Lovely piece and I think everyone is feeling that way one way or the other with everything that's happening in the world.
I gravitate between staying off the news for my mental health and feeling guilty for closing my eyes on our world. It's a tough one but I like the idea of shielding and creating your own mechanisms to protect your mental health.
I understand that desire completely. It takes very firm boundaries to let ANY of it in at all, and I am definitely a work in progress. It's easier if I shield beforehand, but some days I still need to hide from everything 🙈
Yes to all of this. I am a traditional meditation failure though, so I’ve been practicing what I call meditation walks where I alternate focusing on one sense at a time as I walk. Once I’ve gone through all the senses one at a time, I then focus on whichever sensory thing pops up. This is helping immensely and allows me to meditate in my own way.
I'm OBSESSED with this idea, and if it ever stops pouring rain, I'm going to try it immediately. It sounds so much easier than traditional meditation, and I walk several times a day anyway, so I think I just found my new favorite thing! Thank you, Leslie 🩵
They will. I know what to do. It’s the emotional walls I have the break through. But I will. I have quite a purpose here. 😘 And goddess knows, if I haven’t been killed yet by what I’ve had done and have done, well, I think I’ll be okay. I just want to be there now. But when I do get there, I’ll be carved and scarred and lit with the light of the sun glowing from the inside out of me. I’m almost there. 🫶
I understand wanting to be there now. Soooo deeply. Sending you all the love and support for your journey 🩵
Have you read Existential Kink? It's my absolute favorite book in the entire world for accepting challenging emotions, making peace with our shadows and just generally coping with the triggers of life. I highly recommend it!
What a perfect way to sum it all up: I have to start taking care of myself before I burst into flames. This makes me think, well lets us some flames to put out my flames. Here are some of my favorite practices: Self-care through the four elements: Ground yourself in the present moment (Earth) by doing a meditation, putting your feet on the earth, or taking a nap right on the grass, write down your thoughts and burn what you can't control (Air & Fire), rinse away everything not serving you (Water), a bath, shower, or cold plunge. I am about to go jump in the ocean right now.
These are wonderful methods, Alicia! I completely forgot that cold plunges are a nervous system regulator, too! I hope your ocean swim brought you some much-needed calm yesterday 🩵
I love screaming into pillows. I have also run around the house and whacked walls with pillows as hard as I could… or chucked them at walls (obviously walls with nothing hanging on them or anything around that might be broken or harmed lol)… getting that energy moving through my arms has been important for me in my journey because holding them in frozen stasis has been one of the ways I deadened (protected!) myself from feeling anger. It’s been a slow thaw over many many years.
I always love seeing these conversations about getting in touch with our bodies in order to feel and release stuck emotions. It’s SO important!
I had never heard of “completing the stress cycle” per-se before. This terminology is new to me.
However, I have been connected to somatic work for a long, long time… and understanding that we need to allow our emotions fully pass through us is something that i don’t know I necessarily learned from any one particular somewhere, or if it came through my interest in many different modalities of psychology and spirituality 🤔
I got into Bioenergetics, which was (is!) a somatic psychology of sorts, I guess, founded by Alexander Lowen… I got into it back in my early 20s, as I was interested in Wilhelm Reich’s work and Alexander Lowen was his student. It was fascinating and revelatory, and deepened my spiritually in some ways- which probably seems kind of weird since it is very much about the body and not about spirituality at all lol. But anyway, Lowen talks about how as children we use our bodies to suppress our emotions, and how this even ends up shaping our physical development and what we look like!
I haven’t read any of his books in many years, so i can’t recall if he talks about going through the whole emotional wave- a term which is very much used in Human Design, but that I had used in different ways before finding HD.
Oh jeez I could keep going. Emotional mastery/intelligence and this sort of thing is another subject extremely dear to my heart and which I have been deep deep into in my own life!
Where did you hear about this “completing the stress cycle”? I am always interested in learning more on these subjects!
Oooh this stuff absolutely fascinates me. I have a theory that the same information is communicated in many of the circles I hang out in, but one day, one person says it in just such a way, and it finally lands in my brain and sinks in. I've also deep-dived into Human Design but somehow missed it there. I heard it for the first time in a podcast with Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, when they were promoting their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I was recovering from a burnout-induced nervous breakdown, and the information felt like a life raft.
I'm especially intrigued by this: how as children we use our bodies to suppress our emotions, and how this even ends up shaping our physical development and what we look like. This feels like a rabbit hole calling my name! Thank you for sharing all of this with me, Natalie!
That's one of my favorite methods, too. I feel like, despite the many, many boycotts we're undertaking, the pillow industry will thrive over the next four years 🤣
I'm curious how long you have known about the value of completing the stress cycle? I only learned about it in the last year or so, and the lightbulb moment for me was PROFOUND.
Empath here, and yes, I have been completely... everything. Great post, all great ideas that I have done before and need to do again and more. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful, even if none of it was new. I actually had to be reminded about shielding in order to start doing it every day, so hopefully this post can do that for you, too :)
I relate with this post so much! Thanks for the reminder to shield. I’ve been eating my feelings and then working out to get back in my body, being kind to myself through it all. This episode and all the @newsnoynoise helps keep me informed and calm.
“What you can control is the action you take to complete the stress cycle, getting yourself unstuck and out the tunnel’s other side…” — this is the most crucial part of the process, yet so many people don’t realize how to actually complete the stress cycle!
Emotions = energy in motion, and if that energy isn’t moved through and released, it gets stuck in the body—or worse, intentionally suppressed. That’s when the real damage begins. Unresolved anger, in particular, is a slow killer. It doesn’t just disappear—it manifests physically, often in the form of inflammation, acid reflux, irritable bowel, high blood pressure, and more.
This is exactly the stress-disease connection I talk about so much. The body is always communicating with us, and when we don’t honor and complete the cycle, it finds another way to demand our attention.
Loved this piece—it’s such an important conversation!
I remember when I learned about completing the stress cycle and I was hit with such a deep understanding of how stress affects me and what I can do about it. This is definitely not discussed enough (I'm looking at you, Western medicine), so I love that your work raises awareness about this. Thank you so much for reading!
Absolutely! Completing the stress cycle was such a game-changer for me too. It’s wild how much stress gets trapped in the body when we don’t fully process it—and how simply moving, expressing, or releasing it can make all the difference.
And yes, Western medicine rarely addresses this piece! Treating stress like an invisible, secondary issue rather than a core factor in health is such a huge gap. That’s why conversations and pieces like yours matter so much.
I’m curious—what was the biggest shift for you after learning about it? Did you notice a specific way your body releases stress best?
I have essential tremors. Very mild, treated with the lowest dose of medicine (which I am determined to replace with holistic remedies . . . I'm getting there). But when I have unresolved stress in my body, I physically shake. It freaks people out because I think THEY think I'm about to spontaneously combust 🤣
It doesn't matter what I do--a walk, a bike ride, any movement whatsoever, but I know it's "resolved" when my hands are no longer shaking. It's actually an excellent barometer for "have I sufficiently off-gassed this energy?" It also actively prevents me from trying to create while riled up, because I physically can't draw a straight line.
Thank you for the question, because this is the first time I've thought about how it actually looks for me.
OMG, this is so good. It's like the universe whispered in your ear "Dre needs this!" and you were like, "I got you, girl!"
My nervous system has been slowly catching fire the last 2 weeks and I hit the wall this weekend. This week is about completing the stress cycle. FUCK, how did I not remember that part?
Thanks for talking this empath off the chaos ledge right now.
P.S. I just stopped watching news. I can't. I stopped during the pandemic. I try to keep myself sorta, kinda, in the loop about the big news stories. But I just can't do it. One news story can fling me into a tailspin. I've done experiments and it's so real. ONE news story. That's all it takes.
I relate to the one news story thing so deeply. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't. It's not worth it. The rest of us will message you when it's time to bug out. I've found that, with shielding, I can let a little in (like 15 minutes or 2-3 stories MAX) and still function. It doesn't linger in my mind or ruin my day.
And yes to completing the stress cycle, girl, so glad I could remind you. Lakeisha Cadogan @storypriestess had to remind me about shielding, so this was just me paying it forward 🩵
Oh, how I needed to read this right now. I am a strong empath - clairvoyant, clairsentient, and clairempathy - and everything is strong these days. I am recovering from a physically challenging 2024, so I am figuring out how to further protect myself moving forward. Meditation has become my home base. I am also looking for a good crystal purveyor to restock my shelves. Thanks for this post.
You’re so welcome! The daily shielding has been game-changing for me. It even allows me to dip my toe into reading the news without completely combusting. I still only do small doses though.
I’m glad meditation is working for you. I want to build more of that into my own routine. As for crystals, there aren’t many stores near me, so I search on Etsy and read reviews before buying. Many of the proprietors are individuals who put immense care into their shipments and give little extras. Happy hunting!
I’m so happy you started shielding daily! It’s the ONLY way I’ve been able to function. A lot of people have given me strange looks when I tell them I shield… but this shit works!
Well, thank YOU for the reminder to do it! I was blown away by the difference in my emotional highs and lows after doing it just one time! So people can scoff all they want--this is the REAL DEAL.
Meanwhile, I'll be over here in my golden bubble just chillin' 🧘♀️
I think I must walk around in a constant state of shielding 😆 No joke. I don’t meditate (I should) but as you described how shielding works and what it feels like, I immediately recognized it as my natural state of being. Although I would have described it as a Wall, but that has a more negative connotation. So shielding it is! Has a much better ring to it
Wow, Shlee, sending you high praise for your body's innate wisdom! And I agree, with a shield, you can allow positive things in and deflect everything negative. That's a bit harder to do with a wall.
"ONLY reading outlets that align center is not the way to go. Instead, you should read a balance of perspectives so that you know what’s being spoonfed to the masses who aren’t savvy enough to do their homework. Diversification works for stock portfolios; it only makes sense that it would apply here." 💯
If everyone were more like you, Jennie, the world would be a better place. But anyway, yeah, as far as I can see, everyone has blind spots -- conservatives, leftists, libertarians, moderates, anarchists . . . So I really appreciate your telling your readers to get a diverse range of perspectives.
I find your icon that changes picture every second or two quite distracting. I have to cover it up to read what you write. Since you are writing for empaths and sensitive folks, I suggest you change this to make it easier on us.
I'm sorry, I can completely understand how that might be bothersome. This is my first post for highly sensitive people and empaths, so I didn't consider it, and probably won't change it.
Lovely piece and I think everyone is feeling that way one way or the other with everything that's happening in the world.
I gravitate between staying off the news for my mental health and feeling guilty for closing my eyes on our world. It's a tough one but I like the idea of shielding and creating your own mechanisms to protect your mental health.
I understand that desire completely. It takes very firm boundaries to let ANY of it in at all, and I am definitely a work in progress. It's easier if I shield beforehand, but some days I still need to hide from everything 🙈
Yes to all of this. I am a traditional meditation failure though, so I’ve been practicing what I call meditation walks where I alternate focusing on one sense at a time as I walk. Once I’ve gone through all the senses one at a time, I then focus on whichever sensory thing pops up. This is helping immensely and allows me to meditate in my own way.
I'm OBSESSED with this idea, and if it ever stops pouring rain, I'm going to try it immediately. It sounds so much easier than traditional meditation, and I walk several times a day anyway, so I think I just found my new favorite thing! Thank you, Leslie 🩵
Oooh. I love this method. I have to try that. Meditation failure, but still determined! 🙋♀️
Will read but this popped up and I thought, “What if it’s always and not just ‘right now’?” Hah. I will read because it’s clearly for me. Thanks.
Well my hope is that some of these tips can become daily practices for those of us who need them that often 🩵
They will. I know what to do. It’s the emotional walls I have the break through. But I will. I have quite a purpose here. 😘 And goddess knows, if I haven’t been killed yet by what I’ve had done and have done, well, I think I’ll be okay. I just want to be there now. But when I do get there, I’ll be carved and scarred and lit with the light of the sun glowing from the inside out of me. I’m almost there. 🫶
I understand wanting to be there now. Soooo deeply. Sending you all the love and support for your journey 🩵
Have you read Existential Kink? It's my absolute favorite book in the entire world for accepting challenging emotions, making peace with our shadows and just generally coping with the triggers of life. I highly recommend it!
What a perfect way to sum it all up: I have to start taking care of myself before I burst into flames. This makes me think, well lets us some flames to put out my flames. Here are some of my favorite practices: Self-care through the four elements: Ground yourself in the present moment (Earth) by doing a meditation, putting your feet on the earth, or taking a nap right on the grass, write down your thoughts and burn what you can't control (Air & Fire), rinse away everything not serving you (Water), a bath, shower, or cold plunge. I am about to go jump in the ocean right now.
These are wonderful methods, Alicia! I completely forgot that cold plunges are a nervous system regulator, too! I hope your ocean swim brought you some much-needed calm yesterday 🩵
Thank you and it did!
I love screaming into pillows. I have also run around the house and whacked walls with pillows as hard as I could… or chucked them at walls (obviously walls with nothing hanging on them or anything around that might be broken or harmed lol)… getting that energy moving through my arms has been important for me in my journey because holding them in frozen stasis has been one of the ways I deadened (protected!) myself from feeling anger. It’s been a slow thaw over many many years.
I always love seeing these conversations about getting in touch with our bodies in order to feel and release stuck emotions. It’s SO important!
I had never heard of “completing the stress cycle” per-se before. This terminology is new to me.
However, I have been connected to somatic work for a long, long time… and understanding that we need to allow our emotions fully pass through us is something that i don’t know I necessarily learned from any one particular somewhere, or if it came through my interest in many different modalities of psychology and spirituality 🤔
I got into Bioenergetics, which was (is!) a somatic psychology of sorts, I guess, founded by Alexander Lowen… I got into it back in my early 20s, as I was interested in Wilhelm Reich’s work and Alexander Lowen was his student. It was fascinating and revelatory, and deepened my spiritually in some ways- which probably seems kind of weird since it is very much about the body and not about spirituality at all lol. But anyway, Lowen talks about how as children we use our bodies to suppress our emotions, and how this even ends up shaping our physical development and what we look like!
I haven’t read any of his books in many years, so i can’t recall if he talks about going through the whole emotional wave- a term which is very much used in Human Design, but that I had used in different ways before finding HD.
Oh jeez I could keep going. Emotional mastery/intelligence and this sort of thing is another subject extremely dear to my heart and which I have been deep deep into in my own life!
Where did you hear about this “completing the stress cycle”? I am always interested in learning more on these subjects!
Oooh this stuff absolutely fascinates me. I have a theory that the same information is communicated in many of the circles I hang out in, but one day, one person says it in just such a way, and it finally lands in my brain and sinks in. I've also deep-dived into Human Design but somehow missed it there. I heard it for the first time in a podcast with Drs. Emily and Amelia Nagoski, when they were promoting their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I was recovering from a burnout-induced nervous breakdown, and the information felt like a life raft.
I'm especially intrigued by this: how as children we use our bodies to suppress our emotions, and how this even ends up shaping our physical development and what we look like. This feels like a rabbit hole calling my name! Thank you for sharing all of this with me, Natalie!
That's one of my favorite methods, too. I feel like, despite the many, many boycotts we're undertaking, the pillow industry will thrive over the next four years 🤣
I'm curious how long you have known about the value of completing the stress cycle? I only learned about it in the last year or so, and the lightbulb moment for me was PROFOUND.
Empath here, and yes, I have been completely... everything. Great post, all great ideas that I have done before and need to do again and more. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful, even if none of it was new. I actually had to be reminded about shielding in order to start doing it every day, so hopefully this post can do that for you, too :)
I relate with this post so much! Thanks for the reminder to shield. I’ve been eating my feelings and then working out to get back in my body, being kind to myself through it all. This episode and all the @newsnoynoise helps keep me informed and calm.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/14kSojlWbeL4jWDzxODl0O?si=CyfTM1GiQmWV9nuKV7uxLA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A0eFL5HJejQHZrdgAFdPnOm
Yesssss! Thank you so much for this!! I didn't have a good source on Substack to point people to and this looks perfect.
THIS!! 🔥
“What you can control is the action you take to complete the stress cycle, getting yourself unstuck and out the tunnel’s other side…” — this is the most crucial part of the process, yet so many people don’t realize how to actually complete the stress cycle!
Emotions = energy in motion, and if that energy isn’t moved through and released, it gets stuck in the body—or worse, intentionally suppressed. That’s when the real damage begins. Unresolved anger, in particular, is a slow killer. It doesn’t just disappear—it manifests physically, often in the form of inflammation, acid reflux, irritable bowel, high blood pressure, and more.
This is exactly the stress-disease connection I talk about so much. The body is always communicating with us, and when we don’t honor and complete the cycle, it finds another way to demand our attention.
Loved this piece—it’s such an important conversation!
I remember when I learned about completing the stress cycle and I was hit with such a deep understanding of how stress affects me and what I can do about it. This is definitely not discussed enough (I'm looking at you, Western medicine), so I love that your work raises awareness about this. Thank you so much for reading!
Absolutely! Completing the stress cycle was such a game-changer for me too. It’s wild how much stress gets trapped in the body when we don’t fully process it—and how simply moving, expressing, or releasing it can make all the difference.
And yes, Western medicine rarely addresses this piece! Treating stress like an invisible, secondary issue rather than a core factor in health is such a huge gap. That’s why conversations and pieces like yours matter so much.
I’m curious—what was the biggest shift for you after learning about it? Did you notice a specific way your body releases stress best?
I have essential tremors. Very mild, treated with the lowest dose of medicine (which I am determined to replace with holistic remedies . . . I'm getting there). But when I have unresolved stress in my body, I physically shake. It freaks people out because I think THEY think I'm about to spontaneously combust 🤣
It doesn't matter what I do--a walk, a bike ride, any movement whatsoever, but I know it's "resolved" when my hands are no longer shaking. It's actually an excellent barometer for "have I sufficiently off-gassed this energy?" It also actively prevents me from trying to create while riled up, because I physically can't draw a straight line.
Thank you for the question, because this is the first time I've thought about how it actually looks for me.
OMG, this is so good. It's like the universe whispered in your ear "Dre needs this!" and you were like, "I got you, girl!"
My nervous system has been slowly catching fire the last 2 weeks and I hit the wall this weekend. This week is about completing the stress cycle. FUCK, how did I not remember that part?
Thanks for talking this empath off the chaos ledge right now.
P.S. I just stopped watching news. I can't. I stopped during the pandemic. I try to keep myself sorta, kinda, in the loop about the big news stories. But I just can't do it. One news story can fling me into a tailspin. I've done experiments and it's so real. ONE news story. That's all it takes.
I relate to the one news story thing so deeply. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't. It's not worth it. The rest of us will message you when it's time to bug out. I've found that, with shielding, I can let a little in (like 15 minutes or 2-3 stories MAX) and still function. It doesn't linger in my mind or ruin my day.
And yes to completing the stress cycle, girl, so glad I could remind you. Lakeisha Cadogan @storypriestess had to remind me about shielding, so this was just me paying it forward 🩵
Oh, how I needed to read this right now. I am a strong empath - clairvoyant, clairsentient, and clairempathy - and everything is strong these days. I am recovering from a physically challenging 2024, so I am figuring out how to further protect myself moving forward. Meditation has become my home base. I am also looking for a good crystal purveyor to restock my shelves. Thanks for this post.
You’re so welcome! The daily shielding has been game-changing for me. It even allows me to dip my toe into reading the news without completely combusting. I still only do small doses though.
I’m glad meditation is working for you. I want to build more of that into my own routine. As for crystals, there aren’t many stores near me, so I search on Etsy and read reviews before buying. Many of the proprietors are individuals who put immense care into their shipments and give little extras. Happy hunting!
Good insight 😌 Can i translate part of this article into Spanish with links to you?
Yes please do. Thank you for asking :)
this was wonderful. thank you!
You're welcome! I'm happy it was useful :)
I’m so happy you started shielding daily! It’s the ONLY way I’ve been able to function. A lot of people have given me strange looks when I tell them I shield… but this shit works!
Well, thank YOU for the reminder to do it! I was blown away by the difference in my emotional highs and lows after doing it just one time! So people can scoff all they want--this is the REAL DEAL.
Meanwhile, I'll be over here in my golden bubble just chillin' 🧘♀️
Great post, Jennie! Thanks for the AllSides tip. I hadn’t heard of it before.
Thank you, Chris! And, you’re welcome. I hope that can be a resource for the truth-seekers among us 😉
I think I must walk around in a constant state of shielding 😆 No joke. I don’t meditate (I should) but as you described how shielding works and what it feels like, I immediately recognized it as my natural state of being. Although I would have described it as a Wall, but that has a more negative connotation. So shielding it is! Has a much better ring to it
Wow, Shlee, sending you high praise for your body's innate wisdom! And I agree, with a shield, you can allow positive things in and deflect everything negative. That's a bit harder to do with a wall.
Breaking down walls and building my shield 🛡️ 💪 Thanks, Jennie :)
"ONLY reading outlets that align center is not the way to go. Instead, you should read a balance of perspectives so that you know what’s being spoonfed to the masses who aren’t savvy enough to do their homework. Diversification works for stock portfolios; it only makes sense that it would apply here." 💯
Oooh, getting your stamp of approval on my truth-seeking process is EVERYTHING! 🩵
If everyone were more like you, Jennie, the world would be a better place. But anyway, yeah, as far as I can see, everyone has blind spots -- conservatives, leftists, libertarians, moderates, anarchists . . . So I really appreciate your telling your readers to get a diverse range of perspectives.
I find your icon that changes picture every second or two quite distracting. I have to cover it up to read what you write. Since you are writing for empaths and sensitive folks, I suggest you change this to make it easier on us.
I'm sorry, I can completely understand how that might be bothersome. This is my first post for highly sensitive people and empaths, so I didn't consider it, and probably won't change it.