How Your Nervous System Learns Safety and Why it Takes Time to Integrate
Do you ever experience moments where you logically know something however your body feels the complete opposite? This experience does not mean anything is wrong, it actually means your nervous system is doing its job.
This is an indicator that your nervous system has learned safety through experience and not logic. Sometimes, even when we are doing the work on ourselves, it takes time for our body to catch up with what we know rationally. This can be frustrating and even at times feeds into our inner critic who loves to say " it’s not working, what’s the point?”
How the Nervous System Learns
From birth onward, your nervous system is constantly absorbing information:
Am I safe here?
Do i need to stay alert?
Are my needs being met?
Is it safe to relax?
Repeated moments of stress, disconnection, or emotional overwhelm shape our nervous system just as much as any major traumatic event. Overtime, our system adapts and our adaptations are protective, even if they become limiting as time passes.
Why Safety Can Feel Hard to Access
Safety is just an absence of danger. For your nervous system, safety literally means predictability, emotional attunement, a sense of agency and an ability to rest without vigilance. If safety was inconsistent, conditional or unavailable earlier in your life, your nervous system may not recognize calm as safe at all. In fact, slowing down for many of the people I work with can feel uncomfortable or even threatening. This is why some people feel more anxious when things are going well, restless when nothing is wrong or uneasy with stillness or quiet. Your nervous system may be waiting for other shoe to drop because historically, it typically did.
The truth is, for many of us, we have learned that being disconnected from our bodies is what is safe. It’s safer to not be attuned to what is authentically showing up for us because that means we have to challenge the norm or we may have to speak on our needs which may disrupt the peace or upset others in our environment (hello danger). So our nervous system remains in a stress response state because we have learned that this keeps us safe, even if now, it is also keeping us small or feeling stuck.
How EMDR Supports Nervous System Safety
EMDR works with how the brain and nervous system naturally process experiences. Rather than focusing only on talking about what happened, EMDR helps the nervous system:
Reprocess past experiences that are still being held as “unfinished”
Separate the past from the present
Reduce the emotional and physiological charge stored in the body
Over time, this allows your nervous system to learn something new:
That what once required protection no longer does.
This doesn’t happen by forcing calm. It happens by building safety gradually, at a pace your system can tolerate.
Why Healing Takes time
If your nervous system has spent years (like your entire life span) learning and then practicing staying alert, it makes sense that it wouldn’t just change overnight. As we all know, change is difficult and it is just as challenging for our nervous system to change as it is for us cognitively to make changes. Healing isn’t about erasing the past, nor condoning it, its about teaching the body something new, over and over again, until safety becomes more familiar. Safety is a skill you will learn in EMDR outside of and during processing.
Rather than asking yourself what is wrong with me? A softer inquiry could be, what did my nervous system need at the time? This shift alone can create space for self compassion and change.
If You’re Curious About the Next Steps
If you’re exploring EMDR Therapy in New York via teletherapy, you’re welcome to learn more about my approach on my homepage, explore common questions on my FAQ page or read other blog posts.
This is your permission to not rush your healing. Your nervous system will meet safety when it’s ready, with the right support.
If anything I wrote resonates with you and you are feeling called or even just a tiny bit curious, feel free to reach out for a free 15 minute no pressure consultation.
By Lisa Slone, LCSW-R
EMDR Therapist
