Have you ever noticed this pattern in your relationships? When you really fall for someone, you can’t eat or sleep. You check your phone constantly, analyzing every interaction. It’s exhausting but exciting—and you’ve come to believe that’s what passionate love feels like. But what if that feeling isn’t love at all? What if you’ve been confusing anxiety with connection, uncertainty with passion?

This confusion often has deep roots. If your early experiences with love were entangled with unpredictability, your nervous system may have learned to associate heightened arousal—racing heart, shallow breathing, hyper-focus—with connection. Perhaps caregivers were inconsistently available, creating cycles of longing and relief that your body recorded as “this is what love feels like.” Or maybe you observed relationships where drama and intensity were equated with depth of feeling.

Your body holds these associations at a primal level. Notice what happens physically when you meet someone who is steady, consistent, and clearly interested. Do you feel mysteriously bored or flat? Does your body seem underwhelmed despite this person offering qualities you consciously value? Conversely, when someone is hot-and-cold or difficult to read, does your body suddenly awaken—heart racing, senses heightened, fully engaged? These physical responses offer important clues about your unconscious definition of love.

You might recognize yourself in certain patterns. Perhaps you keep falling for people who are clearly wrong for you, where everything is complicated and difficult. Then when you meet someone kind and available, you feel nothing—no chemistry, no excitement. This might connect to early experiences where love came from someone who alternated between intense closeness and emotional withdrawal. Your body learned that the cascade of neurochemicals produced during anxious attachment was “real love,” while stable connection felt unfamiliar and therefore unexciting.

Or maybe you find yourself repeatedly drawn to relationships that keep you on edge—partners who are ambivalent about commitment, whose attention is unpredictable. The moment you sense someone is fully invested in you, something in you shuts down. It’s like the chase is the only part that feels alive. This pattern often connects to developmental experiences, where pursuing emotional connection was necessary but actually receiving it remained rare.

Healing Exercise #1: The Body Confusion Inventory

Take time to notice and document your physical responses in different relationship dynamics. After interactions, note:

• How does my body respond to consistency versus unpredictability?

• What physical sensations arise with clear interest versus ambivalence?

This conscious tracking helps identify how anxiety has become coded as attraction in your system. The awareness itself begins to disentangle these associations.

Healing Exercise #2: Redefining Chemistry Practice

Create two columns on a page. In the first, list the physical sensations you typically associate with “chemistry” or attraction. In the second column, explore which of these sensations might actually be anxiety responses (racing heart, hypervigilance, obsessive thinking). Then create a third column where you imagine and describe what genuine connection might feel like in your body if anxiety weren’t confused with love—perhaps warmth, relaxation, or openness. Review this regularly to help your system recognize new possibilities.

Healing Exercise #3: Nervous System Regulation Date

Before dates or significant interactions, practice a brief regulation exercise:

• Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly.

• Take five deep breaths, extending the exhale longer than the inhale.

• Remind yourself: “Safety can feel good too. I can be both secure and engaged.”

This simple practice helps your nervous system remain regulated enough to accurately assess connection rather than being drawn to familiar anxiety states.

Healing happens gradually as you create experiences that contradict old patterns. You might initially find yourself creating problems with stable partners just to feel the familiar rush of anxiety. With awareness, you can recognize this impulse and choose differently, allowing yourself to experience the unfamiliar sensations of secure attachment. At first it might feel almost boring, but over time, you’ll discover there’s a depth and richness to feeling safe with someone that you’ve never experienced before—like your nervous system can finally relax and actually enjoy the connection.

Physical practices support this rewiring process. Consider developing what could be called “anxiety versus love checks” throughout your day. Place a hand on your heart, notice your current state, and ask:

• “Is this excitement or anxiety?”

• “Is my system contracted or expanded?”

This regular practice helps distinguish between the high-arousal state of anxious attachment and the open, grounded feeling of genuine connection.

True intimacy has moments of excitement but isn’t built on constant arousal. Many people come to realize that what they thought was passion—that stomach-dropping feeling of uncertainty—pales in comparison to something much more powerful: the quiet moments of feeling completely at ease with someone, where you can take a full breath and feel your whole self is welcome. This shift represents the nervous system recognizing that safety, rather than threat, can be the foundation for deep connection.

Remember that transforming this pattern takes patience. Your brain developed these associations for good reasons—they helped you navigate your early relationship environment. As you practice distinguishing anxiety from love, you may still feel automatically drawn to familiar patterns. Each time you notice this pull, you have an opportunity to choose differently, gradually teaching your nervous system that connection can feel safe rather than activating, deep rather than dramatic, secure rather than exciting in the ways you’ve known before.