Good morning, dear friend,
How are you today? I hope you are well.
Birds are chirping, money is being spent, gardening is in full gear, summer is loading, and the social butterflies in your life are coming up with plans. Behind all these, there is the normal humdrum of being an adult in the 21st century and all the things we wish we could be.
There are these special days when your body feels heavy, and nothing in your immediate world seems to explain why. You sleep but don’t feel refreshed or strengthened, you have taken every supplement available to man, and even gone to have IV drips for B12. Your body said nooooooo!
You aren’t necessarily “sad,” and there’s no crisis to point to. Yet, you feel it—a quiet weight in your chest, a persistent tension in your shoulders, a shallow quality to your breath. It is a specific kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t seem to touch.
The most confusing part? Your mind cannot explain it.
Your body is subbing you, my dear.
Your Body Remembers What You Tried to Move Past
Not every experience we encounter is processed in the moment. In the rush of survival or the demands of daily life, we often tuck things away:
- The things you brushed off because you had to be strong.
- The moments you ignored because life didn’t pause long enough for you to feel them.
- The hurts you didn’t even realize were deep enough to leave a mark.
I have them, you have them too. It was one of the things that led me on the journey of self-discovery. I realized I didn’t even know who I was. Out of that journey, this blog was born. Understanding yourself, your roots, and your fruits is the best investment you will ever make. Understanding the memories you have buried and how they inform your current realities.
The fact that you work so hard and abuse your body so much stems from drinking swollen garri for dinner one night at age 3, you hated it and told your subconscious that it would never happen when you became an adult.
This is the old script still running in your head when you ignore sleep, ignore love, ignore your children’s needs, and book that shift. It is self-harm. You have food now, you just haven’t healed.
You become so defensive when people hug you, because someone inappropriately touched you at age 8, and you did not tell anyone, or you told someone and you were not believed, or blamed even, so now you are so defensive once someone doubts or criticizes you.
See, we all have these stories and old scripts that rule our lives, but we are not conscious of them, so they keep ruining things.
What are yours?
While your mind may have moved on, your body is a faithful historian. It keeps the tension from conversations where you stayed quiet to keep the peace. It stores the stress of holding everything together while the world feels like it is falling apart. It carries the ache of every time you told yourself, “It’s not that serious.”
How the “Unspoken” Shows Up
When our internal system is carrying a heavy load, it communicates through “body-first” signals. You might notice:
- Sudden Irritability: Feeling “on edge” with the people you love most.
- Persistent Fatigue: A bone-deep tiredness that persists despite rest.
- Physical Constriction: A tight chest or a “knot” in the stomach, even when you are safe.
- Emotional Withdrawal: A sudden, inexplicable urge to pull away and be alone.
- Micro-Overthinking: Obsessing over small details because your system is searching for a reason to justify the deeper feeling of unease. think about those days you just can’t sit down, flitting about the house like a bee.
If you walk into a room or hear a certain tone of voice and your mood shifts instantly, please know: that isn’t random. That is your body recognizing a pattern before your mind has even had a chance to name it.
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The Burden of the “Strong One”
Consider the person who has always been the pillar of their community or family, like you and me, caring for children and also parents who are ageing. We are reliable, resilient, and rarely complain. Over years of being “the strong one,” we subconsciously learn that our own needs are secondary.
We take that into marriages, workplaces, and religious communities, and we find others there who enable us to ignore our own self-awareness and personal responsibility for developing.
We don’t cry when overwhelmed, or we cry secretly in areas where we can’t be seen; We don’t speak when hurt. We simply… carry on.
Years later, life may look perfect on the outside, yet we feel constantly drained or anxious for “no reason.”
If this is you, please hear this: You are not broken. Your body is simply holding years of unexpressed emotion that finally wants to be heard.
It’s Not Just “In Your Head”
We often try to think our way out of our feelings, believing that if we can just understand the problem, we can fix it. But healing isn’t always a logical process.
This is very common if you are a religious person who often defaults to asking, “God, why?”If not you, then who? Life, by its very nature, is heavy because we are not perfect. So instead of avoiding problems, let’s get better at investigating them honestly and fixing them with the help of God.
That unexplained anxiety or that wave of heaviness isn’t a “problem” to be solved; they are signals to be heard. Your system is reacting, tensing, or shutting down as a way of protecting you.
Small Ways to Begin Listening
You don’t need to figure everything out today. In fact, rushing the process can often create more tension. Instead, try moving toward yourself with a sense of gentle curiosity:
- Notice without Judgment: Observe the tension in your shoulders or the drop in your mood. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” try asking, “What is my body trying to tell me right now?”
- Validate the Weight: Acknowledge that if you feel heavy, it’s because you are likely carrying something heavy.
- Give yourself what your younger self always wanted. I started buying myself toys I longed for as a child; at one point, that was a small way to give myself what I needed for that time. I once took dance classes to become more comfortable with my body. What can you do today for yourself? Don’t wait for anyone else. Do it.
- Create Space to Feel: Permit yourself to not have the answers. Sometimes, the most professional and compassionate thing you can do for yourself is to stop “functioning” for a moment and just be. Give yourself permission to eat the Eba and lick the ice cream if that is what you need, let the sink be full of dishes and let the car not start. It is ok, for a while.
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Taking a moment to look inward is a radical act of self-kindness. Use these prompts to explore how you express (or hold back) your inner world.
- The Silent Language: When you are overwhelmed but tell everyone “I’m fine,” where does that “unfelt” emotion go? Do you feel it in your jaw, your stomach, or a sudden restless energy in your legs?
- The “Strong One” Filter: Think of the last time you felt hurt but chose not to speak up. What was the story you told yourself in that moment? (e.g., “It’s not worth the drama” or “I don’t want to be a burden.”)
- Safety in Expression: What is one way you feel safe expressing yourself when words feel too hard? Is it through movement, music, writing, or perhaps simply sitting in silence?
- Honoring the Signal: If your body’s current heaviness or tension had a voice, what is the very first word it would say? Don’t overthink it—just listen for the first word that bubbles up.
- A Letter to Your System: If you could say one thing to the parts of you that have been carrying stories in silence, what would it be? (Perhaps: “I see you now,” or “It’s okay to let go.”)
Final Thoughts
You are carrying a heavy load, and you can develop stronger muscles by working on self-awareness, whether in small ways or big ways. Take the coaching and the therapy, but know that you can grow stronger from this; you will not break.
Nothing is unique to you on earth. What is happening to you has happened to someone else, too, and they exist. The intelligence to move forward with wisdom and compassion exists.
The only option is not to continue the way you are going, you can actually die in spirit and soul, and eventually body if you.
Do it for you, do it for posterity, do it for your creator, who made you to be much better than you are now. He looked at you and decided that the world needed you.
Not in this beaten, smelly, dark, torn apart state, but in the form of a bright light that can shine and bless the world with the abundant gifts preloaded within you.
Get rid of the trash and heaviness and moaning dredge of past scripts you keep replaying, get rid of the stench of the grave.
Life is in you, big life!
If your body feels off or confusing lately, it might just mean that something in you hasn’t been given the space to be felt yet. It’s okay to slow down. It’s okay not to be “fine.”
Your body isn’t working against you; it is speaking for the parts of you that were once forced to be silent. When you begin to listen honestly and without haste, you move toward a version of yourself that is not just “strong” but truly whole.
Until next time, stay warm, stay growing, and stay kind to yourself.
With love and light,
Amaka
