When you learn to listen instead of endure, you begin to empower yourself and learn to really heal.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is how often women are taught to accept symptoms as a part of life. We are told that exhaustion is a part of motherhood, anxiety goes hand in hand with a busy schedule, weight gain and poor sleep come with aging, and hormonal changes are just a part of being a woman. Instead of thinking about these symptoms as information our body is trying to communicate to us, we accept tiredness, stress, anxiety, and weight gain as normal. And over time, many of us become incredibly skilled at enduring discomfort rather than becoming curious about it.
I caught myself doing exactly that recently.
I was just over six months post cancer treatment and I caught my first cold. It was not a severe illness; in my children it manifested as congestion and a slight postnasal cough in the morning. But my body’s response was much bigger than the virus itself. I experienced chills, body aches, and what felt like a fever for a day or two. Those symptoms passed relatively quickly, but what followed was nearly three weeks of deep fatigue, joint discomfort, and muscular restriction.
I could still function. I was teaching classes, taking care of my children, exercising, and showing up for my responsibilities. But everything felt heavy. Once I stopped moving, I felt like I could fall asleep almost immediately. As someone who has been through cancer treatment, I understood there could be many reasons for this. My hormones had changed. My immune system was still recovering. My body had endured significant stress. So I began telling myself that this was probably just my new normal and something I needed to endure.I resigned myself to acceptance without really pausing and listening to what my body was trying to tell me.
I continued with my daily practices; my lymphatic brushing, my foam rolling and facial unwinding exercises. I continued to prioritize sleep and moving my body. But I also continued on with my day, ignoring the fact that although these practices helped me out of debilitating discomfort, my body was still saying “I need more support” after being sick. Then, about three weeks after I first caught the cold, my symptoms escalated. My joints became extremely swollen. My muscles ached. My neck became so stiff that turning my head was difficult. I developed unexplained itching throughout my body. I was having to gently crawl out of bed to the floor and straight into facial unwinding movement in order to find space in my body to function during the day.
And as I lay on the floor taking deep breaths and rolling out my neck, it struck me that I had been tuning out the information that something was off in my body for weeks. I had very quickly resigned myself to accepting my discomfort. Part of the reason was because I attached a story to it – cancer treatment caused a lot of dysregulation in all layers of my body and I should be feeling less than 100%. And I know this is not just my experience.
Whether it’s cancer survivorship, motherhood, perimenopause, menopause, chronic stress, or simply the demands of modern life, we often embody the message that discomfort is something to endure. We become accustomed to functioning despite our symptoms, rather than listening to what those symptoms might be trying to tell us. We learn to keep going, even when our bodies are asking us to slow down.
One reason for this is that many of us spend much of our day focused outside of ourselves. We move from task to task, notification to notification, screen to screen. Our attention is constantly being pulled outward. When this happens, we can become disconnected from a skill called interoception (our felt-sense).
Interoception is our ability to sense what is happening inside the body. It is how we recognize hunger, fullness, tension, fatigue, warmth, calm, stress, or the subtle shifts that tell us something needs attention. Interoception is one of the ways our body communicates with us. But when we’re constantly consuming information, multitasking, or staring at screens, it becomes easier to miss those quieter signals.
We stop noticing the tightening jaw, the shallow breathing, the fatigue that has been building for weeks, the tension in our shoulders, or the anxiety that has quietly settled into our nervous system. Instead of receiving information from our bodies, we spend most of our day receiving information from the world around us.
Once I started viewing my symptoms as information rather than something to endure, I became curious about the why. What was happening inside my body? What systems might be struggling to find balance? Were there changes I could make to better support what my body was asking for? Cancer treatment creates significant disruption throughout the body. The immune system is challenged, the nervous system spends months operating in a heightened state of vigilance, hormones shift, inflammation patterns change, and the body’s resources are directed toward survival. Even after treatment ends, those systems don’t simply flip a switch and return to baseline. They continue searching for equilibrium. Because of my 14 months of treatment, my nervous system and immune system had lost some of their ability to adapt smoothly and had become stuck in a state of overreaction. Understanding the physiology behind what I was experiencing changed everything. Instead of feeling frustrated by my symptoms, I felt empowered by them. The symptoms were information. My nervous system and immune system were asking for support.
Once I recognized that, I shifted my focus. I paused and dropped into my felt-sense and received what it was telling me. I scheduled a lymphatic massage to help support my immune system, spent more time outside, prioritized breathwork, played with my children, rested, and intentionally sought moments of joy and connection. Little by little, my body began responding. Not because I found a magic solution, but because I started listening more carefully to what it was asking for. And while we cannot control every symptom or every challenge, we can develop a stronger relationship with our bodies so that we recognize what they need sooner.
One of the simplest ways to begin to reconnect with your interoception is to create small interruptions in your day to get away from work and other tasks that take your focus external. Set a timer every hour, or if that feels like too much, habit stack your breaks – after each zoom call, in between meetings, anytime you have a shift in tasks at work. If you have young kids, notice how often they move and move with them. Children are still very connected to their interoception. Step away from all your screens (phone breaks are NOT interoception breaks). Ideally take 5 minutes to check in with your body, but shorter breaks count too. Meet yourself where you are at the moment.
The two videos below offer simple ways to practice flexing your felt-sense muscle. The first helps you develop awareness of sensation and the messages your body may be communicating. The second uses movement to explore how subtle changes in position can completely change your experience within your body.
This practice of reconnecting with your body is not about fixing symptoms. It is about rebuilding trust in your ability to notice how you are feeling and tune into what your body may be asking for. Because the goal is not to become symptom-free all the time. The goal is to stop assuming that discomfort is something you simply have to endure.
The more we strengthen our interoception, the more we shift from enduring our bodies to partnering with them. We begin to recognize the whispers before they become shouts. We learn to respond sooner, support ourselves more effectively, and trust the wisdom that has been there all along.
Because your body is communicating with you every day. The question is not whether it is speaking. The question is whether we are creating enough space to listen.
