Healing
Healing is making sense of what hurt, what it changed, and what you want to carry forward.
It doesn’t always start where you think
Healing can sound like this enormous thing you’re supposed to somehow finish.​
But a lot of it starts much smaller than that.
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Noticing the reaction that feels bigger than the moment. The same kind of person you keep getting tangled up with. The thing someone says that hits a nerve every single time. The way your body reacts before your brain has even caught up.
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Those moments are often telling us something.
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Sometimes the thing we’re reacting to is happening now.
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And sometimes, something much older has just had its smoke alarm set off.
Your body’s smoke alarm
Yes. We can lose a fair bit without losing the metaphor or the punch.
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Your nervous system is constantly taking in information and asking:
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Am I safe here? Can I relax? Do I belong?
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It notices physical danger, but it also remembers the things that have hurt emotionally.
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Think of it like a smoke alarm that learnt to go off every time you made toast.
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The toast isn’t dangerous. The alarm is just responding to what it has learnt.
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Our bodies can do the same.
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A disagreement suddenly feels enormous. Someone takes too long to reply and your stomach drops. Your boss says, “Can we have a quick chat?” and you’ve already lost your job seventeen different ways.
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The moment might be new. The feeling isn’t always.
Why we all react differently
Two people can be in the same situation and have completely different reactions to it.
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One hears feedback. The other hears rejection.
​One shrugs off a slow reply. The other is already wondering what they did wrong.
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It’s not really about who’s “too sensitive” or who handles things better. We all walk into the moment with a different history behind us, and those experiences have taught us different things about conflict, love, belonging, criticism, being left out and being heard.
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The reaction can make a lot more sense when you stop looking only at what just happened and start getting curious about what it touched.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn
When something sets off that internal alarm, protection can look very different from person to person.
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Fight might look like getting defensive, snapping, arguing or needing to prove your point.
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Flight can look like avoiding the conversation, keeping ridiculously busy, putting something off or finding seventeen other things that suddenly need doing.
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Freeze can be staring at the screen with absolutely no idea where to start, going blank in a conversation or feeling completely stuck.
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Fawn can sound like “It’s fine,”​“Whatever you want,” or apologising before you’ve even worked out whether you’ve done anything wrong.
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And sometimes we move between them.
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These responses aren’t the whole of who we are.​ They’re ways our system has learnt to protect us.
It didn’t start here
Sometimes the thing that sets you off now has a much older feeling attached to it.
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Being ignored might hit hard because being overlooked used to.
​Conflict might feel huge because keeping the peace once felt safer.
​Saying no might feel uncomfortable because being easy, helpful or agreeable helped you stay connected.
A lot of our patterns started as ways of coping, fitting in, protecting ourselves or keeping things steady.
They worked for a reason.
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The tricky part is noticing when you’re still using an old survival trick in a life that looks very different now.
Start noticing the pattern
You don’t have to pull your entire childhood apart every time someone annoys you.
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Sometimes it starts with noticing.
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Catch it.​
What just happened?
What did I feel?
What did I immediately want to do?
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Follow it.
What was the sore spot?
Rejection? Not feeling good enough? Being misunderstood? Losing control? Feeling left out? Being criticised?
Go back.
Does this feeling feel familiar?
Where else have I felt this?
What did I learn to do when I felt like this before?
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You won’t always find some enormous answer.​ Sometimes you’ll find nothing at all.​ And sometimes you’ll suddenly understand why something that looked so small on the surface had the ability to knock you sideways.
And then what?
Understanding where something came from can explain a lot. But there comes a point where you start catching yourself in real life.
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You type the massive text explaining yourself… then realise you don’t actually need to send it. You say “I don’t mind” when you absolutely do mind. Someone’s mood changes and you immediately wonder what you’ve done. You get one slightly off message and read it six different ways.
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Or you’re halfway through an argument and suddenly realise - oh shit, I do this every time.
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That moment matters.​ Because once you can see the pattern while you’re actually in it, you’ve got a chance to do something different.
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Say what you actually mean. Ask the question instead of filling in the blanks yourself. Let the text sit unsent. Say no without adding a five-minute explanation. Let someone be in a bad mood without making it your job to fix it.
And slowly, you collect new evidence.​ Someone can be disappointed in you and still love you. A disagreement doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is in trouble. You can have a boundary and still be a good person. Someone else’s mood isn’t always about you.
The old pattern might still show up. You just don’t have to hand it the steering wheel every time.
Your nervous system can learn new things too
What your nervous system learnt once, it can learn differently.
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The old alarm might still go off, but over time you get better at recognising what belongs to now and what belongs to then.
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That matters.​Because healing isn’t about never being triggered again.​ It’s about not letting every old alarm decide what happens next.
A letter to someone you used to be
Sometimes looking back helps us understand just how much we were carrying at the time.
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Think of a younger version of yourself. Not necessarily the youngest - just the one that comes to mind.
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What was happening in their world?
What were they trying to hold together?
What did they need but not know how to ask for?
What did they start believing about themselves because of what was happening around them?
And what do you know now that they didn’t know then?
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You don’t need perfect words.​ Just write to them.​
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Letter to Younger Me
A guided reflection for looking back with a little more understanding at who you were, what you carried and what you might have needed to hear.
Healing is noticing what your past taught you to do, and deciding what still belongs in your life now.
Continue Exploring Awareness of Self
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Healing Tools
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Practical ways to work with what you’ve started noticing - through journalling, breathwork, somatics, nature and more.