Self-Worth Isn’t a Concept—It’s a Felt Sense: What Animals Teach Us About Presence and Safety
- rachel stokes
- Jul 24
- 4 min read
Most of what we’re taught about self-worth and presence lives in the mind: affirmations, mental discipline, trying to “focus on the now.” But for a dysregulated nervous system, those tools often don’t land—because true worth and presence aren’t thoughts. They’re states, accessible through a felt sense of safety. And we can learn a lot about that from animals.
1. Self-Worth as a State of Safety, Not an Idea
Self-worth is the body’s ability to feel safe being itself—without needing to perform or shrink. It’s not a thought, belief, or story. It’s not something you earn or effort toward. It’s a biological experience of grounded presence, which arises naturally when the nervous system feels safe.
As I shared in my last blog post, What We Can Learn From Animals About Nervous System Regulation, animals live in constant conversation with their bodies and environments. They startle, assess, respond, and return to calm. A dog hears a loud bang, perks its ears, sniffs the air, senses there’s no da nger, and settles again. Regulation is their baseline—not a concept, but a cycle they complete.
For us, too, regulation is biological. Based on trauma physiology and polyvagal theory—the science of how our nervous system helps us feel safe or threatened—regulation means staying present with what’s arising so a cycle can complete: from activation (is there a threat?), to expression (what do I need to do?), to resolution (am I safe now?), and back to calm.
This cycle runs through the autonomic nervous system, which has three main branches:
Ventral vagus (front body) – connection, safety, calm
Sympathetic – activation, mobilization, fight-or-flight
Dorsal vagus (back body) – freeze, shutdown, deep rest
Here’s where it gets important: when an emotional or stress response isn’t allowed to complete—because we were interrupted, shamed, isolated, or had to suppress our reactions to stay safe—that energy stays in the body. The nervous system holds it as unresolved, and the threat never really ends.
Over time, this can lead to sympathetic dominance (hypervigilance, bracing, urgency) and/or dorsal vagal dominance (shut down, numbness, disconnection). These are survival adaptations—not flaws. But they can make self-worth feel inaccessible, like you’ve lost touch with yourself or the world feels too fast, too much, or meaningless.
This is where many people live: in a loop of trying to think their way into worth while their body is still running survival code. But when we begin to reconnect with safety in the body—through practices like orienting and slow, attuned presence—the nervous system starts to shift. The ventral vagus becomes more active again, and with it comes a felt sense of connection, curiosity, and grounded openness.
Let’s look at how this feels:
In ventral vagal regulation, breath slows, muscles soften, and you feel safe to be yourself.
In sympathetic activation, worth feels like something to prove. The body is scanning and pushing.
In dorsal shutdown, you may feel invisible, unmotivated, or ashamed. It’s not laziness or low self-esteem—it’s your body conserving energy in the face of overwhelm.
You're not broken. Your body is protecting you in the best way it knows how. But self-worth can’t be accessed clearly from a survival state—it becomes available again when the system feels safe.
And when safety becomes your baseline, presence becomes natural.
2. Presence Isn’t About Tight Focus—It’s About Regulation
Presence means actually inhabiting yourself and the moment, instead of abandoning it to chase approval, control, or avoidance.
I used to be terrified to raise my rates for dog and cat sitting. My body believed that saying yes to myself meant risking disconnection—that if a client rejected me, I’d lose belonging. I didn’t just think that—I felt it: a deep ache and pressure in my lower abdomen, flashes of anger and hopelessness. So I’d abandon my needs, overextend during sits, and avoid discomfort or confrontation. Then I’d spiral out of the present moment and into self-loathing and mental rumination—what many call anxiety.
In nervous system terms, my body didn’t feel safe with the belief that having my needs met was allowed. I was caught in a loop between mobilization (sympathetic nervous system dominance—the imagined threat of losing connection) and immobilization (dorsal vagal shutdown—the collapse into overextension and despair). My body was doing what it was designed to do—protect—but it was exhausting.
Presence, from a nervous system lens, emerges through regulation. It arises when the body no longer perceives threat. It begins with orienting to the environment long enough for the body to register: there’s no danger here. Softening your gaze and noticing shapes, sizes, and colors can help activate the ventral vagus nerve, which plays a key role in feeling connected and safe.
You don’t force presence. It’s what’s left when you’re not bracing against life.
Presence isn’t hyper-focus. Animals in regulated states don’t obsess or strain. They’re relaxed, aware, and connected. Hyper-focus, on the other hand, is usually a form of vigilance. Even hunting requires calm—not anxious control, but grounded precision.
Our nervous systems don’t just respond to danger—they remember it. That’s why healing isn’t about the mind alone. It’s about helping the body come back to now.
Closing
If you’ve been trying to think your way into worthiness or meditate your way into presence, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just using mind tools for a body need.
Come back to your body. To your breath. To your own inner animal.
That’s where presence and self-worth come home.
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