The Wisdom in the Wound

Why Your Reactions Make Sense

There is a moment in almost every therapeutic journey when someone says, “I do not know why I reacted that way. It was too much. I should be over this by now.”

And in that moment, I slow everything down.

Because the truth is this: your reaction always makes sense.

Not in a rational, cognitive, cause-and-effect way, but in the deeper language of the nervous system and the internal world of parts.

What may seem “irrational” on the surface is often a legacy protector at work. These are parts of you that formed early, sometimes long before you had language, to keep you safe, connected, or invisible when needed. They are intelligent. They are adaptive. And they do not forget.

What Legacy Protectors Are and Why They Matter

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), protectors are the parts of us that step in to manage pain. They may show up as defensiveness, withdrawal, people-pleasing, control, perfectionism, or even explosive anger.

Legacy protectors are the ones that have been with us the longest. They often inherited their role from our caregivers, communities, or cultural conditioning. These parts do not exist in a vacuum. They carry the imprint of intergenerational trauma, systemic pressure, and early attachment strategies that shaped our sense of self.

When these protectors are activated, they can seem disproportionate to the situation at hand. But from the inside, they are responding to a deeper layer of experience, often a wound that has been touched, even if only lightly.

Your system is not overreacting. It is remembering.

Your Body Is the First to Know

According to the work of Dr. Stephen Porges and the Polyvagal Theory, the autonomic nervous system scans for danger below the level of conscious awareness. This is known as neuroception. Before the brain can assess a situation logically, the body has already decided whether it feels safe, unsafe, or life-threatening (Porges, 2011).

When a part of you senses threat, even in the form of a facial expression, tone of voice, or silence, your entire system can shift into a protective mode. You may feel a racing heart, a lump in the throat, a sudden urge to shut down or lash out. These are not signs of emotional immaturity. They are evidence of a well-developed, highly sensitive internal alarm system that once kept you safe and is now trying to do so again.

What looks like a reaction is actually a response. What feels like chaos is often a well-rehearsed dance of internal protectors trying to prevent deeper pain.

Emotional Reactions as Attempts at Regulation

The body does not separate emotional pain from physical threat. Neuroscience has shown that emotional rejection lights up the same areas in the brain as physical injury (Eisenberger et al., 2003). That means when someone ignores you, criticises you, or invalidates your experience, your system may react with the same urgency it would if you were under physical attack.

This is especially true for individuals with developmental or complex trauma. As Dr. Janina Fisher explains, the nervous system remembers everything, and even minor relational disruptions can reawaken old survival responses (Fisher, 2017).

So the next time you find yourself saying, “I should not be this upset,” I invite you to pause. There is likely a younger part of you that is not just reacting to now. It is responding to then.

The Wisdom Behind the Reaction

There is wisdom in the wound. And there is even more wisdom in the parts of you that try to protect it.

The part that lashes out may be guarding against a lifetime of being silenced.
The part that shuts down may be shielding you from emotional overwhelm that once felt unbearable.
The part that over-explains may have learned that safety comes from being understood or proving your worth.

These reactions are not flaws. They are protective systems doing their job. And the more extreme the reaction, the more that part believes the system is in danger.

Healing begins not when we suppress these reactions, but when we become curious about them. In IFS, we call this “turning toward.” It means softening our stance, slowing our breath, and asking the part, “What are you afraid will happen if you do not respond this way?”

The answers are often profound.

Reactions as Invitations to Reconnect

Your emotional reactions are not meant to be eliminated. They are messengers. Each one offers a glimpse into a part of you that has something to say.

The goal of healing is not to become emotionally neutral. It is to be in relationship with your emotional world. It is to lead your internal system from Self-energy, with compassion, clarity, courage, and calm, so that the parts that once reacted in fear can begin to rest.

This is not a process of quick fixes or behavioural control. It is a gentle unfolding. A conversation that deepens over time. And every strong reaction is an invitation to begin again.

You Are Not Too Much

• You are not too sensitive.
• You are not irrational.
• You are not broken because you feel deeply, respond quickly, or sometimes spiral.

You are a system trying to protect itself. And every part of that system has a reason for the way it reacts. When we listen closely, we discover that even the most overwhelming emotions carry the language of protection, not pathology.

The wound speaks through your reactions. But the Self can respond.
And that is where healing begins.

In abundant love and kindness for all gentle souls,

Angela xox 

References

• Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292.

• Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. Routledge.

• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

• Schwartz, R. C. (2021). No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.