When the Danger Has Passed

A couple of days ago, I was walking with my wife across a quiet patch of sand when I saw them.

The impressions were clear, pressed deep enough to hold their shape. The edges stayed sharp. No wind had softened them. Very little water had touched them. I stopped without thinking, the way we often do before the mind catches up.

Mountain lion.

We had already noticed other prints around our campsite, though none as distinct as these. Whatever had passed through here had moved with ease. I wondered whether the cat had been on a deliberate hunt or simply out on a midnight stroll.

My first reaction was pause. Not panic. Pause.

I felt a subtle tightening in my chest. My eyes lifted from the ground and began scanning the landscape automatically. Tree line. Rocks. Shadows.

All of this happened before I said a single word to myself.

This is how threat works. It arrives first in the nervous system, not in words.

I knew enough to know the track was not super recent. The sand had already been speckled by rain from the night before. This animal was gone. It could have been yesterday. It could have been last night. It was not now.

Still, my body had not received that memo yet.

So I stood there for a moment, letting both realities exist. The track was real. The animal was not present. My caution made sense.

Balance matters.

In my work, I often see people standing in this same psychological posture. Frozen mid-step. Heart rate elevated. Eyes scanning for danger that once existed.

A tone of voice. A silence. A look that lands the wrong way.

Something “bad” may have happened here before.

The mind rarely asks the most important question first. Is this happening now?

Trauma leaves impressions the same way a threatening animal leaves tracks. It presses into soft ground and remains long after the body that made it has moved on. The nervous system learned something important once. It learned how to survive. It learned what to watch for. It learned when to stop walking and look around.

That learning deserves respect.

Standing over those prints, I noticed how easily imagination could sprint ahead of reality. I could picture the cat watching from the trees. I could feel my muscles preparing to react. I could let the story escalate.

Instead, I grounded myself in what was actually present. The wind. The light. The absence of movement. The quiet.

The track was information, not instruction.

That distinction comes up again and again in therapy. People do not need to erase their history. They need help learning how to read it accurately. A raised voice once meant danger. A closed door once meant abandonment. A certain look once meant harm.

Those responses were intelligent then. They may not be accurate now.

I eventually stepped around the track and continued walking. It was meaningful, and it no longer required action. I stayed aware. I stayed present. I trusted both my instincts and my assessment.

The print shifted from threat to reflection, creating curiosity rather than fear.

Healing often looks like that. Not charging forward recklessly. Not freezing in place forever. Learning how to tell the difference between memory and moment.

Tracks tell us where we have been. They do not get to decide where we stop.

Is this happening now?

Often, the answer changes everything.