The Habits That Helped You Survive Might Be Exhausting You Now

Maybe you feel it right now. You seem a little more anxious than usual. Maybe you even feel a quiet, persistent buzzing underneath your skin. You can tell that you're not rebounding the way you usually do, but you just keep pushing through. Yet, the more you push, the more you seem to crash or collapse afterward.

It’s so new to your usual patterns as the energizer bunny. You tell yourself it should just be temporary. But you can't focus. You're not sleeping well. Your digestive tract is suddenly reacting to everything you put in your mouth. And no amount of rest or sleep ever seems to be enough.

You're doing everything you think needs to be done. You’re following the typical pattern, using the typical coping mechanisms, checking off the typical checklist. Yet, there's a pull inside telling you that something is missing. There's this happiness, this joy, that you just can't reach, no matter how hard you try or how much you accomplish.

You can almost feel the separation. It's a disconnect—an almost numb feeling. A bit dissociated, maybe, but deeper than that. It’s an inability to feel; a very flat affect. And honestly? Part of it almost feels good, because you've always felt so much. You were always so emotional, sometimes so over the top. This numbness makes it seem as though feelings are finally manageable because you don't care as much. You don't take things as personally.

But underneath that numbness, there is a soul sickness. Something deep inside you that says: I am here. I am breathing. But I am not living.

The Day the Body Said "No More"

I had always noticed a pattern within myself of bracing for impact. Preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best. But eventually, this bracing became more intense. It started to shake my confidence. I began to feel helpless.

My lifelong lie had always been: I'm unstoppable. I can do it on my own.

It was a typical day. I was feeling exhausted from long hours, but that was nothing new—I had been running on fumes for the past three decades. My mind said, "I'm exhausted." My body said, "Keep going." Yet, I noticed this undercurrent of just feeling... off.

I walked over into a coworker's cubicle, and suddenly, I was breathless. I could feel myself falling into the arms of another coworker and hitting the ground. My body was shaking. I wasn't entirely unconscious because I could hear the people around me panic, but I couldn't say a single word. My body just kept shaking. It felt so incredibly weak. I had absolutely no control over what was happening.

It was 2020, right at the dawn of the pandemic. There was so much terrifying uncertainty. I woke up in an emergency room where countless tests were run, but nothing solid was found. An MRI revealed a pituitary issue and a neurological referral was made. I walked away, telling myself it was still manageable, but knowing deep down that something was fundamentally broken.

I had a vacation planned for the following week, and nothing was going to stop me from taking that trip to Florida. Everything in me knew it was exactly what I needed. One week of vacation, I thought, that's going to save me. This was the story I kept telling myself after decades of piling on countless work hours and endless stress: Just keep trying to do more, be more, have more. Then you can rest.

The Irony of "Doing Everything Right"

The ironic timing of this collapse is that I had just finished my functional health coach certification. I had just ran a half marathon. I knew how important exercise, routine, stress management, discipline, and food choices were. I had a strict morning routine that started 3 hours before my workday. I genuinely felt that I was in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape of my life.

Yet, this collapse was still happening.

I had just opened my own health coaching business. Three days after opening that business, and being discharged from the hospital, I was sitting at my kitchen table. God spoke to me. He told me that as horrific as this season seemed—the uncertainty surrounding the world, the exhaustion down to my bones—this was going to make me a better coach. This was going to help me meet the truest version of myself.

I wanted to keep shining light. Faith had become my staple, and I was positive that "this too shall pass." But the trauma of 2020 brought up a massive wall of resistance in me. When the mandates came down, I noticed a physical contraction within my body that I could not understand. It felt worse than usual. As the world around me grew unsafe, a heavy, familiar helplessness set in. The combination of fear, forceful rules, and deep isolation acted like a time machine for my trauma. Suddenly, I wasn't an unstoppable adult; I was right back to being that helpless little girl.

Then..... the floodgates opened.

Flashbacks of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse started to ensue. I did not realize that this was trauma living just under the surface. I had always been told, "People have it much worse than you. You're fine." And although I had various disjointed memories over the years, I carried a deep, suffocating shame for as long as I could remember, but I never fully knew why.

The Dark Night of the Soul

There would be more trips to the emergency room. Once again, carted out on a stretcher in front of my coworkers and family. Lots of incidental findings and diagnoses added to my chart, but nothing that helped me understand why I was getting worse. I was offered anti-depressants and told to "manage my stress" solidifying the story that I was crazy. Even someone in my faith community—who should have been a deep support system—commented after I confided in her, "Why do I attract such needy people?" It made me step back and think: If people of faith can't be trusted, who can be?

By the end of 2022, the devastation in the world and my work life took its final toll. Despite all the gut work, the supplements, the positive thinking, and the journaling, I faded into darkness. I wanted to learn about trauma for my clients, not to face my own demons! I had to walk away from my 30-year career because I could no longer think clearly enough complete complex tasks. I was in a constant state of panic. I was gone from my body, gone from my soul. I was just hovering somewhere, observing it all happen, unable to control it.

In effort to bring a trauma-informed lens into my coaching business, I found myself watching a trauma summit where Dr. Aimie Apigian was starting a new cohort in the biology of trauma. The best part? You didn't have to dig deep into your dark story. That had always been my greatest fear: I figured if I ever let loose and started to cry, I would never stop. I was terrified of proving the people right who had always treated me as though I was "less than." I feared that opening those doors would seal my core belief into reality: that I was unlovable, invisible, and irrelevant.

I enrolled in the Biology of Trauma course. The first step was connecting with the body to bring a felt sense of safety. But I was so shaken, I couldn't feel safe. In week two, we worked on accepting support for the body. I was too shaken to accept it. By week three, focusing on expansion and joy, I realized I couldn't attain joy. I was completely un-receptive.

When Survival Strategies Disguise Themselves as Personality

As I started diving into the nervous system and early adversity, a massive lightbulb went off. That buzzing feeling wasn’t random, and it certainly wasn't a character flaw. It was my body still running patterns that once kept me safe.

Many of the exhausting habits we carry today didn’t show up because something is broken inside of us. They showed up because, at some point, our environment felt emotionally difficult, unpredictable, or overwhelming. Your nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do: It adapted to survive.

Let's look at how biology steps in to protect us when our emotional (and physical) needs aren't met:

• The "I'll Just Do It Myself" Person & The Caretaker:
  Your Stress Response (sympathetic nervous system) got stuck in overdrive. You became the one to solve everyone's problems and hold it all together because your brain perceived "resting" or "dropping the ball" as a literal threat to your safety. You took on the weight of the world because stepping back felt dangerous.
• The Chameleon & The Accommodator:
  You used a survival-based version of social engagement (often called "fawning"). Your nervous system learned that keeping everyone else happy, regulated, and comfortable was the absolute safest way to prevent conflict and keep yourself from getting hurt. You sought validation by abandoning your own needs.
• The Invisible One & The Master of Detachment:
  Hello, Dorsal Vagal shutdown. When conflict, abuse, or big emotions felt too heavy to fight or flee from, your body pulled the emergency brake. You learned to blend into the wallpaper, stay quiet, and completely numb out. Because when you are small, powerless, and terrified, being invisible feels like the ultimate, and only, protection.

Freedom to "Fly Like an Eagle"

When you crash that hard, a terrible shift happens. You suddenly believe that all the lies you feared are true. You are a burden. You are weak. You are always on the outside looking in. As I sat alone in my apartment, unable to talk to anyone for fear they'd think I was crazy, I had a realization.

These lies, these coping mechanisms, these archetypes—they were how I survived my earliest memories.

I remember being five years old in an empty apartment my mother had just secured through Section 8 housing. It was a fresh start. There was a round area rug, and the Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle" was playing. I remember spinning around that rug in circles with my little brother, feeling this overwhelming sense of freedom. Even at five, I knew we were finally safe. I was no longer trapped in an environment of pure terror. Before that moment, I had been too small to protect myself, so my body had resorted to the ultimate survival tool: shutdown. I had died inside just enough to make it through. But in that new apartment, that paralyzed part of me finally had permission to wake up.

By age 11, I knew I had to be the grown-up to help my mom care for my siblings (The Caretaker).

By age 12, I knew I was entirely alone in this world (The Invisible One). I remembered standing up in a classroom, terror in my eyes and a sick, twisted knot in my stomach, looking out at my classmates rolling their eyes as I read a story. I was mocked. Kids made fun of my appearance. I was simultaneously desperate to sleep and never wake up, while also desperately searching for love, validation, and visibility.

From Survival.....to Safety

The strategies that helped you survive were never meant to be your permanent address. They were just a bridge to keep you alive.

The problem is that when those strategies begin early in life, they become deeply wired into the developing brain. In the earliest years of life, the brain is still under construction. It is learning one very important question over and over again:

Is the world safe… or do I need to stay on guard?

If a child experiences fear, chaos, unpredictability, or neglect during those early years, the brain becomes incredibly good at detecting danger. It’s not weakness. It’s brilliant biology. The brain simply wires itself to protect.

The amygdala—the brain’s alarm system—becomes highly sensitive. The nervous system learns to brace. The body stores those experiences in what researchers call implicit memory. These are memories held in the body and nervous system, not necessarily in clear stories we can explain.

That’s why so many adults say things like:

Your body remembers what your mind cannot fully articulate.

• For some people, it shows up as anxiety.
• For others, it looks like panic attacks.
• For some, it becomes OCD, hyper-vigilance, people pleasing, or the need to control every detail.
• And for others, it becomes the opposite—emotional shutdown, numbness, or feeling disconnected from life itself.

But here is the part that matters most: The brain that wired itself for survival can also rewire itself for safety.

Not through force. Not through shame. Not through pretending the past never happened. But through new experiences.

Healing often begins with learning to gently assess what shaped us—early brain development, attachment wounds, nervous system patterns, and the environments we grew up in. Not to blame anyone. Not to stay stuck in the story. But to finally understand what our bodies have been trying to protect us from all along.

Then slowly, step by step, we begin introducing something many of us never had enough of early on: Safety.

With enough of those new experiences, the nervous system begins to learn something new: The danger is no longer here.

Faith often plays a role in this process too. For many people, healing includes learning to surrender what was never theirs to carry in the first place. Letting go of shame. Letting go of the belief that they were somehow broken.

And slowly, something beautiful begins to happen. The layers of protection that once kept you alive begin to soften. Not because they were wrong. But because they are no longer needed in the same way.

Underneath those layers is the person you were always meant to be—the truest version of yourself that existed long before survival strategies took over.

Photo by Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash