I’ve spent my life dreaming of homes. Literally. Dreaming through them at night. Longing for one during the day. In my child’s heart, I yearned for a place to…root in, to belong, to drop my guard and breathe. Because my own homelife was anything but.

My home was dangerous, and it wired into me some desperate but adaptive survival measures. I could yearn for stability and peace, but what my body knew was danger and dysregulation. I had little idea what it felt like to feel…good.

So last year when, by some grace (and privilege and luck), I was granted my dream of a peaceful, beautiful home…well, it’s been a lot to take in.

In a body primed by trauma

It’s a painful irony that we can both deeply yearn for something and be woefully unprepared to receive it. Neither my body nor psyche has quite known how to rest in this good.

I can sense the peace…sometimes even sink in, thanks to years of healing work. But my nervous system is still exquisitely attuned to danger. And these survival responses don’t just shut off once we’re safe. They keep churning away, seeking new problems. 

For me, this can show up as anxiety and fixation on upcoming house maintenance—the “danger.” Or as acute stress with workers in the house. More often, it’s background buzz, an inner trembling just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A faulty signaling system

In some bodies, the arrival of something good may even come as a shock. The system will treat it as a giant stressor, and then respond in kind. Why?

The brain’s amygdala stores info about what’s safe and dangerous so that we can quickly respond to threats. It then compares any new experience against its stored data.  

Problem is, long-term trauma creates an attic stuffed with unpleasant references and just a cupboard of pleasant ones. So, any novel experience tends to be judged a threat—even when it’s positive.

Building tolerance for good stuff

Regular trauma work takes load off an overworked nervous system. But to rewire it, we also need to rebuild tolerance for feeling good.

To practice, try this deceptively simple exercise. Look around and find something pleasant or at least neutral. Notice it for a few moments, just take it in. How does it make you feel?

There’s no right or wrong way to feel…you’re just increasing your bandwidth for positive experiences. Practice several times a day. In time, your body will start to let them in.

Feeling at home

Recently, I was sitting at breakfast, subsumed by dread. I didn’t know why. I peered around my kitchen, looking for the problem, but all was dappled light and peace. A bulb went on. In that moment, I realized nothing was wrong. My dread evaporated.

My body let in the good.