Hello and good morning.
Welcome to day four.
I am so excited to be here.
This one is called what you call chemistry is actually your nervous system.
I know shocker.
Everybody wants that chemistry,
But is it really good for you?
I need you to really be here for this one.
So put your phone down.
We're not scrolling.
Pull over if you're driving because what I'm about to tell you could be the most important thing out of the entire 21 day challenge.
And I don't say that lightly.
So today we are talking about chemistry.
You know,
That spark feeling.
Exactly the one I'm talking about,
The electric pull,
The obsessive thinking,
The I cannot stop checking my phone,
I cannot stop thinking about them,
I have known this person for three weeks and somehow it feels like my whole nervous system is wrapped around them and they're not feeling.
Yeah,
It's an addiction.
We call that chemistry.
We call it a connection.
We call it a sign from God.
We call it a sign from the universe that we have found our soulmate.
We say things like,
I have never felt this way before and maybe this is the one and there is just something about them.
I'm sure you've felt that way if you've been in love before.
And I want to lovingly.
So very tenderly.
But very directly tell you sometimes that feeling is not love.
Sometimes that feeling is your nervous system recognizing a wound and calling it home.
So your nervous system is always running a background program,
A kind of pattern recognition software that was installed in your earliest years.
And what that software learned based on your very first experiences of love and connection is what love is supposed to feel like.
If love felt safe and consistent and warm growing up,
Your nervous system learned that love feels like safety,
Like calm.
Like being able to exhale.
But if love felt unpredictable,
If love felt like chasing,
Like waiting,
Like not quite knowing where you stood,
Like intensity and highs and lows and never fully landing,
Then your nervous system learned that love feels like that.
Not because that is what love actually is,
But because that is what love felt like when your brain was being wired.
When you were a little.
.
.
Little bean.
So when you meet someone and your whole body lights up with that electric obsessive pull,
Your nervous system is not necessarily saying this person is right for you.
It might just be saying this feels familiar.
This matches the pattern.
This is what I recognize as love.
And familiar is,
Unfortunately,
Not the same as good.
Familiar is just,
You know,
Known to you.
Now let me get into the neuroscience of this for a second because I want you to understand why this happens on a biological level.
When we encounter something that matches an existing neural pattern in our brain,
We get a hit of dopamine.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with reward and motivation.
You catch my hint here?
It is the same chemical that fires when you get a like on a post or win a game or eat something absolutely delicious.
It feels good.
It feels exciting.
It feels like a sign.
But.
.
.
Here's the thing,
Dopamine does not mean right.
Dopamine means familiar and anticipated.
And when someone is activating your old attachment wound,
Your brain is firing dopamine like crazy because it recognizes the pattern,
The push-pull,
The uncertainty,
The chase.
Your brain has been here before.
It knows this road and it rewards you,
Literally,
Chemically,
For finding it again.
This is why you can meet someone genuinely kind,
Genuinely available,
Genuinely interested in you,
And feel almost nothing.
That's the kind guy always finishes last,
You know,
The nice guy always finishes last.
He's considered boring to you,
Right?
And then you can meet someone who is hot and cold and unavailable and feel absolutely everything all at once.
And it is not because the unavailable person is more compatible with you.
It is because they are more familiar to your nervous system.
Your brain is not giving you accurate information about the future.
It is giving you a chemical reaction based on the past.
I feel like I have to get personal here because this one I have lived so very deeply.
It almost makes it very difficult to talk about.
I am what I like to call a recovering red flag collector.
I have dated them all,
The narcissist,
The emotional abuser,
The avoidant who needed weeks of space and called it literal self-care,
The hot and cold who made you feel like the most important person in the room one day,
And a complete stranger the next.
The manipulator,
The one who said,
I am just not ready to commit right now,
Which just so we're clear in translation means not with you specifically.
Together for a little while and have some fun.
And every single time I felt that chemistry,
That pull,
That this one is different,
Every single time my nervous system lit up and said,
Yes,
This,
This is the one.
And every single time I ignored the red flags,
Not because I was like stupid,
Not because I did not see them,
But because the familiarity of the dynamic felt like love.
The chaos felt like passion.
The uncertainty felt like chemistry.
And I had been so,
So,
I was so wired to the particular feeling for so long that I genuinely could not tell the difference between excitement and anxiety,
Between attraction and activation.
And here's the thing I was not doing.
I was not stopping to ask myself.
What is it about me that keeps arriving here?
I was blaming them,
Analyzing them,
Trying to fix them,
Or understand them,
Or wait them out.
But I was not turning the question around and asking,
What pattern am I running?
That keeps finding this exact situation.
That question changed everything.
Because here's what happened when I finally did the work,
When I finally found myself,
Chose myself,
Built a relationship with myself that was actually grounded and real and loving.
Something seriously shifted.
And I mean that in the most practical,
Unglamorous,
Honest way possible,
I swear.
It was not a movie moment.
It was a slow and uncomfortable and sometimes boring and deeply necessary movement within my body.
And then real love found me.
Healthy love,
A good person,
Someone consistent,
Someone who showed up,
Someone who did not make me guess or chase or shrink or perform.
And do you want to know what my nervous system did?
Can you believe it?
It did not trust it.
I am not even joking.
I found a genuinely good person and my nervous system looked at all that safety and calm and availability and went,
This feels wrong.
This feels boring.
Where is the chaos?
Where is the push-pull?
Where are the red flags I'm supposed to be analyzing?
And I had to consciously,
Actively,
Repeatedly tell myself,
This is good.
This is what good feels like.
You are allowed to have this.
You are deserving of this.
This is not boring.
This is safe and safe is allowed to feel like home.
That is the work every single day.
That is actually the work,
You guys.
Not just finding the healthy relationship,
But convincing your nervous system that you are allowed to stay in it.
Because.
Your nervous system will go for that feeling because your nervous system will go for what feels like home every single time.
Until you retrain it.
Until you build new neural pathways and recognize safety as love instead of familiarity as love.
Until calm stops feeling like the absence of something that starts feeling like the presence of something.
Something real,
Something sustainable,
Something that does not cost you your peace every single day.
That is what we are doing here.
We are retraining.
We are building a new home inside your nervous system.
And it does take time.
It takes repetition.
It takes patience.
It takes exactly the kind of daily practice that this challenge is built around.
Thank you again for showing up.
We're going to move on to our shamanic practice.
So find somewhere to sit comfortably.
Close your eyes if you can.
Take a deep breath.
Starting at your feet,
Slowly scan upward through your body.
Your calves.
Your knees.
Focusing on your belly.
Your chest,
Your shoulders.
Your jaw.
And where do you feel contraction right now?
Where do you feel tightness in your body?
I want you to just notice it,
Do not try to fix it or change it,
Just notice.
Now,
I want you to bring your mind to someone you have felt that intense,
Overwhelming chemistry with.
Someone who maybe activated you.
Just let them come to mind.
Notice what happens in your body.
Where does the feeling show up?
Now you can let that image go.
Take a deep,
Slow breath in.
And ask yourself,
Was that love?
Or was that familiar?
You do not have to answer it out loud.
Just let the question sit in your body for a while.
Your body knows the answer already.
Okay,
And your journal prompt today is think of someone you felt instant overwhelming chemistry with.
What did they remind you of?
Not who did they remind you of necessarily,
What feeling did they create?
What familiar emotional experience did being around them bring back?
What would it feel like to choose someone who makes your nervous system feel calm instead of electric?
Does calm feel like love to you yet?
If not,
Why do you think that is?
And I want to say that you're not broken for choosing the wrong people.
You were running a program that was installed before you had any say in the matter.
You were doing what your nervous system was trained to do.
But you are here now,
You are asking the questions,
You are doing the work,
And that means you are already rewriting the program.
Safe can be the new home.
And we're building it together.
You did the work.
I'm so proud of you.
I will see you on day five.
With so much love,
Haley.
