Why Love Feels Like Danger

Why does closeness sometimes feel threatening — even when there's nothing wrong?

Relational trauma teaches the nervous system that love and danger live in the same place. This isn't a mindset problem or a lack of self-love. It's a body-level response that was once adaptive — and that now shapes how you move through every relationship in your life.

In this session, I explore what relational trauma is, how it becomes stored in the body, the patterns it creates in adult relationships, and what genuine, somatic healing looks like — beyond the Instagram advice.

Followed by a guided somatic journey: Coming Home to Safety in Your Body — a practice for gently building the felt sense of safety in connection.

*Please note: This track discusses relational trauma. It is intended for educational and supportive purposes and does not replace professional mental health care.*

Abi Beri | Nervous System & Trauma Specialist

Transcript

And thank you thank you for listening so if you've found your way to this chances are you know something about love feeling complicated maybe more than complicated painful terrifying and even when the person in front of you isn't doing anything wrong maybe you've been in relationships where you gave it everything and it still wasn't enough or maybe you pushed people away just as things got close or you've stayed in situations far longer than what was good for you because leaving felt more dangerous than staying or maybe and this is the one that doesn't get talked about enough you're in a perfectly good relationship right now with someone who is kind and present not going anywhere and something inside you still can't fully land you can't trust you're still waiting for the other shoe to drop that experience that's not a personality flaw that's not you being difficult or emotionally unavailable or my personal favorite you're not being commitment phobic that is a nervous system that learned at some point that love and danger live in the same house and today we are going to talk about how it happens why it happens and slowly gently what it looks like to begin to change it people who desperately want connection and those bodies are absolutely terrified of it so let's explore this now let's start with what relational trauma actually is because it tends to get misunderstood most people when they hear the word trauma they think of a single dramatic event a car crash a natural disaster an assault something discrete identifiable dateable but relational trauma is very different it's not usually one thing it's a pattern it's what happened or what consistently didn't happen so within your most important early relationships with a parent a caregiver sometimes a sibling sometimes later on in life a partner so this might look like just some examples a parent who was emotionally unavailable not cruel just not there just going through the motions physically present emotionally absent now a parent whose moods were unpredictable when you never quite knew which version of them you were going to get so you became very very good at reading the room then there is the parent who expressed love through criticism who just wanted the best for you but whose version of care felt like constant judgment or you had a relationship later in life that was intermittently warm and then cold and that alternated between connection and cruelty that made you feel loved one day invisible the next day now remember this none of this requires that you had a bad childhood in a dramatic sense some of the most relationally traumatized people i sit with come from homes that looked from the outside completely fine comfortable functional even but what relational trauma does regardless of how it arrived is this it teaches your nervous system closeness is not safe and once that lesson is installed once it becomes a body level truth rather than just a thought it runs every relationship you step into with or without you noticing it now let's look at the nervous system's role in all of this and why the body keeps the score now here is the important thing to understand about the nervous system and i want to keep this accessible because the neuroscience really matters here when we experience something overwhelming in a relationship especially as children before we have the cognitive capacity to process it the experience doesn't get filed away neatly as oh that difficult thing just happened it gets stored as a body state a set of physiological responses that become the default whenever a similar cue appears so your nervous system doesn't care about timelines it doesn't know that you're an adult now that you're safe now that person standing in front of you is not the person who hurt you what your nervous system knows is patterns textures the particular quality of a silence that feels withdrawn the tone of voice that sounds like disappointment the feeling of someone not texting back the moment just before an argument escalates and the moment it detects something that pattern matches even remotely an old wound even if the matches lose even if the similarity is superficial the alarm activates your heart rate changes muscle tightens breathing shifts your thinking narrows and suddenly without having made any conscious decision you're not fully in the present moment you're now in some deep neurobiological state back there now this is what people mean when they talk about being triggered so it's not just feeling upset but being pulled out of the present into the body's stored memory of danger and here's what makes relational trauma particularly complex the very thing that triggers the threat response is also the thing you most want connection closeness love so the nervous system ends up in this impossible bind moving towards what it needs the most and simultaneously bracing for impact and when the body learns that closeness is dangerous it develops strategies these strategies are very intelligent they were adaptive and they got you through at some point but they also tend to cause chaos in adult relationships some people learn to shut down to go cold to become very self-sufficient very independent very capable of functioning alone because needing people became synonymous with getting hurt if you need no one no one can abandon you and the therapists call it anxious avoidant i just call it lonely some people learn to become hyper vigilant in relationships to scan constantly for signs of withdrawal rejection abandonment or to read into a pause before a reply to interpret a bad mood as a sign that something is wrong between you to ask are you okay with me more times than they'd like to admit so the nervous system is doing its job perfectly here it's watching the horizon for danger but the cost is exhausting some people now they learn to lose themselves they shapeshift into whatever the relationship seems to require to be agreeable pleasing accommodating to make themselves small enough that they won't rock the boat now i mentioned this briefly in the other recording where i spoke about the fawn response if you have listened to that one but relational trauma often runs underneath fawning also the belief that who you actually are isn't lovable so you'd better present something more acceptable and some people learn to repeat to recreate the family dynamic even when they don't want to not because they enjoy suffering but because the nervous system always finds the known even when the known is painful because it's safer than the unknown now this is one that confuses people the most why do i keep ending up in the same kind of a relationship because your system is navigating towards what it recognizes the most not towards what is good for you towards what feels like home even if home means difficult chaotic and toxic now i want to pause here and say something about what the wellness industry tends to offer to people who are struggling in relationship now in just my own personal opinion i think it's a disaster honestly the prevailing advice tends to sound something like love yourself first you attract who you are your vibe attracts your tribe and set boundaries now none of that is completely wrong but it is hopelessly incomplete when we are talking about relational trauma because it frames the problem as one of mindset belief or self-esteem things you can theoretically fix with enough journaling and enough affirmations it really doesn't account for the fact that relational trauma lives in the body and in your nervous system and in patterns of physiological response that are not accessible to conscious thought so you cannot love yourself your way out of a dysregulated nervous system you cannot read enough self-help books to rewire neural pathways that were laid even before you learned how to speak and the apps now here is a seven-day course on building secure attachment sounds brilliant because what decades of relational wounding needs is just one week of push notifications and everything will be fine now i say this not to be unkind to people who create these things many of them are well intentioned i say it because there is a mismatch between what relational trauma actually requires and what the so-called wellness market tends to offer it can leave people feeling like they're doing something wrong like they're not trying hard enough like only if they believed in themselves they'll be fine so you are not doing anything wrong the truth is the work is slower deeper and more body-based and just acknowledging it for yourself might help so what does real healing from relational trauma involve now in my experience clinically and personally it has a few core threads which don't change so first one understanding that the responses make perfect sense first and perhaps most important shift is moving from self-blame and confusion to comprehension when you understand that your nervous system developed these patterns as a survival response when you can look at your tendency to shut down or to cling or to self-sabotage and see the logic in it see the child in you who needed to do this something loosens might not loosen or soften all the way might not happen instantly but the self-attack becomes a little bit quieter the question shifts from what's wrong with me to what happened to me and what did i need to survive it then creating safety in the body not just in the mind so healing relational trauma is not primarily a cognitive process it requires working with the body learning to regulate the nervous system not through suppression or control but through genuine felt safety now this is what somatic work is for not to revisit the past and then relive it again but to gently incrementally build the body's capacity to tolerate closeness without automatically falling into the threat response the nervous system learns through experience so healing very slowly happens through new experiences of safety repeated over time now this is the part that's uncomfortable to say because it sounds like i'm saying just go and have better relationships that's not what i mean what i mean is that the nervous system heals in part through co-regulation through experiences either in therapy in friendships in a safe relationship of being seen heard and not abandoned of the threat response activating and then nothing terrible happens gradually learning through repeated experience that it's possible to be close and not be hurt this is also why good trauma therapy genuinely attuned relationally grounded therapy or healing is important in this work because it's not the techniques it's never the techniques but the relationship itself the therapeutic relationship when it's working well it's one of the primary healing mechanisms now the last one it tends to catch people off guard that healing relational trauma involves grief because at some point you have to acknowledge that the love you needed as a child or as a young person or as someone navigating difficulty wasn't fully there wasn't fully consistent or it came with conditions that deserves to be mourned not dramatized acknowledged felt and sat down because when we grieve what was missing we stop unconsciously trying to get it from every new relationship we enter we stop needing current people to repair ancient wounds and that changes everything about how we show up now i want to say something before we move into the practice something that i think is important and often gets missed healing relational trauma takes time longer than we'd like longer than the wellness industry will tell you there are good stretches and then you also might have sudden regressions there are moments when you thought you've moved past something and then it happens again in a new context and that's absolutely not failure that's the nature of healing one layer at a time the nervous system doesn't go into straight lines spirals it revisits and gradually it integrates so bring patience to yourself here the same patience you would extend to a child learning something very difficult which is in a very real sense is exactly what this work is now let me say this you did not learn to fear love because something is wrong with you you learn to fear love because at some point love came with pain and your body was simply paying attention i'll say this again you did not learn to fear love because something is wrong with you you learn to fear love because at some point love came with pain and your body was simply paying attention now let's come into a practice now there's no right or wrong no specific way to do this simply checking in with the body about the words about the topic that we've been exploring find a position for yourself that feels supportive that might be sitting might be lying down and you're somewhere that feels safe enough now if you want you can let your eyes close or soften your gaze whatever allows your attention today to move inwards start now with a single breath not a forced deep breath just a conscious one an intentional breath breathing in through your nose and letting the exhale be longer than the inhale just extend your breath out slightly whatever that means for you and take another breath in like that slow easy exhales now the extended exhale activates the part of you that rests and digests the part of you that is capable of feeling safe so we are not forcing anything here we're just offering the body a gentle invitation now bring your attention to where your body makes contact with whatever it is supporting it right now the chair the floor the bed whatever is beneath you right now feel the contact the actual physical sensation of being held of gravity working with you and not against you you don't have to create this sensation it's already there just notice it now if it feels accessible press your feet gently onto the floor feel the floor push back there is ground beneath you you are here you are safe you are here you're safe you are here and you are safe now let your shoulders soften now let your shoulders soften not because something is wrong with holding tension but just offering them the option you don't have to carry anything in this moment now gently without any agenda let's begin to scan the body but just curious noticing where there is ease and noticing where there is holding this is us meeting the body's held story without judgment and without agenda is there tightness anywhere in your chest perhaps a slight constriction around the heart space or in your throat or in your belly if you find something don't push it away and don't rush towards it either just acknowledge it like you might acknowledge someone standing in the doorway I see you you can stay for now I see you you can stay for now I see you you can stay for now many of us when we have experienced pain in a relationship we carry that pain somewhere in the body the chest that says stays slightly guarded the throat that tightens when we need to ask for something and the stomach that knots before a difficult conversation they are the body's faithful record of what it navigated these are not weaknesses if it feels right now only if it feels right place a hand on whichever area feels most held most protective your chest your belly whenever wherever the sensation is calling you no pressure no fixing just contact just presence now if it feels safe to do so for you allow an image to arise not forced just permitted maybe it's a younger version of you at whatever age feels most relevant in this moment maybe you're a child maybe you're a teenager or maybe you're a young adult navigating their first experiences of love and heartbreak see this younger self really see them how they hold their body what their face carries whether they seem braced or collapsed or watchful and even if you don't see anything stay with the feeling that you have this is the part of you that learned what love meant in those early years that made sense of the world with the information available to them that developed strategies shutting down scanning self-erasing because they needed them from where you are now with everything you've come to understand about yourself about your nervous system and about how all of this works is there anything you want to say to them it doesn't have to be words it might be a gesture a look simply the felt sense of presence of being with them rather than turning away now gently bring to mind a moment any moment however small when you felt safe in other people's arms a person when you felt seen or when you felt that being close was okay it might be a friendship a particular conversation a past relationship an animal because our nervous systems co-regulate with animals too and that counts it doesn't even have to be romantic love just a moment of felt safety in connection maybe it's happening to you right now just inhabit that memory inhabit that feeling of safety even if it's for a few seconds notice what it feels like in the body a warmth an opening or a breath that comes a bit easier this is what your nervous system is capable of closeness without alarm presence without bracing and warmth without waiting for it to be taken away it may only be available in glimpses right now and that's enough glimpses repeated over time become neural pathways new defaults a new sense of what love can feel like now i am going to offer some sentences here you don't need to repeat them you don't need to believe them either just let them land if they land where they land i am allowed to want love and i am allowed to be afraid of it my patterns in relationships were not mistakes they were survival i am not broken i am someone who has been hurt and who is now learning to love again i am allowed to be loved without waiting for it to be taken away my body is learning what safety feels like and it does not have to learn all at once my body is learning what safety feels like and it does not have to learn all at once now start to bring your awareness back to the room to the sounds around you to the sensation of the surface supporting you begin to deepen your breath slightly just a little more air just a little more presence and if your eyes were closed when you're ready gently you can open them and just let yourself land here again thank yourself for showing up for this the fact that you're here that you're willing to look at this and to feel into this that takes courage be gentle with yourself and know that this work slow imperfect and incremental is some of the most important work you can do love was always supposed to feel like safety and you're allowed to now find your way back to that thank you for spending time with me today if this touched something in you i'd be really glad to hear about it if you'd like to explore more of this work deeply you can either visit my website or leave a comment for more information thank you very much again for joining me today and until next time namaste