Fine, But Not Fine
Sometimes I wish I could hook my brain up to a projector and show you what it’s like inside. Not because it’s inspirational, but because it’s insane.
The mind is a wildly powerful thing in ways we don’t even realize and can barely process. It distracts, it protects, it rewrites, it hides, it stores, it edits. It does things for us without even asking. And many of us are walking around thinking we’re fine when really, we’re not. We’re in survival mode. We’ve just adapted to it.
I saw this most clearly when I worked as a therapist. I spent years sitting across from people who had lived through real trauma. Sometimes they could name it. Sometimes they couldn’t. But the signs were there: anxiety that wouldn’t budge, anger that came out sideways, depression that never made sense. And what I noticed over and over again was that their minds were doing everything they could to help them survive. Often, that meant burying the pain so deep they couldn’t even find it.
But the body always knows.
And it’s not just about trauma. I see this in everyday life. The friend who wants to leave a job but keeps talking herself out of it. The woman who knows something needs to change but can’t name what. The guy who jokes about burnout while running on fumes. We think it’s about being tired, disorganized, and overwhelmed, but sometimes it’s just the mind trying to protect us from stepping into something unfamiliar.
I started to notice the patterns: the chronic tension, the stomach issues, the shutdown in their eyes when we got too close to something tender. I realized healing didn’t always come from insight or words. Sometimes it came from release. From tears. From movement. From stillness. From letting the body speak after years of silence.
And I began to notice it in myself, too. As a therapist, you think you’re the one holding the space. But I leaned that even when I was guiding others, my own body was quietly holding its own unprocessed stress. The tight jaw during hard sessions. The fatigue that would hit after certain client stories. The moments I’d find myself crying in the car for reasons I couldn’t name.
We all carry more than we realize.
A few years ago, right after my mother passed, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I had never experienced digestive issues before. But the stress, grief, and emotional overload of losing my mother hit me in a way I never expected—not through panic attacks or tears, but through my body literally attacking itself. The doctors told me it’s not uncommon: stress can trigger autoimmune responses. And in my case, it did. That diagnosis changed everything I thought I knew about what stress looks like. It’s not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes it’s quiet, internal, and deeply physical.
Dr. John Sarno, a physician known for connecting chronic pain with repressed emotions, once said that when the mind can’t express something, the body will. He famously treated patients with debilitating back pain not through medication or surgery, but by helping them face what they were unconsciously running away from.
He noticed that men, in particular, often experienced back pain as an emotional pressure valve. Raised not to cry or fall apart, their bodies would step in to hold the emotions they weren’t allowed to express. Women might cry more openly, but we’re not off the hook either. We hold stress in our stomachs, our migraines, in our breath. We cry and we move on, never quite understanding why we feel so heavy.
And the wildest part? Most of us don’t even notice it because we’re too busy.
We keep ourselves moving. Productive. Distracted. We build our lives in a way that doesn’t allow space for stillness, because stillness might expose what we’re trying to outrun. And we confuse that constant motion with being okay.
We say things like, “I’m just tired,” or “It’s just a busy season,” when really, our body is whispering: please pay attention.
Being high-functioning isn’t the same as being well.
What’s even more mind-blowing is how often our own minds are the ones getting in the way of our healing. They don’t just store trauma—they block us from moving forward. They convince us we’re not ready. That it’s not the right time. That we should be grateful for what we have. The mind creates noise that drowns out our deeper knowing. It keeps us safe by keeping us stuck.
When I began exploring trauma work more deeply, I learned that most healing doesn’t happen through talking. It happens through doing. Through practices that involve the body and the nervous system. Somatic therapy. EMDR. Tapping. Breathwork. Movement. These are the tools that bypass the overthinking brain and go straight to where the pain has been stored.
Because when we say “we carry trauma in the body,” we mean it literally. It’s in the clenching, the stiffness, the overreactions, the numbness. It’s in the way we can’t relax, even when everything seems fine. It’s in the patterns we repeat without understanding why.
Our bodies remember. Even when our minds choose to forget.
And when we finally slow down long enough to notice? When we stop performing wellness and start feeling it?
That’s when the healing begins. That’s when the mind and body stop fighting each other and start working together.
That’s when we come home to ourselves.
And maybe, that’s the most powerful thing the mind can do—not to fix us, but to let us feel safe enough to finally let go.
We don’t need to figure it all out. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is to just notice what we’re feeling, without judgment. To slow down long enough to ask, “What am I carrying right now?” and “What do I need today?” The mind will always try to make sense of things, to label and explain. But the body? It just wants you to listen. To check in. To give it space to be. That’s not a healing plan. That’s just being human—and it’s enough. n
Tamara Gestetner is a certified mediator, psychotherapist, and life and career coach based in Cedarhurst. She helps individuals and couples navigate relationships, career transitions, and life’s uncertainties with clarity and confidence. Through mediation and coaching, she guides clients in resolving conflicts, making tough decisions, and creating meaningful change. Tamara is now taking questions and would love to hear what’s on your mind—whether it’s about life, career, relationships, or anything in between. She can be reached at 646-239-5686 or via email at tamaragestetner@gmail.com. Please visit www.tamaragestetner.com to learn more.
