Why Some People Heal… And Others Stay Stuck
In my practice, I've noticed that the clients who make the biggest progress are not the “perfect” ones. It's actually the ones who become......self-aware.
The ones who realise that healing is not just about supplements, gym routines, green juices, or cutting out gluten.
It’s also about working on the nervous system…
The stress load, the people pleasing, the constant state of “pushing through”.
You can eat well, train regularly, and take all the supplements in the world, but if your body still feels unsafe, overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted, or permanently switched on, your physiology reflects that.
The HPA Axis
The HPA axis - the communication system between the brain, stress hormones, and adrenal glands was never designed for chronic survival mode. But so many people live in this state for years.
Think,
- The mum who is exhausted but keeps pushing through.
- The person waking up at 3am most nights with a racing mind (and heart) thinking about all the tasks for the next day.
- The woman surviving on caffeine, skipping meals all day, then wondering why she crashes in the evening and reaches for the chocolate and crisps.
- The gym-goer who, despite training intensely 5–6 days a week, cannot shift the weight because the body doesn’t feel safe enough to ‘let go’ of it.
- The high-flying corporate worker in a “dream” City job, earning well but constantly running on stress, whose digestion swings between constipation, urgency, and burning diarrhoea. The pressure he carries doesn’t stay in his mind… it shows up in his gut!
- The person who says “I’m fine” whilst their body is screaming otherwise - they experience fatigue, headaches, skin flare-ups, IBS, hormonal symptoms and/or anxiety.
- The carer, the helper, the fixer, or the people pleaser who feels guilty sitting down for 10 minutes to catch their breath but will drop everything in an instant for everyone else.
The “Inner” work
One of my recent clients made incredible progress because alongside the nutrition and protocols, she started doing the inner work too. She began recognising her coping patterns. The self-sabotage. The martyr mindset. The way she had spent years showing up for everybody else whilst neglecting herself. During one of our sessions, she said something that stopped her in her own tracks:
“If one day I fall unwell, who will actually show up for me?
For years, she had been the one holding everything together. Supporting everyone. Carrying the emotional weight.
And then came the real shift:
“If I were to fall ill one day, would anyone show up for me? Would they care for me the way I cared for them? Would I be able to rely on them the way they relied on me or would life continue for them without me in it?’’
Maybe some would. Maybe some wouldn’t.
But that wasn’t really the point.
Bittersweet realisations
The point was realising she could not keep abandoning herself whilst waiting for others to show up for her. It was about self-reliance first and foremost. Healing started when she began giving herself the same care, compassion, patience, and energy she gave so freely to everybody else. From that self-awareness came self-respect, then self-worth.
The face of healing
Real healing doesn’t have to be loud, it can be subtle.
It can look like:
- finally eating breakfast instead of surviving on coffee until 2pm
- sitting down to eat instead of rushing meals in stress mode
- saying “no” without guilt or overexplaining
- going to bed earlier instead of doom scrolling because you didn’t give yourself real “me time” during the day
- resting instead of punishing yourself with another intense workout when your body is already exhausted
- asking for help instead of carrying everything alone
- unfollowing people who constantly make you feel inadequate
- ‘valuing’ your values and taking pride in them
- being at peace with who you are instead of constantly comparing yourself to everyone else
- stopping the cycle of “I’ll look after myself once everything else is sorted”
- understanding that someone’s else’s opinion of you is actually none of your business – what you think of you is most important.
The Shift
For my lovely client, healing started when she stopped seeing rest as laziness.
When boundaries stopped feeling selfish. When ‘me first’’ no longer came with guilt attached to it. When she understood that she wasn’t in control of other people’s behaviour, but she was in control of her own.
When she gave herself space to sit with her emotions, rather than avoid them, she started to understand why she felt the way she did, and why she dealt with life the way she did. Her behaviour patterns became clearer.
And I wish more people came to this realisation before the scary diagnosis happens, before the burnout strikes, before the panic attacks set in, the nervous breakdown, or the body forcing them to stop.
Sometimes the biggest shift happens when the penny finally drops:
“I cannot keep abandoning myself.”