Why You Know Better… But Still Do the Same Thing in Relationships

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to meet Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score.

I had come across his work a few years ago when I was working with clients, and at the same time trying to understand my own experiences a little more clearly. And there was one moment from that time that stayed with me, because it didn’t quite make sense in the way I expected it to.

I remember being very aware of where I was. I could take in the room around me, I knew I was safe, and there was nothing happening that posed any kind of threat. On a logical level, everything was completely fine. But my body wasn’t responding in line with that at all. It had already moved into something else. I felt panicked, tense, shaky, and no matter how much I tried to talk myself through it or remind myself that I was okay, nothing really shifted.

And I think what stood out about that experience wasn’t just how intense it felt, but how little my thoughts seemed to influence it. Because there was a very clear sense of knowing that I was safe, and at the same time, a completely different experience happening in my body.

When you haven’t had language for that before, it’s confusing. It can feel like something isn’t lining up, or like you’re missing something, because if you can see what’s happening so clearly, why doesn’t that change how you feel?

And this is often the same question that shows up in relationships, just in quieter, more everyday ways.

It might look like sending a message to someone and noticing what happens in you when they don’t reply for a few hours. You might be able to tell yourself that they’re probably busy, that nothing has actually happened, and still feel your body start to shift. Your attention narrows, your mind starts trying to fill in the gaps, and before you realise it, you’re checking your phone, rereading what you sent, or thinking about how to bring things back to how they felt before.

Or you might be sitting with your partner and notice something small change in their tone, something that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to explain if someone asked you what was wrong. And yet internally, something has already started to move. You might find yourself becoming more careful with what you say, softening things, explaining more than you normally would, trying to keep things steady, even though part of you knows that nothing significant has actually happened.

These moments can feel disproportionate to what’s going on externally, and that’s usually where the frustration comes in. Because you can see it. You can understand it. You might even be able to name the pattern while it’s happening. And still, it doesn’t seem to change the response in the way you expect it to.

This is where the idea that “if I know better, I should be able to do better” starts to fall apart a little, because it assumes that these responses are being driven by the part of you that thinks and reasons. But what I came to understand, both through his work and through experience, is that the body doesn’t experience trauma as something that is over. It experiences it as something that is happening now.

So even when you can orient yourself to your environment, even when you can recognise that you’re safe, your nervous system may have already moved into a state of protection. Your heart rate changes, your breathing becomes more shallow, your body tenses, and all of that is happening not because there is actual danger in that moment, but because your system hasn’t yet registered that the threat is no longer there.

And once that shift has happened, a different part of your brain takes the drivers seat. The part that allows you to reflect, to think clearly, to access the things you’ve learned, becomes much less available or completely goes offline. Which means that the response you’re having in that moment isn’t being guided by your understanding, even though that understanding is still there in the background.

This is why so many people find themselves in this very specific kind of frustration, where they can explain their patterns, they can see exactly what’s happening, and yet when they’re in it, it feels like something else takes over. It’s also why it can feel like you’ve gone backwards when those patterns show up again, because it looks like nothing has changed, even though that’s not actually what’s happening.

What’s changed is your awareness. But awareness and response don’t shift in the same place, and they don’t shift at the same pace.

The cognitive side of processing can move quite quickly. You can learn something, reflect on it, and make sense of your experiences in a way that feels clear and even resolved. But the emotional and physiological patterns that sit underneath that are shaped over time, through repeated experiences, through what has felt familiar, and through what your system has learned to expect.

So even when you reach a point where you understand something deeply, there can still be a part of you that is operating from an older pattern, not because it’s resisting change, but because it hasn’t yet had enough new experiences to update.

This becomes particularly noticeable in relationships, because they naturally involve uncertainty, closeness, and moments of perceived change. A slower reply, a shift in tone, a change in plans. These things might seem small on the surface, but for a system that has learned to associate those cues with something more significant, the response can feel much bigger.

And that’s usually the point where people start to question themselves. Why am I reacting like this? Why can’t I just stay calm? Why do I keep doing the same thing in relationships, even when I know better?

But when you start to look at it through this lens, the question shifts slightly. It becomes less about “what’s wrong with me?” and more about “what has my system learned to expect here?”

Because these patterns weren’t formed through thinking. They were formed through experience. Through moments that felt overwhelming, inconsistent, or uncertain, where your system had to adapt in order to feel safe. And those adaptations can show up as overthinking, hypervigilance, pulling away, or trying to maintain connection at all costs.

Which also means they don’t change just because you understand them.

They change through new experiences.

And this is the part that can feel slower, and at times less satisfying, because it doesn’t come from a single insight or a moment of clarity. It comes from repetition. From small shifts that, on their own, might not seem like much.

It might look like noticing the urge to check your phone and giving yourself a moment before acting on it. Or feeling the impulse to send another message and allowing a bit of space instead. Or staying in a conversation and letting there be a small amount of discomfort without immediately trying to fix it or smooth it over.

These moments are easy to overlook, but they’re the ones that start to create something different internally. Because each time you have a slightly different experience, your system begins to register that it doesn’t always have to respond in the same way.

And over time, that’s what allows the gap between knowing and doing to start to close.

Not all at once, and not in a way that feels immediate, but gradually, as your body begins to learn what your mind may already understand.

So if you find yourself in that space, where you can see your patterns clearly, where you understand what’s happening, and yet your responses don’t always reflect that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re stuck or that something isn’t working.

It may simply mean that your system is still in the process of catching up.

And that process isn’t something you force.

It’s something you support, gently and consistently, until what you know starts to feel true in your body as well.