A Different Operating System
I’m in the middle of something I didn’t know how to name until it started happening. I didn’t even know something like this was possible. I’m not “fixed.” I’m not “healed.” But I’m no longer running around putting out fires.
What changed wasn’t my personality, my values, or my beliefs. It was the rules my body was operating under. My nervous system is no longer behaving as if it’s under constant threat. This is still a work in progress and I don’t know where it’s going to take me yet. But here’s what’s already different since the shift.
What I Lost
Most of what I lost isn’t visible. It was the cost of constantly bracing for danger. Of waiting for the ground to give out from under me. For the other shoe to drop.
Some of that cost is clear from the negative space, not what I learned, proved, or did, but what I no longer experience.
Background monitoring – constant bracing for danger, scanning communication for tone, replaying conversations, checking for mistakes and anticipating fallout. My body is relaxed for the first time in working memory.
Emotional flooding – since I was in constant fight-or-flight mode, every outside stimulus was treated as a threat, no matter the size. Emotions now come and pass instead of activate me for days or weeks after.
Decision-making no longer feels like life-or-death. I’ve learned I can make my choices in drafts if I need to – not all decisions are permanent or identity bound.
No urgency to explain myself – no longer justifying my reactions, pre-empting misunderstanding, or translating my internal world for safety.
Losing these didn’t make life easy, it made it quieter. Markedly quieter. It gave me space where there was panic, quiet where there was chaos. My internal monologue is no longer running the show.
What I Gained
Alignment between body and mind – the gap between what my brain knows and what my body believes is smaller and more manageable now.
Curiosity without collapse – instead of catastrophizing, I stay curious and investigate. I no longer turn curiosity into a problem to solve or danger to neutralize.
Self-trust – I didn’t realize how much I didn’t trust myself until the first time I did.
Emotional containers – where all emotions used to flood my system equally, there is discretion. Now my emotional response matches the situation. Emotions come and resolve.
Rest actually restores – this is the big one. Now when I rest, I actually feel relief, not guilt, not shame, not fear that I’m doing something incorrectly – I feel rested when I wake up. Not every night, but frequently enough to make a difference.
What I gained doesn’t look dramatic because it’s actually absence. I gained the absence of constant effort. The absence of constant stress.
What Stayed The Same
My values, high sensitivity, intense curiosity, depth, and care for others are still totally intact.
My personality didn’t change, my response to the world did.
What Still Feels Weird
Absence of urgency feels empty, like something is wrong but I can’t quite name it. For the better part of my life, I was calibrated to put pressure on myself in order to function. I found safety in urgency. I used adrenaline to get myself moving. Now I have this vague feeling that I’m forgetting something, and every so often I’ll realize I’m not worried. I’m not in perpetual panic.
Choice used to make me feel that my decisions were identity-binding, mistakes were permanent, and choosing wrong felt deeply upsetting. Now, I feel like I can edit my choices if I need to. They no longer define me. I catch myself often expecting choices to be difficult, but they do not hold the power they did in the past.
Self-trust feels oddly suspicious. Since I’m no longer second-guessing, self-flagellating, and trying to prove myself and my reasoning, life got simpler. My mind is much quieter. I no longer feel sick to my stomach every day. That calm is strangely hard to get used to.
I’ve always felt that I’m living my life on “hard mode” while others are not, and now I finally know why. It turns out some nervous systems regenerate automatically; mine had to be rebuilt from scratch.
I’ve been calling this a “rewrite” – not because I rebuilt myself, but because the rules my body was operating under completely changed. It’s made my system quieter, my pain less sharp, my mind more present.
If Any Of This Resonates
If you have been trying to “fix” yourself and are frustrated when it isn’t working, please understand it’s not your fault. You have been fed the story that coping skills work for everyone, that effort assures good results, and if it’s not working it’s because you need to “try harder.”
The reality is those things are true for someone working from nervous system safety. If your effort hasn't been working, you might not have the conditions you need to make change happen.
You’re not “doing it wrong.”
If it hasn’t been working, that doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means effort alone was never the mechanism of change. Change doesn’t come from forcing yourself harder. It comes from creating the conditions where your system no longer has to fight just to exist.
This isn’t a finish line. It’s a different operating system. And for the first time, mine isn’t running on emergency power.
