Why do I feel this way when nothing’s “wrong”?

When your body remembers what your mind hasn’t caught up to yet…

You’re smart. Insightful. Capable. You show up for work, for your family, for your friends. You’ve probably been the strong one, the reliable one, maybe even the one others come to when their world is falling apart.

So why is it that sometimes you feel like you’re the one who’s barely here?

Why do you space out in the middle of conversations, find yourself scrolling endlessly, overreacting to small things, or underreacting to big ones? Why does a part of you feel so tired, even when you've slept? Or irritable, even with the people you love most?

And maybe worst of all: why does no one else seem to notice?

You might be wondering: “What’s wrong with me?” But let’s pause there.

What if the real question isn’t what’s wrong with me, but rather: What has my body been trying to say that I haven’t yet learned how to hear?

Your body knows before your mind understands

Long before you can explain what’s happening, your body is already speaking.

It tightens your chest when you’re under pressure. It checks out during conflict. It surges with adrenaline in moments that don’t seem dangerous. It dissociates during meetings, freezes during hard conversations, or holds a quiet buzz of tension all day long, even when life looks "fine" from the outside.

This isn’t you “overreacting.” This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you.

As Deb Dana, clinician and author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, puts it:

“The autonomic nervous system is shaped over time by our lived experience.”

In other words, your body has a memory.

It remembers what felt overwhelming, threatening, chaotic, or unsafe, even if your conscious mind has forgotten or rationalised it.

There’s nothing wrong with you

Let me say this clearly: There’s nothing wrong with you.

What you’re feeling, the numbness, the overwhelm, the disconnection, the fatigue, these are not signs of failure. They’re signs that your nervous system has been on high alert for too long. And it’s exhausting.

You may have been surviving in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn for years — perhaps decades — without realising it. These are not just trauma buzzwords; they are physiological states your body adopts to keep you safe when something feels too much to handle.

Dr Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, explains:

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

That stuckness, that internal chaos or collapse? It’s not about weakness. It’s about protection that got left on repeat.

Learning the language of your nervous system

Most of us were never taught how to listen to our bodies, especially if we grew up in environments that required us to ignore discomfort, hide emotion, or stay quiet to stay safe.

You learned to push through, to function, to achieve. But you may have paid a quiet cost for that: feeling like you’re performing life instead of living it.

Here’s the thing: your nervous system isn’t broken. It’s wise. It’s just been trying to do its job without enough support or context.

The good news? You can learn to understand its cues and respond in ways that bring relief, calm, and genuine connection. Not just coping. But healing.

What this work looks like (and what it doesn’t)

This is nervous system-informed therapy.

It’s not about talking circles around your pain. It’s not about fixing you. And it’s definitely not about rushing you to “move on.”

It’s about gently exploring what your body is saying through symptoms like anxiety, shutdown, overreaction, or fatigue, and creating space for something new to emerge.

It might look like:

• Noticing when you leave your body — and learning how to come back safely.
• Learning how to feel emotion without being consumed by it.
• Building capacity for connection without overwhelm.
• Releasing the need to be “fine” all the time.

It’s practical. Relational. Somatic. We work with your body’s rhythms, not against them.

“But I don’t even know what’s wrong…”

That’s okay. You don’t need to have the perfect words. So many of the people I work with say things like:

• “I feel disconnected, but I don’t know why.”
• “I have everything I thought I wanted, but I’m still not happy.”
• “I overreact to small things and underreact to big ones.”
• “Sometimes I just feel gone.”

These are not problems to fix, they’re invitations to slow down and listen.

Because underneath the overwhelm, there’s often a very intelligent, protective system doing its best to manage stress and keep you from reliving something your body once found unbearable.

Healing is not about “Getting over it”

Gabor Maté, renowned trauma expert and author of The Myth of Normal, writes:

“The essence of trauma is disconnection from the self.”

So, the path forward? It’s not about “powering through.” It’s about coming back to yourself, gently, safely, in your own time.

This is slow work. Body-led work. But it is powerful.

Sometimes that means breathing into your chest and feeling it soften for the first time in years. Sometimes it means crying in a way that surprises you, not because you’re broken, but because you finally feel safe enough to feel.

You don’t have to do this alone

Maybe you’ve been trying to self-regulate for years through meditation, journaling, even therapy, and it helped… until it didn’t.

If you’ve hit that invisible wall where talking isn’t enough anymore, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means your body is asking for a new kind of support.

One that involves curiosity instead of judgment. Presence instead of pressure. Connection instead of performance. And you don’t have to navigate that alone.

Let’s find the version of you that feels fully alive

There is a version of you who doesn’t feel so fragmented. Who doesn’t have to brace through every day. Who can feel joy, connection, even rest, without guilt, without collapse.

That part of you is not gone. It’s still waiting, underneath the coping, the freeze, the ‘I’m fine.’ And when you’re ready, support is here to help you come back to it.

This work doesn’t require you to explain everything perfectly. It just asks for a willingness to begin. Because healing isn’t about forcing your way forward — it’s about building enough safety inside that moving forward feels natural.

Are you ready?

References

• Dana, D. (2018). The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Levine, P. A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. North Atlantic Books.
• Maté, G. (2022). The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Avery Publishing.