Your Nervous System Isn’t Reacting to the Moment — It’s Reacting to the Meaning

We like to believe we are reacting to what is happening right now.
But the nervous system is rarely responding to the present moment — it is responding to the story you attached to moments like this in the past.

This is why two people can walk through the same holiday dinner, the same criticism, the same silence in a room — and have two completely different internal experiences.

Because it is never just the circumstance.
It is the meaning your body learned to attach to it.

Why Stories Matter to the Nervous System

We carry stories from three places:

• Inherited stories — the messages we absorbed without anyone ever saying them
  (“Don’t rest,” “Don’t cry,” “Keep the peace,” “Don’t make it worse.”)
  

• Internalized stories — the conclusions we made about ourselves based on past pain
  (“I am too much,” “It’s my job to fix,” “If I relax I’ll be rejected.”)
  

• Self-created stories — the rules we wrote to feel safe
  (“I must perform to be loved,” “If I say no, I lose belonging.”)
  
  

Those stories don’t just live in your head —
they live in your nervous system.

They shape how quickly you go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
They shape how safe or on-edge you feel walking into ordinary days.
They shape whether you brace, shut down, or breathe.

When the Mind and Body Don’t Match

This is why you can tell yourself,

“I’m fine. It’s not a big deal,” while your body whispers, “I don’t feel safe yet.”

Because the nervous system remembers what your mind tries to rationalize away.

Your body is not betraying you — it is protecting you according to the story it still believes.

Faith & Re-Storying

Scripture doesn’t say “forget” — it says renew.
Not to deny the past, but to re-anchor the meaning in truth.

When Christ enters our story, He does not erase what happened —
He rewrites what it means about who we are, what we’re worth, and what we’re safe to receive now.

Re-storying is not pretending something didn’t hurt.
Re-storying is refusing to let the wound define you more loudly than the Healer.

The Work Ahead

You are allowed to slow down and ask:

• What story is my body still living by?

• Where did I learn that?

• What truth is God inviting me to anchor in instead?
  

Your nervous system learns from repetition, not inspiration.
Every time you practice a new story rooted in truth, you teach your body that it can finally exhale.

This is what healing looks like:
not erasing the story —
but telling a truer one.