What If This Year Was Simply About Coming Home to Yourself And Loving Yourself More?

On nervous system safety, embodied care, and the quiet work of coming home to yourself

As we step into 2026, I find myself returning to this question, not as an invitation to add one more thing to your list of resolutions or self-improvement projects, but as a deep inquiry into what might become possible if you stopped waiting to become someone else before you could offer yourself love and care.

When I speak about loving yourself, I’m not talking about using affirmations, positive thinking, or trying to convince yourself that everything is fine when it doesn’t feel that way. I’m talking about a grounded, practical form of love that you can choose to offer yourself when you’re facing difficult situations and life challenges. There are countless opportunities to practice giving yourself this kind of love: when you’re dysregulated, when you’ve been activated for hours and can’t seem to settle, when you’ve dissociated through half the day without even realizing it, or when you’ve snapped at someone you care about because your nervous system was already overwhelmed before the conversation even began.

This is the kind of love that helps us most in those moments—a love that creates real change in the body and the nervous system, and that doesn’t require you to be different, better, or more healed than you are right now, in this moment.

The Conditioning We're All Carrying

Most of us learned early that love was something we had to earn through being good enough, doing enough, achieving enough, working hard, or fixing whatever was supposedly broken or unacceptable in us. All of our habits and habitual ways of being developed as adaptive strategies to all the experiences we have lived through, not as indications that something is wrong with us or as definitions of who we are, yet we internalized the belief that we needed to transform ourselves into some ideal version before we could be worthy of our own care and attention. That love was conditional on meeting certain standards or overcoming certain struggles or no longer having the nervous system patterns that developed as adaptations, even though the more we can accept these patterns and be with them without judgment, shame, or pressure, the more they can unwind and transform on their own as life moves forward.

This conditioning runs deep in our bodies and nervous systems, not just in our thoughts. It's held in the way your shoulders tense when you feel like 'you're not doing it right', in how your breath becomes shallow when someone seems disappointed in you, in the shame that floods through you and your posture collapses when you can't do something you think you should be able to do by now. It's there in every moment you override your body's signals for rest, play, or connection because you've learned that productivity is more important than your needs, in every time you push through exhaustion because slowing down feels like failure or falling behind, in every conversation where you minimize your own experience because you've been taught that your needs are too much or asking for support is a burden or a sign of weakness.

Your nervous system absorbed these messages and organized itself around them. It learned to monitor constantly for signs that you weren't measuring up, to brace against anticipated criticism or rejection, to shut down your needs before someone else could dismiss them. These patterns aren't mistakes or flaws in your nervous system. They are the result of intelligent adaptations to environments where your authentic needs and feelings weren't safe or welcome or met with the deep care they always deserve.

Through decades of studying various forms of nervous system regulation and supporting people in their healing process, I've learned that our nervous system cannot regulate through more pressure, more judgment, more demands that you be different than you are. It doesn't come into balance by adding shame about your patterns on top of the patterns themselves. And your nervous system definitely won't find its way home to homeostasis when the underlying message you're unknowingly sending it is that, home isn't available until you've changed enough to deserve it.

How We Come Back To Regulation

Your body finds its ease when it experiences something fundamentally different than the conditions that created dysregulation in the first place. It settles when it receives the message, not through words but through felt experience, that it's safe enough to let go of the protective strategies that once kept you alive but now keep you stuck in patterns of activation or shutdown or cycling between the two.

Regulation naturally happens when you notice you're getting activated in a conversation and instead of pushing through or pretending everything is fine, you pause and acknowledge what's coming up for you in that moment. When you recognize you're heading toward burnout and actually rest before your body forces you into collapse. When tension starts building in your shoulders or your jaw and you take a moment to shake or breathe or simply notice and name what you are feeling rather than ignoring the signal until it becomes chronic pain.

These actions and responses may seem small, almost too simple to make a difference. And yet, each one of your responses is teaching your nervous system something profound and transformative. You're showing it that discomfort doesn't have to escalate into crisis before you pay attention, that your needs matter even when they feel inconvenient and even burdensome, and ultimately, that you're worthy of love and care exactly as you are, not someday when you've finally figured everything out.

This is what I mean when I invite to start loving yourself more. It's not an abstract concept of self-love that's been commodified and packaged and sold back to us as another thing we're failing at if we don't feel it consistently. I'm offering a new paradigm of self-love and self-care with concrete, embodied practices of meeting yourself with true acceptance and deep care in the moments when you're struggling most, when you're furthest from the person you think you should be, or when every part of you wants to judge or fix or force yourself into a different state.

What Changes When You Stop Pushing Yourself

I've watched this transformation happen many times, both in my own body and in the people I've supported over the years. When you stop trying to force your nervous system into regulation through willpower or discipline or the right technique applied with enough consistency, something shifts. This kind of deep transformation may not happen immediately, or all at once, but gradually, steadily, and in ways you may not even notice until you look back and realize how much has changed.

You start catching dysregulation earlier, when it's still manageable, when you still have access to your capacity to respond rather than just react. You notice the tightness in your chest before it becomes full panic, the fog of dissociation before you've been gone for hours, the irritability that signals you're heading toward burnout or conflicts before you've completely depleted yourself.

Your window of tolerance expands. Situations that would have overwhelmed you six months ago or sent you into shutdown for days become manageable. This is not necessarily always easy or comfortable, but it becomes something you can stay present with rather than needing to fight or escape. You find yourself able to tolerate difficult emotions without immediately moving to fix them or make them go away, capable of sitting with discomfort without collapsing into it or running from it.

The chronic tension you've been carrying in your body for years starts to release, not because you've been doing enough stretching or massage or bodywork, though those can certainly help (as long as they're not suppressing what's expressing itself through those tension patterns), but because your nervous system finally feels safe enough to let go and relax. The patterns that organized around protection and survival gradually unwind as they're no longer necessary, as your system learns through repeated experience that there are other options available now, that regulation is possible, and that you can come home to yourself even after being lost in dysregulation.

This is the transformation we can each experience through care rather than force, through attunement rather than override, through working with your nervous system rather than against it. It's not the dramatic before and after story that gets celebrated in our culture of quick fixes, bio-hacking, and total transformations. It's much quieter than that, more subtle, often invisible to people who don't know what to look for. But it's also more sustainable, more genuine, more rooted in the actual reality of how your body heals and how nervous systems return to balance.

The Practice of Listening

One of the most radical things you can do for your nervous system this year is simply start listening to what it's telling you instead of overriding those signals because they're inconvenient or don't fit into your schedule or seem like they're asking for too much.

Your body is always communicating with you through sensations, through impulses to move or rest or reach out for connection, through the quality of your breath and the tension patterns you're holding and the energy available to you in any given moment. These signals are information about what you need right now, in real time, to stay within your window of tolerance and maintain some capacity to regulate and become more flexible over time.

When you ignore those signals for too long, or you consistently override what your body is asking for because you have to finish this project or meet that deadline or take care of everyone else's needs before your own, your nervous system has to escalate. The whisper becomes a shout, the gentle nudge becomes an urgent demand, the subtle discomfort becomes pain or illness or complete shutdown that you can't ignore anymore.

But when you start listening earlier, and you treat your body's signals as valuable information rather than inconveniences to push through, something different becomes possible. You rest before you're forced to collapse. You move when you feel activation building instead of waiting until you're so wired you can't settle. You reach out for support or connection and co-regulate with someone you feel safe with before you're drowning in isolation. You pause in the middle of your day just to check in with yourself and notice where you are and what you need, without trying to fix or change anything. Simply being present with yourself.

This practice of listening is how you build trust with your nervous system. You're showing it through consistent action that you're paying attention, that its communications matter to you, and that you're here and available even when things are difficult. This kind of trust is the foundation all wanted change builds on. Without it, all the regulation techniques in the world will only take you so far because underneath, your nervous system doesn't actually believe you're listening, doesn't trust that you'll respond to its needs, and is still bracing against the next time you'll override what it's telling you.

What This Year Could Hold For You

I'm not suggesting that 2026 needs to be the year you heal all your trauma or overcome all your habitual patterns or become the person you've always thought you should be. That kind of pressure and expectation of dramatic transformation is exactly what keeps your nervous system stuck in dysregulation because it's built on the premise that who you are right now isn't enough.

Instead, what if this year was simply about developing a different relationship with yourself, one practice at a time, one moment of noticing and naming what's here at a time, one choice to meet yourself with love and care instead of criticism? What if the goal was just to expand your capacity a little bit, to catch dysregulation a little earlier, to be a little more gentle with yourself when you're struggling, to lean into being flexible in your responses when you can, and to trust your body's wisdom a little more than you did last year?

This is how sustainable change becomes possible. Not through revolutionary overhauls or forcing yourself into a completely different way of being, but through small, consistent choices that gradually reshape your nervous system's baseline and resiliency. Through showing up for yourself again and again, especially in the moments when it would be easier to judge or force or ignore what's here right in that moment.

Maybe this year you start with just one regulation practice that feels right for your nervous system, something you can turn to when you're activated or shut down, something that helps even a little bit. Maybe you commit to those micro-moments of presence throughout your day, just pausing for a breath or two to check in with yourself, to notice what's happening in your body and name it out loud to yourself before you're completely overwhelmed or collapsed.

Maybe you start naming what's coming up for you in relationships instead of pretending everything is fine when it isn't, creating space for your nervous system to settle through transparency and vulnerability rather than performance and protection. Maybe you let yourself rest when you're tired instead of pushing through until you collapse, or move when you feel activation building instead of trying to sit still and force yourself to calm down.

These practices might not look impressive from the outside. They're not the kind of transformations that get you attention or applause. But they're the practices that fundamentally change how you live in your body, how you meet yourself in difficult moments, and how you navigate the inevitable stress and challenges that come with being human.

Supporting Your Journey With Herbal Allies

Sometimes your nervous system needs support beyond practices like breathwork and body-based regulation techniques. The daily accumulation of stress, the chronic activation or shutdown patterns you've been living with, the emotional intensity that comes with feeling what you've been numbing or avoiding, all of this can benefit from gentle, consistent support that helps your system metabolize what it's processing.

For almost 15 years now, I've been using herbal formulas from Orion Herbs as part of my own regulation practice. I'm careful about what I recommend because I know how vulnerable people are when they're struggling with dysregulation, how easy it is to reach for anything that promises relief. These aren't magic solutions, quick fixes, or bio-hacks. They're allies in the longer process of building regulation capacity and supporting your nervous system as it does the difficult task of unwinding old patterns and creating new possibilities.

There are two formulas I use daily and have watched support many people in their healing process over the years.

Emotional Ease is designed specifically for those moments when difficult emotions arise and threaten to overwhelm your capacity to stay present. It supports your nervous system in processing feelings without becoming flooded by them, which is exactly what we're cultivating through regulation practice. The formula includes gentle and safe herbs like motherwort, passionflower, and hawthorn that have been used for centuries to ease emotional distress while maintaining presence and clarity.

I take this when I feel emotions intensifying beyond my window of tolerance, when my chest gets tight and my thoughts start spiraling, when I need support metabolizing what's coming up for me without tipping into full dysregulation. It doesn't numb feelings or create artificial calm. It helps your system do what it's designed to do, which is process emotions and return to balance, and it provides extra support for that process when your nervous system's capacity is already stretched thin.

Soma Ease supports your body's ability to release the chronic tension that accumulates when your nervous system has been in protection mode for extended periods. When you've been activated or shut down for days or weeks or years, your body holds that charge in muscles, tissues, and fascia. This formula helps facilitate the physical release that regulation requires, the softening and letting go that becomes possible when your system finally feels safe enough to drop the armor it's been carrying.

I use this particularly when I'm aware of tension patterns that have become habitual, when my shoulders are up around my ears and won't come down no matter how many times I remind myself to relax, when my jaw is clenched even in sleep, when my body is showing me it's stuck in protection mode, with my chest bracing, and needs support returning to a more easeful baseline.

Both formulas are available in alcohol-free tinctures that you can take throughout the day as needed. They're not meant to replace the regulation practices that help your nervous system learn new patterns. They're support for that process, allies that make it a little easier for your body to do what you're asking of it as you unwind old adaptations and build new nervous system capacity.

I've been using them daily for years now, not because I'm constantly dysregulated or unable to regulate on my own, but because they support the ongoing practice of maintaining nervous system health while managing the demanding practice of being human and supporting others in their healing. They're part of how I take care of myself, how I resource my system so it has what it needs to stay resilient and flexible even when life brings challenges that test my capacity.

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Your Invitation

You don't need to have everything figured out before you can start caring for yourself. You don't need to wait until you've healed enough or changed enough or proven you're worthy of your own attention. The care you offer yourself right now, exactly as you are, with all your patterns and struggles and adaptations, is what makes healing possible in the first place.

This year, consider what might shift if you simply devoted yourself to listening to what your body is asking for, meeting yourself with love and care when you're struggling, building your capacity to stay present with what's difficult rather than forcing yourself to be different than you are. Don't look at it as a project or a goal or something else you need to accomplish, but as a practice of coming home to yourself, again and again, in all the small moments that make up your days.

The transformation you're looking for doesn't require you to become someone else or better than who you've been. It happens through showing up for the person you already are, treating yourself with the care and loving attention you've been waiting for someone else to provide, trusting that your nervous system knows how to heal when it finally feels safe enough to let go of the patterns that once protected you but now keep you stuck.

Your body has been waiting for this. Not for you to fix yourself or force yourself into some ideal state, but for you to simply show up with care and playful curiosity, to listen to what it's been trying to tell you, to offer it the support it needs to finally settle and soften and remember what regulation feels like.

That's how I invite to embrace this new year. Not as a process of transformation through force, but transformation through deep care. Not becoming someone new, but coming home to who you've always been underneath the protection and the performance and the patterns that kept you safe when you needed them to.

You already have everything you need. These practices and resources are simply here to help you remember, to support you as you find your way back to yourself, to remind you that you're worthy of your own love and care exactly as you are right now, in this moment, without needing to change a single thing.