Why Your Nervous System Craves Certainty (And Why It Looks Like Control)

I don't think you're actually trying to control things, maybe in some ways.

But underneath it, I think what's happening is that your nervous system is trying to answer one question.

And that question is, am I safe? So to start, I'm going to ask you a few questions and kind of like think about this for a second rather than just listening as I kind of ramble off a handful of questions.

Why do you reread texts? Why do you rehearse conversations before they actually happen? Why do you go over and over a situation that's already done and passed? Why do you check to see if someone seems upset with you even when nothing has actually happened? Why do you Google symptoms at 11 p.m.

or even 2 a.m.? Why do you need reassurance sometimes more than once even after someone's already told you that things are okay? So my hot take is that none of these things are actually about control.

Every single one of these things is about one question.

Am I safe right now? Is this okay? Do I know what's about to happen next? And kind of sit with that for a second, because I think a lot of people who have found this podcast have spent years being told or telling themselves that they're too much, that they're too anxious, that they're too needy, they're too sensitive, that they can't let things go and they have to have everything in a certain way.

And when you receive that feedback or you have those self-beliefs for years and years, underneath it all can be this wondering of like, what in the world is wrong with me? Why can't I shift or change these things? And really nothing is wrong with you.

I really do believe that deep down what's happening is that you're trying to feel safe.

And when you can understand what's actually driving that, the behaviors that you engage in, they stop looking like flaws and they can really start looking like exactly what they are.

a nervous system that's doing its job.

I think that the word control implies something manipulative in kind of like a negative way, right? Like there's a person underneath a behavior who wants power, who needs to dominate, who can't handle not getting their way.

But for trauma survivors, I think what's happening is something that's a lot more kind of natural than all of that.

your nervous system learned things a long time ago, maybe decades ago, and it's still operating from that learning right now.

And if you're someone who's been labeled controlling, maybe by a partner or a parent or a friend, or maybe a combination of all of those things, and you've walked away feeling like you're too much to be around and that you need too much reassurance and all of those things, I want you to know that being label controlling by someone who didn't understand what was driving the behavior is its own kind of wounding, right? It takes something that was already painful and adds a layer of shame on top of it.

It makes you question yourself in a way that has really nothing to do with what's actually true about you.

So if you've been listening to this podcast for a little while now, you've heard me talk a lot about how your brain is a prediction machine.

I've talked a lot about the idea of predictive processing.

And I just want to talk briefly about it again because it really is the foundation of what this episode is all about.

And I want to tell you about a part of it that we haven't really talked about before.