Why healing is making you feel worse

Somatic healing made her feel worse.
Not better. Worse.

She spent thousands trying to heal, and ended up more anxious, more overwhelmed, and I quote, even started to “hate everything.”

She began asking herself questions like, “Why did I even get on that call? It ruined my day.”

It started with a course. Then a few sessions.
Then it snowballed into programs for her to build more self-awareness, go even deeper, and somehow be told she was still avoiding her emotions. Breath work and swaying turned into pillow-screaming but the shifts she was seeking she couldn’t find.

The more she tried to heal, the worse she actually felt.

It left her lost inside her pain, with no idea how to repair the damage that was done.

I related with her story—because honestly? I completely see myself in her.

I learned how to be hyper-aware of the pain in my body, was taught many hacks to “move it out,” but not how to actually feel better inside it.

I trusted people who said they could guide me deeper. I placed people and the somatic tools they gave me on pedestals, with some of these experts disappearing after months of telling me to rely on them.

I’m not the only one who dug too deep, was guided by willing hands to do so, then left in periods of heavy depression and increased symptoms without anything to hold on to, except to “just keep trusting the healing process.”

Just like this woman shared with me, there was a reason I walked towards it, found merit from the practices, but in the end—needed to take a firm step back.

So here’s the real question:

Why does something that’s supposed to help, and sometimes does, also make a lot of people feel worse?

After years working through these things myself, here’s what I’ve learned:

It’s not just about feeling your emotions.
It’s not even just about your relationship to your emotions.
It’s about the environment you’re in while you feel them.

Nervous system co-regulation. Community. Think about it with me for a second, here.

Remember Christiaan Huygens? Back in the 1600s, he noticed that two clocks placed next to each other would eventually sync.

This is a similar principle as co-regulation, except humans interact a lot through signaling such as:
- tone of voice,
- facial expression,
- body language,
- breath rhythm,
- and eye contact.

In short, a person who is unregulated can be supported simply by being with people who are feeling at peace and at ease in their own nervous system.

What if you built many relationships with people who all understand and support each other in this concept?

That’s what I call a fucking community.

Picture having a load of friends who, when someone is in need, they’re able to take a nap on someone’s couch while the other one is chilling and reading a book. Just being and supporting each other without having to trauma dump.

Because your environment really fucking matters.

You can feel amazing in a safe space, then go back to your job and family and feel like shit again almost immediately. Not because you didn’t do the work “right” but because your nervous system is simply responding to where you are.

This is why looking at your environments as a whole is so important.

(I am also separating this from those who may not have access to leaving situations that are harmful. Some of us have all the resources in the world to leave a bad situation, and some don’t. This is where community support is deeply needed.)

I want you to look at somatic healing through the lens of being in touch with yourself and life around you.

Instead of walking around like you have a dog collar on and the only thing you pay attention to is your head—you’re paying attention to your body and to other living things.

This is a practice that has indeed been colonized, by the way, seeing as indigenous people all around the world were well-practiced in being embodied—and colonization stripped them of their lifestyles and even their lives. In time we’ve come back around to doing studies to “prove” that this works, and profited off of it.

But many have known from the dawn of time that being in connection to your body, nature, and the lives around you heightens wellbeing.

Truly altogether, we are complete, and we have all we need.

Embodying this reduces isolation and stress, creates many avenues for support, and inspires creativity and play—all the things that come from being in a regulated state.

So what actually helped me?

Not more techniques, babe.

PEOPLE. Nature. Like real, good-quality relationships with people and the other living things around me.

When I meet someone who inspires me, or gives me that feeling of, “Oh, my god, I can finally breathe now. When was the last time I laughed like this?”—I reach out to them. Invite them out for a drink.

I have sleepovers with friends (yes, as an adult).

I interact with nature on my daily walks.

I notice the leaves swaying, the sun on my skin, the bugs by my feet—I take in every detail, knowing we are all connected to each other.

I call a friend from out of the country most mornings. It wakes me up, it puts her to sleep, and both of us start/end our days with connection.

I host a women’s circle weekly as part of the services I offer.

I take my laptop to coffee shops and make friends with the baristas.

I do eat meat, but I eat it with gratitude for the life that was given (that I didn’t raise and butcher myself).

I get the fuck out there. I participate in life around me.

The somatic tools I’ve been taught? I use them not to keep focusing on my pain and to move something out of me like an exorcism, but to teach me how to connect.

Does my breath deepen?
Am I able to laugh and cry here?
Do I feel energized or depleted?

The things that estranged me and others from this connection, this wisdom, is called trauma.

This is the point that somatic healing was supposed to teach us.


Not to “move trauma out,” but to reconnect with our inherent rights as living things.

We became disconnected from ourselves, and in the process lost each other.

And we act like this is some new idea when many cultures have this imbedded in their lifestyles deeply.

If what you’re doing to “heal” is leaving you feeling more alone, more overwhelmed, and more disconnected—that’s not fucking healing.

It’s just isolation with better branding.

We don’t heal by going deeper into ourselves alone. We heal by coming back into connection when we lost it. With ourselves, yes. And also with each other. With life.

So if you were never taught the point of all this, here it is.

And may we never lose sight of it again.