You know that feeling when your nervous system is like a smoke alarm that won't shut off?

Heart pounding, thoughts racing, jaw clenched so tight you could crack a walnut?

Yeah, that's one end of the spectrum.

Emotional regulation (the thing everyone keeps telling you to work on) isn’t about controlling your feelings or becoming some perfectly balanced human who never loses their cool. It’s about your body finally feeling safe enough to experience what you’re feeling without either exploding or going completely offline.

You know that feeling when you’re standing in front of the cereal aisle, frozen, because you can’t decide which box to buy? Or when someone asks what you want for dinner and your brain just… blanks?

Emails answered, kids fed, bills paid, that work project submitted on time. From the outside, you've really got your shit together.

But inside? You feel like you're watching your own life through foggy glass, going through the motions while some essential part of you has quietly slipped away.

Betrayal trauma isn't just heartbreak.

It's your body losing its blueprint for safety.

This isn't ordinary loss. This cuts at the core of what it means to be human; our need for trust, safety, and belonging.

Have you ever been going about your day making coffee, answering emails, having conversations but felt like you were watching it all happen from somewhere else? Like you were floating above your own life, present but not really there?

You call it "just how I am.”

But, doesn't it sometimes feel lonely in that carefully constructed fortress of self-reliance?

From the outside, you seem capable.

But, inside? You might be quietly unraveling.

That’s not just burnout. That’s the overfunctioning trauma response, a nervous system stuck in overdrive, long after danger has passed.

We tend to talk about trauma responses in terms of fight, flight, orfreeze trauma response. But there’s a fourth one we don’t talk about nearly enough, fawn.

"Triggered" has become one of those words that gets thrown around everywhere.

On Instagram captions, in group chats, even as a joke at the dinner table.

But if you’ve lived through trauma, emotional neglect, or a chronically unsafe upbringing, you know that being triggered is anything but funny.

You know that kind of relationship that feels electric at first?

The one that sweeps you up, makes you feel chosen, alive, like maybe this time, finally, you’ve found something real?

But then, almost without warning, it shifts.

The warmth cools.

The attention fades.

And, you’re left holding the thread, trying to make sense of what just happened.