Why Peace Feels So Hard When You're Used to Survival Mode

How women in recovery struggle with peace, emotional safety, and letting go after living in survival mode for years

Dr. Nikki LeToya White

I didn’t start my personal development or sobriety journey because I wanted to be enlightened.I started because I wanted relief.What I didn’t realize then was that I wasn’t searching for purpose — I was searching for peace.

For a long time, I thought peace was something you earned after you fixed enough things about yourself.

After you found your “why.”After you healed the trauma.After you set boundaries.After you created structure.After you became disciplined enough, spiritual enough, healed enough.

I did all of that.

And still, peace felt… unfamiliar.

Almost suspicious.

When Survival Mode Becomes Your Personality

If you grew up in chaos, inconsistency, emotional neglect, or unpredictable relationships as I did, survival mode doesn’t feel like stress.

It feels like normal. I beat you feel this way too.

Being alert.Reading the room.Anticipating reactions.Staying productive.Staying useful.Staying strong.

Survival mode trains your nervous system to believe that calm equals danger.

So when peace finally arrives, your body doesn’t relax.It scans.It braces.It waits for the other shoe to drop. It walks on eggshells.

This is why so many women say:

• “Why do I feel uneasy when things are going well?”

• “Why do I feel bored or restless when there’s no drama?”

• “Why does peace feel empty instead of comforting?”

Nothing is wrong with you.

You’re just detoxing from survival and self-sabotage.

I Thought the Hardest Part Was Building the Life

I used to believe the hardest part of healing was:

• finding a vision

• creating structure

• developing discipline

• setting boundaries

• finding my voice

• processing emotional pain

• committing to daily practices

I did all of that work.

But that wasn’t the hardest part.

The hardest part was letting go.

Letting go of old stories.Letting go of resentment.Letting go of needing to be understood.Letting go of needing someone else to finally “get it” or apologize for the pain they caused.Letting go of the version of me that stayed alert just in case or self-sabotage because peace didn’t feel deserving yet.

Peace required surrender — and that felt like losing control.

The Student Level: Where Healing Gets Real

In my work, I talk about what I now call the student level of healing.

This is where growth stops being performative and starts being embodied.

I later saw this same truth reflected in an article by StackSnacker, “12 Things You’ll Only Notice About People Who’ve Done the Inner Work.” What stood out wasn’t the list itself — it was how quietly accurate it was. It described people who no longer need to win every interaction to feel whole.

On the student level, we also embodied this truth:

• You can understand two sides of a conflict without abandoning yourself.

• You can forgive someone while still holding them accountable.

• You can love someone and still acknowledge the relationship is unhealthy.

• You stop reducing everything to right/wrong, good/bad, villain/victim.

• You learn how to sit in nuance.

This ability to hold complexity without collapsing is a hallmark of emotional growth.

This level humbles you.

Because you realize healing isn’t about being morally superior or emotionally right.

It’s about emotional maturity.

And emotional maturity is quiet.

Why Peace Threatens the Ego

Here’s the part no one likes to talk about.

Survival mode gives the ego a job.

It gets to:

• stay alert

• stay righteous

• stay justified

• stay armored

• stay prepared to defend

Peace removes the battlefield.

And without a battlefield, the ego panics.

Because if you’re not fighting…If you’re not proving…If you’re not explaining…

Who are you?

This is why peace feels disorienting for women who’ve lived in emotional war zones.

Accountability vs Apologies: The Shift That Changed Me

One of the biggest turning points in my healing was understanding what real accountability looks like.

A real apology is not:

• long explanations

• emotional displays

• self-punishment

• spiritual language

• or guilt

A real apology sounds like what people who’ve actually done the inner work tend to offer — something StackSnacker captured well in “12 Things You’ll Only Notice About People Who’ve Done the Inner Work.”

“I understand how my actions impacted you.”

“I take responsibility.”

“I am working on this pattern.”

No defensiveness.

No excuses.

No blame-shifting.

The focus is repair — not ego protection.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth:

You don’t fully understand peace until you stop demanding apologies from people who are not capable of accountability.

The Question That Haunted Me

For a long time, I carried this quiet question:

“What am I missing that everyone else seems to get?”

Why did some people seem lighter?

Why did peace come easier to them?

Why did I still feel tense even after doing “everything right”?

What I was missing wasn’t effort.

It was release.

I was still tying my worth to being right.

To being validated.

To being acknowledged for what I survived.

Peace required me to loosen my grip on that identity.

Letting Go of Grudges Is Not Weakness

I was hurt by my mother's life choices.

I was hurt by my father’s life choices.

I was hurt by people’s choices, my own choices, absence, and limitations.

Letting go didn’t mean pretending that it didn’t matter.

It meant refusing to let my self-worth depend on their capacity to show up differently or my ability to learn from my mistakes.

Peace came when I stopped asking:“Why did you do this to me?”

And started asking:“What do I need to be free?”

Peace Is a Skill — Not a Personality Trait

Peace isn’t something you’re born with.It’s something you practice.

Especially if your nervous system learned chaos first.

Peace looks like:

• not reacting immediately

• not correcting everyone

• not explaining yourself

• not rehearsing conversations

• not holding onto old arguments

Peace is choosing neutrality when your body wants conflict.

And that choice feels foreign at first.

Why Women in Recovery Struggle With Peace

For women healing from:

• codependency

• emotional eating

• people-pleasing

• approval addiction

• self-abandonment

Peace feels like losing relevance.

If you’re not needed…If you’re not fixing…If you’re not rescuing…

Who are you?

Peace forces you to meet yourself without a role.

That’s terrifying — and liberating.

This Is Why Peace Comes After the Work, Not Before

You can’t bypass survival mode with affirmations.You can’t think your way into peace.You can’t hustle your way into safety.

Peace arrives when your system finally trusts:“I don’t have to fight to exist.”

That trust takes time.

And choosing peace over being right is one of the highest levels of healing there is.

If Peace Feels Hard Right Now, Read This Slowly

Nothing is wrong with you.

You’re not behind.

You’re not failing healing.

You’re unlearning survival.

And that is brave, quiet work.

Reflection Prompts to help you do the work on the Student Level

• Where in my life am I still operating from survival instead of safety?

• What does peace threaten inside me — control, identity, or validation?

• Who am I when I’m not explaining myself?

• What grudges am I holding because they make me feel justified?

• What would it feel like to choose peace even if no one apologizes?

• How do I define accountability — and do I practice it myself?

• What part of me is ready to move from survival to the student level?

If this article stirred something tender in you, that’s not random.

This is the kind of inner work I expand on inside Coming Home to You and within the Gutty Girl Lifestyle Academy — spaces designed for women who are ready to stop surviving and start living in emotional safety.

No pressure. No performance.Just room to exhale.

If achieving full remission from codependency and emotional eating rooted in abandonment, childhood emotional neglect, and betrayal trauma is your goal this year, subscribe to my newsletter and take a deep dive into tools and resources to support your effort.

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About The Author:  Dr. Nikki LeToya White MSEd-TL, Ph.D. RHN is the founder, director, and full-time board-certified trauma-informed nutritionist, folk herbalist, and wellness consultant at Spiced Life Conversation Art Wellness Studio and Botanica. She created Spiced Life Conversation, LLC Art Wellness Studio, and Botanica to provide the Metro Atlanta area with counseling and coaching services where clients are carefully matched with the right program for healing abandonment and childhood emotional neglect trauma that cause codependency, emotional eating, financial stress, and imposter syndrome as it relates to the fear of success and being abandon. We help you begin your emotional healing journey with ease. Recently, we have expanded to include an online membership site so we now provide support to people living all over the world. All of our recovery coaches provide at least one evidence-based treatment to assist in your recovery. Dr. White is a big proponent of self-care and helping people live a fulfilling life! She has been in full remission with both codependency and emotional binge eating disorder since 2016. In living a life in recovery from sugar addiction. I love my low-sugar balanced lifestyle.

Best Regards

 Dr. Nikki LeToya White