I had a moment in a session recently that stopped me in my tracks.
A client was describing a familiar pattern — walking into a room and immediately bracing. Shoulders tight. Breath shallow. Nervous system already preparing for something to go wrong… even though nothing actually was wrong.
So, I asked, “What are you expecting to happen right now?”
They paused. Then laughed a little sadly and said, “I guess… I’m expecting danger. Even when there isn’t any.”
That moment right there is the predictive brain in action.
Neuroscience now tells us that the brain isn’t passively receiving reality — it’s constantly predicting it. According to researchers like Lisa Feldman Barrett, perception works more like a simulation than a camera. Your brain anticipates what it thinks is about to happen, then uses sensory input to adjust the story just enough to keep it coherent.
So we don’t actually experience the world as it is.
We experience what our brain expects.
Which explains so much, doesn’t it?
Why two people can live through the same event and come away with entirely different realities.
(An example I often use is being on a bus when it nearly crashes. One person might walk off feeling so grateful to have survived that they commit to living their best life ever right in that moment. Another person might survive the exact same incident but walk away with the belief that the world is scary place full of threats and retreat into their home never to emerge again. They both experienced the same traumatic event, but have it dramatically different meanings.)
This explains why old emotional patterns keep recreating themselves.
Why “just thinking positive” doesn’t work — because the nervous system doesn’t speak in affirmations. It speaks in predictions.
In hypnosis, when someone drops into a deeply relaxed state, something remarkable happens. The brain becomes more flexible. Less certain. More willing to revise its expectations.
In that session I mentioned above, as the client’s nervous system settled, their body literally softened. Their breathing changed. Their face changed. And when I asked again what they expected to happen next, the answer was different.
“I’m actually kind of excited to see what might happen next,” they said.
That wasn’t positive thinking. That was a prediction update.
And once the brain accepts a new prediction — safety instead of threat, ease instead of vigilance — reality reorganizes around it. Physiology follows. Emotion follows. Behavior follows.
How much of what we call “reality” is actually memory rehearsing itself forward.
And how much healing is really just teaching the brain that the present moment is not the past.
I help my clients find the Glimmers in Day-to-day life, because the crazy thing is that live RIGHT NEXT to the Triggers. It’s all a matter of what we expect, and what we look for.
