3 things I thought were my personality—but were actually survival responses

For years, I thought being a people pleaser, overly emotional, and intensely Type A were simply parts of my personality.

But through EFT tapping and nervous system work, I began to see these traits differently: not as evidence of who I fundamentally was, but as responses my nervous system developed to help me feel safe, loved, and in control.

In this episode, I’m sharing the personal experiences that helped me understand what was underneath these patterns, including why I avoided conflict, why small moments could feel emotionally overwhelming, and why planning and perfectionism became ways to create safety.

This is not about judging or trying to eliminate parts of yourself. It is an invitation to get curious about which parts feel authentic—and which may have developed to protect you.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Aligned by Design podcast. I'm your host, Alexa Stone, certified EFT practitioner, recovering people pleaser, and nervous system guide. This podcast is for the millennial woman who's done a lot of inner work, but still feels stuck in patterns like overthinking, people pleasing, burnout, self-doubt, and feeling like she's somehow behind in life. Each episode will explore the subconscious beliefs and nervous system patterns driving those experiences, along with practical tools, EFT insights, and honest conversations to help you feel more regulated, more confident, and more like yourself. If you're ready to stop holding it all together and start creating a life that actually feels good to live, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to this episode. So what we're going to be talking about today is how we realize throughout our nervous system journey what things are actually our personality and things that we just are as an authentic human and what things about us are actually survival responses. And this happens pretty naturally as we grow up. Our nervous system is always looking out for how to keep us safe, how to keep us protected, and it latches on to the smallest of things in our childhood, especially, that turn into survival responses. Like for one example, if you liked Pokemon growing up and you realize that people make fun of you when you talk about it, so then our body internalizes this thing that I like that people think is weird. Being weird makes me unlikable, makes me unlovable. So therefore, to be safe, I should not like those things. And over time, there's a gradual snowball effect where we can be in our mid-30s, early 30s, like I am, and wonder to ourselves, okay, what is the real me? And what have I just conditioned myself to be throughout my life? So I thought I would share today some things about myself that I have realized through my own journey with EFT tapping and nervous system healing in general that are actually survival traits that I thought were personality traits. The first one is people pleasing, and I know I made a post about how I get so annoyed when people think that being a people pleaser is a personality trait, but it was coming from a place of self-reflection. I thought that that was a personality trait of mine. I just wanted everyone to be happy. I like to be the peacekeeper, but truly it was a survival response. And an example that I reflected on when I was trying to figure out, you know, what was the real me and what was the survival response. And I thought about my good friend from high school, senior year. We were sitting in a computer lab one day. We were talking about a friend that she wasn't getting along with at the moment. And she said something along the lines of, yeah, like you and I have never gotten to a fight though. And in my head, I was like, Yes, because anytime I've disagreed with you or didn't think something you did was right, I just said nothing. It wasn't that we never had anything to fight about, but I didn't give any ammo because I didn't want to fight. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to be pleased with me, so therefore I just never went against her on anything. Where I've seen myself make a lot of progress in this response is with my nine to five job. I am typically that go-to person who pretty much says yes to everybody because I want people to like me, I want to build a good rapport, and I want to get the job done. But my boss actually, during a yearly review, told me I needed to stop doing this. And when I was telling my EFT mentor Demi about this, she thought it was funny because I mentioned that as soon as my boss recommended this, I said, Well, no, I hear what you're saying, but this is really like a way for me to build a relationship with these people, is to say yes when I can. And Demi was like, You realize you're picking a comfortable hell over an uncomfortable heaven, right? Like, you should take that as your permission to push back to people. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, good point. So I am working on this, it's not fully healed, but I am a work in progress. The second thing that I thought was a personality trait was being emotional. If you asked anybody who knew me growing up, they would definitely say that I was very emotional as a kid. I would cry all the time, I was very sensitive, and it just felt like that was me. I was just very sensitive, and that was just who I am. Like my mom even jokes today that you can tell exactly how I feel by the look on my face. I have no poker face. So through my journey, I've realized that it wasn't that I was emotional, it was my nervous system was so overwhelmed with trying to hold on to so much stuff that the smallest inconvenience in my life would just set me off. So it wasn't that everything made me sad. It was like I had been carrying all of the stuff. I was already at capacity, and one little mistake, dropping one thing on the ground, just made me lose it. Again, like don't get me wrong, I still feel emotions. I still get upset, you know, when I've had a long day and my son knocks over something and I go into Hulk mode, but it's definitely not as often as it used to be. And I feel like I can also rebound a lot faster where I might have been in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Maybe it's like an hour or so, depending on what happened. So I definitely feel like I have come a long way with this one. All right, this is the last one, but this is the biggest one that was like a what the fuck? When I realized that this was not my personality. And that was being a type A girly. I have always needed to be in control, but my nervous system is really clever and smart because it always disguised this as, you know, I'm just prepared. It's a good thing. I just thinking of all the things that could potentially happen. It's not that I'm neurotic, it's I'm being safe, I'm being good. Like my favorite hobbies were getting a planner. And like I like I loved planners. I did those Erin Condren sticker planners back in the day. And I thought it was just a hobby. It was for fun, but I truly did it to try to control as much as I could because my childhood, I pretty much could control nothing. And thinking about how much I needed to control everything even makes me so tense thinking about it, and it makes me feel so sad for that little kid who felt so not in control of her life and didn't feel safe in that, that she compromised for decades to come by needing to control every minute of her day of her life. And one of the memories that has come up for me when I think about this is my dad, if he was taking my sister and I somewhere, we would be getting into the car and already like not really excited to leave the house anyway. But we would ask, where are we going? And he would say, Doesn't matter. Like, don't worry about it. And it felt so unsafe because he also was bringing us to places that we did not want to be. And please keep in mind, again, and now as a parent of a toddler, I know that you are not bringing your kids out to Disneyland every time you leave the house. Like sometimes some boring things need to be done. But this was going to like a bar at 2 p.m. and being around people that might have been intoxicated or maybe just a little bit weird. And for a young girl especially, I hated being in those situations. So even when I felt the courage to ask for the information to make me feel like I had a little bit more control, it wasn't given to me. So it was like, what's the point? And I think a place that type A typically comes up for a lot of people, and it came up to me was in school. I was a top 10 student at my high school. I always got very good grades. And what makes me so sad is like I genuinely think a part of my personality is a love of learning. I love to read, I love to learn new things. That's why, you know, I'm still getting certifications and doing courses and stuff in my 30s. But that love was tainted when it came to what those grades meant for me at home. Again, my God, if I came home with like a 94 on a test and I would have been happy about it, he was like, you know, why did you, why didn't you get a hundred? And then he would make it even worse by saying, go to your teacher and ask why you didn't get a hundred. And I was like, I knew why. It's not even if it was a multiple choice thing. Like I clearly got like one or two questions wrong and I just got the facts confused, but it was like I couldn't be less than perfect because then I had to answer to somebody. So I had to know everything to keep myself safe. So I really encourage you to kind of do this for yourself. And in the next episode, I'm gonna talk a little bit more of how to decipher the difference between what's a personality trait and what's a survival response. But I would just say, especially with this work, when you're thinking about your childhood and little you, it can get pretty emotional. Like I've been trying to not cry while record this because I just feel so much for that little girl who wanted to be loved, who wanted to be enough and wanted to be safe. So make sure if you do this type of exercise that you are in a safe place, you have support where you need it. And again, just be just be kind to yourself because every one of these that you unlock will get you even closer to the person that you want to become. All right. Until next time, we'll talk to you later.