Tonight I watched a short video of a stray dog and how they tried to rescue her. At first, it looked simple. She was hungry, she allowed a person to approach her, she clearly wanted affection and food. But her body was shaking uncontrollably. She wasn’t aggressive, she wasn’t running away, she wasn’t protecting herself. She simply could not trust what was happening, even while moving toward it, even trying to wiggle her tail... And in that moment, something in me recognized her completely. Not intellectually, not as an idea, but through a very familiar sensation in my own body. 

I realized there is a part of me that lives in that exact contradiction. I want love, I reach for it, I am not closed to it, and yet... something inside does not allow me to fully relax into it anymore... This is not a belief I can argue with or change through understanding. It lives in the nervous system, which learns through repeated experience, not through explanation... It learnt through years of this experience... Traumatic experience... Conditioning... 

What we usually call fear often looks like distance or avoidance, but there is a quieter form that hides in plain sight. You stay, you connect, you even open sometimes, and yet there is a subtle but persistent tension underneath everything. It appears slowly... collects throughout years... through repetition of the same patterns that always end in pain. It resembles what is known as a freeze response, where the body does not flee or fight, but remains internally braced... and where you stop trusting the joy...  From the outside, everything can look normal, even warm, while inside there is a layer that refuses to let go... Suspecioun grows... pessimism grows with it also... the body learns to feel never ending enxiety.... 

Over time, the body builds its own logic. It does not think in words, it organizes itself through patterns of sensation. When closeness has been intertwined with inconsistency, distance, deletion or unpredictability, a very quiet conclusion forms: it is not safe to fully relax now. This is not dramatic, it is not even conscious most of the time. It simply becomes the background state. Even in moments of warmth, something remains slightly contracted, as if the system is still waiting to see what will happen next. "will I be betrayed again?" "will I be deleted again?" "will I be invalidated again?"

There can be moments when things feel different, when the body softens just a little and something warmer becomes possible. In those moments, it almost feels like trust could grow. But it is partial, not complete, because trust is not a decision that can be made once in a second. It is something that accumulates slowly, through consistent experience, through presence. And this is where an important distinction becomes clear: my body is not afraid of love itself, it is responding to what it has learned to expect around it.

Because of that, this is no longer about talking things through or trying to convince myself that everything is fine. The body does not respond to reasoning or analysis in that way. It can only relearn through a different kind of experience, one that is stable enough to register as safe. That kind of safety does not come from occasional closeness over coffee or brief connection over the email... It comes from continuity in real life, from presence that does not disappear or collapse, from something that does not need to be constantly questioned or re-established. 

It is not about small windows of connection, not about “coffee for half an hour,” but about time that is long enough for the body to stop anticipating the painful end. Time where nothing is pulled away, nothing suddenly shifts, nothing needs to be defended against. Only in that kind of space does the system begin to consider letting go.

And this leads to a very honest place. The question is no longer how to force trust or override fear, but whether there is enough real stability for the body to begin relaxing on its own. A new programming has to occur...  The body does not follow logic or promises. It responds to what repeats. It either gradually learns that it is safe to exhale, or it continues to hold tension as a form of protection. There is nothing weak about that. It is simply memory, living inside the body and waiting to be met by something different... and the body DOES want love and connection... it is afraid... it is simply afraid... it needs some loving attention... series of dates almost... new conditionning where safety is learnt....