In the 1950s, if a woman had a breakdown, people stopped. The world around her made accommodations. Someone took the children. Someone brought food. The breakdown was taken seriously because it was visible, dramatic, impossible to ignore.
Now we have breakdowns regularly — and we’re expected to get through them before the next meeting.
The threshold for what counts as “enough” to slow down has shifted so dramatically that most of us have forgotten we’re allowed to stop. So we manage. We cope. We push through. We develop extremely sophisticated systems for not feeling what we’re feeling — and for a while, it works.
The check engine light
Think of it like a car. The check engine light comes on. You notice it. You might even mean to deal with it. But the car keeps running, and you have places to be, and the light doesn’t necessarily mean the car is going to stop, so you… keep going.
The light stays on. Weeks pass. Months. The car keeps running. You stop really noticing the light because it’s always there now. This is just what the dashboard looks like.
And then one day the car doesn’t start.
This is what happens in the body. The signals — anxiety, fatigue, pain, tension, disrupted sleep, digestive issues, pelvic symptoms — are the check engine light. They’re not malfunctions. They’re communication. The body hasn’t stopped working for you. It’s been working overtime trying to get your attention.
Eventually, when it’s been ignored long enough, the body stops asking and starts requiring.
What this has to do with therapy
Most people come to therapy when they’ve already hit the wall. When the car has stopped. When the physical symptoms are too significant to manage around. When the relationship is in serious trouble. When the job has become impossible to show up to.
But you don’t have to wait for the wall. You can come when the light first comes on.
Therapy — particularly the kind that works with the nervous system, the body, and the patterns underneath the coping — is most effective before the crisis. Not because the crisis is your fault. But because there’s more to work with when you’re not also managing an emergency.
“You don’t have to be in pieces to deserve support. You just have to be someone who’s noticed that something’s off.”
What if I don’t know what I’m looking for?
That’s actually a completely reasonable place to start. Many people who come to therapy for the first time don’t have a neat summary of what’s wrong. They have a feeling. A tiredness that sleep doesn’t fix. A low-grade sense that they’ve been running on empty for longer than they can remember. A physical symptom their doctor can’t explain.
You don’t need a diagnosis. You don’t need the right words. You don’t need to have done the research or read the books or understand the acronyms.
You just need to recognize that the light is on.
If something in this resonated — if your check engine light has been on for a while — a free 20-minute consultation is a low-stakes place to start. No commitment, no expectation to have it figured out.