There’s a reason new beginnings feel threatening,even when they should feel exciting.

It’s called anticipation anxiety —✧ A nervous system response that treats the unknown as dangerous✧ Often triggered by past disappointment, trauma, or prolonged stress✧ You lose the ability to emotionally project positive outcomes — even if they’re possible

This is linked to a pattern called positive projection decay:✧ When your mind used to imagine joy, success, connection✧ But now imagines failure, pain, or nothing at all✧ You stop dreaming forward — you only plan to survive

You may also experience:✧ Future fatigue (“why bother?”)✧ Identity pause (“I don’t know who I’d be if things changed”)✧ Freeze response in moments of choice or opportunity

🧠 Why it happens:✧ Your nervous system remembers past letdowns more vividly than hope✧ It builds protection around you by muting forward motion✧ But it accidentally mutes aliveness too

💡 The shift begins not with a leap — but with a flicker.✧ A small risk✧ A soft beginning✧ A memory of a time you felt lit up — even if it was just trying on an outfit for your first day

That spark isn’t gone.It’s just waiting for safety to stop being your only setting.

✧ soft anchor:

You don’t need to be fearless.You just need to remember that joy is worth moving toward again.

🌒 return to memory:

→ read: i used to be excited for what’s next→ reflect: when wonder turns into fear

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

There’s a reason new beginnings feel threatening,even when they should feel exciting.

It’s called anticipation anxiety —✧ A nervous system response that treats the unknown as dangerous✧ Often triggered by past disappointment, trauma, or prolonged stress✧ You lose the ability to emotionally project positive outcomes — even if they’re possible

This is linked to a pattern called positive projection decay:✧ When your mind used to imagine joy, success, connection✧ But now imagines failure, pain, or nothing at all✧ You stop dreaming forward — you only plan to survive

You may also experience:✧ Future fatigue (“why bother?”)✧ Identity pause (“I don’t know who I’d be if things changed”)✧ Freeze response in moments of choice or opportunity

🧠 Why it happens:✧ Your nervous system remembers past letdowns more vividly than hope✧ It builds protection around you by muting forward motion✧ But it accidentally mutes aliveness too

💡 The shift begins not with a leap — but with a flicker.✧ A small risk✧ A soft beginning✧ A memory of a time you felt lit up — even if it was just trying on an outfit for your first day

That spark isn’t gone.It’s just waiting for safety to stop being your only setting.

✧ soft anchor:

You don’t need to be fearless.You just need to remember that joy is worth moving toward again.

🌒 return to memory:

→ read: i used to be excited for what’s next→ reflect: when wonder turns into fear

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

When we’re young,we don’t need certainty to feel excited.

We just need possibility.

But somewhere along the way,the unknown stopped being magical.And started feeling dangerous.

This is anticipation anxiety —✧ When your nervous system associates newness with threat✧ When the future feels like it’s already judged you✧ When you don’t plan out of vision — you plan out of defense

And it makes sense.Because you’ve had enough dreams fizzle.Enough plans fall apart.Enough hope turn into hurt.

So now, instead of leaning into possibility —you brace for impact.

Even if nothing is wrong.Even if everything is fine.You freeze anyway.You stand still for years.And wonder why you feel disconnected from your own life.

But what if this isn’t a flaw?What if this is just a signal —that your nervous system needs a new story for the future?

Not one built on safety.One built on spark.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of you still believes new = danger?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

I saw a girl todaytrying on an outfit for her first day of work.She looked so alive.

The kind of alive that only comeswhen everything feels like it might begin again.

And I remembered —there was a timewhen I felt that too.

When the unknown didn’t feel like a monster.It felt like a door.A possibility. A portal.The beginning of something I couldn’t wait to meet.

Back then, even a secondhand book salefelt like a place where my whole life might change.

But now…I hesitate.I brace.I overthink.I freeze.

I look at the future like a threat.Like it’s waiting to disappoint me.Like it’s something I have to survive — not something I get to step into.

I don’t know when that shift happened.But I miss the version of me who was still excitedto see what might unfold.

Maybe I’ll try putting on the outfitI wore to my first day of work.Maybe I’ll wear her energy for a while —and see if the spark remembers how to find me.

✧ quiet prompt:

What was the last new thing you looked forward to — not feared?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

This is not a meditation for thinking. This is a meditation for *resetting*. The Rebirth Loop is a long-form ambient experience designed to hold you during deep rest, burnout recovery, emotional shifts, or late-night reflection.

In this space, your next version can rise… quietly. No pressure. No performance. Just presence.

⟡ Includes repeatable affirmations, soft ambient bed, and space for deep becoming

⟡ Designed by irisis — for who you are and who you're still becoming — 🌀

LOOPED AFFIRMATIONS:

• Becoming can happen quietly

• I am allowed to rest

• The old has softened

• My breath makes space for the new

⟡ irisis.co | @irisis.co | Quiet Journal #rebirthmeditation #sleeploop #guidedmeditation #identityreset #quietbecoming #irisis

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

This body-based meditation invites you to explore how identity lives in your skin — and how we can gently release the performative layers we no longer need to wear.It’s a body scan not for tension, but for truth.Created in alignment with irisis — a brand for who you are and who you’re still becoming.⟡ Download the Quiet Journal⟡ Explore identity-based pieces: irisis.co ⟡ IG: @irisis.co—🧥 PROMPTS INSIDE:• What identity have I been performing in my body? • Where do I feel truth? • What would softness — not performance — feel like?#bodymeditation #guidedmeditation #selfawareness #identityhealing #quietbecoming #irisis

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

You can be fully aliveand still… absent.

Not in body.In awareness. In sensation. In truth.

This is what I call emotional extinction —the slow disappearance of feelingin a life that keeps moving.

It doesn’t happen in one moment.It happens over time.

✧ You stop crying at beauty✧ You stop pausing before you respond✧ You stop asking yourself if you still care✧ You become functional. Efficient. Numb.

And the scary part?

Everyone applauds you for it.

Because our world rewards the material —what we can show, measure, produce.

But none of those things feel alive without feeling.

That’s the great illusion:A life can look fulland be completely hollow inside.

So maybe death isn’t when the body stops.Maybe it’s when your experience of yourself goes silentinside a life that still performs like everything is fine.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of you has been functioning… but not feeling?

🌒 go deeper:

→ read: the neuroscience of aliveness, affective flattening, and internal deadness → chapter: decoding

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

Lately, I’ve been thinking about death.Not in fear.Just in curiosity.

What actually dies… when we die?

Because the things we made stay.The stories we told stay.The conversations. The artwork. The tests. The dresses. The designs.

They don’t disappear.They’re timestamped.Stored in some dimension we don’t need a body to revisit.

So what’s the part that ends?

Maybe it’s the feeling.The breath behind the action.The scent of meaning we attach to the moment.

Maybe death is just the end of interpretation.

And if that’s true —if the only thing we lose is our ability to feel it all —then what does that sayabout the way we live now?

Because I know a lot of people(myself included)who spend years moving through lifewith no feeling.

Chasing success with no joy.Performing love with no presence.Creating beauty with no breath in it.

And if we’re not feeling —if we’re not interpreting the moment —aren’t we already gone?

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of your life have you stopped feeling — even though it still exists?

🌒 next layer:

→ read: emotional extinction → chapter: underneath

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

There’s a strange kind of griefthat comes after the storm.

Not when everything breaks —but when everything becomes… distant.

It’s called emotional disidentification —The quiet moment whenthe version of you who was hurtingstarts to feel separatefrom the one who’s still here.

It can feel like peace.It can feel like disconnection.It can feel like betrayal.It can feel like relief.

Because for so long,your pain was the narrator.The lens. The architecture.The reason you moved the way you moved.

And now that it’s quieter —you’re not sure who you are without it.

You’re still healing.But you’re no longer inhabiting the grief.You’re observing it.

And that’s where return begins.Not with a bang.But with a breaththat no longer echoes in your wounds.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of your identity has started to fall away… and you didn’t even notice until now?

🌒 go deeper:

→ read: grief processing, memory detachment, and post-traumatic perspective shift → chapter: decoding

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com

There was a time when everything felt loud.The grief. The rage. The confusion. The ache.

I was inside it.Inside the fight.Inside the spiral.Inside the question of whether I’d ever feel whole again.

But now…something is different.

I still remember it.But it’s quieter.Like watching a film I know by heart — but from the outside.

I’m not in the scene anymore.I’m the one watching it.Holding the knowing.Witnessing the version of mewho was still trying to hold it all together.

And it’s strange.That something that once swallowed me wholenow barely grazes the edges of who I am.

That love.That pain.That story.

It still happened.But it doesn’t own me anymore.

And somehow —even though I’m still putting myself together,one breath at a time —I can finally see the distance.And that, too, is a kind of peace.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of your story are you finally able to witness, not relive?

🌒 next layer:

→ read: emotional disidentification and the grief of becoming → chapter: underneath

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com