Human beings are wired to notice danger, react quickly, and stay alive. To understand the evolution behind this and how we are built to learn to protect ourselves from danger, we can take a look at our closest relatives, chimpanzee’s.
When a monkey senses a threat, its first instinct is to move toward safety in numbers. If its group responds and offers protection, it soon returns to play. But if it faces the danger alone, its body surges with adrenaline, preparing to fight or flee. That surge is costly. A content monkey is one that rarely has to enter that high-alert state.
Humans share these same adaptive systems. As an infant, if you felt unsafe, you reached out, fussed, or cried – signals designed to bring your caregivers close. When comfort arrived, your system settled. If it didn’t, your distress likely intensified. And if soothing still failed to come, you may have shut down or withdrawn.
These are our earliest physiological patterns. Then life widens.
Learning is Constant
It’s tempting to assume humans are simply more intelligent than other primates. Yet research comparing orangutans, chimpanzees, and human toddlers on problem-solving tasks has shown that other primates can match us in several areas. Chimpanzees, for instance, often excel in tasks involving the physical world, like spatial reasoning.
Where humans stand apart is in social imitation.
Human children are extraordinary observers. We watch. We copy. We absorb. Culture runs through us at high speed. A child who sees a parent stiffen at the sight of a spider, or fall silent during conflict, is learning—even without a single word spoken.
We are unmatched in our capacity for social learning.
Living a Life Shaped by Learning
Who you are today reflects both your biology and everything you’ve experienced. Every moment—large and small—has shaped your responses. If you’ve lived 30 years, that’s more than 10,000 days of encountering stress and learning how to manage it.
If the adults around you were mostly responsive—if they soothed you, held you, reassured you—you may have developed a sense of safety that allowed curiosity and exploration. Calm, openness, and trust become familiar states when we experience them repeatedly.
But what if your environment was marked by stress, busyness, neglect, or unresolved trauma? You may have spent much of your early life on alert. Without regular exposure to calm, you had little chance to learn it.
All of us accumulate experiences we wouldn’t have necessary chosen for ourselves. And learning doesn’t work by subtraction. The nervous system doesn’t delete old patterns simply because they’re inconvenient. Survival systems are built to preserve what once kept us safe. But learning is always additive. While old responses may remain, new ones can be built alongside them, and with new learning comes new choices.
You are never finished learning. And growth accelerates in the presence of someone who feels warm and safe. Learning has the power to transform and this is where therapy enters.
Therapy: Humans Helping Humans
Therapy is one person sitting with another in vulnerability. It is, at its heart, an experience of social learning.
Therapists aim to create a space grounded in acceptance and shared humanity, staying steady as stress or trauma unfolds. The learning happens in the relationship itself—in the room, in real time. With patience and attention, patterns come into view. Whether that be a quickened breath, a tightening tone, a shift in posture, or all of these at once. These are the repeated responses that once served a purpose.
Then something new becomes possible. A therapist may slow their own breathing and invite calm into the space. They may model openness, steadiness, and safety. In that shared presence, clients can begin to experience regulation—not just intellectually, but in their bodies. They can learn what safety feels like with another person, and eventually within themselves.
Remember, we cannot rewrite earlier chapters of our lives. Those pages are complete. But we can change how the story unfolds from here. We can learn new ways of responding. You are the author of new chapters, and it is hope that lives in the unwritten pages.
If you are ready to learn new responses and create opportunities for growth, contact us at 0479 149 277 to explore how we can support you and book an appointment.