Why Neuroception is a Trauma Healing Superpower

What makes us recognize that some people are safe and others are dangerous? For those of us with unresolved trauma, what makes us misperceive danger when we are actually safe?

It might be the way our partner looks at us, the tone of voice they use when frustrated or upset, or how they move their body during a normal, healthy conflict. If trauma is still in the nervous system, it's easy for our bodies to misread these nonverbal cues as danger and react with a trauma response.

Imagine there’s a spectrum between danger and safety. Neuroception feeds you signals about where on that spectrum you are, in any given moment.

That’s why it’s an essential part of trauma healing. Neuroception refers to how pathways in the nervous system interpret for us whether someone (or something) is safe or dangerous.

Because neuroception usually happens below the level of our conscious awareness, we don't realize when the danger signals we’re noticing may not be coming from outside — they may be coming from within us.

Because trauma puts the nervous system in a state of constant high alert, people with high levels of unresolved trauma are likely to be mislead by their neuroception.

Unattuned neuroception means that we may interpret actions as an attack when they're not. We may perceive unkindness when there isn't any. Although we’re in a safe environment, we may see danger everywhere.

It's painful because we end up being on high-alert when we relate to others, and that translates into behavior that is perceived as high-conflict when it's not. It's just that our brains and bodies have unresolved trauma that sends us signals of danger, when we're safe.

We might feel frustrated and like we can't do anything about it — but because of neuroplasticity, we can.

Trauma and the Nervous System

Trauma happens when our nervous systems perceive something as overwhelming and life-threatening. It doesn’t mean that thing is life-threatening, only that our nervous systems perceive it as life-threatening.

(This is also 100% beyond our conscious control.)

For those of us with unresolved trauma, our neuroception is sending us constant danger signals, even though we’re in situations of safety. Because we’re constantly getting signals that the world is never safe, we're not able to enjoy the present moment or connect deeply with the people we care about.

Unresolved trauma also means that we're more likely to be re-traumatized. With overactivated nervous systems that see danger everywhere, we're more likely to respond with full force to even small amounts of threat in a way that overwhelms and potentially retraumatizes our nervous systems.

With trauma, the process of neuroception will misread social and environmental cues and trigger our bodies to protect and defend ourselves at all costs – even though there isn’t any real-time threat.

It’s as exhausting as it is discouraging. And if any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

I'm sharing this because once we understand the role that neuroception plays in giving us never-ending danger cues, we can take steps to shift our neuroception into healthier territory.

Because of neuroplasticity, our neuroception is 100% changeable.

No matter how unsafe the world might appear, it's possible to learn how to create safety. I would even say that it's necessary. 

There is no need to continue to suffer because of what happened in the past.

We can rewire our nervous systems and learn how to connect safely and confidently with ourselves, others, and the world. Let's explore how.

Neuroception and Conscious Awareness

Most of the time, the autonomic nervous system operates below the level of our conscious awareness.

We might freeze when we hear a sudden, loud noise. We might feel suddenly angry when someone bumps against us accidentally in a crowd. We might want to escape an uncomfortable social situation. And we feel connected when we're relaxing with people we care about.

These are all impulses or feelings at the level of the autonomic nervous system.

When we have unresolved trauma, it's not that simple.

We might feel shutdown in social situations and prefer to isolate rather than connect. We might feel overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts or emotions that are flashbacks from our original traumas. We might feel inexplicably angry at someone showing us care. We might avoid intimate relationships because we don’t feel safe to connect with others.

None of these reactions are necessarily conscious, meaning we are probably not aware that we're acting from unresolved trauma in those moments.

It's natural to blame ourselves and feel like there's something wrong with us.

That’s why it's so powerful to bring conscious awareness to neuroception and begin to untangle what's really going on.

It’s not because we're wrong or broken. It's because our nervous systems are still reading the present moment as a threat.

Trauma interferes with the neural pathways that link the thalamus (the part of the brain that understands the flow of time as past, present, and future) with the rest of the body.

That's why when flashbacks happen, it often feels like we're back in the moment when our traumas occurred. To our bodies and brains, we are back in those moments — until we create new neural pathways of safety and connection.

Once we learn to pay attention to what's going on in our nervous systems, we start to notice when our bodies and minds are sending us danger cues. We feel the rising tension in the shoulders, the drop of the stomach, the tension from holding our breath. We notice the sudden intensity of strong emotions.

In relationships, this can show up as wanting to give up or leave. But most of us would rather learn how to stay present with ourselves and navigate to a place of inner safety.

How to Create Safety through Neuroception

When neuroception sends us outdated danger cues that are not accurately reading the current situation, we owe it to ourselves to learn how to shift our states.

If we don't, we risk losing treasured relationships and hard-won opportunities.

If we don't learn how to change our neuroception in those moments, we jeopardize the potential of our lives. We don't want to look back with regret at the heavy price of unresolved trauma — not when we know we can heal.

We can shift our neuroception so that it's accurately reading safety and danger in real-time. When we do this, we start to create the inner safety for ourselves that our bodies need to heal.

This is a process that I do with private clients in my trauma resolution practice, but I'll share with you some of the basics for you to explore.

Before I do, it's important to recognize where so many of us get stuck in our process. Western culture likes to place the mind in dominance over the body, which is ineffective when we're trying to heal because it doesn't allow the body's natural intelligence to lead the healing process.

Instead, we try to control it from the mind, doing our best to talk and think our way out of something that is embedded in our neurobiology. Then we fall into a shame spiral because no matter how much effort we put in, the flashbacks and trauma responses are still there.

Or we think that we can ignore the impact of trauma and expect it to heal with time. But it won’t because trauma is a highly adaptive survival strategy. Our bodies are not going to shift strategies until we feel truly and deeply safe.

Let's explore some of the ways we can start to reorient our neuroception:

1. Window of Tolerance

To heal, we need to be in an optimal state of awareness. This means not being overactivated into a trauma response or flashbacks, but also not being frozen or shutdown. It's called a "window of tolerance" because we want to be inside the metaphorical window frame – not over-activated and not under-activated. We want to notice when we’re going outside it so we can pause and bring ourselves back. 

2. Somatic Trauma Navigation Skills

To stay within our windows of tolerance, it's essential to learn and practice somatic trauma navigation skills. These are body-based skills that help us tolerate the danger signals our neuroception is sending us. These skills help us to update our nervous systems in real-time, so that we can receive the safety, love, and belonging that is present in the moment. These somatic skills include containment, grounding, orienting, resourcing, titration, and pendulation, which I share more about here and here.

3. Safety, Love, and Belonging

Trauma healing requires a foundation that allows us to reorient our neuroception to the goodness of now. To do this, we need real safety in our relationships and environments. We need to experience authentic connection and love. And we need to feel like we belong to the world, to our friends and family, and to our communities. From that place, the body can update to the reality of the present moment. We learn to sense accurately when there is real danger that we need to respond to and when it’s safe enough to relax.

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I hope that exploring neuroception has been helpful for you. It’s important to understand why things might feel dangerous to your body when your mind knows that they're safe. Or why hypervigilance is such a common experience when we have unresolved trauma.

Trauma responses happen automatically, and they will keep going until we decide to shift and heal. Conscious awareness of our inner state is the first step to shifting the painful patterns of fear and isolation.

Here's to healing.

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