Less How it Looks, More How it Feels

For a long time, I didn't care how things felt. I only cared how they looked.

And as long as everyone around me was validating that it looked good — I told myself it must have been good. It must have felt good.

It didn't.

That's the trap so many of us are living in. The perfectly curated life. The polished exterior. The grinding toward success while the inside quietly decays.

I'm not here to shame that — I lived it for years. But I am here to tell you there's another way.

Why women stop listening to their bodies

Women are conditioned to constantly care for and nurture everyone else — and it is destroying our health.

There's a book called Rushing Women's Syndrome by Libby Weaver that breaks this down hard. When you're always doing for others, you literally cannot be in your own body. You can't feel what you're feeling. You can't hear what your body is trying to tell you.

This is where somatic healing comes in. Somatics — the practice of healing through the body — is finally getting the attention it deserves. Because trauma doesn't just live in the mind. It lives in the body. It gets trapped there when we're frozen in fear, unable to move, unable to process.

The Body Keeps the Score is essentially the bible for understanding how the body holds what the mind won't face. If you haven't read it, start there.

What a month on my bathroom floor taught me about healing

About a year and a half ago I was doing CrossFit and Orangetheory five to seven days a week. I thought I was taking care of myself.

What I was actually doing was running from myself.

So I paused my gym membership for a month. And instead of working out, I sat on my bathroom floor. I put oil on my legs. I used a Gua Sha stone — a traditional Chinese healing mineral known for restoring energy, improving circulation, and releasing toxins — and I slowly worked it up and down my muscles.

I have extremely muscular legs. I played rugby. The boys team called me the bus because three girls couldn't take me down. And for years I was proud of that — until I realized I used that strength to not feel anything.

That month on the bathroom floor? I believe it's part of why I got pregnant shortly after. I stopped overriding my body. I let it rest. I let it feel.

The lesson: sometimes the most healing thing you can do is stop.

Why you can't grind your way to emotional health

Danielle LaPorte wrote it and I haven't stopped thinking about it since:

You can't grind your way to grace.

Grinding feels productive. It keeps us busy. It keeps us away from the emotions we don't want to face. And yes — it produces results. But results aren't grace. Physical success isn't peace.

We are in a paradigm shift right now. Moving from forcing to allowing. From planning to trusting. From hard to soft.

And I know — that transition is not easy. Especially for women who were trained to be tough to survive in masculine spaces.

But soft is not weak. Soft is where healing lives.

What happens when you suppress your emotions

Suppressed emotions don't disappear. They come out in explosive, destructive ways.

You yell at your kids. You snap at your partners. You are rough with yourself in ways you don't even clock anymore because it became normal so long ago.

It's not normal. It's a symptom.

I watched a movie where Michael Keaton's character says one of the keys to a successful life is how gently you lived. That line wrecked me. Because for so long gentleness wasn't even on my radar — it felt like weakness.

Now I understand it's the whole point.

The loneliest part of emotional healing nobody talks about

Emotional healing is lonely.

You can't exactly call your friend and say hey, I just re-experienced something from when I was six and I'm sitting with it. That's not a normal conversation. Most people don't have the capacity to hold that with you.

So you witness your own breakthroughs alone. You feel your own shifts in silence. You walk this tightrope — and the only thing that keeps you steady is how much you trust yourself.

Trust is built slowly. By choosing the hard thing. By showing up for yourself over and over again even when no one is watching. Especially when no one is watching.

How to start doing the real emotional work — practical steps

This isn't about falling apart. It's about finally letting yourself feel so you can put yourself back together — on purpose, as the person you actually are.

• Notice when you're performing versus feeling. There is a difference and your body knows it.

• Try somatic work — even just slow, intentional movement where you check in with your body instead of pushing through it.

• Start IFS therapy or read No Bad Parts — it's a game changer for understanding your emotional patterns.

• Stop grinding as a coping mechanism. Rest is not a reward. It is a requirement.

• Practice gentleness with yourself like a skill — because it is one.

Less how it looks. More how it feels.

That's where the real work begins.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is somatic healing and how does it work?

Somatic healing is the practice of processing trauma and emotions through the body rather than only through the mind. Because trauma gets physically stored in the body — particularly when someone is frozen or unable to respond during a distressing event — talk therapy alone often can't fully release it. Somatic practices like intentional movement, breathwork, body scanning, and tools like Gua Sha create physical pathways for emotional release and nervous system regulation.

What is Rushing Women's Syndrome?

Rushing Women's Syndrome is a term coined by Dr. Libby Weaver to describe the chronic state of stress that affects women who are constantly doing, nurturing, and caregiving at the expense of their own body's needs. The syndrome describes how this sustained stress response — running on adrenaline and cortisol — disrupts hormones, digestion, sleep, and overall health. The core message: you cannot heal while you are constantly overriding your body's signals to show up for everyone else.

Why does emotional suppression cause physical symptoms?

When emotions are suppressed, the body holds the stress response in a state of activation. Over time this chronic tension manifests physically — as pain, illness, hormonal disruption, digestive issues, and fatigue. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is the foundational text on this connection, documenting how unprocessed trauma and emotion live in the body's tissues and nervous system, not just in memory.

What does it mean to grind as a coping mechanism?

Grinding as a coping mechanism means using constant productivity, overexercise, or busyness to avoid feeling difficult emotions. It looks like discipline from the outside — and often produces real results — but internally it is a form of running. The problem is that the emotions being avoided don't disappear. They compound, and eventually surface as burnout, breakdown, or destructive behavior. Real healing requires slowing down enough to feel what the grinding has been covering.

How do you build self-trust during emotional healing?

Self-trust is built through small, repeated acts of showing up for yourself — especially when no one is watching. It means choosing the uncomfortable honest thing over the comfortable avoidant one. It means sitting with an emotion instead of numbing it. It means honoring what your body is telling you even when the world is telling you to push through. Each time you choose yourself in this way, the trust compounds — and that trust becomes the thing that carries you through the lonelier parts of healing.

This post is based on the full podcast episode. Listen to the complete conversation on How to Heal — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Lindsay Trimarchi is a life coach, speaker, and host of the How to Heal Podcast. She works with high-achieving women ready to stop performing and start living. Find her on Instagram @howtoheal