When Courage Becomes as Contagious as Fear: Dancing with Nervous Systems…
Your patterns, Your family patterns, Your organization's patterns—the ones driving you crazy, the ones depleting you, the ones creating burnout, the ones you swear you'll change but somehow never do—they're not accidents. They're defaults - the patterns you organically reinforce without intentional disruption. These familiar patterns are like highways in your brain, and in the brains around you. And here's the kicker: your brain regresses to these highways or old patterns under conditions that should feel opposite but aren't— stress AND familiarity. This is ideal if you like the patterns and want to keep them, but can feel like torture if you have worked hard to change them and have been seeing results.
The Physics of It All
From a physics perspective, integrity means all parts working together in unified coherence. When we push out parts—voices, truths, uncomfortable realities—we're not necessarily morally compromised (though maybe that too). We're structurally unsound.
Those pushed-out parts? They become your blindspots. And, blindspots are naughty because they sneak up on you. They're the things you defend before you even know what you're defending. Or the things you react to before you even realize you are reacting. Like when someone suggests changing a holiday tradition or meeting time and everyone gets instantly defensive but can't explain why. (Spoiler: rebellion of “x” is still a reaction, because on its own it is not, yet, creation of something new.)
For the Change Agents I work with…
If you are drawn to work with me you are committed to changing patterns in yourself as well as the lives and world around you for the better...everyone I work with is a change agent.
Now let's be real about care and social change work. It is undervalued and systematically exploited in a capitalistic society in order to maintain focus on material things and to maintain fear. Non-profits, for example, by their legal design are literally organized for burnout. Underpaid because "mission." Overworked because "passion." Scrutinized on spending while being asked to save the world on fumes. This is often true for any adjacent social change or caregiving profession.
So how do we start building new paths for social change, and working together. We need to plant seeds inside what already exists to build something new. We can’t for example, just shift from capitalism to mutual aid, we have to build bridges even beyond what benefits mutual aid offers from our current structures to new structures. This on an individual level means, for example, a lot of change agents need to adjust their relationship to money and the value of their work in the current system to create a new one. This also means we need to practice building community and collaboration in new and sustainable ways to co-create new foundations for these new patterns and new structures!
The Uncomfortable Truth About Collaboration
Here's what nobody wants to hear: You cannot collaborate without participating in conflict.
From a physics perspective, collaboration requires all parts. If we're avoiding conflict, we're excluding parts. Pushing them out. Creating blindspots. Losing structural integrity.
The trouble is we are not taught to do this and don’t even know where to begin, even when we know there is a challenge to address.
Your Practice Ground
You need a space to experiment where:
You can BE curious and grow “data” on patterns
New patterns can be tried without perfection
Conflict can happen and be practiced
Your nervous system can activate without YOU abandoning ship
Your not doing it alone. You are sharing and celebrating one another’s little steps
Someone holds the container so you don't snap back to the default that isn't working
Because here's the thing about disrupting patterns: The familiar will ALWAYS pull you back. Always. It's not a moral failing. It's physics. It's neuroscience. It's being human. So we have to make the new patterns familiar through repetition in every part of our life.
What Actually Creates Change
You know what doesn't work? Trying to think your way into new patterns while your nervous system is hijacked. Under activation, you WILL regress to patterns you learned before age three. Not because you're weak. Because you're human with a human brain.
What does work?
1. Recognize the activation is coming Both under stress AND in familiar settings. It's not if, it's when.
2. Build your dirt paths with repetition New neural pathways need practice. Again and again and again. Until they're strong enough to compete with the highways.
3. Get external support You cannot see your own blindspots (that's literally what makes them blindspots). You need someone outside your system's activation pattern to hold the container while you try new moves.
4. Make courage contagious When you change your pattern, you create permission for everyone to change theirs.
The Dancing Lesson
Those "problematic" patterns? They're not enemies to defeat. They're dance partners showing you where your nervous system is stuck.
The question isn't: How do we eliminate our dysfunction?
The question is: How do we develop the agility to dance with whatever comes?
Because if we can learn to dance with activation—to be with it, face it, move with it—we can do anything. Even transform systems that insist on their own sickness with the patterns they depend on. Your nervous system agility becomes everyone’s possibility.
Togethe, we can make courage more contagious than fear.
The Non-Negotiables:
You cannot do this alone. Your brain won't let you.
Progress isn't linear. You'll regress. That's not failure—it's data.
Small disruptions create big changes. Don't try to transform everything all at once.
When you change your dance, you give everyone permission to change theirs.
Remember: You're not broken. Your patterns aren't character flaws. They're just highways that served you once. Now you're building new roads. It takes time. It takes practice. It takes courage.