12/18/2025
Most of us come to healing with a quiet expectation that one day, we’ll stop getting activated.
We imagine that progress looks like staying calm, unbothered, unaffected. That if the work is really working, we won’t snap at our partner, shut down in hard conversations, or feel our body tense in familiar moments.
So when activation shows up, it can feel like something went wrong.
For example, you might snap at your partner over something small and immediately feel confused about why it came out so strong.
Or you shut down during a conversation and can’t find your words, even though you care deeply about what’s being said.
Or a tone, a look, or a silence suddenly makes your chest tighten and your mind race.
Or you over explain, people please, withdraw, or go numb without fully choosing to.
When that happens, it’s easy to assume healing should have prevented it.
The goal of healing isn’t to eliminate activation. It’s to change what happens when activation appears. That kind of change doesn’t come from insight alone. It comes from helping the whole system learn something new, not just understand it.
Over time, that looks like noticing yourself getting flooded without immediately lashing out.
Staying in the conversation instead of disappearing from it.
Feeling intensity without your nervous system taking over.
Instead of asking, Why am I still getting activated? A more useful question becomes, What’s different about how I meet this activation now?
