If you’ve been feeling guilty for wanting a softer, more peaceful life – your body might be trying to show you something important.

When the Body Starts Talking

There’s something that came through for me recently that I want to share, because I have a feeling it might resonate with where you are right now too.

I just came back from a trip to Hawaii, and I was there to let my body have time and space to reset.

If you’ve been following my journey, you know I’ve been deep in healing my relationship with PMDD. Right before my cycle starts, my hormones drop and this wave moves through me – feelings of unsafety, disconnection, and this deep emotional heaviness that demands my full attention.

All of these emotions started rising to the surface – not the PMDD itself, but what had been living underneath it. Layers I hadn’t been able to access because I was always too busy, too overstimulated, or too focused on managing everything else to actually sit with what was there.

What I found surprised me.

I had been carrying so much guilt, shame, and fear around one simple, quiet desire…

I wanted a more peaceful life.

I wanted a deeply regulated nervous system. I wanted softness. I wanted to stop pushing so hard. And somehow, even after years of doing this work – years of teaching it, living it, breathing it – there was still a part of me that felt guilty for wanting that.

That realization stopped me in my tracks.

The Disconnection From Desire

What came through next was bigger than just my own experience. It prompted me to look at something I see in so many of the women I work with…

We are deeply disconnected from our own desire.

And I don’t just mean the big, life-altering desires. I mean the quiet ones. The simple ones. The ones that whisper instead of shout.

We want things, but we feel guilty for wanting them. We feel a certain way, but we’re ashamed of the feeling. We want to take a bold action, but we’re worried about what people will think. So we shrink. We ignore. We override. We tell ourselves it’s fine when it’s not fine.

And over time, all of that repression.. all of that self-rejection.. it starts to shut the body down.

Literally.

The body doesn’t just quietly absorb what we refuse to feel. It responds. It tightens. It gets louder. Symptoms show up. Fatigue moves in and doesn’t leave. The nervous system starts sending signals – sometimes gently, sometimes urgently – that we’ve been ignoring ourselves for way too long.

This isn’t abstract or theoretical. This is what happens when we chronically abandon our own truth. The body keeps the record of every desire we swallowed, every feeling we pushed aside, every moment we chose performance over presence.

And eventually, it asks us to pay attention.

The Noise That Buries Our Truth

I was reflecting on this during an Instagram Live recently, and something clicked about why it’s become so hard to hear ourselves.

Every time we open social media, there are layers upon layers of stimulation competing for our attention… captions, text overlays, audio, video, opinions, trends, curated aesthetics. Our nervous systems are absorbing all of it, constantly. Most of us don’t even realize how much input we’re processing in a single scroll session.

And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, our own truth gets buried.

We stop being able to feel what we actually feel. We lose touch with what we actually want. The lines between our authentic desires and the projections we’ve absorbed from everyone else’s content become so blurred that we can’t tell the difference anymore.

That disconnection from desire is where so much of our suffering lives.

Not because desire is dangerous.. but because the suppression of it is.

When we can’t access what we truly want – when guilt, shame, or overstimulation has blocked that channel – we lose our compass. We start building lives, businesses, relationships, and routines based on what we think we should want instead of what actually feels true. And the body feels that misalignment. It always does.

What My Body Was Actually Trying to Say

What opened up for me in Hawaii was this remembrance that my body had been trying to talk to me this whole time.

The PMDD. The emotional waves. The heaviness. The cycles of feeling deeply unsafe right before my period. None of it was something to fix or push through or medicate away. It was something to listen to.

And when I finally had the space to get quiet enough to hear it, the message was so clear…

Stop abandoning yourself.

Stop feeling guilty for needing rest. Stop performing wellness while ignoring what your body is actually requesting. Stop waiting for permission to want what you want.

My body wasn’t malfunctioning. It was responding to years of override. Years of saying “I’m fine” when I wasn’t. Years of shrinking my desires down to what felt acceptable or palatable or not-too-much.

And when I let that land – when I stopped trying to manage the symptoms and actually listened to what they were communicating – something softened in me that had been gripped tight for a very long time.

The Questions That Bring Us Home

So I want to ask you something, and I mean this gently…

What does your body actually need right now?

Not what you think it should need. Not what the latest wellness post told you it needs. Not what would make you feel like you’re doing it “right.” What does your body actually want?

And are you showing up for that? Are you advocating for it in your daily choices? Are you being honest with the people in your life about what you need in those relationships? Are you carving out real time for the things your body and soul are asking for?

Because if your body is getting louder – if symptoms are showing up, if emotions are rising, if something keeps trying to get your attention no matter how many times you push it aside – that’s not a sign that something is wrong with you.

That’s a wake-up call.

And you deserve to answer it.

Giving Ourselves Permission

We are all waking up to the fact that our nervous systems have been carrying so much for so long. Years of overstimulation. Years of performing. Years of ignoring the quiet voice that says this isn’t what I actually want.

And the most radical thing we can do right now isn’t to add more practices, more protocols, more information to an already overwhelmed system…

It’s to finally, honestly, give ourselves permission to feel. To rest. To want what we want without making it wrong.

Your truth is still in there. Your desire is still in there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just been waiting for you to get quiet enough to hear it again.

And when you do – when you stop long enough to actually listen – you might be surprised by how simple the message is.

It was never about doing more.

It was always about coming home to yourself.

Reconnecting With Your Body

Pay attention to what your body is asking for this week – not what you think it should need, but what it’s actually requesting. Place a hand on your belly, take a few slow breaths, and ask: what do you need from me right now? Listen without judgment. Your body has been communicating with you all along.. sometimes we just need to slow down enough to hear it.

Honoring Your Desire

Notice where you’ve been suppressing a desire because it feels too simple, too selfish, or too much. Write it down without editing it. Let yourself want what you want – even if it’s just on paper for now. The act of naming your truth is the first step toward honoring it.

Creating From a Grounded Place

Check in with how your nervous system feels when you sit down to work. Are you creating from a grounded, honest place – or from overstimulation and urgency? This week, try turning off all input for 20 minutes before you create anything. Let your work come from your own signal, not the noise around you. Your best ideas live in that stillness.

Xoxo, Lauren