Listening Instead of Fixing: What Your Nervous System Needs This Year

Many trauma survivors enter the new year with a familiar internal narrative: I need to fix myself.
Fix my reactions. Fix my emotions. Fix my productivity. Fix my relationships.

But trauma healing does not begin with fixing. It begins with listening.

Your nervous system has been communicating with you all along—through exhaustion, anxiety, shutdown, irritability, or overwhelm. These are not malfunctions. They are signals.

In The Trauma Monster, Barb Dorrington emphasizes that the body remembers what the mind may minimize. When we ignore these signals in favor of productivity or self-improvement, we reinforce the very patterns that trauma created.

Listening means slowing down enough to ask:

• When do I feel most regulated?

• What situations drain me?

• What helps me feel grounded?

• Where does my body tense or soften?

Listening does not demand immediate action. It asks for curiosity without judgment.

This year, instead of setting rigid goals, you might practice regular nervous system check-ins. Brief moments of noticing throughout the day. A pause before responding. A moment of breath before pushing through.

When the nervous system feels heard, it begins to settle. And from that place, meaningful change becomes possible.

You do not need to force yourself into healing. Your body already knows the way forward.