How I Stopped Hitting the Wall

Last week my throat started to get scratchy.

My first thought was: I'm getting sick.

And then I caught myself. I redirected. I don't have to get sick. I might be just fine. What does my body need right now?

That question used to not be available to me. For many years I would find myself sick, or in the middle of an emotional crisis, or blowing up at my kids, and wonder how and why it kept happening. I couldn't see it coming. By the time I was aware of it, I had already hit the wall.

Now I can sometimes catch the signal before it becomes a crisis. Not always. But more often than before.

Here is what I did when I asked that question last week.

I got myself to bed earlier. I took the goldenseal my naturopath had prescribed, already sitting on my counter. I took my cod liver oil and whole food vitamin C. I ate more nourishing, easy to digest food. I took time to be still and write in my journal.

Simple things. Already right in front of me.

I also did something that might not seem like self-care but genuinely is. I closed a few open loops. An email I had been putting off. A task sitting on my list. Those unfinished things drain energy quietly in the background, and finishing them gave me something back.

By the end of the week my throat had settled. I did not get sick.

The difference between then and now is not that my life got easier or the demands got smaller. It is that I have learned, slowly and sometimes the hard way, to ask one question before I hit the wall instead of after. And then to actually listen to the answer.

But here is what I don't say enough when I tell that story.

In my twenties I could not have done any of this if you had paid me.

Not because I didn't know the tools existed. But because I didn't believe my own needs were worth attending to. Self-care wasn't something I had permission for. Rest felt like failure. Slowing down felt dangerous. When something in my body asked for attention, my answer was to push past it and keep going.

A lot of the work I do with clients isn't about techniques at first. It is about something more foundational: learning to value yourself enough to actually use them. Learning to treat your own nervous system like something that matters. Learning to believe that what you need is real.

Be where you are. That is not a platitude. It is the whole practice. If you are in the place I was in my twenties, start there -- not with the trifecta, but with the question of whether you are allowed to need things at all.

And if you have already done some of that work, here is what becomes available.

Thought work.

Our thoughts are not neutral. They are constantly running in the background, shaping what we feel, what we do, and how much energy we have. Many of the thoughts that drive us toward the wall are ones we have never examined. Things like: I don't have time to slow down. Other people need me more than I need myself. Rest has to be earned. Asking for help is weak.

Thought work is the practice of noticing these stories and questioning them. Not forcing yourself to think positively. Just seeing what is actually running and asking: is this true? Is this serving me? What would I think instead?

When you can see a thought clearly, you have a choice about it. When you cannot see it, it runs the show.

Processing emotions.

Emotions that do not get expressed do not disappear. They go somewhere. Into the body. Into the background hum. Into the accumulation that eventually becomes the wall.

Processing emotions means actually feeling what is there rather than managing it, suppressing it, or reasoning it away. It does not mean wallowing. It means giving what is present enough space and expression to move through.

When emotions get their expression, they move. This is what I work on with clients constantly. The feeling that has been waiting for permission to be felt.

Nervous system regulation.

This is the body work. Sleep. Movement. Nourishing food. Stillness. Minerals. Closing the open loops that quietly drain your energy. Giving your nervous system the physical input it needs to downregulate rather than stay stuck in a low-level stress response.

Most people know what their body needs. The nervous system regulation piece is actually doing those things -- not as an overhaul, but as a consistent, small practice.

You do not have to do all three at once. You do not have to have a perfect practice. You do not have to start in any particular order. You can start anywhere.

If the only thing you did this week was notice one thought that was not serving you and question it, that is thought work. If you let yourself feel something instead of pushing past it, that is emotional processing. If you went to bed thirty minutes earlier or took a walk outside or closed one open loop, that is nervous system regulation.

Small. Consistent. Gentle. That is how the wall stops appearing out of nowhere.

Not because life gets easier, but because you start hearing the signals earlier.

The scratchy throat last week was a signal. I heard it. I responded. The wall did not appear.

What is your body telling you right now? What is the smallest, most gentle thing you could do for yourself today?

That is where it starts.

Fall sessions are open at waltonwellness.com

Jill Walton is a Life Coach, Integrative Change Work Practitioner, and nervous system specialist at Walton Wellness.