Trees don’t get “sick” from stress. They adapt. And here is the part worth holding onto: so do you.
Picture a tree that takes a hit. Maybe a windstorm. Maybe a long drought. Maybe a branch tears away and leaves a wound. The tree doesn’t panic, and it doesn’t malfunction. It moves into phase one: the stress phase. Roots dig deeper. Bark thickens. Sap shifts. Growth slows in some places and speeds up in others. From the outside the tree looks tense, almost braced. But nothing has gone wrong. Every change has a purpose. The tree is mobilizing.
Then the conditions ease. The wind dies down. The rain returns. Now phase two begins: the healing phase. Callus tissue forms over the wound. There is visible swelling around the injury. Energy floods back in to finish the repair. And here is the part most people miss. The tree often looks a little “worse” before it looks better. That swelling, that knotted bark, that bulge where the branch used to be is not damage. That is the tree completing the cycle.
Hold that picture, because Germanic New Medicine sees you in exactly the same way.
Two phases, one cycle
Your body, like the tree, does not move through stress in one flat line. It moves through two distinct phases. Once you can recognize them, a lot of the fear around your symptoms starts to soften.
The stress phase (sympathicotonia). This is your mobilizing phase. Cold hands. Racing thoughts. Your appetite drops. Sleep gets strange, and you wake at 3 a.m. with your mind running. You might lose a little weight without trying. This is not your body breaking down. This is your body bracing, the way a tree thickens its bark. Your system is gathering its resources and pointing them where they are needed.
The healing phase (vagotonia). This is the phase that tends to scare people, because this is when you actually feel it. Tired. Warm. Achy. Swollen. Foggy. Maybe a low-grade temperature, maybe some inflammation, maybe a flare of the very thing you were worried about. Many women have been taught that these sensations mean something has gone wrong. But look at the tree again. The swelling is the repair. Energy has flooded back in to finish the job. You feel worse for a moment because the work is finally happening.
You are not broken in either phase. In the stress phase you are mobilizing. In the healing phase you are repairing. You are doing exactly what a tree does, just with a few more opinions about it.
Why this changes everything
Here is what happens when you do not understand these two phases. You feel a healing-phase symptom, the fatigue or the swelling or the ache, and you read it as proof that something is wrong. That fear pulls you straight back into a stress phase. And now your body has to start the whole cycle over again.
Fear interrupts healing. Not because your body is fragile, but because your nervous system listens to the story you tell it. Tell it “I am in danger” and it will mobilize. Tell it “this is repair, this is the cycle finishing” and it can stay in the phase that actually heals you.
This is the difference between fighting your body and working with it. A tree does not argue with its own swelling. It lets the callus form. You are allowed to do the same.
A gentler way to read your symptoms
The next time your body does something that makes you nervous, try this. Instead of asking “what is wrong with me?”, ask “which phase am I in?”
If you feel wired, cold, sleepless, and switched on, you may be in a stress phase. The kindest thing you can do is help your system feel safe enough to come out of it. Slow your breathing. Soften your schedule. Name the stress out loud so it stops running quietly in the background.
If you feel tired, warm, achy, and heavy, you may be in a healing phase. The kindest thing you can do here is rest and let it happen. This is not the time to push or to fix. This is the time to be the tree that allows the callus to form.
Neither phase means you are failing. Both mean your body is intelligent, responsive, and very much on your side.
You are more like a tree than you were taught
Somewhere along the way, most of us learned to treat our bodies as machines that break. But you are not a machine. You are a living system, cycling through stress and repair the way every living thing does, the way the tree outside your window has done quietly for decades.
Save this for the next time a symptom makes you nervous. Read it as a phase, not a verdict. And ask yourself, gently and without judgment: which phase am I in right now?
If this way of understanding your body feels like a relief, there is so much more where this came from. Come find me on Instagram @drmichelledickie, where I break this down one symptom at a time, or Grab my “Your Symptom Translator” to dive a bit deeper into common symptoms. https://drmstatton.systeme.io/ghk-seekers. Your body has been speaking to you all along, and I would love to help you learn its language. This is not medical advice and is solely for educational purposes.
