Episode 8 - Rewriting the Stories the Nervous System Learned
Welcome back to Reconnection Moments, a space where we get real about intimacy disorders and healing from sexual compulsivity. Not through willpower or shame, but by gently rewiring the brain and body back into connection. I'm Dr. Michael Barta, creator of The Reconnection Model. In each episode, I'll be answering questions I hear most from clients and therapists, and I will also be sharing fresh insights from my ongoing work.
Host:Welcome back to the Reconnection Podcast. In the last episode, Dr. Michael Barta helped us understand how we move from survival into connection, not through effort or techniques, but by recognizing the body's protective responses and allowing truth, vulnerability, and presence to return. So today, we're exploring some foundational concepts to the Reconnection Model. The stories our nervous system learned early in life and how they shape adulthood and how they can be rewritten through connection.
Host:Dr. Barta, welcome back.
Dr. Barta:Thank you very much. It's good to be here.
Host:Tell us about this topic and what's at the center of it.
Dr. Barta:Well, it's learning how to listen to the nervous system. And the brain and the nervous system, they're responsible for everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do. But we don't know that because it's unconscious. So tuning into this system allows us to understand what's been driving us for all these years. And the nervous system doesn't use words.
Dr. Barta:It uses pattern recognition. And as children, our brain and autonomic nervous system are constantly asking one question, and that's, "What does the world do when I show up as myself?" And if our answer was, "You're too much, your feelings don't matter, you must perform to be accepted, your needs aren't important," or we find that love disappears when we're messy, then the nervous system forms a story, okay? Not consciously, but biologically. And so the nervous system is driving us, and it's telling us it's safer to stay small.
Dr. Barta:It's safer to stay invisible. If I want connection, I have to perform. Love is conditional. My needs create problems. And if I'm authentic, if I'm really honest, I'm going to be abandoned.
Dr. Barta:And these stories become the blueprint for adulthood, even if they're no longer true.
Host:So these aren't psychological interpretations. They're survival codes.
Dr. Barta:This is correct. So they're written in the body. It's the autonomic nervous system or the nervous system's memory. Okay? And they're written in the body long before the intellect forms language to describe them.
Dr. Barta:So this is what's driving up.
Host:So how do these early stories show up later in life?
Dr. Barta:Well, if you look at yourself, right, you can start looking and seeing if any of these patterns are true. So whenever we show up anywhere, all right, whenever a person who has received these messages in their lives shows up, they're going to be the person who learned I'm too much and they'll apologize just for existing. A person who learned my feelings don't matter, they're going to avoid conflict at all costs. And someone who learned connection isn't safe will rely on controlled distance or pretense in order to get a sense of connection, but they will never be able to connect. They aren't choices.
Dr. Barta:They're inherited blueprints, and they shape how we communicate, how we respond to conflict, how we express our needs, and how we interpret tones, how we interpret silence. You know, a lot of people are uncomfortable with silence. How much closeness we allow, and whether love feels comforting for us or whether it comes in as a threat.
Host:So this is where so many couples misunderstand each other.
Dr. Barta:Exactly. Yeah. Two people aren't reacting to the present moment. They're reacting to stories their nervous system learned in childhood. And almost all of us do this.
Dr. Barta:But the voice inside the nervous system, the bigger the messages that the nervous system learned in its early environment, the more pushback will happen, right? When one person withdraws, the other pursues. It's not because they're incompatible, it's because their internal stories aren't matching, right? It's because their internal stories have collided in some way. One learned when conflict comes, I should disappear.
Dr. Barta:The other learned when conflict comes, fight harder and don't you disappear. Neither is wrong, but both are protecting old wounds.
Host:Let's talk about rewriting those stories. If these stories are so deeply wired, how do they ever change?
Dr. Barta:Well, our stories have to rewrite themselves through experience, not logic. We can't talk ourselves into this. We have to be in an environment where we are experiencing these events that are going to enable us to rewrite this story. The nervous system needs to encounter something that contradicts its expectations. For example, if a person learned, "If I speak up, I'll be punished," experiences maybe for the first time someone staying present with them instead of moving away from them when they get their voice.
Dr. Barta:And in that moment, the story starts to get rewritten. And if a person learns, "My needs are a burden," well, experiencing small need and, you know, they ask for a need to be met, and they experience it to be met. Right? And they experience that need being met. That rewrites the story.
Dr. Barta:Another example of a person's story is, you know, "If I'm honest, I'll be abandoned." Well, if they show truth and someone leans in and not away, that moment rewrites the story as well. These aren't techniques. They're experiences of connection that the body never has before. And this is really what we want to do and what we do in the Reconnection Intensive.
Dr. Barta:People are actually experiencing being accepted. They're experiencing having a voice. They're experiencing showing their their true authenticity. They're experiencing showing their deepest shame, and it's accepted instead of rejected. This is how the nervous system learns how to rewrite stories.
Dr. Barta:Right? So it starts abandoning the old stories and starts showing up for the new stories. And it starts looking for more experiences where we're accepted as we are, not made to perform to get love and attention. So these aren't techniques, like I said before, right? They're experience of connection that our bodies have never had before.
Host:And you mentioned the intensives and the work you do there and the model, and that's where the four pillars come back into the picture. Right?
Dr. Barta:Yeah. The whole experience is built around those four pillars. Right? Authenticity, vulnerability, transparency, and presence.
Dr. Barta:They're not behaviors. They're conditions that allow new experiences to happen. They are conditions that allow us to be able to fully connect with another person. And together, they create an environment the nervous system never had growing up. Right?
Dr. Barta:So there's truth without punishment. There's emotion without withdrawal. There's needs without shame. There's closeness without fear. And there's honesty without losing the relationship.
Dr. Barta:And when the nervous system repeatedly encounters these conditions, the old story loses credibility. It's not corrected, it's replaced.
Host:So when someone truly begins living from a new story, what changes?
Dr. Barta:Well, life becomes coherent. Right? A person who always braced for rejection begins to trust connection. Someone who carried shame begins to feel seen. People who lived as performers begin to rest in their authenticity.
Dr. Barta:Individuals who hid their needs begin to express them with clarity. Relationships become places of repair rather than reenactment. The world doesn't change, but the interpretation of the world changes, and that shifts everything.
Host:It's the difference between surviving your life and inhabiting it.
Dr. Barta:Exactly. Rewriting the story isn't about becoming someone new. It's about becoming who we've always been. There was nothing ever wrong with us. We were taught there were things wrong with us.
Dr. Barta:But once we get to the point where we're expressing ourselves without fear, then we can express ourselves in more and more situations.
Host:All right, Dr. Barta. Thank you. This conversation puts, you know, words to those invisible forces shaping so much of our pain and our healing.
Dr. Barta:That's right. Well, thanks again for having me on here. You know? And, when people understand that their stories were inherited, not chosen, then compassion for ourselves becomes possible, and compassion creates the first opening for real change.
Host:In our next episode, we'll explore why addiction becomes the nervous system's attempt to solve the ache created by these stories and how connection gives the system what addiction was trying to imitate. Till then, thank you for listening to the Reconnection Podcast.
Dr. Barta:Thanks, everybody.
Dr.Barta:Thanks for joining me today. If you wanna learn more about how this healing happens, visit drmichaelbarta.com. And if this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Until next time, keep reconnecting.