Glimmers and Chronic Illness

Glimmers – Remembering Safety When the Body Forgets

There’s a kind of tiredness that sleep doesn’t touch.

The kind that seeps into your muscles, your breath, your thoughts. Chronic illness has a way of tensing your body so deeply that you forget what

ease feels like. Your internal and external surveillance start working overtime: scanning,

planning, fixing, proving, fearing what will happen next?

For many of us, this didn’t begin with illness—it began long before. In homes where rest felt

unsafe. In moments when no one held our hand as we trembled through something too big. Too big for little one's nervous system.

When soothing was foreign, because the adults around you didn’t know how to soothe

themselves either.

Over time, the body learns to survive without safety, majority of times it spends on survival.

It tightens around uncertainty, around other people’s moods, around the next wave of pain.

And then illness comes— you become tired but wired. There is no capacity to rest, because body doesn't feel safe, there is no capacity to heal - because the body can't rest. 

You read everything, try everything, yet without a felt dialogue with your body, you’re lost.

It’s like being deep in a forest without a map.

You want someone to guide you out—maybe a doctor who sees the whole picture. But most

doctors were not taught to move in harmony with complex symptoms that require

multitasking and patience (thankfully, this is slowly beginning to change). And even less of them are familiar with dysregulated nervous system or Cptsd.

So you walk alone. A patch of sunlight here, then darkness again. A moment of hope, then

doubt.

And yet—those tiny patches of light matter.

They are not “nothing.”

They are the seeds of your map.

Each time you pause in one—notice it, breathe it in, anchor yourself. Write down where you

found it. Let it become a breadcrumb you can follow back when the dark closes in again. Over

time, these glimmers become not just moments but pathways—tiny doorways of safety your

nervous system can return to.

 Why Glimmers Matter for the Nervous System?

When you pause inside a glimmer — a moment of softness, warmth, or safety — something

subtle happens. Your nervous system, which has spent years scanning for

danger, suddenly gets new data:

"Maybe it’s okay to relax for a second. Maybe I’m not alone right now."

According to Polyvagal Theory, your body has three main pathways for responding to life:

The ventral vagal system, which allows connection, calm, and curiosity, healing.

The sympathetic system, which fuels movement and survival — fight or flight.

The dorsal vagal system, which pulls us into collapse, shutdown, or numbness when things

feel too much.

But there’s also a state in-between — what many of us know as functional freeze.

It’s when both the gas and the brake are pressed at the same time.

You look calm, put together but inside there’s buzzing, tension, exhaustion.

Your body is trying to move forward and protect you — all at once.

For those of us with chronic illness or trauma, this mixed state often becomes the default.

Healing then isn’t about forcing a quick release or chasing a high-energy breakthrough.

It’s about learning to move slowly enough that the body begins to trust the safety of

softening.

Because the freeze doesn’t thaw under pressure — it melts under warmth.

Glimmers are those tiny moments of warmth,

they’re quiet invitations to melt.

The sound of a bird, a patch of sunlight on your skin, the familiar smell of your pillow, specific herb smell, tea.. book..water — each

tells your body, “This moment is not dangerous.”

And every time your body receives that message, it rewrites a small part of your survival

story.

You don’t have to chase those glimmers.

You can let them come, one breath, one heartbeat, one safe second at a time.

Your nervous system doesn’t need speed — it needs gentleness. Gentleness and slowness is the opposite of surviving.

Healing is learning to pause.

Over and over again.

Healing is finding small lights,

small warmth —

and letting the body sense it.

One second,

one breath,

one millimeter at a time.