Beyond Healing: Identity, Nervous System Wisdom & Post-Traumatic Growth in 2025

As we close out 2025, Dr Nat Green reflects on a powerful year of growth, integration, and becoming — both personally and collectively within the Growing Tall Poppies community.

This episode is a gentle yet honest Year in Review, exploring the arc many of us travelled this year: from burnout and emotional exhaustion, through meaning-making and identity grief, and into deeper integration and wholeness.

Together, we revisit the conversations, themes, and insights that shaped 2025 — including burnout, nervous system wisdom, post-traumatic growth, identity shifts, and the courage it takes to let go of who we once needed to be.

This is not just a recap. It’s an invitation to pause, reflect, and honour how far you’ve come.

 We Reflect on:

•  Burnout isn’t always about doing too much —  vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and nervous system overload often play a role
• The concept of identity grief 
• Why healing is the doorway, not the destination — and what lies beyond it
• A guided reflection to help you honour what you’ve released, what you’re nurturing, and what you want to carry forward
• Reframing the urge to “burn it all down” as a call toward truth, integrity, and alignment

A Special Reflection: 2025 — The Year of Shedding & Sacred Completion

In this episode, Dr Nat also names something many have felt but struggled to articulate: 2025 has carried a strong energy of completion.

Across cultures and traditions, this has been symbolised as a year of shedding — of letting go of skins that no longer fit. If you’ve felt an urge to:

• walk away
• simplify
• release old roles or identities
• question what no longer feels aligned

You’re not broken — and you’re not self-sabotaging. Your nervous system knows when something has run its course.

This episode gently explores how unbecoming can be just as vital to growth as becoming — and why endings are often the gateway to post-traumatic growth.

Who This Episode Is For

This episode is especially for you if:

• You’ve experienced burnout, exhaustion, or emotional heaviness this year
• You feel like you’re in a season of transition or completion
• You’ve done a lot of inner work, but sense something deeper is shifting
• You’re curious about post-traumatic growth, identity change, and nervous system-led healing

Looking Ahead to 2026

As we move into 2026, the invitation is no longer to chase perfect healing — but to live from integration, authenticity, and presence.

Dr Nat also shares her intention to take a short restorative break, modelling the very nervous system care she teaches, before returning refreshed in January 2026.

Thank You

Thank you for being part of the Growing Tall Poppies community.
For listening deeply.
For choosing growth — even when it was uncomfortable.
For allowing yourself to become.

✨ Keep showing up.
 ✨ Keep feeli

If this episode resonates with you then I'd love for you to hit SUBSCRIBE so you can keep updated with each new episode as soon as it's released and we'd be most grateful if you would give us a RATING as well. You can also find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drnatgreen/ or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DrNatalieGreen

Intro and Outro music: Inspired Ambient by Playsound.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be deemed or treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Transcript

Dr Nat Green: 0:01

Welcome to the Growing Tall Poppies Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nat Green, and I'm so excited to have you join me as we discuss what it means to navigate your way through post-traumatic growth and not just survive, but to thrive after trauma. Through our podcast, we will explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater purpose, self-awareness, and a deep inner peace. Through integrating the many years of knowledge and professional experience, as well as the wisdom of those who have experienced trauma firsthand. We'll combine psychology accelerated approaches. Coaching and personal experience to assist you, to learn, to grow and to thrive. I hope to empower you to create deeper awareness and understanding and stronger connections with yourself and with others, whilst also paving the way for those who have experienced trauma and adversity to reduce their suffering and become the very best versions of themselves. In order to thrive. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. Welcome, beautiful tall poppies. I'm Dr. Nat Green, and in today's episode as we near the close of 2025, I wanna sit with you reflect on what we've explored together this year, and celebrate how far you've all grown, not just in knowledge, but in lived transformation. This community, this work, it's not about perfection. It's about growth through the discomfort, learning through heartbreak, and becoming the people we couldn't see at the beginning of the year. You've shown up, you've listened, welcomed hard truths, heard challenging stories, and carried all of that with grace and that matters. In 2025, we navigated an arc. From pain to burnout through meaning making into integration and identity, we unpacked how burnout isn't always what it seems. Sometimes it's vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, or nervous system overload. We explored this deeply together, naming what many of us felt but didn't yet have the language for. You invited me into your earbuds as you walked, or your cars as you drove, as we explored identity, grief and what it means to shed who we were to embrace who we are now and who we are still becoming. We sat with deep personal stories, stories of loss, caregiving. Of reshaping self-worth when life threw you off its course. And we asked what lies beyond the healing and started to see that healing is the doorway, not the destination. These were not just podcast episodes. They were invitations to look inward, to feel fully. To move forward with intention and some of the most powerful moments this year came through our guest conversations where lived experience met great wisdom and true courage, conversations with practitioners, survivors, and change makers. It showed us how boundaries and self-worth rebuild not just a life, but a life of purpose. How chronic invisible effects of trauma, like exhaustion and weight on the nervous system, aren't weaknesses, but doorways to new identity, how creative recovery, nature, and permission to pause. Can restore energy when survival has become routine, what it looks like when someone steps into legacy, turning loss into purpose. And each of these episodes reminded us that every single voice in this space whether host or guest reflects a shared longing. To rise beyond survival and grow into thriving this year wasn't just about me talking to you. It was about you listening with your whole self nervous system and soul included. You told me you've recognized burnout as more than tiredness. You've set boundaries that you never thought was possible, and you've started saying yes to yourself even when that too felt impossible. You've grown and not just in theory, in real embodied ways. This transformation doesn't show up only as a change in thinking. It shows up in how you treat yourself, how you show up in relationships, and how you engage with your purpose. And all of that is worth celebrating. So now let's take a moment together. If you're driving. Just keep focusing on where you're going and focus on the road. If you're sitting with your coffee or walking wherever you are, feel your feet on the ground beneath you. Just take a slow, deep breath in and let it out with gratitude for how far you've come. Ask yourself, what did I release this year? What part of myself am I nurturing now that I couldn't nurture before? And what do I wanna carry forward into the new year? You don't need answers right away. Let the questions land for now and take root, and there's something else I wanna name because so many of you have mentioned it in your messages, your sessions, and your quiet conversations. I know for some of you this might seem a bit woo woo, and I've certainly been embracing more of this throughout the year as I open my inner self up more and more and connect with my soul. And I must say that while I'm not quite woo woo yet, I'm I'm one woo. And this has had quite a profound impact on me at many levels. So I invite you to allow this to meet you wherever you're at right now. 2025 carries the energy of the year of the snake and numerologically. It's a nine year and across cultures, both of these symbolize completion. Endings, shedding, letting go of skins that no longer fit. And I personally think this is so apt for us right now, and if you've felt an almost visceral urge this year to walk away, to burn things to the ground, to strip life back to, its. bare essence or to release old roles, identities, stories, or expectations, then I want you to hear this clearly. You are not broken. You are not self-sabotaging. You are responding to that completion energy, and the nervous system knows when something has run its course long before the mind catches up. For many people this year hasn't been about adding more. It's been about unbecoming. Unbecoming who you had to be to survive unbecoming identity shaped by trauma, obligation, or expectation. And unbecoming versions of yourself that once kept you safe, but are now keeping you small. This is what shedding really looks like. It can feel raw, it can feel destabilizing. It can feel like everything is falling apart, but often it's actually falling away. And this urge you might have had to burn things down isn't about destruction. It's about truth and fully living in your truth. When a cycle completes, anything misaligned becomes intolerable, and your nervous system simply won't cooperate anymore. That's not recklessness. That's integration of your self identity and your nervous system demanding honesty, and in post-traumatic growth. This is a really crucial phase, not healing the wound, but releasing the identity that formed around that, and that is why this year may have felt heavier, quieter. Or more confronting than expected because endings require presence, and shedding requires courage. So if you've been standing at the edge of something, a relationship, a role, a version of yourself, unsure whether to leap or to stay, know this. Completion doesn't rush. It waits for readiness, and sometimes growth looks less like blooming and more like letting go of the skin that once held you together. Just let that sit for a minute and as we move into the next year. Our work is not to chase perfect healing, but to look for and embrace wholeness and authentic presence. 2025 was about realizing that healing opens a door next year. It's about what we choose to do after we walk through it. And I am really excited about what lies ahead for all of us in 2026. Thank you all for being such a special part of the growing tall poppies community. I've made a decision that in order to honor my nervous system and ensure that I walk the walk and talk the talk, and continue to show up as the best version of me and continue to grow our special podcast and community, that I'll be taking a few weeks off to rest, recover, and replenish, and I'll be returning. With the growing tall poppies Thrive After Trauma podcast the week of the 12th of January, so wishing you all a restful break and holiday period. And if you celebrate Christmas, may you do so with joy and peace. And if you do not, then please enjoy the holiday period also with joy and peace and may your hearts and souls be filled with love, kindness. Deep inner peace. Thank you for growing with me, listening deeply and choosing your expansion even when it was uncomfortable. Keep showing up, keep feeling, keep becoming more of who you are and growing into who you are meant to be. This is growing tall poppies, and I can't wait to see what the next year holds for every single one of us. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me in this episode of Growing Tall Poppies. It is my deepest hope that today's episode may have inspired and empowered you to step fully into your post-traumatic growth, so that you can have absolute clarity around who you are, what matters the most to you, and to assist you to release your negative emotions. And regulate your nervous system so you can fully thrive. New episodes are published every Tuesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we explore both the strategies and the personal qualities required to fully live a life of post-traumatic growth and to thrive. So if it feels aligned to you and really resonates, then I invite you to hit subscribe and it would mean the world to us. If you could share this episode with others who you feel may benefit too, you may also find me on Instagram at Growing Tall Poppies and Facebook, Dr. Natalie Green. Remember, every moment is an opportunity to look for the lessons and to learn and increase your ability to live the life you desire and deserve. So for now, stay connected. Stay inspired. Stand tall like the tall poppy you are, and keep shining your light brightly in the world. Bye for now