1:1 Coaching: www.savannanoelle.com/comebackMy girlfriends who know me best have asked me a very important question over the years, one I can finally answer without hesitation. “Savanna, if an emotionally available, stable, safe, ready, secure man, doing his own work on himself, showed up in your orbit, would you even know how to spot him? Would you be ready to stay?” You see, I know how to operate and dance in the land of the unavailable, inconsistent man. It’s familiar. It’s how I learned what love was. But would I know in my nervous system what safety and security actually felt like if it appeared before me? Would I recognize it, and feel calm in my body, if he was consistent, made an effort, reciprocated, and had the crucial conversations when conflict hit? For a lot of my life I thought maybe I was just kissing too many frogs. But really, it was my nervous system running my love life, hopping from one unavailable, inconsistent, abusive man to the next. So when initially asked this question years ago, I figured that if that kind of man came along, my anxiety would finally settle, and I’d know how to step into it. But in reality, it was something much deeper than that. As I talked about in Part 1, our attachment wounds and unhealed traumas shape our nervous system, and that shapes our capacity: how much discomfort and uncertainty we can hold, how much we cling, and how close someone can get before we shut down or run. Are we able to self-regulate instead of cling to someone when we fear abandonment, when those attachment wounds are screaming at us? Are we able to stay in the emotional discomfort with someone when we fear rejection or not being good enough, without fleeing? We can all say we want secure, consistent, healthy, communicative relationships. But if we don't consider and work with the nervous system we've developed over the span of our lives, all the ways we learned to cope to be seen, loved, and validated, we keep attracting the very thing we don't want. This is why the dance of the unavailable person is so seductive, and such an easy scapegoat. Our wounds keep us in the cycle of the familiar ways we’ve learned to cope. Until our relationships become so unmanageable and toxic, and the cost of self-abandonment and self-betrayal grows so great that we are finally forced to learn how to soothe our own inner landscape. You start to see that you are the common denominator in all of your relationships. It takes work with our protective parts. So this next episode is all about how we build capacity. The actual tools. Capacity is something we practice. It’s learning how to stay when you want to run, or when you’re sitting in discomfort. It’s getting curious instead of reactive. It’s the ability to hear a need without falling into shame or defensiveness. It’s the capacity to let someone be exactly who they are without abandoning what you know about yourself. It’s the ability to listen with compassion first, without needing to be right or to be understood. (I struggle with this one.) And most of this work happens in the body, not in the mind. You can study your attachment patterns and understand them completely and still feel flooded the moment things get real in a relationship. That’s because your nervous system learns through experience, contrast, by getting curious about your own triggers and why you react the way you do. In this episode, I explore how emotional capacity is built, how disconfirming experiences help us reprogram our deeply held beliefs, and the practical tools that can help you begin strengthening your own nervous system and inner resilience. I also share more of my own story: what it has taken to stop abandoning myself, and how learning to regulate changed not only my relationships, but my relationship with myself. I hope you enjoy it, and as always, if this episode resonates with you or you have a topic you’d like me to cover on the pod, please “like,” share and subscribe or send me an inquiry at: www.savannanoelle.com/support, and I will make sure your question or topic is covered during another episode. Hugs, Savanna Get full access to Savanna's Substack at savannanoelle.substack.com/subscribe
