The Art of Perception: Seeing with a Clean Window

Why Your Brain Protects You From Truth and How to See Clearly Again

📍🧙🏾🗺️ WELCOME HOME.

Ah… you made it.
Right on time.

Before we begin:
This is not content to scroll through.
This is a deep dive. A vision quest. A mirror moment the body can speak to you. Only, If you are paying intentional attention.

If it is late… rest.
The Whispering Wizard 🧙🏾 does not condone doomscrolling in the dark.
Return when your eyes are soft, your nervous system is open.
The nervous system does not integrate truth in panic or exhaustion.
Return when your body can listen.
This portal is not for scrolling, it is for reflecting.
Keep a journal close.
You’re not just reading. You’re observing.

You are remembering.

What will be unlocked in you is not stored in language.
It is stored in response.

Let the activation rise.
Let the insight land.
Let the old maps dissolve.

Welcome to the Portal,

When you are ready... step inside.

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Perception is the topic for the week as we travel on our Safari ride through human behavior. I find perception to be something of importance that creates much of the conflict that many of us are gridlocked in within our relationships.

There is a moment, often so subtle many of us miss it, when your body decides what the world is. Long before your brain has pieced together a story, your heart races, your chest tightens, your stomach flips. You see a word, hear a tone, or notice a glance — and your whole system shifts. That shift isn’t about the word or the glance. It’s about you. It’s about the map your nervous system built from every story, every silence, every storm it’s ever weathered.

We like to believe we’re reacting to reality. Most of the time, we’re reacting to memory.

This is the nature of perception. This piece is important to me because it reflects something I see so often in my clinical practice with families and in the broader patterns of behavior I observe in society today. Perception isn’t a camera capturing what is; it’s a lens colored by what was. And until we understand that, we’ll keep confusing perception with truth, reaction with reality, and familiarity with safety. We’ll keep playing the arena fighting ghosts of the past while shouting “harm” at reflections of our own pain—still trapped inside the prison of our psyche.

The Body Decides Before the Brain Explains

Before a single conscious thought forms, your body is already working. It’s scanning, sensing, deciding. Stephen Porges calls this neuroception — the nervous system’s unconscious ability to detect safety or threat before the thinking brain gets involved (Porges, 2011). Like a built-in surveillance system, it relies on cues you may not even notice: a slight change in tone, a sudden movement, a subtle facial expression.

This means your body reacts first — tightening, freezing, leaning in and your mind follows by building a story around that sensation. Most of us reverse the order when we explain our experiences: “I felt angry because he yelled.” In truth, the body flinched first, and the mind later said, “Ah, that means danger.” Your perception isn’t just happening in your head; it’s being written in your muscles, breath, and heartbeat.

Prediction, Not Reaction

Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) reminds us that emotions are not raw reactions to the world but predictions. Your brain constantly uses past experiences to forecast what’s happening and how to respond. Like predictive text on your phone, it fills in gaps before all the information is available. If chaos was your norm, your brain will predict chaos even in calm. If betrayal once followed closeness, your body will brace for it the moment someone gets near.

This predictive process is not a flaw — it’s efficient. But it also means perception is deeply shaped by history. We are not perceiving things as they are; we are perceiving them as we were. Trauma teaches the nervous system what to expect, and expectation becomes the lens through which we see. Expectation is also what leads us in to forging the signature of others on a contract we type up for them without their consent.

Family Scripts That Shape Our Lens

Our first lessons in perception are written in our families. Murray Bowen (1978) described how roles like “scapegoat,” “golden child,” or “peacemaker” become survival strategies for maintaining connection and safety. These roles don’t disappear when we grow up — they become filters. A peacemaker might perceive any disagreement as danger. A scapegoat might assume they are at fault before anyone says a word.

Reinforcement is a powerful teacher. If tears were punished, the body learns that vulnerability equals risk. If achievement was praised, worthiness becomes performance. If silence kept the peace, self-expression becomes threatening. Harriet Lerner (1989) observed that many women internalize the belief that shrinking themselves preserves love — mistaking self-abandonment for maturity. These unconscious lessons shape how we perceive safety, love, and belonging in adulthood.

And so, perception becomes a reenactment. A woman betrayed in the past might meet a faithful partner but still interpret a delayed text as danger. A man dismissed as a child might read neutrality as rejection. They are not reacting to the present — they are reacting to echoes of the past.

Over the weekend, I finished Season 2 of Nobody Wants This, and it landed with me in a way that felt almost clinical. Kristen Bell (Who by the way joined The Safety To Speak community on Instagram🥳) her character, Joanne, is a podcaster dating a rabbi named Noah — but underneath their relationship, you can see the invisible hand of family conditioning shaping perception. Her sister, Morgan, built their shared career around Joanne’s messy love life. Chaos was the brand. Now that Joanne’s found a healthy relationship, the dynamic begins to shift — and Morgan unconsciously tries to sabotage it. Stability threatens the family ecosystem that once thrived on dysfunction. Boy does this feel like my life when I met my husband! haha!

There’s a moment where Noah asks for a night to himself — not to disconnect from her, but to decompress from the weight of his own world. Joanne immediately interprets that request as emotional danger. She spirals. Her nervous system registers “distance” as “rejection,” “space” as “separation.” It’s the same pattern I see with clients who grew up in unpredictable homes — where autonomy meant abandonment, and closeness meant collapse.

Clinically, this is what we call misattunement through threat perception. The brain’s predictive coding system responsible for scanning present cues through old memory networks — confuses safety with familiarity. In Joanne’s case, the familiar is chaos; calm feels foreign. Neuroscience tells us that the amygdala doesn’t distinguish between emotional and physical threat once the system is activated. When a partner’s tone or timing feels reminiscent of old pain, the body fires the same alarm bells as if danger were happening now.

Attachment research reinforces this. Individuals with anxious or disorganized attachment tend to hyperactivate the attachment system when their partner signals independence. They read temporary distance as permanent loss. This behavior isn’t about irrationality — it’s about biology. The body remembers what separation meant long before adulthood offered new possibilities.

The dynamic between Joanne and Morgan mirrors another layer I see in families: the economy of dysfunction. When one person starts healing their perception, others who were unconsciously benefiting from the chaos feel threatened. Homeostasis — even if it’s unhealthy — fights to maintain itself. That’s why family systems theory has long noted that when one member differentiates, another may escalate. It’s not malice; it’s the system’s attempt to restore balance. Something I see often in my family sessions with clients.

Perception, in that sense, is not neutral. It’s shaped by nervous system patterning, family roles, and relational reinforcement. Research on empathic accuracy shows that couples routinely project their own emotional states onto their partners rather than reading them accurately. The more stress or history of rejection they carry, the more distorted their interpretations become. What’s meant as a simple “I need rest” is heard as “I need space from you.”

When I work with couples, I often invite them to slow the moment between stimulus and story. Instead of asking, “Why did you do that?” I ask, “What did you perceive?” Because what they saw, heard, or felt is rarely about the present moment — it’s about the nervous system remembering what happened before.

That’s what Nobody Wants This captured so beautifully. Joanne wasn’t reacting to Noah’s words — she was reacting to the ghosts in her own nervous system. That’s perception at work: the body seeing through a lens shaped by every experience that came before. In my own clinical work here in El Paso, especially with the amount of generational trauma in this city. I see this same perceptual distortion play out daily. So many couples carry inherited scripts around betrayal — fathers who cheated, mothers who stayed, resentment passed down like emotional DNA. Infidelity isn’t just something they fear; it’s something they expect. The mind begins scanning for it everywhere in tone, timing, social media patterns, even silence. We’re collectively conditioned for distrust, not connection.

In this city and across our wider culture — cheating is the storyline we’re sold. Reality TV thrives on it, influencers market around it, songs romanticize it. It’s no wonder our nervous systems stay on high alert. When everything around us frames love as fragile and people as replaceable, what did we think the body was going to do? The body doesn’t just prepare for love it prepares for loss too. That’s perception: the nervous system protecting itself from a movie it’s already seen or maybe actually experienced.

I meet so many individuals terrified of being cheated on that they’ve stopped cultivating a life outside their relationship. They give up hobbies, friendships, independence — the very things that make them whole and then wonder why the connection feels suffocating. The more they fuse their identity with the relationship, the more fragile it becomes. It’s a reenactment of their parents’ anxiety: if I don’t control the environment, I’ll lose love. But what they’re really losing is themselves.

How Culture and Algorithms Hijack Perception

Family isn’t the only teacher. Culture, media, and technology shape perception too — often in ways we barely notice. The human brain has a negativity bias: we pay more attention to threat than to neutral or positive stimuli. Social media algorithms exploit that bias, serving us outrage, conflict, and fear because those states keep us engaged (Maté, 2022).

The more we engage, the stronger those neural pathways become. Dan Siegel (2010) explains, “Where attention goes, neural firing flows.” Repeated exposure to emotionally charged content wires the brain to expect — and seek — threat. Over time, we stop asking, “Is this true?” and start asking, “Does this feel familiar?”

And because familiarity feels safe, even when it’s harmful, we keep clicking on content that reinforces our worldview. Confirmation bias turns perception into a closed loop. I like to call this the revolving door— what we consume shapes how we see, and how we see shapes what we consume.

Algorithms don’t just predict what we want; they shape what we expect. And expectation is the architecture of perception. Expectation is also the killer of joy.

When Perception Protects Us From Joy

Perception is not only a filter — it’s a strategy. It doesn’t just protect us from danger; it can also protect us from joy. Bruce Lipton (2005) notes that our beliefs act as filters that influence not only perception but biological responses. If those beliefs are rooted in pain, they will shape the world to match. If your nervous system expects rejection, you might sabotage intimacy before it can reject you. If it expects abandonment, you might distance yourself first to prove you were right. If it expects struggle, peace might feel suspicious — or even unsafe.

This is why self-sabotage often shows up right when life begins to soften. It isn’t because something is wrong with us. It’s because our perception says, “This is unfamiliar. Unfamiliar might mean danger.” The body, trying to keep us safe, chooses the suffering it knows over the safety it doesn’t.

But this isn’t the end of the story. Neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to rewire itself — means perception can change. When we bring awareness to the stories beneath our reactions, when we pause before we assume, when we practice new ways of being, the brain lays down new neural pathways. What was once threat becomes neutral. What was once unsafe becomes possible.

This means not crashing out when your partner wants alone time. It doesn’t always mean they want to leave you/ It could just mean they want time for themselves.

Cleaning the Lens

So how do we begin to see with a clean window?

Start by noticing the sequence: body first, meaning second. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” ask, “What is my body trying to protect me from?”

Then get curious about the origins of your lens:

Where did I learn this reaction? Who taught me this story? What evidence am I using — and is it from now or from then? Finally, practice clarifying language and perception in relationships:

“What does that word mean to you?”

“What did you feel in that moment?”

“I know what I meant — but how did it land for you?”

We hear through filters built from our past. Without curiosity, we mistake disagreement for danger, feedback for rejection, and difference for threat. Curiosity lets us clean the glass.

✍🏽 Reflection & Journaling

Reflection Prompt:

Pause and think of a time when your reaction felt bigger than the situation. What might your body have been protecting you from?

Journaling Question:

Choose one “trigger word” (like the ones from the portal test- you will see this in this week’s upcoming YouTube video) and write freely about what it stirs in you. Where did you first learn the meaning you attach to that word? What would it feel like to meet it with curiosity instead of certainty?

Perception is not reality. It’s a movie the body shows the brain, a prediction written in sensation and memory. It is not the world itself — but it decides how we move through the world. And the beautiful, terrifying, liberating truth is this: the lens can change. The glass can be cleaned. The window can open.

When we stop reacting to ghosts and start responding to what’s real, we don’t just see others differently — we see ourselves differently too.

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Data collectors…

What came up for you while reading this?

I wrote this one from a tender place. It has nothing to do with me having it all figured out and everything to do with the fact that I’m living inside this madness too.
So if you’re in the swirl, I see you.

I’ll be back later this week with more. Until then…
Be gentle. Be discerning. Be exactly where you are.

I tell my clients: “ Come as you are, where you are—period.”

This corner of the internet isn’t loud on purpose.
It’s a place to come back to yourself.

To ask better questions.

I am hoping with time, more of you can engage and share where you are so we can use this quiet corner of the internet for expanding discussions. And also so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself 🙃.

I will leave you with this as we move through our week :
Where does your perception need cleaning not because it’s wrong, but because it’s fogged by old weather?

If something stirred in you, I’d love to know what it was.
If not, let the question travel with you. Let it do what it needs.

As always references are below.

Knowledge is power, ignorance is a choice.

Talk soon,
—Sav 🫶🏽

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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.

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

Lerner, H. (1989). The dance of intimacy: A woman’s guide to courageous acts of change in key relationships.Harper & Row.

Lipton, B. H. (2005). The biology of belief: Unleashing the power of consciousness, matter, and miracles. Hay House.

Maté, G. (2022). The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture. Avery.

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

Rosenberg, M. B. (2003). Nonviolent communication: A language of life. PuddleDancer Press.

Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam.

📚Recommended Reads on Perception & Meaning-Making

Neuroscience & Psychology:

• How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett

A groundbreaking look at how the brain constructs emotion and perception in real-time.

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

A trauma-informed classic that explores how past experiences shape bodily perception and awareness.

• The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy by Louis Cozolino

Explains how therapeutic relationships rewire perception and meaning through co-regulation.

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

A deep dive into cognitive biases, intuition, and the two systems of thought that shape perception.

• The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons

Explores selective attention and how we miss what’s right in front of us.

Spiritual & Philosophical Works:

• The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

Explores the voice in our head, how we perceive our thoughts, and the art of observing consciousness.

• The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

A spiritual meditation on presence and how perception is shaped by the illusion of control.

• A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Illuminates how ego and unconscious patterns shape collective and individual perception.

• The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

A dense but brilliant look at the divided brain and its role in shaping Western perception and culture.

Trauma & Meaning:

• Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine

Connects nervous system regulation to perception and survival-based interpretations of reality.

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

A profound reflection on how meaning shapes perception even in the darkest circumstances.

• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

Explores how shame and trauma fog our perception of self and how to return to clarity.

Bonus — Visual Perception & Design:

• Interaction of Color by Josef Albers

A stunning visual exploration of how we perceive color differently depending on context — perfect metaphor for psychological perception.

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🧙🏾‍♂️🌀 Whispering Wizard’s Closing Words

📍End of Mission I: Perception Portal Completion

Ahh… Traveler.
You made it through the maze.

Not by rushing.Not by knowing.But by staying with yourself.

This… is a skill.

⚗️ Most people seek answers.
But you? You practiced perception.You slowed your reactions. You stayed curious.
You endured the discomfort of reflection…the invisible kind of strength.

🧙🏾: Let me tell you something clinical now:

📚 “Insight is not the endpoint of therapy. It is the entry point of integration.”
(Dr. Daniel Siegel, The Developing Mind)

When you learn to notice your thoughts, emotions, and responses as learned blueprints you are no longer trapped by them. You are shaping the map, not following one you never chose.

And for that… I have a gift.
To celebrate your courage, your curiosity, and this first completed mission.
I offer you:

A 10-page guided expedition into your earliest conditioning.

This is not a test.
This is not homework.
This is mirror work.
And you earned it.

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To Receive Your Offering:

You have gained your first Safari tool— a map that helps you track your early emotional contracts, somatic reflexes, and inherited identity roles that may still be steering the wheel. Now, here is the thing about these tools—they

🧙🏾: My offering for your efforts “The Family Roles Reflection: Unpacking Early Conditioning…”
🔖 Collect Here

Rest now,
The next map will reveal itself soon.
Until then—reflect. Integrate. And above all… stay curious.