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There was a time when slowing down made everything worse.
The moment things went quiet, my chest tightened.
My thoughts sped up.
My body felt restless, almost panicked.
I told myself this was anxiety. That I needed to meditate more, breathe better, “drop in.”
So I tried.
I sat still.
I followed my breath.
I did all the things that were supposed to help.
And yet, the more I tried to calm myself, the more unsettled I became.
It took a long time to realise I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
My nervous system simply didn’t feel safe enough to stop.
When Rest Feels Like A Threat
Looking back, my system had been in motion for years.
Building.
Holding responsibility.
Staying functional through loss, pressure, and uncertainty.
Being capable became my safety strategy.
So when I finally removed the external demands, my body didn’t experience relief—it experienced exposure.
There was nothing left to distract me from what my system had been carrying.
And stillness felt like standing in the open without armour.
I Thought Calm Was The Goal
Like many people, I believed calm was proof of healing.
If I wasn’t calm, I assumed I was dysregulated.
If I was dysregulated, I assumed I was failing.
But calm wasn’t accessible to me yet.
Not because I was broken—but because calm had never been associated with safety.
My system had learned that staying alert kept me intact.
The Shift That Changed Everything
The shift didn’t come from trying harder.
It came from understanding what my body had adapted to.
Once I stopped treating my nervous system as something to control, and started treating it as something to listen to, things began to change.
I realised my anxiety wasn’t an enemy.
My restlessness wasn’t resistance.
My inability to settle wasn’t weakness.
It was intelligence.
My body had kept me going through things I didn’t have the luxury to fall apart in.
Safety Before Stillness
What helped wasn’t forcing myself into calm.
It was finding moments of safety first.
Safety in conversation.
Safety in being understood without needing to explain.
Safety in slowing down with someone, rather than alone.
Tiny moments where my system realised it didn’t have to stay braced.
From there, stillness started to feel less dangerous.
Healing Didn’t Look How I Expected
Healing didn’t arrive as peace.
It arrived as softening.
As permission to not be okay for a while.
As learning to recognise when my body needed movement instead of silence.
As allowing myself to pause without demanding an outcome.
Over time, calm began to show up—not as something I achieved, but as something that happened naturally when safety was present.
If You Struggle to Settle, There’s Nothing Wrong With You
If slowing down makes you anxious…
If rest leaves you unsettled…
If quiet feels louder than noise…
It doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It means your nervous system has been protecting you in the only way it knew how.
And with patience, understanding, and the right conditions, it knows how to change.
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