Latest / Unlocking The Paradigm Portal / Be Real, Not Nice: Your Body Never Forgot. | The Unsafe Wound (Generational Wounds Series)

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Be Real, Not Nice: Your Body Never Forgot. | The Unsafe Wound (Generational Wounds Series) · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

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Good morning. Welcome back to unlocking the
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Paradigm portal. My name is Sarah.
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So we have been in it this week, haven't we?
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Monday we talked about the unworthy wound, that one that
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turns exhaustion into achievement.
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And Wednesday we tackled the unlovable wound, the one that
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keeps you just far enough inside yourself that love can't reach
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you all the way. And today I'm going to be
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upfront about this. This wound is the root of many
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of the other wounds. If the unworthy wound lives in
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your relationship with work, and the unlovable wound lives in
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your relationship with other people, then the unsafe wound
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lives in your body and it formed 1st, and it runs most of the
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other wounds. So if you've ever wondered why
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you know better but can't do differently, or why insight
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doesn't translate into change, today is where that gets
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answered. So let's keep going.
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Your body has been running a threat assessment on every room
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you've ever walked into, and it's not because you're anxious
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or broken or overly sensitive, because it's some point early
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enough that you have no memory of it.
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Your nervous system decided the world wasn't reliably safe and
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it needed to stay ready, and it calibrated, and it built a
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system to catch danger before danger could catch you, and it
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has been running the system ever since.
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In every relationship, every conflict, every moment of quiet
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that feels wrong somehow, we're fully relaxing, feels like a
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risk you can't afford. In every situation where someone
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raises their voice or suddenly pulls back and something in you
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responds before your brain has finished processing what
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happened, that is not overreacting.
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That, my friends, is a nervous system that learned its job in
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an environment where staying alert was survival.
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It just never got the memo that the environment changed.
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That is the unsafe wound. And it didn't start with you.
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Your nervous system is not broken.
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It's loyal. It's still protecting you from
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something that happened a very long time ago in a place you no
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longer live. The wound is the system running
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past its expiration date. So what is the unsafe wound, you
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ask? Well, let me tell you, it is a
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core belief held not in the mind but in the body.
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That the world is not reliably safe and that you specifically
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cannot count on safety being provided by the people around
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you. That you have to stay ready.
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That lowering your guard, even briefly, even when things look
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fine, is a gamble that your system isn't willing to make.
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This is why it runs the other two wounds especially.
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And in the future, we'll get into many more wounds.
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So the unworthy wound working constantly to earn your place
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makes more sense when you realize your nervous system
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learned that being useful was a form of safety.
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If I am needed, I can't be discarded.
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The performing isn't just about worth, it's about protection and
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the unlovable wound. That keeping people at a
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controlled distance also makes full sense here, because total
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intimacy means letting someone close enough to hurt you,
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possibly badly. And a nervous system running an
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unsafe wound doesn't care how much you consciously want
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connection, it will override that want with a physiological
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response every time closeness starts to feel like exposure, so
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the unsafe wound shows up in your body and the startle
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response that's slightly too big for the situation.
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Or the hyper vigilance in social environments like scanning and
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reading the room before you can settle into it.
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Or the chest tightening and conflict even when you're not in
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physical danger. The sleep that doesn't restore
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you. The chronic muscle tension
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you've stopped noticing because it's been there so long it just
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feels like you're normal. And it also shows up in your
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relationship with stillness. So the unworthy wound can't rest
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because rest feels unearned, and the unsafe wound can't rest
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because stillness feels exposed. And when there's nothing to do
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and nowhere to be, the body sometimes surfaces.
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What's been out running what it has been out running.
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So the wound keeps you moving because moving is a regulated
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state and stopping isn't think like a shark.
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The unsafe wound isn't a thought pattern, it's a body state.
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And you can think your way out of a belief, but you cannot
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think your way out of a nervous system calibrated for danger
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since before you had language. So now let's get into the
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generational map of all of this. The unsafe wound is the oldest
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wound in the chain because the nervous system dysregulation
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that transmits before language that is running the entire
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system. It's before story, and it
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travels in the quality of a caregiver's touch, in the
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consistency of their response, and in whether the world the
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infant encountered was predictable or not.
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And this time, more than the other two wounds we've talked
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about, we're tracing something that traveled through bodies,
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not just through behavior. So the Silent Generation
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survived events that created collective dysregulation on a
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scale that's almost incomprehensible.
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From here, the depression, World War 2, genuine scarcity, real
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threat. Their nervous systems weren't
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broken. They were accurately calibrated
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to what they survived. But that calibration came home
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with them and it sat at the dinner table, and it showed up
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in emotional unavailability and rigid rules and the refusal to
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discuss difficulty. Because for that generation,
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discussing difficulty wasn't relief, it was weakness.
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And weakness in the environments they'd survived was dangerous.
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And then the boomers. Boomers grew up in homes where
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the adults were physiologically carrying survival level
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experiences they'd never processed.
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The external safety was real, but inside those households,
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inside those nervous systems, the alarm was still running.
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Children Co regulate before they self regulate, and a child in a
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home with dysregulated adults will develop a dysregulated
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baseline regardless of how safe things look from the outside.
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And then Gen. Xers got the unsafe wound in the
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form of unpredictability, the latchkey experience, homes
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disrupted by divorce, addiction, financial instability, parental
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depression. The adult who was warm yesterday
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was unreachable today. The home that was stable last
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year was restructured this year. Unpredictability and danger
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register the same way in the nervous system.
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The body doesn't distinguish between a tiger and the
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possibility of a tiger. And the millennials got it in an
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ambient form. The over scheduled outcome
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optimized childhood that left no room for unstructured stillness.
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The nervous system needs boredom and it needs to learn to
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regulate without stimulation. Then adulthood arrived with
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economic instability, political chaos in a world that felt
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perpetually on the edge. The unsafe wound in millennials
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often looks like a low grade chronic hum of anxiety that's
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fully normalized because everyone around them is running
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the same frequency. And then we move to Gen.
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Z. So Gen.
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Z is navigating it in an environment designed to make the
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threat response inescapable. The news cycle, the climate,
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social media architecture that is specifically built to trigger
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engagement through alarm. Their nervous systems are
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showing the effects in the data and the anxiety, the depression,
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exhaustion, and the overwhelming sense that safety is theoretical
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rather than actual. Again, different eras, different
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triggers, same body state moving forward through every generation
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that didn't have the tools to stop it.
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The alarm running your nervous system was not installed by you,
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it was inherited from people who needed it and passed it forward
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without knowing they were doing it.
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That is not failure. That is the most human thing
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that there is. So how does it show up right
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now, today? Well, this one is going to get
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personal because the unsafe wound doesn't live in a story
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you can recognize and push back on.
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It lives below the story. It lives in automatic responses
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that happen faster than thought. It shows up the moment you walk
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into a new room, a party, a meeting, a space full of people
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you don't know. Some part of you immediately
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starts gathering data. Who is safe, where the exits
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are, what the power dynamics look like.
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You've gotten so good at it that it looks like social
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intelligence. And it is.
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But it's also exhausting, and you are doing it in rooms where
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you are completely safe, and it shows up in conflict as a
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physiological event. Your heart rate changes, your
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breathing shallows. Your body prepares for threat
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before your mind has assessed the actual danger level.
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You are having conversations from inside a threat response
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while trying to present as a calm, rational adult, which is
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an extraordinary amount of work, and which is why conflict
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depletes you even when it resolves cleanly and it shows up
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in intimacy at the exact moment closeness tips into exposure.
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There's a threshold, different for everyone but consistent
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within you, where vulnerability starts to feel like danger, and
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sometimes this looks like emotional withdrawal and
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sometimes it's starting a fight and sometimes it's physical
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tension your partner can feel even when you can't name it.
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Sometimes it's being completely fine and then suddenly not fine
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with no explanation for the shift, and it shows up in your
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relationship with your own body. The unsafe wound creates
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complicated terrain there. Sometimes it's dissociation or a
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sense of observing yourself rather than inhabiting yourself,
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and sometimes it's the opposite. Hyper awareness, interpreting
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neutral body signals as symptoms, scanning internally
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the same way you scan externally.
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The body became an unreliable place at some point, and some
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part of you has been managing that ever since.
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You are not overreacting. You are accurately reacting to a
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threat level your body established a long time ago and
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has never been given a reason to revise downward.
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So we're going to turn on the light and see what changes when
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you actually see it. Because remember, once you see
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it, you can't Unsee it. So here's what's different about
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the unsafe wound. Understanding it is necessary,
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but it's not enough. You cannot think your way into a
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regulated nervous system. The wound lives below language,
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which means the healing also has to go below language.
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This is why people who are extraordinarily self aware, who
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can articulate their patterns with precision, are still
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struggling in their bodies. Intellectual understanding and
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physiological reset are two different processes.
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Both matter, but one is not optional.
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What changes when you see it clearly is this.
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The shame lifts because the unsafe wound, more than either
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of the others that we've talked about, has been interpreted as a
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personal failure, as weakness. The anxiety, the hyper
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vigilance, the reactivity, the difficulty being still, these
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have been pathologized and moralized in ways that add a
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layer of shame on top of an already dysregulated
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physiological experience. And shame is not a regulated
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state. It contracts the nervous system
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further, and it makes the wound worse while insisting the wound
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is your fault. And when you understand this is
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a generational inheritance, a nervous system calibrated for an
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environment that no longer exists by people who were doing
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the same thing their people did before them, the shame loses its
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grip, The claws retract, and the story shifts from something is
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wrong with me to something happened to the people who
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shaped me, and it shaped my body before I had any say in it.
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And now I get to be the person in my line who does something
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about it. Generational curse Breakers.
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So the nervous system is not fixed.
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It's plastic. It can be recalibrated not
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quickly and not through willpower.
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You can't push your way through this but through consistent
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repeated experiences of actual safety.
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Through relationships where rupture is followed by repair.
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Through practices that speak directly to the body, Breath
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work, movement, touch, rhythm, presence.
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The slow, unglamorous, non linear work of teaching a system
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that's been on high alert for decades that it is allowed to
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come down. This is why I've spent the whole
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week on these three wounds together.
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The unworthy wound, the unlovable wound, and the unsafe
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wound are not separate problems. They are three expressions of
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the same thing, a self that learned in its earliest and most
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formative context, that the world wasn't reliably safe, that
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love wasn't reliably available, and that worth had to be earned.
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They run together. They heal together, slowly in
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the direction of safety, one regulated moment at a time.
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And under everything, under every wound we've looked at this
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week, under every generational story handed down without
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permission, is the same thing it always is.
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Hope, the stubborn, indestructible conviction that
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it is not too late to do this differently.
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That is yours, and it has always been yours.
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You are not too far gone. You are right on time.
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You are the person in your line who stopped, who looked, who
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decided that what was handed down stops here.
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That is not a small thing. That is everything.
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So you're stoned for today. I'm going to close this this
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week, a little bit differently. There's no assignments that
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involve your head. This one is for your body.
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Tonight, do one thing specifically designed to tell
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your nervous system it is safe right now, in this moment, in
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this body. Not metaphorically,
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physiologically. So.
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Here's what that looks like. Find a comfortable position, put
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one hand on your chest, put one hand on your belly and take 5
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slow breaths. A longer exhale than an inhale.
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Not because breathing fixes everything, because a longer
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exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system,
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which is your rest and digest mode.
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The off switch for the threat response.
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You are literally telling your body through the mechanics of
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breath that the alarm can calm down.
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And while you're there, say this out loud if you can, and
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internally if that's what's available.
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I am safe right now. This body has carried a long
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time of staying ready, and it can rest for five breaths. 5
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breaths, one hand on your chest, one on your belly.
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That's the beginning, not the end, just the beginning.
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But beginnings are the only place anything ever started.
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And if the words that I put together don't work for you,
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make up your own, my own personal one.
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When my unsafe wound kicks up, because it does still kick up,
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is I do that. I put a hand on my chest, a hand
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on my belly, and I just breathe and I close my eyes to stay with
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myself and I say I am scared and I am safe.
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I am scared and I am safe over and over.
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And it does eventually work. So you showed up every day this
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week and you looked at 3 wounds that most people spend a
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lifetime walking around and avoiding like they don't exist.
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You did not look away and I am proud of you.
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That is not bravado. That's what years of doing the
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actual work looks like. You didn't get here by accident.
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You got here by choosing to see clearly every single time.
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It would have been easier not to and that is amazing and
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commendable. So I will be back Sunday for the
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deep dive. Not sure what that's going to
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look like. Bring some questions.
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I might actually try to do a live with a couple of my friends
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to tackle some of this. We'll see what ends up coming
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up. So like, share, subscribe, hype,
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do all the things not to prove my worth, but to help my channel
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keep pumping out to other people.
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Leave me some comments. I love hearing what you guys
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have coming up for you and share this with anyone that you think
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might have some interest in it. And next week I'm coming back
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with three more wounds. If anybody has suggestions of
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ones that are coming up for you, let me know.
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I would love to take a look at all of them.
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And as always, don't forget Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at
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9:00 PM is the Light in the Dark series and Saturday nights will
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be tied into this unsafe wound. And thank you so much for
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joining me. Have an amazing Friday.