When I reflect on my conversation with George Kansas, what strikes me most is how our paths to healing often require us to face the very things we’ve spent years avoiding. As someone who has walked the painful journey from trauma to transformation, I recognize that the answer to how to take care of yourself isn’t just bubble baths and self-care routines—it’s the deep, intentional inner work that leads to genuine healing.
George and I connected immediately over our shared understanding of how trauma lives in the body, and how conscious communication—both with ourselves (showing up as embodied leadership) and others—becomes the pathway to freedom.
The Dance Between Trauma and Communication
As George beautifully articulated during our conversation: “Every result you and I experience, every result that you could point to in your life, good, bad, or otherwise, is the result of the sum total of all of the conversations you’ve had, led, or overheard since before you were born.”
This profound insight highlights how the narratives we’ve absorbed—and the ones we tell ourselves—shape our experience of reality. For survivors of trauma, these narratives often include shame, self-blame, and a fundamental disconnection from our authentic selves.
My own healing journey began with recognizing how much of my identity had been formed in response to trauma rather than from a place of genuine self-knowledge. Like George, I discovered that our bodies store these experiences, creating patterns that can keep us trapped in cycles of survival rather than thriving.
Taking Care of Yourself: Learning to Listen
One of the most powerful aspects of my conversation with George was our shared understanding of somatic experience—how trauma lives not just in our memories but in our physical bodies.
For years, I carried my trauma in my tissues without realizing it. My body was sending signals I couldn’t interpret, and my dissociation kept me from fully inhabiting my physical form. George’s experience mirrored mine in many ways, as he described his own journey toward embodied wisdom.
When we begin taking care of yourself authentically, we must:
- Learn to inhabit our bodies again: Noticing sensations, respecting our physical boundaries, and understanding that our bodies often speak truths our minds aren’t ready to hear.
- Recognize our trauma responses: The fight, flight, freeze, or fawn reactions that once protected us may now be limiting our lives.
- Practice conscious communication with ourselves: Speaking to ourselves with compassion rather than judgment, especially when we’re struggling.
Leadership Begins Within: Inner Work & Embodied Leadership
What fascinated me about George’s approach to healing is how he frames it as embodied leadership. We cannot lead others—whether in business, relationships, or community—until we learn to lead ourselves through our own inner landscapes.
True leadership begins with:
Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence
Understanding your triggers, patterns, and emotional landscape allows you to respond rather than react. Both George and I discovered that when we healed our relationship with ourselves, our external relationships transformed naturally.
Authentic Communication
Learning to express your needs, boundaries, and truth without either aggressive domination or self-effacing apology is a hallmark of both healthy leadership and effective self-care.
Recognizing When You’re Surviving vs. Thriving
Many of us have become so accustomed to operating in survival mode that we mistake it for living. As George shared from his experience, when trauma has been your baseline for decades, you often don’t realize there’s another way to exist until you experience it.
Practical Tools for Taking Care of Yourself
Our conversation revealed several practical approaches to genuine self-care that go beyond surface-level remedies:
1. Create Space for Integration
Both George and I found that healing requires intentional space. This might mean meditation, time in nature, or simply moments of silence where you can process what you’re experiencing without distraction. Integration happens in the pause between experiences.
2. Find Your Somatic Practice
For me, it was walking in nature while doing EMDR-like bilateral stimulation. For George, it included various body-centered practices. The key is finding what helps you reconnect with your physical self in a safe, regulated way.
3. Practice Conscious Communication in Relationships
Start small—perhaps with a trusted friend or therapist—and practice expressing your authentic thoughts and feelings. Notice when you’re tempted to people-please, attack, withdraw, or freeze, and gently guide yourself back to centered communication.
4. Develop a Relationship with Your Inner Child
Both George and I found profound healing in reconnecting with the wounded parts of ourselves that were frozen in time. Speaking to, listening to, and caring for these aspects of ourselves creates integration and wholeness.
The Courage to Face Your Story
Taking care of yourself ultimately requires the courage to face your own story—not just the sanitized version you share at dinner parties, but the raw, unfiltered truth of your experience. This is where genuine transformation becomes possible.
As George pointed out, many of us have become experts at compartmentalizing our pain, functioning at high levels professionally while carrying profound wounds we never address. True healing requires understanding that your well-being is not separate from your wholeness.
For me, this meant acknowledging that despite my professional success, I had created a wall around myself that kept others—and even parts of myself—at a distance. The breakthrough came when I realized that I needed to integrate all aspects of my experience rather than continuing to split my life into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” parts.
Finding Your Path Forward
If you’re ready to move beyond surviving to thriving, consider:
- What conversations are you avoiding having with yourself?
- How does your body feel when you consider your most painful experiences?
- Where in your life are you leading from woundedness rather than wisdom?
Remember that healing isn’t linear. Some days you’ll feel powerful breakthroughs, and others you’ll wonder if you’ve made any progress at all. This is normal and part of the process.
The most important thing is to start—to make a commitment to yourself that your healing matters, that taking care of yourself isn’t selfish but essential, and that the inner work you do creates ripples that extend far beyond your individual experience.
Your Invitation to Heal
As we continue this journey together, I invite you to approach your healing with both courage and compassion. You don’t need to do this alone. Whether through professional support, community connection, or spiritual practice, find the resources that resonate with your unique path.
If my story or George’s resonates with you, I encourage you to explore my resources page where you’ll find additional guidance for your healing journey.
Remember, taking care of yourself isn’t just about managing symptoms—it’s about transforming your relationship with yourself at the deepest level. This is the work that changes not just our individual lives, but our collective experience.
Until next time, keep healing.