Some of what we called love was just survival. Healing teaches us the difference.
Understanding the Nervous System: Familiarity vs Safety
In my personal and professional opinion, one of the hardest and most important parts of our healing journey is learning the difference between safety and familiarity.
When you begin your healing journey, you realize how often your body confused the two.
"Familiarity isn’t safety. It’s just repetition."
Familiarity can feel so much like safety — not because it’s truly is, but because it’s known.
Our nervous systems are wired to seek the familiar, even if the familiar was chaotic, unstable, or painful.
It’s the "repetition" that makes it feel “normal,” not the health of the experience itself.
You may find yourself unconsciously drawn to people, places, or patterns that mirror the very wounds you are trying to heal.
This is why doing deep inner work feels so confusing at times.
Not because you don’t know better — but because your body remembers the familiarity, not the danger.
Healing asks you to slow down, feel into your body, and start being curious:
Does this feel safe? Or just familiar?
Why We Choose Familiarity Over Safety (Neuroscience of Survival)
From a neuroscience perspective, our nervous systems are not wired to seek what is healthiest or most aligned — they are wired to seek what is predictable, Therefore what is predictable is what we accept and deserve.
As children, our developing brains and nervous systems are wired for one primary goal: survival.
We rely on attachment to our parents/caregivers not just for love, but for actual survival.
When those caregivers are unsafe, unavailable, or inconsistent, the body learns that safety is not dependable — but connection must be maintained at all costs.
This creates a deep imprint in the nervous system.
The amygdala — the brain’s threat detector — becomes conditioned to associate familiarity with survival, regardless of whether it was actually safe.
Over time, this conditioning gets stored in implicit memory, which doesn’t rely on conscious thought but on emotional and somatic recall.
The prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for reasoning and perspective — isn’t fully developed in childhood and often goes offline during traumatic experiences, we don’t get to process what’s happening with logic or perspective. Instead, the body stores the survival strategy, which we later recognize in familiar patterns.
That’s why, as adults, we can logically know someone or something isn’t good for us —
but still feel drawn to them.
That isn’t weakness or poor judgment.
It’s your nervous system following what it was trained to believe was necessary for connection and survival.. It’s a survival strategy on autopilot.
Healing requires slowing down, accessing the body's cues, and rewiring those imprints so the nervous system learns a new baseline: calm is safe.
Steady is safe. Peace and danger do not coincide.
This unlearning doesn’t happen overnight. It requires repetition, gentle awareness, and giving your body new experiences of safety over time. However, I will admit can be challenging in a world where 80% of the population are unhealed and living out there trauma and calling it a life. I am very much aware safe relationships are not a dime a dozen.
The Inconsistency I Once Called Home
This truth was the hardest thing for me to come to terms with in my last relationship.
It felt so familiar — comforting, exciting, something I already knew, it really felt "like home.”
And maybe, once upon a time, this kind of connection would have continued to feel safe to the version of me that was just surviving.
But when the relationship ended, it took almost two years to see the truth:
the only thing consistent about this person was his inconsistency.
It was one of my last lessons, "Just because it feels familiar doesn’t mean it’s safe."
Growing up in a home where people went from calm to chaos in seconds — where mental health struggles and addiction shaped the emotional weather —
I became deeply conditioned to rapid shifts in mood and behavior.
Therefore, I wasn’t alarmed when my partner exhibited similar traits.
I was aware it wasn’t ideal, and I didn’t like it — but it wouldn’t change my feelings or my choice to stay in the relationship.
I chose connection over safety more times than I could count.
I allowed the relationship to continue far longer than my inner wisdom wanted, because on a somatic level, inconsistency didn’t terrify me.
It was almost... expected.
I still believed on some level maybe even for as short period of time, he showed me what safety in a relationship felt like, and because I had never experienced it, I clung to it. Even after the writing was on the wall, it was it was so hard to come to grips that this "home" was not safe for me anymore.
It was only through deep nervous system work, inner child work, and grieving the lack of safety I had growing up, that I began to fully reclaim my right to something different.
Something that doesn’t just feel familiar — but is steady, safe, and deeply honoring.
The Choice to Heal: Moving Toward True Safety
Healing asks us to pause before we run toward what is simply familiar.
To listen a little deeper.
Quiet the thoughts of the mind, and be still with our bodies.
To honor the parts of us that once called survival “love” — and to choose something different now.
"Healing asks you to pause before you run toward what feels familiar."
You are not failing because safety feels unfamiliar right now.
You are healing.
You are learning.
You are coming home to yourself.
"Your nervous system remembers survival. Healing is teaching it to learn peace, safety and stillness, for maybe the first time."
Familiarity kept you alive.
Safety helps you thrive.
Every time you choose a calm nervous system over chaos, you are rewriting a story generations deep.
Every time you trust your inner signals — even when your mind doubts them — you are becoming the truest, most authentic version of yourself.
Healing doesn’t always feel like home at first.
But keep going.
You’re building a new home inside yourself where love and safety can finally live together.