Your Body Isn’t Telling You the Truth — It’s Telling You Its History
Why familiar discomfort can feel like love, and how to rewrite its story.
Your body is a gifted and complex storyteller.
But it doesn’t speak in words — it tells its stories through tight chests, shallow breaths, restless nights, and the sudden rush of longing or dread.
Long before your mind makes sense of anything, your nervous system has already sorted every sound, scent, and shadow into two primal categories:
safe or unsafe.
The strange ways memory works
Memory is funny how it operates.
If, like me, when you were young you burned your hand on the stove, your brain didn’t only record the heat.
It captured everything.
It captured:
the scent of damp earth outside the window,
a song or music drifting from another room,
the small tremor in someone’s voice nearby,
the color shirt your brother was wearing.
This is how associative memory works. As neuroscientist Eric Kandel wrote:
“The brain is a pattern-seeking machine, constantly trying to make meaning out of the sensory input it receives.”
So later, rain or that melody or a red colored shirt might spark unease — not because you’re irrational, but because your body paired them long ago with pain.
This is how it works with love, too.
If the first love you knew was inconsistent or sharp-edged, your body didn’t just memorize the person. It also memorized the atmosphere.
The way the hallway light flickered before a fight.
The hush that fell over dinner.
The aftershave or perfume someone wore when apologies were semi-mean or half-meant.
So decades later, you might still find yourself reaching for a love that confuses you — a love with just enough tension to feel like home, familiar.
We chase the wounds we recognize.
Therapist Francis Weller once said:
“We are continually trying to complete the old story by entering into relationships that replicate it.”
Your nervous system doesn’t seek what’s best for you. It seeks what’s familiar. It doesn’t know the difference between what is healthy and what simply matches the old ache.
That’s why, perhaps, we sometimes keep touching the hot stove though we already consciously know touching a hot stove will get us burned.
Not because we like the burn, but because somewhere deep inside, heat still equals home.
The gentle miracle of new wiring
But this is the hopeful part.
Your nervous system is plastic, changeable, and highly capable of new stories.
As poet Mark Nepo wrote:
“You do not have to live the same life twice.”
With time, repetition, and safe love — from others, and from yourself — your body can learn new pairings.
The rain, the song or music, the red short, or the smell of cedar can belong to quieter chapters.
They can exist in our futures without the threat.
A small reminder
Your body isn’t wrong.
It’s just remembering.
Teach it something new.
And it will learn.
Give it new history.
If this resonates, you can find more at My Safe Love Project on Substack, where we explore how to gently rewire your nervous system for steadier, clearer love.
✍️ Companion Reflection: What is your body still pairing with love?
Take a quiet moment, let your shoulders drop, and breathe.
Then gently ask yourself:
What sights, smells, songs, or seasons does my body still link to love — or to fear?
When calm enters the room, does my body lean in… or brace?
What might it be like to teach my nervous system that peace is safe, not suspicious?
You don’t have to answer it all at once.
Just notice.
Because awareness is how the old story begins to loosen.
✍️ If you’d like more gentle reflections like this, or small ways to rewire your body’s love story, you can find more at My Safe Love Project on FB, IG and on Medium.