Illness Isn’t a Failure. It’s a Signal.

We’re taught to deny or bury signs of being unwell. To treat fatigue, pain, or mood shifts as flaws to hide. To ignore discomfort until it becomes undeniably problematic.

Why?

Because in the world most of us were raised in, health isn’t defined by connection or insight.

It’s defined by performance.

You’re expected to look well, work hard, show up, and get on with it. Even if your body is throwing off signals that something is wrong.

This is true of physical illness. But even more so with mental illness.

We don’t just fear being seen as unwell. We fear being seen as unstable, irrational, dramatic, or weak. So we keep performing wellness, even when we’re unraveling inside.

And so, symptoms get buried. Health takes a back seat. And people wait until it’s “bad enough” to seek help.

But here’s the thing no one tells you: Illness isn’t failure. It’s feedback. Your body is communicating.

That bloating? That restless sleep? That skin flare or 3pm crash? Not random. Not weak. Not a personal flaw. A sign to pay attention to.

Symptoms are your body’s way of keeping you in conversation with yourself. Not to scare you, but to steer you. To help you course-correct before the damage is done.

And yet, so many people miss the message.

In the nearly two decades I’ve spent working in clinical practice, I’ve seen thousands of clients. From CEOs to stay at home mothers of three, from burnt-out professionals to women navigating perimenopause.

The one thing they have in common?

Disconnection.

Not from their ambition, their responsibilities, or their intellect. From their bodies.

Ask them about their digestion, and they can’t describe what’s normal. Ask about their cycle, and they don’t know where they’re at. Ask how they’re sleeping, and they say “fine” even when they’re waking multiple times a night.

The signals are there. But they just aren’t tuning in.

This isn’t personal. It’s cultural.

In Australia today, almost half the population (47%) live with at least one chronic health condition.

One in five adults live with two or more. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, musculoskeletal pain, digestive disorders, depression, anxiety.

Conditions that don’t begin overnight. Conditions with symptoms that, if caught early, can be reversed or resolved.

But most people don’t get help when the signals start. They wait until they’re on multiple medications, or can’t get through a work day, or feel like strangers in their own bodies.

Because the system has taught them to ignore the signs. To outsource insight. To separate the head from the body.

This split, between mind and body, has deep roots in Western medicine.

We see this in the way we treat mental illness. For decades, psychiatry treated the brain as if it were entirely separate to the rest of the body. Disconnected from inflammation, food, hormones, immune signalling, or gut function.

That thinking is finally shifting, thanks in large part to researchers like Professor Felice Jacka at Deakin University, who pioneered the field of nutritional psychiatry. Her work shows that what you eat doesn’t just impact your waistline. It shapes your mood, cognition, and resilience. Diet impacts the entire system.

A poor-quality diet, low in fibre, plants, and healthy fats, has been shown to increase the risk of depression by up to 80%. While a nutrient-dense, whole food diet has been linked to improved mental health outcomes across all age groups.

In other words: the body and mind aren’t separate. They never were.

So when you feel anxious, flat, wired, or inflamed, it’s not “all in your head.” It’s in your system. And your symptoms are trying to tell you something.

But if you’ve spent years overriding these signs, because you were praised for being “low maintenance” or feared being judged, it makes sense that you stopped listening.

It’s not your fault. You were taught to disconnect. Taught to push through. Taught that tuning in was indulgent or dramatic or unproductive.

But that strategy eventually fails. Because the body goes from whispering to speaking and eventually it’s screaming at us to pay attention.

Here’s what I want you to consider:

The next time you notices symptoms think about what your body is asking you to pay attention to. What if strength isn’t pushing through - but listening in? What if the smartest thing you could do is pause and ask: what’s out of balance here?

This is the shift that changes everything. It’s the foundation of The Health Edit. Not fixing. Not forcing. But recognising the one thing your body is asking for, and acting on it.

Because the sooner you tune back in, the sooner your body doesn’t need to scream.