The Nervous System

The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) is the body’s built in threat detector and warning system. It detects and processes emotional threats (real or perceived) and prepares us to respond in milliseconds.

This is the where we get the fight, flight, or freeze response. This system kept us alive millions of year ago, but it’s primitive. Emotional danger like rejection, criticism, or conflict trigger the same nervous system response as physical danger. These threats are generally not life-or-death, but your nervous system doesn’t know the difference.

So what happens when our SNS is activated?

We go into survival mode. Our body saves resources by shutting down whatever it doesn’t need to survive, such as digestion, immune system, and executive function (logic and reasoning). Your amygdala, which manages emotional responses, especially fear, will hijack your executive function. This means you will feel extremely nervous or scared and struggle to think clearly.

How does our SNS know what’s safe and what’s a threat?

Our nervous system gets calibrated when we’re very young, using our early experiences of love as the blueprint. If you experienced significant trauma, neglect, inconsistency, invalidation, or conditional or transactional love when you were young, this is what your SNS expects love to feel like.

• So you will feel safe in similar dynamics, like with partners who are not fully emotionally available, or in a transactional relationship where love is given with an expectation—that the other person stays, that you’ll be rewarded for your effort or sacrifice, etc.

• Unfamiliar dynamics that do not match the blueprint will sound the alarms. Your nervous system doesn’t recognize calm, safe, healthy love, so it assumes it’s not safe.

Our nervous system knows what to expect from familiar dynamics. It knows it can survive them, even if they are toxic, painful, or leave us feeling unfulfilled. However, when healthy relationships are unfamiliar, your nervous system doesn’t know how they work, what to expect, or how it will end. So it errs on the side of caution and tells you to run.

Your nervous system doesn’t make suggestions, though. It won’t stop to ask questions or reason through things, it just hits the panic button and makes you feel uncomfortable, uncertain, scared, or insecure. It will convince you that this will end in pain, loss, or abandonment.

This is very common. You are not alone, and you’re not crazy.

• Your SNS might tell you that you’re not good enough, they deserve better, or they’ll eventually leave you.

• It might tell you that you’ll somehow screw it up or damage them.

• It might say that you can’t trust them, that there’s a catch, or this is too good to be true.

• Your nervous system will make sure you genuinely believe whatever it tells you. That voice in your head that believes these things? That’s your nervous system talking.

• It’s not lying to hurt you, it’s trying to protect you the only way it knows how.

*These beliefs often lead to distancing behaviors or self-sabotage, which only strengthens them. Here’s how it often plays out: If the other person leaves on their own, it confirms (the false belief) they were always going to leave. If you drive them away, it confirms (the false belief) that you’re toxic or you hurt people who get too close.

Your nervous system might be scaring you away from the exact connection you’re looking for.

The way this plays out in your relationships can vary.

For some people, distance feels like danger because their nervous system learned early on that when connection disappears, it might not come back.

This has a name, object constancy. This means being able to hold onto a sense of connection even when someone isn’t physically or emotionally present.

Bob’s nervous system sees distance as danger. When Sally pulls away or gives her attention elsewhere, he panics. He feels an overwhelming urge to fix things before they get worse—so he reaches out, pushes for connection, walks on eggshells. That’s what an anxious attachment strategy does: it tries to prevent loss before it even happens. The irony? His frantic efforts to close the gap can make Sally feel smothered, which only drives her farther away.

Other people develop a different type of fear. Instead of fearing loss, they fear connection. They learned early on that connection wasn’t reliable and that having needs was inconvenient, so it felt safer to avoid closeness altogether. The system learned to regulate through distance by shutting down, rationalizing, or avoiding vulnerability so they never have to risk being let down.

In this example, Sally feels uncomfortable with too much closeness or emotional intensity. When Bob gets too close, she feels pressure and needs space to breathe. It’s not that she doesn’t care—her nervous system just learned that closeness can lead to pain.

It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that caring feels dangerous or futile. They can’t lose something if they never allow themselves to have it, so they keep their emotional distance. This is what an avoidant attachment strategy does : it disconnects before it gets close enough to hurt.

Some people’s nervous systems hold both fears at once—the fear of losing connection and the fear of being too close. This can look and feel very confusing. Their behavior constantly contradicts itself as they bounce between craving closeness and fighting it off.

It's a complicated push-pull pattern that might feel like “come here…no, go away…but wait, don’t actually leave…but also, don’t come back!” It is incredibly confusing and can feel like emotional whiplash to the person on the receiving end. This is a disorganized attachment strategy, driven by two opposing fears: ‘I need closeness’ and ‘closeness will hurt me.’ It can look like being manipulated or jerked around, but it’s really just a nervous system that doesn’t know how to feel safe, no matter what it does.

When your nervous system confuses benign situations as a reason to panic, love starts to feel unsafe—even when it isn’t.

When love harms: how abuse and fear distort your clarity

If you're in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, the nervous system often responds by trying to keep the peace at all costs. It doesn’t weigh logic or long-term safety—it reacts to immediate threat. .

When love has been weaponized, your body learns to fear both disconnection and connection. So you walk on eggshells, keep quiet, try harder. It makes sense. Staying in a harmful relationships isn’t always about love—it’s often about fear: what will happen if you leave, what leaving says about you, or fear of being alone, etc..

That fear is valid, but it also clouds your clarity. You’re not imagining things. And if it’s hurting you, it matters—even if no one else sees it.

When love feels stuck: how the nervous system justifies staying

Not every unhealthy relationship is abusive. Some are simply unfulfilling, misaligned, or painful in ways that aren’t obvious.

You may feel guilt for wanting more. Shame for not being happy. Or tell yourself, “Maybe I expect too much,” or “No relationship is perfect.” That’s not clarity, that’s conflict. And it can distort your feelings so much that you lose your ability to tell what’s real.

This tends to create confusion, disconnection, and harm for both people.

Loving someone doesn’t mean it’s the right relationship, and staying when you know it isn’t can erode self-worth and harm both people.

When we start to question things, we find ways to justify staying and rationalize warning signs.
Below are 15 common lies we tell ourselves to avoid leaving a relationship.