It’s mid-January, and that list of resolutions you made with such hope a few weeks ago? Already gathering dust. Maybe you’ve tried to start that meditation practice three times. Or the gym membership you bought is unused. Or you’re still scrolling social media instead of working on that creative project.
And now comes the familiar voice: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just do this? Everyone else seems to have their act together.
Here’s what I want you to know: it’s not a willpower problem. It’s a nervous system problem.
When Your Body Says No
Traditional goal-setting advice assumes you’re operating from a calm, regulated nervous system. It assumes you have the bandwidth to add new habits, to push yourself, to “just do it.”
But if you’ve experienced trauma—childhood neglect, ongoing discrimination, relational harm, loss—your nervous system might be stuck in survival mode. And when your nervous system is focused on survival, it doesn’t have energy left over for goals.
Think about it this way: if your body believes you’re in danger, it’s not going to prioritize morning runs or learning a new language. It’s going to prioritize keeping you alive. Right now. In this moment.
This is especially true for folks who’ve experienced ongoing marginalization. If you’re navigating racism, transphobia, or other forms of systemic harm, your nervous system is working overtime just to help you get through the day. Asking yourself to also be more productive, more disciplined, more anything can feel impossible—because it kind of is.
The Trauma Response Masquerading as Laziness
What looks like procrastination or lack of motivation is often a trauma response.
Your nervous system learned to protect you through:
Freeze. You can’t start the project because every time you try, you feel paralyzed. Your body literally won’t let you move forward.
Flight. You stay busy with everything except the goal that matters. Suddenly cleaning the baseboards feels urgent.
Fawn. You say yes to everyone else’s needs and have nothing left for your own goals. Taking care of yourself feels selfish or dangerous.
Shutdown. You scroll, you numb out, you can’t seem to care about anything. Your system has decided the safest option is to feel as little as possible.
None of these are character flaws. They’re your nervous system doing what it learned to do to keep you safe.
Why Traditional Goal-Setting Backfires
Most goal-setting advice makes trauma responses worse, not better.
“Just push through!” tells your nervous system that you’re not listening to its distress signals, so it pushes back harder.
“Be more disciplined!” adds shame on top of an already overwhelmed system.
“You’ve got this!” bypasses the reality that your body doesn’t feel like you’ve got anything right now except survival.
For many of my clients—especially Black women and women of color who’ve been told their whole lives to be strong, to work twice as hard, to push through—this “just do more” advice lands on a system that’s already depleted. You’ve been pushing through your whole life. Your body is exhausted.
What Your Nervous System Actually Needs
Before you can move toward goals, your nervous system needs to feel safe enough to relax its death grip on survival mode.
This is where EMDR comes in. EMDR helps reprocess the traumatic memories and experiences that keep your nervous system stuck in threat mode. When we process what’s underneath—the childhood experiences that taught you the world wasn’t safe, the racial trauma that keeps you hypervigilant, the relationship wounds that make vulnerability feel dangerous—your nervous system can start to settle.
As one client described it after several EMDR sessions: “It’s like someone turned down the volume on the constant static in my head. I didn’t realize how much energy it was taking just to function.”
When your nervous system isn’t spending all its resources on survival, you suddenly have bandwidth for other things. The goals that felt impossible start to feel possible. Not because you developed more willpower, but because your body finally feels safe enough to grow.
A Different Approach: Befriending Your System
Instead of fighting against your nervous system, what if you worked with it?
Get curious, not critical. When you can’t seem to start something, ask: “What is my system trying to protect me from right now?” Maybe starting that business brings up old fears of failure and rejection. Maybe setting boundaries activates the part that learned people-pleasing kept you safe.
Focus on regulation first, goals second. Before asking your system to do more, help it feel safer. This might look like therapy, sure. But it also looks like: taking breaks, saying no to things, moving your body in gentle ways, connecting with people who get it.
Make your goals trauma-informed. Instead of “go to the gym 5 times a week,” try “move my body in ways that feel good when I have the capacity.” Instead of “stop procrastinating,” try “notice when I’m in a freeze response and offer myself compassion.”
Celebrate tiny wins. Your nervous system needs evidence that small steps are safe. Each tiny action that doesn’t result in catastrophe helps it learn that moving forward is okay.
The Mosaic Includes Rest
Here’s what the wellness industry doesn’t tell you: rest is part of the mosaic too. The pauses, the moments of not-doing, the times when you need to just survive—these aren’t failures. They’re necessary pieces of the whole.
Healing isn’t linear. Some days you’ll have energy to move toward goals. Other days, getting out of bed is the goal. Both are valid. Both are part of weaving your fragmented pieces into something whole.
For those carrying the weight of intergenerational trauma, of systemic oppression, of having to be strong for everyone else—your rest is revolutionary. Your gentle approach to yourself is radical. Your choice to stop pushing and start listening to your body is healing.
Moving Forward (Gently)
If your goals keep failing, it’s not because you’re broken or lazy. It’s because your nervous system is doing its job—keeping you safe the only way it knows how.
The work isn’t to override your system with more discipline. The work is to help your system feel safe enough to relax so you can access the parts of yourself that actually want to grow and create and move forward.
That’s the work we do in trauma therapy. We don’t just set goals and hold you accountable. We help your nervous system release what it’s been holding so you can show up for your life in new ways.
