"What is my reality?"

For years, I wandered through the endless labyrinths of my mind in pursuit of this question. I couldn't find the answer because I was looking in the wrong place. Like a scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street, no matter how much I ran, I always ended up at the same dead end: "The world is an unsafe place; you must be on guard."

Yet, there was something strange... Sometimes I would wake up in the same bed, in the same house, living the same life... But on that day, even the light filtering through the window looked like "hope" to me. Incoming emails weren't threats; they were simple tasks to be handled. The sound of the phone didn't startle me; instead, it sparked curiosity.

The next day? I would wake up to the same life again, but this time, everything was a battlefield. So, what had changed overnight? Had the world fixed itself, or had it broken down? Of course not. The world stood exactly where it was. The only thing that changed was the window through which I viewed that landscape. In other words: the settings of my nervous system.

Reality Is Not a Rock, It Is a Story

In my previous post (Guests of the Mind), I mentioned the guests that infiltrate our minds those foreign thoughts. Now, let’s go one step deeper and look at the atmosphere those guests create.

For years, I thought that what we call "reality" was a solid rock standing somewhere out there, identical for everyone. If I saw a situation as a "catastrophe," then it was an absolute catastrophe. But the most earth-shattering lesson I learned on my somatic journey was this: Reality is not fixed. Reality is a script rewritten moment by moment according to the current state of your nervous system.

We were always told to "be realistic." But no one ever stopped to ask, "Which reality are we talking about?"

If your nervous system is in "danger" (sympathetic) mode, a person frowning across from you looks like an "attack." But if you feel "safe" (ventral vagal), you look at that same frown and simply say, "He must be tired today," and move on.

The event is the same. The person is the same. But the story has completely changed.

You Cannot Bloom in the Wrong Garden

This is where the real issue gets tangled. Most of the time, we mistake the "alarm" state of our nervous system for the absolute truth of our lives. We confuse fear with "intuition." However, fear is a reaction; intuition is a state of calm knowing.

And more importantly, we try to plant our own reality in the minds of people who do not understand it at all.

As I weeded out those foreign seeds from my mind, I realized that my biggest mistake was trying to cultivate my own reality in the wrong soil. If you tell people about your own world, about that new reality sprouting inside you, and they don't understand you or even smile slightly then that is not a front you need to fight on. It is simply a place where you should not be.

You cannot explain your own landscape to someone looking through the wrong window.

An Invitation to Clean the Window

Today, right now, as you read this, pause for a moment. Look around you. But this time, focus not on your thoughts, but on your lens.

How do you see the world right now? Is it difficult, chaotic, and exhausting? Or is it possible, fluid, and inviting?

If the landscape you see makes you feel trapped, do not try to change the landscape (your job, your home, your relationship) immediately. First, check your window. Maybe the glass is just dirty? Maybe you are tired, and your nervous system has switched to "shutdown" mode?

Just because mountains are not visible in foggy weather does not mean the mountains are not there. It only means the weather is foggy. Your reality is waiting for you behind that fog, sunny and solid.

You just need to take a breath and clean that window.

With love,

Elif Gökçe