Hidden Perception

Sensory Data

Sensory data is the raw information we read from others without knowing it. Your body tracks microscopic cues in milliseconds: undetectable facial movements, vocal timbre, pupil dilation, breathing patterns, posture, timing, movement synchrony, even subtle scent cues. These signals are involuntary and register instantly, shaping sense of safety, warmth, interest, trust, and threat in any interaction. You don’t choose to notice any of this and you can't control it. Your nervous system was designed to look for and interpret it automatically.

This isn’t a new theory, it’s been studied and utilized for decades. It’s how lie detectors work. They scan for and measure internal micro-cues, most of which we are entirely unable to influence or control.

There are more than 3000 documented external micro-cues. Because this information never reaches conscious awareness, it shapes your internal experiences and feelings in ways you do not realize. A tiny change in someone’s voice, the speed of their breath, the angle of the corners of their mouth, or the length of their walking stride can shift how safe, welcome, or uneasy you feel. When you kiss someone, there are biological compounds in saliva that transmit you a ton of data that you are completely unaware of. That’s partly why a kiss can feel meh or really intense. Attraction and compatibility are largely based on things about others we have no idea even exist.

This is why dating apps have such a low success rate. The information that we use to determine whether or not we are attracted to someone or feel safe, comfortable, seen, etc. is not present. It’s why you can be excited about a match one day, and be over it the next. It becomes more about validation than actual attraction or connection.

Sensory data is the foundation for everything that follows; it sets the stage for how your nervous system interprets a given moment, and how your body prepares to respond.

Nervous System Filters

Your nervous system is what turns sensory data into meaning, and it never does this from scratch. Every signal you take in is evaluated through two filters: the state of your nervous system in that moment (regulated, alert, guarded, stressed, etc.) and experiences from your earliest relationships. Your body filters what’s happening now through the lens of what it learned back then to decide how to interpret the moment.

Your system isn’t looking for what’s true, it’s looking for what feels familiar. Your nervous system will ask “Have I seen or felt this before?” If the answer is yes, then it will assume it knows what will happen and acts accordingly. For example, if you star to feel a genuine connection with someone, and your nervous system knows in the past this felt safe and loving, it will feel safe to explore it. But if you had tumultuous or hurtful relationships, especially in your childhood, your nervous system will tell you, “This is not safe, you’re going to get hurt, you need to get away from this—now.” Except it won’t use those words. Instead it might sound like “You’re not good enough”, “They deserve more than you can give them”, “You’ll eventually screw this up”, or “They’re going leave you.”

If it’s unfamiliar, meaning your nervous system hasn’t encountered this before, it tends to act defensively, erring on the side of caution and treating the unknown as a potential threat.

It’s like if you’re wearing tinted glasses, everything will look different than it actually is. What you see looks real because it looks the same in any light or from any angle, so you accept it as reality. But when you take the glasses off, you see that things are very different from what you believed. No matter how real it looked before, the lenses were altering your perception.

This is what happens in relationships. When your nervous system is using an old, outdated filter, it can recycle old meanings onto a new situation without you even realizing it. That’s how intensity can feel like love, conflict can feel like connection, distance can feel like punishment, and genuine love can feel threatening. Understanding this can help you separate your present from the stories of your past.

Automaticity

Automaticity refers to how fast and involuntary this process is. Your nervous system reads cues and assigns meaning in milliseconds, long before you have any conscious awareness. You can’t stop yourself from sending these signals, and you can’t stop yourself from reading other people’s—your nervous system is wired to do it automatically. Because it happens so quickly and outside of awareness, and because these cues are being filtered through your past experiences, the feelings you have can feel incredibly real and true, even when they may not be. The fear based feelings tend to be least accurate, but they also often feel the strongest because our nervous system wants to be convincing, and it can’t take any chances. Those are the feelings you may want to question before deciding to trust them.

Influence

Influence is about what all this automatic processing does to you. The cues you take in, such as warmth, confidence, instability, receptivity, tension, approachability, etc., combine to create an overall impression that feels intuitive.

Your nervous system uses those cues to decide whether someone seems attractive or unappealing, trustworthy or risky, comforting or activating. You think it comes from your conscious experience, ‘I liked his vibe’, ‘she seemed really grounded’, ‘he gave off a weird energy’, ‘she was intense’, ‘he carried himself well’, etc. But the majority of what actually shapes those impressions are the tiny signals your nervous system is always reading.

The pull you feel toward someone or the need to push them away can seem like pure chemistry or instinct. But much of what you experience as attraction, aversion, safety, tension, resonance, or irritation is your system stitching together hundreds of tiny signals into a single feeling. It’s not random. It’s your body’s interpretation of who feels safe, familiar, compelling, or threatening in that moment.

The accuracy of those interpretations is where you may have some control. If you are able (and willing) to recognize your own filters and that your feelings, no matter how real or intense they feel, may be misleading, then you can start peeling back the lenses and seeing things more clearly.

This process runs your first impressions, your reactions, your pull toward some people and your aversion to others, and it does it all without you knowing. And even though you’re oblivious, it influences attraction, trust, conflict, comfort, and connection more than anything you try to do intentionally.
Understanding it doesn’t stop the system, but it helps you see that your feelings are always valid, but that doesn’t mean they are always true.