11/10/2025
āØ8 years ago, I sat down with my Dad and told him I needed therapy.āØ
I used to have a picture above my bed that said āshe made broken look beautiful.ā
At the time, I thought that was strength - being able to hide my suffering, keep smiling, keep āfunctioningā.
But inside, I was numb, disconnected and dissociated.
My body was present, but I wasnāt.
Years of stress, self suppression and never feeling enough had taken me so far from who I truly was.
I didnāt realise then that this was a trauma response - the very thing society often praises because it looks like resilience.
But itās not resilience.
Itās shutdown disguised as stability.
Itās your mindās way of protecting you when life feels too heavy to bear.
Sometimes the strongest people are the ones who look āfine.ā
They wake up, go to work, smile, reply to messages but inside, theyāre just surviving, not living.
The freeze response is one of the bodyās ways of coping with trauma.
Itās when your system shuts down to protect you from pain.
You stop feeling - not because you donāt care but because your nervous system canāt take any more.
What looks like āholding it togetherā is often emotional paralysis.
What seems like āstrengthā is sometimes exhaustion wearing a brave face.
If this is you, please know numbness isnāt failure.
Itās your body whispering, āI need time to heal.ā
Give yourself that time.
Donāt rush your recovery.
Youāre not broken - youāre protecting yourself in the only way your body knows how.
Healing isnāt always loud or visible.
Sometimes itās the quiet courage of getting through one more day, one gentle breath at a time.
Over the past decade, itās been a long, layered journey for me - filled with deep inner work, recovering from burnout, learning to set boundaries, saying no and rebuilding life with wellbeing at the forefront.
Through breath, stillness, therapy and gentle self awareness, I began to find my way home.
Each moment on the mat, each conscious breath, became a step back toward myself.
Healing hasnāt been about becoming someone new - itās been about remembering who Iāve always been beneath the layers of survival.
I see you and Iām here for youā¦you are not alone š«¶š¼
Nia x
