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 years ago when survival might have meant outrunning a sabretooth tiger. Today’s threats are generally not life-or-death, they are often emotional threats, but your nervous system does not 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. What is actually safe registers as danger, while harmful dynamics will feel 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, healthy relationships are unfamiliar, and 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. This won’t feel like a hint that you should question things. It will make you feel incredibly uncomfortable, uncertain, scared, and insecure. It will make you feel threatened in situations that are safe, certain you’ll eventually get hurt.

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

• Your SNS might tell you that you’re not good enough for this person or that they’ll leave you once they really get to know you.

• It might tell you that this person is incredible, but you’ll somehow screw it up.

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

• These made up stories can make you feel insecure or uncertain, sparking fear or anxiety about this person or relationship.

• Your nervous system will make sure you genuinely believe whatever it needs you to believe to convince you that this is not safe, even if in reality, it is the kind of love and relationship you’ve been looking for.

*These beliefs will make you push them away or sabotage things, which reinforces the stories that you are not good enough or ruin everything. This ensures that you’ll continue to believe the lies and stick to the safety of your familiar patterns. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that is tough to escape. If the other person leaves on their own, it confirms they were always going to. If you drive them away, it confirms that you ruin things.

These thoughts aren’t random, they’re your nervous system trying to keep you safe. It learned early on that love can hurt, so now it stays on high alert, constantly scanning for signs of potential 'danger'. It assumes that if it can spot the signs early, it can protect you.

But remember, to your nervous system, familiar = safe and unfamiliar = danger. It might be scaring you away from healthy, safe love, simply because it's what you're used to.

The way this plays out in your relationships can vary. Which pattern shows up depends on what your system learned early on about connection, safety, and love.

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

This has a name, object constancy. It’s something your brain develops as a baby through consistent caregiving. It’s the ability to hold onto a sense of connection even when someone isn’t physically or emotionally present. If your early relationships were inconsistent or unstable, you may not have developed object constancy. So now, when someone pulls back, goes quiet, or seems different, your nervous system freaks out.

Your nervous system has been trained to see distance as abandonment. If they give their attention to someone else, are preoccupied with work, are not super responsive to you, you panic. You get an overwhelming urge to fix things, reach out, force connection, or smooth over tension before it turns into loss. You might spiral over a text, walk on eggshells, or abandon your own needs just to keep the connection intact. And if you are frantically trying to fix something that isn’t actually broken, it can make your partner feel smothered.

This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was wired to do, though: protect you from emotional abandonment by desperately trying to prevent it. This is an anxiously attached nervous system.

Bob & Sally stories coming soon!

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 having needs was inconvenient to their caregivers, so it’s safer to just avoid close connections altogether. They might also struggle with shame and guilt for ever wanting connection or hoping to get their needs met.

The system learned to regulate through distance by shutting down, rationalizing, or avoiding vulnerability altogether. That way, the person can avoid the pain of being let down.

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. If things feel too close, they might pull away and need some time apart, or end things altogether. This response is often misread as coldness or disinterest, but it’s actually a survival strategy: “If closeness leads to pain, I’ll just stop getting close to people.” This is an avoidantly attached nervous system.

Some people develop a combination of both, which can look and feel very confusing. Their behavior constantly contradicts itself as they bounce between craving closeness and being afraid of it.

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. The nervous system is constantly contradicting itself, driven by two opposing fears: “I need closeness” and “closeness will hurt me.”

It can look like being manipulated, played, or jerked around, but it’s really just a nervous system that doesn’t know how to feel safe, no matter what it does. It creates a lot of pain for both people. This is called disorganized attachment.

You know the idea that if they want to be with you, they would?
That may not be the case at all. What someone wants in relationships is often overridden by fear. Your nervous system reacts; it doesn’t process things first, it doesn’t weigh the options or evaluate risk—it just reacts, instantly. And it’s wrong…a lot.
This isn’t weakness, cruelty, or personal failure, it’s physiology.

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.

You might find yourself explaining things away, minimizing harm, blaming yourself, or holding onto the “good moments” like a lifeline. That’s not weakness. That’s survival.

When love has been weaponized, your body learns to fear disconnection and connection—because both can hurt. So you walk on eggshells, keep quiet, try harder. It makes sense. But staying isn’t always about love—it’s often about fear: fear of what will happen if you leave, fear of what that says about you, or fear of being alone. 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 at first. But even then, your nervous system might work overtime to justify staying, especially if you fear being alone, starting over, or letting someone down.

You may feel guilt for wanting more. Shame for not being happy. Or tell yourself, “Maybe I expect too much,” or “No one’s 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.

If you aren’t being fully honest with yourself, you may be unintentionally misleading your partner too. They might think everything’s fine, while you're quietly withdrawing, hoping things change. That gap creates confusion, disconnection, and harm for both people.

Loving someone doesn’t mean it’s the right relationship. Staying when you know it isn’t can erode self-worth on both sides.

When we start to question things, or when we know deep down that we should leave but can’t, we find ways to justify staying or rationalize the warning signs.
Below are 15 common lies we tell ourselves to avoid leaving a relationship.
Click them to see the truth behind the lie.