The Feral Cat

If you've ever tried to befriend a feral cat, you already know something important about healing. You don't rush toward it. You don't try to grab it, or corner it, or convince it with your good intentions that you mean no harm. That approach…however well-meaning…sends the cat straight under the porch and sets you back to the beginning.

What you do instead is this: You put a can of tuna near the edge of the garden. And then you get out of the way.

You come back the next day. Maybe the tuna is gone. Maybe it isn't. You put out another can. You move a little closer than you did yesterday—just a little. You sit quietly nearby, not looking directly at the cat, not reaching toward it. You let it decide the pace.

This goes on for days. Sometimes weeks.

And slowly, so slowly you almost miss it, the cat begins to trust that you're not a threat.

Your nervous system works the same way.

It has been doing its job for a long time. Scanning for danger. Bracing for impact. Learning, through experience, which things are safe and which things require protection. It is very good at its job, and it is not going to be talked out of what it knows just because you've decided you're ready to feel differently.

You cannot rush it. You cannot grab it by the scruff and carry it inside.

What you can do is put out the tuna.

The tuna looks different for everyone.

It might be a breathing practice you return to, gently, without expectation. It might be a therapy room where nothing bad happens, week after week, until something in your body starts to believe that. It might be one honest conversation that doesn't end the way the old ones did. It might be a moment of rest you allow yourself without earning it first.

Small things. Repeated over time. Offered without demand.

The nervous system—like the feral cat—is watching. It notices when the threat doesn't arrive. It notices when you keep showing up the same way, quietly, without agenda. It notices when it's safe to come a little closer.

This is why healing can't be forced.

Not because you're doing it wrong. Not because you're not trying hard enough. But because the part of you that needs to heal is not going to respond to urgency. It's going to respond to consistency. To patience. To the slow accumulation of evidence that this time, things might be different.

That evidence takes time to build. You cannot rush the cat.

But here's what I want you to hold onto: The cat does come closer. Not all at once. Not on your timeline. But it comes.

And one day…without being able to point to the exact moment it happened…you realize something has shifted. Something that used to send you sideways doesn't anymore. Something that felt impossible has become, quietly, ordinary.

That's not magic. That's tuna on the ground, day after day, and the patience to keep stepping back.

If your nervous system has been feral for a long time — wary, braced, not quite willing to trust — that's not a character flaw. That's a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. And it can learn something new. That's exactly what therapy is for.