I didn’t grow up thinking something was wrong with me.
I grew up thinking I was impressive.
I was the quiet child. The responsible one. The girl who could read the room before anyone spoke. I knew when to lower my voice. When to agree. When to disappear. People called it maturity.
No one called it survival.
I didn’t decide to become that way. My nervous system did it for me. It learned quickly that love had conditions. That connection could be withdrawn. That safety depended on behavior.
When your mother is emotionally unstable, self‑absorbed, or punishing when you have needs, you adapt. You don’t argue with reality. You shape yourself around it.
Being good becomes strategy.
And strategy keeps you attached. But it doesn’t keep you well.
I didn’t understand that until my body started collapsing.
For years, I had no language for what was happening. I didn’t know about nervous systems. I didn’t know about trauma. I didn’t know about stress reshaping biology or genes turning on and off. I just knew I was sick and no one could explain why.
I moved from hospital to hospital. Clinic to clinic. Blood tests. Scans. Pills. Adjustments. I followed instructions carefully because that’s what good daughters do. They comply.
Nothing changed.
Somewhere in that process I began to believe I was unlucky. That maybe fate had decided something about me. I didn’t question my environment. I questioned myself.
By the time I found the science, I wasn’t curious.
I was desperate.
My body was shutting down in ways I didn’t say out loud. I was closer to dying than anyone around me understood.
The shift didn’t come from a miracle. It came from a sentence that felt uncomfortable.
What if my body wasn’t broken?
What if it was responding?
That idea irritated me at first. It felt like blame. But the more I studied neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, epigenetics, the more something began to click. Chronic emotional suppression is not a personality trait. It is a long‑term stress state.
And long‑term stress changes everything.
When a child learns that anger threatens connection, anger goes underground. When sadness gets dismissed, it gets stored. When hunger gets shamed, hunger goes quiet.
In front of my mother, I never asked for specific food. I never asked for more. Whatever was served had to be enough. Wanting something different meant being ungrateful. Wanting more meant being shamed.
So my body learned not to want. That lesson spreads.
I didn’t just suppress hunger. I suppressed need. I suppressed exhaustion. I suppressed frustration. I called it strength.
In my case, control wasn’t subtle.
My mother would take numbers from my phone. She would threaten to call people and tell them what a terrible daughter I was if I didn’t obey. Friends would disappear. Connections would dissolve. I remember crying for hours because my world kept shrinking. Attachment felt fragile.
You learn quickly in that environment. Connection is conditional. Independence is dangerous.
Stay good.
The nervous system does not forget lessons like that. It stores them in the body.
When you live like this long enough, fight‑or‑flight stops being temporary. It becomes baseline. The body keeps preparing for threat even when the room is quiet.
In fight‑or‑flight mode, energy is mobilized for defense. Heart rate increases. Muscles tense. Blood sugar rises. Systems that aren’t essential for immediate survival get deprioritized.
That’s useful if you’re escaping something. It’s destructive if you never get to come back down.
When there is no return to homeostasis, energy doesn’t go toward repair. It goes toward vigilance. Cells that should be building, cleaning, restoring start conserving. Communication between cells weakens because communication costs energy. The body shifts from cooperation to protection.
It becomes every cell for itself.
Immune cells rely on clear signaling. Hormonal systems rely on rhythm. Chronic stress disrupts both. Genes involved in repair and regulation stop expressing optimally when the body interprets the environment as unsafe.
Research on autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis shows this pattern clearly, especially in women who lived under prolonged psychological stress and emotional restraint. Years of vigilance correlate with immune systems that begin attacking the body they are meant to protect.
The body isn’t betraying you. It’s defending you. I didn’t know any of this while I was sitting in waiting rooms.
I learned it after nothing worked, after I began studying psychology and neuroscience just to understand why my body wouldn’t heal.
That’s a hard realization. It means the environment that shaped you also shaped your biology. And it means healing is not about forcing positivity.
It’s about teaching safety. The moment everything shifted for me was small.
I was lying down to rest, and my body wouldn’t soften. My mind kept pushing. Get up. Do something useful. Don’t waste time.
That voice sounded like home.
I realized being good was never about ethics. It was about survival.
Once you see that, you start noticing the pattern everywhere.
Overgiving in friendships. Staying silent in relationships. Taking on more work than your body can handle. Feeling guilty for resting. Feeling anxious after saying no.
You get praised for being easy. Your body absorbs the cost.
This doesn’t require turning your mother into a monster. It requires honesty about the system you grew up in. A system that didn’t allow your full emotional range.
I spent years studying because I needed answers. Neuroscience. Trauma research. Brainwave states. Self‑directed neuroplasticity. Not as a hobby. As survival.
What I found was confronting.
My body had been protecting me the entire time. It learned to say yes when my mouth couldn’t. Real change didn’t begin with affirmations. It began with awareness.
Not intellectual awareness. Sensory awareness.
Notice your chest when you think about disappointing someone. Notice your breath when you consider resting. Notice your stomach when you want to ask for something.
Those reactions are not flaws. They are conditioning. Then comes the deeper work.
Most of us carry an internal rule that sounds simple: I am safe when I am good.
It doesn’t live in thought. It lives in the body. Logic cannot reach it.
That’s why working with slower brainwave states in meditation matters. When the brain moves out of constant beta analysis and into alpha and theta, the body softens. The guard lowers slightly. The nervous system becomes receptive.
You don’t need dramatic rituals. You need repetition.
Here’s how I began.
• I lay down and did nothing except breathe slowly until my body felt slightly heavier.
• I shifted attention inward. Not solving problems. Just noticing sensations.
• When I felt that quieter state, I imagined real scenarios. Someone asking for too much. Me saying no. Silence afterward.
• I rehearsed staying present in my body instead of collapsing into compliance.
• I focused on feeling safe while being honest.
That’s the key.
The nervous system needs to experience that honesty does not equal abandonment.
Rehearse it enough times, and the brain builds new pathways. Cells communicate differently. Hormonal rhythms stabilize gradually. The body stops budgeting all its energy for defense.
This is not instant. It is biological retraining.
Over time, my symptoms softened. Not in a cinematic way. In subtle shifts. Less bracing. Slightly deeper sleep. Fewer crashes. More clarity.
Healing didn’t make me softer. It made me more accurate.
I can feel anger now without panic. I can feel hunger without shame. I can rest without rehearsing excuses in my head.
The old patterns still appear sometimes. They just don’t run my life.
If you recognize yourself in this, understand something important. You were not born overly sensitive or weak.
You adapted.
Your body did exactly what it needed to do to keep you attached. Now it just needs new information.
Safety instead of pressure. Honesty instead of performance. Regulation instead of vigilance.
I don’t write this from theory.
I write this from inside a body that almost shut down and slowly learned how to feel again.
If this resonates and you want support that is grounded in neuroscience, trauma work, and lived experience, I work one‑on‑one with people who are ready to do this slowly and honestly.
If you’d like to stay connected, my newsletter is where I share the ongoing process.
And if you’re on Threads, that space feels less like a platform and more like a room where we think out loud together.
No urgency. Just the work. nd the conversation.
