I remember finding a real passion for fitness just before I turned 30. I’d gone through some significant life changes and, for the first time, I was in a secure enough place, both financially and relationally, to ask myself some much bigger questions. What do I actually want for myself? What would help me feel better? How can I look after my body? (What a blessing to be in a place to be able to ask these questions of myself!).
I booked a few personal training sessions in the hope of feeling stronger, and I absolutely loved them. Before long I found myself drawn towards Hyrox, CrossFit-style training and high-intensity sessions that left me completely exhausted, but somehow I felt more alive than ever. I began measuring a good workout by how breathless I became, how much I could lift or whether I finished feeling as though I’d emptied the tank entirely. I admired discipline, grit and determination. I’d never known my body was capable of these things and discovering that strength felt deeply empowering. Looking back now though through a trauma informed lens, I can see that my body wasn’t simply enjoying exercise. It was responding to something much deeper, and it’s such a valuable topic of conversation for anyone on a trauma recovery journey finding fitness.
Like many others who have experienced childhood trauma, I spent much of my early life disconnected from my body. Dissociation was such an ordinary part of my existence that I didn’t even know it had a name until much later. I wasn’t consciously ignoring my body’s signals; I simply hadn’t learnt or had the safety to hear them. My mind had become incredibly skilled at surviving, achieving, pleasing and over functioning, while my body stayed numb, and quietly carried everything that never had the chance to be felt.
High-intensity training helped me feel alive inside a body I hadn’t realised had been numb for much of my life. It gave me a sense of power, control and embodiment that I’d never experienced before. Looking back after everything I’ve learnt about trauma, I can see that my nervous system had spent decades preparing for danger without ever being able to complete the stress responses it was designed for. There was so much energy stored inside me, yet nowhere for it to go. Suddenly, with these new found gym workouts my body had somewhere to put it and I felt better than ever.
For that chapter of my life, this style of training was exactly what I needed. It was conscious activation after years of disconnection, and it helped me come home to myself in a way I hadn’t known was possible. Yet over the years something interesting began to happen. My love of movement didn’t disappear. If anything, it deepened. Yet the relationship I had with exercise slowly began to change alongside my trauma recovery, and it started teaching me something I hadn’t expected, that there isn’t one “right” way to move our bodies. That the movement we need depends on the nervous system we’re bringing with us that day / month / year.
Over the last decade, therapy has slowly helped me build a life that my nervous system can trust. Of course, recovery never happened solely in the therapy room, just as it never happened solely in the gym. It happened through financial stability, relationships that felt emotionally safe, creating a home that was secure and felt like mine, having enough time to rest occasionally, and slowly gathering enough internal resources to notice what my body had been trying to tell me all along.
Gradually, my mind and body stopped feeling like two separate people trying to steer the same ship. As they began working together rather than against one another, the way I trained naturally started changing too. For years I thought fitness was teaching me resilience, and in many ways it was. But I can also see that some of what I admired about myself wasn’t resilience at all. It was self-abandonment dressed up as discipline.
The fitness world often celebrates pushing through discomfort, ignoring excuses, digging deeper and proving what we’re made of. And whilst there can be growth in challenge, if you’ve grown up learning that your own needs don’t matter, that saying no isn’t safe or that your worth comes from enduring more than everyone else, then “push through” can become a very familiar and unhealthy motto. I know it did for me.
As a child, trauma disconnected me from myself in ways that left me helpless, hypervigilant and constantly scanning everyone else’s needs before my own. Later, fitness gave me something incredibly important that I’d been missing: power. But somewhere along the way I realised I was still overriding myself. The pattern had changed, but the relationship with myself hadn’t. Instead of abandoning myself for other people, I was abandoning myself in pursuit of becoming stronger, fitter and more disciplined. I wore exhaustion almost as a badge of honour. The fuller my diary, the harder the workout, the emptier the tank, the more successful (and safe) I felt. Not to mention all the comments I started to get on my physique, that affirmed I was strong and fit. It looked very different from childhood, but my body was still learning that safety and love came through self neglect and pushing beyond its limits. These days, in relation to my training I ask myself a very different question.
‘What pace does my nervous system need today?’
That single question has changed my relationship with movement more than anything else.
Sometimes I arrive at the gym planning to stay for an hour and leave after thirty minutes because that’s enough. Other days I stay longer because I genuinely have the energy to enjoy it and can feel it’s what I need. Some days I choose a busy class because my body needs activation, community and the release that comes from moving stored stress energy. Other days I train alone because solitude feels nourishing, or because the noise, lights and unpredictability of a class would leave my nervous system more overwhelmed than regulated.
Living with neurodivergence has only deepened the need for this curiosity. Sometimes my brain genuinely craves novelty, intensity and stimulation. Other days I need rhythm, predictability and quiet. Neither is more virtuous than the other, they’re simply different needs arising from the same nervous system. Changing things up when I need to could to some be seen as inconsistency, but for me it allows my fitness journey to be consistent alongside my overall health and wellness.
My Crohn’s disease adds another layer too. There are seasons where training hard genuinely helps me regulate. Moving my body reminds me of what it can do rather than only what it struggles with. Feeling strong gives me confidence and helps me work with stress hormones that might otherwise leave me feeling stuck. But there are other seasons when my body is inflamed, undernourished or exhausted. During those times, pushing harder doesn’t build resilience at all. It simply confirms to my nervous system that we’re still living in threat. I’ve had to learn that strength isn’t only measured by what I can push through, sometimes it’s measured by whether I can stop before my body has to stop me – even if the class instructor is yelling at everyone to go faster! (There’s nothing quite like finding the rush in doing what you need despite external pressures, and not feeling guilty about it!).
Finding that sweet spot is an ongoing conversation. Enough movement to support my mental and physical health and enough challenge to help me grow. But not so much that I accidentally reinforce the very survival patterns I’ve spent years trying to heal, or neglect the nourishment, recovery and gentleness my body also deserves.Every time I choose to listen and attune to my mind and body instead of override, I’m practising things trauma took away from me for a very long time. Consent. Autonomy. Trust. The belief that my own internal experience deserves to influence my choices. That might sound like an unusual thing to connect with fitness, but I suspect many people who have lived through trauma will recognise it immediately and understand the importance of it.
Trauma often teaches us that our bodies exist to endure rather than communicate. Maybe we ignore tiredness because there isn’t time to rest. Perhaps we dismiss hunger because someone else’s needs feel more important or because we need to conform or feel a sense of control. Or do we override discomfort because saying no has never felt safe. Eventually that relationship with ourselves becomes so familiar that we mistake it for discipline. There’s a whole industry and many fitness influencers capitalising off of this way of being! Yet sometimes overriding your body’s limits isn’t discipline at all. Sometimes, as it was for me, it’s survival wearing gym clothes, or a search for worthiness.
I often wonder how different the fitness world might look if we spoke more openly about nervous systems instead of simply motivation. What if, instead of asking everyone to train harder, we became curious about where their nervous system already spends most of its time, and tailored their workouts with that in mind. Some people live predominantly in freeze. For them, lifting weights, running, boxing or CrossFit might be exactly what their body needs to reconnect with its own strength and capacity. Others spend every day in fight-or-flight. Their nervous system is already flooded with stress hormones before they even walk through the gym door. For them, slower strength work, yoga, swimming, walking or simply stretching may be the thing that gently moves them back towards balance. Neither approach is better. They’re simply serving different nervous systems.
The same is true for neurodivergence, chronic illness, disability, menopause, caring responsibilities, grief or the countless other experiences that shape how we inhabit our bodies. A coach enthusiastically shouting encouragement across a gym floor may feel exhilarating to one person and deeply activating to someone whose body still responds to raised voices as a sign of danger. A busy class full of music and bright lights may feel energising for one person and overwhelming for another. None of those responses are wrong, they’re simply different stories being told by different nervous systems.
I’m not interested in convincing anyone to train the way I train but I do hope having these conversations may lead to people being curious about what might help them feel healthy and safe in terms of their fitness. Curious about what safety feels like in their own body, what activation feels like and whether the pace they’re living at is already reflected in the pace they’re exercising at. Because perhaps the most healing movement isn’t always the hardest one. It’s more likely to be the movement that gently nudges our nervous system back towards balance.
I’d love to hear how your trauma recovery or relationship to your nervous system has influenced your fitness journey over time. For me, fitness has gradually become less about changing or challenging my body and much more about coming home to it. I still lift weights often (when my body allows), I still love Hyrox and enjoy difficult sessions and feeling strong. The exercises themselves haven’t changed nearly as much as the relationship I have with them. I also love slow long walks (what a privilege to be able to do so!), and workouts that don’t leave me with nothing left in the tank.
I’m no longer trying to prove that my body can survive. I’m trying to build a relationship with it that neither my body nor mind wants to leave.
