Dear Powerful Ones,
I want to speak directly today, because this is urgent:
Many of us stay in situations that don’t serve us—not because they’re good—but because they feel safer than risking something better.
Safety is seductive. Familiar pain is predictable. Old patterns feel like armor. And after trauma, our nervous system is wired to favor predictability over possibility.
This isn’t just metaphorical. There’s a psychological study from the 1960s that illustrates it in a stark, almost heartbreaking way. Psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier placed dogs in situations where they received repeated electric shocks they could not control. Later, when escape was possible, many dogs didn’t move, enduring pain that they could avoid. The study was cruel — the dogs suffered needlessly — but it taught us about learned helplessness: past trauma teaches a body that action won’t change outcomes.
And here’s the nuance that resercher and somatic practitioner Ailey Jolie brings: learned helplessness isn’t the full story. Our bodies are doing accurate threat detection, not just “overreacting.” The same attunement that kept us safe as children—our heightened awareness, hyper-vigilance, or ways of shrinking and adapting—can later be mistaken for a wound. What once protected us now becomes restrictive.
Our nervous system learned early on: freeze, adapt, over-function, shrink, or overcompensate to survive. That imprint doesn’t just disappear when we grow up.
Instead, it can show up in adult life as patterns that feel “stuck” or “wrong,” even when the environment is no longer threatening.
We may be unconsciously playing out the strategies our younger selves developed—the very responses that kept us alive in childhood—without realizing that the system that once protected us can now limit our capacity to trust, expand, and choose freely.
When your body signals, this doesn’t work, it’s time to look two-fold:
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How is this pattern keeping me alive or safe?
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Where is it now keeping me stuck?
Ailey asks a question that can change everything:
What impossible juggling act have I been performing since before I had language for exhaustion?
This isn’t about motivation or willpower. It’s about how your system learned to keep you alive — and how it might now be asking for new information, not more force.
I see it in everyday life:
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Staying in relationships that shrink our needs.
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Holding onto identities that protected us, but now feel like cages.
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Shouldering independence that was once necessary, but now isolates.
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Convincing ourselves we’re “fine” because longing feels unsafe.
This isn’t weakness. It’s intelligence shaped by experience.
And yet, staying isn’t neutral. Every day you remain in patterns that don’t serve you trains your nervous system to expect less, teaches your body what’s acceptable, and limits your capacity for aliveness.
Growth doesn’t start with certainty. It starts with willingness to notice. To observe your patterns without judgment. To name what’s protective and what’s now restrictive.
Journal Prompts:
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Where in my life am I staying because it feels safer than trusting something better?
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What am I protecting myself from — and what is it costing me?
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Where do I feel my body signaling “this isn’t safe,” and what does that feel like?
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What impossible juggling act have I been performing since before I had language for exhaustion?
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If I trusted my capacity to handle disappointment, what might I be willing to want?
This is where power begins. Not by forcing change, but by noticing. Noticing what your body, history, and system have been doing to protect you — and seeing what’s possible when the protection is no longer required.
👉 Hit reply and tell me — where do you sense you’re staying out of safety rather than truth?
With so much care and respect for your nervous system,
Em 💜⚡️🌟
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đź“· by Nadine Rupprecht on Unsplash
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