Wired for Survival
Even before you are born the world dictates who you should and shouldn’t be, and what you can and can’t do, instead of embracing you as the magnificent being you truly are, with your own unique gifts, purpose and path.
It’s no surprise you may feel lost, feel like you don’t belong, feel like you don’t have a home or a purpose when you’ve spent decades adapting to your environment for connection, safety and survival, perhaps, without even realizing it.
Survival is your natural default setting.
Your brain, body and nervous system are wired for survival, not for happiness.
You may have been taught, from an early age that acceptance and belonging means upholding the mainstream and status quo of your family, while ignoring your needs and aspirations.
Conforming and complying to the expectations of your family, peers, workplace and community is standard and expected in many environments. In some circumstances, it’s crucial for survival.
You’re encouraged to be different, but not too different.
If you step too far away from the norm, you’re often ridiculed and ostracized. You may instinctively hide parts of yourself to meet acceptable standards and expectations of your family and community.
Straying too far from your family or community’s ideologies often comes at a cost, risking your acceptance and belonging, and sometimes even your safety.
Overtime, you can lose yourself and forget who you truly are. You may even do things you don’t want to do, or morally and ethically disagree with to maintain a sense of connection and safety, or to simply survive.
Adverse childhood experiences, chronic stress, trauma and living in survival mode may cause you to further disconnect from yourself and your true essence. This rupture may cause you to feel broken, as if you need to be fixed, and society perpetuates that belief.
You are not broken, and you don’t need to be fixed.
You’re having perfectly normal emotional, physical and biological reactions to stress, trauma and the crazy world we live in. Your brain, body and nervous system are doing what it was designed to do–protect you!
The good news is, thanks to neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself and adapt) you can change your deeply ingrained survival patterns and conditioned tendencies. Behaviours you may not be aware of, as well as your larger fight, flight, freeze responses can be transformed!
“A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”
- John A. Shedd
Be kind to yourself and thank your brain, body and nervous system for doing their job–keeping you alive! But, also consider what conditioned tendencies are holding you back? What deeply ingrained survival patterns are no longer needed, and are now hindering you?
You may have no desire to travel the world, or climb mountains, but how are your survival patterns keeping you too safe? What’s holding you back from expressing and sharing your unique gifts or following your soul?
🔥 Heather
If you liked this post you might also like: Follow Your Soul, What is Somatic Experiencing®? and Start Slowly and Imperfectly!