From the desk of Sang
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
This will take 7 minutes to read. And maybe shift how you understand why nothing has worked yet.
Dear brilliant, exhausted you,
I get it.
You've done the work. Like, really done the work.
You're probably reading this at 11 PM after finally getting the kids to bed, your Oura ring glowing red because your HRV has been in the toilet for months, wondering why you feel this terrible when you've tried everything.
Stressed and scrolling through your Saved folder on Instagram full of nervous system regulation posts you never have time to actually try.
As your carefully curated morning routine falls apart by 8 AM because your body won't cooperate with the "just breathe" advice.
And you oscillate between too much and not enough. All the time.
Too much work, not enough presence.
Too much giving, not enough receiving.
Too much performance, not enough rest.
Too much control, not enough surrender.
Never landing anywhere.
And to top it all off...
You're being told you're doing it wrong.
Should you meditate more? Journal harder? Find a better therapist? Try EMDR? Somatic yoga? EFT tapping?
What about those fancy group programs everyone's joining?
Should you invest in another course?
Hire a performance coach who promises you'll "optimize" your way out of burnout?
Post affirmations in your Notes app you'll never read again?
Most high-achieving women are suffering from what I call "therapeutic whiplash"...
Mixed with a dose of "I've analyzed myself to death"... and a pinch of "why am I still broken if I understand everything?"
And they end up doing a bit of this... a bit of that... and achieving absolutely NOTHING that lasts.
Soon, they're staring at their bookshelf full of Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté, and Peter Levine thinking, "I KNOW all this. So why am I still stuck?"
I call this madness the intelligent woman's trap.
Also known as the hyperarticulate burnout.
It's suffocating there, worse than being told to "just relax."
And I'd rather eat my morning meditation cushion than keep watching brilliant women spin their wheels this way.
But this isn't about me... It's about you.
You're reading this right now because something valuable - something HUGE - is at stake.
The one that changes your family's financial future, funds your kids' education, proves you didn't sacrifice for nothing.
And your nervous system keeps sabotaging it by burning out right before the promotion or freezing in the final presentation.
The decade where your body either cooperates or rebels entirely.
You got through college and early career on procrastination, last-minute all-nighters, hyperfocus binges, and optional crash days.
But your body can't do that anymore after mid-30s.
Now it's costing you: gray hair coming in faster, the cortisol belly that won't budge no matter what you eat, sleep that never actually restores you, weight that fluctuates wildly, energy that crashes by 2 PM.
This is the window where it either stabilizes or becomes a chronic issue for the next 30 years. Where you either feel good in your body again or resign yourself to managing symptoms forever.
Not the fantasy version, but the actual person who chose you and is still here.
Things haven't been the same since the births. The roommate-ness is becoming permanent.
You're watching yourself become your parents - the exact thing you swore wouldn't happen.
You were determined to have love that outlasted kids. This is the window where it either rebuilds or calcifies into permanent distance.
Every new relationship brings the same question: "Is this my gut instinct or trauma responses from the past?"
You oscillate wildly. Either you become his mom, managing the whole process, or you keep what you think is a "cool distance" while wondering "this cannot be this hard, what's wrong with me?"
You swing between "am I too picky and going to end up alone with cats?" and "oh god, I'm becoming that doormat I never thought I'd be."
Both paths carry shame. Neither is actually you.
The cost of staying in this pattern? Spending your life alone or performing in partnership. Both are unbearable.
You're terrified after loss or haunted by the last birth. You've forgotten parts of it, but Google Photos needs to be scrolled through quickly.
You've stopped driving on freeways (you and your Oura ring know this secret) and you're white-knuckling every car journey.
This is your chance to not pass birth trauma to this baby. To actually bond instead of performing motherhood.
To not spend the next 18 years repairing what gets formed in these first months. The procedural memory gets written NOW.
You're watching your daughter's shoulders tense exactly like yours. Her teenage school counselor calls and your heart pummels.
You know what's happening to her friends. You just want her safe. Did you push her too much? Not enough?
And your son - so distant now, you don't have access to him anymore. Your jaw tightens because you refuse to raise yet another man who struggles to emote.
The patterns forming RIGHT NOW will either free them or cost them their 30s in therapy. You have maybe 3-5 years before these patterns solidify into their operating system.
You left home young. Maybe a decade passed, or more. The distance was freedom. Space to breathe.
You worked through the traumatic elements in therapy. But now the roles are reversed, and your therapist tells you you're "codependent" and should go "no-contact."
She misses everything: the cultural layer, the sacrifice, the fact that they're your PARENTS.
And she completely misses the visceral reality - that when you drop them off at the airport, your throat closes. Or you pick a fight. Or you avoid the goodbye entirely.
Because your body knows this could be the last time.
The one that startles when even your partner walks in behind you. That can't handle malls, loud restaurants, sudden sounds.
Time blindness. Procrastination-hyperfocus-crash. Sensory overload in "normal" environments.
That justice sensitivity - you were the angry girl in school, fighting every injustice. The same one now terrified to go to your reunion because someone might say "she had so much potential, but..."
Your partner says "stop taking everything so personally" but your brain is like that HD camera that photographs the night sky perfectly - except when you focus it on nearby grass in daylight, everything's pixelated.
You can't modulate. It's all or nothing.
Then you see it in your kids and the shame hits: did you curse them with this?
Whatever it is for you...
The stakes are real. The cost of staying stuck is massive. And time is not on your side.
Let me tell you what happened when I left corporate.
I thought I was done with that world. Strategy consulting, data, high-stakes decisions, the constant performance.
I became a doula. Then trained in Somatic Experiencing®. Then Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's developmental movement work. Pre and perinatal psychology. Embodied eating. 12+ years of deep specialization.
And I met a lot of beautiful, intuitive, deeply caring practitioners.
Who had never been in a boardroom.
Who had never pitched to a room of skeptical executives.
Who had never felt their nervous system shut down right before a make-or-break presentation.
Who had never negotiated their worth while their body screamed "just take whatever they offer."
They're lovely people. They do good work.
But they don't know YOUR world.
They've never sat in the same rooms you sit in.
They don't understand the specific flavor of burnout that comes from performing brilliance while your nervous system is screaming.
Most somatic practitioners are running lifestyle businesses.
Peaceful. Slow. Grounded. Beautiful, honestly.
But you? You're not trying to build a lifestyle business.
You're trying to run a category-defining career while also being a whole human.
You need someone who's done both.
Here's what I bring that almost no one else can:
I speak fluent corporate AND fluent body.
BITS Pilani. MS in Computer Science. Harvard/MIT credentials. Built businesses. Exited. Sat in those partnership meetings where everyone's smiling and your stomach is in knots.
I know what it's like to be the smartest person in the room and still feel like you're about to be found out.
To nail the presentation while dissociating.
To get the promotion and immediately think "now I have to perform at this level forever."
I've lived those stakes.
The $50K raise that changes your family's trajectory? I've negotiated those.
The partnership position where one freeze response costs you years? I know that terror.
The way your body sabotages right when you're about to break through? I've completed that pattern in my own nervous system.
And here's what most people don't know:
The same pattern-recognition that made me good at strategy consulting? That's what makes me lethal at nervous system work.
I can track your autonomic states the way I used to track market patterns.
I can identify your character structure the way I used to identify business bottlenecks.
I can see the procedural loop that formed when you were six months old - the exact motor sequence - and map how it's showing up in your leadership style today.
Most practitioners will tell you to "slow down" and "feel your feelings."
I built this work specifically for women whose brains process at lightning speed.
For women who are deeply intuitive AND analytically brilliant.
For women who need both languages - body and business - spoken fluently in the same sentence.
I custom-built this for you. My BFF who speaks both languages.
Now here's what's happened in the last 5 years:
Everyone and their mother is suddenly "somatic."
Weekend certifications. Online courses. "Trauma-informed" added to bios.
And look - some of it is helpful. For some people.
But can they track what happens in your body when you're about to ask for the raise?
Do they understand the specific procedural pattern that makes you say yes when you mean no in high-stakes negotiations?
Have they mapped the exact character structure that makes brilliant women collapse right before they break through?
Here's the difference:
Most practitioners will help you feel better.
I help you perform differently.
They work with your emotions.
I work with the procedural memory organizing your entire response system.
They teach you to regulate.
I help you complete the incomplete stress cycles that have been running for 30+ years.
They're running lifestyle businesses. I'm a category creator.
And I built this category specifically for women like you. Like us.
Women who need someone who's been in the room where it happens.
Who speaks both languages - boardroom and body - without code-switching.
Who understands that your analytical brilliance isn't the problem to solve.
It's the gift that makes the somatic work even more powerful.
You are not "too analytical" for body-based work.
You are not "too in your head" to do somatic healing.
You are not broken because insight hasn't fixed you.
You are a deep thinker AND a deep feeler whose nervous system learned to survive by living in your head.
And the healing world? It wasn't built for you.
How many times have you figured something out - at work, in relationships, about a project - way before anyone else could see it?
You just knew. Your body knew. Your intuition was screaming.
But when they asked "how do you know?" you couldn't explain it.
So you had to reverse-engineer your way into a narrative explanation that made logical sense.
Build the intellectual scaffolding after the fact so other people could follow.
Translate your somatic knowing into language your mind could defend.
That's not being "too analytical." That's being brilliant at BOTH.
You are deeply intuitive AND intellectually rigorous.
A deep feeler AND a deep thinker.
But every healing space you've walked into has asked you to pick one.
I left the corporate, data-driven, analytical world to become a doula.
Then a somatic practitioner.
I was done with the pace, the performance, the constant proving.
I thought, "Finally. I'll slow down. I'll be in my body. I'll live from my intuition."
And that part of me - the deeply intuitive, feminine, connected part? She landed. She thrived.
Birth work cracked me open in the most beautiful ways.
But here's what nobody prepared me for:
The other side of me - the analytical, pattern-recognition, deep-thinking side - didn't go anywhere.
She was still there. Still sharp. Still needing somewhere to go.
And when I looked for spaces in the healing world that could hold BOTH sides of me...
I found nothing.
Every therapy space wanted me to:
• Slow down (when my brain processes at lightning speed)
• "Drop into my body" (as if I could just... do that on command)
• "Feel my feelings" (I can name 47 feelings. That's not the problem.)
• "Stop intellectualizing" (translation: stop being smart)
The somatic world was full of people who'd never lived in high-pressure environments.
Who didn't understand what it's like to be both deeply intuitive AND analytically brilliant.
Who treated fast thinking like a defense mechanism instead of a gift.
And the corporate/coaching world? They just wanted me to optimize harder.
Neither space had room for a woman who was BOTH:
• Deeply intuitive AND a rigorous thinker
• A deep feeler AND deeply analytical
• Somatically sensitive AND intellectually sophisticated
So I built one.
Let's be brutally honest about what's out there and why it's failing women like us.
"Let's understand your childhood. Let's explore your patterns. Let's name what happened."
And you did. God, did you do that work.
You can analyze your attachment style in your sleep. You know exactly why you people-please (childhood conditioning). You understand your perfectionism (survival strategy). You've connected ALL the dots.
But your body? Still running the same program.
Because talk therapy works with explicit memory - the stories you tell, the insights you gain.
But the patterns keeping you stuck? Those live in procedural memory - motor sequences your nervous system learned before you had language.
The way your chest tightens when someone needs you. How your shoulders rise when conflict starts. The reach-and-collapse pattern that leaves you depleted. The performance mode you can't turn off.
These aren't cognitive problems. They're incomplete stress responses your body has been trying to finish for decades.
And talking about them? Doesn't complete them.
"Let's optimize your systems. Let's set better boundaries. Let's build better habits."
And you tried. You implemented every productivity hack. You learned to say no (in theory). You created morning routines (that lasted three days). You set boundaries (that you immediately violated when someone needed you).
But your nervous system? Still treating everything like a threat.
Because coaching works with strategy and behavior change - the conscious decisions you make.
But when your autonomic nervous system is dysregulated? When you're living in chronic sympathetic activation?
No amount of goal-setting changes how your body responds when triggered.
Willpower doesn't override a nervous system that learned danger equals productivity.
"Just drop into your body. Feel your sensations. Practice gratitude. Breathe deeper."
And you signed up for ALL of them. The meditation app. The gratitude journal. The body scans. The breathwork class where you had a panic attack because slowing down felt dangerous.
But your body? Still doesn't feel safe enough to let go.
Because these tools assume your nervous system can regulate on demand.
But you have a character structure organizing your entire response system. Procedural patterns running for 30+ years.
You can't "just breathe" your way out of a nervous system that learned slowing down = danger, needing = abandonment, vulnerability = annihilation, resting = falling behind.
These tools work beautifully... for people whose nervous systems already feel basically safe. That's not you. Not yet.
"Let's track your HRV. Let's optimize your sleep. Let's test your hormones. Let's supplement your way to regulation."
You got the Oura ring. The continuous glucose monitor. The Dutch test. The comprehensive bloodwork. You take magnesium, ashwagandha, L-theanine, CBD, adaptogens. You know your cortisol patterns better than your doctor does.
But your body? Still dysregulated despite perfect supplements and data.
Because biohacking and functional medicine address the symptoms - the downstream effects of chronic stress. The biological markers.
But if your nervous system is still running the motor patterns that CREATE the dysregulation? If the procedural loop that formed at 6 months old is still incomplete?
You're just managing symptoms. The data looks slightly better. But nothing fundamentally changes.
The HRV doesn't improve because the procedural loop never completed.
Here's what nobody in the healing world wants to admit:
There is almost nothing available for brilliant, high-achieving women who need nervous system work at the procedural level.
The therapy world? Built for people who need to GAIN insight. (You have insight coming out of your ears.)
The coaching world? Built for people who need strategy and accountability. (You have more systems than you can implement.)
The somatic world? Built for people who can "just slow down." (Your brain doesn't work that way and that's not a problem.)
The performance world? Built for people who can optimize their way out. (You can't biohack your way out of procedural memory.)
What's missing is the space that says:
"Your analytical brilliance isn't the problem. Your fast-processing brain isn't the enemy. Your deep thinking AND deep feeling aren't contradictions to resolve.
Your nervous system learned to survive in a specific way. And we're going to work with that, not against it."
This isn't for everyone.
It's not for people who need to develop insight (therapy does that beautifully).
It's not for people who need better systems (coaching does that well).
It's not for people in acute psychiatric crisis (that requires clinical intervention).
This is for you if something of massive value is at stake RIGHT NOW:
The stakes I listed earlier - your career, your health, your marriage, your kids, your aging parents, that pregnancy, finding love, your neurodivergent nervous system.
And you recognize yourself in these patterns:
You're hyperarticulate and self-aware - you've done years of therapy and understand everything, but your body still runs the same program.
You're a deep thinker AND a deep feeler - and you're exhausted from healing spaces that ask you to pick one.
You have a fast-processing, pattern-recognition brain - and you're done being told that's a defense mechanism.
You've tried meditation, yoga, breathwork, tapping - and they either don't work or make things worse.
You're not broken. You're not too analytical.
You just haven't found the approach built for how your specific nervous system works.
For women who are both brilliant and dysregulated.
For women whose intuition speaks before logic can catch up.
For women who need their intelligence honored, not pathologized.
If this is landing - if you see yourself in these words - the next step is understanding what's actually organizing your nervous system.
Not another personality test.
Not another diagnosis.
A map of the specific procedural pattern your body learned to survive.
Because you can't change what you can't see.
And once you see it? Everything shifts.
Sang