Sustained tension changes who you think you are

When a body has been in defense for too long, the tension stops feeling like a state.

It starts feeling like identity.

“I'm anxious.”
“I'm tense.”
“I'm impatient.”
“I don't know how to relax.”
“That's just who I am.”

But most of the time, that is not who you are.

It is your nervous system running a pattern that has been active for so long you no longer perceive it as a pattern.

You perceive it as you.

That is one of the deepest traps of chronic tension:

It does not just change how you feel.

It changes how you define yourself.

And from that definition you make decisions, build relationships and organize your entire life.

When the system finally regulates, many people discover something disconcerting:

The person they believed themselves to be was not them.

It was the tension.

And beneath that tension there was someone who had been waiting for a long time.