One of the biggest things I’ve learned through doing this work is that healing doesn’t mean your old reactions suddenly disappear.
You can do years of work on yourself and still feel that flash of anger, that knot in your stomach, that familiar feeling of not being enough, or the urge to shut down, defend yourself, overthink, people-please or assume the worst. The reaction can still come. What changes is your relationship with it. There starts to be more space between having a reaction and becoming the reaction. And that space is where we begin to change.
So many of our automatic reactions were learned a long time ago. They developed through our experiences, the meanings we made from those experiences, and the things we learned we needed to do to feel safe, loved, accepted or in control. Some of those responses probably served us really well at one point. They protected us. They helped us cope. They helped us get through things we didn’t yet have the tools to deal with differently.
But what protected you then can restrict you now. The goal isn’t to fight those parts of yourself, judge them or force them to disappear. It’s learning how to meet what comes up differently. This is why I use my A R C process: Awareness & Accept, Recalibrate & Regulate, and Choose.
It starts with awareness. Before you can change a pattern, you have to be able to see it. You notice what is actually happening inside you. Maybe your chest has tightened. Your stomach has dropped. You’re angry. You feel rejected. You want to withdraw. You’re already rehearsing an argument in your head or telling yourself a very familiar story about what this means. Rather than immediately trying to fix it, explain it or get rid of it, you become aware of it. This is what I’m feeling right now. This is what’s happening inside me.
Then comes acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean you like what you’re feeling or approve of it. It doesn’t mean the story in your head is true, and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to accept poor behaviour from somebody else. It simply means you stop fighting the fact that this is what you are experiencing in this moment. Instead of telling yourself, I shouldn’t feel like this, you can say, Okay. This is what’s here.
That small difference from reacting, resisting, fighting or fixing; creates space for curiosity. What has this activated in me? What am I making this mean? Is this entirely about what is happening right now, or has something older been stirred up too? When you can notice your reaction without immediately becoming consumed by it, you are no longer completely inside the reaction. You are observing it. And that gives you somewhere to go next.
The next part of A R C is Recalibrate & Regulate. When we’re activated, our first instinct is often to think harder. We analyse, replay conversations, predict what someone else is thinking and try to figure everything out. But sometimes the first thing we need isn’t another thought. We need to regulate. Come back to sending simple messages of safety to your body. There is absolutely no need for dozens of somatic exercises here, that just makes you work harder and feel more stressed. Slow your out breath just a whisper. Feel your feet on the ground. Unclench your jaw. Drop your shoulders. Take a walk. Step outside. Put your hand on your chest. Give yourself five minutes before replying to the text, sending the email, having the conversation or making the decision.
You are giving your nervous system a chance to recognise that you don’t have to react immediately. Because when we’re highly activated, everything can look different and feel urgent. A comment can feel like rejection. A mistake can feel like failure. Someone needing space can feel like abandonment. A difficult conversation can feel like danger.Regulation helps us create enough internal steadiness to see what is actually happening. Then we can recalibrate.
Recalibrating is where we begin separating the reality of the situation from everything our history, fear, assumptions and conditioning might have added to it. What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What story am I telling myself? What part of this belongs to what is happening today, and what part might belong to something that happened years ago? Is my reaction proportionate to what is actually happening? What else could be true?
This isn’t about talking yourself out of your feelings or pretending everything is okay. Sometimes things genuinely aren’t okay. Sometimes someone has crossed a boundary. Sometimes you have been hurt. Sometimes something needs to change. Recalibrating is about being able to see that clearly rather than seeing the whole situation only through the lens of your activation. You’re coming back to yourself. And from there, you get to Choose.
This is the part of the process where you ask yourself, Who do I want to be here? What would give me a better experience? Not, What does my fear want me to do? Not, What have I always done? Not even, What will make this uncomfortable feeling disappear as quickly as possible?
What do I choose? Maybe you choose to have the conversation instead of avoiding it. Maybe you choose not to send the message you wrote while you were angry. Maybe you choose a boundary. Maybe you choose compassion. Maybe you ask a question rather than making an assumption. Maybe you stop abandoning yourself to keep somebody else comfortable. Maybe you let something go. Maybe you decide to do absolutely nothing until you have more information. There isn’t one correct choice. The important shift is that your response becomes intentional rather than automatic.
And this is how change starts becoming part of who you are. Every time you become aware rather than immediately being swept away, you are practising. Every time you accept what you are feeling rather than fighting yourself for feeling it, you are practising. Every time you regulate your nervous system and recalibrate the story you are telling yourself, you are practising. Every time you consciously choose how you want to respond rather than allowing an old pattern to choose for you, you are practising. The old reaction might still show up, this is being human!
That doesn’t mean the work isn’t working. Over time, you might notice it sooner. You might believe the story a little less. You might recover more quickly. You might have more space between the trigger and what you do next. And eventually, something that once automatically controlled what happened next becomes something you can notice, understand and respond to differently.
For me, that is what this work is really about. It isn’t about becoming someone who never gets triggered, never gets angry, never feels insecure or never falls into an old pattern. It’s about becoming someone who knows how to meet themselves when they do.
Awareness & Accept.
Recalibrate & Regulate.
Choose.
This is what we teach you to learn and practice in the community. We come back to it again and again, until the way we consciously choose to respond begins to become the way we naturally live.
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