I have some version of this conversation all the time.
“Vanessa, I know this stuff. I’ve read your workbook. I’ve read the books. I’ve done the groups. I’ve listened to the podcasts. I’ve used the apps. I understand neuroplastic symptoms. I understand the nervous system. I know what somatic tracking is. I know I’m supposed to reduce fear. I do not need more information. I just need my f***ing body to stop freaking out.”
I get why this is so maddening.
There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from being able to explain exactly what is happening while simultaneously feeling completely unable to change what is happening. You can understand your symptoms intellectually, recognize the patterns, know that your scans or medical workup have been reassuring, understand the research, and even catch yourself in real time going, Oh, I know what my brain is doing right now.
Meanwhile, your back is still spasming. Your stomach is still turning. You are still dizzy. Your head still hurts. Your heart is still racing. Your body appears to have missed the memo entirely.
This is one of the places where I think we have to make a distinction that can be annoyingly subtle: knowing this work is not necessarily the same thing as how we are doing this work.
I am also very aware that saying something like that can sound a little gaslighty. It can start to sound like another version of blaming the client: You say you understand it, but apparently you don’t understand it enough. You are still symptomatic, so you must be doing something wrong. I do not think that is what is happening, and I actually think that deserves a post of its own because there is a very real conversation to have about the ways recovery language can accidentally become another way of making people feel responsible for symptoms they did not choose.
What I mean here is different.
You really can understand something intellectually before it has sunk in emotionally. You can consciously believe something and still have a protective system that is operating according to older information. In very simplified neuroscience-y terms, the parts of the brain involved in conscious reasoning, reflection, and interpretation are not the only parts involved in what your body does. The prefrontal cortex can be sitting there saying, We have looked at this. We know what this is. We are okay, while faster protective systems involved in threat detection and learned associations are already responding as though something needs your attention.
That does not mean one part of your brain is smart and another part is stupid. It means they learn differently.
Your conscious mind can update through information. You read something compelling. A physician explains why the structural finding on your scan does not adequately account for your symptoms. You learn about predictive processing. You understand how pain can be generated as a protective response. Something clicks, and intellectually you think, Oh my God. This makes sense.
That is SOOO important. Education can be extraordinarily powerful. Sometimes it changes symptoms almost immediately.
But the nervous system is also paying attention to what happens next.
What do you do when the sensation comes back? What happens inside of you when it gets stronger? How quickly do you start trying to figure it out? Do you immediately need to know whether this symptom is neuroplastic or structural? Do you check whether the somatic tracking worked? Do you start measuring whether you are recovering “correctly”? Do you need reassurance that this flare will end before you can settle? Do you move toward the sensation with curiosity, or are you technically moving toward it while quietly hoping that doing so will finally make it go away?
This is where the work can get much more interesting than simply, “Did you read the book?” or, “Are you doing somatic tracking?”
Because sometimes a person knows everything there is to know about neuroplastic symptoms while still approaching their nervous system with an enormous amount of urgency.
And urgency is information too.
I have become increasingly interested in this because I think urgency can hide underneath recovery work remarkably well. It can look very productive. Tell me what to do. Give me the exercise. Which technique should I use? How often should I do it? How long until it works? How will I know I am doing it correctly? Is this the right sensation to track? Should I be paying attention or distracting myself? Is this a setback? Does this mean I do not believe enough yet?
On the surface, those can sound like questions about learning.
Underneath, sometimes the nervous system is asking one much simpler question: How do I make sure I am okay?
That search for certainty is not limited to pain, either. For many of us, it is a much broader way of moving through the world. We want to know what is going to happen before we make the decision. We want confirmation that someone is not upset with us. We replay the conversation to make sure we did not say the wrong thing. …this is exactly why I don’t save my voice notes when I send them in a text…or else I will listen to myself and try to unsend it. We research until we find the answer that finally allows us to relax. We want the plan, the timeline, the explanation, the guarantee.
There is nothing inherently pathological about wanting certainty. Human brains like prediction. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, and when something has felt scary for a long time, of course we want an answer that lets us finally put it down.
The trouble is that when our way of responding to uncertainty is always to urgently eliminate it, the nervous system can keep learning that uncertainty itself is a problem.
And now we can bring that exact same pattern into recovery.
We are no longer urgently Googling the disease. Maybe now we are urgently Googling neuroplasticity. We are no longer scanning our body only for signs of damage; now we might be scanning to see whether the exercise is working. We are not asking, Am I injured? anymore, but we may be asking, Am I safe yet? Am I recovered yet? Have I convinced my brain yet?
The content has changed. The nervous-system state underneath it may not have changed very much at all.
This is why I do not think recovery can be reduced to getting the right information into your head. At some point, this becomes experiential. The brain needs opportunities to discover something new through what you actually do when the old alarm shows up.
Maybe you notice a sensation without immediately turning it into a project.
Maybe you allow yourself not to know exactly why today is worse than yesterday.
Maybe you catch the urgency to make the symptom stop and decide that you do not have to obey that urgency right this second.
Maybe you go to dinner even though your stomach feels weird, take the walk even though your back is talking to you, or let the dizziness be there without spending the next hour deciding what it means.
Sometimes the new learning is not, Look, I did the thing and I had no symptoms. Sometimes it is, I had symptoms and I was still okay.
…That distinction is huge.
Because if every recovery exercise becomes another attempt to force your body into giving you the answer you want, it is very easy for the nervous system to hear the same old message underneath all of our very sophisticated new language: This needs to change before we can be okay.
This is also where I think people can get stuck on the idea that they need to “believe” harder. They tell themselves they are safe over and over while internally checking whether the statement worked. They try to convince themselves that the symptom is harmless while another part of them is waiting anxiously for the symptom to disappear as proof.
Again, none of this means you are doing recovery wrong. It means the brain is learning from far more than the sentence you are saying to yourself.
It is learning from your attention, your behavior, your expectations, what you do with uncertainty, how much urgency surrounds the sensation, and what happens when your body does not immediately cooperate.
This is why someone can know this work backwards and forwards and still have more to explore. Not necessarily more information. Sometimes, frankly, the last thing someone needs is another podcast explaining predictive processing.
The more useful question might be: What is my nervous system actually practicing all day?
Gertie in Utah on our road trip to the Creek Retreat last year, looking out at the world with absolutely no guarantee about what comes next. A tiny lesson in tolerating uncertainty from someone who has never read a single book about the nervous system. I’ll be back at the Creek Retreat in January 2027.
Am I practicing that discomfort has to be solved quickly, or that discomfort can exist without becoming an emergency?
Am I practicing that uncertainty means I need more information, or that I can sometimes let an unanswered question remain unanswered?
Am I practicing that I can only relax once my body behaves, or am I slowly learning that I can have a life, make a decision, enjoy something, connect with someone, move, rest, travel, eat, work, and be present even while my body is being a little loud?
That is a very different kind of learning. And it helps explain something that otherwise feels completely absurd: how you can know exactly what is happening and still feel your body respond as though you do not.
Your body is not reading the workbook. It is learning from what happens next.
Thanks for another great article Vanessa.
So relatable and helpful, thank you! 💗