Joe Hudson

So without that, we will modify parts of ourself.

We'll only show the parts that are accepted or aren't shamed or even yelled at.

We will become, again, who we need to be to maintain the bonds that are closest to us or that are most important to us.

And then because our nervous system will always prefer the familiar, this is why we get so stuck in patterns even if we know they're dysfunctional and they might be betraying us or we might be neglecting ourselves or maybe hurting those around us because our nervous system will prefer those predictable patterns because it knows what comes next.

Even if what comes next is something we want to avoid,

it feels safer to us than the unknown.

So that is for some of us why we continue to, no matter how much insider awareness we might have, right?

We might know that we're in a safe relationship, yet we can't help those instinctual reactions that our body elicits.

The moment that someone appears upset with us or the moment that someone isn't as communicative with us as we would like them to be, right?

We spiral into panic because maybe our body, right?

remembers a time where we didn't have secure connection, where distance met rejection or met abandonment.

So we memorize, to some extent, the emotional climate and the reality, again, for most of us adults, because we were raised by humans who were

raised by humans.

And if we think back to past generations, many of our parents and our grandparents didn't have access to this information.

Like I just even acknowledge this nervous system science is new information.

And some of us didn't have access to resources, to financials.

So for all of those reasons, more often than not,

we didn't have the safety and the emotional attunement that we needed in childhood.

So the home base that we keep returning to isn't a grounded, safe, secure one.

And though, while that is the case, we can create that at any time.