Weekly insights for women who are ready to feel grounded, regulated, and resourced.
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This week's hot topic π₯
This week we're talking about why some of us find it genuinely hard to switch off, and what that actually means.
Hey Reader
For years I told myself I was just bad at relaxing. That I was wired differently. That I was more of a 'doer' - that I needed to be busy.
I told myself this so convincingly that I genuinely believed it was just my personality. Some people are relaxed people. I was not one of them. Fine.
I'm also a double Capricorn and Virgo moon. IYKYK π
What I didn't understand at the time - and what I now understand pretty well - is that not being able to switch off is not a personality type. It's a nervous system that learned, somewhere along the way, that staying alert kept you safe.
Maybe you grew up in a house where things could change quickly and you needed to be ready. Maybe you got a lot of praise for achieving and very little for just being. Maybe something happened that trained your brain to treat stillness as a threat.
Whatever the reason - and the reason is different for everyone - the result is the same. You arrive at rest and your system fights it. Not because you don't want it. Because it doesn't feel safe yet.
Why "just relax" is genuinely useless advice - and it p*sses me off.
It's not that you don't know how to relax. It's that your nervous system doesn't yet have evidence that it's okay to do so.
You can tell yourself to calm down. You can take the holiday. You can run the bath. But if your system is still scanning for the next threat, the bath is just a warmer place to worry.
The shift happens when you start giving your nervous system evidence - small and consistent - that things are okay. Not through telling it, but through showing it. That's a different kind of work. Slower. Less dramatic. More lasting.
Something to try this weekend
Pick one thing that has no output. No product. No result. No post. Just something you do because it feels good to do it.
And notice the part of you that tries to make it productive. Not to judge it. Just to notice it. That's where we start.
And an extra bonus? Take my free nervous system quiz to help you figure out what's going on.
Your nervous system has a type
Find out what it is, for free
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With care,
Aimee x
P.S. You are not bad at relaxing. You are someone whose nervous system never learned it was safe to. That is absolutely workable.
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