Nicola hare - The reset therapist
For a long time, it was common for people to think healing was something that happened only in the mind. I just need to think differently, stay positive, understand myself more, then I’ll be OK. But the body has a way of telling the truth that the mind tries to outrun.
The anxiety that never fully leaves, the tight chest or clenched jaw. Shallow breathing and a racing heart. Exhaustion. Insomnia, numbness, illness, lethargy, muscle aches. A switched on all the time, stressed out nervous system.
Sometimes the body speaks long before the mind is ready to listen.
Many of us become experts at avoiding what hurts by staying busy and overworking, losing ourselves in addictions and distractions or becoming numb and disconnected. All the while when asked how we are, we find ourselves saying ‘I’m fine thanks, how are you?’ But the body still carries the stress of what was never processed. The nervous system doesn’t respond to what we say is OK, the body still carries the stress of what remains unprocessed.
It remembers:
the environments where you never felt safe
the emotions you had to suppress
the grief you locked away and didn’t feel
the constant pressure to hold everything together
the fear you learned to normalize
Even years later, the body can still respond as though the danger never fully ended.
The Body Was Never Working Against You
So many people feel frustrated with themselves for feeling anxious all the time, or seeming unable to calm down. But often, these responses are not dysfunction at all, they are an adaptation. Your body learned how to survive the experiences your mind tried to minimize, dismiss, or move past.
Sometimes anxiety is a body that learned hypervigilance and sometimes numbness is protection from overwhelm.
Sometimes exhaustion is what happens after years of internal survival mode.
The body is not betraying you. It’s communicating. Can you tune in and listen instead of treating it like an enemy betraying you?
You Cannot Heal What You Stay Disconnected From
This is why healing is not just cognitive. Of course, your story matters, talking matters and awareness matters. But eventually, healing asks something deeper. It asks for you to safely reconnect with yourself.
Can you notice your body without immediately escaping it?
Can you stay present with emotion instead of shutting down?
Can you breathe deeply enough to feel what’s underneath the tension?
This is where practices like counselling, breathwork, grounding, movement, and nervous system regulation become powerful.
Not because they “fix” you (you are not broken). But because they help create safety inside the body again.
Breathwork and the Body
Many people are surprised by what surfaces during conscious connected breathwork.
· Emotions
· Memories
· Tension
· Tears
· Relief
· Anger
· Grief
· Stillness
Conscious Connected Breathwork does not creates these things. They were already there beneath the constant noise and suppression. It has a way of gently bypassing the mental defences we’ve spent years building to enable what is already there to become part of your conscious experience.
This type of breathwork gives the body an opportunity to release what it has been carrying alone. Not all at once or dramatically. Just at it’s own pace and honestly.
Learning to Listen Instead of Override
Most of us were taught to override our bodies. Push through, ignore, keep going! These messages are everywhere you look. Don't cry, don't express your feelings if they are not light and fluffy, don't slow down, don't rest.
Healing often begins with a completely different question:
“What is my body trying to tell me?”
Maybe the exhaustion is asking for rest.
Maybe the anxiety is asking for safety.
Maybe the numbness is asking for gentleness.
Maybe the tension is asking to finally be acknowledged.
The body speaks in sensations long before words arrive and as a psychotherapeutic counsellor and rebirthing breathwork facilitator, this is what I work with, with my clients. I help people to come back to themselves.
Healing is not about becoming someone new. It’s about reconnecting with the parts of yourself you had to disconnect from in order to survive. Slowly, safely and compassionately.
The goal is not to never feel stress, fear, sadness, or pain again. It is to no longer abandon yourself when those feelings arise.
To breathe instead of brace.
To notice instead of numb.
To stay instead of run.
Healing begins the moment we finally listen to what our bodies have been saying all along.
The Body Keeps What the Mind Avoids
- Healing from Trauma
Contact
info@nicolahare.com
