Held: Healing the Places That Thought They Had to Fight

The Sympathetic Dominant Nervous System 

Attachment Style - Fight

When your Nervous System grows up wired for Sympathetic Dominance, it learns early on: "I feel safer when others are near, and less safe when I’m alone.”  This is the fight energy of the attachment system—hyper-alert, quick to respond, always trying to prevent rupture before it can fully form.

It’s not because you’re dramatic or needy.

It’s because, at one point, connection meant survival.

So now, when something feels off, your instinct is to fix it—fast. To make it right before you’re left behind.

To keep everyone okay, so you can feel okay, too.

This is an anxious attachment, born not from weakness, but from wisdom—your body trying its best to protect what matters most: relationship, connection, belonging.

Sasha grew up in a home where love felt like a moving target. Her mother was brilliant, fierce, and emotionally unpredictable. One moment, she’d be laughing in the kitchen, dancing to Stevie Wonder, pulling Sasha into a swirl of warmth and attention. Next, she’d go cold. A forgotten chore, a sideways glance, or a poorly timed question would set her off. Her tone would sharpen, her eyes would narrow, and Sasha would brace herself for the storm.

It wasn’t physical violence—it was emotional volatility. And it taught Sasha one thing: Stay alert, or stay unsafe.

As she got older, Sasha became the friend who always texted back, the partner who noticed every shift in tone, every sigh, every pause. Hyper-aware. Hyper-responsible. She could feel the tension in a room like it was electric, like it was hers to solve.

Her body never rested. Even in stillness, her mind was racing: What did I do wrong? What does he need? How can I fix this?

It wasn’t until her therapist gently explained, “Your nervous system doesn’t know the danger is over,” that Sasha finally broke down and cried. Not because it was sad, but because it was true. She had been living on high alert for decades—her nervous system hardwired to scan, respond, and react.

She wasn’t needy. She wasn’t too much. She was wired for survival.

That realization didn’t fix everything overnight, but it gave her a door —a way in. Through somatic therapy, breathwork, and compassionate movement, Sasha slowly began to reintroduce her body to safety. To quiet. To rest. She stopped running from the feeling and started listening to it.

Her healing didn’t come in a single moment—it came in many:

In soft mornings, when she didn’t check her phone right away.

In moments when she said “I need space,” without guilt.

In the way she learned to soften her shoulders—not because someone told her to relax, but because her body believed it was finally safe enough to do so.

I feel such deep compassion for little Sasha—the child within—who endured an emotional rollercoaster just to feel loved. Her nervous system didn’t overreact. It adapted. She learned what she needed to survive. And that’s not something to be ashamed of—it’s something to honor.

What’s beautiful now is that you can go back for her.

You, the adult, can become the safety she never had.

You can hold her with the love, patience, and understanding that, as a child, she was never offered.

She was innocent then—wide-eyed, open-hearted, and full of light. And that same light? It's still burning inside you, steady and strong.

There is no shame in the ways you’ve coped. You were doing the best you could with what you knew at the time. Your choices were shaped by survival, not failure.

You are not broken—you are in process. And you are allowed to learn without being judged for not knowing. Learning doesn’t define you—it refines you.

Now, you can move forward with new awareness, on a clean slate, still innocent, still worthy, and still growing.

Now, last but not least, I have one final thought for our healing and health, Matt and Ash write in The Inner Work: “Our ultimate healing will eventually come through forgiving all those who wronged us in the past, therefore setting ourselves free… In a sense, to remember our own innocence, we have to also remember theirs.”

This isn’t about excusing harm. It’s about freeing yourself from the weight of it. It’s about returning to who you’ve always been: whole, loved, and innocent.