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Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 4: Functioning, Not Living, with Rachel Heather
A note before you listen: Rachel's story touches grief, trauma, and addiction. We keep those at the level she chose and do not go into the private parts. Take care of yourself as you listen.
For about a decade, Rachel Heather had small burnouts and partial recoveries, always just well enough to keep working, never well enough to actually live. Her words for it are functioning, not living. She was hyper-alert, in survival mode, masking so well that the people closest to her had no idea. Then the big one came and took her feet out from under her.
The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Rachel is candid about the cost of survival mode: a childhood shaped by her father's absence, decades of masking neurodiversity no one had a name for, and a 38-year relationship with cannabis that started as relief and became a plaster over everything she could not feel. When the collapse arrived, she surrendered to it. She shook, she cried, she stayed on the floor for three months, and she let her body release what it had stored for a lifetime.
Victor and Rachel get into what surrender actually means, why she stripped out every stimulant, how frequency meditation and nature and painting regulated a system that could not settle, and what it was like to receive an autism and ADHD diagnosis at 55 that reframed her entire life. This is also an honest conversation about addiction, about her son's recovery from cannabis-induced psychosis, and about the danger of normalizing the things we use to numb.
The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Rachel's answer is the heart of the episode. She feels calm. She feels at peace. She says she has never felt this way in her life.
In this episode:
What functioning, not living feels like day to day. The physical cost of a decade in survival mode. Masking undiagnosed neurodiversity. How addiction works as nervous system regulation. Surrendering to a collapse instead of fighting it. Meditation, nature, and creativity as regulation tools. A late autism and ADHD diagnosis. An honest talk about cannabis and what we normalize.
About Rachel Heather:
Rachel is a former chef turned front-of-house manager who ran several of her own businesses, raised and home-educated two children, and came through long-term burnout, grief, and a late autism and ADHD diagnosis into what she calls living the real kind. She now paints and works with clay in her open-air Inner Child Studio, makes pieces she calls imperfectly perfect, and volunteers with a neurodivergent artistic community. Her creativity is both her regulation and the way she tells the story she could not put into words.
Find Rachel:
Instagram: @asliceoflife69
Threads: @happypotter69
Resources mentioned:
Mind Clearing, the practice Rachel credits in her recovery, developed by Alice Whieldon: https://alicewhieldon.com/mind-clearing/
From Victor: If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio
This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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By Victor GoenkaA note before you listen: Rachel's story touches grief, trauma, and addiction. We keep those at the level she chose and do not go into the private parts. Take care of yourself as you listen.
For about a decade, Rachel Heather had small burnouts and partial recoveries, always just well enough to keep working, never well enough to actually live. Her words for it are functioning, not living. She was hyper-alert, in survival mode, masking so well that the people closest to her had no idea. Then the big one came and took her feet out from under her.
The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Rachel is candid about the cost of survival mode: a childhood shaped by her father's absence, decades of masking neurodiversity no one had a name for, and a 38-year relationship with cannabis that started as relief and became a plaster over everything she could not feel. When the collapse arrived, she surrendered to it. She shook, she cried, she stayed on the floor for three months, and she let her body release what it had stored for a lifetime.
Victor and Rachel get into what surrender actually means, why she stripped out every stimulant, how frequency meditation and nature and painting regulated a system that could not settle, and what it was like to receive an autism and ADHD diagnosis at 55 that reframed her entire life. This is also an honest conversation about addiction, about her son's recovery from cannabis-induced psychosis, and about the danger of normalizing the things we use to numb.
The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Rachel's answer is the heart of the episode. She feels calm. She feels at peace. She says she has never felt this way in her life.
In this episode:
What functioning, not living feels like day to day. The physical cost of a decade in survival mode. Masking undiagnosed neurodiversity. How addiction works as nervous system regulation. Surrendering to a collapse instead of fighting it. Meditation, nature, and creativity as regulation tools. A late autism and ADHD diagnosis. An honest talk about cannabis and what we normalize.
About Rachel Heather:
Rachel is a former chef turned front-of-house manager who ran several of her own businesses, raised and home-educated two children, and came through long-term burnout, grief, and a late autism and ADHD diagnosis into what she calls living the real kind. She now paints and works with clay in her open-air Inner Child Studio, makes pieces she calls imperfectly perfect, and volunteers with a neurodivergent artistic community. Her creativity is both her regulation and the way she tells the story she could not put into words.
Find Rachel:
Instagram: @asliceoflife69
Threads: @happypotter69
Resources mentioned:
Mind Clearing, the practice Rachel credits in her recovery, developed by Alice Whieldon: https://alicewhieldon.com/mind-clearing/
From Victor: If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio
This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.