For years, I lived in a loop of trying to “fix” my symptoms.
Every ache, flare-up, wave of fatigue, or strange sensation in my body was met with urgency. I would ask myself:
What do I need to do to get rid of this? What did I do (physically) to create this?
What stretch, what supplement, what therapy, what new strategy can I try to make this go away?
On the surface, it seemed like I was being proactive, taking control. But in truth, this mindset — this need to fix myself — was one of the biggest things keeping me stuck in mind-body recovery.
The Fixing Loop
What I didn’t realise at the time is that this constant drive to fix my symptoms was reinforcing a deeper belief:
There is something wrong with me.
Not emotionally. Not energetically. But physically — dangerously so. And that belief kept my brain and body caught in a cycle of perceived danger.
Every time I tried a new treatment with desperation…
Every time I tensed up in fear as a symptom returned…
Every time I told myself, “I need to do this or the pain will come back,”…
I was sending a powerful message to my nervous system:
“We are not safe.”
And when your nervous system thinks you’re not safe, it reacts exactly as it should: it stays in high alert. It tightens muscles. It raises inflammation. It keeps you stuck in pain cycle. It does what it was designed to do — protect you — even when the threat isn’t real.
The Shift
One of the most helpful learning in the mind-body work and my personal was this:
Healing doesn’t always come from fixing. Sometimes, it comes from feeling safe again.
That was a radical shift for me. To stop trying to get rid of my symptoms — and instead, to turn toward them with curiosity and compassion.
To ask:
What might this symptom be trying to tell me?
What if this isn’t damage, but a protective signal from a nervous system stuck in survival mode?
Instead of going for a massage to “get rid of the pain,” I started asking myself:
- Am I pushing too hard again? What beliefs I’m believing?
- What emotional weight am I holding in my body right now?
Sometimes a massage helped — but other times, it didn’t. And when it didn’t, I would panic, feeling like pain would stay forever and I would be able to do the things I love. That panic was the problem to keep me tuck in the pain signal. It wasn’t about the massage. It was about the pressure I was putting on myself to make the symptom disappear, and the fear I attached to its presence.
Healing Through Safety, Not Perfection
Our bodies are not broken machines. They are adaptive, intelligent, sensitive systems shaped by our beliefs, emotions, and experiences. This is neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to change and rewire based on what we repeatedly think, feel and do.
And when we relate to our symptoms as threats, we unknowingly reinforce neural pathways of fear, pain and hypervigilance – which will create more symptoms.
But when we begin to shift from “How do I fix this?” to “How do I bring safety to my system?”, we begin to rewire those pathways. We teach the brain that the body is safe again. And slowly, the brain starts to respond differently — no longer in defense but in regulation, unlearning old neuropathways of symptoms.
What Helped Me Break the Loop
Here are a some of the mind-body techniques that supported me in getting unstuck from the loop of fearing my symptoms — and in rewiring my brain and nervous system for safety instead of fear:
- Recognising the conditioning I’d absorbed from years of medical and physical therapy advice. Where I was taught to believe that every symptom had a purely physical cause, even when no clear explanation was given. This kept me constantly searching for physical reasons behind my symptoms, which only reinforced hypervigilance in my brain and nervous system, keeping me stuck in fear rather than seeing the mind-body connection.
- Interrupting and letting go of the “fix it now” mindset. I began to honour that healing takes time — and that discomfort doesn’t always mean danger or physical damage. This allowed my brain to stop associating symptoms with emergency.
- Learning how the nervous system and brain work. Understanding the principles of neuroplasticity — that my brain was creating and reinforcing pain loops based on fear — gave me hope. If the brain can learn pain, it can unlearn it too.
A Final Word on Neuroplasticity
Your brain is not stuck. It is always learning, always changing. Every time you choose kindness over urgency, safety over fixing, you are retraining your brain and body to move out of survival mode and into healing – this will lead to symptoms to fade and recover.
This is the real power of mind-body medicine!
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