I need to tell you about Claire. (Not her real name, but her story is 100% real.)
Claire was what you’d call a high performer.
Up at 5 am.
Trained like an athlete.
Managed a team of 14.
Ran a household with a toddler who thought sleep was a government conspiracy. 🤣
But here’s what scared me about Claire:
She couldn’t sit still.
Couldn’t take a moment to rest.
And even when she tried? Her body wouldn’t let her.
So, I asked her the obvious question:
“Claire, why do you operate like this?”
Her answer?
“I don’t know how else to feel safe, Pauline.” 💀
Let that sink in for a second…
Her sense of safety was LITERALLY tied to staying in constant motion.
And that’s when I realized what was happening:
Claire’s body had pulled the greatest “Uno Reverse” in history.
See, your body’s incredibly smart.
Train it? It builds more muscle.
Climb a mountain? It produces more red blood cells.
Cut yourself? It literally stitches your skin back together.
Adaptation is what it does best.
But here’s the problem:
It adapts to what hurts too!
Stress?
Pressure?
Overwhelm?
“No worries,” it says.
“We’ll just make that part of your routine.”
Put these into your system long enough, and your body starts thinking:
“Ah… so THIS is normal now. Cool. I’ll wire that in permanently.”
…
That chronic tension? Becomes normal.
That inability to switch off? Also normal.
That “Why do I feel numb when nothing’s wrong?” feeling?
You guessed it…
Also normal.
Continue feeding it to your body long enough…
And it becomes part of your baseline.
(You’d be shocked at how many successful business owners this happens to.)
On the outside, they look fine!
But beneath the surface…
They’re SLAPPING at the water like a drowning octopus, trying to stay afloat.
“Why do I feel numb?”
“Why can’t I just switch my brain off?”
“Why do I wake up exhausted after a full nights sleep?”
Simple.
Because they’re attempting to solve the problem the wrong way round.
Top-down instead of bottom-up.
Now, most people think they can “logic” their way back to normal…
But the nervous system doesn’t speak logic.
It speaks in sensation.
(That’s bottom-up solutions.)
The best results actually come from reverse engineering this approach.
The opposite of what mindset coaches teach.
And exactly what I teach inside NUMINOUS.
(My flagship program.)
Inside, clients learn how to:
✅ Regulate their systems in under 3 minutes
✅ Spot the sneaky “survival habits” keeping them stuck in hyperdrive
✅ Unhook the coping tactics that quietly reinforce burnout
Without spending years in therapy. 🤣
There’s more to it, of course.
As for Claire, she went from constant motion… to actually enjoying the stillness!
Want to learn how she did it?
Click the link to read more about Numinous.
I go WAAAAAY deeper into the science on the next page.
In Love and Harmony,
Pauline
