01/06/2026
A great read and relatable.
''If your nervous system learned safety through performance, rest will feel dangerous.''
When safety was earned by staying useful, impressive, or productive, slowing down can trigger alarm. The body does not read rest as relief at first. It reads it as exposure. Without motion or output, old fears rise to the surface. Nothing is actually wrong, but the system is unfamiliar with safety that does not require effort.
''Expressing your needs will feel like a deficiency.''
When worth was tied to what you provided rather than who you were, needing anything can feel like failure. Asking, receiving, or even noticing desire may activate shame. The nervous system learned that needs threatened connection, so it learned to minimize them. This is not weakness. It is conditioning.
''The mind will be in a dense fog, at first.''
As performance drops away, clarity does not immediately rush in. The fog appears because hypervigilance has been doing the organizing for a long time. When that vigilance softens, there is a period of disorientation. The mind is relearning how to orient without fear as its primary fuel.
''Stay anyway.''
Staying means resisting the urge to self-abandon when discomfort appears. It means allowing confusion, slowness, and uncertainty without turning them into proof that something is wrong. This is the moment the old pattern usually pulls you back into effort. Staying changes the outcome.
''Because this work is worth it, just as you are.''
The work is not about becoming more acceptable or functional. It is about restoring your right to exist without earning it. You are not behind. You are not broken. The nervous system heals through experience, not achievement. What you are doing matters because you matter, now, not later.
