How Nervous System Conditioning Shapes The Way We Love and Live.
A Collision with the Past
I was doing what I often do when the weather is beautiful — getting my steps in by walking in the park near my home. There’s a large pond there, and when the sun is overhead, it warms your face like the heat coming off a roaring fire. The route is simple, predictable, nourishing and offers stimulating scenery. Three clean loops and I’m reset.
I was feeling grounded. Good. Second loop in.
And out of nowhere, I collided.
Body to body. From opposite directions.
An old flame.
My breath froze.
I was caught mid-inhale. My body tightened. Time slowed in a way that felt eternal, though it was only seconds.
I was stunned. And in that stretched silence, I couldn’t even think.
I’m pretty sure he said something, but I have no idea what it was.
Then I inhaled and regrouped.
Feet on the ground. Voice steady.
I mustered up a response – but something had already happened.
My body felt flooded with a history of familiar sensations.
When the Familiar Comes Calling
What was happening? I had grown, worked on myself, moved on.
The unexpected nature and proximity to him triggered an internal battle.
My body innately started running an old narrative. One that is spoken in bodily sensations — I felt a flutter in my chest, an impulse to lean forward, a quickening of my breath, a rush of energy.
But, I knew better.
A quiet but palpable tug-of-war began, between my young, conditioned self – still drawn to his familiarity, “familiar once meant safe” and the older, wiser self “my preservationist” who learned the art of discernment — the part of me that knows how to identify and track threat in real time.
My nervous system wasn’t being logical, it was being safe — following old wiring that once helped me survive, but no longer fits who I am today.
I couldn’t rely on that wiring anymore — it was familiar, but no longer trustworthy. Survival had shaped it, but discernment was now here to guide me.
Old Wiring Meets New Wisdom
The struggle was real. It left me uneasy. My preservationist stepped forward – stay grounded, move slowly, really listen.
This advice didn’t just come as a voice in my head. It was physically felt in my body as containment, limitation, guardedness — my breath and heartbeat slowed, I kept my distance, my voice responded but didn’t elaborate.
Wisdom was on board.
Mind you, this might seem as if this all happened in slow motion like the ending scene in the Titanic. But, nooo…the nervous system operates with lightning speed, most often outside of our awareness. So that’s why, before realizing, we do something again and again and then find ourselves scratching our heads about it afterward.
In the past, not heeding this advice had cost me time, clarity, self-trust, peace, and my health.
This process can stop you from living a full version of yourself. It can throw you off balance, rob you of peace and bait you into cycles of going nowhere — all on the premise of safety. The body truly is only set up to keep you safe based on what’s it’s been conditioned to believe. Its intent is to function as your ally, wise resource and guide. But, through no fault of its own, conditioning during formative years, lays down an unconscious template that we continue to use in the present, even when it doesn’t serve us.
Chemistry or Conditioning?
Often, we mistake these instinctual sensations in romance –- that feel magnetic — for chemistry. That spark isn’t always true chemistry; it can be a nervous system reflex. A conditioned familiarity. An old idea of safety.
Have you ever taken the time to trace what chemistry means in your body. What are the origins of your beliefs around chemistry? How did you experience chemistry in your youth? What were the examples you grew up with? What did you end of believing as a result?
In my case that meant a trauma bond — attaching to those that hurt me. Because, in my young mind the consequences of not attaching would’ve been far worse.
This Isn’t Just About Love
This process doesn’t just show up in relationships.
Because this wiring lives in the body, it doesn’t stay contained to romance — it shapes how we socialize, work, parent, heal and even lead.
We are living inside systems that endlessly trigger our nervous system without allowing the body restoration, space or perspective. Our bodies are flooded by headlines, feeds, politics, healthcare philosophy and hustle culture.
This is called dysregulation.
Dysregulation is a Cultural Condition
Dysregulation shows up in groups, families, workspaces, communities, nations -– living in chronic stress, threat, speed, scarcity or disconnection. And, then it gets normalized as ”just how life is”.
Dysregulation narrows us into reactivity. Shortening our patience, collapsing our perspective. Hijacking our choice.
It creates reactive systems across families, workplaces, healthcare, finance and institutions — systems that react to pain rather than building conditions that prevent it.
Reactive leaders do not build resilient organizations, they create burnout cultures and are often regulation failures, not strategy failures.
Regulation is NOT softness. It is a STRATEGIC advantage.
The Cost of Not Listening
Before I stepped onto this path, I was somatically illiterate — like so many of us.
I made choices that didn’t honor who I was — because I didn’t fully understand who I was.
That cost me.
In everyday life, this looks like staying too long, leaving too quickly, burning out, experiencing chronic pain or illness, shrinking to belong and silencing ourselves. Expansion or growth can feel dangerous when the body remembers that love, belonging and safety once came with conditions.
The Tool That Changes Everything
The turning point for me began with a simple tool: the pause. This is the difference between repeating and rewiring. Choice comes back on board.
The pause allowed me to interrupt the trigger of my old wiring without automatically being hijacked by it.
When I began choosing to pause. I had to sit and stay in the moment. While hard at first, the body responded. My body softened. Breath relaxed. Heart rate steadied. I had access to the full spectrum of cognition and choice.
Healing happens in that present moment. Not when we are thinking of the past or the future. But when we are sensing what is happening in the right now.
Over time, my ability to stay in the moment longer — my capacity — expanded.
Everything shifted. My system could hold polarities and complexities. This offered me the ability to observe, negotiate and decide what the right next move was. Not default to a pattern that was wired in me when I had less tools at my disposal.
Relationships became: “Do I want them? Do I feel good around them?”
Health stabilized. Decisions clarified. Uncertainty became tolerable. My work deepened.
The Questions That Matter Now
Somatic literacy is no longer optional. It is foundational for relational maturity and collective stability.
Regulated systems think long-term. Reactive systems think immediate survival.
The world will remain uncertain and complex at least for the foreseeable future. So, let’s reclaim our power and strengthen the inner wiring that supports steadiness, choice and connection. It begins with asking:
What has limited regulation cost you in your life, career and relationships?
Can your nervous system distinguish between present-moment threat and the imprint of past conditioning?
Georgette Zacharias
Helping individuals and leaders build lives of regulation, not reactivity.
