Your nervous system is perfect. It has been honed over many years to keep you safe and to help you interact with others in meaningful ways. You may think you are overly sensitive at times, but there is no such thing as being too sensitive (or too emotional). You just need to understand the task: to utilize your nervous system’s powerful precision to respond to all the stimuli you encounter in the world. You deserve the chance to figure out how you feel about everything, how everything that has happened is affecting you. Stop judging yourself; this is everyone’s task.

Your nervous system excites you to move, and to do so with precision and grace. It is the human’s infinitely complex system of nerves that allows them to dance, to move masterfully in the fast-moving landscape of a basketball game and to sing so beautifully it brings others to tears. Your nervous system is also there to preserve you and help you navigate complex social interactions. It can make you as gentle, vulnerable and powerful as you need to be.

Believe it or not, all this attention paid to what is happening inside your body is to disconnect it from the ego’s influence. Attached to the ego, the nervous system will always tend toward violence (the fight or flight energy). When the ego is in charge, it is impossible to forgive. Your ego convinces you you have to win, be right, be on top and hold a grudge. You should get to know your aggressive impulses. They are there to protect you. But faced with acting in violence toward another person, you must pull the brake and be gentle.

Feel the power of your body. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Say what you think. Be silly! Laugh loud! Make mistakes. But also stay quiet and hold yourself back. Learn to hold some things in reserve. There is a time for everything.

A truly non-violent person is one who is not afraid of their own aggression because they have explored it fully and know how to use it. In most cases, they know they do not need to use it. And when they do use it and go too far, they can seek forgiveness and forgive themselves. Ultimately, your aggression is there to keep you alive, not to help you vanquish someone else. A truly non-violent person is fully themselves and tells the truth, but not at the expense of another.

This is the magic of being a herd mammal with human sensitivities. You have a self-protective system that has kept you safe all this time, but also altruistic desires to seek peace and connection with others – to fully support others’ right to be alive and be themselves. Both are life-giving. Saving yourself to the detriment of another is not love or freedom. When you destroy another person, you also die with them. When you condemn someone else, you also condemn yourself.