Learning What We Were Never Taught

When we stop and really consider what it means to listen, it becomes clear that listening is something we’re taught and tested on.

We learn about selective hearing. Active listening. Listening with our “whole body.” Toddlers are told that listening requires an appropriate action or reaction. “I said no.” As we grow older, people ask us to repeat back what they’ve said when they believe we weren’t listening. Listening becomes something external, something provable, something others get to evaluate.

It’s a skill we practice for everyone else.

And yet, many of us spend years doing the opposite with ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, we learn not to listen inward. We override hunger so we can finish what we’re doing. We push through fatigue because stopping feels inconvenient. We minimize emotions, manage them away, or talk ourselves out of them so we can keep functioning.

Often, this isn’t conscious. It’s survival.

We live in a culture that praises endurance and productivity. Pushing through is admired. Rest is conditional. Hunger is delayed. Fatigue is reframed as weakness. Emotional expression is acceptable only when it’s tidy and brief.

✨ We are taught, subtly and repeatedly, to distrust our bodies.

Instead of being informed by what our bodies are communicating, we decide what our bodies need. We tell them when to eat, when to rest, and when to feel, usually based on external demands rather than internal signals.

And then we wonder why listening feels so hard.

✨ Intuition vs. Anxiety: Learning the Difference

One of the most confusing parts of listening inward is learning to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety. Especially if you’ve lived in chronic stress, the two can feel tangled together.

Intuition tends to be quiet and steady. It’s often felt lower in the body, in the abdomen, as a subtle sense that something feels off, or not quite right. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t demand. It just knows. Even when intuition points to something uncomfortable, there’s a grounded quality to it.

Anxiety, on the other hand, usually makes an entrance. It lives higher in the body, most often in the chest, with a faster heartbeat, shallow breathing, sweaty palms, and a strong urge to do something immediately. Anxiety feels urgent, panicked, future-focused, and repetitive. It loops. Loudly.

While anxiety can eventually cause nausea, that usually comes after the heart rate has been elevated for a while. Intuition doesn’t escalate like that. It doesn’t spiral or shout.

For people who have spent years in survival mode, these signals can blur. When the nervous system is always on high alert, everything feels urgent. And this is important: clarity doesn’t come from effort. It comes from safety.

Anxiety isn’t a character flaw; it’s your body sounding an alarm. I like to think of it like a smoke detector in the kitchen. You can be cooking carefully, slowly, everything under control… but as the heat rises, eventually the alarm goes off. Not because there’s a fire, but because the system is sensitive to a threat.

🌿 Anxiety works the same way.

🌱 Relearning Hunger and Fatigue

Hunger and fatigue are often the first body signals we learn to ignore.

Many of us stop eating based on sensation and start eating based on rules or time. For some people, there’s still awareness: I think I need more than chips right now, or my body wants protein. But for others, eating becomes scheduled instead of felt. Breakfast because it’s morning. Lunch because it’s noon. Dinner because it’s evening, not because the body asked.

Fatigue follows a similar pattern. When we’re sick, stressed, overwhelmed, or emotionally taxed, the body naturally needs more rest. But instead of listening, we push through. We tell ourselves we should be able to handle it.

When the body finally asks to pause to nap, to lie down, to stop anxiety often joins the conversation. I’m not doing enough. I’m falling behind. What if this means something is wrong?

Exhaustion gets labeled as laziness.
Rest starts to feel suspicious.
Guilt shows up uninvited.

✨ What if hunger and fatigue weren’t problems to solve, but information to receive?

🤍 Emotions as Body Communication

Emotions are another language of the body and one we’re especially good at misunderstanding.

Because emotions show up physically as tension, heaviness, tightness, restlessness, we assume they must mean something is wrong. That something needs to be fixed. But emotions are not verdicts. They’re signals.

These sensations are often early warnings, long before burnout or collapse. The work here isn’t interpretation or correction. It’s curiosity.

It can feel uncomfortable to say, I feel sad, without attaching a reason or a solution. But sometimes emotions don’t need meaning. They just need space. Feeling something does not mean something is broken. It doesn’t mean action is required.

Sometimes it simply means: this is what’s here right now.

🌿 Why Wellness Isn’t Control, Tracking, or Perfection

Modern wellness culture often tells us that health comes from control. From tracking. From doing everything “right.”

We’re encouraged to monitor ourselves constantly, food, movement, sleep, mood, and boundaries as if wellness is something you earn through perfect management. And if you do it all correctly, you’re promised balance.

But that version of wellness creates pressure. It turns care into performance.

Wellness isn’t management. It's relationship.

I like to think of wellness like standing at the center of a wheel. Life spins us outward, into stress, responsibility, chaos. We will get pulled to the edges. That’s inevitable. Wellness isn’t staying perfectly centered. It’s knowing how to come back when the spinning slows.

🌱 That return is wellness.

✨ Learning to Trust the Body Again

After years of ignoring the body, trusting it again can feel risky.

There can be grief for what wasn’t honored sooner. Fear that listening will open something you can’t handle. Skepticism is shaped by past attempts that didn’t go well. And yes, sometimes life throws a curveball, and even the best boundaries fall apart. Sometimes we tear the house down and open for business again. (It happens.)

Rebuilding trust is slow. Uneven. Deeply personal. Inconsistency isn’t failure, it’s part of being human.

Listening doesn’t mean obeying every signal your body sends. It simply means hearing them. Letting them inform rather than dictate.

The body remembers how to communicate once it feels safe enough to speak. All we’re really doing is creating conditions where safety can exist.

🌿 A Gentle Way Back In

Listening to your body is not about getting it right.

It’s about presence. About noticing hunger, fatigue, emotion, intuition, and anxiety without immediately trying to control or correct them. It’s about rebuilding a relationship.

That work is harder than it should be and easier than you think.

And it’s one of the most honest forms of wellness there is.

Honoring your healing and rooting for your growth.
Anique
Founder, Sanctum & Soil