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

The Body Has a Story. Are You Listening?

There's a book called Rushing Women's Syndrome by Libby Weaver that hit me hard. The premise is simple: women are conditioned to constantly care for and nurture everyone else — and it is destroying our health.

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 here's what we now know: 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 breaks this down like nothing else — it's essentially the bible of understanding how the body holds what the mind won't face.

My Month on the Bathroom Floor

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 beyonce 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.

You Can't Grind Your Way to Grace

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.

For so long I didn't even know I wanted grace. I wasn't taught to want it. I was taught to white knuckle it. To muscle through. To clean up the mess and move on.

We are in a paradigm shift right now. We are 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 We Don't Feel

When we suppress emotions — they don't disappear. They come out in explosive, destructive ways. We yell at our kids. We snap at our partners. We are rough with ourselves in ways we don't even clock anymore because it's become normal.

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

I watched a movie with Michael Keaton where his 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 Healing

Here's what 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.

The Work

• Notice when you're performing versus feeling. There's a difference.

• Try somatic work — even just slow, intentional movement where you check in with your body

• 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.

• Be gentle with yourself. Practice it like a skill.

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

Less how it looks. More how it feels.

That's where the real work begins.

Lindsay Trimarchi Richter 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.