The most unexpected path home

How, after 20 years of failed therapies, my nervous system finally broke open.

Sep 19, 2025

Before we get started: All of this would be hard to imagine if we weren’t actually living through it, but every week — every single week — the lived reality of this country grows more hateful, severe and downright terrifying. I, of course, don’t need to tell you. All I know is that even though I don’t know how to show up thoughtfully right now (because I am undoubtedly living in survival mode with limited access to my prefrontal cortex), this project and the tools and information I explore on behalf of it are the only way I find moments of my day where I can live beyond survival mode. AND everyone deserves that. So, just like last week, I’m going to keep going. because the only way we can beat this fuckery and fascism is together with our brains fully engaged.

So, without further ado, I continue sharing here, out loud, because I will not ever stay silent, as I live in pursuit of a life — for all of us — that can exist beyond survival mode.

I was at my absolute wit’s end.

I had spent 20 years in weekly therapy doing the work — all of the work — the journaling, the behavioral therapy, the medications, the psych ward stays and the treatment programs. All of it. And yet, the life I wanted was still out of reach.

And there wasn’t a choice. While it was a privilege to live independently and have access to care — to be alive, even, whatever the doctors told me to do, I did. Narrative therapy journaling in the middle of the night, a handful of pills twice a day, 100 mg of protein, five workouts a week. I did it, or rather, I perfected it.

My chart didn’t proclaim I was “the perfect patient” multiple times over those twenty years for nothing.

But somehow, even after doing every single evidence-based therapy and intervention they could throw at me, I was still fifty pounds overweight, losing hours (and sometimes even days) to dissociative fugue states and having multiple night terrors every time I went to sleep.

As much as I tried to be grateful for my survival, to honor the privilege of it and the care I had, beneath the surface, I was often furious at everyone who made being “well” and “regulated” with a mental illness look so easy.

Then (and now) Instagram made all that anger worse. So many people there are pushing an answer to pain. And whether it was a blonde Californian in flowing linens at her Pacific-front estate promoting a breathing exercise, or a NYC-based influencer in a yoga set that cost more than my month’s grocery budget, they all proclaimed their answer was “The Answer.”

The worst were the ones smiling in ice baths as #coldplunge was trending. In thong bikinis, posing. Every time I saw them, my anger frothed into rage and I thought: “You’re in an ice bath and you’re smiling? Seriously. Just go fuck yourself.”

I’m sure they’re all really nice, but for once, can I just say… Seriously?

I know — my feelings were not pretty or even kind. They certainly weren’t gentle. But they were true. I was just tapped completely out. And yet, the advice from doctors and therapists was always the same: keep doing the work, Kate. Keep doing the work.

But the work wasn’t working.

My nights? Still full of terrors. My days? Still lost to fugues. My A1C? Still sky high. In all honesty my life was still a literal shitshow, requiring diapers.

Trapped in a brilliant adaptation

Something nobody told me at the time — and how I wish they had — was that many of the simple practices that other people were using to heal: movement, breathing, reflection, did not yet apply to me. They couldn’t, because I was chronically dissociated.

I still can’t quite find the words for what feeling so deeply and constantly dissociated is truly like. All I know is that when I return, the world is in color. When I am severely dissociated, it is not. And back then, the color wasn’t the only thing missing. I was missing too. My entire self was just not there. Instead, I was like an astronaut floating high above the distant world I was a part of, but could not begin to touch, breathe, or feel.

Of course, dissociation manifests in many ways. It’s an adaptive human state. But chronic dissociation is the disappearance of body, identity, mind and even pain. And that’s where I lived — a ghost of myself, tortured by what I’d been through, but more tortured by how the gory truth of it didn’t even seem to jack my heart rate or scare me, even a little.

Now, after spending two years reading and exploring this intensely, I know I was profoundly dissociated because my nervous system had moved past “fight or flight” and was trapped in “fawn” and “freeze” states, as well as the most traumatized state one can experience — fugue — nearly all the the time.

But at the time, I didn’t understand that. At the time I didn’t recognize that these states of being are in fact brilliant adaptations for survival. But because of the duration and severity of my experiences, I had grown trapped in their neural wiring, never coming back down to earth.

Instead of understanding what my nervous system was doing, I thought I was broken — entirely, completely broken and that my life was doomed, no matter what therapies I pursued.

But that wasn’t the case at all.

The work wasn’t working

Not long after my anger at Instagram advocates (and healing modalities, in general) surfaced, I had a checkup with my endocrinologist. I had been with her for a year and since then, I had been exercising and trying to eat right to lower my A1C levels.

But again, the work wasn’t working and the doctor didn’t mince words:

“Kate. You’re pre-diabetic. What you’re doing isn’t working. Really, at all.”

This seemed to be the final straw but instead of the rage I expected to burst from my mouth, I found sobs.

She was unfazed, but clearly trying to be kind, adding: “It’s not your fault.”

I know she meant well. I know she was referring to the decade I’d spent on antipsychotics and the havoc they wreaked on my metabolism. But a doctor’s kindness was no longer enough. Not after twenty years of doing everything they’d instructed — absolutely everything — and still feeling broken.

My tears continued as I began to sputter about how I didn’t want more medications. She hesitated for a moment but then casually added: “There are studies… some alternatives to medication, if you’re interested. Have you heard of cold plunging?”

My anger finally showed up. “Cold plunging? Like those bikini-wearing bi****s on Instagram?!” I had lost it.

Completely undisturbed by my outburst, she proceeded to pull up the literature to show me how long-term cold water exposure can, in fact, decrease A1C.

It seemed like a reasonable alternative to adding yet another medication to my life.

And so, like the perfect patient I was, I agreed.

I got ready to try one more thing, one more time.

Little did I know this was the crack that would break everything open.

Into the River

I had started my experience with cold water in the shower. 10 seconds first. Then 15. But now it was early April and this would be my third attempt stepping into the icy Connecticut River.

The water that day was forty-two degrees.

Forty-two degree water doesn’t actually feel “cold.” It feels like your body is being electrocuted.

The second your skin hits the water, the air is sucked out of your lungs. Your chest clamps tight — like someone’s cinched a belt around your ribs. And your breath comes in these jagged little gasps, almost like hiccups you can’t quite control.

Your mind (of course) screams: Get the fuck out. Right now! RIGHT NOW! And that’s when every inch of your skin feels like it’s on fire, as the blood flees your extremities to protect your core.

There’s nothing gentle about it. At all.

But then, something shifts. The sharpness dulls. Your heart rate, after spiking, begins to slow. Your breath lengthens. Your muscles unclench. And there’s this strange, almost eerie stillness that settles in — like your whole body has relaxed into a hidden ease — one you never knew existed.

There’s a name for this miracle reaction, it’s called the mammalian dive reflex. For me, it feels like falling from a plane and being caught by a hugging cloud. It feels like absolute ease.

So there, on this third try, I was caught by a cloud. And as it caught me, my body submerged in that shocking cold — something happened that had never happened before: I had a body.

Fingers. Toes. Legs. Arms. They were all mine.

In the river, I was here.
In the river, I was alive.

Yes, in the river, for the first time in my life, I knew I was real and I had survived.

My girlfriend, grimacing in pain just a few feet away, cocked her head like Waffle does in these moments. “Wait Kate, Are you ok?”

Her fearful tone caught me off guard amidst my otherworldly calm. Putting dry hands to now tear covered checks, I nodded, the tears as much of a surprise to me as they were to her. In a hushed tone of awe, I finally found my words.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I just — I just have a body?”

Her cackle of a laugh echoed across the bare Connecticut and shattered my zen. But after a moment of apprehension, I joined in with my own giggles.

“I know I know it’s totally absurd but for real — I’m totally blissing out.”

And that was how I first, finally, began rewiring my nervous system — a system that had kept me alive when I needed it most — but had been stuck in loops of dissociation, making any real healing impossible.

A look ahead

Next week, I will share Part II as The Healing Lab begins its first deep dive on our most ancient wiring, the nervous system, including:

How it evolved to keep us alive.
How it gets hijacked by trauma and pain.
Why so many of the social media posts you see on “Nervous System Regulation” are misleading at best (and complete bullshit at worst).
And, most importantly, how to work with your nervous system, so it can become your ally instead of your onslaught.

I’ll leave you with this: different things work for different people.

So whether you fall in love with cold plunging like me, or one of the many other ways people are able to befriend their nervous system, please just know that even in this hell of a time, there is are many paths to find your way home again.

And that’s what the Healing Lab is here for.

This is why you marry a colorblind husband.

And with that? I’m off to sleep. (And to eat more gas station chicken. Which is delicious. Which I will share. With both girls.)

Wishing you a weekend where you can tread gently on yourself,

Kindly,

Kate