Zen Is for the Healthy: A Real Look at Healing While Chronically Ill

Here’s the thing about “healing your nervous system” when you’re chronically ill: it sounds really nice in theory. Like a luxury spa day for your inner wiring. Gentle breathwork. Mindfulness. Maybe a little nature walk followed by a magnesium foot soak.

Except in real life, you’re on your sixth hour of body pain, your vision is going fuzzy from fatigue, and your “nervous system regulation” looks more like staring at the ceiling trying not to scream.

But sure. I’ll just vibe my way out of this flare.

When ‘Just Breathe’ Feels Like an Insult

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to “just breathe” or “try cold plunges” or “cut out dairy,” I could afford a private chef, a live-in massage therapist, and maybe, just maybe, some actual rest.

Newsflash: my body isn’t a Pinterest board. It’s a battlefield.

When you’re chronically ill, your nervous system isn’t just dysregulated—it’s full-on paranoid. Constantly scanning for the next threat. And when the threat is your body, you don’t get the luxury of co-regulating with soft lighting and ambient whale noises. You regulate in survival mode. You regulate in doctor’s offices, hospital beds, and Target aisles where you suddenly feel like you’re going to pass out next to the $5 bins.

Regulation, But Make It Realistic

Let’s talk about what nervous system healing actually looks like when you’re sick and exhausted:

• Saying no to plans that you wanted to say yes to, then lying in bed wondering if everyone secretly hates you.

• Feeling your heart race for no reason, trying box breathing, then ending up dissociating anyway.

• Celebrating the fact that you didn’t yell at the person who suggested turmeric as a cure for your entire medical history.

  
  

Healing isn’t linear. It’s not even a line. It’s a mess of scribbles drawn by a raccoon on acid.

Some days, you regulate like a champ. Other days, you cry on the bathroom floor because you can’t find a comfortable position to exist in. Both count. Neither make you a failure.

The Myth of the Zen Sick Person

There’s this strange expectation that if you’re chronically ill and healing, you should be serene. Like some kind of spiritually enlightened, barefoot forest nymph who’s transcended suffering through meditation and acceptance.

But let me tell you: I can be healing and hate everything.

I can be healing and pissed that my body betrayed me.

I can be healing while being a snarky, salty, unshowered gremlin with ice packs strapped to my knees.

There’s no gold star for being the quietest, most palatable version of sick.

Trauma Responses Are Not Personality Traits

A lot of us have spent years masking our pain, shrinking our needs, and gaslighting ourselves into pretending we’re fine. That’s not healing. That’s survival. And sure, it got us here, but now we’re trying to do more than survive, right?

So here’s where nervous system work comes in—not as some miracle cure, but as a slow, unsexy process of unlearning the bracing.

Letting your shoulders drop.

Letting yourself cry.

Letting yourself not be productive.

Letting yourself be inconvenient.

The real work? It's not glamorous. It's not social media-worthy. It’s not even visible to anyone but you.

But it matters.

Micro-Moments Are the Whole Damn Map

Your nervous system doesn't regulate in grand gestures. It doesn’t care how many supplements you’re taking or how clean your gut is this week. It learns safety in tiny, boring, beautiful moments:

• Choosing not to scroll doom content at 2am.

• Noticing your clenched fists and slowly opening them.

• Hearing the first edge of panic rise—and staying with yourself anyway.

  
  

These moments build safety. They rewire. They count.

And no one claps. No one gives you a cookie. But that doesn’t make them any less heroic.

You Don’t Have to Be Grateful for This

Let’s get this out of the way: chronic illness isn’t a gift. It’s not your body’s “love language.” It’s not the universe teaching you a lesson. It’s something you live with. End of story.

And if you do find meaning in it, that’s yours. But don’t let anyone force that narrative on you. You can heal your nervous system and still rage at the unfairness of it all. You can be a spiritual badass and sarcastically mutter, “Namaste my ass” during a flare.

You contain multitudes. (And probably a whole damn pharmacy.)

Final Thought: You’re Not Doing It Wrong

If you’re still sick, still tired, still flaring—you're not doing it wrong. Healing isn’t a ladder you climb. It’s more like crawling through mud with a flashlight and hoping you didn’t leave your dignity behind somewhere near 2020.

But you’re here.

You’re trying.

You’re learning to be kind to a body that has every reason not to feel safe.

And that? That’s the bravest damn thing I’ve ever seen.