The People Who Make My Body Exhale
I helped my friend Tamara out the other day. She’s training in EMDR, so she needed to record a session for her supervisor, and I agreed to be her test subject. No big deal.
Except, actually (of course) it was.
I’d had one of those weeks. The kind where my nervous system was running on high alert, my sleep was wrecked, and I was on the edge of slipping into old habits that I wanted to leave in 2024.
The kind of week where I could feel my body saying please, for the love of God, stop!
With my brain replying, absolutely not, we have emails to send.
But during that session with Tamara, something shifted. As she guided me through this visualisation, I felt my body do something unexpected: it let go.
My shoulders dropped.
My breath deepened.
And for the first time all week, I wasn’t holding anything, there was no tension, no stress, no mental to-do list ticking away in the background.
Just......
And then?
All I wanted to do was sleep.
Not in a polite, ooh, that was so relaxing kind of way, but in a shut the laptop, log off from life, don’t talk to me.
It was like my body, after being asked what it actually needed, responded with finally, she’s listening.
Now put me to bed.
I’ve been very aware of my nervous system this year. In particular, how it shows up in different spaces, how it reacts to different people.
I used to think that feeling wired, tense, or restless was just part of being an adult, but I’m realising now: that’s just bad information. My body isn’t meant to be in fight-or-flight mode all the time.
It’s been trying to tell me that for ages.....I just haven't been using my listening skills.
Because the reality is, I’m really good at just powering through.
I’ve spent so many years ignoring exhaustion and pushing forward. Because that’s just what you do, right?
But now, I’m learning that choosing myself doesn’t mean adding another self-improvement task to my to-do list.
It means stopping.
It means letting my body have a say in what happens next.
And in doing more of that listening, it is becoming so much clearer that some people and places are bad for my nervous system.
There are rooms, situations where my body is braced for impact. Where I am holding my breath without realising.
But on the other hand there are spaces, and people, that make me feel held. Where my shoulders drop, my mind quiets, and I feel like I can just be.
That session with Tamara made that clearer than ever. And it’s not that I didn’t know this before...I did.
I’ve always known that I have to be been good at stepping away from what doesn’t feel right...I. What’s different now is that I’m not just focussing on leaving things behind.
I’m actively moving toward what feels good.
Deliberately being with people and situations that make me feel safe, cared for, where there is ease.
The truth is, Tamara has been softly leading me towards this realisation for a while now. Since we met, she’s been nudging me, gently, and very patiently towards a deeper connection with myself.
Not in a forceful way (which I’d resist immediately, because I’m stubborn), but in a way that has let me arrive at these realisations in my own time.
It takes work from me, but I’m slowly unlearning so much of what I was handed.
Blogging every day is helping with that.
The whole process of putting words to thoughts so that I can process instead of just letting them rattle around in my brain.
That moment with Tamara wasn’t just nice. It was this pretty awesome before-and-after moment that showed me what my body actually feels like when it’s not gripping onto stress for dear life.
And now that I’ve felt the difference, I don’t want to unfeel it.
I don’t want to go back to ignoring what my body has been screaming at me.
So, I’m sitting with it.
Not rushing to analyse or fix it, just taking the moment to pay attention.
Because my body?
It knows what it needs. And I’m finally ready to listen.
