Laughing Crow’s Articles

Here’s what really happens when you stop running your life on inner rules like: I must, I should, this is just how I am — and start operating on choice instead..

First: your nervous system does not applaud your growth.

It panics.

You don’t say, “I’m choosing differently now,” and feel enlightened. Your body hears,

“Cool, so the rules that kept us alive are gone and we’re winging it?”

Absolutes are the nervous system’s emotional duct tape. Ugly. Limiting. Holding things together just enough to function. Choice rips the tape off. And suddenly your body has to actually sense what’s happening instead of hiding behind autopilot.

Cue the symptoms.

Chest tight for no reason.

Jaw clamped like it’s guarding state secrets.

Stomach doing interpretive dance.

Fatigue mixed with wired alertness — the classic why am I exhausted but unable to sit still combo.

Nothing’s wrong. Your nervous system is just running diagnostics because the old operating system doesn’t apply anymore.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: absolutes create stability. A crap kind of stability — but stability nonetheless. They reduce decision-making. And decision-making costs energy. Choice requires presence. Presence burns calories. Your body notices.

So when you shift from I must keep everyone happy to I can choose how and when I show up, your nervous system goes,

“Excuse me. Now I have to track boundaries, energy, feelings, and consequences in real time? Absolutely not.”

Except… it does. Slowly. Clumsily. With complaints.

And while it’s complaining, something sneaky happens...

Your breathing deepens. Not because you meditated, but because your body isn’t bracing for invisible consequences anymore. Deeper breath improves vagal tone, heart rate variability, and tells your system, we’re not under immediate threat. Which is new information.

Muscles follow. Chronic tension starts letting go. Shoulders drop. Jaw unclenches. Pelvic floor stops acting like it’s preparing for a car crash.

People call this “releasing trauma.” Often it’s just stopping obedience to an internal command to stay tight forever.

Digestion improves too. Turns out your gut doesn’t love processing food while your nervous system is on high alert enforcing 47 unspoken rules. Less bloating. More regular appetite. Better absorption. Because your body finally believes it’s safe to digest instead of surveil.

Sleep shifts. Fewer 3am cortisol wake-ups where your brain rehearses conversations from 2009. More actual rest instead of unconscious vigilance. Your nervous system realises it doesn’t need to stand guard all night like an unpaid security contractor.

Immune function improves as well. Chronic stress suppresses immunity. Absolutes generate chronic stress. Choice reduces unnecessary alarms. Fewer alarms equals less inflammation, fewer flare-ups, better healing. Boring biology. Big payoff.

Emotionally, things get louder before they get saner.

Feelings that were neatly suppressed by rules start wandering around unsupervised. Anger shows up without asking. Grief taps you on the shoulder while you’re loading the dishwasher. Joy appears and makes you suspicious. That’s not regression — that’s range returning.

Absolutes numb.

Choice sensitises.

And sensitisation is how resilience actually builds.

When emotions are allowed to move, they stop lodging in the body as headaches, gut issues, neck pain, fatigue, and mysterious symptoms doctors label “stress-related” and then quietly back away from.

Mentally, clarity improves — not because you “healed your mind,” but because cognitive load drops. Your brain isn’t constantly policing invisible laws. Less internal surveillance means better decisions, more creativity, and way less burnout disguised as responsibility.

Yes, there’s a wobble phase. A very real one.

That’s the moment you realise how much of your personality was built around following rules instead of sensing truth. It feels like taking the training wheels off and discovering you were leaning on them emotionally.

That wobble isn’t failure. It’s recalibration.

You’re not losing structure. You’re upgrading from control to responsiveness.

And once your nervous system gets enough lived evidence that choice doesn’t equal danger?

Things settle.

The body softens.

Energy returns.

Life feels less like a permanent emergency meeting.

Not because life got easier — but because you stopped forcing your body to survive using rules written by a past version of you who was just trying not to fall apart.

That’s not woo.

That’s physiology catching up to truth.

Your nervous system was never meant to live under commandments.

It was designed to respond.

And once it remembers that?

Your body stops acting like it’s under siege… and starts acting like it actually wants you alive.

-Laughing Crow