You may have experienced early trauma that forced your brain to develop some extreme nervous system responses in order to survive. Abuse, neglect, losing a parent in childhood–all can cause symptoms like those of a war veteran with PTSD. What’s different is that you grew up like this.
If you learned as a child that danger came from anywhere, and especially from those you loved, your brain may have kept your nervous system hyper-vigilant all the time. And you stay like that for decades. Now as an adult you see anything, including love, as a potential threat. You can’t even feel happy.

Your brain created symptoms like hyperarousal to help you survive your childhood. But what your brain created it can circumvent—permanently—with new neural networks that breeze past faulty wiring. A superhighway bypasses the old lane. And you are calm and at peace, possibly for the first time in your life.