Why some of us feel relief when plans get canceled, and it has nothing to do with being antisocial. It's the first time all week our nervous system isn't bracing for something. - Silicon Canals

"Your autonomic nervous system has been running a background process all day (or all week), quietly allocating resources toward an upcoming social event. Planning the outfit. Rehearsing potential conversations. Calculating travel time. Managing the micro-anxiety of 'Will I be interesting enough? Will I say something weird? Will I be too tired to be fun?' This is what psychologist and neuroscience researcher Stephen Porges calls neuroception: the way your nervous system scans for safety and threat below the level of conscious awareness."

"Your body doesn't distinguish between a dinner reservation and a deadline. Both require mobilization. Both keep you in a state of low-grade physiological readiness. When the plans evaporate, so does the mobilization. And the feeling you register as 'relief' is really your nervous system finally standing down."

When social plans are canceled, the physical relief people experience is not merely an emotional preference but a physiological response. The autonomic nervous system spends hours or days in a state of mobilization preparing for social events, managing micro-anxieties about performance and social adequacy. This process, called neuroception, operates below conscious awareness as the body scans for safety and threat. When plans are canceled, the nervous system finally stands down from this sustained state of readiness. The relief felt is the body's response to no longer maintaining this low-grade physiological tension, not a reflection of introversion or antisocial tendencies.

Read at Silicon Canals