Sarah May Bates

“What happens over time is your brain gets trained into feeling certain emotions and you grow used to them. You literally memorize the feelings and they become intertwined with your memory of the literal experiences. Once your body has memorized a specific emotion associated with a particular experience, it will automatically trigger you to feel that emotion when any new and related experience occurs. Feeling these old emotions becomes routine–just like when you have peeled an apple so many times, you don’t think about it anymore, an emotion can be embedded into your muscle memory. Even if they are unpleasant, they become where you feel the most inclined to be because they feel “comfortable.” When you feel an emotion repeatedly, your body grows a tolerance to the feeling and it becomes simply “normal” and therefore, to move opposite the feeling causes a sense of fear and anxiety. The feelings you’re used to, just like the way you peel that apple–that feeling is what you know, it’s where you feel safe.

When you’re working on creating positive change–or change of any kind, it will feel uncomfortable, tedious, or even scary and insurmountable because you’re moving away from “safe.” It’s not difficult in reality, but because you’re used to feeling a certain way–even when that feeling is bad, in your body it’s associated with comfort and safety.”
― Sarah May Bates