When Survival Mode Becomes Your Personality

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

[00:00:06]That's a quote by Carl Jung.

[00:00:08]And I came across it again recently.

[00:00:11]And this time I just sat there thinking about it for a while.

[00:00:15]Because I don't think I realized until that moment how long I'd been surviving instead of actually being completely myself.

[00:00:25]And the strange part is from the outside I looked completely functional.

[00:00:32]I still worked. I still laughed. I traveled and dated and had fun with my friends and my family, which is exactly why I didn't see it.

[00:00:41]But lately after slowing down and simplifying my life I realized something.

[00:00:47]Now it wasn't this move that suddenly changed me. I know the things started to change long before I decided to move here.

[00:00:55]I know I've been slowly finding my way back to myself for years now.

[00:01:01]Before I go any further I'm going to take just a quick moment to say thank you so much to all of you for your support with my videos recently. I am just incredibly grateful and overwhelmed. So many people have shared their own experiences with stress and burnout and grief and survival mode and nervous system exhaustion and I I think a lot of us can see a little bit of ourselves in each other and and I think that's helpful to know that we're not alone.

[00:01:29]And I also want to say that I'm feeling much better now. The exhaustion has totally passed. It only lasted a week or two and I hope that all of you who said you were going through the same thing that you'll be feeling better soon as well.

[00:01:40]I wish you all the best.

[00:01:43]Now I don't think I realized how long I had been carrying the stress in my body and my mind.

[00:01:50]Not in any obvious way at least. I wasn't you know curled up in a ball somewhere unable to function. I wasn't walking around visibly falling apart most days.

[00:02:01]I I think that's why so many people miss it.

[00:02:05]Because we can be exhausted mentally or physically and still look completely fine to everyone around us, right?

[00:02:13]We can be functioning while quietly disconnected from ourselves.

[00:02:19]And I think probably with me it started after my marriage ended about 15 years ago.

[00:02:27]At the time I told myself I was okay.

[00:02:30]But looking back now, I was far from okay.

[00:02:35]Survival mode kicked in pretty hard after that.

[00:02:39]And I didn't even know it.

[00:02:42]Everything became a struggle for many years. There was financial pressure. I was trying to rebuild. I was trying to stay strong. I was trying to keep going.

[00:02:51]I was trying to figure out who I was anymore.

[00:02:56]Cuz I didn't know.

[00:02:59]And then I lost both my parents within 7 months of each other.

[00:03:02]And then my brother-in-law, who I was also very close to. And it's hard when you lose people that you love as I'm sure many of you know.

[00:03:11]Losing my mother would have especially changed something in me because she got pancreatic cancer and was gone very quickly and it shocked all of us.

[00:03:20]And you know, we truly thought we had another 15 or 20 years with her.

[00:03:25]She was very healthy we thought on the outside and but I remember thinking afterwards how much stress she carried throughout her life.

[00:03:33]And I think finally witnessing that and and seeing the outcome of that I it affected me a lot more than I realized.

[00:03:43]And then there were relationships.

[00:03:45]Dating men was never a problem.

[00:03:48]But looking back at I know I wasn't healed yet. I didn't fully love myself and that makes relationships that much more challenging.

[00:03:57]And I think I was trying to find safety and validation and love, certainly, while still carrying unresolved grief and stress underneath the surface.

[00:04:11]And the strange thing about all of that is that a survival mode is you can stay there for a long time, so long that it starts to feel like your personality.

[00:04:21]You think this is just who I am. You know, I'm always thinking, I'm always I'm always carrying something mentally, I'm always preparing for what's coming next, managing and trying to hold life together.

[00:04:36]And maybe some of you know exactly what I mean when I talk about that because sometimes even relaxing is difficult because part of your mind is always bracing for something.

[00:04:50]Psychologists talk about how the nervous system adapts to prolonged stress.

[00:04:56]Eventually hypervigilance starts feeling normal, which means people don't even realize how dysregulated they become because it simply become their baseline.

[00:05:09]And I think many people normalize survival mode because they're still functioning, you know? I I know I did.

[00:05:19]But now I feel like a different person.

[00:05:22]And what's interesting about all that is that many things that I thought would matter forever suddenly don't feel nearly as important anymore.

[00:05:35]Even my relationship with appearance has changed.

[00:05:39]A few years ago I stopped coloring my hair, which shocked even me. I used to joke that I would be on my death bed asking if my roots were showing.

[00:05:49]>> [laughter] >> But slowly something shifted in me.

[00:05:56]Not because I gave up.

[00:05:58]I think I became less interested in performing all the time.

[00:06:02]Less interested in proving anything.

[00:06:06]And less interested in exhausting myself trying to maintain an image of who I thought I was supposed to be. Especially as a woman as we get older.

[00:06:19]And then writing my book changed something, too.

[00:06:22]As much as journaling and meditating as much as I had done over the years there was something about finally telling the truth to myself more than anything that seemed to move me closer to healing in a way that I I can't even fully explain or understand, really.

[00:06:43]And now I'm here.

[00:06:45]You know, living near the ocean, drinking my coffee outside in the mornings, looking at the water, watching the ships go by at night. Even last night I saw this beautiful one all lit up. It was amazing.

[00:06:55]And I feel calmer.

[00:06:57]And not nearly as worried about as money as I thought I'd be, not obsessed with possessions, not even consumed with whether or not I'll be in another relationship someday.

[00:07:06]And that last part especially surprises me because so much of my life I was searching for something outside of myself that I finally had to learn to give to me.

[00:07:22]I think that's why I feel so different now. This is the first time in many years that my nervous system has finally realized hey we survived.

[00:07:36]And now I'm no longer constantly bracing for life. And I finally get to uh meet myself again.

[00:07:42]Anyway, those are just some of the thoughts I've been having lately in the the peace of my new place.

[00:07:48]And if any of this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments.

[00:07:53]And if you feel drawn to hitting that hype button, it's a new thing for me because of of of you, of the support from you, or hitting that thanks button, I would really really appreciate it.

[00:08:07]And until next time, keep following the fireflies.