What If My Body Has Been Trying to Protect Me?

In my last podcast episode of Flip the Script – Body, Mind & Soul, I spoke about coming home to the body when it hurts.

About softening instead of fighting.

About asking that simple question:

What do you need from me today?

As I’ve continued sitting with that question, something else has been gently unfolding.

I began to wonder…

What if the pain isn’t just something to manage?

What if my body has been trying to protect me?

Not just now.

But for a very long time.

The Body Protects

As a nurse, I understand symptoms on a clinical level. I know physiology. I know treatment pathways. I know how to read a chart.

But as a woman living inside this body, and through years of sitting with other women in circle, in sound, and in honest conversation, I’ve also come to see something else.

The body protects.

The body compensates.

The body remembers.

And slowly, I started recognising a pattern in my own life.

For many years, protection seemed to come in the form of weight. I would never have described it that way at the time. But looking back now, I can see how it created a buffering — a layer between me and the world, especially during times when I felt exposed, pressured, or emotionally unsafe in ways I didn’t yet understand.

And then, when my skin began to flare, something shifted.

Instead of only asking how to fix it…

I began asking a different question:

What is my body trying to tell me?

And quietly, almost unexpectedly, a realisation surfaced.

What if this isn’t punishment?

What if this isn’t failure?

What if this is protection?

My body saying, in the only language it knows:

I am protecting you.

That moment softened something in me.

Because instead of fighting my body… I began listening.

When Protection Starts Early

Listening led me deeper.

Into emotional work. Not surface-level affirmations, but the kind of work that asks you to sit with old memories, old fears, and stories your nervous system has been carrying quietly for decades.

Through Emotion Code and Body Code work, I uncovered stored emotions from a time long before I had language for them.

Through Family Constellation Therapy, I saw patterns of protection that weren’t just mine, but inherited, absorbed, unconsciously carried.

And then one memory surfaced.

I was about seven years old.

I found a photograph of a little girl. I remember thinking it was me, she looked so much like me. When I asked my dad about it, I learned she wasn’t me. She was his daughter from a previous marriage.

At seven years old, there was no adult logic. No context. No nuance.

What my young nervous system understood was simple:

If my dad could leave that daughter… he could leave me too.

That was a child’s interpretation. A child trying to make sense of something far beyond her understanding.

Instinct chose protection.

And without words, without conscious choice, I built a barrier.

Not because anyone meant harm.

Not because something was wrong.

But because a child’s nervous system will always choose safety.

That strategy stayed with me for decades.

It showed up in intimacy.

In how much I allowed myself to be seen.

In how much of myself I revealed.

In the buffering of weight.

And perhaps later… in the protective flare of my skin.

Not because I was broken.

But because my body had been loyal.

Loyalty, Not Failure

When I truly saw that, not intellectually, but viscerally, something shifted.

Not blame.

Not anger.

Compassion.

Because my body wasn’t attacking me.

It wasn’t betraying me.

It had been protecting me for more than fifty years.

And when we can see these patterns, we don’t force them away.

We begin offering the body a different experience.

For me, that has meant:

• Noticing when I overgive.

• Learning to say no.

• Allowing boundaries to feel like safety instead of rejection.

• Surrounding myself with steady, grounded, kind people.

• Creating space to sit and just be.

• Less performing.

• Less proving.

• More softening.

• More listening.

• More time for me.

I realised healing wasn’t about doing more modalities.

It was about embodying safety.

About creating a life that tells my nervous system:

You are not seven anymore.

You are not unprotected.

You are not about to be left.

The Questions That Opened Something

During this time, I revisited a resource I’ve used personally and in my one-to-one work with women, The Healing Questions Guide by Wendy Jensen.

It isn’t a book you just read.

It’s a book you sit with.

It asks structured, intentional questions that gently loosen thought patterns the nervous system has been running for years.

In the section on obesity, one question stopped me:

What do I need to protect my body from?

Is my body really in danger?

Then in the sections relating to skin, dermatitis and eczema, more questions landed just as deeply:

• What is irritating or frustrating me?

• What will it take to resolve it?

• What will it take to overcome whoever or whatever I feel is preventing me from doing what I want?

Irritation.

Frustration.

Prevention.

Restriction.

And then there was the affirmation for eczema:

“I am ready to move on with my life no matter what it takes. I will readjust myself and the people in my world so I can do what I have come here to do without regret.”

That isn’t just about skin.

That’s about boundaries.

That’s about authenticity.

That’s about no longer shrinking to stay safe.

And I could feel it.

I was ready.

Safety Is Learned

This is something I see again and again in the women I work with.

Their bodies are not failing them.

Their bodies are incredibly loyal.

They continue protecting, bracing, holding, long after the original reason has passed, until they experience enough safety to do something different.

And safety isn’t something we think our way into.

It’s something the nervous system learns through experience.

Gently.

Repeatedly.

Over time.

A Gentle Reflection for You

As you sit with this, just pause for a moment.

Notice what stirred.

Maybe there’s a memory.

Maybe there’s a pattern you’re beginning to see.

Maybe there’s simply a softening.

You might gently ask yourself:

• What was happening in my life when my body first learned it needed protection?

• What did I decide about myself — or about the world — in that moment?

• Where might I still be bracing, even though my life has changed?

• How has my body been loyal to me?

• What small act of safety could I offer myself this week?

There is nothing to fix here.

Just awareness.

And awareness is powerful.

Because awareness…

Is where healing begins.