The Stages I Moved Through While Healing My Nervous System (Through Somatic Healing)

For a long time, I thought healing would look like insight. Like understanding. Like finally “getting it.”

Instead, healing showed up in my body.

In waves. In stages. In ways, I couldn’t intellectualize my way through.

What I experienced wasn’t chaos. It was somatic unwinding — the nervous system releasing what it had been holding for years.

I want to name the stages I moved through, not as a formula, but as a reflection. Because if you’re somewhere in the middle of this process, you might think something is wrong with you.

There isn’t.

Stage 1: The Crying Stage — When Safety Returns

This was the beginning.

Not because I suddenly became sad,but because my nervous system finally felt safe enough to feel.

The crying wasn’t always tied to a story. Sometimes it came out of nowhere. Sometimes it felt excessive, exhausting, confusing.

Somatically, this stage is about thawing.

Frozen emotions — held back for years — finally get permission to move.

Tears are not emotion. They are discharge.

This wasn’t weakness. This was my body saying: “I don’t need to hold this anymore.”

Stage 2: The Grief Stage — Mourning What Never Was

After the crying came grief.

Grief is different from sadness.

Sadness says: “This hurts.” Grief says: “This should have been different.”

This stage wasn’t about the present. It was about mourning:

• the safety I didn’t receive

• the protection that should have been baseline

• the care that never arrived

Somatically, this stage recalibrates expectations. Hope-based survival strategies collapse.

This is where many people think they’re regressing.

They’re not.

Grief is integration, not breakdown.

Stage 3: The Rage Stage — When Boundaries Come Online

This stage is deeply misunderstood — especially for women.

Rage doesn’t come from dysregulation. It comes from safety.

Only when my system no longer needed to appease did anger arrive.

This wasn’t explosive or chaotic. It was clear. Hot. Grounded.

Somatically, this stage looks like:

• clean sympathetic activation

• voice without shaking

• “no” without explanation

• anger without panic

Rage is grief with direction.

This is where people-pleasing died. This is where self-protection returned.

Stage 4: The “Laughing Maniac” Stage — Energy Comes Back

This stage surprised me.

Suddenly, there was laughter. Absurdity. Playfulness. Moments of feeling almost too alive.

To someone who doesn’t understand somatic healing, this can look unstable.

It’s not.

This is life force returning.

Somatically, what’s happening:

• trapped energy releases

• dopamine comes back online

• the nervous system remembers pleasure

  
  

Joy after trauma often looks chaotic before it looks calm.

This stage is the body realizing: “I survived.”

Stage 5: The Calm Stage — Regulation & Capacity

This is where I am now.

And it’s important to say this clearly:

This is not numbness. This is regulation.

The signs were subtle but profound:

• anxiety dissolved

• hard conversations no longer made me sweat

• my body stayed present during conflict

• no more nervous system hijack

Somatically, this is ventral vagal dominance. Flexibility. Capacity.

I can now:

• feel without flooding

• speak without appeasing

• stay without dissociating

  
  

Peace isn’t the absence of feeling. It’s the presence of capacity.

Why Somatic Healing Made the Difference

Talk therapy gave me insight. Somatic healing gave me release.

My body didn’t need more explanations. It needed to:

• complete interrupted survival responses

• discharge stored energy

• renegotiate safety

That’s why healing came in stages — not ideas.

One Last Truth

These stages aren’t linear. They’re spiral-based.

You may revisit grief — softer. Anger — clearer. Joy — deeper.

But you won’t return to the beginning.

Your nervous system has learned something irreversible:

You are safe in yourself.

And once the body knows that, everything else reorganizes.

This is it for today.

With the outmost love from the deepest corner of my heart.

Liefs,

Eny