Most people imagine “hijacking” as something dramatic — manipulation, abuse, coercion. But the reality is quieter:
Anyone can hijack you once they find the lever in your nervous system.
Sometimes the lever is emotional:
- fear of abandonment
- fear of conflict
- fear of shame
- fear of disappointing someone
- fear of being misunderstood
Sometimes it’s behavioral:
- withdrawal at key moments
- strategic silence
- a well-timed label
- the hint of leaving or withholding
It doesn’t require intent. Patterns do the work.
Not every hijack is intentional — some people trip your levers accidentally, others learn them and adapt. Discernment between the two is its own training.
If our nervous system has an automatic response — fawn, freeze, collapse, appease, rage, shutdown — then anyone who touches the right cue can steer you. Partners, parents, managers, strangers. Even groups.
And it gets more complicated:
Digital bad actors learned this before the rest of us. Social engineering, algorithmic pressure, and AI-shaped prompts all exploit human levers. But the powers-that-be in both personal and professional environments use the same mechanics — consciously or not.
Some people stop once the misunderstanding clears. Others, consciously or not, shift to a new lever when the old one no longer works — not out of malice, but out of patterned habit. That’s when discernment matters most.
Hijacks don’t start with domination. They start with you getting hooked in a way you can’t articulate, responding to something you don’t fully understand, tightening around a fear you can’t quite name. You only notice the hijack after the pattern has already played you.
Here’s the part most people misunderstand.
Fighting or avoiding keeps you inside the pattern. It reinforces the reaction. It strengthens the lever. Instead, we can do better by uninstalling the mechanism.
Uninstalling works differently:
- Certain types of meditation, like Zen, quiets the story.
- Somatic awareness reveals the hook.
- Pattern literacy shows how the cycle operates.
And slowly, the lever stops producing the old reaction.
Not because the outside world became less manipulative, but because the internal exploit no longer works.
The hijack loses power when the hook has nothing to grab.
Uninstalling your own levers is the foundation; learning who repeatedly reaches for them is the advanced work.
This is not becoming invulnerable. It is becoming relatively un-exploitable — not by shutting down, but by neutralizing the pattern as it runs.
Most of the levers into our nervous systems were installed long before today. You can uninstall them through awareness, practice, and retraining.
When the lever no longer triggers the old response,
our choices return to center,
presence comes back online,
agency becomes continuous.
Patterns are trainable. Agency grows with practice.
⛩️🌿
