you picked.

Let’s understand something here. The poison you pick can very well be influenced by what you observed growing up, by your family or your environment. So maybe you grew up in a family that eats highly processed foods, candies, sodas, etc. This is your baseline for functioning. The thought of eating healthy sounds like death because sugar is a primary in your diet. Remember, I speak in metaphors and analogies. Sugar can be any of those addictive behaviors we listed above. I say all this to help the reader understand. This isn’t about blaming. It is about exploring what influences the choices you make. What influences the highway you choose to drive on. Remember my Highways of Communication? I will link that essay below.

So now fast-forward. Now we’re here in our disordered highway because that’s what the modern world says, but what if we’re not disordered? What if we’re drifted? Think about it—it’s like we were under a spell and it takes somebody outside of you or maybe deep deep work within you to kind of clean that window enough that you can finally see the light of who you used to be— the “higher self.” This isn’t about comparing who you used to be…No, it’s about comparing where your soul used to be and I’m talking about all of us as humans. Many of us may never have connected with ourselves at a soul level and that could simply be due to upbringing and not witnessing that work being modeled. We are all souls on a journey and our souls know the way home, but we’re the ones in the car driving it, because we’ve been given the vessel (our bodies) to drive it. We have been given the free will and agency to pick or oats and ride our lives on it through our choices. We all have free will and agency that we are not exercising enough in a way that does not leave us self abandoned. Because we’re not driving our own cars metaphorically steering our own ship. When we don’t steward our own lives that comes with side effects. So, as a result there is no order. There is no sequence. There is just this feeling of being out of alignment.

And I think because we have developed language for everything, which I think is an amazing trait that us humans have the ability to do. We take things way too far. To the extremes the same way we do with our poisons —remember the poisons? What causes us to disconnect from ourselves, whether it’s sugar, a substance, a food, a behavioral pattern, thought pattern etc. Those behavioral patterns can be having no habits, no structure, you’re not doing what you know at a soul level you should be doing. I don’t like using “should” language, but this type of should feels more like a need. It’s part of the responsibility that comes with being alive. It’s the duty we were given with our place here on Earth. It’s our responsibility to take care of what we have within us.

This vessel—that’s what I’m going to call it. Our bodies. But not just our bodies. Our nervous systems. Our minds. Being mindful, and full of intentional effort with our habits, our body, our mind, and our soul becomes part of the responsibility of taking care of ourselves. I think we’ve gotten so used to broadly naming things that I’m not even sure we know what we’re naming anymore. And if we don’t actually understand what we’re constantly naming, it becomes a form of cognitive laziness. A shortcut that provides nothing concrete for the mind to hold onto.

A perfect example of this is when people say, “We need to work on communication.” Communication this. Communication that.

Okay... but what does that actually mean?

Then we say, “Oh, I feel...” So now we have feelings. And boy, are they complex. You actually have to dive into the pool of those feelings and pull out specific emotions—anger, sadness, frustration, resentment, grief, shame.

We have to get concrete with the specific feeling, meaning we have to name it.

Yet what I’m noticing lately about our nervous systems is that we almost always have the blueprint that explains why we do what we do. Why we communicate the way we communicate. I feel____ because of ____.

Okay? And?

So with communication what exactly do you need to work on with communication? We must learn to get specific. Otherwise, we are holding a blank map with the word communication stamped on it, but with no directions telling us which way to go first.

Example:

“We need to work on communication when we are in an activated state.”

Okay... why?

“...Well, when we communicate, it turns into a fight where we overly criticize one another, speak harshly, interrupt, attack, and deflect...”

The dysfunctional dance.

Perfect. Now we have a path to take. Meaning we have a direction to turn so we can improve the dysfunctional dance by exiting the loop that keeps us stuck and disconnected. Think of Adlerian psychology. I believe everything has a time and a place, but sometimes we get so lost in the past of our trauma that we stop paying attention to the present symptom that trauma is contributing to in the present moment. We keep reaching back into the hippocampus archives, searching for answers, while the present-day consequences continue unfolding right in front of us, thus creating the gridlock we want help navigating through. What I mean here is this: maybe the symptom we’re trying to understand isn’t just about what happened back then. Maybe it’s also about the fact that this is all we’ve ever known. All we’ve ever felt. Maybe reaching for the past has become the only direction we, as a collective, know how to look towards.

I also believe that if we as humans don’t know another baseline to operate from, that could be true for other people as well. Our partner. Our family. Our friends. Our co-workers. They, too, may not know another way to be.

Let’s zoom in closer here.

If I feel____ emotion, that emotion may cause me to behave in a way that maybe everyone in my family behaves, too. So it becomes normalized within my blueprint, but not necessarily normalized within my partner’s, my friends’, or my co-workers’ blueprints. Let’s think about avoidant families here. When emotions enter the chat, the family learns to frequent Logistics Highway as a means of avoiding Expression Highway. Over time, we all inherit that pattern. We become frequent flyers to Logistics Highway. If that is true for me, you, and the cat down the road, then that means this occurs for many of us as humans. So when emotions enter the chat, we head straight to Spicy Island Town. We get loud. We cuss. We slam doors. We shut down.

All of those behaviors don’t actually tell us about the emotions that are at play. They don’t tell us about the vulnerabilities that have been activated. They just activate us right into the logistics autopilot path. For some households, pissed off and okay are the only two emotions that operate within the system. So we never explore deeper to get to the root cause and bridge the gap. We scream. We yell. We fight. We avoid. Meanwhile, the connection suffers. Families and couples start to drift from each other. We can only act like nothing is wrong for so long. Eventually, the pressure cooker fills up, and it needs a release.

Let’s zoom out a little more.

We have to think about what we’re currently navigating in our relationships. What are we navigating in our families? In our marriages? What behavior is happening to us that we are navigating with our partners or with our family?

'“I don’t get enough attention.

They made me feel neglected.

They don’t make me feel good enough.

I always feel left out.”

Okay? How do you know what not feeling “good enough” even feels like enough to even pinpoint that feeling to begin with? What were you experiencing before this person to have the ability to identify not feeling good enough?

Spend some time here because this concept is hard.

We often blame the present person for “making” us feel that way. But no one can make us feel something if we didn’t know that feeling existed to begin with. So if that feeling exists, it means it existed before the person who is currently poking at it. Which is a signal to the body that it’s an old wound that maybe has not gotten a chance to scab over and heal. So we have to understand that the stories our mind tells us when the wound gets touched become a portal. A time-capsule portal that can send us back to the original injury.

Remember, The Body Keeps the Score.

Now, what if the original injury was created by the same person who is currently poking it? For example, your partner created a wound, and now you want that behavior to change. Okay... what are you comparing their current behavior to? What is the reference point? We could be comparing it to the way that person made us feel in the beginning of our relationship. Maybe they used to behave XYZ, and now they don’t. So because they don’t behave the way they used to, now you do not feel “good enough.”

Let’s zoom out even more...

Is it possible that what feels like not good enough isn’t happening simply because they are no longer doing what they used to do or what you need them to do? Is it possible that what they gave you in the beginning created a feeling? And in the beginning, that feeling was good enough. So that feeling became the “poison” you got addicted to. You needed them to continue doing what they were doing to keep you feeling good enough. So the moment they stop...

BAM.

Now you don’t feel good enough.

When we get addicted to a poison, just like the examples before with substances, candy, scrolling, etc., we hyperfocus on the feeling we receive from it.

I eat Trolli’s to feel ____, which equals dopamine.

When we fall in love, we are flooded with oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. We get that cocktail from the “poison” of choice—that feeling of the honeymoon stage. If that poison provides us with such a good cocktail of hormones, we have to admit to ourselves that we’re not even living in reality anymore. We’re chasing the cocktail. We’re chasing the feeling the poison gives us. The poison, essentially, is the dopamine. The dopamine we get from falling in love. The dopamine we get in the early dating stage with high sexual chemistry. Just like the dopamine we get from substances, scrolling, shopping, or candy. And that dopamine comes with attachments.

Because I think about substance use, I think a lot about attachment. I think that’s why substance use is such a common thing for people to reach for. It can become rooted in attachment. We attach to other things, too. I have a whole-ass blankey—yes, I call it Blankey and I have had it since I was born 😫. I’m attached to it not being washed because I need it to smell a certain way. It provides me a sense of comfort. Some people get attached to other people. Others get attached to drugs, shopping, or dopamine of any kind, wherever they can get it, and get it fast. Now, my Blankey is an attachment. It comforts me. That’s a pretty mild example, but as humans, we tend to go to extremes.

Think about the word extremes. Think about the word extremist. When you hear those words, where does your mind immediately go?

Mine goes straight to politics because people are so extreme these days in the political arena. But more importantly, it goes there because that word has been primed in me due to the media.. If my mind immediately goes to politics, I’m now highlighting another mechanism of the brain. So let’s go back to disorder. I’m just pulling words from what exists in our modern society today. This isn’t me trying to push an agenda, despite that being a wound that many of us have. Being suspicious of ulterior motives. I’m highlighting perception here. I want to talk about this out loud with people who can handle a conversation like this, because I know many of you are going to assume a meaning behind what I’m trying to do, and there really isn’t anything I’m trying to do other than explore how our minds organize meaning.

There’s disorder everywhere we look. But now I want you to go outside. I want you to observe nature around you, whatever that looks like: stray animals, trees, bugs, birds. And I want you to sit with that energy.

I want you to notice how life goes on for everyone... but humans.

Now, I want you to go somewhere. If you can, go somewhere in nature. If not, go somewhere people naturally gather. Maybe it’s your downtown plaza or whatever your community has. I want you to simply observe the world around you. The buildings. The birds. The bugs. The trees. The wind. Just watch it all. Then I want you to watch the people living within it. Just gaze over them. Notice their mood. Notice their happiness. Watch them talking with other people. Connecting. Relating. Watch them laugh. Or maybe you see a parent going off on their kid, and you find yourself thinking,

“Sister... I feel you. It’s hard.”

Wish her well.

Or maybe you see a mom that’s pissing you off because she’s on her phone, not paying attention, and her child almost jumps off of ______, almost gets hurt, or runs into the street, and she still isn’t paying attention because she’s distracted talking. Now you’re feeling some kind of way.

What is that feeling creating inside of you?

Maybe it’s anger. Maybe you want to walk over there and say, “Hey, lady. You need to pay attention to your kid.” Maybe you feel the urge to tell her how to parent. For me, my immediate response is panic for the child. I want to intervene. That panic becomes the intervention. It’s almost automatic, like a reflex. My nervous system doesn’t really ask permission—it just moves. Now, depending on the situation, that response looks different. If it’s a fight, I’m coming in with “Ay yo!” energy. If it’s something like this, I’m much softer. “Hey, excuse me. Your child almost fell off of this.” Or, “Hey, your little one almost ran into the street.”

I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but I’m going to check in because that’s where my nervous system naturally takes me. Some people don’t care. And that’s something we end up observing, too. We witness people neglecting their own lives in the same way they neglect their children. Sometimes they genuinely don’t seem to care. Sometimes people call someone for help, and then it’s out of their hands.

But then you realize something else.

Even the systems we call often don’t do anything until someone is already dead or missing. This leads me to my next point. If we’re going to call humans “disordered,” then we also have to be willing to acknowledge that many of the systems we’ve built are disordered, too. If we’re going to be labeled as disordered humans, then maybe we also need to start considering disordering some of these systems. We need to question the systems that were built before us.

The tax system is one that I keep thinking about. Are you telling me that in order to own a house—even after you pay it off—you still have to pay property taxes? It sits on land you should own. It’s ridiculous. Where’s the incentive to actually own something? Then, if you rent, you’re constantly chasing because the rent goes up every year. Now you have kids to feed. Now it costs half your paycheck just to get to work because of gas. And we’re all just sitting here watching this shit show of a system feed us and gaslight already “disordered” people.

Share

I’m currently watching this little Filipino family at the park, covered by shade and trees, and it’s beautiful. They’re playing cards, and people are riding bikes around the park area too.

Being back home in California, being with my family fills up my day in a way that I didn’t realize I missed. There are people to talk to. Smiles. Laughter. Stories being shared. Moments being made. Behavior that brings us forward to— the present. But I think we’re losing sight of those moments because we’re on autopilot, drifting in the fog. Remember the fog of the poison I brought up earlier? That poison could be substances. Scrolling. Maybe you’re dying inside. Maybe you feel like shit. Maybe you’re exhausted. Maybe your body is trying to alert you to something through symptoms. Maybe it’s affecting your mental health.

Whatever it is, we’re no longer fully present in these moments.

We’re in our heads. We’re analyzing. We’re overthinking.

“What did they mean?”

“What was that smirk?”

“Why did they say that in front of everybody?”

Especially when we’re around family, we lose the moment of connection because we’ve drifted somewhere else.

Think about it this way.

With the Highways of Communication, Logistics Highway represented by the everyday tasks: the kids, school, appointments, chores, groceries. It was the baseline category that most relationships naturally travel through. But what if there’s also a baseline highway for functioning? A loop that just keeps looping and looping and looping.

The difference is that everyone’s baseline highway is different.

These highways aren’t universal. They’re broad ranges of ways that people function. Mainstream psychology might call them Type A personalities, Type B personalities, personality traits, temperament, or something else entirely. Whatever we call them, I think there are many different baseline ways of functioning. Many “lanes” to operate in within baseline highway.

But there is one common baseline that I see so many of us operating in.

The image above this is what I call the Charlie Day phenomenon. I show this to my clients because I see it in myself, too. We’re always here trying to crack the case in the present moment.

“Am I with the right person?”

“Does he love me?”

“Does she love me?”

“Am I being taken advantage of?”

“Is this the right job for me?”

“Why do they always have to talk shit?”

It’s the pathway of hypervigilance.

If hypervigilance is our baseline, then our Baseline Highway also has a spectrum of lanes. And what I mean by spectrum is this: the Baseline Highway has multiple lanes that we can drive in. Some of us weave through all of them. Some of us chronically stay in one lane. Others chronically stay in another. Think about the people who drive in the left lane. They’re in the fast lane... but they’re driving slow, holding everyone else up. Think about the people who genuinely want to heal. They aren’t just intellectualizing everything. They’re trying to embody what they’re learning. They’re implementing skills. They’re eating healthier, and regulating themselves. They’re doing the work.

Let’s call that the Regulated Lane.

But even when you’re trying to stay in that lane, you inevitably find yourself behind people who don’t belong there. People whose behaviors pull you out of your window of tolerance (out of that regulated lane). People whose nervous systems begin interacting with yours until you slowly find yourself drifting out of your own lane.

Maybe this metaphor isn’t perfect yet, but stay with me.

We all encounter people who activate us. Sometimes we stay in toxic dynamics because of them. Sometimes we stay because of ourselves. Either way, we become caught in an internal loop that creates distress. When we’re around certain people long enough, they can activate us to such a degree that we’re no longer operating from our Regulated Lane.

Do you see what just happened?

You’re no longer in that lane... but you still feel like you are.

Because the amygdala doesn’t have eyes.

It doesn’t realize you’ve drifted outside of the lane you were trying so hard to stay in. Remember, we’re still talking about the Baseline Highway. This highway has multiple lanes across a spectrum. This is where I think our ego can quietly creep in. We become so convinced that we’re still operating from our highest self that we don’t even realize we’ve changed lanes.

I actually think floors work as a really good metaphor here, too.

In The Meantime, Iyanla Vanzant talks about how we all begin in the basement, and over time we work our way up through different floors. Some of us eventually allow people into our lives who are still operating on developmental floors we’ve already outgrown. They’re simply on a different floor. Since they’re operating from a different developmental level, their behavior begins interfering with ours. That interference creates reactivity. And if we repeatedly allow ourselves to lose our cool, over time that reactivity can become our new baseline. That new baseline only hurts us because we slowly begin drifting out of the Regulated Lane.

I can already hear people saying, “Well, what about what they’re doing?”

Exactly.

Now you’re in the Charlie Day cycle.

You’re not wrong. They very well may be contributing to the problem. But look at where it put you. It pulled you out of alignment. That right there tells you everything you need to know. And yet, you still don’t leave that lane. Why? Because you’ve become comfortable there. You’re addicted to it. That is your part. That is your role in the lane drifting that is occurring.

Let’s go all the way back to the beginning when we talked about disorder.

We broke down disorder. Then we explored order. That led us to sequence. Sequence depends on the sequence of what is being placed into order. So, within this psychological and human behavioral framework, I’m talking about the sequence of habits. The sequence of behaviors. The sequence of what we consistently practice. It’s also about how strong our discipline muscle becomes in maintaining the sequence of habits that keeps us in the Regulated Lane as our baseline.

You see what I did there?

Now we have a roadmap.

I have this nervous system baseline chart as shown above. On that chart, 0–5 is regulation, and 0–3 is that beautiful rest-and-digest regulation lane that is the goal for our wellbeing. That’s where we want to be. But here’s what’s fascinating. You can still be in the Regulated Lane and have something grab your attention 3-5 lane. You’re still driving in your lane, but some external behavior happening outside of you has the ability to cause your eyes to drift over into someone else’s lane because you’re thinking, What the hell are they doing now? That can happen in thirty seconds. It can happen in five minutes, or over an entire afternoon. What I’m trying to describe here is an attentional shift. If you’re still regulated, you’re simply aware of the external stimulus. You noticed it. Your nervous system hasn’t necessarily left regulation lane yet.

Now, depending on how long you stay focused on that stimulus determines whether or not you remain in the Regulated Lane.

Does that make sense?

Think about a teacher. A parent. A burnt-out partner. It really doesn’t matter who it is.

Sometimes all it takes is staying focused on that external stimulus for just a little too long...

Snap.

Now you’ve drifted into another lane.

Once you snap, you’re no longer in the Regulation Lane. You’re no longer in the green zone. You’re in the orange or red zone. The red zone represents the extreme end of reactivity. The Activation Lane can house anger, frustration, sadness, grief—anything that keeps you out of the Regulation Lane.

Remember, this is the Highways of Functioning.

The first highway is the Baseline Highway. This is where your nervous system lives. It has multiple lanes, and the lane you’re traveling in determines your baseline for functioning. The Baseline Highway then influences the next highway, which is the Mindset Highway, or what I also think of as the Highway of Perception. This is where your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, interpretations, and perceptions are constantly interacting with one another. Your feelings generate thoughts, and over time those thoughts begin shaping your perception of reality. That Highway of Perception then feeds directly into the Highway of Behavior, which is the part everyone else sees. This is our actions. Our words. Our tone. Our body language. Our habits. Everything observable. Remember, behavior never exists in isolation. What we see with the eye has already been filtered through perception, and perception has already been influenced by baseline. We have to remember that.

So now behavior has multiple lanes because there are many different ways behavior can present itself. There’s regulated behavior, dysregulated behavior, grief behavior, numb behavior, defensive behavior, dissociative behavior, anxious behavior, pleasant behavior and even resentful behavior. There are all different types of behavioral expressions, and each one tells us something about what may be happening further upstream. That means we can’t just look at behavior by itself. We have to consider the baseline lane we frequent and behavior. We have to consider habits because habits become one of the primary lanes within the Highway of Behavior.

One of those lanes aligns with the Regulation Lane of the Baseline Highway. I think of that as the Healthy Habits Lane. These are the daily behaviors that support regulation rather than pull us away from it.

Now, the problem takes us all the way back to where we started... disorder.

Back to sequence.

The order of those habits is different for every single person because we are all unique. The same recipe will not regulate everyone in the same way. We spend so much time watching other people and being influenced by what works for them that we forget to learn the sequence of habits that keeps our own nervous system regulated. That’s where we have to be very careful. Very cautious. Very mindful. Otherwise, we end up trying to mimic the sequence in which other people stack their habits, and when that sequence does not work for us, we develop side effects. Anxiety. Depression. ADHD symptoms. Whatever it is. Not necessarily because the habit itself is wrong, but typically it is due to operating from the poison of comparison. We have to learn what works for us in order to stay balanced within our own nervous system. I think part of the Mindset Highway—the Highway of Perception—is heavily influenced by symbols. Symbols infiltrate our behavior because they first infiltrate our perception. Our brains turn things into symbols as a form of survival. If I can assign meaning to something, I can begin predicting what might happen next. That prediction is a survival process, even though you cannot see it with your eyes because it is happening internally within the mind.

Once I turn something into a symbol, I can create a meaning around it. That meaning can then produce an action or behavior in me. So instead of waiting to find out whether you might become a threat, my mind assigns meaning to you, predicts a behavior from you, and prepares me to protect myself. That is the danger of symbols. They can help us survive, but they can also cause us to respond to an assumed meaning rather than what is actually happening in front of us.

Share The Safety to Speak™

Now that I’ve guided you through this framework, I want you to take a deep breath because we’re about to place something under the magnifying glass. From this point forward, I don’t want you thinking about politics. I don’t want you thinking about religion. I don’t want you thinking about whether you agree or disagree. I want you to think like an observer. Like a researcher. Imagine we’re in a laboratory together studying human behavior. Our job isn’t to decide who’s right. Our job is to notice what happens inside of us while we observe.

The examples I’m about to use are modern-day examples because they contain symbols that many of us already have strong neurological associations with. That means your brain may immediately assign meaning before we’ve even finished collecting the evidence. That’s exactly what I want you to notice. I want you to pay attention to your own nervous system. What emotion shows up first? What assumption does your mind immediately make? Where does your Highway of Perception begin taking you before we’ve even looked at all of the information?

This has nothing to do with how I personally believe or where I stand on any of these topics. That’s not what we’re studying. We’re studying the human mind and perception. We’re studying how quickly the brain creates meaning purely from symbols and how that meaning begins shaping behavior before we’ve even realized we’ve assigned it.

So let’s begin.

Case Study One

A woman is standing in front of a California state monument made of stone in a beautiful natural setting. She is fully covered, with only her face visible, and she is waving a Palestinian flag. As she stands there, you hear people driving past yelling at her. Notice my wording. I said you hear people yelling. We never actually see the people yelling. We simply hear what sounds like a male voice shouting from a passing vehicle. The woman later gets into her car and begins reflecting on what just happened while recording herself on camera for social media. Based on that interaction, she makes the statement that California is “a dangerous place.”

Before we go any further, I don’t want you deciding whether she’s right or wrong. I don’t want you deciding whether the people yelling were justified or not. I want us to stay where we have stayed this entire essay—with observation.

What are the objective facts?

What did we actually witness?

What meanings has your mind already started assigning that we haven’t actually observed? That’s the hook that pulls you and conditions your nervous system into having an automatically response and skipping the key lane. Pause.

Now we’re going to take everything we just laid out and place this scene under the magnifying glass. We’re going to slow it down and examine it piece by piece. I don’t actually want to focus on the symbols themselves. I want to focus on the mechanisms underneath the symbols. This is where I think we miss each other as a human species. We get so caught up arguing about what the symbol means to us that we never stop to ask what our nervous system is actually doing while it’s assigning meaning to that symbol. So let’s start with the woman. Is she actually from Palestine? We don’t know. She’s dressed in what appears to be traditional clothing for her culture or religion, but that doesn’t actually tell us anything. Again, we cannot take what we see at face value. This is discernment training. Observation comes before interpretation. Just because my brain immediately wants to connect dots doesn’t mean those dots belong together.

So she’s standing there waving this flag, and afterward she reports feeling afraid. That immediately makes me curious. Where did she learn what danger feels like? How does she even know what “danger” is? Because if danger had been the only thing she had ever experienced, would she even recognize it as danger? Or would it simply feel normal? She entered California. She waved a flag. She received a response she apparently wasn’t expecting. That’s all we objectively know. Everything else is an unknown variable. What is her history? Unknown. What is her trauma history? Unknown. What experiences shaped her nervous system before this interaction? Unknown. We don’t know what those shoes have walked through before arriving at this moment.

Now I’m going to show you where my curiosity naturally goes, because this is what it looks like to explore instead of conclude. Let’s assume, for the sake of the exercise, that she is from Palestine. Notice what I just did. I made an assumption, and I’m telling you it’s an assumption. If that assumption happened to be true, my first question isn’t political. My first question is psychological. Why did she leave? Was she seeking safety? Opportunity? Family? Education? A different life? I don’t know. I’m not answering the question. I’m simply asking it. That’s a very different thing. I can already feel some of you wanting to answer that question. Notice that. Your Highway of Perception is already activating. I’m asking you to stay with the question a little longer. If she truly left her country to build a life somewhere else, I’m curious about the nervous system that arrived here. What experiences shaped it? What meanings has it already assigned to the world before this interaction even happened? Her waving that flag may represent many different things: pride, grief, home, family, loss. It may simply be the only flag she owns. I don’t know. That’s the point. We don’t know. I mean let’s be real, she may not even know.

Now let’s shift our attention to the person driving by. Imagine it’s the Fourth of July. They have an American flag flying from the back of their truck because they’re proud to be American. They see her waving a Palestinian flag. Instantly, their brain turns that flag into a symbol. That symbol becomes a meaning for them, about her. That meaning produces an emotion as a result that emotion produces a behavior. They yell at her. Notice where the behavior actually began. It didn’t begin with yelling. It began with perceiving. Then she gets into her car and records a video saying she feels scared. Again, my curiosity doesn’t stop with the feeling. Where did she learn to associate a man yelling with being scared? Has she experienced war? Abuse? Oppression? Violence? I don’t know. Those are questions, not conclusions. Remember The Body Keeps the Score. When she hears a man yelling, where does her nervous system go? Where does her perception go? What roads has she already traveled? What have those shoes walked through? What have those shoes fled?

Now let’s pause for a moment.

Now let’s pretend that guy uploaded a TikTok, just like she did, and now I’m watching his video. He’s some white, patriotic American bro (I know... stereotype, but stereotypes exist). He’s angry. He’s cussing. He’s got a Bud Light for the roadie. They’re headed to the beach or somewhere. Who knows. But he feels completely justified. Completely righteous in the anger he’s experiencing because, “How dare they bring XYZ, XYZ, XYZ over here. We’re in America. Go back to your country.” Maybe that’s what he’s saying. Again, he has made a meaning in his mind about her behavior of waving that flag. But where is that anger actually coming from? You really can’t sit here and tell me that a woman you’ve never met, standing in a park, waving a flag from a country she isn’t currently in, is enough by itself to make you that angry. Something else is happening. A symbol has been created, and a meaning has been assigned to that symbol.

The exact same thing happens when someone sees a white person waving an American flag and immediately makes a meaning about them. See how we’ve already left the present moment that I was talking about earlier? We’re not actually responding to what is physically happening in front of us anymore. We’re responding to the story our nervous system has attached to the symbol. We’ve drifted out of the present moment and into a specific lane within the Baseline Highway. Once we’re in that lane, we begin looping. That loop influences the Highway of Perception, and the Highway of Perception begins shaping the story we’re telling ourselves. Eventually, that story produces a behavior. In her case, maybe that behavior is getting on TikTok and sharing how unsafe she felt. In his case, maybe it’s getting on TikTok explaining why he was so angry. Different behaviors. Same mechanism.

Remember, at this point it isn’t even about the flags anymore. It isn’t about what she’s wearing, what she looks like. It isn’t even about that one interaction. We’re looking underneath all of it. We’re looking at the psychological landscape each person brought into that moment long before they ever crossed paths. Her story is different. His story is different. Both stories are valid because both belong to human beings who have lived different lives and developed different nervous systems. Does that automatically make either story accurate? No. And that’s exactly why this work matters, and why nuance is important. The moment we drift out of regulation, we lose access to curiosity and discernment. Once that happens we stop observing, and we start jumping to conclusions— taking a trip to distortion island. That’s the shift. We stop asking questions, and we start defending the meaning we’ve already made.

Now think back to the Highways of Communication. If we can’t access regulation, we can’t access those highways either. Instead, we begin looping. We defend. We criticize. We withdraw. We justify. We overexplain. We intellectualize. We attack. We shut down. Whatever lane our nervous system frequents becomes the lane we continue driving in.

Do you see the connection now?

We cannot communicate effectively because we cannot access regulation. And when we cannot access regulation, we cannot access the parts of ourselves capable of curiosity, discernment, and repair.

So we loop.

Looping is a form of avoidance. We all avoid differently because we all have a different flavor of what we loop in. Some of us loop in substances. Some of us loop in scrolling. Some of us loop in work. Some of us loop in relationships, or in hypervigilance, overthinking. We loop in our poison of choice.

So what is your poison?

How do you eat? What do you smoke? What do you drink? What do you scroll? What do you consistently reach for when your nervous system begins drifting out of regulation? More importantly, how repetitive is that behavior? Because repetition is what creates the baseline. The more consistently you engage in a behavior, the more it becomes the lane your nervous system habitually travels down. And over time, that lane begins influencing how you feel, how you think, how you process information, how you communicate, how you listen, and ultimately how you experience the world around you. Which is why it impacts your perception. We throw words around all the time like effectively. “Communicate effectively.” “Process effectively.” “Listen effectively.”But what does effectively actually mean? It means something different depending on the person because every one of us has a different Highway of Perception. We all assign different meanings to the same words based on the life we’ve lived, the experiences we’ve had, and the baseline we’ve developed into. Words are simply tools that help us translate what is happening inside of us.

Think about the technology we have today. I can speak English, and within seconds technology can translate my words into another language so someone else can understand me. That’s essentially what I’m trying to do throughout this essay. I’m translating information that many of us have carried for years but haven’t known how to organize. We’ve collected all this information. We’ve read the books. We’ve listened to the podcasts. We’ve highlighted the quote or talk about healing until we’re blue in the face. But so much of it stays intellectual. We keep holding it. We keep repeating it. We keep regurgitating it. We don’t embody it.

What does embodiment actually look like for you?

Because it’s going to look different for everybody. That’s the sequence. That’s the order. That’s what I’ve been trying to build throughout this entire essay. Your sequence is not my sequence, is not the next person’s sequence. My sequence is not yours. The goal isn’t to copy someone else’s recipe. The goal is to discover the sequence of habits that keeps your soul in alignment. Being in alignment becomes incredibly important because the longer we stay out of alignment with ourselves, the more we abandon the younger parts of ourselves that were already abandoned during development. Our developmental experiences shape the Baseline Highway. The lane we repeatedly travel within that highway begins influencing the Mindset (perception) Highway—our perceptions, beliefs, interpretations, and stories. Those perceptions then shape the Highway of Behavior, what everyone else can actually see. Over time, those highways become well-traveled roads. They become habits. They become loops, which then become personalities when stuck in them long enough. They become the routes we automatically take without even realizing we’re driving them.

Now, here’s what concerns me.

In today’s world, those chronic loops are increasingly being treated as identities. Mainstream culture often takes the lane you’ve been stuck in and turns it into a prediction about your future with disordered language. As if the loop you’ve been driving somehow determines who you are or what your life will become.

I don’t believe that.

I believe it tells us where you’ve been driving and how that route has caused you to loop. Not where you’re destined to stay.

Poverty. Homelessness. Chronic abuse cycles. Not feeling at home in your own body. Maybe you have what everyone else would call the “perfect life.” You have the money. The beautiful home. The successful career. The family. The vacations. All the things people spend their lives chasing. But internally, you still don’t feel good. Your relationships are suffering, so is your nervous system. It actually doesn’t matter what the circumstance is because everyone is navigating something. Every single one of us. The question isn’t whether you’re struggling. The question becomes where your struggle lives, what lane it keeps pulling you into, and whether you’ve mistaken that lane for who you are because pathology has become identity. Which robs us of the neuroplasticity our brains were designed to do.

Throughout this essay, I’ve used the word poison a lot, but maybe this is where I want to soften that idea. Maybe the goal isn’t to spend our lives trying to find the poison that hurts the least. Maybe the goal is to become so familiar with our own nervous system that we begin choosing what nourishes it instead. What restores it. What keeps it balanced. I don’t actually love the word healing because, for me, it almost signals perfection. Like one day we’ll finally arrive and declare ourselves “healed.” I don’t think that’s what this is. I think this is balance and an embodied form of awareness. I think this is learning how to recognize when we’ve drifted into another lane and having enough self-awareness to gently bring ourselves back.

That’s why we spent so much time talking about the Highways of Communication, and now we’re beginning to build the Highways of Functioning. Communication was never the whole story. Communication is simply what becomes visible, but underneath communication is perception. Underneath perception is nervous system baseline. Underneath baseline are the habits we repeatedly practice until they become the roads our nervous system naturally prefers to travel (our personality.) That’s why we started with the word disorder. We broke it apart. We looked at order. Then we looked at sequence. Because maybe the conversation isn’t actually about disorder at all. Maybe it’s about the sequence we’ve been stacking our habits in, because of outside influences, and we are doing that for years without ever realizing it. As we continue exploring this framework together, we’re going to place modern life under the magnifying glass. That means exploring the symbols being made behind: politics, family systems, marriage, social media, parenting, religion, culture, trauma, and addiction. We’re going to slow everything down so we can understand the mechanisms underneath human behavior. Once we develop the curiosity in mechanisms than conclusions, something shifts. Curiosity begins replacing certainty, which allows us to access critical thinking in order to make proper judgments from a discerned place and not a reactive state. That’s where I think growth actually starts.

It will probably make you uncomfortable. Good. I think discomfort is often the invitation into awareness. We’ve been conditioned to judge before we’ve been taught to observe. The same way we react before we’ve been taught to regulate. We’ve been conditioned to mistake our perception for reality. My work has always been exposure therapy, but check your baggage. This isn’t about trying to persuade you how to think or to even like me or believe what I believe. I’m trying to expand your capacity. The more capacity your nervous system has, the more difference it can tolerate without immediately translating that difference into danger.

The world is nothing but difference. So developing capacity provides you the skills necessary to be bilingual in the language of connection. Your partner will be different from you. Your children will be different from you. Your family will be different from you. Your clients will be different from you. Even the version of yourself ten years from now will be different from who you are today. If we don’t learn how to expand our capacity to tolerate difference, we’ll keep looping. We’ll keep assigning meanings that were never there. We’ll keep normalizing dysfunction simply because we’ve driven that road so many times it feels familiar. And familiar doesn’t always mean healthy or have a meaning at all. Sometimes familiar is just familiar.

Maybe that’s what disordered language has unintentionally done. Maybe we’ve become so focused on naming the outcome that we’ve stopped becoming curious about the sequence that produced that very outcome. We’ve become experts at labeling the destination while remaining strangers to the road that got us there. That’s the work I want to do with you. Once we learn to ask better questions we develop the ability to create better regulated observations which lead to greater awareness. Greater awareness creates different choices, and different choices create different habits. Over time those different habits create a different baseline for functioning in this world. And over time, that changes the direction of the entire highway (trajectory of our life.)

I’m excited to build this framework with you because that’s all these essays really are. They’re me thinking out loud. They’re me sharing the way my brain organizes the world. Some of it will resonate. Some of it won’t. Some of it will evolve because I’m still learning too.

So take what serves you. Leave what doesn’t.

Tell me where your mind went while reading this. Tell me where you noticed yourself making assumptions. Tell me where your Highway of Perception took over. Because if this framework does anything, I hope it helps you become a little less certain, a little more curious, and a little more compassionate toward the highways that both you and everyone else have been driving for far longer than either of us probably realize.

Till next time data collectors

Over the course of this last year. Collecting data not just from my lived experience, but also from my clinical practice, and observing human behavior in systems. One overlap I am seeing especially if you live in America, is the family system of America.

Are y’all ready to get into it?

I challenge you despite being uncomfortable to see if you can access true inquiry and not reactivity. You will know it’s reactive based off if your immediate response is to criticize, or minimize who I am because it’s a nuanced truth that may seem too loud.

None of this work is about me, the lessons embedded deep within this are rooted in helping us understand the mechanisms we are all using within the relationships closest to us.

If the shoe fits is what I always say. Then it’s a portal into something deeper within you. Remember perception is the root of my work. The eyes that read this will all interpret different perceptions. Neither is good, bad, right, wrong. It just is—what we do with that is the real work.

This essay is about the psychological patterns not the context itself. This is going to be hard for society today especially after 2020, because in isolation times we saw what that did to the collective. I am a firm believer that being in captivity causes psychological strain so much so that just like in our relationships we end up stranded in the island of rumination. So if we spend time shipwrecked on that island long enough we will develop side effects. I truly believe what we are seeing today are the side effects of that time spent in rumination. The family of America had so much time to play mad libs due to what the media was feeding us all—or at least those of us who eat up the media. The goal of this essay is not to pursuade the reader anything. But to allow us the ability to pause long enough to expand our minds, see the undercurrents and the neural highways we have been conditioned to take again and again. No matter the context— this pattern has spilled into our families, relationships and workplace dynamics making it harder to rewire out of.

Let’s get into it.

Abstract

This paper proposes a psychological and sociological hypothesis: that the contemporary American sociopolitical landscape functions as a large-scale, dysfunctional family system. We posit that citizens have been conditioned into specific familial roles—the Golden Child, the Scapegoat, and the Enabler—by “parental” institutional bodies (political parties and media) to ensure systemic stability through division. Utilizing frameworks of Bowen Family Systems Theory, Schema Theory, and Neurobiological State-Dependent Perception, we argue that individuals are being “groomed” into collective groupthink, effectively trading personal agency for tribal belonging. This essay examines the “Discomfort Displacement Cycle” at a national scale, where unresolved systemic shame is projected onto marginalized groups to prevent a collective “Family Meeting” that would demand institutional accountability.

I. The Family You’re Already In

The American sociopolitical landscape is not a theater of war even though it feels like it, but let’s zoom in. What we are really seeing is a collective reenactment of familiar wounds in us all. To understand why our discourse feels so visceral, we must move past the idea of policy differences and recognize that we are living within a macro-reenactment of a dysfunctional family system. This is a system where the “Parents” (the Institutional State and Political Parties) maintain power not through any real leadership, but through the clinical application of enmeshment, trauma bonding, and the strategic assignment of roles. The very roles each and everyone of us lived through within our own childhood.

The current state of American discourse is characterized by what I like to call “Noise”—a state of constant distraction, deflection, and gaslighting. This environment mirrors the glitch seen in families where parents refuse to acknowledge harm because their egos cannot process the associated shame or guilt. As a result, the collective is currently experiencing a trauma reenactment, where the “siblings” (demographic, marginalized, and political groups) turn on each other rather than addressing the elephant in the room: an abusive parental system that thrives on trillions in unaccounted-for losses while demanding total compliance. All while utilizing fear to get that compliance.

Is it starting to feel familiar yet?

Buckle up…

Systemic Roles and Archetypes

In any dysfunctional household, roles are assigned to manage the parents’ anxiety and shame or who ever dictates the emotional climate of that environment. In the American Family System, these roles have been scaled to fit entire demographics:

• The Golden Children (The Groomed Minority): Minority groups, Queer, and Trans communities are currently being groomed into the Golden Child role. Now, let’s understand something as we examine this. This isn’t true allyship; it is enmeshment for utility. Key word here, utility. The “Parent” (the Party) uses validation and “love-bombing” strategies such as waving flags, using specific vernacular all to connect to specific communities to try and portray relatability such as wearing a pride flag or bringing hot sauce to the interview with a black individual. Anything to grant a false sense of cultural power to ensure total loyalty. The issue here is the collective is too unconscious to see the covert tactics happening. If any of you have read the book Outwitting The Devil, this is what Napoleon Hill would call drifting. The modern society today is in a massive drift state contributing to unconsciousness. They were designed to look at the “villain” — the opposing side. This is why humans today are always looking for an enemy. See how tribalism can be used for avoidance or as a distraction? The Golden Child feels “heard” but is actually being capitalized upon, used as a moral shield to protect the Parent from accountability. Remember, the parent in this theory is the political party we blindly support without inquiry.

• The Scapegoats (The Designated Villains): Depending on the “Parental” party in power, the Scapegoat in today’s American society is often White “cis” males and White women. Yeah, I said it…. What comes up for you reading that? What happens in the nervous system? What mind movies or stories did your mind just flash for you?

In this system, the Scapegoat is the container for all systemic failure. By pointing at the Scapegoat, the Parent ensures the “Children” never look at the Parent’s own behavioral fraud or incompetence. No matter what side you claim to be on—we can all agree fraud is at the forefront of a lot of this. It’s easy to blame white people in today’s times rather than looking at where we perpetuate our own stagnation.

• The Lost Child (The “Conspiracy Theorist”): These are the individuals who have begun to see the glitch in the algorithm. They notice the elephants in the room—the missing trillions and the institutional inconsistencies. However, because they disrupt the family’s manufactured peace, they are bypassed and labeled as “crazy” or “conspiracy theorists” to neutralize their data. Hmmm… this is feeling very familiar.

• The Golden Goose (The Institutional Government): The entity that produces the “wealth” (or the illusion of it) that everyone fights over, yet no one is allowed to audit— by use of inquiry. Can you see why injury is such an important skill to exercise? It makes sense to me why many don’t or are afraid to.

The Somatic Trap: Trauma Bonding as Policy

We are currently normalizing maladaptive behaviors as a primary means of avoiding direct accountability. The “Noise” we hear daily—the constant cycle of outrage—is a distraction designed to keep the population in a state of Preemptive Embodiment. You feel the tightness in your stomach or the shallow breath before you even read a headline, because your nervous system has been conditioned to expect a storm. We have discussed pavlovian style conditioning. If you are new you can catch that essay below.

This is a Trauma Bond on a national scale. Marginalized groups pick the “Parent” (political party) they believe will save them, not realizing they are being herded into a Narrative Prison. You see this with the mayor in NYC, and we experience this form of coercive control through allyship here in El Paso where they use threats for things so minor such as threatening to take your recycle bin away or similar to what occurs in California where city forces use massive fines to get compliance. In this prison, the ability to inquire—to simply ask “Why” has been surgically removed through social conditioning. We have made the population afraid to ask questions because, in a dysfunctional family, Inquiry is seen as betrayal. Now, majority of the unconscious collective cannot see this because they are too busy being blind loyalty members to narratives and beliefs about the “other” to keep them stuck in the shitty tennis match of constant conflict.

We are witnessing Pop Culture on trial because we are finally seeing our own household dynamics projected onto the screen. You can see that with the OJ documentary and selected celebrities that get “off the hook” for piss poor behavior. Almost like we use celebrities as puppets for the game. Think about what Will Smith did with slapping Chris Rock and was there a consequence for his behavior? no— so what does that teach and model at scale? Celebrities play a role at leading the unconscious to pick a side based on blind loyalty factors they have to that celebrity. We are watching the messy, uncurated collapse of a system that thrived on our division. The algorithm is glitching because the “siblings” (Left, Right, Black, White, Queer, Cis) are starting to realize that the “Parents” don’t actually care about them—they only care about the compliance that keeps the house standing within the dysfunctional system we are all apart of.

It’s easier to be mad at ICE.

It’s easier to be mad at corporations, politicians, billionaires, the President or whatever institution is currently occupying the role of societal villain. In many ways, outrage is the easiest emotional currency available to us. Despite its impacts psychologically to the mind, body, and spirit of humans. It gives us somewhere to displace our discomfort. Somewhere to direct our fear. Somewhere to assign responsibility. The problem is that outrage can also become a very effective distraction from self-examination. If all of my attention is focused on what “they” are doing, I never have to ask what role I might be playing in the very system I claim to oppose. Family therapists have been studying this dynamic for decades. Murray Bowen (1978) observed that anxious family systems often organize themselves around an identified patient—the person everyone agrees is the problem. The family becomes consumed with discussing the rebellious child, the alcoholic parent, the difficult spouse, or the family member who appears to carry all the dysfunction. What often goes unnoticed is that while everyone is busy studying the identified patient, very few people are examining the emotional process of the family itself. The identified patient may be symptomatic of the dysfunction, but they are rarely the entirety of the problem.

I sometimes wonder if America does the same thing.

We spend enormous amounts of time arguing about ICE, corporations, political parties (right vs left), influencers, celebrities, and public figures. These conversations dominate our feeds, our headlines, and our dinner tables. Yet far less attention is given to the everyday ways ordinary citizens contribute to the emotional climate we claim to dislike. The therapist who avoids difficult conversations because they fear losing a client despite their job to be the neutral person, not the person who overly validates. The teacher who remains silent because speaking up feels risky or puts them at risk for exile amongst other teachers or staff. The journalist who knows outrage generates engagement. The Judge who projects their trauma onto custody dynamics making it difficult for the father who is a good man to have access to their child. The influencer who profits from division, so they post what is socially acceptable to get the views. The citizen who shares information without verifying it because it confirms an existing belief. None of these behaviors make national headlines. Yet collectively, they shape culture every single day. The uncomfortable truth is that systems do not operate independently from the people within them. We often speak about governments, institutions, and corporations as though they are separate organisms floating above society, disconnected from ordinary people. They are not. Systems are built, maintained, reinforced, and protected by human beings. They require participation. They require compliance. They require people willing to perform tasks, follow orders, remain silent, look away, or justify behavior that conflicts with their values. The “parents” of society may create the rules, but the rest of us are often carrying them out with our own hands. Just peep into your workplace.

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable because accountability is far less satisfying than outrage. Outrage gives us dopamine. Accountability requires humility. Outrage allows us to feel morally superior, while accountability forces us to acknowledge our contradictions. Social psychologists have repeatedly found that people are far better at identifying bias, hypocrisy, and moral failures in others than they are in themselves (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002). We possess an extraordinary ability to see everyone else’s contribution to the problem while remaining largely blind to our own. From a family systems perspective, this is not particularly surprising. Anxious systems naturally externalize responsibility. They look for someone to blame. Someone to fix. Someone to punish. Someone to remove. The fantasy is that if we can just get rid of the identified patient, the system will finally function. Yet the history of families, organizations, and nations suggests otherwise. Remove one scapegoat and another quickly emerges. Replace one villain and a new one appears. You see, the target changes, but the emotional process remains the same. The mechanism remains.

Sometimes I watch what are described as “peaceful protests,” and I find myself wondering how much of what I’m witnessing is genuine civic engagement and how much resembles a family DARVO session happening on a national scale. Not all protests. Not all movements, but enough to notice the pattern. Denial of personal contribution, aggressive displacement of responsibility, and reversal of accountability. All lead to a collective insistence that the problem exists entirely outside of us. The language changes. The slogans change. The hashtags change. Yet underneath it all, I often see something that looks remarkably familiar to what happens inside distressed families.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not what ICE is doing, what corporations are doing, or what politicians are doing.

Perhaps the more uncomfortable question is this:

What am I doing?

How am I contributing?

Where am I participating in the very thing I claim to oppose?

Because the moment we become unwilling to ask that question, we stop behaving like differentiated adults and start behaving like children demanding that someone else clean up a mess we helped create.

II. The Grooming of the Collective Golden Child

In clinical family systems, the “Golden Child” role is a strategic assignment—a child is not chosen for their inherent needs, but for their utility in regulating the parent’s ego and stabilizing a fragile family unit. How many people can we get to support and vote for us and what do we need to do perfomrativly to get them to “trust” us? When we scale this to the American macro-system, we observe a sophisticated process of Institutional Grooming. Political entities (The Parent) identify marginalized demographics—specifically Minority, Queer, and Trans communities and pull them into a state of Enmeshment. This enmeshment is facilitated through a trade: the Parent offers a false sense of power through symbolic gestures (e.g., rainbow branding, specific cultural pandering, and performative validation, inclusivity etc) in exchange for total tribal loyalty. This dynamic mirrors the love-bombing phase in toxic romances, where the individual is flooded with a sense of being “seen” and “valued” to mask an underlying predatory capitalization on their identity.

This loyalty is not free it comes with trade off that we are seeing many okay with paying. It is purchased at the cost of the group’s critical thinking, informed choice, and cognitive nuance. As members are herded into groupthink roles, they experience a degradation of the neural pathways required for independent evaluation. They become high-functioning sheep within a narrative prison they truly believe they created yet fail to realize where the ability to inquire and to ask “Why?” If you notice the elephant in the room, well that get’s framed as a betrayal of the family unit. This creates a population that is cognitively lazy, accusatory, and manipulative, opting for the safety of the narrative over the effort of true agency. Meaning, if we have been conditioned into fearing inquiry or even asking why. Anyone else that does is automatically “bad, dangerous, unsafe.” Do you see how polarity enters the chat? Can you see how this complicates things when faced with real people in the real world? Especially therapists who are designed to challenge, hold nuance, and leave implicit bias at the door. This creates double binds when we enter into fields where directness, and accountability are part of the work. Pause real quick. What is your perception on directness? That word will look differently in the mind for us all, let’s get clear on that.

Let’s jump into our first case study…

But let’s check in with the nervous system thus far.

How is everyone doing? What are you feeling? What is coming up?

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Case Study 1: O.J. Simpson – The Archetype of the Caged Golden Child

The O.J. Simpson trial was a national family meeting that exposed the mechanics of this archetype. Simpson existed within a self-constructed movie where he was “The Man” which was a role fed by a history of fatherlessness, a drive for hyper-masculinity, and a desperate need for external validation which he got through his celebrity status.

Lets look at the the following data:

• Systemic Enabling: Simpson was the Golden Child of an entire cultural ecosystem: fans, legal architects, and media entities who relied on his status for their own utility.

• The Family Role Projection: During the trial, Blackness and Whiteness were not treated as complex identities but as rigid family roles used to manipulate the national psyche. The legal strategy succeeded by forcing the public to choose a “parental side,” effectively bypassing the facts of the crime.

• The Scapegoat vs. The Protected: To keep the Golden Child “heroic,” the system required a Scapegoat. The focus was redirected away from the human trauma of the victims and onto the systemic failures of the “other parent” (the LAPD).

The Inquiry: The Inquiry: Who needed O.J. to remain a hero?

The communities that were enmeshed with his success could not afford his humanity or his potential for darkness, because doing so would have shattered more than a public image. It would have threatened a symbolic victory. O.J. was not merely a man. He had become a projection screen. A symbol. A vessel carrying collective hopes, grievances, aspirations, and identity needs. To acknowledge his flaws meant risking the collapse of a narrative that many people had emotionally invested in. This is where family systems become incredibly useful. Bowen observed that anxious systems often assign symbolic roles to individuals. The hero. The scapegoat. The golden child. The victim. Once someone occupies one of these positions, the system becomes invested in maintaining the role because the role serves a psychological function for the group. The role itself becomes more important than reality. Zoom out, at a societal level, communities often do the same thing.

The O.J. case exposed something uncomfortable, not simply about race, but about tribalism. The question is not whether racism existed. It did. The question is not whether black Americans have experienced systemic oppression. They have. The question is what happens when legitimate historical pain becomes fused with identity in such a way that accountability begins to feel like betrayal.

Case Study 2: The Family System – How the Golden Child is Created

Before we can recognize these dynamics within governments, institutions, political parties, or social movements, we have to understand how they first develop inside ordinary families. Family systems rarely organize themselves around fairness, just look back in the hippocampus archives of your life.

They organize themselves around anxiety.

When a couple welcomes their first child, they are not simply becoming parents. They are also confronting versions of themselves they have never met before. There is no manual capable of preparing someone for every emotional trigger that parenthood awakens. The first child often receives the most inexperienced version of the parent. They become the family’s first experiment in attachment, discipline, emotional regulation, and repair. As Gabor Maté (2022) notes, siblings are never truly raised by the same parents because parents themselves are continually changing. The mother raising her first child is psychologically, emotionally, financially, relationally, and biologically different from the mother raising her third. This difference does not automatically create dysfunction. What creates dysfunction is the parent’s inability to metabolize guilt. Boy oh Boy is guilt one hell of a weapon, but one hell of an emotion that causes humans to act in ways they may not typically behave as.

Suppose the firstborn begins setting boundaries as an adult. Perhaps they confront years of emotional neglect. Maybe they point out the inconsistencies between how they were disciplined compared to their younger sibling. Maybe they describe feeling unseen, parentified, criticized, or chronically responsible for maintaining the emotional climate of the household. At that moment, the parent faces an uncomfortable psychological crossroads.

One path requires accountability.

The other requires self-protection.

If acknowledging the firstborn’s experience threatens the parent’s identity as a “good mother” or “good father,” the nervous system often chooses protection over repair. Rather than tolerating shame, the family unconsciously reorganizes itself to preserve the parent’s emotional equilibrium. Bowen (1978) described this as the system’s attempt to restore homeostasis. So now the goal within the family is no longer about truth its about maintaining stability. But what is ability in dysfunctional environments? This is where family roles quietly begin to crystallize.

The oldest child, who was once simply asking to be understood, slowly becomes “the difficult one.”

“The dramatic one.”

“The angry one.”

“The ungrateful one.”

Meanwhile, the younger sibling learns something equally important.

Safety comes through alignment. They are observing the parents response to their older sibling and learn what not to do, or what to do in order to get on the parents good side. Som If siding with the parent reduces conflict, preserves closeness, or secures affection, the younger child unconsciously learns to participate in maintaining the family narrative. They don’t have to be manipulative to do this either. In fact, many children genuinely love both siblings. Yet children are exquisitely sensitive to emotional climates. They quickly learn where safety lives.

Sometimes safety lives in silence, lives in agreement, or it lives in helping the parent carry the illusion that nothing is wrong.

This is how enmeshment develops.

Over time, the parent becomes increasingly fused with one child, often confusing emotional dependence with closeness. The relationship begins serving the parent’s unmet attachment needs rather than the child’s developmental needs. The child gradually becomes confidant, emotional regulator, protector, therapist, surrogate partner, or symbolic proof that they were, in fact, a successful parent. What appears to outsiders as extraordinary closeness may actually reflect blurred generational boundaries rather than secure attachment (Minuchin, 1974). Now, what is the cost of this arrangement because it is profound.

The favored child learns that love is contingent upon loyalty.

The scapegoated child learns that truth is dangerous.

The parent learns that avoiding accountability temporarily reduces anxiety.

And the family mistakes this fragile equilibrium for peace. What is the messaging and modeling that is taken from this? Well—avoidance. Perhaps the most tragic consequence is that the siblings themselves often begin participating in the system. The younger sibling may genuinely believe the oldest is selfish, difficult, or overly sensitive because that narrative has become the emotional language of the household. Aligning with the parent protects them from becoming the next target. Family systems have an extraordinary ability to recruit children into preserving dysfunction without anyone consciously intending harm.

Now zoom out.

Replace the mother with a political party.

Replace the favored child with a preferred voting bloc.

Replace the scapegoated sibling with the group blamed for the family’s distress (white people)

Replace the household with a nation.

The mechanics barely change.

The names do.

W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) described what he called double consciousness which is the experience of seeing oneself through one’s own eyes while simultaneously viewing oneself through the lens of a society shaped by racial prejudice. This was an extraordinarily important contribution because it highlighted the psychological burden carried by black Americans navigating a society that often distorted their humanity. Yet every adaptation has a shadow. When a community has spent generations being misrepresented, stereotyped, or demonized, a powerful protective instinct can emerge. Criticism from within the group begins to feel dangerous. Accountability begins to feel risky. Public acknowledgment of dysfunction can feel like handing ammunition to an already hostile world. Now Zoom Out. We see this today within the black community. I call for a family meeting and many stuck in perception find that to be a threat. Many within the community what members in the same community to get their shit together. Now, Many of us who are apart of the community are fighting stereotypes that in today’s time are being perpetuated by its own members. This is where you get in group rivalry. We don’t need to examine the family system within black culture because we can stay focused on the historical past injustices as a vine to escape the discussion that can lead us to connection. So what happens. We bypass or dismiss certain maladaptive behaviors, rationalize it as an issue with white supremacy as a means to manage the image of black people.

The community cannot afford a bad look and that is where things become complicated. Why? Because what begins as protection can slowly transform into enablement.

All that started in the name of solidarity now becomes silence.

What begins as loyalty can become denial.

The original purpose was survival.

The unintended consequence becomes stagnation. This is what we see today in modern times.

One of the clearest examples of this dynamic occurs inside families where image slowly becomes more important than repair. I see this with religious based families, cultures, and those in the public eye such as influencer families, couples, or individuals on boards of organizations that provide access to the public scrutiny. Imagine a father who struggles with alcohol. Every weekend he becomes verbally abusive, emotionally unavailable, or unpredictable. As the oldest daughter grows older, she begins noticing the pattern and eventually finds the courage to bring it up. She isn’t trying to shame her father, she is simply accessing expression highway to build connection and repair. The daughter in this example simply wants the family to acknowledge that something isn’t working because she can already see the impact it’s having on her younger siblings, who maybe she has become so parentified because of this dynamic that she has become protective of her younger siblings. Instead of her mother responding with curiosity or accountability, the conversation immediately shifts. “We don’t talk about family business.” “Your father works hard.” “Every family has problems, you are ungrateful” “Why are you always looking for something that’s wrong?” In that moment, the problem quietly changes. The father’s behavior is no longer the threat. The daughter’s willingness to name it is.

Over time, the emotional climate of the household begins reorganizing itself around protecting the family’s image rather than repairing the family itself. The younger siblings learn that questioning dad creates conflict, but agreeing with mom restores peace. So what do they do? they don’t consciously choose dishonesty. They choose safety. They begin minimizing the drinking, explaining away the outbursts, and eventually defending the very behavior that has harmed them because participating in the family narrative keeps them emotionally connected to the system. The oldest daughter slowly becomes “negative,” “too sensitive,” or “the difficult one,” while everyone else is rewarded for maintaining the illusion that everything is fine. The family has unknowingly shifted from protecting each other to protecting the story they tell about themselves.

This is what Bowen meant when he described anxious systems reorganizing themselves to maintain homeostasis rather than truth (Bowen, 1978). The family’s goal is no longer about healing. The goal is emotional equilibrium for that unit. The mother’s nervous system has become organized around preventing shame rather than repairing harm. Admitting that her daughter is right would require confronting years of missed opportunities, painful guilt, and perhaps the realization that the marriage she has spent years defending has come at the expense of her children. That level of self-confrontation is incredibly difficult. It is often psychologically easier to dismiss the messenger than to metabolize the message.

This is one of the observations made by Dr. Kamilah Majied, whose work frequently explores how historical trauma, systemic oppression, and collective identity influence psychological functioning. While understanding oppression is necessary, she repeatedly emphasizes that healing cannot occur through perpetual identification with injury alone. Trauma must be acknowledged, but eventually communities must also reclaim agency, responsibility, and authorship of their future. Otherwise the wound becomes the identity and identities are remarkably difficult to question.

Wilhelm Reich’s work on the psychology of oppression pointed toward a similar phenomenon. Systems of domination do not merely operate externally. Over time they become internalized. What does that look like exactly today? Well, People begin organizing themselves around structures that originally harmed them. The oppression survives not only because it exists outside the individual, but because it becomes embedded within the psychological field itself. This is where I believe many modern conversations become stuck. We can always externalize our maladaptive behavior to the “villain” and avoid internal accountability.

Understand this has nothing to do with injustice being imaginary. We as a collective engage in thought terminating cliches just to shut this conversation down. This is a hill I will die on. We have to be bold and brave to initiate these conversations the same way we have to be bold and brave to have them within our own family and relational systems.

So, If this dynamic sounds familiar, it is because we continue to reenact it everywhere at home.

We see it when political candidates are caught lying, engaging in unethical behavior, or contradicting their own stated values, yet supporters rush to defend them because acknowledging the behavior would threaten the larger narrative they have attached themselves to. Research in political psychology has consistently found that individuals evaluate information differently depending on whether it supports or threatens their group identity (Haidt, 2012; Tavris & Aronson, 2007). The facts themselves become secondary. The primary concern becomes protecting the tribe. We see it in celebrity culture. When allegations emerge against a beloved public figure, entire online communities often mobilize to explain away, minimize, rationalize, or attack anyone raising concerns. You see this with Arianna Grande and her weight. Concerned fans are then crucified by die hard supporters who are bypassing the concern and what this is messaging and modeling to her fans. Insert other public figures or celebrities, even influences doing the same thing. The reaction is rarely about the individual event alone. The celebrity has become symbolic. They represent a community’s aspirations, values, identity, or sense of belonging. To question the celebrity feels like questioning the group itself. Social Identity Theory suggests that people frequently experience attacks on the group as attacks on the self (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). So if we question someone and their body image, when then place that inquiry on our own.

We see it within activist movements. A movement may begin with legitimate concerns and meaningful goals, yet over time become resistant to internal criticism. Members who raise concerns about strategy, leadership, or unintended consequences may be labeled traitors, sellouts, or enemies of the cause. Irving Janis (1972) described this phenomenon as groupthink—a process in which preserving group cohesion becomes more important than critically evaluating information. In these moments, belonging becomes more valuable than truth. We see it in religious communities. Clergy misconduct scandals have repeatedly revealed environments where leaders were protected, victims were doubted, and concerns were dismissed because acknowledging wrongdoing threatened the institution’s image. The preservation of the system became more important than confronting reality. Family systems theorists would recognize this immediately. The system becomes organized around protecting itself rather than correcting itself. We see it in families every holiday season. The uncle who drinks too much but is never confronted because “that’s just how he is.” The grandmother who manipulates everyone through guilt but is protected because “she’s the elder.” The sibling whose behavior creates chaos year after year while everyone walks on eggshells to avoid conflict. The family cannot afford to challenge the dysfunction because the challenge itself threatens the stability of the system.

And we see it in conversations about race.

A black person who raises concerns about dysfunction within the black community may be accused of reinforcing stereotypes—being called “anti-black” to shut the conversation down. A white person who raises concerns about dysfunction within their own community may be accused of betrayal. The same pattern appears across cultures, religions, political parties, and social groups. The fear is rarely about the criticism itself. The fear is about what happens if the criticism is perceived by outsiders.

The community cannot afford a bad look.

The problem is that healthy systems are capable of self-correction. Unhealthy systems become preoccupied with self-protection. Edwin Friedman (1999) argued that chronically anxious systems often punish differentiation because differentiated individuals threaten the emotional equilibrium of the group. The person willing to say, “We need to look at ourselves,” frequently receives more resistance than the behavior they are attempting to address. I see this personally with my work online. Women love to come for me— calling me “arrogant” simply because I am secure and do not need their/ the publics approval or agreement. This is why accountability often feels so dangerous, because it introduces complexity, it forces a group to hold nuance—multiple truths simultaneously.

The system may have been harmed. The system may also be harming itself.

Historical injustice is real.

Present-day responsibility is also real.

Oppression exist. Which also means agency exists too.

Mature systems can tolerate both truths, but immature systems insist that only one can survive. That’s the collective sickness and over time this polarity conditions Borderline personality traits. The collective focus remains locked inside what I call the hippocampus archives. The historical record, the nervous system’s catalog of every reason we have ever been hurt.

Those archives matter don’t get me wrong. The archives should be studied, and should never be erased. But archives are designed to inform the present—not replace it. That’s the problem. At some point a community must ask whether it is using history as information or as insulation from accountability. There is a profound difference between understanding how a wound was created and organizing an entire identity around preserving the wound. This is why moments like the one highlighted by comedian and content creator Druski become culturally significant. In one viral exchange, a Black man attempted to attribute his incarceration for murder to white supremacy. Druski’s response was blunt: this had nothing to do with white people. What made the moment powerful was not its humor.

It was the interruption.

For a brief moment, someone refused to allow a legitimate historical framework to be used as a blanket explanation for individual behavior— that distinction matters. When every outcome is attributed exclusively to oppression, personal agency begins to disappear, and when agency disappears, accountability disappears, and when accountability disappears, growth becomes nearly impossible or at least to our perception. Eventually the burden shifts onto the very members of the community who are actively attempting to move forward. They find themselves working harder, behaving better, performing more responsibly, and policing their own behavior to counter stereotypes that are sometimes being reinforced by members of their own group. This creates exhaustion.

Human beings exist inside multiple truths simultaneously. The problem emerges when one truth becomes so dominant that it crowds out every other truth available in the room. At that point, we are no longer pursuing understanding. We are simply just protecting a narrative.

And every family system knows what happens when a narrative becomes more important than reality.

The system stops growing.

III. Case Study 2: Rodney King and the National Nervous System

One of the most uncomfortable realities about human systems is that they rarely collapse because nobody knew. More often, they collapse because everybody knew and very few people were willing to risk what they would lose by speaking up. Now, Family therapists understand this phenomenon well. In dysfunctional families, children quickly learn which truths are safe to acknowledge and which truths threaten the stability of the household. Over time, silence becomes adaptive. The child learns that belonging is often more valuable than honesty. The nervous system begins making calculations: “If I tell the truth, will I lose connection? Will I lose safety? Will I lose access?” Eventually the silence becomes so normalized that people no longer experience it as avoidance. They experience it as loyalty (Bowen, 1978).

This is one of the reasons the Rodney King case became such a profound injury to the national nervous system. The trauma was not limited to the violence itself. The deeper wound emerged from what happened afterward. Millions of people watched the footage. They witnessed the event with their own eyes. Yet when the officers were acquitted, many people experienced something that psychologists would recognize as a form of institutional betrayal—a moment when the institution responsible for protection appeared unwilling to acknowledge reality (Freyd, 2013). For many Black Americans, the message was not simply that harm occurred. The message was that harm could occur publicly, be documented, be witnessed collectively, and still be denied. From a family systems perspective, this resembles the child confronting a parent about abuse only to be told that the abuse never happened. Or a daughter telling their mother of a sexual assault that happened from the mother’s boyfriend, inly for the mother to DARVO her daughter in protecting the boyfriend. The injury is compounded because reality itself becomes destabilized.

Yet what interests me is not only what institutions do. It is what communities do in response. Because once a group experiences repeated betrayal, a new problem emerges. The community becomes organized around survival. Like we discussed earlier in the essay. W.E.B. Du Bois described this through the concept of Double Consciousness —the experience of constantly evaluating oneself through both one’s own perspective and the perspective of a society that may already hold distorted assumptions about you (Du Bois, 1903). This adaptation makes sense. If you know you are being watched, judged, stereotyped, or misrepresented, you become hyperaware of how your community is perceived. You become protective. You become vigilant. You become invested in defending the group. The problem is that every adaptation carries a shadow.

At some point, protection can become enablement. Accountability can begin to feel like that very betrayal I keep mentioning. As a result, internal criticism can start feeling more threatening than the behavior itself. The question quietly shifts from “Is this true?” to “How will this make us look?” The focus is no longer reality. The focus becomes image management. Sounds like communal narcissism. This is where the recent P. Diddy situation becomes psychologically fascinating. For years, there were rumors. Stories. Allegations. Industry whispers. Jokes hidden in plain sight. Enough smoke that many people now claim they suspected there was fire. Yet very few people spoke publicly while the power structure remained intact. Why do you think that is?

Well, systems reward compliance, period.

Just like western medicine— you get care with compliance. Speaking up can cost invitations, contracts, opportunities, relationships, money, status, and proximity to power. Sociologists have repeatedly found that individuals frequently suppress dissent when belonging to a group is perceived as more valuable than confronting wrongdoing (Janis, 1972). Silence becomes the price of admission.

And before we rush to make this exclusively about Hollywood, we should recognize the same dynamic in our own families and communities. How many people remain silent about addiction because they don’t want to embarrass the family? How many people tolerate abusive behavior because challenging it would disrupt the family hierarchy? How many churches protected leaders because confronting misconduct threatened the institution? How many communities protect certain individuals because exposing them would create a “bad look” for the group? The costumes change. The emotional process remains remarkably consistent.

This is where I believe many conversations about race become trapped in a cycle of reenactment. The reality of racism is not the question. The historical record is well documented. The question is what happens when legitimate historical wounds become fused with identity in such a way that they begin functioning as explanations for everything. Like I stated earlier, Wilhelm Reich argued that systems of oppression eventually become embedded not only in institutions but also within the psychological structure of individuals themselves (Reich, 1933/1970). In other words, the oppression survives not only because it exists externally, but because people begin organizing their lives around it internally. Trauma researchers have repeatedly found that healing requires both acknowledgment of the injury and the restoration of agency (van der Kolk, 2014). What concerns me most is how quickly we demand courage from outsiders while excusing silence within our own people. We expect institutions to be accountable. We expect white people to speak up. We expect politicians to challenge corruption. We expect police officers to confront misconduct. Yet we often hesitate to ask the same of ourselves. Just me stating this there will be some who will read and say “so cops don’t need to face the misconduct?” that’s not at all what I said but its what you will internalize. We do the same in our families and relationships.

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Family systems theory would suggest that this is precisely where growth becomes possible. Maturity begins when the focus shifts from what everyone else should be doing to what we ourselves are willing to do. Healthy systems are not built because someone else became accountable first. Healthy systems emerge when individuals become willing to tell the truth even when the truth threatens their position, their status, their paycheck, or their seat at the table (Bowen, 1978; Friedman, 1999).

And perhaps that is the real question underneath all of this.

What are we willing to ignore in exchange for belonging?

Because every family has a secret.

Every institution has a secret.

Every community has a secret.

The only difference is whether the members of the system are willing to tell the truth about it.

Family Systems Case Study:

Imagine a twelve-year-old girl finally finding the courage to tell her mother that her mother’s boyfriend has been sexually abusing her. She has rehearsed this conversation a thousand times to prepare for her courageous step of vocalizing it. Her hands are shaking. Her heart is racing. She already knows there is a chance her mother won’t believe her, but somewhere inside of her is still the hope that the one person biologically wired to protect her will finally make the nightmare stop.

Instead, her mother explodes.

“You’re lying.”

“Why would you make something like that up?”

“You’re just jealous because I finally found someone.”

“You’re trying to ruin my relationship.”

Within seconds, the daughter’s disclosure is no longer about the abuse. The conversation has shifted entirely toward protecting the mother’s relationship. The boyfriend has quietly become the Golden Child of the system, and the mother’s nervous system is no longer organized around protecting her daughter. It has reorganized itself around protecting the attachment she has with her partner. To acknowledge the abuse would require confronting an unbearable reality that she failed to protect her child, invited danger into the home, and perhaps ignored warning signs along the way. Rather than metabolizing that shame, the system unconsciously relocates it. The daughter becomes the problem, and that brave disclosure becomes the threat. Truth itself becomes dangerous, and the daughter learns that silence is better than speaking up.

Family therapists see this more often than people realize. The deepest wound is not always the original abuse. The deepest wound is often what happens after the disclosure. The child learns that reality can be erased if it threatens someone else’s emotional stability. She learns that telling the truth may cost her the very relationship she hoped would save her. She begins questioning her own memory, her own perception, even her own worth. This is the devastating psychological injury that Jennifer Freyd (2013) describes in her work on betrayal trauma. When the individual or institution responsible for protection becomes the one denying, minimizing, or defending the harm, the nervous system experiences a profound rupture. The injury is no longer only the abuse. The injury becomes the collapse of trust in reality itself thus creating a massive imprint that will sediment itself in the timeline, being projected in the adult relationships to come.

Now zoom out.

This is one of the reasons the Rodney King case left such a deep imprint on the national nervous system. The trauma was never confined to the violence captured on camera. Millions of people watched the footage with their own eyes. Then they watched a legal system acquit the officers involved. For many Black Americans, it felt psychologically similar to the child whose mother refuses to believe what she has just witnessed. The message was not simply, “Someone hurt you.” The message was, “What you saw cannot be trusted.” That is what institutional betrayal does. It destabilizes reality. It forces people to choose between believing their own perception or remaining psychologically attached to the authority that has betrayed them. The nervous system cannot comfortably hold both. Something has to give.

This is why family systems are so helpful for understanding society. Whether it is a mother protecting an abusive boyfriend, a church protecting a pastor, a corporation protecting an executive, a police department protecting its own, or a political party protecting one of its leaders, the mechanics remain remarkably consistent. The anxious system does not first ask, What is true? It asks, What will happen to us if this is true? The answer to that question often determines whether truth is welcomed or sacrificed in the name of preserving the system.

III. The Narrative Prison and the Outsourcing of Agency

The Narrative Prison is a psychological architecture and it is built to bypass the intense, exhausting labor required for true agency. As a reminder everything costs energy expense. The cost of agency takes from that expense but also from the cost of belonging. True sovereignty demands internal accountability and continuous self-inquiry, both of which require immense energy from the nervous system. To avoid this discomfort, the collective outsources its autonomy to pre-packaged ideologies. These ideologies function like structural cages: they provide a superficial sense of safety and meaning, but they permanently paralyze critical thinking. By entering the Narrative Prison, the individual trades the responsibility of informed choice for the comforting sedation of a script.

The Narcissism of the Righteous Victim: By adopting a victim narrative, individuals avoid the shadow work of looking at internal failures—such as broken homes or addiction within their own communities and instead project all blame onto external “oppressors”. So what this can look like is when a community or individual internalizes the role of the perpetual victim, they develop an absolute moral immunity. This dynamic is what I call the Narcissism of the Righteous Victim. Researchers Ekin Ok, Karl Aquino, and colleagues clinically identified as Virtuous Victim Signaling. Their research demonstrates a direct, empirical link between frequent victim-and-virtue signaling and "Dark Triad" personality traits—specifically communal narcissism and Machiavellianism. Communal narcissists do not boast about wealth or physical dominance; instead, they claim a "superior prosociality," asserting that they are more caring, moral, and uniquely persecuted than anyone else. By adopting this specialized victim architecture, individuals unlock what the data calls moral immunity. Moral immunity shields the individual from any criticism regarding the manipulative, hostile, or deceptive means they use to achieve their goals. On a macro scale, this operates as a tactical bypass to avoid the grueling shadow work required to look at internal systemic failures. By framing all personal and collective pain as the exclusive fault of an external "oppressor," like I have been saying— the individuals successfully avoid looking at generational rot within their own walls: broken homes, cycles of addiction, or localized community instability. The victim narrative becomes an ego-preserving shield. As long as the "enemy" is outside the house, you never have to clean the rooms inside

Selective Outrage and Principle Fluidity:

A defining feature of psychologically captured systems is not simply selective outrage it is principle fluidity. In a differentiated individual, values remain relatively stable even when circumstances change. A person may wrestle with complexity, revise a position when new evidence emerges, or acknowledge competing ethical concerns, but the underlying principle remains recognizable. By contrast, within highly tribalized systems, principles often become conditional, expanding or contracting depending on whether they protect the emotional needs of the group. What appears on the surface as moral conviction is frequently the nervous system’s attempt to preserve belonging. This is what we see in modern society. In these moments, loyalty supersedes consistency, and protecting the tribe becomes more important than examining whether one’s reasoning remains coherent across contexts (Haidt, 2012; Kahneman, 2011).

One example many people immediately recognize is the dramatic shift in public rhetoric surrounding bodily autonomy. “My body, my choice” is often presented as an absolute ethical principle within discussions of reproductive rights, yet that same principle has, at times, been narrowed or abandoned in conversations surrounding vaccine mandates. Regardless of where one personally stands on either issue, the psychological observation remains the same: when identical ethical language produces opposite conclusions depending on tribal affiliation, it suggests that identity may be exerting greater influence than principle. This does not prove one position is correct and another incorrect— lets pause here for as second. This is the part of nuance and my work that causes uproar. It is not about who is right or who is wrong. That is the trap I am trying to bring to awareness to. It demonstrates how group identity can shape which values are emphasized, minimized, or temporarily suspended in service of maintaining group cohesion (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Janis, 1972).

This same dynamic becomes visible outside of politics. In one episode of Jubilee’s Middle Ground, fitness expert Jillian Michaels participated in a discussion with body positivity activists. The conversation itself is less interesting than the relational dynamics unfolding underneath it— remember I call these under currents. Regardless of where one lands philosophically on weight, beauty standards, or public health, the interaction provides an opportunity to observe nervous systems under perceived threat. Rather than functioning as individuals exchanging ideas, many participants appeared to be operating as representatives of a shared emotional identity. Moments of disagreement were frequently experienced not as intellectual challenges for healthy debate but as interpersonal injuries requiring defense. The conversation repeatedly shifted away from examining claims and toward regulating the emotional equilibrium of the group. In noticed this with activists that were tiptoeing with their perspective even though they were debating Jillian. Apart of the same activist group but weary of upsetting other members of the same group.

From a family systems perspective, this is what happens when unresolved wounds become the organizing force of belonging. Shared suffering undoubtedly creates powerful bonds, and many activist movements begin with legitimate experiences of marginalization, discrimination, or exclusion. The problem emerges when healing becomes secondary to maintaining the cohesion of the wounded identity itself. The group unconsciously develops an investment in keeping the wound psychologically alive because the wound has become the primary organizing principle of the relationship. What originally served as protection gradually transforms into identity.

Neuroscientifically, my favorite part of this work— this pattern is understandable. Repeated discussion of emotionally charged experiences without sufficient regulation can repeatedly reactivate the same defensive neural networks associated with those memories (van der Kolk, 2014; Porges, 2011). Rather than allowing the nervous system opportunities to integrate painful experiences into autobiographical memory, the individual may continually revisit the injury in ways that strengthen its emotional salience. What I mean by this is essentially the scab is picked before it has the opportunity to become a scar. Over time, this pattern of “regulation” through discussion and or vigilance becomes mistaken for healing, and activation becomes mistaken for advocacy. Now, if you are still with me I have to remind the amygdala of the readers. Again, my work is not here as an argument against activism, social justice, or acknowledging genuine oppression. On the contrary, naming harm is often the necessary beginning of recovery. The concern arises when communities unintentionally become organized around the perpetual maintenance of dysregulation rather than the cultivation of resilience, differentiation, and repair. If every disagreement is experienced as retraumatization, genuine dialogue becomes nearly impossible because the nervous system interprets curiosity as danger before the prefrontal cortex has the opportunity to evaluate new information (Siegel, 2020; Porges, 2011).

What I have been observing through my work with clients but through being the observer of collective behavior is that many of these contemporary movements are becoming forms of organizational displacement. The original injury may have been inflicted by parents, institutions, peers, or broader systems of injustice. Yet the emotional intensity generated by those experiences is often redirected toward symbolic representatives of the “other.” The present conversation becomes a stage upon which unresolved relational wounds continue to seek resolution. In psychodynamic language, this resembles displacement and projection; in family systems language, it resembles reenactment. Either way, the nervous system is attempting to solve yesterday’s injury inside today’s interaction.

Just the other day I spoke to a client stating “…your partner is not in a marriage with you, they are in a marriage with their trauma that they are trying to conquer through you…” I see this in many of the couplesI work with and within my own dynamics within my marriage.

The tragedy is that both sides often leave believing they defended themselves, while neither side experiences repair or even connection. The wound remains open, the nervous system remains activated, and the cycle continues. At that point, outrage ceases to function as a pathway toward justice and instead becomes a mechanism through which unresolved pain continually reproduces itself across relationships, communities, and generations. Explaining how we continue to pass down the generational ache rather than confront it.

Cognitive Shortcuts: One of the fastest ways a dysfunctional family maintains homeostasis is through labeling. Instead of engaging with what is being said, the system assigns an identity to the person saying it. "You're selfish." "You're dramatic." "You're the problem." The label becomes a cognitive shortcut that allows the family to avoid the far more difficult task of tolerating ambiguity, examining evidence, or considering whether the uncomfortable observation being made might contain some truth. The role has already been assigned so as a result it means the conversation is over before it has begun. Now, with modern America increasingly functioning this way. Labels such as racist, phobic, bigot, communist, misogynist, or traitorcan certainly describe genuine prejudice or harmful behavior. I immediately think of Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols. One of the biggest arguments he makes is that human beings are not nearly as rational as they imagine themselves to be. Much of our behavior originates outside conscious awareness, emerging symbolically through projection, dreams, myths, and the stories we construct about ourselves and others (Jung, 1964). When aspects of ourselves remain psychologically unintegrated, the psyche seeks relief by locating those unwanted qualities somewhere else. The enemy is no longer something we wrestle with internally—it becomes someone standing in front of us. The problem arises when these words cease functioning as descriptions of observable behavior and instead become conversational weapons used to end inquiry before it begins. Which I. experience with my work online as well as many others. Even Brené Brown mentions struggling with this receiving death threats and people burning her book. Rather than inviting curiosity, they foreclose it. Rather than helping us discriminate between harmful and non-harmful behavior, the family members in America’s family collapse complexity into moral certainty. In cognitive psychology, this reflects the mind’s tendency to rely on heuristics—mental shortcuts that reduce uncertainty by simplifying complex social information (Kahneman, 2011). While heuristics allow us to make rapid judgments, they also increase the likelihood of stereotyping, confirmation bias, and premature conclusions.

Within the framework of America as a Family System, these labels function much like family roles. Every “mini-house” whether organized around race, politics, religion, sexuality, or ideology—develops spoken and unspoken rules about which conversations are permissible and which observations threaten the emotional stability of the group. Members quickly learn that asking certain questions may result in exile, public shaming, or accusations of betrayal. Remember belonging is currency and we all have the humanistic need to want to belong. As a result, the nervous system learns that belonging is contingent upon conformity, not differentiation. Where are my overfunctioners at that shrink themselves as a means to keep the boat steady? Over time, people stop evaluating ideas on their own merits and instead scan for whether an idea violates the emotional norms of the tribe or even the family. Bowen (1978) described differentiation as the capacity to maintain one’s thinking while remaining emotionally connected to others. In highly anxious systems, that capacity deteriorates.

This becomes particularly evident when examining discussions occurring within communities themselves. Consider the black community. Like every community, it contains remarkable diversity of thought, experience, values, and behavior. It also contains individuals whose behavior harms others, through violence, exploitation, crime, or interpersonal abuse. Naming these realities should not automatically be interpreted as an attack on Black identity that is hypocritical. Yet within highly polarized environments, criticism directed toward behaviors occurring within one’s own group may quickly be reframed as internalized racism, betrayal, or giving ammunition to outsiders. The consequence is not protection but paralysis—stuckness. Adaptive members of the community are left carrying the reputational consequences of behaviors they neither endorse nor participate in, while maladaptive behavior remains insufficiently challenged because confronting it risks social punishment from within the group itself. The same psychological pattern appears across many identity-based communities. Within some queer and transgender spaces, individuals who raise questions about policy, boundaries, language, or competing rights (such as parents not wanting biological males using bathrooms their daughter are in) may find themselves immediately labeled as phobic, even when the concern being expressed is rooted in legitimate questions about privacy, safety, or competing ethical obligations. Conversely, genuine prejudice can also be dismissed by those outside these communities who refuse to examine their own biases, but let’s be careful. This is nuance, not every person who is trans is a predator, but not every parent wanting to protect their daughter’s safety in the bathroom is phobic. The labels are what create pavlovian conditioning with cognitive laziness. The mechanism is not unique to one side. The mechanism is the point. When labels become substitutes for dialogue, everyone loses the opportunity to refine their thinking.

This is not an argument that prejudice does not exist. Racism exists. Homophobia exists. Transphobia exists. Sexism exists. These realities should neither be minimized nor ignored. Notice how I have to keep repeating that throughout this essay? Why do you think that is?

The concern is what happens when those terms become reflexive explanations rather than carefully considered conclusions. Once the label is assigned, the psychological work of curiosity stops. The individual no longer has to wrestle with competing truths because the label itself performs the cognitive labor. It becomes what I call grasping for the vine. The George of the jungle through the vines of avoiding accountability. When individuals reach for the nearest available explanation (vine) to avoid the discomfort of complexity, we lost sight of repair and connection.

Now if we zoom in to the family. This process resembles what social psychologists describe as motivated reasoning, in which people unconsciously evaluate information in ways that protect preexisting identities and beliefs rather than impartially assessing evidence (Kunda, 1990). The label becomes psychologically rewarding because it restores certainty, reinforces group belonging, and eliminates the anxiety of ambiguity. Unfortunately, it also reduces the capacity for accountability. Once every uncomfortable interaction can be attributed to racism, transphobia, or some other singular explanation, individuals and groups may lose opportunities for genuine self-reflection, interpersonal repair, or behavioral change. Family systems offer a striking parallel. Children raised in chronically reactive households quickly learn that telling the truth may provoke rage, withdrawal, or retaliation. How many of us learned the love stopped or was withheld when we did not do what our parents wanted?

Rather than addressing the underlying issue, family members begin organizing themselves around emotional avoidance. Conversations become performances designed to prevent explosions or adult tantrums rather than opportunities for mutual understanding. This is where the idea of walking on eggshells is introduced. The same process can emerge institutionally. Many people I have worked with including myself navigated workplace dynamics that mimicked the very challenges we faced in our own childhoods. Supervisors become reluctant to provide feedback, triangulate or use cohesive control tactics, educators avoid difficult conversations, clinicians hesitate to ask exploratory questions, and organizations prioritize risk management over honest dialogue because everyone fears triggering the next conflict. What begins as conflict avoidance slowly transforms into collective enablement.

Clinically, this is not emotional maturity it becomes emotional accommodation. The system reorganizes itself around the most reactive nervous systems in the room. Over time, the loudest voices begin determining what everyone else is allowed to think, ask, or acknowledge. The unintended consequence is that differentiation declines while splitting increases making a fast track to borderline traits. People become conditioned to sort the world into allies and enemies, victims and perpetrators, good people and bad people. Yet decades of psychological research consistently demonstrates that healthy cognitive development requires increasing tolerance for ambiguity, complexity, and competing truths rather than reducing them (Kegan, 1994; Siegel, 2020).

IV. Case Studies in Systemic Bypass

One of the defining characteristics of a dysfunctional family is not simply that harm occurs. Harm occurs in every family, depending on what you classify as harm. The defining characteristic is what the family chooses to notice and what/who it quietly steps over. Some conversations become impossible to escape. They dominate headlines, algorithms, dinner tables, and comment sections. Others disappear almost as quickly as they arrive, despite carrying enormous consequences for public trust. It raises an uncomfortable question: Who decides what deserves our outrage?

Take the Somali daycare fraud case in Minnesota, one of the largest pandemic-related fraud investigations in U.S. history. Or the repeated reports documenting billions—and over the decades, trillions in accounting discrepancies within the United States Department of Defense. Or highly publicized disputes over investigations into state leadership and public accountability. Whether one attributes these situations to bureaucracy, incompetence, corruption, or political gridlock is almost secondary to the psychological observation. The public’s attention rarely remains fixed on institutional accountability for very long. Instead, our attention is continually redirected toward the next emotionally charged conflict. It’s almost as if this is by design.

Families do this too.

Children begin arguing in the living room while no one asks why the electricity hasn’t been paid. Parents become consumed with who raised their voice instead of why the family keeps repeating the same destructive pattern. The conflict becomes the distraction. The distraction becomes the tradition. Before long, everyone forgets what the original problem even was.

I sometimes wonder whether we’ve confused stimulation with awareness. Because every week there is another controversy demanding our emotional energy. Another celebrity scandal, another culture war, another viral clip. Yet, another reason to pick a side thus conditioning our brains to polarity and away from nuance. Our nervous systems remain perpetually activated, but activation is not the same thing as attention. If anything, chronic activation narrows our ability to notice the slower, quieter forces shaping our lives.

Perhaps this is one of the greatest costs of living in a society organized around outrage. We become excellent at reacting and increasingly poor at observing.

The Symbol of Wealth

This same process quietly shapes our relationship with money. Spend enough time online and you’ll hear people proclaim, “Fuck the rich.” Then watch what happens after they close the app. Many of those same individuals open YouTube videos about manifestation, abundance, financial freedom, passive income, or becoming wealthy.

There is something deeply human about this contradiction.

Carl Jung believed symbols carry emotional weight far beyond their literal meaning (Jung, 1964). We rarely respond to an object itself. We respond to what the object has come to represent within our own psyche. Wealth is one of those symbols. For some, wealth symbolizes freedom.

For others, it symbolizes greed.

Exploitation.

Narcissism.

Corruption.

Abandonment.

If the unconscious has fused money with moral danger, the psyche finds itself in an impossible position. Consciously, we may long for financial stability, generosity, and freedom. Unconsciously, we may fear becoming the very type of person we have learned to despise. Meaning the very abundance we pray from comes with adjusting to having it and the symbol we applied having it to mean. A classic example of this is someone who grew up low income. Now, surpasses the tax bracket they grew up in. he family may label or even judge them calling them names such as “bougie” “entitled” etc. Anything to avoid the discomfort of the financial growth that was made. The conflict is rarely about money itself. It is about identity. If “wealth” has become psychologically synonymous with selfishness, then pursuing abundance begins to feel like pursuing corruption. The mind quietly sabotages the very future it consciously desires because it refuses to become the symbol it has constructed. That can also be true by having family. Think crabs in the bucket mentality.

Perhaps this is why so many people feel trapped between resentment and aspiration.

They condemn wealth while longing for security.

They resent success while praying for opportunity.

They reject power while asking someone else to rescue them.

Maybe the deeper question isn’t whether wealth is good or bad. Maybe the question is this:

Because whatever answer your nervous system gives may be shaping your life far more than your bank account ever could.

V. Neurobiological Implications: Commute Calibration and Preemptive Embodiment

One of the least discussed features of trauma is that it rarely waits for the event to begin before preparing the body for danger. The nervous system starts the meeting on the commute there. The following information connects to my essay that I will ink below.

Long before the conversation unfolds, many of us have already rehearsed the argument, imagined the rejection, predicted the betrayal, replayed every previous injury, and unknowingly instructed our bodies to prepare for war. I call this Commute Calibration. This is the unconscious process of calibrating our nervous system toward an anticipated outcome before the interaction has even occurred.

Whether we’re driving to a therapy appointment, walking into a family gathering, attending a work presentation, or preparing for a difficult conversation with our partner, the commute often becomes a rehearsal space. The question is rarely What am I driving toward? The more clinically interesting question is: What am I practicing on the way there?

Neuroscience suggests that the brain functions as a prediction engine rather than a passive recorder of reality. Rather than waiting for new information, it continuously generates predictions based on prior experience and updates those predictions as new data becomes available (Barrett, 2017). When previous experiences have taught the nervous system that certain people, environments, or identities are dangerous, the body often begins responding before objective evidence of danger appears. Stephen Porges (2011) describes this as neuroception—the nervous system’s unconscious detection of cues of safety or threat before conscious awareness has the opportunity to evaluate them.

This is where Preemptive Embodiment occurs.

We do not merely anticipate the storm.

We begin living inside it before the clouds arrive. That stay read don’t gotta get ready mentality.

By the time we walk into the room, our physiology has already shifted. Our muscles tighten. Our breathing changes. Our attention narrows. We become exquisitely sensitive to facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and ambiguity. Remember my shot gun. Many of us are already looking through the shot gun for any perceived threats. So, neutral interactions become easier to interpret as hostility because the nervous system is searching for evidence that confirms the prediction it has already made. State-dependent perception ensures that the body often finds exactly what it is expecting (Siegel, 2020).

This phenomenon extends far beyond intimate relationships. It quietly shapes the way entire communities relate to one another. If someone has repeatedly been told that members of another group are dangerous, oppressive, ignorant, or morally suspect, those expectations begin traveling with them. They enter the interaction already armored projecting what the heard about that person, group, culture etc. Instead of what they learned from their own personal interaction with them. What I call— breaking bread. The armor itself then changes the interaction, thus impacting the development of a relationship.

I experienced this personally after moving from California to southern Alabama. Before I ever met my neighbors, countless people warned me about what I should expect as a multiracial Black woman living in the South. Their warnings were not entirely without historical context. Racism has profoundly shaped American history and continues to affect many people’s lives. But something fascinating happened when I arrived. I realized that my nervous system had been quietly calibrating itself for conflict before any conflict had actually occurred. But more importantly it was not influenced by my personal experience or my own informed discernment. It was influenced by what others filled in my mind.

The people I met were likely calibrating too.

Just as I wondered how they might receive me, they may have been wondering how I would receive them. Each of us entered the interaction carrying predictions the other person had never authored. Had I walked into every room assuming rejection, my body would have communicated that expectation before I ever introduced myself. Thus, generating an undercurrent the others can in fact pick up and feel and unconsciously project back. Hypervigilance has a way of inviting the very distance it fears. Instead, I chose something far more difficult. I chose to show up as myself— Silly goofy Sav. I brought cookies. I smiled. I remained curious. I allowed people to become individuals before allowing my nervous system to categorize them as symbols, used on noise from factors outside of my own heart.

This does not mean discrimination disappears if we think positively. Nor does it deny the reality of prejudice or historical injustice. It simply acknowledges that trauma can quietly shape perception in ways that influence interactions before reality has an opportunity to speak for itself. The distinction matters because a nervous system prepared only for danger may unknowingly close doors to relationships, opportunities, mentorships, and communities capable of expanding its world.

Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in our increasingly tribal culture. Communities understandably form around shared experiences, histories, and identities. Belonging is a fundamental human need— currency if you will. Yet belonging can become psychologically costly when it requires members to remain perpetually vigilant against outsiders or requires you to shrink yourself. The tribe begins reinforcing not only shared values but shared expectations of threat. Over time, members stop relating to individuals and start relating to symbols. Every interaction becomes filtered through inherited predictions rather than present-moment observation.

The irony is that while these communities seek safety, chronic hypervigilance often prevents them from experiencing it. The very strategies developed to protect the nervous system begin narrowing the range of experiences capable of teaching it that safety is still possible.

VI. Conclusion: The Alchemical Revolution

The American family system is currently imploding because it is built on an “illusion of fear” and man-made constructs. Breaking the cycle requires:

1. Reclaiming Agency: Moving away from “outsourcing decisions” to narratives and therapists, and returning to being the “baseline” of one’s own life.

2. Deprogramming: A deep deprogramming of the mind to return to “presence before programming”.

3. Sibling Unity: The “siblings” must stop using the same swords against each other that were used by the system and start communicating their shared data to alchemize a power strong enough to transcend the current indoctrination.

Now, The more I study psychology, neuroscience, sociology, trauma, attachment, polyvagal theory, conditioning, family systems, and human behavior, the more I keep arriving at the same place.

The soul.

I think psychology, neuroscience, all of that is giving us language humanity has desperately needed. We finally understand why our bodies react the way they do. We understand trauma. We understand childhood development. We can even understand why people repeat patterns. We understand why nervous systems become dysregulated. We understand projection, cognitive biases, confirmation bias, state-dependent perception, dopamine, addiction, conditioning, reinforcement, and learned helplessness better than ever before. Yet for all of our understanding becomes a loop we get stuck looping in. I can’t help but notice something unsettling. We have become incredibly educated around the concept of healing while simultaneously becoming more fragmented as a society. We know more words than ever before, but many of us seem no closer to peace.

I think that’s because we’ve become fascinated with understanding the machinery while forgetting to ask who is operating it.

We’ve neglected the soul.

David Hawkins writes that consciousness itself organizes the way we experience reality. Fear is not simply an emotion that visits us from time to time. It becomes a perceptual lens through which we interpret everything around us (Hawkins, 1995). If fear becomes the baseline from which we perceive the world, then every disagreement becomes a threat to us and every unfamiliar person becomes dangerous. If there is a question that deviates from our norm of certainty well that question becomes an attack. Eventually, fear stops being something we feel and quietly becomes who we are. The baseline in which we all function in.

Maybe that’s what has happened to America.

We’ve mistaken fear for wisdom.

We’ve mistaken anxiety for awareness.

We’ve mistaken hypervigilance for discernment.

We’ve mistaken outrage for courage.

We’ve mistaken belonging for truth.

And we’ve mistaken constant stimulation for consciousness.

The American family system is imploding because fear has become its operating system. Every member of the family is terrified of exile. We don’t want to lose our tribe. We don’t want to be labeled. We don’t want to be called racist, anti-Black, phobic, privileged, ignorant, woke, conservative, liberal, communist, fascist, or whatever label happens to dominate the conversation that week. So we outsource our discernment to the collective because belonging feels safer than thinking independently for ourselves. The cost, however, is that every time we abandon our own discernment to maintain acceptance, we surrender another piece of ourselves. Agency is rarely stolen all at once. More often, it is traded away in small exchanges for the promise that we will continue to belong.

When I work with people-pleasers and chronic overfunctioners, this is almost always the wound sitting underneath everything else. They don’t simply fear rejection. They fear being misperceived, because somewhere in childhood they learned that if someone misunderstood them, saw them incorrectly, projected onto them, or became disappointed in them, then connection itself was in danger. So they spend their entire adult lives managing other people’s perceptions instead of managing their own integrity. They over-explain. They overfunction. They over-apologize. They shape-shift. They become emotional contortionists hoping that if they can just explain themselves one more time, someone even if it’s their partner will finally understand. This is where I mentioned earlier.

What if gaining understanding from others was never the assignment?

What if one of the greatest acts of psychological freedom is allowing yourself to be misunderstood by people who are committed to misunderstanding you and facing that urge to explain and choosing not to? Bowen called it differentiation. Hawkins would likely describe it as releasing attachment to the ego’s need for approval. Jung might describe it as individuation, which is the lifelong process of becoming who you actually are instead of who the collective demands you become (Jung, 1964). Scripture echoes the same invitation repeatedly through different language. “Do not fear.” “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” “Perfect love casts out fear.” Different traditions. Different vocabulary. Yet each one seems to point toward the same destination. Stop allowing fear to organize your life.

I don’t think America has a political problem nearly as much as it has a consciousness problem. We have confused information with wisdom, performative behavior with authentic character, and being visible to all as being significant or “good enough.”

We’ve become so consumed with learning the language of healing that we’ve forgotten to actually practice it. Healing isn’t collecting diagnoses or memorizing attachment styles. Healing is a journey in developing the capacity to sit in uncertainty without grasping for the nearest vine. It is remaining open when your nervous system wants to close, shut down, shrink, or react. It is learning to witness your own thoughts without immediately becoming them. It is a skill that no matter what room you are in— when strengthened provides the benefit of connection. Not just to others, but to yourself.

Maybe this is why awe matters so much.

The more I think about it, the more I believe awe is one of the greatest antidotes to fear that exists. Fear collapses our world until all we can see is ourselves. Awe expands it until we remember we are part of something infinitely larger than ourselves. You don’t stand beneath a sky full of stars wondering who voted for whom. You don’t walk through a forest asking whether the trees are left or right. Nature simply exists. It cooperates. It adapts. It creates. It doesn’t outsource its identity because it has never forgotten what it is.

Maybe that’s what we’ve forgotten too.

Maybe before there were political parties, before there were algorithms, before there were identities to perform, before there were movements demanding our allegiance, before there were brands, careers, titles, and diagnoses, there was simply a human being trying to understand what it meant to be alive. Somewhere along the way, we replaced being with performing because we got rewarded with online presence and dopamine from likes. We replaced consciousness with conditioning and replaced our soul with strategy. This is the most heartbreaking part for me as someone that works with humans at such vulnerable level.

What I’m talking about is something much quieter and infinitely more demanding. An alchemical revolution asks us to stop waiting for institutions to become healthy while refusing to become healthy ourselves. It asks us to stop blaming the family system long enough to ask how often we recreate it in our marriages, our friendships, our workplaces, our communities, our churches, and even inside our own minds.

The family system loses its power the moment enough siblings remember they were never supposed to become copies of the parent. That’s the revolution I’m interested in.

Not one that changes who’s in office.

One that changes the level of consciousness from which we meet one another.

Because every great transformation in history began long before it became visible to the eye.

It began the moment someone quietly decided,

“I will no longer allow fear to tell me who I am.”

What will you decide?

References

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA dictionary of psychology.

https://dictionary.apa.org/

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

Hawkins, D. R. (1995). Power vs. force: The hidden determinants of human behavior. Veritas Publishing.

Hawkins, D. R. (2002). The eye of the I: From which nothing is hidden. Veritas Publishing.

Hawkins, D. R. (2012). Letting go: The pathway of surrender. Hay House.

Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink. Houghton Mifflin.

Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols. Doubleday.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kegan, R. (1994). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern life. Harvard University Press.

Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314.

Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498.

Le Bon, G. (1895/2001). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. Batoche Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton.

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Extended Reading

Psychology & Trauma

Bradshaw, J. (1988). Healing the shame that binds you.

Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice.

Maté, G. (2022). The myth of normal.

Miller, A. (1979). The drama of the gifted child.

Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving.

Wolynn, M. (2016). It didn’t start with you.

Family Systems

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice.

Kerr, M. E., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family evaluation.

Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy.

Satir, V. (1988). The new peoplemaking.

Carl Jung & Depth Psychology

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion.

Jung, C. G. (1969). The archetypes and the collective unconscious.

Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and his symbols.

von Franz, M.-L. (1964). “The Process of Individuation.” In Man and His Symbols.

Consciousness & Spiritual Development

Hawkins, D. R. (1995). Power vs. Force.

Hawkins, D. R. (2002). The Eye of the I.

Hawkins, D. R. (2012). Letting Go.

Ram Dass. (1971). Be Here Now.

Tolle, E. (1999). The Power of Now.

Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology.

Sociology & Culture

Durkheim, É. (1897/1951). Suicide.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life.

Lasch, C. (1979). The culture of narcissism.

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone.

Propaganda, Media & Group Influence

Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda.

Janis, I. (1972). Victims of groupthink.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media.

Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism.

Human Behavior & Decision Making

Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational.

Cialdini, R. (2021). Influence (New and Expanded ed.).

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow.

Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine Nation.

McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave.

Awe, Meaning & Flourishing

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning.

Keltner, D. (2023). Awe: The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life.

Miller, L. (2021). The awakened brain.

Peterson, J. B. (1999). Maps of meaning.

Biblical & Spiritual Integration

The Holy Bible

The Bhagavad Gita

A Course in Miracles

Data Collectors,

Happy July,

I know I know I have been behind but, I also need to give myself a bit of a break as well. I am not a machine. I have recently been traveling and am currently back home in California. My heart feels full again. I just do not belong in the desert at all😩.

I have been sitting with something lately and I want to share these thoughts with you all. I have had to pull back from the amount of time I consume social media or just media content in general. Now that I am back in my home state I have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather California has been dishing out. Going on my 4-6 mile walks has been such a gift for my soul. Not being on the algorithm really clears out the noise that lives in the mind. I know that is true for some of us. But…

I can’t help but wonder how much of the chaos we keep witnessing outside our homes is displaced energy from the chaos we refuse to address inside them. All the stuff we see online, robberies, killings, toxicity, and people telling you what you need to do. It’s becoming too much noise. When I think about the drama on the roads, the drama in the workplaces, and the drama literally in stores. I keep thinking to myself.

Many of us are drowning in dynamics we know aren’t healthy. We know the conversation that needs to happen. We know the boundary that probably needs to be set and reinforced by our behavior. We know something has to change. But we avoid it because we already “know” how it’s is going to go.

“They’re going to react.”

“They’re going to tell me what I meant instead of listening to what I actually said.”

“They’re going to project their own story onto me.”

“They’re going to make me the bad guy.”

So we say nothing.

What we don’t realize is that avoiding conflict doesn’t eliminate suffering. It simply relocates it. Psychology has long recognized displacement as our tendency to redirect emotions away from the place they belong and toward somewhere that feels safer (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Thats why people are fighting in their cars on the highway, stealing from stores and hard working mom and pop shops, murdering each other, infidelity, family gridlock, and more…. It is getting ridiculous at this point. Now, pair that with what we know about experiential avoidance, that avoiding difficult thoughts and emotions often amplifies distress over time instead of resolving it. We are all becoming pressure cookers and suddenly a lot of our behavior starts making more sense (Hayes et al., 1996).

Does it make sense though?

The pressure cooker energy is building up BUT that energy has to go somewhere.If it isn’t moving toward repair, it usually moves toward projection. We see this everywhere especially online. Why do you think that is?

My theory…

Instead of confronting the partner, the family, the boss at work—we snap at the cashier. Instead of setting the boundary, we pick fights online. Instead of addressing the relationship that continues to wound us, we scream at strangers in traffic. What I am noticing in humans is we found a loop hole for exercising our agency where it actually matters, we rehearse control in places where it costs us very little.

I see it every day.

Everybody has something to say.

Everybody has an opinion.

Everybody is ready to tell someone else what they’re doing wrong.

We’re policing each other’s language, telling people what they should and should not be doing. That their relationships are wrong and to decenter so and so. We’ve become hall monitors of humanity, telling complete strangers how they should think, speak, vote, parent, heal, and exist. Yet many of us walk back into homes where we haven’t exercised our own agency in months—sometimes years. The fire is large there which makes sense why we exert our control outside the home. That’s the part that fascinates me. We call ourselves powerless while exercising power everywhere except the place we’re actually responsible for.

Now let’s pause… Before someone reaches for a vine to “explain” their why.

I’m not saying every conversation is safe to have. Some relationships are emotionally abusive or just physically and emotionally dangerous OR— draining. These dynamics require an exit plan, not another attempt at communication. Discernment matters with this work. My work is not for everyone. But many of us really have to get clear on the situations we are drowning in. Not everything is abuse, not everyone is a narcissist. Sometimes we are simply over staying our welcome in dynamics we have yet to build the courage to walk away from. Sometimes exercising your agency doesn’t look like speaking louder— it looks like staying silent or even removing yourself. Consequences aren’t about changing another person and their behavior. Sometimes they’re about refusing to continue participating in a dynamic that is slowly drowning you. The hardest part is recognizing that you’re drowning and the side effect of that is emotional spillage. Which doesn’t stay contained.

It leaks.

Emotional leakage is a term introduced by Paul Ekman to describe the involuntary expression of genuine emotions despite a person’s conscious attempt to suppress or conceal them. Ekman’s research demonstrated that emotions often “leak” through subtle, involuntary channels such as microexpressions, changes in vocal tone, facial tension, posture, and other nonverbal behaviors, revealing an emotional state that differs from what is being verbally communicated (Ekman & Friesen, 1969). While Ekman’s work primarily focused on nonverbal communication and deception detection, I believe the concept extends beyond the face. We must understand that the pressure cooker of unresolved emotions that are never processed do not simply— poof—disappear. These emotions are sneaky sneakersons and they often find expression elsewhere. They leak into our parenting, our romantic relationships, our workplaces, our interactions with strangers, and even the way we move through traffic. What begins as emotional suppression in one environment can become emotional expression in another. In that sense, emotional leakage is not only something we see on someone’s face; it can also be observed in the patterns of behavior that emerge when unresolved emotional experiences remain unaddressed. This is where displacement enters the chat. I have mentioned displacement numerous times in my work.

If all this emotional leakage is out polluting the air, how are we so confused why the world feels so angry? Maybe it’s because so many people are carrying emotions that don’t belong to the moment they’re currently standing in? They’re carrying conversations they never had. Boundaries they never set. Decisions they never made. Grief they never processed. Resentment they never addressed.

The energy has to go somewhere.

For myself, I am choosing to take that energy and for me it goes internally and it looks like this….

I giggle because this is something I show many of my clients and wanted to get framed for my office that way I can just point to it any time my clients immediately jump right back into the pull of the spiral. We don’t realize how much prefrontal cortex energy it takes to live in this constant state of hyper vigilance. For me it always feels like an urgency energy and it’s exhausting. I realize it’s my baseline for functioning simply because it’s what’s familiar to my childhood. How many of us rushed to get chores done just so we can be free from the home and go play outside? I lived my life rushing. So much so that my walking pace through out college was hyper speed😅. Living in that energetic state I did not realize when I was younger how it keeps my baseline for functioning in cortisol island. it becomes so normalized that we don’t even realize that we are stressed. Over time we tend to not consider the implications that does to our body.

I am learning to slow down, and boy oh boy is it uncomfortable. being online has a way of igniting that urgency energy as well. Now that people are following, watching, waiting. The pressure is on. But where did the pressure come from? Where does that pressure go? For some of us like myself— it goes inward. The Brain That Changes Itself reminds us that the brain becomes efficient at whatever it repeatedly practices. Neuroplasticity doesn't judge whether a pattern is helpful to us or harmful. It simply strengthens the pathways we use most often— this is what I keep repeating in my work. Especially when I connect Macro to Micro mechanisms of behavior and brain pathways. If we've spent years rehearsing vigilance, anticipating problems, and scanning for what could go wrong, those highways become incredibly well-developed. The brain starts choosing them automatically because they've become familiar. Meaning, we start internalizing the belief that it’s others outside of us that needs to change rather than the pathway we keep repeating. We have to develop the capacity to rewire out of our own behaviors.

So, Maybe the question isn’t whether you have the strength to do that. Maybe the question is whether you’re willing to use that strength where it actually matters. At home with yourself.

Why won’t the collective use it inside the one place where it might actually change our lives?

I don’t have the answer for that—maybe you tell me.

Below I placed some refection questions for us to ponder on.

Till next time Data collectors.

Reflection

• Where am I repeatedly choosing temporary comfort over long-term freedom?

• Is there a conversation, boundary, or decision I’ve been avoiding because I’m trying to manage someone else’s reaction?

• Where does my frustration usually end up when I don’t express it where it belongs? (zoom in here boucle sometimes that energy can look like self neglect.

• Am I exercising my agency where it matters most, or only where it feels safest?

• What would change if I stopped asking, “How do I make them understand?” and started asking, “What choice is mine to make?”

Data collectors, how has the year been treating you? I can’t believe we are already almost in July!! Goodness me—time is moving. I will be turning 35 this Friday, and I don’t know about any of y’all, but I tend to get the birthday blues rather than feel celebratory.

This month, at least for me, has felt heavy—very dragged.

I’ve had no energy, no motivation, and I’ve been in an overall slump. It’s hard when you are in the human service field. For some of us, this work really does fill us up, but in seasons when we are down in our own lives, it can be difficult to show up for others when you can barely show up for yourself. Those of you with kids, where you at? How you doing back there?

I find myself wanting to unplug and give up on the whole public content educator business. I’m currently building a learning space, but I also have the desire to host workshops where we can all learn in one space together while also gaining supervision status and providing clinical supervision. You ever have all these ideas that just keep popping up, but the basket is getting fuller and fuller? Laughs in ADHD. 🤭 We drown in the distraction of idea-making and brainstorming so that we avoid the actual creation of it all. This is what happens when our nervous systems are activated, and at least for me, my body can tell when I am trying to bypass by being “busy.”

As July creeps in this week... Cancer season. Sigh.

I’m in my moody season, but this moodiness comes from the weight of the collective ache. It’s not just me feeling it; many of us are. We are torn, indecisive, and afraid to move or jump into the unknown. We bypass our whole lives because we are afraid of the “what ifs.”

Many of us are comfortable with where we are: our routines, our careers, all of it. Even the pain that comes with life. Holding that ache for clients is rewarding, but without proper emotional hygiene, you risk absorbing what is not yours. We know leaving means working more than we do now or even leaving a lifestyle we currently have. Some of us are not willing to lose those things. Some of us are aware of the cost that walking away from something can bring; it’s a risk.

The algorithm tells you the universe has your back—just believe—and authors before us have written about this. But what does that actually look like? I mean, concretely. Can anyone describe it?

I notice humans reach for therapists as guides to hand our panic child over, not realizing that handing over the very child we continue to abandon with our own habits, just to give it to someone else, risks secondary injury.

Why do you think that is?

My theory—expectation.

I have been feeling a molasses-type sensation in my body.

S L O W W W W W....

I can admit to the neglect of my physical health through my workout routine and the complete disappearance of my meditation practice. As a result, I have been feeling the noise in my mind a lot lately. It has been throwing me off balance, right into avoidance, executive freeze, and straight-up drifting mode. I’ve been swirling in creative ideas, downloads, and existential reflective inquiries—corridors many don’t explore, though their peacocking leads you to believe they do.

The world is so full of it that those of us with the depth—the metabolic need for it, not to sound dramatic—get labeled as crazy. I am rambling, but this month has been a heavy lesson. I am seeing the pattern not only in myself and my own personal relationships but also with each other systemically. When we refuse to see the pattern, we create a prison that is a repeat of what we watched growing up. That’s why I am so intrigued by cancel culture. Who said we should care about them? Who are they to our lives? Do they pay your bills?

Many people are stuck because the “villains” in their lives may provide for them financially. This is where we are rooted in our comfort. I think about young ones transitioning from high school to college or young adults finally learning that they will have to take over their phone and car bills as a means to escape the control of their parents. Leaving these systems requires a total identity flip. Your life can go from being a suburban housewife and stay-at-home mom to being single and living in an apartment with your dog or cat.

Many of us say we are staying for the kids, but we are staying for the comfort of the living situation or because of the economy. Now, if it were truly that bad, we would do whatever it took to leave. That is humanity, and we don’t want to be honest about that. We have willpower, but we want to claim that we don’t. Insert free will here....

This learned helplessness is poisoning us and causing a rift because nuance exists, but we are being conditioned to bypass that ability. We use the discomfort that nuance creates to signal to us that it is “wrong” and that we should avoid it at any capacity. We use whatever it takes—the weight of this world we are all carrying—and we are normalizing that.

I recently read that the only time animals stay still is if they are sick or dying. I revisit this because the lack of motivation is the body’s mechanism shutting down because it’s not being used. Over time, the body essentially believes it is dying due to a lack of movement. That explains how sluggish we feel: the lack of motivation and drive, the cravings or overeating, the binging, all in the undisclosed name of avoidance. All of it weighs us down energetically, and it’s hard to find the energy to move through it into a walk, a workout, breathwork, or a journal session. It’s bloody hard, but that does not mean it’s impossible.

When we remove inquiry and normalize labels as conversation enders, we condition ourselves away from repair and into reinforced reactivity. This is psychologically alarming and concerning. We do not have the mental capacity to sit with this because we are too busy being conditioned to carry the weight of the world and being righteous in our political sides. This is all a distraction. But when we are tribal to it, we cannot see how it is the “devil energy” pulling us into drifting.

That’s why it’s easy to walk away, divorce, or cut someone off. It doesn’t require us to learn the skills necessary to communicate with people even when we’re upset. We lose friends over it due to heightened emotional states and a lack of willingness to hold onto our own views while listening to others. Somewhere along the line, we mistook nuance as a form of control. Nuance just means multiple things can be true, and for some reason, that angers people. I truly believe it’s because humans can’t stand when their power is given back to them, staring them right in the face.

Now, my hunch also is that people can’t stand when the world around them does not center their pain as if that’s the only pain that exists today.

You see this in marriage, where one partner learns helplessness. We make “should” comments due to the expectation that because they are an adult, they should know better. The more I work with humans, the more I realize many of us are just abandoned children who got bigger. We can navigate life and keep ourselves fed and housed, but when it comes to relationships, we flinch at the thought of leaving the sink full of dishes or staying on the couch when a husband comes home. We project the schema lens of our younger selves onto our current reality, and we live that out in our homes and at work.

We are exhausted. So exhausted. I feel it.

Soooo....

How do we give ourselves permission to rest and lean into that without guilt? What if that’s the muscle we must learn to practice?

We must stop allowing the stories the mind whispers to us to cloud our perception of reality that we later project onto our kids, partner, or whoever at work.

Ladies, something I have been discovering within myself as we go through the Rewiring Out of Resentment series. Much of the resentment I have toward my husband—and I have worked with many women and have women in my life who struggle with the same thing—is watching a man prioritize himself, his happiness, and his hobbies. Really pisses us off. I had to reflect as to why...

I believe it’s because women have been socially conditioned to self-sacrifice in the name of “love.” The women before us often fed everyone else except themselves or fed themselves last. They never rested as a means to take care of the home. Now, I don’t think this is healthy at all. Just look at the wellness of the women in our lives. Many have such hormonal imbalances simply because they operate with the belief that you are selfish to nurture yourself and rest. I disagree with this.

Yet, for those of us with these women actively in our lives, how do you learn the skills to bypass the undercurrents of that energy and choose to give yourself rest—not the overindulgent type of rest either? Our society today labels self-indulgences as self-care, and that is not the kind I am referring to.

For me, I live with a constant state of urgency in my body, as if I am late to be somewhere, and sometimes that somewhere is nowhere. I have had to really reflect on why, despite being an adult now, it is so hard for me to guide my body out of that automatic response. It’s almost as if my fascia has muscle memory to stay in urgency, and part of my mission is to rewire out of that.

Now, resentment in the body does not help. Being online and constantly reminding yourself of the ache in this world does not help either. So it really does fall on us individually to be intentional.

I am back in my home state of California, and I must say—I miss home so much. The air just feels better here.

While I am here, part of my intention is to incorporate joy and play back into my life regardless of the endless to-do list of tasks I feel I must all-or-nothing get done. The key here is to enjoy. Part of my mission, as someone with a very rigid schedule and routine, is to challenge that. I live in this “not on a school night” mentality, which is odd because I have been out of school for quite some time now. So work has replaced school, and the script just keeps replacing itself.

I want to teach my body that play and joy can, in fact, live on the days where work also lives. Meaning, I can do something fun (paddle boarding) right after my last client. I don’t have to go to the mundane routine of the “work week.” I can train my body to understand that work and play can coexist on days that are not just the weekend.

This feels sweat-inducing for me. 🫣 I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? Nothing.

So maybe that is the lesson here.

What can you do this week, despite work, that will fill your cup with joy and laughter? Is it meeting with a friend for a meal or a walk? Is it going on a hike or getting outside in nature? What does that look like for you?

For me, it looks like taking advantage of being back home and having that paddle board ready to go and hit the water. It looks like going on a lot more walks and even taking drives to the Bay Area to get a change in scenery and enjoy the ocean, even if I have work tomorrow.

It looks like slowing down and not all-or-nothing-ing everything on my list of a million things. It looks like developing systems for my brain to minimize urgency energy because my brain can understand that I have things written down—pen and paper—and my brain does not have to flip out wondering where that note I jotted down is.

Let me know what that looks like for you.

As we chase our milligrams by bringing joy in, I hope you share what that looks like for you! I have put some reflection questions down below for you.

Reflection Questions

1. Where in your life are you staying—not because you truly want to, but because the familiar feels safer than the unknown?

2. When you imagine giving yourself permission to rest or experience joy without first earning it, what stories or sensations immediately arise in your body?

3. If your nervous system truly believed that work and play could coexist, what is one small act of joy you would allow yourself this week?

—Till next time, Data Collectors.

Today, we are pulling up the map and looking at how we actually talk to each other. Or rather, how we fail to talk to each other. In human relationships, whether that’s with your partner, your family, or the culture at large—there are three primary highways of communication. When we know how to navigate them, they lead to connection, repair, and true belonging. But right now? Our collective infrastructure is broken. Most of us are either hiding out in safety zones or trapped on what I like to call Spicy Island.

Let’s look at the map.

The Three Highways of Communication

To understand why we get so gridlocked, we have to understand the routes we choose to take:

• The Logistical Highway: This is the transactional route. “Who is picking up the kids?” “Did you pay the electric bill?” “What time is the meeting?” It’s safe, it’s clinical, and it requires zero emotional vulnerability.

• The Interpersonal Highway: This is the relational route. It’s where we check in on the state of us. “How are you holding up with work?” “I feel like we’ve been passing ships lately, and I miss you.” It acknowledges the other person’s humanity and the space between you.

• The Expression Highway: This is the raw route. This is where we share our internal world—our boundaries, our grief, our core needs, and our direct impact. “When that happened, I felt incredibly hurt and unseen.”

Here is a vital truth: We need the Expression Highway and the Interpersonal Highway working together in order to have connection, repair, and belonging.

What we actually do: we camp out on the Logistical Highway as a defensive strategy to avoid the Expression Highway entirely. Why? Because over time—in our relationships, our communities, and our online spaces—our amygdalas have been conditioned to believe that the Expression Highway is a dangerous, volatile place to go. Over time we condition the nervous system to expect shitty tennis matches and nervous system activation. We’ve learned that if we express a raw truth, we will be punished for it. So, we stay transactional. Now, if we look around though you will realize we can’t build intimacy on a highway of logistics— too many of us need depth. Eventually, the pressure builds, we swerve off the road, and we skip the path of repair entirely—landing us straight on Spicy Island.

Welcome to Spicy Island: Think Spooky Island but Spicy style with DARVO, Weaponized Trauma & Pathology, and History Digging

Spicy Island is the land of high-reactivity and zero accountability. It is the destination we reach when we don’t know how to cleanly express ourselves, so we weaponize our defense mechanisms instead.

When we are on Spicy Island, DARVO behavior runs the show: we Deny the behavior, Attack the person bringing it up, and Reverse the Victim and Offender.

The Anatomy of a Spicy Island Pivot: Instead of hearing, “It hurt my feelings when you forgot our plans,”the response becomes, “You always expect me to be perfect, and your tone right now is actually making me feel unsafe.”

Suddenly, the original issue is gone. We deflect by digging into history, pulling up a Rolodex of past sins from 2018 to justify our current behavior. We over-explain. We weaponize therapy speak. We weaponize our diagnoses and our trauma—not as a pathway to be understood, but as a shield to avoid the vulnerability of clean expression. We scream that we are being blamed, but in the exact same breath, we blame, accuse, and attack. We do the very things that make the Expression Highway dangerous for everyone else, fully blind to our own hypocrisy. This is the ultimate tragedy: we use the hostile nature of the highway as our excuse to avoid it, while actively contributing to its hostility.

The Olympic Meaning-Making Team and “Shitty Tennis”

How do we justify this to ourselves? Well it’s simple: we are all gold-medalist members of the Making Meaning Olympic Team.

Psychologically, humans are meaning-making machines. When an event happens, we don’t just experience it; we immediately create a narrative around it. We have seen this over the course of our safari through human behavior. You see, because of confirmation bias, the moment we create that narrative, our brains hunt for proof to validate it. The feeling feels so intense that we treat it as an objective, default truth. “I feel rejected, therefore you are actively trying to maliciousy exclude me.” Once we decide our narrative is the absolute truth, we feel entirely justified in attacking and blaming.

This leads directly to what I call Shitty Tennis.

We all walk around with an invisible pile of shit anchored to our ankles. For some people, that pile is a mountain because of a total lack of self-reflection, zero accountability, and a habit of intellectualizing their growth instead of actually implementing themselves within it. In Shitty Tennis, the minute we feel an uncomfortable emotion, we can’t sit with it. We don’t take accountability for our pile. Instead, we grab our rackets and smack that shit right over the net onto the other person. “I’m feeling anxious, so I’m going to make this your fault.” They smack it back. No one is playing to win a game of connection; everyone is just trying to offload their discomfort. This is where you see insults, personal character attacks, and tactics utilize to GET A REACTION FROM YOU! Now— how to you get out of the match if someone is trying to summon you?

We must first learn boundaries but reinforcing them.

If you do not respond to someone’s shit that they throw no matter how bad you want to say something back. We must understand any attention is good attention even if it’s negative. So your reactive or even a response gives these individuals fuel. The key is no response. That causes their shit to get stuck on their side of the court. Thus— require them to sit in what I call SSRT (Shit Sitting Reflection Time) we rob people of SSRT every time we react and give them the distraction from that time out.

From the Micro to the Macro: Gotcha Culture and Power Dynamics

This isn’t just happening in your living room. We are seeing this play out on a massive, sociological scale. We are living in a macro culture of bait-and-switches.

In online discourse, people will bait you into a conversation under the guise of wanting to discuss one thing, only to flip it on you, exploit a nuance, and DARVO the entire interaction. We are trapped in a toxic Gotcha Culture. People follow creators, leaders, and peers not to learn, but to catch them slipping—to collect “frequent flyer miles” on the Spicy Island fast lane by diminishing their message or forcing performative accountability. It has become so dangerous that even premier researchers like Brené Brown have openly spoken about the reality of facing severe backlash and literal death threats just for trying to navigate complex topics. When the macro culture operates this way, our collective nervous systems register total unsafety.

We see this mirror itself in the workplace too. In professional environments, communication quickly turns into anxious tiptoeing. Why do you think that is? My theory— your livelihood is on the line. You have to feed your family. When organizations lack psychological safety, management relies on systemic power imbalances to keep people quiet. Employees repress their Expression Highway because the cost of speaking up is financial or professional ruin. Meaning you risk cut hours, write ups, etc. what ever way to intimidate you out of the behavior of self-advocacy. Now look online. We don’t like what someone said we try to cancel people. We try to silence them. We try to shrink messages that make us uncomfortable because sitting with the discomfort would require us to look at our own shit pile and sort through it.

You see—not to be petty (well maybe a little petty🤭) cancel culture is comical because they can only cancel someone who believes in whatever being canceled actually means. That would require picking up the shit (opinions) of others with your bare hands. I don’t recommend that.

The Goal is Repair, Not Perfection

Let’s be very clear about something: We do not always have to discuss macro-level societal injustice in order to have an honest conversation about what is happening unjustly inside a family system or a relationship.

The adolescent's attempt to engage in healthy differentiation is met with emotional flooding, defensiveness, and role reversal, effectively shutting down the conversation and preventing genuine family dialogue.

If you think about this from a development standpoint. This is how we become arrested in our communication development with the ability to express. It’s why many of us learned to shut down or react in explosive ways simply because patterns that occurred like the example above.

Now from the mother’s perspective.

When the Expression Highway and the Interpersonal Highway are connected, something beautiful happens: repair becomes possible.

Choosing to walk these highways isn’t about perfecting your communication. It’s not about never making a mistake, never feeling defensive, or never taking a boat ride to Spicy Island. It is about having the courage to dismantle the bait-and-switches, put down the Shitty Tennis racket, and step into the messy, vulnerable work of repair.

True belonging lives on the other side of that bridge. Let’s stop avoiding the drive.

Leave a comment below: Where do you find yourself getting stuck? Are you hiding out on the Logistical Highway, or are you a frequent flyer to Spicy Island? Let’s talk about it.

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Till next time data collectors

Data Collectors,

It’s been a little over a year since being online. As much as I love this work because it allows me to solidify what I am teaching in my own brain, there is another part of this journey that has become exposure therapy for me: the comments.

Now, before we jump into this vulnerable conversation, I want to segue into the understanding that this is not about the mob mentality members themselves. It’s about the wound that gets poked by them. Before you strap in, understand I speak in metaphors—If you haven’t caught my drift by now. So zoom in and examine where you may be engaging in the same behavior or navigating someone in your own life that mimics it. After all, the online discourse world is just another reenactment of the shit we all deal with at home.

Let’s zoom out.

My work has always bridged the micro and the macro in a way that highlights the mechanism—the muscles we use in both arenas. Recently, I have watched how the mob twists and turns your intentions, which is one of the reasons we are working through communication in Stop 2 of Rewiring Out of Resentment. My work never dives into the historical context of macro-level wounds. Never. Because that is not the point. We have enough platforms teaching or speaking on the historical content and much of the reason many want to force historical discussions is because of the booby trap design of deflecting from the original mission my work has always been about.

Societal condition/ messaging and modeling of human behavior.

My invitation for the Black community to discuss family matters, only to be insulted in return, poked a wound for me, and I want to share that with you all. In vulnerable Sav fashion. You see, I have no issue with people disagreeing. In fact, I encourage it. But what we are seeing in today’s society is that many people can only disagree by attacking your character and your intelligence. Something I am far too familiar with especially as a young professional. What is even more clever is that some of these behaviors are wrapped in covert forms of communication—passive-aggressiveness, subtle digs, and intense emotional undercurrents that make it appear as though someone is being kind when, in reality, the communication is backhanded.

This becomes especially difficult to identify when it is riddled with intellectualized language and fluffy, oversized words that make people appear as though they know what they are speaking on, yet they do not embody any of it outside of the performance.

That’s the issue.

That’s the mechanism, if you will, that I focus on.

We are being conditioned Pavlovian style for this to become our baseline for functioning. Read my essay on that conditioning here:

As I have sat with the wound and explored the original injury underneath it, I noticed something about frenemies, and I want to explore it through the lens of the people who follow my work.

You see, if you are following my account and collecting the fruit of this free material that many people pay for in therapy, you will notice something that I know I am not the only one to experience. Many follow me knowing I don’t discuss historical content. You get enough of that elsewhere. You followed because something made you click follow— whether you felt validated, gained insight, or learned a strategy you could use at home. You pick the fruit off the tree and eat it. You gather it and take it home with you.

Until one fruit you pick is sour.

You don’t like it, so what happens?

You condemn the entire tree.

This is what I am seeing in the relational habits of people. As a former people-pleaser and co-dependent, I realized I kept friendships with people who benefited from the fruit I provided. My fun, bubbly personality. The way I would drop everything to show up for you or your family. Anything. I’m a Cancer, so when I give, I give fully—sometimes to my own detriment—which is part of what I had to learn throughout my adolescent and early adult development. The issue, as I reflect on it, is that many people who take the fruit you bear will suddenly bond with others through shared dislike and gossip of the very fruit they picked from your tree to stuff their face with.

Ironically, social psychology has repeatedly found that human beings often form social bonds through shared enemies, shared outrage, and shared disdain. While this can create temporary feelings of belonging, research suggests these bonds are often weaker and less stable than relationships built on mutual respect, shared values, and genuine connection. It is easy to be friends with someone whose life is at rock bottom, constantly in unhealthy romantic relationships, and centers you. I tended to be on the co-dependent side in my early twenties. That benefited some of the friendships I kept around. We were GOOD as long as my life was low. The moment I got my own apartment, got into grad school, and my life started moving in a positive direction, suddenly it was an issue.

I started having boundaries.

I started prioritizing my time.

I was no longer as available as I once was.

What I did not understand at the time was that relationship systems often organize themselves around roles. Family systems theory speaks to this idea. When one person changes their role, the entire system experiences disruption. The people benefiting from your lack of boundaries do not always celebrate your growth because your growth requires them to adjust.

Sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes they resent it.

These days, the level of opportunistic relationships that exist can feel disheartening. We love people for what they provide us. The moment they stop providing it, it is not enough to simply walk away. We have to badmouth their character so that we can feel righteous about the separation. This is why this work is exposure therapy for me. Having the courage to speak regardless of what the mob says about it— is sort of like my redemption for the amount of heartbreaks I felt in the friendship arena simply for developing into my pwn person. That’s the ache of this work that many of us want to avoid. The bonding over shared gossip and dislike for others who are most likely doing things you wish you could do. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as self-justification. If I can convince myself that you are a bad person, then I no longer have to examine my own motivations, entitlement, jealousy, or disappointment.

It’s giving sweet lemons and sour grapes.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the “sour grapes” phenomenon comes from cognitive dissonance research. When we cannot have what we want, we often convince ourselves we never wanted it in the first place. Likewise, when someone no longer provides us with access, attention, validation, resources, or emotional labor, it becomes easier to devalue them than to grieve the loss of what they once provided.

In today’s society, we often bond through shared gossip and shared dislike of other people as I keep saying. This is problematic. What concerns me is that we mistake this for intimacy.

It isn’t.

Knowing what someone hates is not the same thing as knowing who they are.

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So, the same people that attack me in the comments for inviting a family meeting within the Black community are often the same people picking fruit from my free education—which, ironically, has nothing to do with the historical injustices the Black community has faced.

Do you see where I am going with this?

I think that’s why, the more followers I get, the more icky I feel inside. Because not all eyes that watch you are watching you from a place of positivity. “Evil eye energy” is what we call it within my home, and boy, oh boy, do many of us have frenemies in our circles— snakes if you will. Maybe we are fully aware of it, yet not courageous enough to walk away because we’ve convinced ourselves that someone is better than no one. What I have noticed is that many people are attracted to access long before they are attracted to connection. As long as they can access your time, your energy, your knowledge, your resources, your emotional labor, or your attention, everything feels fine. The moment access changes, however, the relationship is forced to reveal what it was actually built upon. Social exchange theory suggests that many relationships unconsciously operate through a cost-benefit analysis (Homans, 1958; Blau, 1964). While most people would never consciously admit to viewing relationships this way, many become distressed when the benefits they once received begin to change.

That is something I learned during my time living alone.

I genuinely enjoyed my own company. The solitude. The peace of never having to question why people were my friends or whether they were truly in my corner.

It was just me.

The issue with that, however, is that some of us can become so comfortable in our solitude that we lose sight of the fact that healthy relationships actually exist.

Not every person is a snake.

Not every person is using you.

Not every connection is transactional.

As I have explored resentment within myself, I had to acknowledge the role I played in keeping snakes in my garden. People who would use my pain as tea-time conversation with other people. People who consumed my vulnerability but never protected it. Looking back, I can see that part of my people-pleasing tendencies made me vulnerable to these dynamics. Research on codependency and overfunctioning often highlights how individuals can become conditioned to derive value from being needed, useful, available, or emotionally responsible for others (Beattie, 1987; Bowen, 1978). The difficult truth is that when your identity becomes organized around providing, you often overlook who is merely consuming the fruit from your tree.

Then something interesting happens. The minute you cut access, the narrative becomes YOU.

Not the behavior.

Not the boundary.

Not the change in access.

You.

“You’re different.”

“You changed.”

“You think you’re better than us.”

“You think...”

Family systems theory describes this as a system’s attempt to restore equilibrium when one member begins functioning differently (Bowen, 1978). When one person develops boundaries, increases self-respect, heals, or stops participating in old patterns, the discomfort is often projected onto them rather than examined within the group. In other words, your growth becomes the problem because it exposes the arrangement that previously benefited everyone else. What fascinates me is how quickly people will create stories to explain your boundaries. Psychologists call this attribution theory (Heider, 1958). Rather than considering that someone may have changed because they are growing, healing, protecting their peace, or reallocating their energy, people often attribute the change to character flaws.

She’s arrogant.

He’s selfish.

They’re stuck up.

They forgot where they came from.

The story becomes easier to tolerate than the possibility that access has changed. And maybe that is why so many of us stay connected to people who secretly resent us.

Because grief is hard.

Disappointment is hard.

Accepting that someone liked your fruit more than they liked you is hard.

I want to take a detour for a moment because I see this same mechanism show up in romantic relationships all the time. Now before someone twists what I am saying, I am not implying that women do not like good men, nor am I implying that men do not like good women. I am talking about something much deeper, this takes critical thinking— and to be a bit of a smarty pants; many people today struggle with the concept of critical thinking. What I am referring to is how human beings often mistake what is familiar for what is healthy. As a therapist, I see many women who continue to date genuinely good men only to find themselves confused by a lack of attraction. They care about the person. They enjoy the person’s fruit. They acknowledge that the person possesses many of the qualities they have prayed for, journaled about, manifested, and claimed they wanted.

Yet something feels off.

Many will describe the relationship as boring.

There is no spark.

No chemistry.

No butterflies.

No obsession.

No emotional rollercoaster.

As someone who was surfing the waves of chaos with men. I can confidently say healthy relationships are boring— in the best way. What attachment research has repeatedly demonstrated is that our nervous systems are often attracted to what is familiar long before they are attracted to what is healthy (Bowlby, 1969; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Levine & Heller, 2010). The nervous system is not always asking, “Is this good for me?” Often, it is asking, “Have I been here before?” For individuals raised around inconsistency, unpredictability, emotional unavailability, criticism, abandonment, or chaos(chaos waves,) stability can initially feel foreign. Sometimes it even feels uncomfortable. This is because familiarity and safety are not always the same thing.

Many people who are accustomed to chaotic dynamics rooted in intense chemistry, emotional highs and lows, intermittent reinforcement,(bread crumbs) and passionate reconciliation can struggle when they encounter a partner who actually offers consistency and emotional safety. Research on intermittent reinforcement has shown that unpredictable rewards often create stronger behavioral attachment than consistent rewards (Skinner, 1953; Fisher et al., 2016). In other words, the relationship feels intense, so people mistake intensity for intimacy.

But intensity and intimacy are not the same thing.

One is activation.

The other is connection.

What concerns me is how much modern culture reinforces this confusion. Many people are consuming relationship advice from influencers whose income depends upon keeping you dissatisfied with what you have. Social media algorithms reward novelty, outrage, comparison, and emotional activation because those things keep people engaged (Haidt, 2024; Alter, 2017). Then we add romance novels good ol’ SMUT, BookTok, reality television, dating podcasts, and highly curated online relationships into the mix. Suddenly people become experts in aesthetics.

They know what attraction should look like.

They know what chemistry should feel like.

They know what the fantasy should sound like.

But they have never actually experienced secure attachment long enough to recognize it when it arrives. When it is sitting right in front of them.

They know longing.

They know chasing.

They know uncertainty.

They know obsession.

But they do not necessarily know connection.

Connection requires being known, it requires accountability. Connection also requires consistency and staying present after the dopamine wears off and the fantasy dissolves. Just like the friendships I mentioned earlier, many people become attached to the fruit while having very little interest in tending to the roots.

Because roots are where intimacy lives.

Roots are where trust lives.

Roots are where commitment lives.

The grass is not always greener on the other side.

Sometimes it’s just turf.

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Now back to the meaning-making mob.

This is exactly why I teach developing the courage to be disliked (great book by the way.) One of my biggest fears with getting online was the Black community— why s that I wonder? especially as a women who is of color. You see, as long as I name the pain, validate the ache, discuss systemic barriers, and highlight group-think dynamics, I am safe. As long as I am talking about what happened to us, I am safe. The moment I start talking about what we do with that pain, how it shows up in our relationships, our parenting, our communication, and the ways we perpetuate harm within our own communities, now I’m the problem. Thats ok though I volunteer as tribute🤣

The issue isn’t necessarily that the information is wrong. Research on cognitive dissonance has shown that when information challenges a belief, identity, or narrative we hold about ourselves, it creates psychological discomfort (Festinger, 1957). In other words, the issue isn’t always the message. Sometimes it’s the wound the message pokes. What’s fascinating to me is that many of these same people are still consuming my work. Their mouths are still stuffed with fruit from the very tree they claim is poisoned with “black betrayl.” They haven’t even finished chewing and swallowing what they already picked, and here we are watching the exact mechanisms I teach about unfold in real time.

The thing about intellectualized language is that it can create the appearance of growth without requiring any actual growth. Psychology has long recognized intellectualization as a defense mechanism where people talk about painful topics in highly analytical ways while remaining disconnected from the emotional work required to address them (Vaillant, 1992). We learn therapy language. We learn trauma language. We learn attachment language. We learn social justice language. We learn all the right words. Yet somehow the embodiment never arrives. The amount of people who hijack your intention, make it about the meaning they made, and then attempt to crucify you with words they learned from social media, ChatGPT, influencers, or years of mentally rehearsing their victim role is astounding. And before someone twists that statement too, I am not saying people haven’t been victimized. Many people absolutely have. I am saying there is a difference between experiencing victimization and building your entire identity around it. One seeks healing. The other seeks evidence and the need for an enemy.

The true ache for me comes from the people who continue falling through the cracks because we refuse to have these conversations. You’re telling me we can’t discuss absent fathers? We can’t discuss abuse? We can’t discuss sexual assault? We can’t discuss the number of Black children who report being dismissed, invalidated, blamed, gaslit, or DARVO’d when they attempt to disclose harm? We can’t discuss crabs-in-the-bucket dynamics? We can’t discuss generational trauma that gets passed from one generation to the next through relationships, parenting, communication patterns, and unresolved wounds? Because family systems research has repeatedly shown that patterns left unexamined tend to get transmitted across generations (Bowen, 1978).

Yet somehow discussing the pattern becomes more offensive than the pattern itself.

Then the conversation shifts.

“Oh, it’s because you’re not Black enough.”

Or my personal favorite.

“You’re not n**** enough.”

Yep. I’ve heard that one before.

What many people fail to realize is that acknowledging historical injustice and examining present-day relational patterns are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true. Historical injustice is real. Racism is real. Systemic barriers are real. And it is also true that communities have to be willing to examine how unresolved pain continues to shape behavior in the present. Those ideas don’t compete with one another. They coexist. What concerns me is when historical wounds become a shield against accountability. Because then we start reproducing the very dynamics we claim wounded us. You can’t fight dehumanization by dehumanizing people. You can’t heal hatred through hatred. You can’t create repair while simultaneously avoiding the conversations required for repair.

And perhaps that’s the strangest part of all.

The same “not Black enough” girl whose work you followed.

The same “not Black enough” girl whose fruit you picked.

The same “not Black enough” girl whose content helped you understand your relationships, your nervous system, your communication patterns, and your family dynamics. Is suddenly not Black enough to discuss family matters.

Which is literally my entire platform.🥴

This is what happens in society when we become reachers for everything except accountability. We will reach for blame, for a diagnoses. We will reach for trauma. We will reach for historical injustice, for explanations. We will reach for excuses. We will reach for anything that allows us to avoid the discomfort of examining our own behavior. Then the moment someone holds up a mirror, we become offended by the reflection staring back at us. Now let me pause here for a second because I’ve noticed something else. Mirror language has become a weapon too. Everybody loves talking about mirrors these days. Everybody wants to tell somebody else to “look in the mirror.” Everybody wants to accuse someone of projecting—wants to point out everyone else’s blind spots. What fascinates me is how often that language is being used by people who have already decided who the villain is before the conversation even starts let alone gets to the best part. The statement itself tells me something. It tells me you’ve already made meaning and assigned intent. You’ve already created a story about who I am before we’ve even entered into an actual discussion.

I see this in my comments all the time as well as the comments of others. “S/he needs to look in the mirror.” Loves, and I am holding your cheeks with this one (the cheeks on your face BTW I need to make that part clear🤣) that statement tells me far more about the baggage you brought into this relationship with me than it tells me about me. Somewhere along the way, whether through your family, a toxic ex, social media, influencers, self-development content, or a creator who profits off outrage, you’ve learned to expect manipulation from people. You’ve learned to expect hidden motives or someone trying to get one over on you in the name of building their “brand.” So now when somebody comes along and speaks directly, challenges your thinking, or invites self-reflection, you immediately sort them into the same category as everyone who hurt you before the same way you do at home with the people in your life. That right there is projection.

Now before someone gets offended by that word too, projection is simply the tendency to assign our fears, assumptions, expectations, and unresolved experiences onto another person (Vaillant, 1992). We stop responding to the person standing in front of us and start responding to everyone they remind us of. Research on attachment theory has repeatedly shown that many of us interpret present-day relationships through the lens of past relationships (Bowlby, 1969). In other words, we aren’t always responding to what is happening now. Sometimes we’re responding to what happened then. That’s why I find this so fascinating. People will enter my corner of the internet and immediately assume I am here to rage bait, get views, manipulate emotions, or stir up controversy.

For what?

For who?

If validation was my goal, I picked the wrong profession. What people often fail to realize is that they are bringing baggage into the relationship before the relationship even begins. They are assigning motives, intentions, and agendas that exist entirely within their own experiences and then interacting with me from that place. Thats the conditioning my work highlights. I am literally the girl on the freeway trying to rescue your stray dog ass and you keep trying to bite and claw at me. 🫣😂

What makes me laugh is that my entire platform is built around the exact opposite. I don’t care who you voted for. I don’t care what race you are. I don’t care how you identify or who you sleep with in your spare time. I don’t care where you come from quite frankly I love diversity and differences in humans— its my most favorite thing about us humans. You get to come as you are, where you are, and have The Safety to Speak.

Sit with that for a second.

For many people, that level of acceptance is completely foreign. Many people have never experienced a relationship where disagreement didn’t immediately become rejection. Many people have never experienced a relationship where accountability and compassion could exist in the same room. Many people have never experienced a relationship where curiosity was valued more than condemnation. That right there is why this work matters— at the heart and soul level for me. Because the same baggage people bring into my comment section is the same baggage they bring into their marriages, friendships, workplaces, and family systems. They project old hurts onto new people. They assign intentions that were never there. They create stories and then react to the stories they created. Social psychologists call this attribution bias. We assume we know why people do what they do, often without ever checking whether our assumptions are accurate (Ross, 1977). We make meaning first and investigate later—if we investigate at all.

Trust and believe, when I hold up a mirror, I am sitting with one too— ya girl is in the heat of this too. This platform has been exposure therapy for me. Being misunderstood. Being misperceived. Having intentions assigned to me that I never had. Having people tell me who I am instead of asking. All of it has forced me to sit with my own discomfort. I am not here to attack you. I am not here to humiliate you. I damn sure am not here to rage bait you. I am here to get you closer to yourself. That is a very different mission. And maybe that’s why some people struggle with my work. They are so accustomed to snakes in the garden that they no longer recognize direct communication when they see it. They are so accustomed to manipulation that they assume manipulation is happening. They are so accustomed to hidden agendas that they assume every agenda is hidden. As a collective we are so accustomed to chaos that we mistake clarity for an attack. So instead of sitting with what was said, we end up defaulting to, “S/he needs to look in the mirror.”

Meanwhile, what many fail to realize is that the mirror is already being used. That’s why this work exists in the first place.The irony is that everybody loves the mirror until it reflects them. We weaponize the mirror when it is pointed at someone else’s behavior. We use it to diagnose, analyze, expose, and condemn. Yet the second that same mirror reflects our contribution to the dynamic (mhmm I said it), now the mirror is problematic? The conversation is harmful? Now the person holding it is the issue. Social psychology has repeatedly found that human beings are far more likely to attribute their own behavior to circumstances while attributing the behavior of others to character flaws (Ross, 1977). In other words, when I hurt someone, there is always a reason. When you hurt someone, suddenly it’s who you are.

I made a video once talking about the baggage we bring into relationships. What fascinates me is how often we expect other people to sort our baggage for us. Its like that book “Are You My Mother” expect it’s “Will You Sort My Baggage”

We want everyone else to understand us, our baggage and to accommodate it. We want them to reassure us through it. Yet the moment we discover they have baggage too, we are disgusted.

We want grace for ourselves and perfection from everyone else. We want understanding for our wounds while struggling to extend the same understanding to theirs. Trust me when I say I have been there too!

What I find most interesting is that this same mechanism shows up in every community. We act like it belongs to one group, but it doesn’t. I see it in Black communities. I see it in Latino communities. I see it in queer communities. I see it in religious communities. I see it in self-development communities. I see it everywhere. It has become societies base line for functioning at this point. Communities that have experienced exclusion often recreate exclusion. Communities that have experienced bullying often engage in bullying. Communities that have experienced invalidation often invalidate their own members. This is one of the unfortunate realities of trauma. Unhealed pain often gets recycled relationally unless it is consciously interrupted (Bowen, 1978; Herman, 1992).

That is the hypocrisy that nobody wants to talk about. The very same externalization of blame that many marginalized groups have experienced from dominant systems often gets recreated within the community itself. The same silencing, character attacks. The same social punishment. The same “stay in your lane,” or “know your place.” The same bullying tactics. It’s the same pressure to conform. The same consequences for speaking outside the accepted narrative. The only thing that changes is who is holding the stick.

Being misperceived is one of the biggest activators for me which is why this work Is exposure therapy. It pokes directly at old wounds. Yet part of this journey has required me to learn how to sit in the discomfort of that cognitive dissonance while NOT trying to overexploit myself in order to get them on the same page with who I am— I have to LET THEM. Research shows that when information threatens a person’s worldview, identity, or beliefs, people often reduce that discomfort by rejecting the source rather than examining the information itself (Festinger, 1957). In other words, sometimes people are not reacting to what you said. They are reacting to what it would mean if what you said were true.

And let me tell you, learning that you cannot explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you is a special kind of hell for the nervous system. It is uncomfortable because, like Katherine Heigl said in a video where she addressed being labeled as mean, everyone loves a people pleaser—they damn sure don't like a secure woman.

One of the most uncomfortable parts of having a public platform is being exposed to just how much projection exists in society. Brent Brown mentioned this in a podcast with how much death threats she gets simply for speaking on a buzzword topic such as ICE. But, I’m not talking about clinical diagnoses or saying everybody has a personality disorder. I’m talking about the traits—the splitting, the black-and-white thinking, the chronic externalization of blame, the inability to hold two truths at once, the tendency to assign intent instead of asking questions, and the habit of making meaning out of something and then attacking people from the meaning they created rather than what was actually said. The internet rewards these behaviors because outrage gets engagement, engagement gets attention, and attention has become a form of currency that many of us will sell our soul for.

What all of this reminds me of are the friendships I kept in my twenties. My husband used to tell me over and over again, “They are using you for free therapy.” I didn’t want to believe him. Now, to be fair, not everyone does that. There are incredible people in this world. There are reciprocal relationships. There are people who genuinely want connection. But I am a creature of depth. I want people around me who can go beyond the surface, who can swim to the depths and play mermaids with me. I want people willing to challenge their own thinking. I want people willing to question the narratives they inherited instead of blindly repeating them.

Because the entire point of self-development is discomfort.

Growth requires discomfort.

Healing requires discomfort.

Accountability requires discomfort.

Looking at ourselves honestly requires discomfort.

The work is not identifying everybody else’s role in the dysfunction. The work is identifying our role in the relational dynamics we keep finding ourselves trapped in over and over again. Family systems theory has been teaching this for decades. If we keep showing up to the same dance with different partners, eventually we have to become curious about the choreography we brought to the stage.(Bowen, 1978). What worries me(if you haven’t noticed I am all of worries😩) is that society is increasingly rewarding victimhood over responsibility. And before somebody twists that statement too, I am not saying people haven’t been victimized. Many people have. I am saying there is a difference between acknowledging what happened to you and building an identity around why you can never change.

Because eventually every conversation becomes the same.

“Well, they did this.”

“Well, this happened to me.”

“Well, the system.”

“Well, my diagnosis.”

“Well, my trauma.”

And while all of those things may be true, none of them answer the question that actually matters:

Now what?

Now, lets get ready to dive deep—put your goggles on.

My challenge for those of you with that mentality is this:

Where are you exercising your free will?

To keep the snakes in your garden?

To keep the same patterns in your life?

To keep the same mentality and nervous system baseline you continue operating from?

Where is YOUR free will?

I ask this beucase the minute we start having that conversation, the insults begin. The Shitty Tennis match starts. Here come the character attacks and the good ol’ bait-and-switch. The original discussion gets abandoned, and now we’re arguing about everything except the thing that was originally brought forward. Raise your hand if this happens to you in your life at home or at work? Communication researchers have long noted that when people feel threatened by a topic, they often shift the discussion to a more emotionally comfortable battleground rather than engage the issue directly (Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010). In other words, if we can’t win the conversation, we’ll often try to change the conversation. This is why there is so much intellectualized language. It’s why so many go to therapy to collect the language torehears their vicim roles at home out in the wild.

I recently posted something on my personal Facebook account about how wholesome it felt watching people from outside the United States come here for the World Cup. I talked about how beautiful it was to watch people experience America through fresh eyes and how it reminded me of how much many of us take for granted because we are so focused on the pain, trauma, wounds, division, and injustice that exist here.

What fascinated me was how quickly some people became upset at the suggestion that someone could appreciate the present while simultaneously acknowledging the problems. That right there is a psychological phenomenon worth paying attention to.

Research on negativity bias has consistently shown that human beings are naturally wired to pay more attention to threats, problems, dangers, and negative experiences than positive ones (Baumeister et al., 2001). From an evolutionary standpoint, that made sense. The brain prioritizes survival. The problem is that many of us become so conditioned to scanning for danger that we lose our ability to experience gratitude, joy, awe, beauty, or appreciation when they are right in front of us.

And honestly, that is a mental health conversation that not enough people are having.

I also have a BIG problem with people who essentially tell you to “know your place” because you choose to enjoy the one life you have.

How can we preach growth mindset while simultaneously reinforcing the very mechanisms that keep us stuck? Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset highlights the importance of believing that change is possible (Dweck, 2006). Yet so much of modern discourse rewards the opposite. We become attached to explanations instead of transformation. We become attached to identifying the wound instead of healing the wound. Many — and this is a big loop— become attached to discussing the problem instead of examining their role within it. The gotcha culture of trying to hold people accountable outside of ourselves is the biggest sickness of all.

Do you see the hypocrisy?

This is why family systems research has found that patterns repeat themselves across generations until someone becomes willing to interrupt them (Bowen, 1978). The faces change. The names change. The circumstances change. Yet the mechanism remains the same.

And this is exactly why my platform is not centered on historical injustice. Again— for those who still don’t get it. This is not about dismissing or saying it’s not real. It’s about exposing you to the conversation you claim to want to have yet continue to avoid.I have watched people use history the same way families use old arguments.

The minute someone initiates a difficult conversation, the discussion gets hijacked.

Now we’re talking about something that happened five years ago.

Now we’re talking about what somebody else’s cousin did.

Now we’re talking about another injustice.

Now we’re talking about another wound.

Now we’re talking about literally everything except the thing that required courage to bring up in the first place. The goal I have studied by humans who do this deflection art is this— if I can get you lost in the side quest, I never have to engage the original discussion.

And that’s the mechanism I’m interested in.

Not the side quest.

The mechanism.

The minute accountability enters the room, someone reaches the hippocampus archives, pulls out a completely different discussion, and now we are arguing about that instead. Before you know it, we are lost in what I call the Hippocampus Forest. We’re wandering through facts, timelines, side quests, and competing narratives while becoming increasingly disconnected from the original conversation that required courage to have in the first place.

How many of you experience that in your personal life?

How many times have you developed the courage to walk the Expression Highway and finally address something that has been weighing on your heart, only for someone to hijack the discussion and redirect it somewhere else?

You finally speak.

You finally advocate for yourself.

You finally address the issue.

And instead of engaging what you brought forward, the other person starts making rules.

“We can’t talk about that until we talk about this.”

“What about when you did this?”

“Well, before we discuss that...”

Suddenly the conversation you initiated gets held hostage by a conversation they never had the courage to initiate themselves. Researchers refer to this as deflection and whataboutism—communication strategies that redirect attention away from the original issue in order to avoid addressing it directly (Walton, 1998). In family systems, it often functions as a way to reduce anxiety while preserving existing relational patterns (Bowen, 1978).

The result?

Nobody feels heard.

Nothing gets repaired.

Everyone leaves feeling justified in the current pattern that needs healing.

And we all remain disconnected.

That’s what hurts.

As someone that holds space for the ache of ALL humans.

This level of self-perpetuated outrage due to mindset. it has nothing to do with people disagreeing with me or because somebody left a comment on the internet. What hurts is that it amplifies something that feels very familiar for me in my timeline. It touches a wound that has existed long before social media ever entered the picture. The wound that says I’m good enough as long as I stay in my lane, provide what people want. I’m good enough as long as I talk about what’s safe. I’m good enough as long as I provide something useful for everyone else to consume. I’m good enough as long as my thoughts, opinions, observations, and experiences remain convenient for the people around me.

And if I’m being really honest, I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I think many of us learned versions of that lesson growing up. Maybe it was in our families our friendships. Maybe it was in church or at school. We learned that belonging was often conditional— and to be loved meant only certain parts of us, but not all of us could be loved. We learned that people enjoyed the fruit we provided while having very little curiosity about the roots that produced it. That you could be celebrated one moment and criticized the next simply because we stepped outside of a role that other people had assigned to us. That’s why these moments sting more than people realize. Because it isn’t about the comment itself. It’s about what the comment touches. It’s about the younger version of me that spent years trying to earn belonging if I could just explain myself clearly enough, be agreeable enough, helpful enough, insightful enough, useful enough, maybe everyone would finally understand me.

One of the greatest acts of reparenting I have had to learn is allowing myself to be misunderstood without abandoning myself in the process. Not pretending it doesn’t hurt or convincing myself that I don’t care. Just sitting with the discomfort and reminding myself that disagreement is not abandonment, misperception is not rejection, and criticism is not proof that I have done something wrong.

What I keep realizing as I sit with all of this is that none of this is actually about the comments. The comments are just the doorway. They’re the thing that pokes the wound and invites me to go looking for where I’ve felt this before. That’s why I always laugh a little when people assume my work is about politics, racial injustice or whatever current outrage people are arguing about online. I mean aren’t y’all tired? My work has never been about that. My work has always been about conditioning, modeling how what happens in the micro is living in the macro thus conditioning us further to normalize this level of dysfunction and division.

It’s about the ways we learn to relate to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. It’s about the stories we inherit from our families, our communities, our culture, and our lived experiences. How the bells that rang decades ago cause us to still salivate to today, even when the original threat is nowhere to be found (Pavlov, 1927). It’s about the fact that many of us are still fighting ghosts. We are still reacting to old wounds as if they are standing directly in front of us, and because those wounds feel so real inside our bodies, we rarely stop long enough to ask ourselves whether the danger is actually here in the present moment or within ourselves.

That’s where free will enters the conversation for me.

Not in a dismissive “just get over it” kind of way. Quite the opposite, actually. I think healing requires us to be radically honest about what shaped us. But eventually there comes a moment where we have to decide whether understanding the origin of a pattern is enough, or whether we are willing to interrupt the pattern itself. Through our choice to choose differently.

Because those are two very different things.

I can tell you exactly why I developed certain fears. I can tell you exactly where some of my wounds came from. I can tell you who taught me to doubt myself, who taught me to shrink, who taught me that belonging was conditional. Understanding those things helped me make sense of my pain, but understanding alone didn’t heal it. At some point I had to decide whether I was going to continue organizing my life around what happened to me or whether I was going to begin organizing my life around who I wanted to become.

Maybe that’s the part that breaks my heart the most when I look around.

Watching people become so fused with their pain that they can no longer imagine themselves outside of it. The wound becomes the identity. The resentment becomes the personality and over time the injury becomes the lens through which every interaction is filtered. Then when someone chooses differently, when someone begins healing, creating boundaries, finding gratitude, challenging their own thinking, or stepping outside of the conditioning they inherited, it feels threatening. Why is that? Well my theory says its because their existence quietly asks a question many people don’t want to answer:

That’s a terrifying question, because now we’re no longer talking about history.

We’re no longer talking about trauma.

We’re no longer talking about what happened.

We’re talking about choice.

Call it Black hate.

Call it self-betrayal.

Call it anti-Black.

Call it whatever helps you sleep at night.

But as you continue picking fruit from this tree, just remember where it came from. It came from the same “not Black enough” girl. The same girl who learned very early that belonging often came with conditions. The same girl who spent years trying to earn acceptance by becoming whatever everyone else needed her to be. That same girl eventually realized that healing was never about becoming more acceptable to other people.

It was about finally becoming a safe place to come home to herself.

Come as you are, where you are 🫶🏽

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.; DSM-5-TR). American Psychiatric Association.

Beck, A. T. (2011). Cognitive therapy of personality disorders (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.

Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly. Gotham Books.

Brown, B. (2015). Rising strong. Spiegel & Grau.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Press.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Gilbert, P. (2010). Compassion focused therapy: Distinctive features. Routledge.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work (Updated ed.). Harmony Books.

Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis. Basic Books.

Hayes, S. C. (2019). A liberated mind: How to pivot toward what matters. Avery.

Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment theory in practice: Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with individuals, couples, and families. Guilford Press.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

LeDoux, J. (2015). Anxious: Using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety. Viking.

Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Panksepp, J., & Biven, L. (2012). The archaeology of mind: Neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions. W. W. Norton.

Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. Oxford University Press.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory. W. W. Norton.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press.

Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why. Portfolio.

Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love. New Harbinger Publications.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score. Viking.

Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.

Extended Reading

These books move beyond psychology into philosophy, spirituality, meaning-making, personal responsibility, and the internal narratives that shape how we experience ourselves and other people. While not all are scientific texts, each offers a perspective that complements the work of developing emotional maturity, self-awareness, and psychological flexibility.

Personal Responsibility & Emotional Freedom

• Letting Go — David R. Hawkins

• The Power of Your Subconscious Mind — Joseph Murphy

• The Untethered Soul

• The Surrender Experiment

• Man’s Search for Meaning

• The Obstacle Is the Way

Awareness & Consciousness

• A New Earth

• The Power of Now

• Awareness

• The Book

• The Wisdom of Insecurity

Trauma, Relationships & Inner Healing

• Our Inner Conflicts

• The Drama of the Gifted Child

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

• The Courage to Be Disliked

• The Four Agreements

Communication & Relationships

• Crucial Conversations

• Nonviolent Communication

• Difficult Conversations

Habits & Behavior Change

• Atomic Habits

• Tiny Habits

• The Happiness Trap

Data Collectors,

One of the reasons I created the Glove Up crayon is because I learned this lesson the hard way. A couple years ago, I was contracted to work in a school setting and let me just say this now: schools are fascinating places to study human behavior. They are also breeding grounds for resentment. You have exhausted teachers, under-supported staff, impossible expectations, politics, gossip, triangulation, burnout, and people carrying around years of unresolved frustration. Put enough stressed-out adults into one building and eventually somebody becomes the emotional trash can.

Unfortunately, on this particular day, I volunteered as tribute. 🤣

I remember being called into an office. The energy felt off immediately. You know those moments where your body notices something before your brain does? Before anyone said anything, I could already feel the shift. Looking back now, that was probably my nervous system picking up cues that something wasn’t right. At the time, I ignored it. I walked in assuming we were going to have a normal professional conversation.

We were not.

Very quickly the conversation shifted into accusations. I was called unprofessional. I was called unethical. I was threatened with being reported. There was an attempt to position me as though I had somehow violated my responsibilities. The irony was that I wasn’t even employed by the school. I was a contracted provider. My role was different. My confidentiality requirements were different. My obligations were different. The very thing they wanted from me would have required me to violate the standards I was hired to uphold.

I knew that.

My supervisor knew that.

The law knew that.

My nervous system did not know that.

What fascinates me looking back is how quickly I stopped accessing the part of my brain that knew the facts. Daniel Kahneman talks about System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 2 is thoughtful, logical, analytical, and deliberate. It’s the part of the brain that gathers information and evaluates evidence. System 1 is fast, automatic, emotional, and survival-based. Guess which one was driving the bus that day?

Not the licensed therapist.

Not the logical adult.

Not the woman who knew exactly what her role was.

The scared kid.

The people pleaser.

The part of me that had spent years believing I was probably wrong.

The moment those women became emotionally charged, my nervous system shifted from top-down processing into bottom-up processing. In other words, my body started making decisions before my thinking brain had a chance to catch up. Stephen Porges’ work on Polyvagal Theory explains that when the nervous system detects threat, our ability to access curiosity, perspective-taking, flexibility, and critical thinking begins to shrink (Porges, 2011). The body prioritizes survival over accuracy.

And let me tell you, survival was in full effect.

I wasn’t asking myself, “Are these accusations true?”

I wasn’t asking myself, “Do they understand my role?”

I wasn’t asking myself, “Do they even have the authority they’re acting like they have?”

No.

My brain immediately went to:

“Oh my God, I’m in trouble.”

“What if they’re right?”

“What if I missed something?”

“What if I lose my license?”

“What if I’ve completely screwed this up?”

If you’ve ever struggled with people pleasing, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The nervous system becomes less interested in truth and more interested in restoring safety. My goal wasn’t clarity. My goal was making the discomfort stop. That is the trap.

For years I thought the lesson from that experience was about toxic workplace behavior. It wasn’t.

The lesson was about what happened inside of me when I encountered toxic workplace behavior.

Because here’s the reality. There will always be people who use intimidation. There will always be people who use shame. There will always be people who use titles, age, authority, experience, religion, education, or social status to establish dominance. Healthy people don’t need to do that. People who feel powerful don’t spend their day proving it. Most people who behave that way are carrying around their own unresolved resentment, insecurity, powerlessness, or pain. The workplace simply becomes the stage where they perform it.

That’s their shit.

The problem was I picked it up.

Barehanded.

I absorbed their certainty.

I absorbed their urgency.

I absorbed their interpretation.

I absorbed their emotional state.

Then I walked out of that office carrying a backpack full of things that never belonged to me in the first place.

When I finally called my supervisor, I was in tears. I was convinced my career was over. She listened quietly and then said something I’ll never forget.

“Savannah, they were completely out of line.”

That sentence hit me like a truck because it forced me to see how far my perception had drifted. My nervous system had become so convinced that I was the problem that it couldn’t even entertain another possibility.

And that’s the thing about not wearing gloves.

You stop collecting data.

You stop asking questions.

You stop evaluating reality.

You start absorbing.

These days, when somebody comes at me sideways, one of my favorite responses is:

“Is everything okay? You seem upset.”

Not because I’m trying to be passive-aggressive.

Not because I’m trying to win.

Because I’m placing their energy back where it belongs. On their side of the street. I spent too many years being the emotional Bounty quicker picker upper for everybody around me.

Not anymore.

The gloves taught me something I wish I had learned sooner:

Not everybody who is upset is right.

Not everybody who is loud deserves authority.

Not everybody who is certain deserves your agreement.

And not every pile of shit is yours to pick up.

🧤☕

Feel free to listen along.

You see, this song makes me cry every time I hear it.

I’ve always been a big Mac Miller fan. When he passed, it felt like a piece of me went with him. His music got me through some really dark seasons of my life. College. Heartbreak. Confusion. Fear. Becoming. There are certain artists whose words become attached to chapters of your life, and for me, Mac was one of them.

There’s a line in the song that always gets me.

Every time I hear it, I find myself thinking about how much of humanity is doing exactly that. We carry the weight of the world while avoiding the weight of our own lives. We point. We blame. We diagnose. We label. We explain. We search for certainty. We search for villains. We search for reasons. Yet so many of us never stop long enough to sit with ourselves.

The truth is we are all carrying something. All of us.

I’ve lost people in my life. Some physically. Some emotionally. At times, I’ve even lost pieces of myself. I’ve come back swinging every single time, but if I’m being honest, it isn’t the loss that scares me anymore. It’s the fear. It’s the panic. It’s the hypervigilance. It’s the constant anticipation that something bad is about to happen and from the work I do with clients and within myself. We are addicted to that baseline, despite prayers for change. We don’t know how to surrender to a life of peace—because peace is scary.

These days it feels like nobody wants to jump. We talk a lot about how we deserve better but never choose better. Ain’t that a trip. We’re all standing at the edge analyzing the water. Looking for guarantees—for certainty. Looking for proof that we won’t get hurt. The problem is life doesn’t work that way. It just doesn’t. Trust me I have been trying.

We’re afraid to walk away.

We’re afraid to stay.

We’re afraid to surrender to the imperfect person we chose to marry, build a life with, or have children with.

We’re afraid to trust.

We’re afraid to let go.

We’re afraid to admit that maybe the answers aren’t as simple as the internet wants them to be that’s the sell out point if you ask me. Believing what the internet tells you.

It’s easy when everyone is a narcissist.

It’s easy when every relationship problem has a diagnosis.

It’s easy when every conflict can be reduced down to a label.

What isn’t easy is looking at ourselves. I mean really looking.

What isn’t easy is asking why certain things activate us the way they do.

What ghosts we’re still fighting. Let me tell you, as I sit in front of many clients who can’t see their blind spots from the angle in which I sit. Many of us are in fact fighting ghosts. Does that mean the pain is invalid? Not at all— but see how for some of us our minds take us immediately to “oh so you’re invalidating…” Why is that I wonder? I tend to absorb the grief of my clients. I love what I do, but it gets heavy at times. This work reminds me how similar we all are underneath the surface.

Everyone is carrying something.

The mother-in-laws.

The partners.

The celebrities.

The therapists.

The clients.

Mac says: “Weight of the world I gotta carry my own” look around. The moment we wake we have the world in our face. Yet we wonder why the weight within us gets neglected and some how that neglect is the partners responsibility, because well “they’re a narcissist?” Or because it’s the parent’s fault? The governments fault? Some people carry that weight loudly while others carry it silently. Some carry it through addiction, through avoidance. While some carry through achievement or through religion. Some through perfectionism, while others through control. Some through people-pleasing— while others carry through anger.

But everybody is carrying something.

There is no escaping it.

Which makes me wonder why it feels like everyone else is living their best life. I think it’s because we live in a culture that rewards performance over understanding. We are stuck in a pathological prison of pointing and blaming because it is easier than understanding. Understanding requires humility and curiosity. We are more curious about the labels than understanding the person in front of us. Understanding requires us to sit with discomfort long enough to ask a different question. We are not be conditioned for questions. We are being conditioned for accusations.

Curiosity leads us to the practice of asking, “What happened to them?” Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with them?” If we are really brave enough to stay in the heat of that discomfort long enough, eventually we find ourselves asking:

That’s where the work begins.

Lately I’ve been sitting with Proverbs 31 the ideal virtuous wife, and it’s had me thinking about women, history, culture, and the stories that get passed down through generations. Not just biblical stories, but human stories. For those already offended because you think this about religion, pause for a moment. That’s that shit i’m talking about right there. Always offended.. Sit here with me in this discomfort for a moment. Think about generations where women were treated as property. Think about cultures where a woman’s value was tied to marriage, obedience, or producing sons to be “good enough.” Think about the daughters born into those systems.

What was it like to be the firstborn daughter of a system like this?

What was it like to watch your worth be measured against things you couldn’t control?

What was it like to grow up learning that love, approval, or safety had conditions attached to it? And then what happened when those daughters became mothers? How do you think those wounds show up in the way they parented?

How did they affect the daughters?

The sons?

The marriages?

The family systems?

I find myself noticing these patterns everywhere. In my own family. In my husband’s family. In my clients. In myself, and yet so many of us can’t explore them because we’re too busy proving why our diagnosis explains everything. We want a label that lets us stop digging, but digging IS the mission of this work. Digging is what brings us closer to ourselves. We want certainty more than we want understanding, but remember understanding requires us to acknowledge that many of the systems we survived as children are still living inside of us as adults.

Just check your nervous system.

Many of us live in shotgun-level hypervigilance— still waiting for the acknowledgment we never received as a child and may never receive as adults. So what do we do? Dig to get our partners to provide what is ours to work on. Many of us want to be heard so badly that we don’t realize we’re recreating the same dynamics we’re trying to escape. We aren’t bad people— we are hurt people and it shows. We’re out here hurting people trying not to get hurt.

That’s what makes this so complicated.

It’s a blessing and a curse to notice patterns.

These days everyone gets reduced to pathology while I’m sitting here seeing the undercurrents of humanity. I can see what’s underneath the success.

Underneath the “happy.”

Underneath the “normal.”

But when you flip that stone over and get close enough. You realize underneath it all that we consider “highlights” there lives: Addiction, resentment, depression, loneliness, attachment wounds.

The family secrets.

The shame.

The ache.

Creatives of all types didn’t create what they did because they had low ACE scores (Adverse Childhood Experiences.) Most gifted people don’t. Their gifts, just like my own are grown in the same soil as the wounds. That’s uncomfortable to admit because we want healing to erase the wound. We must understand though—sometimes healing isn’t about erasing it. It’s about learning how to transform it. Imposter syndrome is real, even for me. I sit with clients much older than me. Clients who have lived entire lives before I ever entered the room. Yet when I sit with them, I don’t see age.

I see beings.

I see people carrying stories.

I see people trying to make sense of their suffering.

My gift for helping others came from wounds I endured, But that gift does not exempt me from doing my own work. I think many professionals forget that part.

It doesn’t exempt me from my fear.

My panic.

My distorted beliefs.

My stories.

It doesn’t exempt me from cleaning the lens I look through when viewing life. I know that sounds cliché, but many of us don’t want to:

And I think that’s where so many of us get stuck. We want our partners to turn our stones over and to validate us in ways we demand not realizing the war we started within ourselves trying to gather accountability from the people we chose. It creates a behavior that if we zoom in close enough to see. (if we turned that stone over) would realize just how much that war starts to mimic exactly what we survived as children. Becoming those very parents we had to survive. Thats how generational trauma works. You see— it’s a blessing and a curse to be a pattern recognizer because you can’t turn it off. These days we have hyper-focused into patterns of pathology instead of humanity.

Now, for some of us—we can give:

Everyone else understanding.

Everyone else grace.

Everyone else patience.

Yet we don’t offer it to ourselves.

Instead we overexplain.

We defend.

We prove.

We argue.

We try to get them to understand. While doing so we lose sight of how that very fight is what starts the self-abandonment.

We so desperately want to be heard.

Want to be chosen.

Want to be understood.

Yet we walk right past the one person we’ve neglected the longest.

Ourselves.

So— are you ready to jump in and swim?

• Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made

• Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the Heart

• Gottman, J. M. (1999). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

• Lerner, H. (1985). The Dance of Anger

• Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight

Knowledge is power. Ignorance is a choice

Data Collectors,

Welcome to our first skill acquisition. Remember when you see the 🖍️ it’s a skill.

I think one of the biggest reasons people are exhausted is because they’re walking around touching everything without gloves. Every comment, every facial expression, every sigh, every weird text message, every social media post, every opinion, every expectation, every family member’s mood, every piece of energy floating around the room. Then we wonder why we’re tired, drained, and burnt out. Imagine walking around your neighborhood picking up random piles of dog shit with your bare hands. You wouldn’t do it. You’d think I was crazy if I suggested it. Yet many of us are doing the emotional version of that every single day. Somebody sighs and we pick it up. Somebody doesn’t text back and we pick it up. Our mother-in-law says something weird and we pick it up. A stranger leaves a comment online and we pick it up. Our partner comes home in a bad mood and somehow we pick that up too. By the end of the day we’re carrying around a backpack full of things that were never ours to begin with.

This is where today’s crayon comes in. 🖍️ Glove Up.

The gloves are not avoidance. The gloves are not pretending you don’t care. The gloves are not becoming emotionally unavailable. The gloves are skills. The gloves are pause. The gloves are discernment and curiosity. The gloves serve as a regulation strategy. It's learning how to stop assigning meaning before you have enough information. One of the questions I ask myself all the time is, “Hold on... am I touching this without gloves?” Because the truth is most of us are not reacting to what happened. We’re reacting to what we think happened. That’s a very different thing.

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Think about how quickly the mind fills in blanks. Your partner sighs and suddenly you’ve decided they’re mad at you. Your friend doesn’t respond and you’ve decided they’re upset. Your mother asks a question and you’ve decided she’s criticizing you. A stranger disagrees with you online and you’ve decided they’re attacking you. If I stopped you right there and asked you for evidence, most people couldn’t give me any. The nervous system is making predictions. Aaron Beck’s work on cognitive distortions highlighted how quickly human beings jump to conclusions, personalize situations, and mind-read other people’s intentions without enough information to support those conclusions (Beck, 1976). In other words, we become convinced that our interpretation is reality. That interpretation then gets projected as the default view for everyone else, so when they don’t agree… There is an internalized feeling of rejection.

This is why resentment spreads so easily. The resentment isn’t just coming from what happened. It’s coming from the meaning we assigned to what happened. Once resentment has enough evidence, it starts running the entire show. Now every sigh means they’re annoyed. Every question means criticism. Every disagreement means rejection. Every mistake means they don’t care. John Gottman calls this Negative Sentiment Override, a relational state where the emotional climate becomes so contaminated that neutral or even positive interactions are filtered through a negative lens (Gottman & Silver, 1999). We stop collecting new data and start proving the old story.

The gloves ask different questions.

What do I actually know?

What am I assuming?

Is there another explanation?

Is this mine to carry?

Am I reacting to this person or what they represent?

Those are glove questions. That’s the work. Not becoming numb. Not becoming detached. Not pretending things don’t bother you. The work is learning how to investigate before you absorb. The work is learning how to sit in uncertainty long enough to gather more information. The work is realizing that not every uncomfortable feeling is a threat and not every activated response deserves your attention.

So this week’s crayon is simple. Pause before you pick it up. Before you grab the story. Before you grab the assumption. Before you grab the offense. Before you grab the resentment. Pause. Put your gloves on. Collect the data first. Just because something activated you doesn’t automatically mean it belongs to you. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. The skill is learning the difference. The reason I love this metaphor so much is because most people think they are wearing gloves when they aren’t.

They think gloves are emotional toughness.

They think gloves are avoidance.

They think gloves are not caring.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about skills.

I’m talking about the ability to remain connected to yourself while interacting with the world around you. For example, gloving up might look like realizing your partner’s bad mood is not automatically your responsibility to fix. Instead of scanning for what you did wrong, overexplaining yourself, or trying to rescue the emotional climate of the room, you simply ask, “Hey, is everything okay?” Then you allow them to own their experience. That’s a glove. It may also look like not trying to parent them into being the version of a mother of father that you want them to be. It looks like allowing them to fumble and experience the natural consequences of that. Gloving up might look like saying no to a request you don’t have the capacity for instead of saying yes and silently building resentment. A fantastic example is hosting thanksgiving dinner. If you really don’t want to but you still say yes. Now you are polluting everyone with your undercurrents. Slamming cabinets, washing dishes aggressively. All because you either can’t ask for help, or don’t have the courage to say no.

It might look like disappointing somebody instead of abandoning yourself. That’s a glove. Gloving up might look like realizing someone else’s urgency does not automatically become your emergency. Just because somebody is panicking does not mean you have to panic. Just because somebody is dysregulated does not mean you have to become dysregulated. That’s a glove. Gloving up might look like receiving criticism without immediately collapsing into shame. Instead of assuming you’re wrong, defective, selfish, irresponsible, or a bad person, you pause long enough to evaluate the information. Is there something useful here? Is there not? What belongs to me? What belongs to them? That’s a glove.

Gloving up might look like refusing to become your own defense attorney every time somebody misunderstands you. One of the hardest lessons I have learned is that misunderstanding is not an emergency. Some people will misunderstand you because they don’t have enough information. Some people will misunderstand you because they are activated. Some people will misunderstand you because it benefits the story they are already telling themselves pr they learned that misunderstanding you activates you—so they allow you to take that bait. None of those situations require you to abandon yourself in order to be understood. That’s a glove.

The people pleasers in the room are going to hate this next one. Gloving up sometimes means allowing another adult to be disappointed. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Sometimes gloving up means allowing another adult to be disappointed. You’re not being cruel or selfish. Disappointment is a normal human emotion, and it is not your job to prevent everyone from experiencing it. Disappointment is the portal to growth sometimes, and there is a few of us who are literally blocking that growth. The more I study resentment, the more I realize resentment grows where self-abandonment lives. Every time we override our own needs, suppress our own truth, ignore our own limits, or carry emotional weight that does not belong to us, we deposit another dollar into the resentment account. Then years later we wonder why we’re exhausted.

This is why I created the Glove Check🧤

Before you pick something up, ask yourself:

Is this mine?

Do I have enough information?

Am I responding to reality, or am I responding to a story?

Am I about to touch this with my truth or with my trauma?

Because the answer to those questions will determine whether you walk away regulated or emotionally contaminated.

Till next time Data collectors

Data Collectors,

Welcome to Stop 1 of the ROR series.

This stop introduces the foundational framework of the entire Rewiring Out of Resentment™ series. In this stop, we begin exploring resentment not simply as an emotion, attitude, or personality flaw, but as an adaptive infection pattern that spreads through nervous systems, relational environments, family systems, and social conditioning.

We are learning how resentment forms, what environments allow it to grow, how it spreads, and why so many people unknowingly live inside emotional contagion cycles without realizing it.

Let’s zoom into environments that can be breeding grounds for resentment. The most common areas I have seen are with those who tend to be over-functioners, people pleasers, those who struggle with emotional invisibility, and mothers with no life, hobbies, or unachieved goals outside of their role as mother and wife.

Over time, when we stay suppressing, over-functioning, etc., we get pulled out of our window of tolerance. When we are pulled out of our window of tolerance and stay out of it for long periods of time, we start to develop resentment. The infection has begun, but we must be careful. Once we have the infection, it is really easy to get hit harder because the system is weaker and more susceptible to the craving for bonding.

Those with a high resentment level tend to want to bond via shared gossip, dislike for others, or the need to complain about their partner with blind-loyalty friends or friends who are also stuck in similar patterns. Don’t get me wrong, co-regulation is necessary, and us ladies need to process a lot in order to regulate. But check your regulation session. Is it mostly you repeating the same upset? If so, you may be co-ruminating in a self-destructive way instead of a helpful way.

Why might it be self-destructive? Well, who do you typically co-ruminate with, and do you ever challenge the blind spots? Do you end with reflection on what is in your control? If not, we are in a self-destructive loop.

Chronic self-abandonment is the biggest behavior leading to resentment.

If we think of resentment as a bacteria that thrives and spreads like mold, we would explore which environments the resentment infection spreads and grows in the fastest. Here are some examples where, if the following behaviors exist in environments, I can guarantee you someone in there is struggling with resentment:

• Avoidance

• Emotional dishonesty

• Chronic survival mode

• Hypervigilance

• Emotional rigidity

• Suppressed grief

• Unresolved attachment wounds

• Repetitive relational gridlock

How do you suspect the infection spreads?

Through tone.
Through energy.
Through interpretation.
Through emotional leakage.
Through defensiveness.
Through withdrawal.
Through criticism.
Through passive aggression.
Through silence.
Through projection.
Through chronic emotional exhaustion.

Eventually, the entire relational field becomes emotionally contaminated.

Emotional Leakage

People often believe resentment only exists in words.But resentment leaks long before it speaks. It leaks through:

• body language

• sarcasm

• sighs

• irritability

• shutdown

• avoidance

• emotional numbness

• hypercriticism

• scorekeeping

• contempt

• chronic nervous system tension

Children absorb it.
Partners absorb it.
Coworkers absorb it.
Families absorb it.

Research consistently demonstrates that human beings are constantly reading one another’s emotional states through nonverbal communication. According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (2011), the nervous system is continuously scanning the environment for cues of safety or danger through facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, and relational energy. In other words, even when nothing is being verbally said, the body is still communicating. This is why unresolved resentment eventually creates emotional climates where:

• play disappears

• curiosity disappears

• softness disappears

• repair feels exhausting

And once all of this disappears, the connection begins feeling unsafe. John Gottman’s research on relationships found that contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and withdrawal are among the strongest predictors of relational distress and disconnection (Gottman & Silver, 1999). Long before a relationship falls apart, the emotional climate often shifts first. Louis Cozolino (2014) reminds us that we are social creatures whose nervous systems are constantly influencing one another. We regulate together, dysregulate together, and often absorb emotional states without realizing it. In other words, resentment becomes atmospheric.

Emotional Cost & Nervous System Currency

One of the core ROR concepts is understanding energy as currency I call it “energy expense.” Everything costs something emotionally:

Conflict costs energy.

Suppression costs energy.

Masking costs energy.

Overexplaining costs energy.

Avoidance costs energy.

Hypervigilance costs energy.

Many people are emotionally bankrupt without realizing it, and when nervous systems become depleted, resentment becomes easier to access than joy.

Why do you think that is? Well, my theory is because resentment requires less vulnerability. Joy requires openness. Play requires flexibility. Connection requires risk. Resentment often feels emotionally safer because it protects the nervous system from disappointment, grief, vulnerability, and uncertainty.

But let’s do a quick cost-benefit analysis.

In psychology, a cost-benefit analysis is simply the process of examining what a behavior, thought pattern, belief, or coping strategy gives us versus what it costs us. Most behaviors persist because there is some benefit, even if that benefit is unconscious.

So, what is the benefit of resentment?

Anyone?...

What I have seen in my clinical practice, as well as within myself, is that one of the biggest benefits is stagnation. We get to stay in the comfy, cozy zone where development does not occur.

We get to avoid uncertainty.

We get to avoid vulnerability.

We get to avoid accountability.

We get to avoid looking at our own role in the dance.

We get to constantly complain about the things we are suffering with. Sometimes that, in itself, comes with a secondary gain, which could be seen as a benefit. Maybe we receive validation. Maybe we receive sympathy. Maybe we receive attention. Maybe we receive a sense of belonging through shared frustration. Maybe we get to stay connected to a familiar identity. The cost of this, though, is stagnation. Over time, resentment builds and begins infiltrating perception.

Perception is the root of my work.

The longer resentment remains unchecked, the more likely we are to interpret neutral situations through a contaminated lens. We stop seeing what is happening and start seeing what we expect to happen, now why on earth would some of us want what we expect? Yup good ol’ confirmation bias.

We begin collecting evidence for our pain. We begin filtering out evidence that challenges the story and before we know it, resentment is no longer something we experience.It becomes the lens through which we experience everything day to day. For those of you who are new to my corner of the internet, I would encourage you to start with my first YouTube video on perception. I will link that below.

Because if resentment is the infection, perception is often where we first begin seeing the side effects of the resentment build up.

Research on chronic stress and trauma suggests that prolonged activation of the nervous system narrows our capacity for flexibility, curiosity, connection, and play (van der Kolk, 2014). When the body is exhausted, survival becomes the priority. The nervous system begins choosing predictability over possibility, protection over openness, and certainty over vulnerability. Certainty is what we all want in this world today, but think about it. Much of what we are certain about is linked to suffering. That is a key indicator that you are in protector part frequency. Stephen Porges (2011) explains that the nervous system is constantly evaluating whether the environment is safe enough to engage socially. When the body perceives threat, it stops caring about joy. It stops caring about fun. It stops caring about connection. The nervous system is trying to survive. Think about it. If you were being chased by a bear, you wouldn’t be worried about date night, pickleball, painting, gardening, or trying a new hobby. You would be worried about staying alive. The problem is that many of us are carrying around nervous systems that act like the bear is still there. So when somebody says, “Why don’t you just go have fun?” or “Why don’t you try something new?” the body says, “Absolutely not.” this has nothing to do with not wanting joy or connection. But because your nervous system has spent so much time surviving that it has forgotten how to play.

This is one of the reasons resentment becomes such a powerful trap. Resentment is familiar. The disappointment is familiar. The frustration is familiar. The criticism is familiar. The story is familiar. The body knows exactly what to do there because it has practiced it thousands of times. Joy, on the other hand, asks us to loosen our grip. It asks us to become curious. It asks us to be present. It asks us to risk disappointment again. And for many people, that feels far more dangerous than staying angry.

This is why I believe resentment can become a baseline for functioning. The nervous system will often choose familiar suffering over unfamiliar peace. Many of us have never actually learned how to live on the lake. We learned how to survive in the storm waves because we were born there. So when the water finally becomes calm, we don’t relax— we freak out because wtf is down there!!!😅. We start looking around wondering what is wrong. We start anticipating the next wave. in doing all of this we do not realize we create our own waves. That is why this work is not simply about reducing resentment. It is about teaching the nervous system that safety, play, joy, curiosity, and connection are not threats. They are skills that many of us never had the opportunity to develop.

Bruce Perry’s work similarly highlights that stressed and dysregulated nervous systems lose access to higher-order functioning. When survival states dominate, our ability to reflect, empathize, and problem-solve, connection becomes significantly reduced (Perry & Winfrey, 2021). Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) further argues that the brain is constantly managing a “body budget.” Every decision, emotional response, stressor, conflict, and interaction either deposits into or withdraws from that budget. When the account runs low, the brain becomes more reactive, less flexible, and increasingly focused on conserving resources.

This is why resentment can become so seductive.

Resentment gives us a story.

Resentment gives us certainty.

Resentment gives us someone to blame.

Resentment allows us to externalize discomfort instead of tolerating the vulnerability required for curiosity.

Joy asks us to soften.

Joy asks us to stay present.

Joy asks us to risk disappointment.

Joy asks us to remain open even when certainty would feel safer.

For many nervous systems, especially those accustomed to survival, softening feels far more dangerous than staying armored. This is one of the central hypotheses of the Rewiring Out of Resentment™ project:

The Glove Up Concept

In future stops, we’ll expand deeper into the concept of “gloving up.” That will be for those who watched the orientation for ROR. it will be a Crayon to add the crayon box. 🖍️

Read the article here to understand what I mean when I say crayons.

For now, let’s think of gloves as emotional protective equipment.

Not emotional walls.
Not avoidance.
Not detachment.

Skills.

1. Pause.

2. Observation.

3. Discernment.

4. Regulation.

5. Compartmentalization.

6. Non-reactivity.

7. Boundary awareness.

8. Emotional responsibility.

But most importantly, the acceptance that multiple things can be true. Not just what you feel, think, and believe. Many of us enter emotionally charged situations completely unprotected, absorbing everyone else’s emotions, projections, expectations, and nervous system activation without realizing it. Then we wonder why we leave interactions emotionally contaminated. The goal here is not emotional numbness. No no we feel on this corner of the internet. The goal is learning how to stay present without emotionally raw-dogging every environment we enter.

Research on emotional regulation and family systems repeatedly points to the importance of differentiation, which is our ability to remain connected to others without becoming emotionally fused with them (Bowen, 1978). In simple terms, differentiation allows us to stay in the room without becoming the room. It allows us to witness someone’s distress without automatically making it ours. It allows us to stay grounded in our values, observations, and reality while remaining open to the reality of another person.

That is what the gloves are.

Not disconnection.
Not superiority.
Not avoidance.

Protection through skill.

THE FIELD OBSERVATION

One of the most important things to understand:

It is usually cumulative.

• Micro-moments.

• Repeated disappointments.

• Unspoken truths.

• Chronic emotional suppression.

• Invisible labor.

• Perceived inequity.

• Inherited modeling.

• Emotional exhaustion.

Eventually, the nervous system adapts to expecting disappointment. This expectation becomes perceptual. Meaning: the brain starts scanning for confirmation. This is where resentment narrows interpretation and reduces relational flexibility.

The nervous system stops asking:

“What else could this mean?”

And starts assuming:

“See? Here we go again.”

Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that human beings naturally search for evidence that supports preexisting beliefs while overlooking information that challenges them (Beck, 1976; Kahneman, 2011). Once resentment takes hold, the brain becomes increasingly efficient at gathering evidence that confirms the resentment story. John Gottman refers to a similar phenomenon as Negative Sentiment Override. In this state, even neutral or positive interactions become filtered through a negative lens because the emotional climate of the relationship has become contaminated (Gottman & Silver, 1999). This right here is why it is so difficult to rewire out of resentment. Many of us are anticipating the very pattern from our partner. We scoff at the idea of them doing anything to improve or change. We dismiss attempts before they have the opportunity to become real.

Many of my couples sessions result in individuals not necessarily wanting repair. They want me to validate them in front of their partner so they can feel justified in whatever it is they are doing at home.

That’s the issue.

If I had a dollar for every time I asked, “How badly do you want to confirm that as true?”

You see, when we are stuck in resentment for long periods of time, this is where Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work comes in. Over time, that mood becomes a temperament. That temperament becomes a personality. That personality becomes a predictable way of interacting with the world. The brain and body become habitually wired into expecting the very thing they do not want. Neuroscience research on neuroplasticity supports the idea that repeatedly activated neural pathways become increasingly efficient over time (Doidge, 2007). The more we rehearse disappointment, suspicion, criticism, and resentment, the easier those pathways become to access. This is where those frequent flyer miles come in, because many of us frequently fly the neural pathway of resentment. Robbing us of the blessing to repair.

So when your partner does something to shift out of the pattern, many people immediately question it as if it is suspicious.

They look for the catch.

They wait for the other shoe to drop.

They anticipate failure.

That suspicion often leads the other partner to feel rejected in their efforts to change, causing them to internalize beliefs about whether change is even worth attempting. Especially when the person they are trying to reconnect with has already decided they don’t believe it and now both people are trapped. One person is trying to prove they can change. The other person is trying to prove they can’t.

That is resentment’s favorite playground.

THIS WEEK’S FIELDWORK

Your Assignment

This week is not about fixing anything. This week is about observation.

Your assignment is to begin noticing:

• where resentment leaks,

• what environments intensify it,

• what interactions drain your energy,

• and how often your nervous system anticipates conflict before it even happens.

You are also encouraged to begin implementing the joy experiment introduced during orientation:

• movement,

• novelty,

• walks,

• play,

• sensory regulation,

• intentional pauses,

• recreational activities,

• or moments of emotional compartmentalization.

Not because you “feel like it.” Let’s be real: if we all waited to get things done because we felt like it, nothing would ever get done. This experiment is testing whether regulated joy can interrupt emotional gridlock patterns long enough for deeper repair work to eventually occur. My husband and I have been implementing this practice as well, as we have found ourselves caught in a season of resentment with each other. If I can be honest, too, between you all and me, much of our resentment comes from inherited scripts. It also does not help the dynamic that my MIL lives with us. She, in Indian mom fashion, brought all her expectations into our home. Part of what my husband has to learn is building the culture that WE make, regardless of how his mother feels about it. And men, I say this with love. Many of you are okay with upsetting your wife instead of upsetting your family, and it shows.

Let me ask you something, especially for those who are living in their own homes. What’s the worst that can happen if you disappoint your mother? What’s the worst that can happen when you prioritize the family you created instead of the script your mother fused into you?

One thing I have noticed about Indian families (and the same rings true for multiple cultural dynamics) is that internalized patriarchy often lives in women. I have to learn how to not allow my MIL’s pollution and expectations to create nervous system movement in my home and within me. That’s where real exposure therapy comes in. It’s easy for me to shrink because “she’s an elder,” but the roles change when elders move into YOUR home. This is something many elder generations do not want to hear.

It’s why “it’s the culture” or “it’s the religion” is the common statement many use to sort of dead the conversation about their accountability. I don’t buy it, though. It has nothing to do with culture or religion if it is not applied consistently across all members of the family. When incongruences are present, we are often looking at family systems dynamics, scapegoat dynamics, and the inability to admit that those dynamics exist. All of this leads us, as individuals, to chase the approval of our parents.

This is where regression shows up. If you have not healed those wounds, you will end up always chasing the approval of a parent who will never give that approval to you. That’s what happens with the narcissistic need to be needed. Priority becomes their needs, especially when those needs are based on severely outdated scripts. Men will end up enabling the disrespect their mother shows toward their wife without even realizing it. Simply because they are in the regressed frequency. Ladies, we forget the men we love also had to survive their upbringing. This is where grace and compassion is necessary. The internet will not teach this though because it benefits from chaos, dysfunction and emotional cut offs.

That’s why this work is not about blame. It’s about understanding what happens to the nervous system and the mind when we are around our family of origin and all that was sedimented from childhood gets brought back to the surface. Family systems research has long observed that adults often regress into earlier roles, emotional patterns, and attachment behaviors when interacting with their family of origin (Bowen, 1978). In other words, highly capable adults can suddenly find themselves thinking, feeling, and behaving like much younger versions of themselves when old family dynamics are activated. Trust me this rings true even for me.

Through the joy experiment, my husband and I realized that physical activity through recreational sports brings us joy. I am competitive. 🤭 So whooping his A** in a recreational activity feels very satisfying as a regulation tool. 🤣

UNTIL NEXT TIME...

Your assignment is simple. Continue the joy experiment.

Collect data.

Observe your nervous system.

Notice where resentment shows up.
Notice where resistance shows up.
Notice where you want to turn around.
Notice where you want to quit.
Notice where you want to prove the hypothesis wrong.

Most importantly, notice what happens when you choose to participate anyway.

When we do this work we must understand.. Savannah!! Are you listening 🤭 The goal is not perfection.

The goal is observation.

The goal is collecting evidence.

The goal is becoming curious about your own patterns rather than automatically believing them. As the Safari continues, there will be additional stops, side quests, field observations, and a few surprise tools along the way. If you see the 🖍️ emoji, pay attention. It means we’re adding a new skill to the crayon box. For now, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. If something stings, activates, irritates, or challenges you, don’t panic.

Collect the data.

The Safari has officially begun.

See you all out there!

And again.

From the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being here, thank you for being heart open to the work. Because connection is what humanity needs, not division.

As always come as you are where you are. 🫶🏽

Remember knowledge is power ignorance is a choice.

References

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. International Universities Press.

Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Spark, G. M. (1973). Invisible loyalties: Reciprocity in intergenerational family therapy. Harper & Row.

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.

Cozolino, L. (2014). The neuroscience of human relationships: Attachment and the developing social brain (2nd ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Viking.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown Publishers.

Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. Viking.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Lerner, H. G. (1985). The dance of anger: A woman’s guide to changing the patterns of intimate relationships. Harper & Row.

Perry, B. D., & Winfrey, O. (2021). What happened to you?: Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Flatiron Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Satir, V. (1983). Conjoint family therapy (3rd ed.). Science and Behavior Books.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Welwood, J. (2000). Toward a psychology of awakening: Buddhism, psychotherapy, and the path of personal and spiritual transformation. Shambhala Publications.

Extended Reading

For those who wish to go deeper down the rabbit hole, I highly recommend the following:

📚 The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
Trauma, nervous system activation, and how the body stores unresolved emotional experiences.

📚 The Polyvagal Theory — Stephen Porges
Understanding safety, connection, threat detection, and the nervous system’s role in relationships.

📚 The Dance of Anger — Harriet Lerner
A foundational exploration of resentment, boundaries, self-abandonment, and overfunctioning.

📚 Family Therapy in Clinical Practice — Murray Bowen
The gold standard for understanding family systems, emotional fusion, differentiation, and inherited relational patterns.

📚 Invisible Loyalties — Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy & Geraldine Spark
An exploration of intergenerational burdens, relational debts, destructive entitlement, and inherited family obligations.

📚 The Neuroscience of Human Relationships — Louis Cozolino
How relationships shape the brain, regulate the nervous system, and influence emotional functioning.

📚 What Happened to You? — Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey
A practical and accessible introduction to trauma-informed understanding and nervous system development.

📚 Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
How cognitive biases, assumptions, and mental shortcuts shape perception and decision-making.

📚 How Emotions Are Made — Lisa Feldman Barrett
A powerful challenge to traditional views of emotion that helps explain why perception is so central to human experience.

🏕️ WELCOME TO THE ROR MAP™

Before you dive in please understand this essay is hands on. It serves as the map through our ROR experience. It is full of Assessment and reflection questions along with the Mission briefing video you will see below. I encourage you all to come back and reassess your scores to see for adjustments and growth.

🧭 Mission Briefing:

🎯 Primary Objective

To investigate whether intentional joy, novelty exposure, movement, and structured compartmentalization can reduce emotional gridlock, interrupt resentment loops, and restore relational flexibility within the nervous system and interpersonal field.

🔬 Proposed Intervention

Repeated exposure to regulated joy, movement, novelty, and intentional emotional shelving may create alternative neural pathways capable of “backdooring” the nervous system out of chronic emotional gridlock and into increased flexibility, safety, and relational resilience.

🧠 Operational Theory

When the nervous system becomes trapped in repetitive conflict cycles, learning itself can become weaponized. In high-arousal states, insight alone is often insufficient for transformation. This project explores whether play, sensory regulation, and embodied participation can soften defensive patterning enough for meaningful rewiring to occur.

🛰️ Research Environment

Participants will observe emotional responses, relational behaviors, cognitive distortions, and nervous system activation patterns across a multi-month experiential field study known as: Rewiring Out of Resentment (ROR)

📂 Participant Role

Each participant acts as both:

• observer,

• and specimen.

The goal is not perfection. No No, we do not do perfection on this corner of the internet.

⚠️ Field Conditions (What to expect)

Participants may encounter:

• discomfort,

• resistance,

• avoidance impulses,

• emotional fatigue,

• cognitive dissonance,

• and heightened defensive responses.

These responses are not considered failure.
They are considered: active field data.

🎒 Recommended Safari Equipment

• Curiosity

• Water (for when that resentment gets spicy and you want to activate into mob mentality behavior🤣)

• Comfortable shoes (For the runners when discomfort hits)

• Reflection journal

• Emotional honesty

• Willingness to stay in the vehicle during activation 😂

  • Willingness to share with the community. (sharing your story through our Advice Column Okay? Now What?, DMs, or the comment section.

  • This adds opportunity to explore actual lived scenarios from those within our shared corner of the internet.

  • You can access previous entries Here.

🚫 Contraband Items (Do not Bring onto the safari)

Please leave behind:

• emotional scorekeeping,

• surveillance of your partner, other, or self.

• doom scrolling during joy activity or intervention implementation.

• “should” language,

• avoidance behaviors or anxiety loops

• substances used to bypass discomfort,

• and the belief that healing should always feel pleasant.

🧪 Select Your Research Environment

❤️ RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT 01

Romantic / Partnership Dynamic

Objective:

To observe how resentment develops within attachment bonds, emotional labor dynamics, conflict cycles, intimacy ruptures, unmet expectations, and nervous system reactivity between romantic partners.

Field Questions:

• What repetitive conflict loop appears most often?

• What behaviors trigger emotional shutdown or activation?

• What emotional need feels unseen or chronically neglected?

• What resentment story do you replay most often?

• What role do you believe you occupy in the relationship?

• What role do you believe your partner occupies?

• What would “repair” realistically require from both parties?

Nervous System Observation:

• Does your body brace around this person?

• Do you anticipate disappointment before interaction?

• Is emotional closeness associated with safety or exhaustion?

• Does joy feel accessible or threatening?

🌿 RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT 02

Family / Friendship / Workplace Dynamic

Objective:

To examine resentment patterns within non-romantic relational systems, including family roles, workplace expectations, social hierarchies, caretaking dynamics, unresolved emotional inheritance, and boundary fatigue.

Field Questions:

• Where do you feel over-relied upon or emotionally depleted?

• What role are you unconsciously performing?

• What emotional burden feels chronically unacknowledged?

• What expectations feel unfair, unequal, or invisible?

• What relational dynamic feels impossible to escape?

System Mapping:

• Is this resentment inherited, modeled, or reinforced culturally?

• Are you operating from guilt, obligation, fear, or resentment?

• Are boundaries present, inconsistent, or absent?

• What behaviors reinforce the loop?

🔥 RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT 03

Individual / Internal Resentment Dynamic

Objective:

To investigate resentment directed toward the self, the past, missed opportunities, identity wounds, grief, shame, perfectionism, burnout, or unresolved emotional narratives.

Field Questions:

• What part of yourself feels abandoned or neglected?

• What internal narrative do you replay most often?

• What are you exhausted from carrying?

• What version of yourself are you grieving?

• What unmet need keeps resurfacing emotionally?

• What emotion feels hardest to release?

Internal System Observation:

• Does rest create guilt?

• Does joy feel earned or unsafe?

• Does stillness increase anxiety?

• Does your nervous system default toward self-criticism?

🧪 ROR BASELINE ASSESSMENT

Participant Intake + Field Readings

Below is the assessment section. This section will provide you with an overall score. Pay attention to Section 4 as the calculation requirements are different. At the end tally up your total to get an idea of where you baseline is before beginning the activity.

🧭 SECTION 1 — EMOTIONAL CLIMATE READINGS

(Relational Atmosphere Assessment)

Rate each statement from:
1 = very low
10 = extremely high

🔢 Emotional Climate Total:

___ / 40

📍 EMOTIONAL CLIMATE INTERPRETATION

0–10

Minimal emotional gridlock detected.

11–20

Mild relational strain present.

21–30

Moderate emotional fatigue and disconnection detected.

31–40

High emotional gridlock likely impacting nervous system regulation and relational flexibility.

🏃 SECTION 2 — ESCAPE & AVOIDANCE PATTERNS

(Withdrawal + Fantasy Readings)

🔢 Escape/Avoidance Total:

___ / 30

📍 ESCAPE PATTERN INTERPRETATION

0–10

Low withdrawal patterning detected.

11–20

Moderate emotional avoidance present.

21–30

High emotional disengagement and survival-based distancing detected.

⚡ SECTION 3 — NERVOUS SYSTEM ACTIVATION

(Physiological Reactivity Readings)

🔢 Nervous System Total:

___ / 30

📍 NERVOUS SYSTEM INTERPRETATION

0–10

Relatively regulated nervous system state.

11–20

Moderate activation patterns detected.

21–30

High-arousal nervous system state likely contributing to resentment looping and emotional rigidity.

🧠 SECTION 4 — WILLINGNESS & PARTICIPATION

(Experimental Readiness Assessment)

🧪 Resistance Conversion Formula

10 - your resistance score = adjusted participation score

🧪 Example Calculation

Original Scores

• Willingness to Participate = 8

• Hopefulness About Change = 8

• Resistance Toward Process = 5

⚙️ Resistance Conversion Formula

Because resistance measures protective activation rather than openness, we reverse the score:

Formula:

10 - Resistance Score (5) = Adjusted Resistance Score (5)

So:

10 - 5 = 5

example score: ✅ Adjusted Resistance Score = 5 then I take my Willingness score and hopefulness score (8+8+5=21) look below the image for the total Participation score. Then review the interpretation in the section below. A score of 21 falls under High willingness.

🔢 Participation Capacity Total:

21 / 30

📍 PARTICIPATION INTERPRETATION

0–10

Low readiness for emotional experimentation.

11–20

Moderate openness with protective hesitation.

21–30

High willingness for participation, experimentation, and nervous system flexibility.

🛰️ OVERALL FIELD CONDITIONS (scores from section 1-3 only!)

This score measures the current level of:

• emotional gridlock,

• resentment looping,

• nervous system strain,

• and relational fatigue present within the system.

• Add together the totals from:

  • SECTION 1 — Emotional Climate

  • SECTION 2 — Fantasy / Escape / Avoidance

  • SECTION 3 — Nervous System State

  ⚠️ DO NOT include: Section 4

🌿 0–35

Low emotional gridlock currently detected.

🌤️ 36–65

Moderate resentment looping and nervous system strain present.

🌧️ 66–95

High emotional gridlock and relational fatigue detected.

⛈️ 96–130

🔬 What Higher Scores Mean

Higher scores may indicate:

• increased emotional activation,

• chronic resentment looping,

• relational exhaustion,

• nervous system rigidity,

• and decreased access to play, flexibility, or co-regulation.

Lower scores may indicate:

• greater emotional flexibility,

• increased nervous system safety,

• and improved access to connection and regulation.

⚠️ ROR FIELD DISCLAIMER

This assessment is not diagnostic. It is not pass or fail.

It is designed to:

• increase awareness,

• observe relational patterns,

• identify nervous system strain,

• and track emotional flexibility over time.

The goal is observation. Collect data and retake the assessment every 30 days.

Open Reflection

• What is the very first memory, hurt, or dynamic that comes to mind when you think about resentment?

• What do you fear would happen if resentment softened?

• What feels hardest about choosing joy right now?

• What activity immediately triggered resistance in you and why?

• What narratives showed up when thinking about trying this protocol?

• Does part of you believe joy with your partner is unsafe, temporary, embarrassing, pointless, or undeserved?

• What emotional “evidence” has your nervous system been rehearsing most?

• What would it feel like to stop monitoring the relationship for a moment and simply experience it?

• Have you become more practiced at protection than connection?

Below is a list of activities to help you get started.

Free or Low Cost Activities

• Neighborhood walks

• Hiking trails

• Basketball at a local park

• Pickleball courts

• Board games

• Card games

• YouTube dance classes

• Stretching together

• Sunset drives

• Picnics

• Farmers markets

• Window shopping

• Community events

• Library events

• Public concerts

• Bike rides

• Watching the stars

• Cooking together

• Watching a comedy special

• Nature trails

• Beach or lake walks

• Home paint nights

• Video games

• Trivia nights

Paid Activities

• Arcades

• Bowling

• Escape rooms

• Comedy shows

• Concerts

• Recreational sports leagues

• Mini golf

• Pottery classes

• Painting classes

• Dance lessons

• Axe throwing

• Sporting events

• Museums

• Botanical gardens

• Kayaking

• Paddle boarding

• Yoga classes

• Couples massages

• Cooking classes

Important Reminder

The goal of the activity is NOT to force deep conversations.

The goal is:

• shared attention

• movement

• nervous system interruption

• novelty

• presence

• laughter

• reconnection through experience

Awkwardness is okay.

Silence is okay.

Resistance is expected.

You are not failing because discomfort shows up.

You are rewiring.

And rewiring requires repetition.

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🗺️ROR MAP Glossary

(This map is your central navigation hub for the Rewiring Out of Resentment™ journey.)

Each numbered stop represents a major essay, lesson, experiment, or nervous system checkpoint along the main road of the series.

Along the way, you’ll also encounter:

• 🧪 Side Quests — deeper explorations into culture, conditioning, attachment, resentment origins, family systems, and perception

• 🖍️ Tool Drops — practical nervous system tools, breathwork exercises, regulation strategies, and “crayons” for your toolbox

• 📍 Checkpoints — reflection prompts, experiments, and participation updates

• 🎒 Field Notes — community observations, collected data, and shared experiences from fellow travelers

🧭 The Safari Exists Across Multiple Terrains

The main Rewiring Out of Resentment™ safari lives inside the:

• 📚 Substack essays

• 🎥 Longform YouTube videos

This is where the deeper theories, reflections, tools, side quests, and nervous system experiments are fully explored.

📱 Shortform Content (IG + TikTok)

The shortform content is designed to:

• make you think,

• react,

• feel,

• question,

• and reflect.

These clips are intentional nervous system interruptions meant to expand perception and pull you deeper into the essays and longform discussions.

🎙️ Podcast / Audio Reflections

The podcast space is more casual and conversational.

Episodes may pull from:

• community experiences,

• case-study style reflections,

• relational dynamics,

• cultural observations,

• and personal transparency.

Think: campfire reflections after the safari. Yaay cozy and fun  🤗

🗾The Map Begins here.

(Due to limited space this may end up being a link if we reach character capacity 🫣)

1. Orientation: (You’re in it 😉)

2. ROR //Stop 1: Next

3. TBA

4. TBA

5. TBA

Wheeew,

You’ve officially been initiated into the experiment.👏🏽

The joy activity can begin at any time. You do not need to wait for the next stop to start collecting data. Your participation is the research. Every walk, pause, playful moment, nervous system interruption, or act of intentional compartmentalization becomes part of the field study. I am engaging in the same activity and so is my husband 🤭

Throughout the next couple months of this journey, you’ll notice “side quests” and “side missions” appear across essays, podcasts, short-form videos, and discussions. These are intentional. Resentment does not only live in romantic relationships. It lives in family systems, workplaces, gender roles, cultural conditioning, grief, identity, expectations, power dynamics, inherited narratives, and survival adaptations. This journey is designed to stretch our capacity for nuance while examining how resentment spreads across multiple relational fields.

Relationships are the hook.

NEXT STOP:

🦠 ROR //STOP 1 — The Infection Model

Next week, we begin exploring resentment through the lens of an infection model.

We will examine:

• how resentment forms,

• the emotional environments that allow it to spread,

• the nervous system conditions that sustain it,

• and how emotional “leakage” impacts the people around us.

This stop will also introduce several foundational ROR concepts, including:

• emotional gridlock,

• energy expenditure,

• emotional contamination,

• protective adaptations,

• and the beginning stages of “gloving up” before entering emotionally charged environments.

With this work the goal is always observation.
We are learning how to identify the conditions that keep resentment alive.

Questions, reflections, reactions, and observations can be shared in the comments, DMs, podcast submissions, or community spaces throughout the week. Many of those discussions will shape future side quests, podcast conversations, and upcoming stops along the trail.

The safari has officially begun.

You have been release into the wild 🤪

I will see y’all out there!

—Come as you are, where you are.

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How many of you are navigating or have navigated a relationship where resentment built up over time so much so that — the gap got too big to repair?

The more I work with couples within all frequencies of conflict levels, the more I realize just how much this work is all rooted in the same emotional frequencies. Remember those Tron highways I have mentioned? Yeah, well— many of us are frequent flyers on the chaos highway. So much so that in our relationships, the amount of dismissiveness, defensiveness, contempt, disrespect, and stonewalling makes many feel like roommates. So close but feeling so far away. This has become normalized as well.

What I also seem to have noticed is, us pesky little humans are so unique in the way in which we avoid the shadow within. The result of this avoidance impacts the filtration system of our minds, which has been stuck in the resentment loop for so long it has disoriented the filtration system. What this means is, what you are taking in from the environment has been contaminated. Contaminated narratives must be named, but how can they be named if we as individuals do not know they are contaminated to begin with?

Couples can maintain the dance of anger, conflict, and disconnect long enough because the level of frustration towards each other is high but not high enough for them to leave…. just yet.

What does that tell you?

I believe many do not leave despite tensions being high for a long time because we really don’t want to walk away from the marriage. So, we must get very clear on the why…

Do you not want to walk away because you are scared? Or do you not want to walk away because you have hope?

What happens if you know that nothing will change with your partner, yet you still stay?

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Now, reflect on the last time you and your partner or whoever this other person is for you. It can even be a family member or even a friend. You can apply this to whoever the role is but for the sake of this discussion let’s focus romantic relationships. Now, for couples in high conflict or high level of disconnect, have you tried going out to a date? Doing something fun?

Or do you argue on the way there?

Or while you are there?

Or even the night fore you get there?

Reflect on the last time you both laughed together.

I am convinced this is the nervous systems anticipatory system live at work. Since the duo has been in the cyclical dynamic for so long the resentment spreads fast like mold. Infecting the connection creating further disconnection between the couple. How can you get any skills used, any listening & understanding to occur when couples just want to rehash their version of the marital tension. Sometimes it feels absolutely impossible to imagine joy, laughter, fun— in seasons or cycles of disconnect and resentment.

BUT…

What if you interrupted the whole thing with — fun?

Sounds weird right? But not just “plan a date” fun by going to eat at yet another restaurant. I mean something intentional where you may even have to interact with other people. It can be a concert, comedy show, sporting event, bbq, community event, recreational activity. Anything that can get you and your partner out of the house, in a new environment, engaging in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the marriage and the problems or discussions of having them.

Just fun.

Ladies, you still with me?

I know this seems difficult. Especially because this falls inline with one of the natural abilities I believe men have access to the most.

The ability to compartmentalize, and ladies, this is a skill we could really develop.

To start this plan we mutually think of “for how long?”

Now, the ideal goal would be to plan for 3 consecutive days, for an initiation jumpstart period, before implementing the weekly goal. The 3 day consecutive practice assists the nervous system’s anticipatory threat system for the change in behavior of the couple. Otherwise the amygdala, which doesn’t have eyes, will grow suspicious of the changed behavior because it has grown use to the storms of chaos. So when one person or both people in the couple decide to activate this activity of joy by picking something to do and doing it, the amygdala — IT WILL— send you thoughts or beliefs to get you to doubt joy being something you can experience or even achieve together.

That’s the lie.

It is very important that when this doubt shows up, you are ready and on the lookout. It’s not going to occur just in you, it will occur in your partner. Since many couples are attuned to the stress responses of each other. You will pick it up from your partner especially for those who are highly attuned to their partners stress responses. You will be able to feel the distortion narratives are impacting them the same way they can feel that shift radiating off of you. Key behaviors to look for when this arises are: nitpicking, managing, complaining, hovering, getting an attitude, contempt, finding something to argue about as a means to stall or abort the mission. These are resistance systems. The nervous system uses these to pull the couple back into their conflict gridlock dance.

This is how we stay stuck in the dance.

It takes one to be willing to step out…

When you are ready and prepared for what will and might happen for you during this activity, you will be equipped to handle the doubt that comes before the somatic memory activates within the body. Once the bodies somatic interpretation turns on it brings on that activated sensation making it a lot more difficult to push against that level of discomfort and continue the work without caving into a fight.

This work is all about building the resiliency to discomfort. Let’s work smarter—not harder, and make that resistance as small as we can.

If you cannot get this done in 3 consecutive days, then try it on the days you can. But it starts with a plan!

One thing I tell myself daily is.

Decide before the week starts what the activity will be and what days and times the couple (you and your partner) will do it.

Then commit to showing up.

The key here is to give the couples joint brain and nervous system a shiny new silver toy to look at. This can even be board games, pool games if you are lucky to have a pool at home, or even video games. You can even call people and make it a social gathering. Yes, it means actually getting involved and doing something intentionally. All of this guides you out of the mind and into the present through activity. When it’s outside of itself, it cannot loop in the self-destruction of distortions, meaning-making, or catastrophizing.

Something I am really learning about myself within my own marriage is just how much my nervous system resists repair because it either:

1. Doesn’t trust it or

2. Doesn’t think the change will last.

Such a positive mindset to hold right? That’s a side effect of the resentment infection especially when it’s chronic.

What I see often what I hand the system a strategy:

“already tried it, and it just made it xyz____”

“S/he won’t____ I know him/her”

“It won’t last more than 2 weeks, after S/he goes right back…”

“It’s not going to matter anyways…”

Fortune tellers yeah?

These are also distortions. You won’t be able to see any change in your future when you are digging up images of the past. Your emotional frequency has built up resentment in it. The only way to truly let go of resentment in order to do this activity is to literally put it down. If you don’t know how to do that metaphorically speaking, then write all that you resent about your partner on paper and literally hold it in your hand.

Go on...

Write it out, pen to paper.

Hold that paper in your hand.

Fold it up.

Date it.

Now, before each activity, you pick this folded up paper, or keep it flat, hold it, and state the following out loud or make up your own variation.

Then put it down.

Get a nice little spot for it if you really want to make this practice your own. Or simply leave it in a file, folder, whatever it is but have that physical piece of paper.

This can serve as an anchoring practice for your mind to have something to physically do. Pick up the resentments (on paper— put down the resentments, put down the paper) For those of you like me, who might struggle with abstract forms of letting go. You can even go as far to getting a small journal for this and each time, write it down before the activity as a ritualistic release of the resentment before proceeding with the joy activity. This is very intentional work.

Honestly, If we as humans really look at ourselves and our relationship. Can we be honest with ourselves? We aren’t really trying at all. We are sampling.

Sampling strategies to see which gives us the immediate feedback loop we need instead of building a new system that involves consistency.

Sampling intellect and where to regurgitate it.

Sampling “skills” just to say they didn’t work.

Sampling anything we can to support our stagnation.

We can’t stand when our partners are on “their best behavior” for 2 weeks and then it goes right back to how it was.

But did anyone rehearse a different option? Did you commute to the interaction rehearsing in your mind the best possible outcome, or just the same outcome you are used to because you “know them and this is just how it is?”I know many think this mind-work stuff is cliché, but just look at how addicted our society has gotten to technology just within the last six years. (Counting since the 2020 isolation times, which is a key data point.) That’s how profound of an impact the digital world has on us, yet we take that power and its level to impact connection for granted.

Think about all the information running through our minds daily. We don’t even have to leave our homes to be told how our lives should be and our relationships should look. Instead, we take a daily psychological beating from the cozy comfort of our own couches and beds—completely willingly.

At this point, we basically volunteer as tribute.

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Now, Lets talk steps.

In order to rewire to reconnection we ALL must learn to build your resistance to discomfort. You have to be willing to see how much discomfort shows up for the relationship without caving to resist the discomfort. What I mean by this is. Some times in this work it means taking the first step out of the loop and just diverting the attention to an olive branch, apology, invitation, a meal. Something that says

Resentment is such a tricky emotion that it is hard to bypass it regardless and still be loving, kind, affectionate, do the “wife” or “husband” duties.

If your thoughts come up with “but…why should I…??”

That’s a die off symptoms of exiting the loop. When we exit the loop of resentment we start to have die off symptoms.

This is egoic pollution. This is the fog clouding up the lens to the filtration system. We have to push through and do it anyways, the same way you smize through your teeth at someone in your workplace. You do it anyways. The way you still give your kids, some of them very disrespectful to you, that unconditional love anyways. So the muscle is there. The choice to use it with your partner is your own.

This is going to be an open tab discussion (series) where we first unpack this slowly and intentionally. I will share my insights and even transparencies of navigating some of these complexities myself. At the end of each essay, there will be reflective questions for you to explore further. I am hoping for this to be a guided experience so we can all share what each other is going through and how you navigate the discomfort of resisting joy for a greater cause—repair in the marriage.

Ready?

Directions

Your goal is to schedule and complete a chosen activity ideally three days in a row for an initiation jumpstart period, which helps prepare your nervous system’s anticipatory threat system for the change in behavior. If consecutive days are not possible, schedule the activity on the days you can, but decide on the specific activity, days, and times before the week begins. Choose a physical activity or bodily movement such as walking, hiking, bike riding, or playing sports—to get your body moving and your brain outside of itself. To shift your brain’s focus further, you can invite friends, visit a recreation center, or join a local group. Once the plan is set, you must commit completely to showing up.

The Rules

1. Commit to showing up and achieving the completion of the activity. If you signed your kid up for a season of sports and on the second practice they wanted to quit, would you allow that? We finish what we start. The key here is to get the emotional field cleared from the resentment fog so you can see the emotional climate from a clean state rather than a tainted one.

2. Go in with an open mind and a willingness to work on what is happening within you, not your partner. This is an exposure therapy portal to your own inability to face fun or joy without the mind turning it negative.

3. Practice active redirection. When your mind wants to loop you back into resentment narratives, you must consciously redirect yourself back to the present moment/ activity.

4. Journal your data and thoughts. Use your journal as a tool to hold your version of the data so it is accurate to the moment and not exaggerated by a future heightened state.

5. Work on sitting in silence if you have nothing to say to each other, instead of bringing up past conflicts just to fill up the space.

6. Track your actual data so it does not get lost. Score your mood on a scale of 1 to 10 (the higher the better) both before and after the activity. Reflect on your experience and save this information so you have real data to compare later, rather than relying on memories enhanced by confirmation bias.

7. Create a code work such as “TIME OUT” if a door was opened and the hallway is heading for conflict. Continue on to the activity.

8. If you are faith based, spiritual based. These are fantastic opportunities to call in the word, your higher power, or set an intention. Great ways to redirect the mind.

Here is Round 1 of Reflection Prompts.

1. What emotional payoff might you secretly be receiving from staying emotionally guarded?

2. What is holding on to resentment protecting you from? Does resentment protect you from vulnerability, disappointment, grief, rejection, surrender, softness, or accountability?

3. Can you remember a time when you weren’t ‘monitoring’ your partner? What else could you be doing with that time?

4. What “evidence” has your nervous system been collecting to confirm your resentment story? Now ask yourself: What evidence has it been filtering out?

5. If joy, play, novelty, affection, movement, laughter, or physical closeness returned to the relationship tomorrow… would your nervous system trust it?

   Or would part of you immediately prepare for its disappearance?

   Why?

6. Have you become more emotionally committed to being understood… than to creating connection?

The key with this mission of adding joy back into the relational field of the couple is to get the field cleared from the resentment fog. That way the couple can see the emotional climate clearly from a clean state rather than a tainted one 🫶🏽.

Good Ol’ discomfort.

How many of us know what that feels like? It’a what we all collectively avoid the most. In our relationships, families, even in the workplace.

In the essay I wrote we discussed the commute calibration. How on our commute to situations we mentally rehearse the scene before even entering the field. You can find that essay below.

These days specially lately, I see our dopamine nation and the nervous systems within it. You see, even with myself right now I am full of discomfort. I want to give up, not do anything, just sleep and do nothing. Anyone else feel that way?

This past month has been a lot for many of us. The discomfort that lives in what is rough to deal with.

We are living in a collective state of preemptive embodiment and since it’s the base line for functioning for many of us. It’s almost normalized at this point. It’s a nervous system loop where we carry the storm into the room before we’ve even turned the knob and walked in. We could be rehearsing it in bed the night before, on the way to work, predicting what the outcome will be so we can “stay ready.” Whether it’s a political argument on the timeline, a walk down the hallway to speak to your teen, or a partner longing for connection, we are witnessing a massive, multi-generational failure to metabolize discomfort. This then creates a leakage and you see this avoidance of discomfort show up in many environments.

When we don’t have the skills to process our own guilt or shame, we displace it. We outsource it to our children, our partners, and our algorithms. This is the skipped highway exit of emotional development, and it’s why we keep reliving the same chaos. I am convinced, that many have experienced arrested development in a lot of areas. Due to the messaging and modeling growing up as well as the internalized beliefs we refuse to let go of. Let’s zoom out— When I reflect on arrested development I think of what Dr. Amen stated “ parents unconsciously rob their child of self-esteem to build their own.” lately this has been very true. Not out of malice but out of the desire to not “feel bad.” When you avoid feeling bad at the cost of your parenting, the cost of your professionalism, and your own self-respect. We end up creating a new version of the same issue many of us grew up in or even survived.

How Our Systems Get Hijacked

To really get why we’re feeling so full of discomfort, we have to look at how our biology is actually being hijacked by the world we live in. It’s not just “in our heads”—it’s a physiological response to a few key things happening in our bodies and our histories. We are physically exhausted from “staying ready” which is the hypervigilence that gives us a false sense of safety. What I call “carrying the storm into the room” this is what neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) calls Predictive Interoception Coding. Our brains aren’t just living in the present; they are constantly guessing what’s next based on every past stressor we’ve ever faced. When we live in that loop of predicting the worst to protect ourselves, we rack up a high Allostatic Load. This is the literal wear and tear on our brains and bodies from chronic stress. We aren’t just “tired” or “exhausted” our systems are physically depleted from trying to solve problems that haven’t even happened yet(McEwen, 2005).

Our “dopamine nation” has lowered our tolerance for the hard stuff. We’ve become so used to outsourcing our feelings to algorithms and quick fixes that we are losing our affect tolerance, which is our actual ability to sit with a hard emotion. As Dr. Anna Lembke (2021) explains in her research on the pleasure-pain balance, when we over-indulge in high-dopamine distractions to avoid feeling bad, our brain counter-regulates by tipping us further toward the “pain” side. This lowers our affect tolerance, making everyday stressors feel unbearable.

The “leakage” is a family legacy. That “leakage” I mentioned where we displace our shame onto our kids or partners—is a core part of Family Systems Theory. When we haven’t reached a high level of Differentiation of Self, we can’t regulate our own internal anxiety. So, we engage in a Family Projection Process: we take our unmetabolized discomfort and unconsciously hand it over to the people we love. (nitpicking, complaining, hovering, trying to “help”, etc) This creates a multigenerational loop where the next generation inherits a nervous system that is already primed for a storm they didn’t even start.

Let’s go on a journey through examples of how we displace the discomfort and how that becomes a cycle.

🛺💨

The Parent Glitch: Discomfort as Tradition

A boundary is not a threat, but to a parent without emotional endurance and a severe level of enmeshment, the narcissistic need to be needed, or simply the inability to curate their own life outside of the kids. Boundaries feel like an existential rejection. They haven’t finished the “highway” of their own development, so when they hit a boundary, they glitch.

Ever felt the heat of those guilt trips, weaponized incompetence, or forms of learned helplessness before? Yup, these are strategies — often unconscious— that gives us the exit to displace the hot potato of discomfort. All while avoiding the vulnerability necessary to ask for what we need.

Could you imagine what it would feel like for you to be on the receiving end of vulnerability like this?

When we understand much of this behavior isn’t malicious and realize it is just a lack of skills—those pesky crayons some of us never got—we can see the cycle more clearly. They reach for the only crayons they have to color that life experience with: passive-aggression, silent treatments, and coercive manipulation disguised as “family loyalty.” This is nervous system activation hiding under the umbrella of tradition, culture, and even faith. When a parent cannot bridge the repair because their ego refuses the shame of acknowledgment, they dodge accountability and hand the emotional burden to their child instead.

This process, often described as a failure of interactive repair, forces the child to adopt compensatory strategies to maintain the attachment bond (Schore, 2012). That’s why many of us become people pleasers, or develop dismissive and avoidant attachment styles. This child grows up as an adult who eventually refuses to hold the weight any longer. In family work, this is where emotional cutoff occurs. According to Bowen (1978), emotional cutoff is a common way individuals manage unresolved emotional attachments to their family of origin by physically or emotionally distancing themselves. For many family systems that live off the fear of “what will people think,” this is the last thing the system needs because it draws external attention to the internal dysfunction.

Again, many of us are stuck in egocentric loops where we think everyone is watching and judging us, when it’s really just us hyper-analyzing ourselves. This heightened self-consciousness is often a byproduct of hypervigilance, a state where the nervous system is constantly scanning for social threats to maintain safety (Porges, 2011). The family system is often built on the individual holding what many other family members refuse to hold; that is how the discomfort gets displaced. It’s easier to pass it like a hot potato using covert means that can look like love, care, or inquiry to the naked eye. For those of us attuned to these dynamics, we see it for what it is: control. We would rather pass the heat of discomfort elsewhere than sit and process through it.

Emotional Displacement and the Software of Shame

Unresolved trauma, sibling wounds, and cultural pressures don’t disappear they get displaced. Parents who never dealt with their own abandonment will project those pieces onto their adult kids. Now— get this… For those parents who are so worried about becoming like their parents. Be careful now, you may end up creating a new version of the same problem like I said before simply because you are more concerned with being liked, seen as good, and you don’t want to feel the discomfort of being “mean, assertive, or “like my parents”, etc.

When I say this I say this with love mommas…

TOUGH. LOVE. SAVES. LIVES!!!

It is a bit selfish to prioritize your own discomfort over the need to parent your children. You don’t want to feel bad, so you don’t demand the respect from your children by implementing consequences, following through with what you say and being consistent. Being a yes parent only conditions the child that everyone outside of you will say yes and that there are never natural consequences to their actions. That is not setting your kid, teen, etc up for success. It’s setting you up for comfort.

See what Dr. Amen means when he says that this is where parents rob their children of self-esteem to build their own?

Many moms who overfunction only do so out of their activated survival self (ASS)—a set of behaviors learned as a child that they never unlearned. Now, many moms overdo it out of their own need to soothe feelings of guilt or shame. We often don’t want to feel the discomfort of our own unresolved behaviors or past decisions. You may simply be learning how to be yourself outside of being a mother, wife, father, or husband, but every time you feel guilt for going to the gym, going out, or going on vacation—doing something where you aren’t just prioritizing the kids—you feel bad. That discomfort is an intensity many couples do not want to face, so where do you think it gets displaced? You guessed it: the partner.

When we zoom in on conditioning, we have to look at the internalized patriarchy within the very women we try to measure up to. This internalized patriarchy is also what raised many of our husbands. In clinical terms, this is often linked to gendered socialization and the internal locus of control; while women are often socialized toward communal overfunctioning, men are often conditioned toward agency and compartmentalization (Helgeson, 1994). Many men have the mechanism to prioritize themselves and compartmentalize effectively. Consequently, women who overfunction often meet men they deem as underfunctioning. Boys are mothered in ways girls are not. If you scan your upbringing, you may see that many mothers do not feel they have the same safety to raise their sons with the same emotional expectations, often due to the influence of their own mothers or mother-in-law’s who overshadow their parenting with their sons. In my work with men and couples, the data shows that many men have no problem prioritizing their needs—not necessarily in a selfish way, but through a capacity for compartmentalization. This is a skill many women could learn to adopt, but instead, many activate an external locus of control. Due to the fear that if they actually did compartmentalize they will be “judged".”

This is where women may start demanding, expecting, or even engaging in covert forms of coerciveness to get their needs met. They want their husband to father or husband exactly the way they seem fit. In psychology, an external locus of control is a major clue that nervous system activation is present (Rotter, 1966). Control is the biggest illusion of safety. Women were conditioned to overfunction, especially for men—to cook, clean, and do it all. Many men were never required to provide reciprocity in emotional availability because their mothers were in a state of survival. For those mothers, doing was what dissociated them from their shadows, grief, and trauma.

This overfunctioning provided a loophole for men to simply wait for the woman to lead. Think about how often women meet for brunch or talk in group chats about how unhappy they are and how their husbands don’t do xyz. Yet, when I ask what they want, many just say “effort.” If you cannot pinpoint what effort looks like concretely, you are setting a boobytrap. According to research on adult attachment and communication, vague expectations often lead to a demand-withdraw pattern, leaving the partner in a state of executive freeze because they feel like no matter what they do, they will fail (Gottman, 1994). Ladies, think about your mothers. How often did you feel that nothing you did was good enough? Is it possible you have created that same hurdle for your partner and your children?

See how focusing on what our partners, coworkers, bosses, kids, or family are NOT doing frees us from the necessity of actually facing the discomfort of doing it, learning it, asking for it, or initiating it—whatever that “it” is. Pointing outward frees us from looking within at what we choose to neglect in ourselves.

Let’s do a quick example for “funzies,” and this is a very common one. Let’s say you had goals, dreams, and aspirations for your career, but kids, marriage, and life diverted you off that path. Years later, you never actually started. Where do you think the buildup of that grief goes? It is often channeled into an undercurrent directed at your partner. It’s easier now to get on them for every little thing, giving a nervous system that is addicted to being “bothered” something to feast on—all so you don’t actually have to face the ache of a choice. We have the free will to change our lives in a snap, and that fact alone is daunting. That thought puts the power back in our hands, and that power is the “hot potato” of discomfort we would rather displace.

This dynamic is often described in clinical literature as emotional reactivity within a system. When we cannot manage our own internal distress or “unfinished business,” we engage in what is known as a functional shift, focusing on the perceived inadequacies of others to regulate our own sense of self (Kerr & Bowen, 1988).

One of my favorite challenges is one I often have to use on myself, too. When I want to hyper-focus on my husband and the enmeshed dynamic he has with his mother—feeling the frustration and emotional intensity that comes with a MIL who weaponizes religion, softness, and “doing” to mask manipulation—it’s easy for me to be righteous in my psychological knowledge. But look at the very boundaries we ladies demand our husbands have with their mothers. Look at the relationship with your own parents. Do you talk? Can you communicate boundaries or tell them no? Can you let them know when they are overstepping, or do you ask to get out of things through avoidance and people-pleasing? If the answer is no, you are being a hypocrite, my dear.

I had to look deep into this mirror myself. Our situation is a bit unique since my MIL moved in with us over two years ago, making boundaries very necessary. But when we are caught in our own web of codependency or enmeshment, the inability to say no comes with the very discomfort we do not want to face. We displace it by focusing on what our partner is failing to do as a way to manage our anxiety through an external locus of control.

From a neuroscience perspective, this is a matter of Hebbian plasticity—the principle that “cells that fire together, wire together.” When we consistently fire and wire the neural pathways that focus on lack and external blame, we effectively prune away our ability to perceive agency or gratitude (Hebb, 1949). This displacement cycle becomes a physiological habit; we are conditioning our brains to scan for deficits instead of blessings, reinforcing a state of survival rather than one of growth.

Biology vs. Betrayal

The “half-assed hug” debate is something I notice in many systems, but it also serves as a metaphor for whatever action you want to replace “hugging” with. Let’s look at the emotional authenticity of hugs within families and how a system navigates when someone says no to physical touch. As always, put your gloves on here—it’s time to bring nuance into this discussion. In some families, due to culture, religious beliefs, messaging, and modeling, the idea of affection is seen as a sign of respect.

However, we also live in a society that is conditioning entitlement, and we have to name this. We often think that just because of what we feel, we are entitled to be rude or disrespectful. In reality, agency and body-protective measures have nothing to do with a lack of respect. Respect is becoming a dying art, so let’s just name that.

This is a biological reality. When the nervous system is activated, our perceptual range narrows, and we often interpret neutral cues as hostile. We cannot force a connection when the body is organized for conflict. This state of “neuroception”—the internal process of scanning for safety or threat—dictates whether we are even capable of social engagement (Porges, 2011). With that being said, we also have to acknowledge that many generations before us were conditioned to “grin and bear it,” forcing children to engage with family members who were behaving inappropriately.

The family might even know about the behavior and still force the child to engage because they don’t want to “look bad, feel bad, or make a scene.” What parents do not realize when they engage in this level of dismissive avoidance is the wound they unconsciously create. By protecting yourself from scrutiny, you create a breach of trust between you and the child. Over time, research shows that this lack of “attunement” and “rupture without repair” leads to insecure attachment patterns (Siegel & Hartzell, 2003). This child grows into an adult who may eventually stop engaging with you entirely due to what you refuse to acknowledge.

This is the discomforting consequence of dismissive avoidance in parenting. We are so focused on immediate relief in the now that we don’t think about the long-term future. When our selfish need for comfort overshadows the needs of those we love, we enter the territory of narcissism—a topic I know everyone loves to talk about. In clinical terms, this is often a form of “narcissistic parentification,” where the child is expected to regulate the parent’s ego and social standing at the expense of their own bodily autonomy (Miller, 1981).

The Rupture of Growth

One of the hardest truths to swallow is that development is not a duet; it’s a relay. Just because you have evolved doesn’t mean your partner, parents, or coworkers automatically will. When we deem ourselves morally righteous in what we have learned and demand that the environment meet us there, we slip into a form of narcissism. Demanding that the world change to accommodate our new awareness is not an act of embodiment; it is a retreat into an external locus of control. Where the illusion of safety lives. An internal locus of control, by contrast, is enforced through boundaries: saying no to your kids and providing consequences without trying to soften the sting by picking up their favorite food just because you can’t sit with their anger. In romantic relationships, an internal locus of control means finally doing something for yourself without scanning the environment—the kids, the partner, the “moods”—to find a loophole that lets you out of choosing yourself. Avoiding that choice only leaves you in resentment because you are still trying to outrun discomfort.

For overfunctioning mothers, I truly ask: how altruistic is your care for others if you do not prioritize self-care? Research into family dynamics suggests that chronic overfunctioning is often a compensatory mechanism for high systemic anxiety (Kerr & Bowen, 1988). People-pleasing is actually a form of manipulation because it creates gridlock, triangulation, and unintentional mess due to not being honest with ourselves. It’s the adult equivalent of saying, “Let me ask my mom... sorry, she said no,” when you never actually asked, but you’re also an adult. We throw others into the line of fire to avoid a perceived backlash that we inevitably face anyway. We are so uncomfortable with the truth that we don’t see the ways the mind takes the long way through avoidance and the externalization of blame.

Ladies, zoom in on yourselves for a moment. Do you do for your daughter what you do for your sons? Do you offer your husband the same grace you offer your children? Some of you tolerate disrespect and a lack of responsibility from your children—giving them miles of leash—yet hold your husband to a standard you don’t even hold for yourself. This is the classic discomfort displacement cycle. We tolerate disrespect in one area and toss that “hot potato” of frustration onto our partners because it is easier than facing the aspects of ourselves that feel powerless. Many couples hit what clinical researcher John Gottman (1994) calls “gridlock,” often because they assume their growth should be synchronous. But forcing a partner to behave beyond their current level of emotional development is its own form of control. Real development may require you to walk away from what creates discomfort, or—and this is a big “or”—it may require you to finally face the heat. Instead of running to avoidance, emotional cutoff, or ending a relationship, we can choose to face the urge to overfunction, scan, and overanalyze.

In my work with couples and families, I see how emotional cutoffs have become avoidance loops. It has become easier to avoid than to face the discomfort of being around another human who is messy and unregulated. This is the cycle many relationships are weathering right now, and it continues until someone makes the active choice to step out of the loop. It’s that easy, but it requires a conscious, daily decision to stay in the chair when things get hot.

The “Emotional Stew” and the Narrative Prison

When we can’t sit in our own emotional stew where the muck of shadow, shame, and embarrassment live. We grasp for narratives that make us the righteous victim so we don’t have to face our own agency. The nervous system is a pesky thing; it will have us grasping for God, the kids, or even therapists to validate a version of the story where we are the only one “drowning,” while failing to see that our partner is also self-medicating and imploding.This “righteous narcissism” prevents us from seeing the relational field as it is. True agency is realizing that you don’t need a narrative to justify leaving a dead marriage; the fact that it isn’t working is enough to start inquiring and assessing.Is it me? Is it the patterns of avoiding discomfort that have gotten us here? It takes two to maintain a cyclical dynamic in a relationship. Many cycles occur because, deep down, we benefit from them; they free us from a discomfort hiding somewhere else. This same displacement cycle is happening at the macro level. The internet has become a nervous system exposure lab where people project their parental wounds onto truth-tellers because they are too lazy to do the work of reclaiming their own power.

They bypass and deflect. They attack the mirror instead of looking in it. They demand comfort instead of self-reflection.

In a nation of dopamine addicts, we all get itchy for love-bombing, political movements, and ideologies because they provide relief from discomfort while simultaneously creating an “end of conversation” dismissiveness. In return, the amygdala which has no eyes—categorizes this chaos as home because it is so familiar. We are comfortable in the chaos because it’s what we were born into. Remember the waves I’ve talked about? Many of us were born in the chaos waves of life. We get so used to riding those waves that when we finally get to the calm of the lake, we’re bored.

This tendency to outsource our emotional state to others is often a byproduct of what researchers call emotional contagion, where our nervous systems unconsciously mimic the distress of those around us instead of maintaining an internal baseline (Hatfield et al., 1993). When we seek righteous victimhood, we are often operating from a state of defensive attribution, a cognitive bias where we attribute our failures to external factors to protect our self-esteem from the stew of shame (Shaver, 1970). Furthermore, the “boredom” we feel in the calm of the lake is a physiological reality for those raised in high-stress environments. Clinical studies on the repetition compulsion suggest that the brain may subconsciously seek out familiar chaotic patterns because the neurochemical spike of conflict feels more like vitality than the unfamiliar stillness of safety (Levy, 1998). Commute Calibration serves as a form of top-down regulation, where we use the prefrontal cortex to provide the mental rehearsal necessary to inhibit the amygdala’s reflexive survival responses (Schore, 2012).

Much of this work requires an awareness of that discomfort. It requires Commute Calibration—the art of the practice.This involves practicing calm through mental rehearsal so that when we arrive, we can embody safety. You stop waiting for the other person to change and you become the baseline for yourself, which is true freedom. You stop letting the past write the emotional code. You don’t just manage your emotions; you lead with them.

That was the goal all along right?

Till next time data collector.

Key Points for Integration

• Predictive Processing: The nervous system doesn’t just react to the present; it creates a “mental rehearsal” of the future based on past trauma. This leads to a high allostatic load, where the body stays in a state of “functional freeze” or hypervigilance.

• The Dopamine-Discomfort Loop: Constant engagement with high-reward stimuli (social media, “outsourcing” feelings) lowers our affect tolerance. This makes ordinary life feel physically painful, causing us to avoid necessary developmental growth.

• Family Projection Process: When we cannot regulate our own shame or anxiety, we unconsciously “leak” it onto our partners or children. This is a primary driver of multigenerational trauma.

• External vs. Internal Locus of Control: Real healing requires moving from an external focus (blaming others, demanding they change) to an internal focus (holding boundaries, choosing yourself, and sitting in the “heat” of the moment).

• The Chaos-Homeostasis Connection: For those raised in high-stress systems, the “lake” (safety) feels boring. We may subconsciously sabotage peace because our nervous systems are wired to perceive chaos as “vitality.”

Extended Reading List

For the Neurobiology Enthusiast

• “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk: A foundational text on how trauma is physically stored in the body and nervous system.

• “Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain” by Lisa Feldman Barrett: A shorter, accessible look at how the brain “predicts” your reality rather than just reacting to it.

For the Family Systems Seeker

• “Extraordinary Relationships” by Roberta Gilbert: An excellent introduction to Bowen Family Systems Theory, focusing specifically on differentiation and triangles.

• “The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller: A deep dive into how children adapt to their parents’ unmet emotional needs, often leading to the “overfunctioning” discussed in the essay.

For the “Dopamine Nation” Context

• “Dopamine Nation” by Dr. Anna Lembke: Crucial for understanding why we are collectively losing the ability to tolerate boredom or emotional pain.

• “The Joy of Missing Out” by Tanya Dalton: A practical look at re-centering your life around your own values rather than the “external scan” of productivity and social pressure.

For the Boundary & Self-Work Journey

• “Parenting from the Inside Out” by Daniel J. Siegel and Mary Hartzell: Focuses on how our own childhood histories affect our parenting and how to break the cycle through self-understanding.

• “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman: Offers data-driven insights into the “gridlock” and communication patterns that happen when couples stop growing together.

Reflective Question

As you move from reading to practicing, which area of your life currently feels like the “hottest potato” the place where you are most tempted to focus on others’ failures rather than your own capacity for choice?

References

Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Bowen, M. (1978). Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson.

Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1993). Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96–100.

Hebb, D. O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. Wiley.

Helgeson, V. S. (1994). Relation of agency and communion to well-being: Evidence and explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 412–428.

Kerr, M. E., & Bowen, M. (1988). Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory. W. W. Norton & Company.

Lembke, A. (2021). Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Dutton.

Levy, M. S. (1998). A conceptualization of the repetition compulsion. Psychiatry, 61(1), 45–53.

McEwen, B. S. (2005). Stressed or stressed out: What is the difference? Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 30(5), 315–318.

Miller, A. (1981). The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Basic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28.

Schore, A. N. (2012). The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Shaver, K. G. (1970). Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14(2), 101–113.

Siegel, D. J., & Hartzell, M. (2003). Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive. TarcherPerigee.

Data Collectors,

Have you ever stopped to think about the every day ways we don’t see how we place ourselves in the line of fire? Every time we resist the nuance to humanity. The messiness, the free will of individuality and in doing so we miss ourselves.

We miss the moments that can bond us, unite us, imprint us with more core memories. But, as long as we stay distracted by the VECNA energy, the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) of our minds it will continue to infiltrate our perception. That’s why having access to very superficial forms of dopamine, such as validation by someone else vibrating at the same frequency as you in the comment section, or a video with millions of views that discusses the same trauma wound, man/woman bashing, and that made us feel seen. This is the sickness, we don’t realize how dangerous having something in own hands where instead of sitting with the very thoughts we are in an endless loops of processing—everything. Is that not like the bell Pavlov used to condition the dogs? Over time that consistent behavior of allowing what’s in our minds to essentially choke hold ourselves. Many of us are talking to ourselves in our own heads more than we are with other people. We sit with the same mental images of a story. Your version. Nuance to a nervous system that vulnerable will see anything that is different as a dismissal of their version. The more I observe human behavior, the more I see how drowning in our suffering story serves no one— not even ourselves. We keep ourselves in a prison needing everyone to validate our version of the pain not seeing the selfishness behind how that robs others of their version—now another loops begins.

Yet, many don’t see it.

You can’t when you are in it. That’s the point of Napoleons Hills Book “Outwitting The Devil.” When you are drifting you are lost to the path of getting back in alignment with yourself.

Many of us know what we need to do. It’s the doing of it that gets really hard. So we start listing all the disorders, chronic issues, and systemic injustices to fill the gap of the doing not realizing that listing them all keeps the wounds fresh in your mind and just becomes yet (insert DJ Khaled voice) another loop of justifications for our behavior or lack of.

We get in our own way and we know it.

Remember, we all individually make up the people. If the world is a mess—well, it’s made up of—the people. The systems that have caused harm we the people are also apart of.

Think about it…

It’s your legal counsel and their team, the micro aggressions that live between the jury and the judge or even the judge and the lawyer working your case. The professor and the student. The veteran employee and the new hire with fresh knowledge and a highly supported approach. We are afraid of being “left behind”or “replaced” so anyone that feels like a threat to us is then automatically projected onto as if they are. Despite the amygdala forgetting we are at work (it doesn’t have eyes so it is counting on us and our differentiation to guide it to truth), we do not see the repercussions of our beef with people at work and how it impacts our work performance and how that performance can impact customer, client, patient, students, etc.

Let’s play with an example here ok. I want us to look at how we—the people—actually build the "broken systems" we complain about. It doesn’t always look like a big, formal policy that causes harm; usually, it’s just unaddressed human leakage that no one feels safe to name or even address.

Characters: Violet the customer, client, patient, what ever floats your boat.

Staff member: A

Staff member: B

Notice how you know nothing about A & B, not their roles, job description, backgrounds, gender, age, none of it—because it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about those identities and labels it’s about the relational space and what happens within it when emotional energy arises.

Let’s pretend this case with violet really triggers some thing inside staff member A, and Staff member B is taking that emotional leakage from A, personal and as a result their beef essentially causes Violet to lose out on intentional effort and the outcome she needed for the services these staff members are suppose to provide her. Ever had work stress that caused insomnia, anxiety, xyz? Ever look at how your work performance gets neglected? In Violet’s case she loses out, due to a dynamic that has nothing to do with Violet at all. So forms get bypassed, deadlines get missed, because the staff are in a stress response due to each other. Their unhealed, unaddressed dynamics costs violet her custody situation, or her health situation, or xyz. This is how we the people make up the very systems we complain about or deem as “not good.” Look at the reenactments that show up in the workplaces. Look how personal bias, workplace conflicts, spill into the work itself often causing death in some environments.

It has nothing to do with what our nervous system is perceiving. Yet our perception dictates how we move through the world. We take it out on the call line workers, the custodians that keep our environments clean, the truck drivers we cut off on the highway because we are impatient but forget they are the ones that deliver our goods.

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How many of you thought immediately after reading that “well the truck drivers…"?”

See, as if whatever we say within the rebuttal justifies. We have become a society of graspers. Grasping for what we can to justify harm done to us or others in our “tribe.”

We do it even in the smallest ways. Especially under stress, especially towards our loved ones. Let’s look close in the micro.

Maybe we are in a streak of not getting good sleep, maybe our back is hurting, we are on our menstrual cycle, we are stretched thin because of outside demands, kids, finances, xyz. Whatever it is. We each get pulled emotionally into emotional states that leave us feeling moody, irritable, apathetic, angry, etc. The safety to speak is about having the safety to be in moods other than moods that are deemed “socially polite” that customer service effort gets to come off like a bra after a long day. 🤭

That type of relief but with emotions, we get to come as we are where we are. We can have RBF without our partner thinking we are mad at them. We don’t have to walk on eggshells with our emotional hygiene especially on dirty days. We all have dirty days.

That’s the point isn’t it? We must be accountable of those dirty days and own them, name them, give grace to ourselves, our partners, our family for being in an emotionally dirty day..

When I work with couples. We always have compassion for the children when they cry, are moody, have tantrums, even when they hit. We can excuse it because “they are tired, hungry, sick, etc. However, when are partner is cranky, snappy, or in mood we deem that as unacceptable. We don’t come with the same grace. Remember the child in us didn’t just vanish, it got taller, and hidden under the stress of adulthood. That child comes out effortlessly when we give ourselves moments of joy. But that’s a different topic. Can you see how we have the ability to give the patience, yet choose not to because “well he’s an adult, she is grown, I shouldn’t have to.”

Who said?

Humanity is messy, moody, and irritating at times— scratch that— most of the time.

We all have an emotional battery that starts to die and the emotional frequency shifts. We forget that shift is felt externally. Often times discharged on the kids or our partner. People around us. We can see this at scale in the macro, especially online.

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I have been making it a point to get back on track with my spiritual routine. Prayer, meditation, gratitude. Most important— physical movement and mobility. I think maybe as I almost enter my 35th level of life in exactly 2 months today actually (July 3rd baby) 🥳

The importance of body movement though is something I can’t take for granted. It’s very easy to as well.

Anyways, my point. I don’t know about any of y’all but these last few months have draaaagggggeeeeeed my ass. 😮‍💨 Tested me in ways that were severely uncomfortable. I also feel a shift on social media. More people are waking up to the upside down reversal. We can clearly see how many are prioritizing follow count over professional ethics, accountability, sequential structure, but please honeybees. Zoom out farther than that.

The cognitive conditioning to our neural pathways. We are already a sick and mentally unwell society. We are plugged in like VECNA’s tentacle things — to the screens. We drink and drink what the algorithm tells us as well as the news outlets. We believe anything we see even if we didn’t see it with our own eyes, and even if we know that Ai exists.

Differentiation is not just a necessary skill it may just end up becoming a survival skill necessary for navigating the new world that is trying to develop. Cognitve shortcuts straight to labeling, diagnosing, and bypassing— to justify ourselves or at least distract attention from the truth. Our inability to allow others outside of ourselves their truths because we aren’t secure in our own. We can label ourselves experts just because we decided to and we have the “followers” to justify it.

Can’t we see though. The farther we get away from community. The farther we stay othering everyone around us to protect ourselves from — ourselves. The more we get in our own way. Think about it, in reality when true crisis occurs, natural disasters, etc, I have seen people jump into help, rescue, xyz. Regardless of the very things we use to divide. Doesn’t that show you how it’s all ego noise? Over time the work gets more clear. The ability to differentiate, hold nuance and still stay rooted in yourself. Exposing self to differences allows you the ability to get closer to your own values. You get to disagree and still—be.

Wild concept am I right?

Don’t worry, I am in practice with you all too!

This month we explore concepts that we can actually try. Start putting into practice strategies to really work on pause. If we don’t know where to begin then let’s just start with the art of doing and saying nothing at all.

Something I know I too can work on🤭

Till next time data collectors.

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I had to sit with The Why…

This is for me.

It’s my guardrails; it’s what holds me accountable.

I realize I show up for others as fuel for myself. Call it survival blueprint? It’s why some of us panic—we never like to be late.. (shiiii my nervous system turns on if it is late to be early🤣) I have an academic schema—which is essentially a mental blueprint we use to organize our lives (Piaget, 1952). I live on that structure. Rigid. Panicky. Hyper-vigilant of time and routine. That kept me balanced and aligned. It was my baseline for functioning. I felt backed and structured by the guardrails of academic due dates and syllabi. A recipe that seemed to keep me grounded. After graduation.

Not only did I lose that structure. I Costco Styled life: graduated grad school, got married, moved across the country. Left my beloved California.

The framework fell apart. Savannah drifted, fumbling in a panic of symptoms that were masked by college—learning that I was willing to give my best to other people’s business but wouldn’t show up for myself in my own.

The public eye puts pressure on you. A kind of pressure that—for me at least— makes you want to sh*t yourself sometimes, but it’s enough to make you get your shit together. Not in a performance way, I wouldn’t really know how to do that, to be honest. Because sometimes I really don’t know how to stfu... lmfao (just ask my brother or my husband🤣). I talk a lot. That’s just me. I talk even more when I recognize patterns of control that others avoid.

I was a “why” kid.

I still am.

This time, it comes with pathology labels designed to make you think something is wrong with you. Whatever is “wrong,” I’m learning that sometimes we just inhabit these archetypes—the universal patterns and roles, like the “Scholar” or “Teacher,” that exist in our collective human experience (Jung, 1959). For me, it was the “Scholar.” Education was my ticket out of the dysfunctional system I was in. Survival...

You know about that pendulum swing, right?

Sometimes we can swing too far in the other direction. Over learning just to stay “safe".” Are we really safe? Or did you just create a new version of a psychological prison? Even I have to step back from the work for a while at times. There is way more than just academics, but we use over-analyzing as a form of protection.

I had an academic schema—a mental blueprint or “script” used to organize and make sense of the world (Piaget, 1952). I lived on that structure. Rigid. Panicky. Hyper-vigilant of time and routine. That kept me balanced and aligned; it was my baseline for functioning. I felt backed and structured by the guardrails of academic due dates and syllabi.

Once that disappeared... Hey, Sav?! Where did she go?

The framework fell apart. I was fumbling in a panic of symptoms that were masked by college. But that “Scholar” archetype is also the portal to the “beyond the beyond” type of conversations with people.

You know …Depth…

Do we remember what that is anymore?

That internal need for depth in this current society can leave us feeling unreached in a way that seems “too much.”

We all are, aren’t we?

According to my analysis from the data I have collected over the course of my life and in my professional settings: Why?

Why is it that when it’s for us—our own business—we sabotage, procrastinate, and freeze? I have failed at so many things; why is this what makes me freeze? The fact is, I made it this far in the ability to capture people’s attention, which is the currency right now. Plus, I come in peace—even though some squirm like a stray dog on the freeway that I am trying to save.

Sometimes it makes me break because I go all in.

I burn out.

I over-function because I still have to unlearn blueprints. I still have to learn to pause. I still have to speak up and not swallow. This last year, my body has been screaming at me in jaw tension. For me, that means throat tightness because of biting my tongue. 🤭Really, Sav? This is biting your tongue? I giggle.

I can only be me. And being human is the best ride because my best client relationships are when we are all just one: beings being seen, being heard, being acknowledged. So many of us need it, but we have gaslighted and “sweet-lemoned” ourselves into believing that we didn’t—because we are “strong,” “independent,” la-la-la noise.

Pavlovian-style conditioning is born out of realizing that the emotional heart of life is what Tony Robbins calls that “pull” factor. You can push, but you need something to pull you. This is my pull. I’m not the girl that is sensitive; I’m the girl that feels everything people aren’t speaking. What the collective feels, what my clients’ grief feels, or the joy they feel. Sometimes it brings me to tears because I am so proud of the people I work with. Life is hard. The clients I have gone through/ are going through shiiiiiiit. They made a choice to work with me, they committed, and the relationships were built. The challenges were faced. Goals were achieved. Just like that not only are people telling me I changed their life.

They changed mine…

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The Evolution of the “Disordered” Realm

I always question to myself… Are humans really experiencing “disorders” or do we have habitual ways of living that have influenced our personality? Those personalities come with traits. Over time, these traits become patterned, labeled, and sequenced, and suddenly, we have “personality disorders.” In my lens, it becomes “disordered” when you have drifted too far for too long. Years and years and years. Trauma can do that. Being raised by parents who are drifters can do that.

Seeing it from this angle helps depathologize the stigma of labels and lets us see it as a game of life: cause and effect. Yes, genetics plays a role. Epigenetic’s (environment plays a huge factor… I mean look around. We can all agree sh*t got weird after 2020)

Think of it this way. Genes are the Christmas tree, the environment decides if it lights up or not.

The ego makes you resistant to this because it becomes about your feelings. Feeling insulted rather than guided. Society creates more resistance, too, because the noise distracts us and drifts us even further away from our higher self. Every time I teach this I have this mental image.

Real talk: Some of you… *cough* people pleasers— you try to save them and they pull you into drifting too. Then, we enter the “disordered” realm. But that doesn’t mean you are stuck there. Think pufferfish—you are puffed up and out there, drifting through life.

ADHD? It’s an island, and you can get shipwrecked there for decades if you don’t create systems and change your lifestyle. What that means is learn the skills to build you a boat/raft— Something—because the palm trees DGAF if you have ADHD. It’s not just a special club where we get to call ourselves “neurospicy” and do nothing about that neurospiciness except tell everyone. 🙄 Fatigued… This work helps me stay there. In aligned structure— or at least I am getting there. It helps me learn and continue to expand my love for learning with others. It breaks me out of comfort zones as I expand my business and my comfort with being seen. It’s the ultimate exposure therapy for me. Throughout this journey, it has revealed a lot of what I need in order to regain the structure academia once gave me.

Across all ages, this is not just about ego and external noise. I feel within the last year, I have elevated so much in awakening to see beyond that noise of distraction—the kind driving people to Polarity Town, bypassing what does not validate them and their feelings. I see straight into the heart of people and I can finally accept and not feel embarrassed to say that, that’s my art. I don’t know, I guess it’s cheesy or something. I am all for cheesy—depending on the cheese. 🤣(I cracked myself up with that one, as my husband looks at me while I am writing this on my laptop, wondering what I’m laughing at 12:44 AM.)

Myself…Always myself.

See…

The Terminal Crisis: The Death of the “Why”

I had to sit with the “Why.” I realized that being a “Why” kid wasn’t just a childhood phase; it was my primary defense against the drift. When we lose our “Why,” we lose our access to inquiry, and when we stop inquiring, we lose access to ourselves for good. That is the real crisis we are facing. Being the why kids created friction for many that were conditioned to never ask why. Just listen as they were told. What’s happening now is we see this at scale. Now Mental health professionals are being asked to cosign the drift by providing diabgositc labels and “skills” that many will refuse to use anyways. Many humans go to therapy not to get help but to gather research necessary to maintain their role as victim. Sometimes that leaves them with blaming therapy for not being effective. We as humans find a why for our suffering more than we care to find a “why” for the reason we choose it over living.

We’ve become a society that is complacent in its own curiosity, settling for the safety of a label because the “Why” requires too much of us, too much effort and maturity. When you stop asking why your nervous system is red-lining. When you stop exploring why you are giving 150% to a system that only asks for 50%, you open the door to be spoon-fed what to think and how to live in fear. We’ve been conditioned to think that the “Why” is a disorder—a symptom of “neurospiciness” that needs to be managed rather than a portal to the “beyond the beyond.” But I am realizing that the “Why” is the only thing that keeps the framework from falling apart.

I heard in a video recently. Animals only sit or do nothing if they are dead or dying.

Sit with that.

You will find those who avoid the message beneath that are those who will find other reasons to argue why animals do nothing rather than to look at their own behavior of stagnation making them ill.

We started playing roles before we discovered who we were, and now we are shipwrecked on islands of our own making, clinging to our “disordered” labels like life rafts that aren’t actually floating. My “Scholar” archetype was my ticket out of the dysfunction, but if I stop inquiring, that same scholar becomes a prisoner of over-analysis and intellectualization. We have to stop using our trauma as the endpoint of the conversation and start using it as the doorway. The level of development this will take—for me, for you, for us—is massive. It requires us to stop biting our tongues and start speaking the truth about the patterns of control we’ve been avoiding. It means choosing the uncertainty of freedom over the coherence of that familiar pain. We were kids begging for the truth, and now, as adults, we whine about the weight of it. But the “Why” is the pull.

It’s the only thing that can lead us away from the labels that harm and imprison us and back to the agency and discipline that can save us.

What do you think?

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Data Collectors

WHY THIS LEDGER EXISTS

This Ledger exists to document what happens when survival becomes an identity humans cling to for survival. During our April safari, we examined the traits most people judge in themselves—avoidance, anxious attachment, people pleasing, hyper-independence, overthinking, emotional shutdown and traced them back to the environments that trained them. The narcissistic need to be needed.

This narcissistic need is what many of us grew up under.We were raised under the women— specifically elders or our mothers who had to disassociate into “doing” to survive. What we are examining is how this style of parenting requires the children of a mother stuck in this survival loop, those children must have something for that mother to do. See how the pattern gets conditioned? It’s not about blaming people it’s about watching how the system gets established. What we also are realizing along this journey is how this current society is obsessed with finding and identifying the villains. Now the problem with getting stuck here is the conditioning of bypassing the inquiring necessary to understand the systems that required adaptation in the first place. The systems that help us understand why we are the way we are. I called them our inherited scrolls, these scrolls house the rules for life, how structured, or unstructured, how rigid we are. The rules to life we think are ours but are really inherited. We then go through our life with these rules despite the gridlock and distress it may cause to us.

Many people spend years attacking behaviors that once protected them, without realizing those behaviors were intelligent responses to immaturity, neglect, inconsistency, narcissistic dynamics, or chronic emotional unsafety. What we call dysfunction in adulthood is often developmental conditioned responses that have saved us from the discomfort of ourselves or rescued our care givers from their own discomfort. We enter relationships believing we are afraid of losing other people, when often we are afraid of losing the strategies that once helped us survive other people. People pleasing, avoiding, doing, working— all as a means to “busy” ourselves away from alignment of self and in the land of drifting. Society fears boundaries because compliance once preserved connection, as you can see with society today— it comes at the cost of abandoning yourself. We fear rest because productivity gave us a sense of worth, now we live out these scripts as adults, forcing them onto our partners and our children. We fear directness because silence once prevented retaliation, but now we are realizing our silence still creates gridlock. So when these adaptations begin to crack under adult pressure, the collapse rarely appears clean.

It emerges as rumination.

As burnout.

As resentment.

As chronic attraction to unavailable people.

As “matching energy.”

April’s work requires us to ask a deeper question: Which parts of you are truly you, and which parts were built for weather that has already passed? What I mean by this is, many of us are waiting for storms we already survived simply because we are so afraid of having to experience that storm again into our current reality. SO much so that we never learn to surrender to the joy or freedom we claim to want.

Let’s get into it.

Primary Artifact: Survival Adaptation • False Self • Attachment Distortion • People Pleasing • Hyper-Independence • Avoidance • Rumination • Nervous System Reactivity • Regression • Differentiation • Identity Reconstruction

This Months Video:

The Bars We Help Build: How Adaptation Becomes Self-Imprisonment

One of the more difficult truths in psychological growth is recognizing that not all suffering is externally maintained. In other words not all suffering is due to external forces. While many wounds originate in real developmental injuries—neglect, enmeshment, emotional inconsistency, narcissistic parenting, gendered double standards, parentification, chronic criticism etc. The continuation of suffering in adulthood is often sustained through internalized structures we unconsciously preserve. Schemas we develop to chase outdated archetypes that we inherited. These structures become the “bars” of a prison originally built for protection. The problem here is— if we all feel the need to lead through life with our protector part driving. Why is nobody asking the question. What are we scared of?

Due to this lack of inquiry we seek repeated validation of our pain stories because pain confirms the narrative we already know, while responsibility requires entering the unknown. The very room we all would rather avoid. Validation has an important therapeutic role when trauma has been minimized or denied, but has it been denied? Our society is so fatigued of everyone’s trauma stories because we realize its being used to end the conversation. when validation becomes the endpoint rather than the doorway, it can keep identity organized around injury rather than agency. Many individuals remain loyal to their pain because pain feels coherent, whereas freedom demands uncertainty, grief, and new behavior. The question becomes not merely who harmed us, but how much of our present confinement is now maintained by adaptations we continue to rehearse because learning to change how we respond without holding on to the managerial need to control what others will say about it.

The Narcissistic Need to Be Needed

One of the more overlooked expressions of narcissism we explored this month is not just overt arrogance, domination, or grandiosity, but the compulsive need to remain psychologically necessary to others. This dynamic often hides behind caregiving, sacrifice, over-functioning, martyrdom, emotional over-involvement, chronic rescuing, or the presentation of being the one who “holds everything together.” On the surface, it can appear loving, devoted, maternal, generous, or selfless. Yet clinically, the organizing principle is often less about the child’s development and more about the caregiver’s need for identity stabilization, emotional relevance, control, and insulation from inner emptiness or underdeveloped selfhood (Kohut, 1971; Miller, 1981). In this structure, helping becomes a form of self-regulation. The child is cared for but is also unconsciously used to soothe the unresolved needs of the parent. It ends up looking like managing their anxiety, giving the parent another person to discharge emotional buildup onto, or using the child as a distraction from themselves.

We explored how this pattern frequently has intergenerational roots, meaning inherited scripts passed down across generations. Many women in prior generations lived within social systems that restricted autonomy, economic mobility, psychological self-definition, and access to identities outside of marriage or motherhood. For many, being needed by family became one of the few available avenues for significance, belonging, power, or emotional centrality (Chodorow, 1978; hooks, 2000). Now, we can’t spend our time piddling in the hippocampus archives, our past can only help us understand why we are doing and behaving the way we do. What we choose to do with that understanding is up to us as adults. You can see why Dr. Amen states many parents unconsciously sometimes consciously rob their children of self-esteem to build their own. Can you see what they are trying to build? Much of this is unconscious behavior; it doesn’t always mean it is happening out of malice. This is how survival blueprints take over. When we zoom into that historical context, indispensability was not merely pathology—it was adaptation. If a woman could not freely build identity through vocation, creativity, authorship, sexuality, or self-directed purpose, she often built identity through relational necessity.

The problem emerges when a survival adaptation required by one generation becomes unconsciously imposed on the next. We see this at the macro level today. What once helped someone endure structural limitation can later become a constricting emotional inheritance for the generations that follow. Today, we are seeing many adults who are people-pleasers rather than initiators. We fight for the victim role because it frees us from having to take action and make a choice for our own life. When identity becomes fused with being needed, a child’s independence may be experienced by the parent as loss rather than success. Developmentally healthy milestones—such as privacy, self-trust, disagreement, relocation, romantic attachment, emotional boundaries, or differing values—can register as abandonment, disrespect, betrayal, or ingratitude (Bowen, 1978).Again, this is rarely conscious. Most caregivers do not think, I need you dependent. Rather, the nervous system experiences differentiation as destabilization. As a result, autonomy may be subtly punished through guilt induction, emotional withdrawal, criticism disguised as concern, chronic unsolicited advice, crises that pull the child back into orbit, or over-helping that quietly interferes with competence (Minuchin, 1974).

KEY TERMS

1. Differentiation of Self — Bowen (1978)

The capacity to remain emotionally connected to others without losing one’s identity, values, or independent thinking. A differentiated person can tolerate disagreement, guilt, and relational tension without collapsing into compliance or reactive cutoff. It is one of the central markers of adult psychological maturity. Low differentiation often presents as people pleasing, emotional fusion, chronic reactivity, or needing external approval to feel stable.

2. Allostatic Load — McEwen (1993)

The cumulative physiological and psychological burden created by chronic stress exposure over time. This includes hypervigilance, emotional suppression, family chaos, over-functioning, relational instability, and unresolved trauma states. High allostatic load often appears as burnout, irritability, executive dysfunction, sleep disruption, anxiety, and diminished resilience. Many individuals misinterpret overload as personal weakness rather than accumulated stress debt.

3. Emotional Fusion — Bowen (1978)

A relational state in which one person’s emotions, needs, or moods automatically dictate another person’s internal state and behavior. Boundaries become blurred, individuality feels dangerous, and disagreement is experienced as abandonment or threat. Fusion is common in enmeshed family systems where loyalty is prioritized over autonomy. Adults raised in fusion often struggle to know where they end and others begin.

4. Enmeshment — Minuchin (1974)

A family dynamic characterized by diffuse boundaries, over-involvement, and impaired individuation. Privacy, autonomy, and separateness are often interpreted as rejection or betrayal. Children in enmeshed systems may become responsible for parental emotions, identity, or stability. Later in life they often confuse closeness with over-access and love with self-erasure.

5. Learned Helplessness — Seligman (1975)

A psychological condition in which repeated experiences of powerlessness condition the person to stop attempting change, even when options later become available. It often develops in controlling, inconsistent, or over-functioning environments where autonomy was punished or unnecessary. In adulthood it may appear as passivity, dependence, indecision, avoidance, or chronic under-functioning. What looks like laziness is often trained non-agency.

6. Overfunctioning / Underfunctioning Reciprocity — Bowen (1978)

A systemic pattern where one person becomes excessively responsible, competent, organized, or controlling while another becomes passive, dependent, avoidant, or less capable. The stronger one pole becomes, the weaker the other often becomes. Families and couples frequently mistake this for personality difference when it is actually a mutually reinforcing relational dynamic. Resentment builds on both sides.

7. Pathological Accommodation — McWilliams (2011)

A defensive adaptation in which an individual chronically adjusts themselves to dysfunctional environments at the expense of authenticity. The person becomes highly attuned to others’ moods, expectations, and reactions while disconnecting from their own preferences or needs. Often developed in childhood, it can later look like people pleasing, emotional invisibility, and identity confusion.

8. Experiential Avoidance — Hayes et al. (1999)

The attempt to escape, suppress, numb, or outrun uncomfortable internal experiences such as grief, fear, shame, loneliness, or uncertainty. It can appear through productivity, substances, overthinking, caretaking, scrolling, perfectionism, or chronic busyness. Relief is usually temporary while the avoided material intensifies over time. Many modern coping habits are socially rewarded forms of avoidance.

9. Neuroception — Porges (2011)

The nervous system’s unconscious process of detecting safety, danger, or threat without conscious reasoning. Before thought occurs, the body is already scanning tone, posture, facial expression, pace, and environmental cues. Individuals raised in volatile homes often develop hyperactive neuroception, perceiving danger rapidly even in neutral situations. This helps explain why some adults react before they can explain why.

10. Window of Tolerance — Siegel (1999)

The optimal zone of nervous system arousal in which a person can think clearly, regulate emotion, and remain connected. Outside this window, individuals may shift into hyperarousal (panic, rage, urgency) or hypoarousal (shutdown, numbness, collapse). Trauma and chronic stress narrow this window. Many relationship conflicts are nervous system events disguised as moral disagreements.

11. False Self — Winnicott (1965)

A personality structure built around adaptation, compliance, and meeting external expectations rather than authentic expression. It often forms when the environment rewards performance but cannot tolerate the child’s real feelings or spontaneity. The individual may appear highly functional while internally feeling empty, unseen, or uncertain who they actually are. Healing involves recovering the hidden true self beneath performance.

12. Narcissistic Need to Be Needed — Integrated Clinical Concept

A relational pattern in which a person derives identity, worth, or emotional regulation from remaining indispensable to others. Helping becomes tied to control, dependency maintenance, or resistance to others’ autonomy. Often expressed through martyrdom, over-helping, crisis management, or guilt when others become independent. It can appear caring on the surface while obstructing differentiation underneath.

13. Relational Debt — Integrated Concept

The accumulation of unspoken truth, unmet needs, swallowed resentment, and emotional suppression within a relationship. This debt is eventually “paid” through passive-aggression, emotional withdrawal, disproportionate reactions, burnout, affairs, or sudden cutoff. What appears sudden is often the delayed consequence of prolonged silence.

14. Pro-Social Avoidance — Integrated Concept

A form of avoidance disguised as kindness, empathy, or being easygoing. The person focuses on others’ needs, moods, or problems to avoid confronting their own vulnerability, grief, conflict, or desire. Because it appears generous, it often goes unchallenged for years. Internally, however, it preserves fear through self-abandonment.

15. Regression — Freud (1917); Modern Trauma Adaptation Models

A stress response in which an adult temporarily reverts to earlier developmental coping strategies when overwhelmed. This may look like clinginess, shutdown, rage, helplessness, controlling behavior, or emotional immaturity. Regression is often mistaken for character revelation when it is more accurately a nervous system return to previously rehearsed survival states.

REFLECTION PROMPT

Take a moment to pause and notice what parts of your life still require you to be needed in order to feel valuable. May of us were conditioned to give 150% so much that as an adult, a mother, and father, a xyz. We continue to give that in every environment. Where did we learn the environment must meet you in your need to overfucntion rather than learning so surrender what is required?

Now shift the lens inward. In your closest relationships, where are you still waiting for someone else to heal and develop the skills that were never taught to you? Where are you blaming others for collisions created by old survival adaptations neither of you consciously chose? Remember the inherited scroll? What conversations, boundaries, or acts of self-leadership would become necessary if you stopped organizing life around old family roles?

As you sit with this gently ask yourself:

Where am I still surviving through patterns that no longer protect me... and calling it love? Calling it “breaking the cycle?”

📚WEEKLY LEDGER REFERENCE ARCHIVE

Bowen (1978) — Family Therapy in Clinical Practice

Bowlby (1988) — A Secure Base

Porges (2011) — The Polyvagal Theory

Siegel (1999) — The Developing Mind

McWilliams (2011) — Psychoanalytic Diagnosis

Winnicott (1965) — The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment

Minuchin (1974) — Families and Family Therapy

Kohut (1971) — The Analysis of the Self

Miller (1981) — The Drama of the Gifted Child

Wachtel (1997) — Psychoanalysis, Behavior Therapy, and the Relational World

Yalom (1980) — Existential Psychotherapy

Frankl (1946) — Man’s Search for Meaning

Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson (1999) — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Beck (1979) — Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders

Kabat-Zinn (1990) — Full Catastrophe Living

van der Kolk (2014) — The Body Keeps the Score

Levine (1997) — Waking the Tiger / Somatic Experiencing

McEwen (1993) — Allostatic Load Theory

Seligman (1975) — Learned Helplessness Theory

Adler (1927) — Individual Psychology / Compensation Theory

Lerner (1985) — The Dance of Anger

Johnson (2008) — Hold Me Tight

Gilligan (1982) — In a Different Voice

Jack (1991) — Silencing the Self Theory

Main & Solomon (1986) — Disorganized Attachment

Rotter (1954) — Locus of Control Theory

Dweck (2006) — Mindset

Karpman (1968) — Drama Triangle

Tajfel (1970) — Social Identity Theory

Janis (1972) — Groupthink

Pavlov (1927) — Conditioned Emotional Response

Linehan (1993) — Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder / Opposite Action

Maté (1999) — Scattered Minds

Lembke (2021) — Dopamine Nation

Illich (1975) — Medical Nemesis / Iatrogenesis

Foucault (1963) — The Birth of the Clinic / Medicalization & Medical Gaze

Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson (1993) — Emotional Contagion

Cloud & Townsend (1992) — Boundaries

Perel (2006) — Circular Causality / Relational Systems

Kernberg (1984) — Aggression and Personality Organization

Walker (2013) — CPTSD & Fawn Response

Brown (2012) — Daring Greatly / Vulnerability Research

Church (2013) — EFT Clinical Trials / Emotional Freedom Techniques

Chodorow (1978) — The Reproduction of Mothering

hooks (2000) — All About Love / Patriarchal Socialization

Nathanson (1992) — Shame and Pride / Compass of Shame

Kahneman & Tversky (1979) — Prospect Theory / Loss Aversion

Hawkins (2002) — Power vs. Force / Map of Consciousness

Napoleon Hill (1938) — Outwitting the Devil

Data Collectors,

What Are You Actually Bringing In With You?

You ever notice how your body starts reacting before anything even happens? You’re not even inside of the hard conversation yet. You’re not at the workplace. You haven’t even pulled into the driveway, but your stomach is already tight. Your breath is shallow. Your mind is running simulations—mind movies. Your nervous system is on edge, and nothing has technically gone wrong. That’s preemptive embodiment. It’s your body rehearsing what it expects. Key word here: because if we are expecting something, we anticipate it.

When we engage in this loop, our mind starts directing the movie and your nervous system is already acting it out. It looks like carrying a storm you haven’t even walked into yet. Maybe you hate your job, and on the drive to work the entire way, your mind automatically loops and loops into negative expectations of how the day is going to be because “the bitches” are in the office and we hate them. So then the mind locks in… on their face, their snarky little XYZ behavior that triggers us. Or maybe it’s the holidays and we are on our way to the families’. The mind loops into anticipation: “Oh boy, Mom is going to ___ and it’s going to get bad.” Here is another example: you are in conflict with your partner, you have to tell them something and express something, and you are already saying, “He/she will react, we will get in a fight, it’s going to get worse, omg we are going to divorce…” See the script? What this is describing here is the nervous system engaging in predictive threat modeling. The brain, specifically the amygdala and insula, begins scanning for danger based on memory, not present-moment data. This is how trauma works: the body prepares before the event because, historically, it had to.

From a neuroscience perspective, this is the sympathetic nervous system activating; and when that happens in advance, heart rate increases, digestion slows, and breath shortens, despite the absence of an immediate threat even being present. The body is not responding to reality; it is responding to expectation (this is when the unconscious contract comes online). For ADHD and trauma-impacted nervous systems, this process is intensified because transitions lack natural pauses, which are necessary to snap the brain back into alignment before moving on to the next task. The commute becomes a bridge where unprocessed activation carries forward unchecked.

How We Reinforce the Very Dynamics We Fear

Every thought you think produces a chemical. Every emotion you embody sends a signal; this is not just inside of you, but into the relational field you’re about to enter. And when we rehearse conflict in our heads, we don’t just “process” something; we generate frequency.

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We ignite the energy loop before it even happens. So by the time we walk through the door, we’re already vibrating with defense, fear, dread, or urgency. We scan for disrespect. We expect invalidation, and the people we encounter feel it, even if they don’t know what they’re feeling. That tension you rehearsed becomes the tone you lead with. That panic you marinated in becomes the climate of the room. It’s not that you’re wrong in what you are feeling— it’s that you walked in with proof before the evidence even formed. Can you see the pattern? You became the prophecy and the producer. You were right, but at what cost?

📓 Field Notes

From a neuroscience angle, this process reflects anticipatory threat activation driven by the brain’s predictive coding system. The nervous system is not organized to wait for events to occur; it is organized to forecast based on prior experience. The amygdala (remember Amy doesn’t have eyes) and hippocampus collaborate to scan for familiar threat patterns, while the prefrontal cortex constructs narratives to justify the body’s activation after the fact. This is why physiological response precedes conscious interpretation. Each rehearsed thought recruits a biochemical cascade, primarily cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine—placing the nervous system into a sympathetic dominant state. Over time, repeated rehearsal strengthens these pathways through neural plasticity. This isn’t just overthinking; it is state conditioning Pavlovian style. The body learns to associate specific people, places, or transitions with danger, even in the absence of present-moment threat.

Clinically, this phenomenon is referred to as state-dependent perception. When the nervous system is activated, perceptual range narrows. Neutral cues are interpreted as hostile. Ambiguity is filled with threat-based meaning. Micro-expressions, tone shifts, or silence are filtered through expectation rather than observation. The individual does not enter the room searching for conflict; the body has already organized itself as if conflict is underway. This is where interpersonal dynamics become self-reinforcing. Human nervous systems are inherently relational and attune automatically through limbic resonance and mirror neuron activation. Others may not consciously identify the source of tension, yet their bodies register it.

Posture tightens. Vocal prosody shifts. The relational field organizes itself around the most dysregulated signal present in the room. What is often described as “frequency” in experiential language is well documented in clinical literature as emotional contagion and autonomic entrainment.

The result is a closed feedback loop: anticipation generates arousal, arousal shapes behavior, behavior alters the relational field, and the altered field confirms the original expectation. The nervous system then records the outcome as evidence, reinforcing the belief that vigilance was necessary. This is how trauma reenactment occurs without conscious intent, and why insight alone rarely interrupts these patterns. This mechanism is further amplified in individuals with trauma histories, attachment injury, and ADHD. For ADHD nervous systems in particular, transitions often lack natural pauses, allowing sympathetic activation to carry forward uninterrupted. The day becomes a continuous physiological sentence without punctuation—no breath, no reset, no recalibration.

What is frequently experienced as intuition is more accurately understood as memory acting as foresight.

The cost is not the absence of accuracy about potential harm, but the loss of nervous system flexibility. Entering relational spaces already armored reduces the capacity for novelty, repair, and genuine connection. Accuracy without regulation becomes another form of self-protection—one that quietly reproduces the very dynamics it seeks to avoid.

Why Not Use That Same Energy in the Opposite Direction?

From a neurobiological standpoint, mental rehearsal activates many of the same neural networks involved in lived experience. Visualization recruits the prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and autonomic pathways simultaneously, meaning imagined states can shift physiological tone in real time. When attention is intentionally directed toward calm, warmth, or receptivity, parasympathetic pathways—particularly vagal regulation—are more likely to engage. This is not a denial of threat, but a reallocation of anticipatory energy. Rather than allowing predictive threat modeling to default toward chaos, the nervous system is offered an alternative template. Over time, repeated rehearsal of regulated states increases nervous system flexibility and expands the window of tolerance. The body learns that anticipation does not have to equal bracing.

In this sense, the commute functions as a transitional container—a liminal space or portal, if you will—where nervous system state can be recalibrated before contact occurs. What is framed experientially as blessing the space is clinically understood as shifting autonomic set point prior to interpersonal engagement. In other words, you basically are mental rehearsing your play before you get into the room. Instead of what you already know may or may not happen, why not exercise new neural pathways and focus on what COULD happen—what you would like to happen? See what happens. Why not? If there is resistance to this practice, ask yourself why. Who resists something that could help them?

What Is Commute Calibration?

Commute Calibration™ is the name I give to a frequency practice I teach clients—it’s a form of nervous system and energetic leadership. It’s the recognition that the emotional atmosphere you walk into is usually co-authored by the energy you bring. And the energy you bring usually starts on the way there. Most people rehearse fear. Most people rehearse defensiveness. Most people replay all the old loops of judgment, rejection, disappointment, and chaos and then wonder why they keep reliving the same dynamics.

Commute Calibration interrupts that rehearsal and replaces it with energetic choice. You practice compassion before contact. You embody peace before confrontation. You picture the person you’re about to see as not perfect, but as receptive. Safe. Understand, they might not be, but that is not the point; it doesn’t matter if they are safe, because you are.

Let’s take a stretch break here real quick... This work is not easy.

As someone who has their own level of CPTSD, anxiety, and hypervigilance skills that make me a skilled pattern recognizer, I also have to check when I am actually feeding the stallion of my mind instead of settling with it—especially in my marriage. Safe, healthy relationships: the ones where there are no phones being hidden, codes, and secrets. Where cheating is not something you anticipate. Relationships where the conflict usually stems from attachment wounds rather than behaviors that align with infidelity and mind games. Mature adult relationships involve facing the ASS in each of us, but most importantly, the ass within ourselves.

I have had my fair share of assery moments in my marriage. The shame or embarrassment my brain can loop in... relationships are a perfect place to face the muck of the shadow. I feel my Commute Calibration even if that commute is just walking down the hall to talk to my husband. If you are in a current season of gridlock, that commute means everything. For many of us—myself included—the hallway is filled with panic child energy, catastrophe, and mental rehearsing of what’s in the hippocampus archives and projecting it onto the conversation I am about to walk into.

Let’s say you are about to talk to your boss. That whole morning—the day you wake up, your drive there, and the walk to the office—what is your mind rehearsing? How is that helping your bodily frequency, or hurting it?

Why is it so difficult for us to rehearse the ideal outcome?

Mental Rehearsal: What the Nervous System Is Actually Practicing

At a clinical level, Commute Calibration™ is a practice of intentional mental rehearsal. The brain is always rehearsing something. The question is not whether rehearsal is happening, but what is being rehearsed and who is leading it.

Neuroscience has consistently shown that mental rehearsal activates the same neural circuits involved in real-time interaction. The prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and autonomic nervous system respond to imagined scenarios as if they are already occurring. This is why rehearsed conflict tightens the chest, shortens the breath, and sharpens tone long before contact is made, just like the image above demonstrates. The body does not wait for reality to confirm the threat; it prepares based on prediction. Most people unknowingly rehearse defense, vigilance, and disappointment during transitions. These rehearsals strengthen old attachment templates and trauma loops, training the nervous system to arrive already braced. Commute Calibration™ interrupts this default rehearsal and replaces it with a deliberate one.

• Calm is practiced before it is required.

• Receptivity is embodied before it is tested.

• Safety is generated internally rather than negotiated externally.

In this sense, Commute Calibration™ is not wishful thinking. It is directing the rehearsal toward regulation instead of reenactment. The nervous system is given a different script to embody, one that does not deny risk, but refuses to let fear lead the entrance. Over time, this changes what the body expects, how it prepares, and what it brings into the room.

This Isn’t Bypassing. It’s Energy Leadership.

From a trauma-informed perspective, this distinction matters. Bypassing avoids pain by dissociation or denial; while regulation metabolizes pain without allowing it to dictate behavior. What is described here aligns with self-led nervous system regulation. The goal is not to invalidate harm, but to prevent the body from reliving it prematurely or indiscriminately. Hypervigilance is a learned survival adaptation rooted in chronic threat exposure. So when left unexamined, it becomes a default leadership structure in relationships, where anticipation replaces presence. Which is why leading our nervous system does not erase memory; it interrupts automatic reenactment loops. This is how individuals move from trauma-driven reaction to intentional autonomic choice.

Clinically, this process expands the window of tolerance. Instead of entering relational spaces in a collapsed or combative state, the body is given a regulated baseline from which discernment becomes possible. Leadership here is not about control over others, but about refusing to outsource internal safety to external conditions.

This is why readiness is internal. The nervous system does not require consensus to regulate; it requires permission to stop rehearsing threat as identity.

Now, lets expand on window of tolerance for a moment.

The Window of Tolerance: Why Regulation Must Precede Contact

The concept of the Window of Tolerance, originally articulated by Daniel Siegel and expanded within trauma research, describes the optimal zone of nervous system arousal an individual can remain present, flexible, and responsive. Within this window, the nervous system is regulated enough to process information, tolerate emotion, and engage relationally without collapsing or becoming aggressive. When an individual enters a relational space already rehearsing threat, the nervous system is often pushed outside this window before interaction even begins. Anticipatory mental rehearsal activates either hyperarousal (sympathetic dominance: anxiety, irritability, defensiveness) or hypoarousal (dorsal vagal shutdown: numbness, dissociation, withdrawal). In either state, perception becomes distorted and the capacity for repair, curiosity, or mutual regulation significantly decreases.

What is often mislabeled as “being sensitive” or “overreactive” is, clinically, a nervous system operating outside its window. In these states, the body prioritizes survival over connection this comes with side effects and those look like: Your boundaries being experienced as threats, any feedback being experienced as attack, and ambiguity feels as if it is filled with danger. Practices such as Commute Calibration™ function by widening the Window of Tolerance before contact occurs— thus building our capacity. By engaging parasympathetic pathways through breath, imagery, and intentional rehearsal, the nervous system is brought closer to baseline regulation. This increases the likelihood that emotional input can be metabolized without triggering collapse, aggression, or reenactment.

Crucially, regulation does not require the absence of discomfort. The window is not a comfort zone; it is a capacity zone. Individuals within their window can feel anger without becoming violent, sadness without collapsing, and fear without surrendering agency. This is why leading the nervous system before entering charged environments is not avoidance— it is preparation.

Pause…

See how this is self-lead preparation instead of doom rehearsing? Where were we before in our commute to the difficult interaction was preparing for the worst. Which created emotional distress in us.

From this lens, we can see that energy leadership is clinically synonymous with state management. It is the decision to arrive within one’s window rather than demanding that others regulate first. Over time, repeated access to regulated states strengthens autonomic flexibility, making it easier to remain present even when stressors arise. This is how cycles break, not by eliminating threat, but by expanding the body’s ability to stay oriented to the present while discomfort passes through.

The Science Backs This Up

Research in psychophysiology and interpersonal neurobiology consistently demonstrates that nervous system states are not contained within individuals, but are co-regulated and transmitted relationally (Porges, 2011; Siegel, 1999, 2012). Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory describes how cues of safety and threat are communicated through facial expression, vocal prosody, posture, and breath rhythm, allowing nervous systems to synchronize automatically during interaction (Porges, 2011). This process occurs below conscious awareness and precedes verbal exchange. Studies on autonomic entrainment show that individuals in close proximity often unconsciously align heart rate variability (HRV), breathing patterns, and muscular tension, particularly in emotionally charged or attachment-relevant relationships (Thayer & Lane, 2000; Thayer et al., 2012). Higher HRV, a marker of parasympathetic regulation and vagal tone, has been associated with improved emotional flexibility, social engagement, and resilience under stress (Grossman & Taylor, 2007). Conversely, dysregulated states—marked by low HRV and elevated sympathetic arousal, spread rapidly within relational systems (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994).

Mirror neuron research further supports this mechanism. Neural circuits involved in action, emotion, and intention activate not only when a person experiences a state directly, but when observing it in others (Decety & Jackson, 2004). This provides a neurological basis for why calm presence can de-escalate a room and why agitation can infect it. The nervous system is not merely responding to words; it is responding to embodied cues in real time (Siegel, 2012). Mental rehearsal research, widely utilized in sports psychology, exposure therapy, and performance neuroscience, demonstrates that repeatedly imagining regulated emotional states produces measurable physiological changes (Jeannerod, 1994; Guillot & Collet, 2008). Controlled studies show reductions in cortisol output, improved vagal tone, and increased stress tolerance when individuals practice compassion-based imagery, gratitude rehearsal, or calm-focused visualization (Lehrer & Gevirtz, 2014; Grossman & Taylor, 2007). These outcomes reflect biological conditioning, not symbolic intention. The body learns from what it repeatedly rehearses.

Trauma-informed frameworks reinforce that dysregulation travels faster than cognition. The limbic system processes safety and threat milliseconds before the prefrontal cortex engages in conscious interpretation, which explains why relational dynamics often shift without explicit confrontation (van der Kolk, 2014; Siegel, 2012). Bodies respond to bodies before language enters the equation. Regulation, therefore, becomes a primary form of communication. Whether described as frequency, coherence, or autonomic signaling, the mechanism remains consistent across disciplines. Regulation is communicable. Grounded presence alters relational fields by changing the nervous system signals available for others to attune to (Porges, 2011; Hatfield et al., 1994). If trauma can be transmitted through proximity and repeated interaction, so can stability, self-leadership, and calm.

From a clinical standpoint, this reframes leadership as state transmission rather than control. The most regulated nervous system in the room often sets the tone and its done not through dominance, but through coherence (Siegel, 1999; Thayer et al., 2012).

What You Radiate Is What You Regulate

When you enter a room already rehearsing trauma, you limit the possibility of connection. When you enter as a tuning fork—when you embody the frequency you want to experience—you reshape the room. You stop waiting for someone else to change. You stop scanning for the threat. You stop letting the past write the emotional code. You become the baseline. Your energy becomes the gravitational pull. Your nervous system sets the pace. You don’t just manage your emotions; you lead with them. That’s Commute Calibration. That’s what it means to walk into a space as a safe person because you chose it for yourself.

Try This the Next Time You Drive Into a Hard Space

No pressure.

No perfection.

Just your intention.

Breathe.

Shake your hands.

Exhale through your mouth like you’re sighing the tension out of your body. Not forcing it. Just letting the pressure drain. Let your shoulders drop. Let your jaw soften. Put on music that doesn’t collapse your chest or spike your nervous system, something that keeps you open instead of braced. This isn’t about distraction. It’s about not walking in already clenched. Now picture yourself in the situation you’re anticipating. The meeting. The job interview. The hard conversation. The family dinner. See yourself there. Not perfect. Not performing. Just present. Visualize how you want to feel in that space—steady, clear, grounded, warm, firm, whatever matters most to you. Notice how your body is holding itself in that version of you. Your posture. Your breath. Your tone.

Then let the scene play out in your mind. Not the worst-case version—this new one. The regulated one. The version where you’re with yourself instead of scanning for threat. Yes! that’s it! You’re rehearsing presence, not control. You’re practicing arriving. You’re choosing what your body practices before you walk in.

And then, quietly, to yourself, say: May I feel peace today.
May I feel grounded.
May I feel supported.
May I be open to joy.

And then say:

I bring calm.
I bring grace.
I am rooted and regulated.
I am safe to lead with love.

(add your own flavor to it)

It might feel weird the first time. It might feel silly. That’s okay. The body doesn’t need you to believe it yet. It just needs you to practice.

Frequency Is Contagious. You Choose What You Spread.

You can be the toxin. Or the tuning fork.

You can be the storm. Or the anchor.

You can rehearse trauma. Or you can rehearse transformation.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to shift. You don’t need their approval to soften. You just need a moment. A breath. A choice. And the car ride is a damn good place to begin, because bodies teach bodies. Nervous systems read nervous systems. Long before words land, before intentions are explained, before outcomes unfold, something quieter is already happening. The body is broadcasting. Others are attuning. Regulation spreads. So does dysregulation. This is not about being positive. It’s about being present. It’s about deciding that the past doesn’t get to write the emotional code of the room before you even arrive. It’s about choosing to practice the state you want to live from, instead of rehearsing the wound you’ve already survived.

You don’t change the world by forcing it to calm down.
You change it by arriving regulated enough to stay yourself.

That’s Commute Calibration.

Stay tuned for a video here I can demonstrate what this looks like visually.

Until next time data collectors

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References & Extended Reading List

Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3(2), 71–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534582304267187

Dispenza, J. (2014). You are the placebo: Making your mind matter. Hay House.

Grossman, P., & Taylor, E. W. (2007). Toward understanding respiratory sinus arrhythmia: Relations to cardiac vagal tone, evolution, and biobehavioral functions. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 263–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2005.11.014

Guillot, A., & Collet, C. (2008). Construction of the motor imagery integrative model in sport: A review and theoretical investigation of motor imagery use. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(1), 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/17509840701823139

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press.

Jeannerod, M. (1994). The representing brain: Neural correlates of motor intention and imagery. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17(2), 187–245. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00034026

Lehrer, P. M., & Gevirtz, R. (2014). Heart rate variability biofeedback: How and why does it work? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 756. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00756

Maté, G. (2019). In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. North Atlantic Books.

Nathanson, D. L. (1992). Shame and pride: Affect, sex, and the birth of the self. W. W. Norton & Company.

Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Schore, A. N. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.

Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. Guilford Press.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The pocket guide to interpersonal neurobiology. W. W. Norton & Company.

Thayer, J. F., & Lane, R. D. (2000). A model of neurovisceral integration in emotion regulation and dysregulation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 61(3), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0327(00)00338-4

Thayer, J. F., Åhs, F., Fredrikson, M., Sollers, J. J., & Wager, T. D. (2012). A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: Implications for heart rate variability as a marker of stress and health. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(2), 747–756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.009

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

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