You snap at someone you love.
And then two seconds later,
You already regret it.
Now,
If that's you,
I need you to hear something right at the start of this video.
It is not because you are a bad person.
It's not because you have a bad temper or because you're too sensitive or because something is broken in you.
It's also not a character flaw.
And I'm telling you that with confidence,
Because for most of my life,
I got this completely wrong about myself.
Hi,
I'm Kinga.
I'm a somatic and trauma release practitioner,
And I used to be one of the most reactive people I knew.
So everything I'm going to share with you in the next few minutes is the thing I actually wish someone had explained to me 20,
30 years ago.
It would have saved me a lot of shame.
Let me tell you what I mean.
When I was a kid,
I was an angry kid and anyone could set me off in seconds.
I had a short fuse and I knew it.
And as I got older,
I started noticing a pattern.
I would snap whenever I was even a little outside my comfort zone.
If I was too hot,
Too hungry,
Too cold,
Too tired,
I'd get sharp,
Irritable.
I'd say things I didn't mean.
And my comfort zone,
Honestly,
Was tiny.
It still is tiny.
So it happened a lot.
And here's the part that I really want you to hear because I think a lot of you know this feeling.
For years I didn't think that I had a problem I could solve.
I thought I was the problem.
I genuinely believed deep down that I was just a bad person.
That this was my personality.
And some people are calm and patient and I simply wasn't one of them.
Now,
If you've ever quietly believed that about yourself,
That you're just difficult,
Just reactive,
Just too much,
I want you to stay with me.
Because that belief is not only painful,
It's also not true.
Here's what changed everything for me.
My reactions were never character flaws.
They were my body doing exactly what it had learned to do to keep me safe.
Now let me explain what that actually means because this is the part that sets you free.
Your nervous system has one main job to keep you alive and safe.
And it's fast,
Much faster than your thinking mind.
So when something happens,
Like a sharp tone,
A certain look or a message that lands wrong,
Your nervous system reads that or that moment in an instant and asks one question.
Is this a threat?
And if some old part of you decides that it is,
Your body reacts.
Before you've had a single conscious thought.
You know,
Like your chest tightens,
Your jaw clenches,
You can feel this heat rising and you already snapped or gone cold or shut down before the thinking part of your brain has even arrived at the scene.
That is why wheel power doesn't work here.
That's why just stay calm and don't let it get to you,
Never actually helped you out.
Because by the time you could think about staying calm,
The reaction had already happened.
You are never reacting on purpose.
Your nervous system reacted first.
Then you got blamed for it.
And the person blaming you.
Most harshly was probably yourself.
Now,
Sit with that for a second.
Because there's enormous relief.
In that.
You're not choosing to overreact.
You're not weak.
You're not failing.
Your body is running an old program,
One it learned a long time ago,
Often before you could even speak.
And at the time,
That program made sense.
It protected you.
It kept you safe or accepted or out of trouble.
The problem is not that your nervous system learned it.
The problem is that it never got the update.
And that word,
Update,
Is the whole reason I'm hopeful and the whole reason I do this work.
Because if your reactivity is a learned pattern and not a fixed character flow,
That it can change.
You're not stuck with this for the rest of your life.
You can teach your nervous system something new.
But,
And this is important,
Here's the catch that took me the longest to understand.
You cannot think your way out of this.
Understanding everything I just told you intellectually is not enough to change it.
And I learned that the hard way,
Because I had studied this.
I understood my triggers.
I could explain my patterns beautifully.
And then someone would use a certain tone.
I'd snap anyway,
Before any of that knowledge could reach me.
Because reactivity doesn't live in your thinking mind.
It lives in your body.
In your nervous system.
And that means the change has to happen there too.
So not through more information and more reading books,
But through experience,
Through practicing a new response over and over until your body starts to reach for it automatically.
Until staying grounded isn't something you have to remember to do,
It's just what your system does now.
And that's actually the whole reason I built a small community around this work.
A place where we get to practice it,
Not just understand it.
But I'll tell you more about that at the end of this video.
First,
Let me give you something you can actually use today.
So here's a simple starting practice.
It sounds almost too small to matter,
But it's the foundation of everything.
The next time you feel something shift in you.
You know,
That tightening,
That heat,
That urge to react.
I want you to do one thing before you do anything else.
Stop and name where you are,
Silently to yourself.
You can keep it to three simple options like settled,
Activated,
Shut down.
That's it.
You're not trying to fix it.
You wouldn't be able to anyway.
You're not trying to calm down or talk yourself out of it.
You're just noticing and naming.
And here's why this works.
The moment you can say to yourself,
I am activated right now,
You are already just slightly outside of the reaction.
A part of you has stepped back to observe it,
And that observer,
That part of you that can notice,
Is the part that's free.
That tiny bit of space between you and the reaction is where everything begins.
It's where choice becomes possible.
Now try it this week,
Three times a day,
Or any time you feel the shift,
Just name it.
Settled,
Activated,
Shut down.
And watch how much changes just from that.
So if you've spent years thinking something is fundamentally wrong with you,
I really hope this lands.
You are not broken,
You never were.
Your nervous system has just been doing its job with old instructions,
And it's waiting for new ones.
And those are learnable.
If you want to go deeper into this,
I've made two courses here on InsideTimer.
You can find them on my profile.
The Freedom of Non-Reactivity.
Part one takes you from reaction into awareness and conscious choice.
And part two goes further into the body,
Into your nervous system states,
The practical tools,
And where these patterns actually came from.
Start with part one if you're new to this.
They are both waiting for you whenever you're ready.
