INSIDE THIS WEEK'S EDITION:

❤️‍🔥WHAT YOUR BODY IS TRYING TO TELL YOU 🗳️THIS IS POLITICAL (AND PERSONAL) 🧘‍♀️ONE THING TO RELEASE THIS WEEK 🧹THE WOO HAS RECEIPTS 🌙COSMIC CORNER

Happy Tuesday, Reader!

Quick question: Have you ever had to leave a restaurant because someone at the next table was eating loudly? Or fantasized about throwing your coworker's keyboard out a window? Or felt like your nervous system was doing a full threat assessment over the sound of someone breathing?

SAME.

This week we're getting into something that doesn't get nearly enough airtime in burnout conversations: your senses. Specifically, how the way you're wired might mean your tank is emptying faster than you realize, and it has nothing to do with your work ethic or your ability to cope.

Let's get into it. 👇

❤️‍🔥WHAT YOUR BODY IS TRYING TO TELL YOU

When the World Is Just Too Loud (And Why That's Not a You Problem)

You've probably heard of misophonia, the condition where specific sounds trigger an intense, almost visceral response. Chewing, tapping, breathing, the scratch of a fork on a plate...🤢 If you've ever felt a flash of rage or panic from a sound that nobody else seems to notice, you know what I'm talking about.

Misophonia isn't a personality flaw or an overreaction. It's a neurophysiological condition, meaning it's rooted in how your brain and body are wired, not how emotionally regulated you are.

And the burnout connection is direct.

When you have misophonia (or any heightened sensory sensitivity), your nervous system is regularly firing a fight-flight-freeze response to triggers in your environment. Most of the time, you white-knuckle through it. You mask, act normal, stay in the meeting, sit through the lunch, and try to survive the open office. And every single time you do that, you're spending from a reserve you may not know you have.

Researchers describe this kind of burnout not as an emotional state but as a physiological one, a place where the nervous system has been taxed so far beyond its capacity that it can't regulate itself back to baseline. The symptoms look a lot like regular burnout: exhaustion, withdrawal, and difficulty functioning, but the cause is cumulative sensory overload, not just overwork.

And the research shows that pushing through or forcing yourself to just deal with the exposure until it stops bothering you, makes it worse! What helps is accommodation, aka using tools, making environmental adjustments, and giving your nervous system actual permission to not be in fight mode.

🗳️THIS IS POLITICAL (AND PERSONAL)

The Accommodation Gap Nobody's Talking About

If you have a broken leg, the world will hand you crutches without batting an eye. But if your nervous system is dysregulated by sensory input, if open offices, fluorescent lights, and ambient noise are actively burning through your cognitive and physical resources, good luck getting anyone to take that seriously.

The research on misophonia and neurodivergent burnout is pretty direct: people with sensory sensitivities need accommodations. Not therapy that forces them to sit with their triggers until they stop reacting. Actual structural support, like the ability to use noise-canceling headphones, modify their environment, and take sensory breaks without having to justify it to HR.

But most workplaces have no framework for this. Sensory accommodations aren't part of the standard ADA conversation. They're rarely offered, rarely documented, and, here's the political part, rarely even imagined as something employees could reasonably need.

And who's most likely to mask their sensory sensitivity and push through? Women. People who've spent their whole lives being told they're "too sensitive." People who've learned that need = weakness in professional environments.

This is the same pattern I've talked about recently with unpaid care labor: the invisible work your body is doing doesn't count until it breaks down. The system profits from you performing wellness you don't actually have.

🧘‍♀️ONE THING TO RELEASE THIS WEEK

The Idea that Your Sensitivity is a Design Flaw

Your nervous system is responsive to the environment around you. That sensitivity that makes you miserable in loud restaurants or fluorescent-lit offices is also the same sensitivity that makes you perceptive, empathetic, creative, and able to pick up on things in a room that other people miss entirely.

There's nothing wrong with your sensitivity. We just live in a world that was built for a narrower range of nervous systems, and a culture that frames your exhaustion as a productivity problem instead of a structural one.

This week, try one small accommodation you've been putting off because it felt like "too much to ask." Maybe it's noise-canceling headphones during deep work, taking a lunch break that's actually a break or saying no to the thing that drains you without offering a three-paragraph explanation.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO EARN THE RIGHT TO PROTECT YOUR OWN ENERGY.

🪄THE WOO HAS RECEIPTS

Reiki is in the Hospital Now. Yes, Really.

MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the Mayo Clinic, three of the most highly ranked cancer hospitals in the United States, all currently offer Reiki to their patients. Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine offers it alongside acupuncture and massage therapy. These aren't fringe wellness boutiques. These are institutions that run on evidence.

The global energy healing market, which includes Reiki (hello! 🙋‍♀️), sound healing, acupuncture, and related modalities, was estimated at nearly $79 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach close to $395 billion by 2030. That's an adoption rate and shift that I can get behind.

What's driving it? A few things: a growing body of research on mind-body connection, a widening treatment gap in conventional mental healthcare, and honestly, a lot of people who tried everything the mainstream offered and still felt like something was missing.

Energy healing operates on a different premise than Western medicine. Rather than treating isolated symptoms, it works with the body's energy field, the stuff that quantum physics is increasingly finding language for, even if conventional medicine is still catching up.

For something like sensory burnout, where the nervous system has been running on high alert for so long it's forgotten what calm feels like, there's something to be said for a modality that works below the cognitive level. You can't think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. But you can invite it back into regulation.

The receipts are there. The institutions are paying attention. AND, if you're interested, you can try it with me. Book your first (or next) Reiki session with me here.​

🌙COSMIC CORNER

The Blue Moon is Bringing You Truth

On Sunday, May 31st, we've got a Blue Moon (meaning the 2nd Full Moon in a calendar month). It's in Sagittarius, which is an adventurous, curious sign. This lunation is bringing your future goals to light. As we get closer to the Full Moon, expect clarity around your goals and life's purpose, unexpected shifts (and maybe some jarring news - eek!), and a grounded energy from Saturn's harmonious trine with the Moon which will help you build your foundations with a clear head and a eye toward the future.