Chronic Symptoms in High-Achieving Women: Back Pain, Insomnia, Jaw Tension, and More

Your chronic symptoms are your body telling you that you have stuck trauma, energy, wounds, and/or blocks that you haven’t healed. 

And while these symptoms are very common in women who are bone-deep exhausted, controlling, in-their-head, and hyperproductive, they’re definitely not normal!

(If you'd rather listen to the voice notes version of this post, check out this super juicy podcast episode!)

BACK PAIN

• Feeling stressed about your financial security in your life

• Feeling like a failure

• Having fear about your future (this can also cause insomnia)

• Feeling overwhelmed by life at the moment (this can also cause headaches)

• Resentment towards yourself, others, or a situation

• Carry unresolved issues from the past

Specifics summarized:

• Upper back is about feeling like you're carrying the world on your shoulders

• Middle back is about being stuck in the past

• Lower back is about being worried about security

INSOMNIA

• Not being able to relax

• Not feeling safe to let go of something (or let go enough to fall asleep)

• Worrying about something and playing it over and over. in your mind

• Living in your head and over analyzing yourself

• Being anxious about something, someone or yourself

• Holding onto feelings of guilt, shame and/or resentment

PERIOD/CYCLE ISSUES

• Rejecting your femininity, carrying wounds about being a woman

• Unexpressed anger and emotions

• Fear of letting go and surrendering

• Feeling trapped in life, your body, or your story

• Holding onto past hurt from men and/or not trusting the masculine

• Wanting to be more masculine/like men because you feel stronger and more powerful then

INABILITY TO LOSE WEIGHT

• Holding onto emotions and energy that you haven't healed (often weight can be "energetic weight")

• Having masculine armor to "protect you."

• Not feeling safe being seen

• Your body thinks that if you lose weight, you'll get into unsafe situations.

• Carrying burdens, stress, and problems from your past that you haven't dealt with

• Having suppressed emotions

• Hiding behind the weight because it gives you an excuse to hide

• Not allowing your true magnetism and beauty to shine through you

• Trying to cover your vulnerability, pain, abuse or hurt from the past

THYROID ISSUES

• Feeling a lack of passion and purpose for your life

• Not feeling safe speaking up

• Thinking that your voice will cause you problems

• Feeling emotionally exhausted and burnt out

• Not feeling confident in communicating easily

• Past unhealed trauma where you couldn't use your voice or using your voice didn't get you what you wanted

JAW TENSION

• Holding onto suppressed emotions

• Feeling a lot of tension in yourself / your life

• Struggling to communicate how you feel or not wanting to rock the boat by speaking up

• Suppressed anger (and often those that "aren't angry people" have the most suppressed anger)

• Self criticism

INFERTILITY

• Fears around motherhood

• Trauma that hasn’t been cleared from your own mother

• Fear of birth

• Lack of self-trust and confidence

• Disconnection and numbness in the body

• Suppression of pain that you may or may not be aware of

• Unhealed sexual trauma

• Not feeling inherently good enough

• Abandonment fears

• A deep sense of unsafety in the body

• Fear of not being able to keep doing your job/business

Simply being aware of your chronic symptoms and what may be causing them energetically isn’t healing because you cannot think your way out of a trauma response.

These chronic symptoms are your body telling you that you have stuck trauma, energy, wounds, and/or blocks that you haven’t healed. And just knowing this isn’t enough...

My MYH Trauma Healing Method isn’t about giving you more information, 300 tools you don’t have time to implement in your day, or journalling. That’s not trauma healing.

Also, you don’t know all the stuff your body is holding onto. Most of it is so deeply shoved down that you cannot identify it on your own anyway.

Talking doesn’t heal trauma; hence, people are in therapy for 5 years still dealing with the same triggers. Then they work with me for 3 days, and they've literally healed the thing that they've been talking about for 5 years.

If you’re triggered by something or having a visceral response to something, that’s a clear indicator that the trauma hasn’t left your body even if you have more awareness about it than ever before. Understanding a trigger doesn’t mean the trigger is GONE.

Other chronic symptoms of trauma:

• Period issues

• Low libido

• Recurring muscle pain or sore parts of your body

• Skin issues

• Digestive problems

• Headaches

• Insomnia

• Anxiety

• Panic attacks

• Shame

• Uncontrollable Anger (anger isn't bad)

• Low self-worth

• Self-blaming

• Overworking

• Numbness

• Depression

• Low mood all the time

• Avoidance

• Isolation

• Constantly joking about things

• Constipation/diarrhea

• Addiction

• Emotional dysregulation

• Major mood swings (separate from hormonal mood swings)

• Inability to communicate

• Shutting down

• Fear of speaking up

If you have any of these, pause before you go into a self-shame spiral. Don't berate yourself; instead, can you empower yourself to heal and change?

By breaking these cycles, you are a beacon of light for others and ensuring the same stories, habits, and false “truths” do not get passed onto your children.

Now, are you ready to actually be free of them?

You can now name what your body has been trying to tell you with these symptoms. But knowing why is not the same as healing or eliminating them.

This is the difference between understanding where your trauma and blocks (that you’re aware of) come from and then the triggers and blocks being gone and not using tools as a band-aid to make you think you’re healed.

When you’re healed, you don’t need tools. Your body operates differently. This is the work I’m guiding highly ambitious women through inside Soft & Ambitious, held safely by someone who has been a trauma healer and industry leader for 9 years.

If you're done managing your symptoms and want them gone, applications are open.