Love, healing, and why beauty that lasts must begin inside out — through the vagus nerve
Desire can feel intoxicating. It wakes something up — your body, your senses, your longing. For a moment, you feel alive. But aliveness isn’t the same as safety. I’ve learned that the body knows the difference long before the mind does.
When you’re desired but not chosen, your system stays alert. You wait. You read signs. You brace. Even in moments of closeness, something in you doesn’t fully soften — like you’re holding your breath, just a little. That isn’t romance. That’s stress.
Harvard research on stress and human wellbeing shows that emotional uncertainty keeps the body in a low-grade stress response — even when affection or desire is present. The nervous system doesn’t relax because someone wants you. It relaxes when it feels safe. Being desired excites the nervous system. Being chosen calms it.
When desire isn’t backed by clarity or consistency, the body stays switched on. Stress hormones like cortisol rise more easily. The system remains in anticipation mode — not rest. And this doesn’t stay emotional.
When Stress Starts Showing Up on the Skin
Harvard Medical School has shown that chronic stress affects the skin’s barrier function, slows repair, and increases inflammation. Over time, this can show up as dullness, sensitivity, breakouts, flare-ups, or simply a loss of softness in the face — even when your skincare routine is “right.”
That’s why the glow fades quietly. Sleep becomes lighter. The jaw stays tight. The shoulders don’t drop. The body is busy protecting itself.
Beauty — real beauty — doesn’t begin with products. It begins where the body feels safe enough to repair.
The vagus nerve — the pathway responsible for calm, connection, and emotional regulation — responds to consistency, not intensity. Harvard’s long-running research on adult development shows that reliable, supportive relationships are one of the strongest predictors of long-term health and wellbeing. When relationships feel emotionally safe, stress responses reduce across the body — impacting immunity, sleep, hormones, and yes, skin health.
This explains why desire without choice can feel addictive at first and draining later. It creates highs without rest. You feel wanted, but not held. And the body never fully exhales.
Why Feeling Chosen Changes Everything (Inside Out)
Being chosen — clearly, consistently — sends a different signal: you can rest now. That rest is healing.
When the nervous system softens, the body shifts from vigilance to repair. Stress hormones lower. Inflammation settles. Sleep deepens. The face relaxes. The eyes soften. The glow returns — not dramatically, but steadily.
That’s beauty inside out.
Not because life is perfect. But because the body is no longer bracing for loss.
I’ve realised that what we often miss isn’t the person — it’s the regulation. The brief sense of calm our body experienced, even if it wasn’t sustainable. Desire without choice keeps you dysregulated. Choice — real choice — allows the body to heal.
How to Heal: Break the Loops That Keep Your Body in Waiting Mode
Basically, you have to break the monotony of life. New inputs calm a nervous system stuck in anticipation.
1. Go outside daily. Sun, trees, water, barefoot if you can — let your body reset before your thoughts do.
2. Create for zero output — journal, doodle, dance in your room, swim, play a sport just to feel again.
3. Take warm showers or baths before bed. Add bath salts or minerals to signal safety and slow down.
4. Add life to your space. Bring plants home, soften lighting, clear clutter — your environment shapes your nervous system.
5. Choose people and rooms that let your shoulders drop, not ones that make you replay conversations later.
6. Journal: put pen to paper and dump whatever is in your head. Split the page into two — what’s not working (ramble freely) and what you’re grateful for (bullet points).
7. Cook for yourself: ordering in is easy, but cooking from scratch once in a while is therapeutic. It breaks routine and brings you back into your body.
And when the body exhales, healing begins. That’s when the glow returns — quietly, unmistakably, from the inside out.
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