Why Your Nervous System Might Be Rejecting Your Big Goals This Year
A week (or so) into the New Year, the energy usually shifts. The demands for declarations start to quiet down, and motivation shifts. The pressure to reinvent yourself starts to feel heavier than inspiring, because instead of just thinking about the changes, you’re now being asked to live them.
For many people, this is the moment when something starts to feel “off.” And it’s not even because they are failing to follow through, but because their body is finally exhaling after weeks of anticipation, comparison, and effort. They’ve even named the second Friday in January “National Quitters Day.”
If your nervous system feels tired rather than motivated right now, see it as information instead of a problem to fix.
When Goals Come From Survival Instead of Safety
Here’s the question I’d love for you to start with: Where did your goals come from?
So many of the goals we’re encouraged to set, like weight loss, career pivots, productivity upgrades, relationship status, or financial benchmarks, are framed as neutral or aspirational. But when we slow down and look closely, many of them are rooted in something deeper than desire.
They’re rooted in survival.
Traditional goal-setting often assumes that clarity is easily attainable. It says that if you just think hard enough, plan carefully enough, or push yourself a bit more, you’ll know exactly what you want and be able to get there.
But the nervous system doesn’t quite work that way.
When your nervous system is dysregulated due to bracing, feeling overwhelmed, or operating in survival mode, it doesn’t orient you toward growth. No, it orients you toward seeking control and protection.
From this place, goals often focus less on becoming who you want to be and more on trying to feel safe.
That can look like setting career goals because uncertainty feels intolerable, not because you actually feel inspired. Or committing to a new health routine because control feels safer than having self-compassion. Or filling your calendar with projects and plans because slowing down leaves too much room for uncomfortable feelings to surface.
In these moments, goals aren’t expressions of desire, but strategies to cope and protect. They are ways to:
Outrun discomfort
Fix or override yourself
Prove you’re “doing enough”
Protect against vulnerability and stillness
From a nervous system perspective, many goals aren’t about becoming more, but trying to stay safe, which is where our core wounds often come into play.
When safety hasn’t been consistent, emotionally, relationally, or developmentally, the nervous system learns to organize around fixing, proving, performing, or staying in motion. Goals become attempts to resolve old pain without having to fully feel it.
There is no shame here. This is an intelligent, adaptive way we’ve all developed to survive.
However, it’s also why the New Year push can feel energizing at first, as you dream up the “new you” you’ll become, and then collapse so quickly. Survival energy can look like motivation for a while, but it’s not sustainable, and eventually, the nervous system starts to push back.
Why? You weren’t meant to live in survival mode.
When Goals are Shaped by Core Wounds
If you look closely, survival-based goals often point back to something much older than the present moment. They’re shaped by our core wounds, which are the early, relational experiences that taught our nervous systems what it needed to do to stay connected, protected, or seen.
Core wounds show us what was missing, inconsistent, or unsafe enough that your system had to adapt. You might recognize this in patterns like:
Feeling driven to prove your worth or competence
Believing rest has to be earned
Equating closeness with anxiety or distance with safety
Feeling productive on the outside but disconnected on the inside
When these wounds remain unhealed, they quietly organize your choice on a subconscious level. Goals become an attempt to resolve old pain without having to fully revisit and to finally feel secure, lovable, or at ease. This is why insight, like learning about your patterns, alone doesn’t change things.
You can understand your patterns, name your attachment style, and even see why your goals aren’t sticking, but you still feel stuck repeating them. Core wounds don’t heal through logic or understanding. They heal through felt safety.
Why Calm Brings Things to the Surface
Here’s the thing: creating traditional goals brings in a level of busyness and chaos. However, to heal and create a sense of felt safety, your body requires calm and, typically, slowing down. If you’re living in survival mode, though, slowing down likely feels uncomfortable.
When chaos decreases because the constant doing, fixing, and striving finally quiets, your nervous system no longer has its usual distractions. So, what hasn’t been felt yet begins to come to the surface.
And while it can feel like you’re regressing, it actually means your nervous system finally has enough space to show you what it's been carrying.
The thing many people get wrong, though, is trying to force calm, like scheduling “calm” in your calendar. It’s not something that can truly be forced, and instead, the focus needs to go to staying present with what arises when things are naturally calm without overwhelming yourself or turning back to old protectors or coping strategies.
It’s important to note, too, that this is work that’s best done with someone else. Someone that can provide a safe space for you to be present with what arises from your subconscious and can help you navigate through. Often, this looks like working with a coach.
If you’re feeling called to explore the core wounds shaping your nervous system, relationships, and goals, I’m opening my flagship live coaching experience, Healing Core Wounds and Codependency, for a Winter cohort.
It’s a six-week, intimate container designed to help you understand these patterns and begin to heal them in a way that feels grounded, supported, and safe.
You can learn more about the cohort here.
Why Safety Changes What You Want
It often surprises people that as their core wounds begin to heal, the goals they once felt compelled to chase start to loosen their grip and even resolve themselves. You don’t lose your ambition or motivation, but your nervous system no longer needs the same strategies to feel okay.
As safety grows:
The urge to prove yourself softens
The pressure to transform into a “new you” decreases
The need to stay constantly activated fades
Instead of trying to become someone new, you’re able to focus more on allowing yourself to live without armor. Your body sheds what it no longer needs, not through force, but through safety.
Suddenly, you notice that the “normal” goals you might have set fall away, because they were never your real desire or destination, but protective detours to keep you in survival mode.
A Gentle Invitation Forward
Are you starting to recognize that you’ve set survival-driven goals, trying to maintain protective chaos, or feel the discomfort with slowing down? Please remember that these patterns make sense when you understand them through the lens of attachment, nervous system regulation, and core wounds.
This is the work I explore deeply in SAFE, not just understanding your patterns, but actually learning how to build internal safety so those patterns no longer have to run your life.
And because healing happens in relationships, I’m offering two ways to move through this work with support:
Healing Core Wounds and Codependency: A 6-week live coaching container where we’ll explore how early attachment wounds shaped your nervous system, your relationships, and the goals you set, and how to begin healing them.
The SAFE Book Club: Move through the book with me, the author, and a group of people, where you can ask questions and integrate the work in a guided, relational space.
If your nervous system is tired of living in survival mode and asking for something different, you don’t have to try to figure it out alone. Sometimes the next step isn’t a goal, but a safe place to begin again.
