Body-First Healing Podcast

You're Not Lost, You're Changing: The Nervous System Reason Change Feels So Hard

• Britt Piper • Episode 45

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Lately you might catch yourself thinking, "I don't feel like myself anymore," and wondering what is wrong with you. In this deeply personal solo episode, Britt offers a different possibility: that not feeling like yourself is often exactly what growth feels like. She explores why change feels so disorienting in the body, why your nervous system can read even aligned, beautiful growth as danger, why becoming someone new almost always includes grief, and how small moments of stability can keep your body open to what is emerging instead of retreating to what is familiar. If you are standing in the tender space between who you have been and who you are becoming, this one will help you feel less alone in it.


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You're Not Lost, You're Changing

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Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week, I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing, you have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here.

Welcome & Introduction

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So today, you guys, we are talking about the topic of change. And I have a feeling that this episode is going to find many of you in the middle of it, just like myself. It's a timely episode for me because I am going through so much change right now in my life, which I will be sharing more about here soon. But yeah, just kind of reflecting for yourself. Okay, maybe your life looks different than it did a year ago. Um, you know, maybe your work is changing. Maybe you have stepped into parenthood, maybe your relationship has shifted, maybe you're healing in ways that have really altered your priorities, your boundaries, your values, and maybe even just the way that you see yourself or how you show up in the world. Or maybe nothing dramatic has really happened at all. And yet you can feel this pull still towards change. Like there's something inside of you that's kind of moving or rearranging itself beneath the surface, and you don't know what that is yet. So lately I've been having so many conversations with friends and clients and this community and family members about change. And I keep hearing kind of like the same version of the same sentence, which is, I don't feel like myself lately, or I feel really disconnected. I feel lost. And then we kind of chalk that up to, I don't know what's wrong with me. And these are sentences that I have been telling myself over the past couple of years. And every time I hear that sentence, I find myself wondering if we've been taught to misinterpret some of the most normal parts of being a human? Because what if feeling unfamiliar isn't always a sign that something is wrong? What if there are seasons where not feeling like yourself is exactly what growth feels like? And another way to look at it is what if the reason that you feel disoriented is because you've outgrown an older identity, but you haven't like fully stepped into your new one yet. Now, I know that for myself and for many of you, that's exactly the season that we are in. And I think that one of the things that our culture really kind of gets wrong about healing is that it presents transformation as if it's this beautiful, inspiring, empowering experience, right? We talk about things like awakening or expansion or about becoming the highest version of ourselves. But we rarely talk about what those things actually feel like while they're happening. Because if we're being honest, which is what I am here to do, expansion is almost always going to feel uncomfortable. And that's because growth is disorienting and healing can be profoundly lonely. And because the becoming that so many of us chase after is going to require you to let go of things that once felt familiar, even when those things were limiting you or holding you back. So you guys know I love analogies. If you're in the Body First Healing program or the somatic practitioner training, you know that I talk in analogies just as a way to make confusing concepts easier to digest. And when I think about change and transformation and growth, I always go back to the quintessential example of the caterpillar. Right? Just think about it. The caterpillar doesn't become a butterfly by adding something new. It becomes a butterfly through a process of dissolution. The structure that once defined that butterfly, it literally breaks down before something new can emerge. And as we often see in nature, nature understands this. And so does our own human nature, our nervous system. Yet somehow we are constantly surprised when our own transformations ask the same thing of us. So before I get on the soapbox, because I'm already there, with all that said, today I really want to talk about why change feels so hard and so disorienting in the body, why your nervous system often interprets this growth and this change as danger, why becoming almost always is going to include grief, and then how to create kind of like enough stability inside of these periods of uncertainty so that your body and your nervous system can stay truly open to what's emerging instead of retreating back to what's familiar.

When You Don't Feel Like Yourself

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Okay, so let's dive right in, guys, and let's talk about what it means if you haven't felt like yourself lately. I briefly touched into this already, but I just want to dive deeper. So again, those statements that I hear a lot, okay, the most common things that I hear from people during periods of change is some version of that same sentence, like, I don't feel like myself anymore. And sometimes it can get phrased as I feel lost, I don't recognize myself, I don't understand what's wrong with me, I thought I'd be happier than this, right? And just check in with yourself. Like, as I say any of those, do they feel familiar to you right now? But underneath all of those statements is really the same concern. Okay. There is a sense that something familiar has gone missing. And I think it's worth pausing here because we rarely stop to ask a really important question in this moment of change. And that question is: which version of yourself are you talking about? Are you talking about the version before the grief, before the healing, before motherhood, the version of you before the breakup, before the diagnosis, the boundary, right? Before you started questioning the life that you'd spent years building. Because often what we are mourning when we are making statements like that isn't ourselves. We are mourning familiarity. And this is because the nervous system develops an attachment not only to people and places, but also to identities. It becomes accustomed to like certain ways of moving through the world. And you can think about it in the ways that we play certain roles, how we tell certain stories about ourselves and about our lives, or we have kind of these expectations for how our life is going to go. We learn who we are in relation to our circumstances. And over time, those identities begin to feel permanent. But then life changes, or we change. And suddenly that identity that once fit no longer fits anymore. And so this is one of the reasons that growth can feel so disorienting. We tend to think of healing as adding something to ourselves, right? More confidence, more freedom, more worth or authenticity. But in many ways, healing is also a process of subtraction. We begin releasing these identities that were built around survival. And we stop performing roles that no longer reflect who we are or who we're growing into. And then when that happens, we kind of have to stop organizing our lives around those expectations. And so while transformation and growth and becoming, while all of that sounds beautiful in theory, it can actually feel incredibly uncomfortable because there is a period where the old identity is dissolving and the new identity hasn't fully formed yet. And in this season, it's like you're no longer who you were, but you're not yet fully who you're becoming. Right. And that in-between space that we're talking about right now can feel lonely and it can feel uncertain and almost like you've lost your footing. And this is where I feel like a lot of people become frightened. They assume that because they feel disconnected from that old version, that that means that they must have taken a wrong turn, right? Something must be wrong. So instead, they start searching for the person that they used to be and they try to get back to how they felt before. But this is the challenge. What if the goal isn't to go back? Like what if the reason that you don't feel like yourself is because the version of yourself that got you here isn't the version that's meant to take you where you're going? And what if the discomfort that you're feeling isn't evidence that you've lost yourself and it's instead just evidence that you're changing. So I think that what I would want you to hear most clearly today is that if you haven't felt like yourself lately, that doesn't automatically mean that you're lost. It may simply mean that you're standing in that space between who you've been and who you're becoming.

The Nervous System & Change

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Okay, so let's talk the science. Okay. One of the most important things to understand about the nervous system is that it's not organized around happiness, right? It's not a thinking system, it's not a cognitive rational system, it's a feeling system, but it's also a predictive system. So it is organized around prediction. And it works in tandem with your brain to constantly attempt to answer the question of what's likely going to happen next. And so that means that every experience that you've ever had becomes data that helps your nervous system to make that next prediction. Now, this map helps you to navigate the world efficiently because it reduces uncertainty. And it tells your system what to expect, how to respond, how you've survived in the past, and where to kind of direct its energy. Now, one fascinating thing is that your nervous system doesn't necessarily care whether the map is quote, healthy. Okay. It cares whether the map is familiar. And this is why people can remain in relationships that no longer serve them. It's why we can often stay in jobs that we've outgrown or kind of continue repeating patterns that we consciously want to change. That familiarity creates predictability. And predictability often feels safer than possibility. Now, from a nervous system perspective, your brain is constantly engaged in something called predictive processing, right? Similar to the nervous system. So rather than experiencing reality as it is, your brain is continually making predictions or assumptions about reality and then comparing those predictions to incoming information. So in other words, your brain is not simply observing the world, it is anticipating it. Now, why does this matter? Or why is this beneficial to bring up? It matters and it's beneficial because it saves energy, it reduces uncertainty, and it increases the sense of control that we have. And if you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, all of those things are incredibly valuable. Like thousands of years ago, uncertainty could literally kill you if you didn't know where your food would come from, whether a predator was nearby, or whether your tribe would accept you, then your survival was genuinely at risk. So the nervous system evolved to prefer the known. Now, the challenge today is that this same mechanism, this predictive mechanism, follows us into modern life. Now, uncertainty doesn't usually involve predators, but it does involve growth. It involves stepping into a healthier relationship or finally setting the boundary or leaving that career, right? Or allowing yourself to want something different. And even when those changes are deeply aligned, the nervous system often reacts as though something dangerous or threatening is happening. And so this is why many people experience, um, for instance, anxiety right before a breakthrough, or why doubt often gets louder when you're moving in the right direction. I think about this honestly a lot because over the past, I feel like several years, I've spoken openly about just really fostering and creating like a slower life. I've talked about both in my book and on the podcast and on social media, about moving away from constant productivity and listening to my body more deeply and choosing depth over speed. And yet, some of the biggest changes of my life have happened during that same period. So when I was writing a book, when I was launching my podcast, when I was building the Somatic Practitioner Institute. And so just changing the structure of my life in ways that I never could have imagined a few years earlier, you know, from the outside, those things might look exciting. They might even look, quote, successful. But every meaningful change and growth opportunity that I went through, even the beautiful ones, they came with so much uncertainty, you guys. And that meant that every single one required letting go of this older version of myself, like shedding that older version of myself. So what I have learned is that the nervous system doesn't automatically celebrate those moments. It kind of often grieves them first, because every new chapter asks you and asks the nervous system to release that map that it's been using for years. Now, the beautiful thing about the brain and neuroplasticity is that the brain remains capable of change throughout your entire life. Right. So new experiences will create new neural pathways. New choices will create new possibilities, new ways of relating to yourself. They create entirely new internal landscapes. But all that to say, neuroplasticity requires repetition. It requires lived experience and giving the brain enough evidence, okay, not evidence, not just thought, not just insight, not just visualization, that this new reality, this new choice, this new possibility is safe enough to become familiar. And so this is why healing and growth, it's not a single breakthrough moment. It is the gradual process of teaching your brain and your body that a different future is possible for you. And I think this is not just I think, I know, because I see this so much in the Body First Healing program when people are coming in. I think this is where many people become discouraged too soon. And the reason for that is because they expect themselves to immediately feel comfortable inside of a life that they've never lived before. They expect themselves to instantly trust this version of themselves that they only recently met. Okay. But that confidence is often the result of repetition, not the prerequisite for it, right? It comes through the experience, not before the experience. And that's because, again, the brain learns by doing, the nervous system learns by experiencing. And every time you take a step toward the life that is calling you, you are giving your system another piece of that evidence that this new reality can actually become your home, your

Your Body Knows Before Your Mind Does

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base. Now, you guys know this would not be a body first healing podcast episode without bringing in somatics here. Okay. So I just want to speak briefly about how to know through your body that it's time for change. Okay. So one of the things that I've noticed over years of doing this work is that the body often knows something is changing before the mind is ready to admit it. Right. So someone might come into a somatic session saying, again, like, I'm, I don't know what's wrong with me. That's usually how it starts, right? And then they start describing their life. And the job that they've worked for 10 years suddenly feels drainy, or the relationship that they've been trying to make work, it now feels heavier all the time, or the house that they were excited to buy, it no longer feels like home. And they keep assuming that the problem is them because nothing looks wrong from the outside. And I've experienced this myself, right? There have been, and you probably have too, there have been seasons where I kept trying to talk myself into something that my body had already made a decision about. So it's like my mind was saying, like, be grateful. This is good. This is what you've always wanted. Meanwhile, I would notice that I was procrastinating on things that I normally felt energized by. I would notice a constant tightness or constriction in my chest. I would notice that every conversation about the future felt exhausting instead of exciting. And this was my body giving me information long before I was really willing to listen to it. And so this is what I think somatic work does so beautifully. It helps us to pay attention to the information beneath the story. Because sometimes the question isn't, what should I do? Sometimes the question is, what is my body already telling me? What is my nervous system already telling me? And so for yourself in this moment, I'll just invite you to consider change that you are confronting right now in your life, right? These alternate paths that you are considering for yourself. When you imagine one of those paths, do you feel yourself leaning forward or pulling back? Does your breathing deepen or does it become more shallow? Do you feel more energy afterward or less? Okay, these aren't magical answers by any means, but they are data. And another thing I just want to kind of touch in here is that I have learned that fear and truth often feel very different in the body. Okay. Fear tends to feel frantic, urgent. It wants answers immediately. It wants certainty and relief. Whereas truth is usually so much quieter. It's almost like the thing that you've known for six months, maybe six years, but you keep talking yourself out of. Okay. It's like the conversation that you know you need to have, the boundary that you know you need to set, or that you keep postponing. I think a lot of people are waiting for like some giant lightning. Bolt of clarity. But in my experience and what I've witnessed in doing this work for so long is that that's rarely how it happens. Okay. More often the body just keeps repeating itself. And so it's going to show up with the same tension, the same exhaustion, the same longing or knowing until eventually the question becomes whether we are willing to

Creating Stability During Uncertainty

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listen. Okay, friends. So in closing, I want to give you just some tangible steps for navigating seasons of change. Okay. So the question here is like, how can we support ourselves during a season of change? I think that one of the most important things that I've learned about navigating transformation and healing and expansion and growth and change, and however we want to say it is that the nervous system doesn't need certainty as much as it needs familiarity. Okay. So unfortunately, when life feels uncertain, most of us go looking for answers, right? Like we want that reassurance. We want guarantees. I remember recently crying to my mom and being like, I just wish I had a crystal ball. And of course, she's like, sweetheart, don't we all? Right. We want to know exactly how everything is going to work out. But as we all know, change rarely offers us certainty. Now, what we can offer ourselves, though, are small moments of stability that help us stay grounded while the larger picture is still unfolding. And I think this is where sometimes we can kind of overlook the power of simple routines and rituals. They create familiarity and that continuity and that sameness that really regulates the nervous system, that helps the nervous system to settle and breathe for a moment. Okay. These small little moments of sameness remind the nervous system that not everything is changing all at once. So when you think about kind of micro routines or small moments of sameness, it could be as simple as making the same morning cup of coffee. It could be a short walk that you do after dinner every single night. It could be having the same waking and sleeping cycles or times, or five minutes sitting outside before you go looking at your phone. These things might seem really insignificant compared to like the magnitude of the life changes that you might be facing, but biologically they really matter because the nervous system finds comfort, it finds regulation, it finds reprieve and safety in repetition and familiarity. Okay. It's creating more predictability in the system, which again allows the system to breathe. Now I've noticed this play out in my own life, like during some of the biggest seasons of change that I have ever experienced, where I was changing the shape of my personal life and really stepping into versions of myself that I had never met before. There was so much uncertainty. There was so much change. And yet, what grounded me wasn't having all the answers. And I actually had like none of the answers. It wasn't knowing like where everything was headed. Instead, it was the smaller things. It was my morning coffee, my gym time, my reading, my nightly routine with the babies. Like this small but consistent handful of rituals reminded my body and my nervous system who I was when everything else felt unfamiliar. And these tiny signals communicated you're here, you are safe, keep going. Right? So when everything around you feels uncertain, these routines become places to land. They become evidence. I know we keep talking about experience and evidence. They become the evidence that there is still something steady beneath your feet. So if you're in a season of change right now, just remember you don't need to have a perfect plan. Okay. You don't need to have every answer. You don't need to know exactly who you're becoming. Instead, I would encourage you to ask yourself a simpler question of what helps me to feel connected to myself? What helps my body remember who I am and then commit to those things with consistency?

Closing Reflection

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Okay, my friends. So as we come to the end of this episode, I just want to leave you with one final reflection. Okay. This is a mantra I've been reminding myself of lately, and I just feel like it would benefit some of you and would support you. And it's that change is not a detour from your life. Change is life. Everything in nature changes. You guys know I love talking about nature because we're part of nature, right? The seasons change, the tides change. Even as I'm talking about it, I'm feeling some of those waves of emotion. We talk about how forests burn and regenerate, how rivers carve entirely new paths through landscapes, right? Our cells die and regenerate. And even stars, I've been studying the stars lately, even the stars themselves are constantly expanding and collapsing and transforming. Like there is nothing alive that remains exactly as it is. And yet, when change arrives in our lives, we often interpret it as evidence that something has gone wrong. But what if this season isn't asking you to hold on tighter? Gosh, what if it's asking you to trust yourself more deeply? Gosh, I really know that that can be difficult when you're standing in the middle of uncertainty in such the season that I am in right now. And I know that it can be difficult when you don't recognize yourself and when you're grieving what was, and when you're exhausted from adapting, and when the future feels really unclear. But the truth is that every version of you that exists today was once unfamiliar too. Just think about that. Like there was a version of you that had never fallen in love before. There was a version of you that had never become a parent before, or a version that had never survived heartbreak before, that had never done the hard thing before. And yet, somehow, step by step, season by season, you became her or him. And so this season of change is no different. Okay. I promise you, I promise you it's not. The path ahead, it might not be visible. And I think of it like the ocean. I've been journaling a lot and I've been on the coast a lot lately during some of my solo trips. And I'm always sitting on a beach journaling about how there's this horizon in front of me, and I can't see what's on the other side. But just because I can't see it, doesn't mean that I'm lost. And so in these moments, when we feel change, it might just mean that we're growing. Well, this was a deep one, guys. As you can tell, it's personal. So I hope that this landed so well in your heart today, so well in your body. Thank you for spending time with me. Remember, as always, that if this episode resonated with you, you can share it with someone who might need the reminder that change is not something to fear, but something to move through with compassion, with patience, with trust. And if you're looking for support as you navigate your own season of change, remember my book, Body First Healing and the Body First Healing Program, are always here to walk alongside you. Okay. Send me a message on Instagram, guys. Let me know how this episode landed. Share it, share it in the stories, tag me. This work is not about becoming someone else. Okay. It's about creating enough safety in your body that you can become more fully you. So until next time, be gentle with yourself, be gentle with your nervous system. Trust the season that you're in. And I will see you next week here on the Body First Healing podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week. And until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.