I am a mountain climber at heart, and I live in California, home to the Sierra Nevadas. I’ve spent much of my life moving through the backcountry with a pack on my shoulders. Over time, I learned to bring only what truly matters for survival. The lack of comforts never felt like loss. If anything, it sharpened my sense of peace—walking through open meadows, beside alpine lakes, and beneath vast, silent peaks.
Many years ago, while hiking out from Thousand Island Lake, I rounded a sharp bend in the trail and nearly walked straight into a bear sitting in the middle of it. We were no more than four feet apart. For a brief moment, we simply stared at each other.
Then something interesting happened.
Before fear could take over, there was a pause. The bear assessed me. I assessed the bear. Two nervous systems met, gathered information, and decided what level of response was necessary.
My first conscious thought was practical and immediate: ditch the backpack!
If the bear wanted my food, it could have it. And if I needed to run, carrying a fifty-pound pack would make that impossible. In the same moment, the bear stood up, stepped calmly off the trail, turned around, and sat down—watching me.
I adjusted my pack and kept walking. When I looked back, the bear was still there, seated, alert, and unmoving.
Nothing dramatic followed. And yet, that moment stayed with me.
What Nervous-System Literacy Really Means
Years later, I understand why.
Nervous-system literacy isn’t about eliminating fear. Fear is not the enemy. Fear is information. What matters is whether our nervous system has enough capacity to use that information rather than be overwhelmed by it.
For those of us living with PTSD, this distinction is crucial. Trauma conditions the nervous system to react quickly and intensely—often for good reason. Hypervigilance, rapid threat detection, and strong survival responses once kept us safe. But when those responses remain locked on high, even in the absence of present danger, they can pull us into patterns of overengagement, collapse, or reenactment.
Healing doesn’t mean never feeling fear again. It means creating enough internal space to pause.
That pause—sometimes only a second long—is where choice lives.
Regulation Is Often Quiet
In popular culture, recovery is often portrayed as dramatic or visibly triumphant. But real nervous-system regulation is usually subtle. No one watching my encounter with the bear would have known that anything significant had occurred. There was no display of courage or mastery.
I didn’t dominate the moment.
I didn’t flee it.
I stayed present.
That presence wasn’t accidental. It was the result of a nervous system that had lived through trauma and was slowly learning to distinguish between current danger and remembered threat.
This is what lived recovery often looks like. Quiet. Unremarkable. Effective.
Applying Nervous-System Literacy to Human Relationships
The same principles apply far beyond the wilderness.
Many PTSD survivors find themselves repeatedly drawn into intense emotional dynamics with people who are dysregulated, time-collapsed, or reliving unresolved trauma. When another person is operating from a past emotional reality, their urgency can feel contagious. Our nervous system may register it as danger, compelling us to explain, fix, defend, or contain.
But engagement is not always required.
Just as with the bear, not every perceived threat calls for confrontation or escape. Sometimes the most regulated response is continued forward motion—staying grounded in the present and refusing to carry more than is ours.
Nervous-system literacy allows us to ask different questions:
- Is this a present-moment threat, or an echo from the past?
- What response is proportionate to what’s actually happening now?
- Am I being pulled into someone else’s survival state?
These questions don’t arise from intellect alone. They come from embodied awareness.
Carrying Only What Is Yours
In the mountains, you learn quickly that carrying unnecessary weight is dangerous. The same is true emotionally.
For PTSD survivors, there is often a long history of carrying what did not belong to us—other people’s emotions, responsibilities, or crises. Recovery involves relearning where we end, and others begin.
Sometimes that means being willing to drop the pack if necessary.
Not because we don’t care, but because survival requires discernment.
Recovery as Integration
Looking back, the most striking part of that encounter wasn’t the bear. It was the pause. Two nervous systems met, assessed, and adjusted without escalation.
That pause is the fruit of healing.
Recovery from trauma is not about becoming fearless or unreactive. It is about restoring enough internal safety to remain present—to recognize danger accurately, respond proportionately, and move forward without reenacting the past.
Sometimes recovery looks dramatic.
Often, it looks like nothing at all.
And that is how you know it’s working.
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Wendy Hoke is the author of The Bishop’s Cross: A Journey to the Truth and co-author of The Church of Gomorrah: When Sexual Abusers Remain in the Church. Her grandfather was a pedophile who preyed on little girls in his own family. The Bishop’s Cross looks into the family dynamics that enable a child molester to continue unabated.
She has been successfully writing for others for many years, first in the financial industry and now as a content curator and ghost blogger. She has finally put pen to paper to tell her own story. You can contact her directly through her website, wendyhoke.com.
