In This Body

Who Am I When I'm Not Needed: Health, Identity, and the End of Performing with Ailey Jolie

• Ailey Jolie • Season 3 • Episode 46

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Join Ailey Jolie for a raw and personal solo episode of How To Be In This Body. In this New Year's reflection, Ailey shares what happened when her body stopped letting her perform; a year of health crises, the real story behind her viral posts, and the decision to focus her attention on her upcoming book and course INBODY. 

In this episode, she explores what it means to let go of an identity built around being needed, why she's done setting goals from the neck up, and the question she's carrying into this year: how do I actually want to spend my time? This episode is for anyone in their own season of stopping, listening, or questioning what comes next. 

In this episode: 

  • 0:00 – Welcome and Embodiment Focus 
  • 1:16 – New Year Messaging Challenged 
  • 3:06 – Illness as Unwanted Teacher 
  • 8:15 – Writing from Inside the Body 
  • 10:31 – Calm Versus Capacity 
  • 22:31 – Stopping the Performance 
  • 26:00 – Self-Regulation Needs Co-Regulation 
  • 33:20 – Holding Less to Live More 
  • 39:20 – Capacity, Fawn Response, and Needs

You can read the transcript here

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Welcome And Embodiment Focus

Speaker

Welcome to In This Body, a podcast where we dive deep into the potent power of embodiment. I'm your host, Aile Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life fully from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment, a podcast dedicated to asking important questions like: how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our shared world? Join me for consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body. This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailey Jolie. Welcome back to In This Body with Me, Ailey Jolie. This is a podcast that focuses exclusively on embodiment and what it means to actually live in your body. It's about intimacy, desire, authenticity, and what your body knows that your mind maybe keeps forgetting. We're right at the start of a new year here together. And if you're anything like me, you've already been bombarded. The emails from me probably started a month ago, but before that I even noticed it on my social media feed, the subtle messages to lose weight or become more optimized to finally be the person you've put off becoming. New year, new you. Set your intentions, choose your word, make this year the year you actually follow through. I mean, I could go on and on. We all know the messaging, and even though every year it seems to get a little bit sneakier, a little bit more stealthy, a little bit more subtle, the messaging is always the same. And I understand why just naturally the realm of capitalism and marketing would choose such a significant moment to try and convince us all to change or to become better, whatever better means for you. And it's really a quite a seductive fantasy in some ways, the illusion or the promise of a completely clean state. The idea that we can just decide with our minds to be someone else and then become that person. It is a fantasy. And I know for myself in years past it definitely was a fantasy that I held. But it's not a fantasy I'm holding this year. This year I've been sitting with a different question. Not what I should do next or create or produce or achieve or who I should become, what what I should optimize or how I should heal. I've just been really sitting with this question of how do I want to spend my time. And I know that sounds so simple and maybe even a bit cliche, but I don't know if it really is. It's actually the question I think that's been underneath everything that happened to me this past year, but also the past few years. And I've been really guarded around a lot of it. And I think that that's been quite important and necessary, and also for a significant amount of time, I just didn't actually have the capacity to share what the experience of being in my body was like, because being so unwell was was really an experience of almost an oxymoron because I was so deeply in my body, so connected in a way that I had never been and I didn't know was possible. I I don't even know how to put that into words. I think people who have been really sick or have struggled with chronic illness, or you probably lots of other life experiences as well that I haven't had. Obviously, I haven't had all life experiences, but for me, chronic illness was this really deep intimacy with my body that my mind didn't get to consent to. It was just happening. And at the same time, there was also this kind of meta-awareness of my body that I needed to hold so that I could be so connected. And this is why for me it felt like such an oxymoron in times, you know, being so deeply in my body, but also this meta-awareness I was like so not of the body in many ways. And to be in, but also so out at the same time is not something that I have a lot of language for. And I don't like using the word out because it implies not being in the body. And for me, struggling with my health has been the most unwanted teacher in how to really be present inside myself. It's the the essence behind this question that I'm sitting with at the start of 2026. I keep going back to this question of like, how do I want to spend my time? And to tell you, you know, why that question is so big, I do need to share a little bit of the oxymoron that I've been living in and feeling in. So the last time the podcast was released, I had just found out that I'd hit kind of my one-year anniversary from the start of multiple surgeries and something quite scary. And I was really actually quite excited to just focus on some other surgeries and some other health stuff that I had coming up. And then in September, I found out, uh-oh, you have not passed the one-year mark, or that's what it looked like. And so I was quite quickly brought back into surgery and so grateful that I live in a place where you can find something out on a Monday and get scheduled for surgery on, I don't know, I think it was like a Thursday or Friday was the next available. I opted to to give myself some some time to process when the surgery happened. It just I don't know ex exactly. It's kind of one of those weird medical mysteries. The growth and the sign of what I'd struggled with previously was on the ultrasound. It showed it that it had come back. But then when they uh went in there, it wasn't there and all my biopsies came back completely normal. And it was this really strange experience for about 10 days, and it lingered with me a lot more than than the good news that I got, because it was this this moment where they had to really reflect on my choices that I had made. After being sick, I definitely had a story that I was gonna take care of myself better or move slower or be more grateful. You can hear my voice that there's emotion there because it didn't come from, I would say the healthiest place. It came from quite a judgmental voice. And so in September, when I didn't think that I had taken care of my body well enough, or was in touch well enough to know that something had come back, or was genuinely just like quite scared. And then finding out, oh, it's not there. And oh, it's it's not there. And we just had surgery again, and actually it all went well, and it was a really healing experience. It really brought this question of what have I done over the past, you know, 14, 15 months since this started that I feel really good about. Like, what have I done with my time? Where has it gone? Where have I invested it? Where have I not invested it? And I did like this really ruthless inventory on my time and the people and the places and the things and the tasks. And it wasn't comfortable. It went on for about five weeks where I was just kind of like really in this hermit hole. And I and I didn't really like my answers to where my time had gone or what I had invested in. And I think that's one of the really hard gifts of being unwell is that you constantly kind of have to question in this way or reconcile in this way with the reality that our time here is quite finite. It's not infinite. We are not limitless beings with endless amounts of time. And when you deal with illness in such a constant way, where there's things just kind of popping up all over the place, you're constantly reminded of this. And so I've been sitting with this question of how do I want to spend my time and letting it really marinate inside of me. And it's the one I'm bringing into the start of 2026. And I could share so much more around the medical stuff that I went through. Last year, tumor in my jaw that is benign, that's wild, almost had complete reconstructive jaw surgery on my face. What? What? How does this even happen? Um, you know, growth behind my eye that's being monitored. Like just like it was just like one thing after another. And and I think that's also what I, you know, I I hate the kind of spiritual salad that we can put on life experiences because I don't think everyone needs to or has to. And oftentimes I don't think it's appropriate. And I can see when I do it inside myself, sometimes it's just a way to soften what is really stingy and hurtful for me. And so when I look back at those experiences, I I can know that I'm a little bit doing a spiritual salad making by saying it's it's when I needed to really question and really be honest with myself about where I was putting my time and my energy and the resource of my body and my body's wisdom. And um it's why I've been quite uh recluse and silent, not just on the podcast, but everywhere in my life, I've done a little bit of a houdini and uh Is it houdini? I don't know. I've done a little bit of a disappearing act and it's been incredibly painful, but it's given me some potent answers around where I want to spend my time. So as I said a few moments ago about this kind of oxymoron being so deeply in the body, but also kind of this meta-awareness of the body that didn't feel disembodied. It kind of felt like my mind and my body were like on the same page. But while this was happening, I just found myself writing so much in a way that I haven't written in a really long time. And I think this is also because I just had this space to do it. I did this kind of disappearing act from so much of my life. And in that disappearing act, I just had this abundance of creativity, but also honesty and kind of like this purging energy through myself of like I want to just get rid of all these stories inside myself. Like I just I for me, I just want to write and write and write and just let this stuff go and move through me and come out in something different. So this year, while I was navigating all this, I had a few posts that went viral, and some of maybe, some of you maybe found me through them. Uh, some of you maybe haven't read them. Some of you maybe have found me through my writing, and some of you maybe have been following me along for a long time, but are familiar with my writing. But regardless, there were quite a few posts that had millions of views. And whenever this happens, at least for me, I I I write and I just kind of let it go. They had millions of views, and I won't say that growth metrics don't matter to me and be dismissive. They absolutely do. I want more people to read not only my work, but other work on embodiment and healing and intersectional feminism and trauma and all of these topics. So of course I was curious about why had this writing done really well. You know, I yes, I had stripped myself from so many social relationships and just gone super insular and kind of again disappearing act. So I was like, maybe that's why, you know, and really kind of in this writing thing. But then kept happening more and more and more. I really started to ask what is resonating, what is different about my writing now? And why do they land the way that they do? And I've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't think it was the words exactly. I think it was really where the words were coming from and and where they have been coming from lately for me. And the truth that I've come to is when you are in a deep relationship with your body and there's something actually happening in that relationship when you're paying attention to your body in the way that I had to and and I keep having to. The words that come from your body change and it comes from somewhere else. And there's less effort and more truth. The words aren't reaching for something, they're reporting from inside something. And this year, my relationship with my body has been intense. It's it's been demanding attention, and I've been listening, really listening, in ways that I always haven't had the privilege to listen. And this is what illness does. It puts you in conversation with your body, whether you want to be or not. And I promise you that I really didn't want to be. I really liked my kind of comfortable, juicy, sensual version of being in my body. And I didn't really like listening to all the other signs and statements that my body was was making to me. And I think because I did eventually turn to that and let go of this one relationship with my body and really accepted a new one. And I'm still in that process of acceptance. I think that's why the words landed differently. Because I wasn't writing about embodiment in in any type of concept way. I wasn't trying to teach embodiment. I was writing from inside a body that was going something. And this way the ideas weren't theoretical, they were, they were lived. And I think that people can feel that difference. Um, I know that I definitely can, and I'm sure that you can too, and that your body has the capacity to feel that difference when something's coming from the mind and being directed at you versus when something's coming from the body and it's it's resonating to you. When I wrote about women needing capacity, not calm, I was in the middle of finding what happens when your capacity gets tested. When I wrote about the cost of self-abandonment, I was learning in real time what my body would and wouldn't tolerate anymore. And all of my writing really came from that place from being in it, not above it. It was also writing that's all been pulled. I didn't feel like fit in the book I've been working on. But I wanted to bring this forward in kind of my first solo episode of the new year with you all, something that I'll be doing more of, to go a little bit deeper into some of that writing, to give it more nuance, to flesh it out. And also I I really believe that the written word and voice are two totally different experiences. I don't know if if you have this, but I can read something on paper and be moved by it. And I can listen to the author and their incantation and the resonance that the words have in their body and feel something so different. And so I thought I'd just spend a little bit of time talking about some of the concepts and the ideas from some of those posts that reached millions of you and just kind of flesh them out in a way that you can't on social media or is really hard to do on social media. I shouldn't say can't, it is possible. It just takes a lot of crafting and a lot of effort. So one of the pieces of writing that did really well was a piece around how calm is a con. And I didn't mean that as just a catchy phrase. I was trying to articulate something I see all the time, as something I've seen in my practice as a therapist, in my own life, in my friends, and in the people around me. And but also something I see in the wellness industry or the longevity industry. I'm not sure which one to use anymore there. They kind of merge into the same thing for me. Both sell this image of central nervous system regulation as serenity, as peace, as calm. I'm sure you've come across the branding with the woman in the white linen meditating at sunrise, unbothered. And the message that's really there is if you do yoga or Pilates now, drink enough green juice, regulate your nervous system correctly, journal your intentions, you'll arrive at this like calm place. And calm is like really presented as the goal. Calm means you've healed. And calm means I'm disassociated usually, or like suppressing something. I mean, I obviously, yes, do have moments of calm but and true and authentic, but for myself, so much of my journey was actually learning to break the calm in my body, to break the ice that was keeping everything frozen underneath, and to have the courage to keep chipping away, and the courage to step into conflict, and the courage to step into repair, and the courage to not just kind of keep everything under the surface. It's okay. And and that's been my journey, and it is continuously my journey in a place where I constantly have to grow because I, you know, calm is is how in my conditioning as a cis heterosexual female. That's what I've been taught I need to do. So taught I I need to perform. But my training tells me that the nervous system wasn't designed for perpetual calm, as I've kind of named. It's designed actually to move and to be fluid and to go up and down and titrate and all of these kind of spiral. And it's designed to move and titrate and be fluid and to mobilize and to fight and to flee, to rest, to connect. The nervous system is intended to fluctuate. The goal from a nervous system perspective has never been to flatline your arousal or your activation into serenity. The goal from a nervous system perspective or polyvagal theory perspective has always been to have capacity. Capacity is the ability to feel everything without collapsing, to be activated and trust that you can come back down. That's resilience, you know, the ability to be water, to not be ice, throw a firework up to like crack the thing so you can come out and say the really scary thing and then get scared and go back under the ice. Like that's that's not the goal. The goal is to be fluid. The reality is that this narrative, the theory, the hypothesis that I've come to is that so much of this narrative of calm being the goal when psychological theory, nervous system work, polyvagal theory shows us that capacity is actually what we're looking for. But my loose theory, and so take it as you want, leave it if it doesn't resonate, if calm, serenity, or peace are presented as the optimal nervous system state or place of healing, then we're more manageable. Because we won't break the ice and say the hard thing. We won't move like water away from situations that are hard from us. We we won't titrate. We'll stay calm and and manageable because calm women don't make demands. So I'm sure we've all heard or been told at some time in our life to calm down. And it's very commonly said to those who identify as female that they need to calm down or don't be so reactive, or you don't want to be seen as crazy. That's why for me, the whole motive of being calm, being presented as the goal is just the wellness version of saying to women you're being hysterical and this is the way not to be. And so the instruction to regulate, to soothe yourself, to be less reactive, for me, it's not neutral, it's quite gendered. And women have always been told we're too much. So when I wrote that post, I I know that it it may have come across quite cute. And uh I think a lot of my my writing on the surface, obviously I'm I'm biased. It's my work, I can never see from the outside, but I try to to write in this way that it's palliatable. And so you can get the concept and it engages, but there is actually something underneath that's much more meaty or chunky and challenging to digest. And so that post, I actually meant it quite politically that B that shaking the foundations of this constant messaging in wellness culture and longevity culture that we need to be calm or that calm is some type of goal is actually keeping us manageable when. Which is also leading us to be complacent when quite literally the the earth is on fire. And I don't know how helpful being constantly calm is to the crisis in our environment and our world around us. Having capacity, I think, is probably much more helpful for not only our individual lives, but our collective lives. And if we have capacity, we can also hold how we're all interconnected. So I want to share a little bit more about that piece of writing because it's really been something that took me a really long time to to alchemize and make sense of and digest that all this messaging, to be calm, had worked on me. It really did work on me. And that it had actually stopped me from growing my capacity as a human being to be with hard things not only in my personal life but my professional life, not only in my individual experience, but in the collective experience as well. Another piece of writing that did really well also had a little bit of a political twinge to it as well. And this one was about how your body isn't tired. It's tired of pretending. And I think that landed because because women know that that exhaustion, the kind that doesn't respond to rest, or you sleep nine hours and you wake up depleted. I know that type of exhaustion. Or the one where you take a vacation and you come back just as tired. This happens because it's not a physical fatigue, it's it's existential. And it's really the cost in my perspective of abandoning yourself to get through your day or your life. And I always say to my clients in like subtle, soft ways, never this directly that I'm aware of. I say something along the lines to get them to start thinking about what it takes them to perform, what it costs them to maybe say yes when they mean no, what type of exhaustion happens when they smile when they're breaking. And this is a way of starting to bring awareness to the enormous amount of energy that it takes to pretend and the body pays the bill. Like I could not believe something to be more true than that statement. And I see it all the time. People coming in and thinking they need better sleep or hygiene or supplements or maybe an antidepressant. I have no problems with those. Those are great things to try. And sometimes they really help. And that's all someone needs. But often what these people need that are right in front of me, and what I know I needed deeply is permission to stop pretending, to feel what they feel, to want what they want, to need what they need, no questions asked, and to just stop performing a life that they maybe even never chose, a life that they thought that they had to have to be good, to do it right, to be successful, to be happy. And so often we don't even question these things. And so this could be another question for 2026. Like, what do I actually want? Just a heads up, that's a hard one. And I wrote about this concept a lot while I was writing the book because again, if I go back to this kind of like oxymoron in the body, mind-body connection thing where it's like dual awareness almost. I really had to stop performing. And you can hear it in my voice even now. It was so uncomfortably challenging for me to just step back and say, Yeah, no emails are gonna get answered. I'm sorry, but like I'm not answering an email. It's it's not happening. I can't perform that I'm okay. Like I cannot do it, I will not do it, and there's going to be consequences for that, but I need to stop here. Like, I am not okay. I just need all of my energy to be on me being okay. And whatever energy I have left that actually feels rejuvenating and replenishing, I shall give. And that was such a hard practice for me because I had to be so ruthlessly honest about what actually felt good and what did not feel good, what felt deeply authentic and what didn't feel authentic. And have done practices like this in earlier in my life, but there is a certain combination of privileges that I had this time around where I could really full stop do it and just be like, no, I'm I'm not performing there, I don't have capacity, I can't do it, and so I'm not going to do it. And it's not easy. People were upset, feelings were hurt, relationships were broken, projections occurred, it was uncomfortable, it's still uncomfortable, but really allowed me to authentically know what it's like to just say the performance stops, mask is off, show is done, this is what it is, and I never want to go back to performing. I'm not here for it. No, no, thank you. So I wrote that post and it still surprises me how much the words resonated with people from a deeply true place. And if you ever find yourself um with the the uh the certain amount of privileges needed to try something like this, I highly encourage it. And like I said, this was kind of the first time it all aligned for me where I could do it in all areas of my life to just stop the performance. I learned a lot and benefited a lot from past times in my life where I was only able to enact that in my personal life or my romantic life. Um, but this time it was it was across the board. It's a bit different. And the last piece of writing that I just wanted to spend a little bit of time with is uh this piece that again didn't make it into the book, but really resonated with my audience was a piece about how we're told to self-regulate alone. The whole post was really about how we are handed all these tools by wellness or longevity culture, breath work, meditation, journaling, polyvagal theory, and how we're told, here's how your system works, now go fix it. And we're told this as if the body is a machine that needs better settings, and as if trauma or our intergenerational history or personal circumstances are just a glitch to be optimized away. But I wrote this post because the whole self-regulating thing, and I mean, there's so much depth here that we could go into. I could do like a multi-podcast series on this, and I'm not going to, so to keep that in mind. I'm not like just touching the surface here, but there's so much research that hasn't been shared around the importance neurobiologically, how we're wired for co-regulation and how our nervous systems actually aren't designed to regulate in isolation. They're designed to regulate in connection through eye contact, through voice, through the felt sense of another person. I know, because it's my experience for a large part of my life there, there really wasn't anyone safe to co-regulate with. And so I deeply know what it's like to hear, well, co-regulating is the thing that heals, and to not have anyone to do that with. But what I love about this research is that there's a lot of beautiful nuance to it. We can listen to the sound of someone's voice, like maybe a meditation teacher or an author in an audiobook, and actually get some of that co-regulation. We also actually get a lot of it from nature, from animals. I'm a big animal person and a huge advocate for the role that dogs have in PTSD healing. If you're unaware of that research, I highly recommend you check it out. I definitely fully believe yes, I did a lot of therapy around my experience of PTSD, but I think the thing that really um moved the needle for me was my pup and having an animal that was so attuned to me that the minute I started to go into a flashback or flashback either visual or sensation in the body, that dog was licking my feet, laying on them, barking, doing all types of crazy things to get me into the present moment. And I definitely know that changed how eventually and I definitely know that over time, that interruption eventually changed how I reacted to my PTSD symptoms and allowed me to really break a pattern because it slowed it down. And the dog's presence made me more conscious. And again, there's lots of research on this, go check it out. But I say this because we can often get a little bit caught in like, well, I don't have someone to co-regulate with. And to that I say, doesn't have to be someone. Doesn't have to be. Can be an animal, nature, a voice, give it a go. And I say it like that, and I so strongly believe in this because we never fully outgrow the need for co-regulation. Co-regulation is not childish, it's not codependent, it's not needy, it's biological. And unfortunately, our very individualistic and capitalist society has pathologized it. We've made self-sufficiency the highest virtue, and there's so many reasons why we've done this. And unfortunately, no amount of breath work erases the ache of being unsupported, and you can't resource yourself out of relational poverty. We've made self-sufficiency the highest virtue, but unfortunately, there are so many things that we can't do ourselves. Breath work can't erase the ache of being unsupported every single time. You can't resource yourself alone out of your deepest pain every single time. I think that's why this writing resonated with so many of you. Because a lot of women have been told that they can do it on their own and that they should do it on their own and being and asking for support means that they're weak or codependent or needing. And that's simply just not true. But if the tools aren't working, it's because you weren't supposed to use them on your own. And I think that's a really important thing to just hold and be curious about. You could even take that question to 2026 around like what is mine to hold and what do I need to be held in? Beautiful question. Beautiful question to sit with throughout the rest of the year or some amount of time in the coming year. But I don't know about setting intentions for the start of this year. I don't know if that's something that works, but I do believe in being in a process of self-inquiry and holding ourselves to questions, big questions, important questions. And for you, that might not be a question of how you want to spend your time. It could be something totally different. But being in that process continuously of self-inquiry and looking at our values and questioning them and being okay for them to change and to shake them and be like, actually, not a value. Is so incredibly important and so potent specifically at the start of this new year. When we look back over 2025, can it be a question that we hold for ourselves as a point of inquiry that maybe leads us through the next 30 days or the next year or five years or whatever that is for us? But I will invite you to find a question that's maybe been stirring inside of you that brings some of that stinginess that you can find in your experiences of 2025 and to hold it close. This question of really what's mine to hold and what do I need help being held in came forward for me. And this diagnosis coincided with a dear friend of mine passing away. And those two things intercepted at the specific moment where I made the choice to release or to surrender, to release my role as the therapist to many of the clients that I'd been working with. And it wasn't an easy uh choice at all. It was really challenging for me and and heartbreaking and sad and confusing because I wanted to still be there. I love these clients. I I love the work that we were doing and their progress and commitment and not being able to see something through for me is a really sore, tender wound. I I like beginnings and I like ends and I like them to be clean and caring and held with an integrity and a sacredness. And so it wasn't in my plan to have to kind of just pivot my whole professional life because my personal life and what my body needed was so much care, and my heart needed so much care as I also grieved. When this happened, when I had to make this choice, and I was told you'll need eight weeks off work, and you know, this amount of time before you'll be able to speak, and we think, you know, one hour of work a week, or and we think, you know, one or three clients a week for the first X amount of months made me feel very ruthless around what is my capacity? Who can I hold, you know, take care of who can I hold? Who's what is my capacity? I say that not in a meaning of like which of my clients do have capacity to hold. That's not what I'm referring to or alluding to at all. More of like what is my capacity to give? And this led me to really honor this pull that I had been feeling towards something different for a while. And it was a pull toward the collective, toward reaching more people, even if it's not as deep in or in the same way. There's something about this moment that we're navigating right now, but what's happening in the the world collectively that makes me want to cast a wider net, even if that means that I can't have the same depth that I've once had with my clients. And and I I don't think if those two events hadn't coincided at the same time, this was a friend to me that really embodied community and generosity and care. If that loss and that grief hadn't happened right at a moment where I found myself in this vast reckoning of like, what does it mean for me to have all this time away from using my voice and my face and what does it mean for my future and and all these questions for me to have really sat in those questions with the depth and the time that I needed to get the clarity of answer that I've that I've come to. And I'm really excited, even though it's been really scary to close down in some ways my private practice. It still exists. It's just very small and very minimal, and that's intentional so that I can put my energy into writing the book that hopefully you one day will hold in your very own hands and your eyes will translate into sensations in your body and you'll read, but also into the podcast that hopefully spotlights more and more individuals who have inspired my embodiment or I feel deep resonance with, or I think of something really unique to share, but also into embody. Embody is my upcoming course. We have a January cohort and a May cohort, and we essentially spend 14 weeks together in community, really untangling all the stories inside our bodies so that we can rewrite the story of our body. And that's where I want to put my energy right now. That's where I want to place my time. Not because individual work isn't valuable, it's so, so, so, so valuable. But because something in me is ready to shift, shift how I'm of service. So, so that's we're moving in the direction of. And for so long, my identity was organized around being the one who holds, the one who hears the hardest things, and there's something seductive about that role. Makes you feel essential, like you matter because you're needed. But I also found for me that it became a trap because when your worth is tied to being needed, you can't stop, you can't rest, you can't let anyone hold you because you're too busy being the holder. And that's one of the strange gifts of being sick is that I couldn't be the holder anymore, or maybe I could have continued to be, but I saw the consequence of that on my own body, but also I saw the consequence on the on my own body, but also had the capacity to be honest that there were people out there that could hold better than me because I was holding so much for myself already. And I really broke through, I guess what you could say, the fawn response, which is something I write about in many of my posts, and the fawn response is all about being so attuned to others' needs that you lose l access to your own. And I think last year it was uh for me a really a deep process of becoming attuned to my own needs first, which all ties into that question. Being attuned to my own needs first. What I really didn't expect is that when I really attuned to my needs, when I stopped, um, capacity, real capacity for the people I love, for my life. What I didn't know is that when I put my needs first, and it's so ironic and obvious, but and I knew it, but I had never really felt it in my body. That that truth that when you put you and your oxygen mask on first, or just even your simple needs like water, your capacity changes in this really remarkable, fabulous way. And uh that's what's allowed me to keep some of my private practice going and to keep continuing to see clients and keep doing the work that I love so much as I develop this new different thing that's scary and challenging and unsure of, but really excited for that I hope reaches more and more people. So that reaches more and more people. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I hope that there are nuggets and pieces that sit out to you that can maybe bring you a deeper sense of connection to your body or curiosity or compassion as we start our new year. And I hope that this podcast gives you permission to not set any goals or intentions or kind of make a whole new you in 2026. I mean, if you do, that's amazing for you. I I love that for you. There's no judgment here, but I hope that this episode leaves you with more questions than you came here with, because I deeply believe that the road back home to ourselves, to our authenticity, to our body, to whatever we want to call it comes by practicing compassionate curiosity again and again and again. Because there's so much noise out there. There are so many stories, some of our own, some of some intergenerational, some families, some partners, some societies. There's so much. And it gets in there. We absorb it. We're like little sponges. And that's why it's so important to to practice again and again, being compassionately curious about the stories that we hear in our mind, the sensations in our bodies, and being really able to slow down, to pause, and to not be afraid of the answers that may arise when we ask ourselves these questions again and again and again. If you are interested in asking yourselves questions this year, you are obviously more than welcome to join my In Body program that will be beginning again in May. This is slow work, it's intentional work, it's not your regular kind of self-development course. It's really a guided process back into your body through meditations, movement, guest teacher, psychoeducational lectures, but also community calls with me. Through each module, you'll be invited to write the story of your body as you understand it right now. In each module, you'll be invited to explore maybe the relationship between your body and food, how romantic relationships have impacted the relationship you have with your body. We'll look at the story as it is right now, and through our time together, you'll be invited to unpick it, unpack it, explore it, and ultimately rewrite the story of your body. If something in this episode resonated with you and but embody feels like too much of a commitment, there's always my Substack where I keep writing about all the things mentioned here. They're longer reflections, the things that don't fit on Instagram. Substack is paid or freed. And I'd love to have you there. It's alijolie.substack.com. And if this episode meant something to you, I'd love if you'd share in. Again, thank you for being here, for listening, and for being in the process of finding and figuring out how to come home to your very own body. If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social group. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very own body.