A terrain-first explanation for ecological compression

You feel tight all the time.

Not just physically tight, though that too. Your fascia won't soften. Your shoulders live somewhere near your ears. Your middle back has been locked up for so long you've stopped noticing it.

You're tired but wired. You don't sleep as deeply as you used to. You don't recover the way you used to.

Foods you used to tolerate fine now create bloating, brain fog, or a mood shift you can't quite explain. You've become sensitive to chemicals, to environments, to other people's stress. Sometimes it feels like you're allergic to life.

You're functioning. Maybe even high-performing. But something feels off in a way that's hard to name. Like you're operating with less margin than you should have.

And you've probably tried a lot. You eat clean. You take your supplements. You've done the elimination diets, the gut cleanses, the protocols. You've seen practitioners. You've read the books, listened to the p...

There’s something shifting right now — and most people feel it in their bodies before they can explain it.

Less tolerance for vague answers.
More irritation with one-size-fits-all advice.
A nervous system that won’t settle when something feels off.
A growing refusal to override internal signals just because an expert says you should.

This isn’t random. It’s not personal failure. And it’s not just cultural.

We are moving out of an era that trained us to endure, tolerate, and endlessly process — and into one that demands agency, clarity, and embodied decision-making.

For years, many of us learned how to stay open and aware. We learned about trauma. We learned about nervous systems. We learned that force doesn’t heal.

But what we weren’t taught was containment.

Sensitivity without structure becomes exhaustion.
Awareness without pacing becomes paralysis.
Insight without integration keeps the nervous system activated instead of settled.

In health and wellness, this looked like staying ...

Most people come to my work, Minerals & Microbes, when they're at an impasse.
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If you’d rather listen than read, this conversation is also available on the Rewilded Wellness Podcast (Season 2, Episode 31) — you can tune in on:

Apple Podcasts — HERE
Spotify — HERE
YouTube — HERE
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They’ve exhausted many other approaches: diet changes, practitioners, lab tests, protocols. Maybe years of it. And while some things helped, the approach has been wildly incoherent. They’ve been reacting to symptoms as they arise and chasing causes, but nothing has actually rebuilt the body in a way that feels stable or sustainable.

If you’re here, you’ve probably already tried a lot.

I know this because I’ve watched people arrive having been run through the same few loops the functional health world keeps people cycling through.

Some show up with 15+ bottles of supplements, taken ...

Let's sit with something that might be uncomfortable for a minute.

What if the thing you call anxiety isn't a mental disorder at all? What if depression isn't a serotonin deficiency? What if the reason you can't seem to regulate your emotions has absolutely nothing to do with your childhood trauma or your resilience or your meditation practice and everything to do with the fact that your internal ecosystem has shifted into survival mode?

Stay with me.

Because here's what nobody wants to say out loud: we've been calling environmental poisoning "mental illness" for decades.

Your nervous system isn't overreacting. It's responding perfectly to a toxic internal and external environment that you didn't even know existed.

The Lie We've All Been Sold

You know what's genius about the mental health industrial complex? They convinced an entire generation that the problem is in their head. Chemical imbalance. Genetic predisposition. Negative thought patterns. Trauma responses.

And yes, envi...

When Health Information Stops Being Nourishing

We are living in an Information Age where wellness advice is everywhere — constant, confident, and often oversimplified. What looks like education is frequently something else entirely: processed information that sounds scientific but lacks context, discernment, and respect for how real bodies actually function.

People ask me all the time to “review” posts they see online or confirm whether a claim they encountered on Instagram is true. I don’t fact-check the internet. What I do care about is helping people develop their own filter — because when you don’t have one, your nervous system becomes the filter. And that’s how overwhelm, second-guessing, and loss of bodily trust take root.

In this episode, I walk through a specific example of how misinformation spreads so easily in modern wellness culture. I use a real Instagram carousel as a case study — not to attack a person or question their intent — but to show how quickly something ca...

Healing Happens in Order — Safety Comes First

If you’ve been trying to heal — doing all the tests, chasing protocols, supplementing diligently — and yet feel stuck, reactive, or like nothing is working, you’re not imagining it. Your body is responding exactly as it should: with survival, not repair. The missing piece? Safety.

Most healing approaches assume: “Do the right thing hard enough, and the body will follow.” But biology doesn’t work that way. Healing unfolds in an order dictated by the nervous system — by safety — not by protocol intensity.

Here’s how it really happens:

1. Safety First

Before you detox, supplement, or chase labs, the nervous system has to feel secure.

This isn’t just a feeling — it’s biological. When the peripheral nervous system is flooded from chronic stress, too many interventions, or trying to “do everything at once,” the body shifts into hypervigilance. Digestion stalls, absorption falters, blood sugar swings, and even “good” interventions feel like a...

I’ve been sitting with something that feels important to name, because I don’t think most people realize what they’ve actually been missing — or why so many of us have felt stuck, hesitant, or quietly exhausted on our healing journeys.

For a long time, I thought I was the problem. I wanted support. I sought it out. I read the books, learned the language, followed the advice. And yet, again and again, I couldn’t bring myself to fully step into the help that was offered. Something in me stayed braced. Watching. Calculating. Holding back.

It wasn’t a lack of commitment.

It wasn’t laziness.

And it wasn’t an unwillingness to do the work.

It was discernment in a body that didn’t have the capacity to tolerate one more experience of being rushed, overridden, or asked to perform wellness.

It was because the support itself didn’t feel safe enough to enter.

Most wellness and healing models assume a level of capacity that many people simply don’t have — especially after years of stress, env...

Why the word/term “dysregulated” isn’t helping anymore

I want to name something gently, because language matters — especially in healing spaces.

The word “dysregulated” is starting to lose its usefulness.

It’s become a blunt instrument.

A catch-all.

A label people try to fit themselves into — often at the expense of nuance, context, and dignity.

At this point, “dysregulated” is being used to mean:

-stressed

-tired

-overwhelmed

-reactive

-burned out

-traumatized

-behind

-“not healed enough”

That’s… almost everyone.

When a word means everything, it ends up meaning nothing.

And worse — it can quietly turn into a judgment.

I see people scanning themselves constantly:

→ Am I dysregulated right now?

→ Is this a sign I’m not healed?

→ What do I need to fix next?

That question alone can put the nervous system into more stress.

Here’s what I want to offer instead:

Most people aren’t “broken".

[Another problematic over-used term, but we'll address that one in a minute].

A...

If your healing journey has turned into an endless chase for the next NOVELTY — the next protocol, supplement, gadget, hack, pathogen, idea, or insight — and something in you knows you’re caught in a cycle you can’t seem to exit…

Keep reading. 

There is a reason the most important work on a healing path often feels boring, uninspiring, or even suspiciously underwhelming.

And it has nothing to do with a lack of willpower, discipline, intelligence, or “doing it wrong.”

It has everything to do with how a nervous system shaped by chronic stress, uncertainty, and overstimulation learns to survive.

Modern nervous systems are trained on novelty.

New protocols. New supplements. New theories. New trends. New hacks. New people promising the missing piece. The next thing. The better thing. The faster thing.

Not because these things are inherently bad — but because novelty activates. It lights up dopamine pathways. It creates a sense of movement, hope, and possibility. It gives the system so...

Healing isn’t always a straight line. Many of us have moved through acute crises, exhaustion, or illness, only to find ourselves in a quieter, less obvious phase — functional but not fully restored. This is what I call the Slow Rebuild Phase, and it’s one of the most important, yet least talked-about stages of recovery.

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During this phase, your body is doing two things at once: repairing and protecting. Your cells, gut, hormones, and nervous system are recalibrating after prolonged stress or survival-mode living. Even if you can work, move, and care for others, there’s a subtle hum under the surface — micro-flares, fatigue, digestive irregularities, emotional sensitivity — signaling your system is still cautious.

Why this phase feels confusing
Many people think that feeling “better but not fully better” is a sign of failure. In reality:

• Your metabolism is pacing itself, conserving energy for repair.

...