When It’s Gone, You Don’t Feel It

On living without the constant nervous system reaction

For many people, constant bodily reaction feels normal.

The pit in the stomach.
The heavy chest.
The sense of dread that arrives without warning.
The way emotions light up instantly and completely.

It can feel like this is just how you are.
Sensitive. Empathic. Deeply affected by the world.

So familiar that it is accepted as the backdrop of everyday life.

Life Inside Constant Reaction

When a nervous system is living in reaction, the body is rarely neutral.

A thought like I’m a bad parent, I’m not doing enough and guilt activates immediately.

Your partner takes their phone to the toilet and the blood drains from your face as your body relives the ice-cold shards of being cheated on.

A letter arrives from the hospital, the lawyer, or the school and your ears thump, your heartbeat surges, and your stomach drops.

Films do not just feel sad.
They pull you into unbearable depths of sorrow.

Music moves straight into the body and transports you back into pain.

A missed call, or not being able to reach someone, can immobilise you.

Other people’s emotions flood your system.

When it becomes too much, dissociation arrives as relief.
Numbing out. Pulling away. Going quiet inside. Sleeping. Using adrenaline or substances to feel something else.

Not because you are avoiding life, but because staying fully present feels too painful.

This can go on for years.
Sometimes for a lifetime.

The Empathy That Is Not Empathy

This constant lighting up is often called empathy.

But it is not empathy.

It is a nervous system reacting to other people’s emotions because its own system is already sensitised. What often gets called empathy here is reactive empathy.

Empathy allows you to feel with someone while remaining grounded in yourself.

Reaction pulls you into their emotional state without choice.

What looks like deep feeling is often unresolved activation in the nervous system.

What Changes When the Reaction Resolves

When a nervous system reaction resolves, life does not become flat.

It becomes quieter.
And freer.

A film can be sad without being annihilating.
Someone else’s distress can be felt without hijacking your body.
Emotions move through without detonating.

The body stays present.

There is no collapse.
No dissociation.
No gripping dread waiting underneath the surface.

Compassion replaces reactive empathy.

Not because you care less, but because your system is no longer fighting to survive every emotional contact. You can stay with someone who is in deep emotion while remaining grounded in your own, connected to genuine compassion for their wellbeing.

Sometimes you notice the gap.
The space between an old stimulus and the absence of reaction.

You sit an exam, waiting for the familiar surge of panic or brain fog that does not arrive, and you complete the paper with a steady hand.

Other times, what emerges instead are creativity, playfulness, curiosity, connection, and freedom.

The Absence You Notice Later

What surprises many people is how subtle this can be.

Often there is no big moment.
No dramatic release.
No sense of arrival.

You simply stop noticing certain things.

The constant pit in the stomach is gone.
The chest no longer feels heavy.
The urgency fades.

It is like finally relieving yourself after being desperate for the loo.
You do not spend the next few hours noticing that you are no longer desperate.
You simply get on with your day.

This absence is easy to miss, especially if you are used to measuring healing by intensity.

This Is Not Numbness

This is not dissociation.
It is not collapse.
It is not switching off.

It is a body that is no longer reacting.

Feeling returns in proportion.
Emotions have edges.
Rest becomes possible.

And with that, energy returns to everyday life.

The Cost of Constant Activation

Living in continual reaction takes a toll.

The immune system works harder than it needs to.
Exhaustion accumulates.
Illness appears more easily.
Injuries can happen more readily.

This is not because the body is weak.

It is because it has been on high alert for too long.

When the reaction resolves, the system finally gets to stand down.

A Quiet Orientation

If you have spent your life feeling everything intensely, the absence of reaction can feel unfamiliar at first.

It can even feel like nothing has happened.

But if your body is no longer bracing, collapsing, or lighting up without consent, something fundamental has changed.

As you resolve activations, the windows of peace get wider and more frequent, the moments of activation get fewer and less intense.

When it is gone, you do not always feel its absence.

You simply live.

This article reflects how resolution based work is understood and approached within Jentle.