Healing a Broken Heart: The Journey That Led Me to Embodiment Coaching
- Sarah Laverty
- Apr 14
- 15 min read
Embodiment coaching helped me to reconnect with my body after years of anxiety, OCD, and a life-changing heart diagnosis. This is the story of how I went from feeling broken in every way, to finding a new path — one that eventually led me to support others on their healing journeys.
“Daddy has a bad heart”
That’s the sentence I learned as a kid to explain why my dad walked slower than other people and didn’t go to work.
He was born with rare genetic heart conditions and hadn’t been expected to live past childhood. But due to pioneering surgery he surpassed everyone’s expectations.
Unfortunately a setback happened just a year after I was born and his health took a downward turn. He was still okay, but no longer fit to go to work. I grew up seeing him go in and out of hospital every so often, but otherwise had a very normal relationship with him.
In fact, him being at home a lot more meant I was definitely a daddy’s girl.
When I was around 13 or 14 his health started to fail. I won’t go into it in detail, but that year was very, very hard. And then, sooner than anyone expected, he died.
That’s why, 12 years later, I found myself frozen to the spot and shaking as a nurse informed me that I had been called for an echocardiogram later that week…
The Day Everything Changed: My Own Heart Diagnosis
I had been checked for heart defects when I was born and I was given the all clear. My parents were, very understandably, relieved, and I never exhibited any signs of heart problems as a child.
When I was 26 I had been enjoying getting into running, and decided I was going to run a half marathon. Of course this meant I was ramping up my runs, and after a while I started to find that I was struggling.
After a 5 or 6 mile run I would come home barely able to keep my eyes open and fall asleep immediately. I started getting “anxiety” (which I later discovered was heart palpitations) in the afternoon at work, no matter what was happening around me. And over a few months I gradually felt more and more unwell.
My instinct told me that something was wrong - this wasn’t just overtraining or the outcome of a new exercise regime. So I booked a doctor’s appointment, fully expecting to find out that I was vitamin deficient in some way. The doctor agreed and booked me in for a blood test.
A few days later, as I sat in the treatment room, the nurse informed me that I would be coming back on Friday to get an echocardiogram.
Immediately I panicked.
“Oh it’s nothing to worry about dear! The doctor just wanted it checked after he listened to your heart. At your age it’s likely just procedure.”
Later that week the nurse who delivered my echocardiogram said the same thing.
Until she checked my results.
“Um, I just need to speak to the doctor.”
I sat in the silent room alone feeling like every last drop of oxygen had been sucked out of it. Barely 2 minutes passed but it felt like an hour.
When the doctor arrived she started asking me questions about my dad’s heart conditions, as well as my own symptoms. I answered as best I could while my insides filled with freezing cold liquid. She started asking about “heart block” which I’d never heard of before.
Despite some nervous looks, they both reassured me that everything was probably fine, they wanted to run my results past some of the consultants in the hospital. I should book an appointment to come back the following week, and head back to work this afternoon.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor said, “if I was really concerned about you, I wouldn’t be letting you go home!”
I followed their instructions, repeating the doctor’s words over and over again in my head like a mantra. I went back to my office, a 30 minute walk away, the whole time feeling like I was only half in my body.
Getting a pacemaker in my twenties
My co-workers had already gone home for the day when I set my bag on my desk and I immediately spotted a call coming through from an unknown number.
“Sarah, I’ve spoken to the consultants and they want you to go to A&E immediately. I’ll give you the name of the registrar to quote at the desk; do not let them turn you away. We believe you may have a condition called Third Degree Heart Block. It’s treated with a pacemaker. Do you have a family member who can go with you?”
You know those moments in films when the main character goes into shock, and the voices around them go really quiet, while a hum gets louder and louder? I experienced that for the first time.
A pacemaker?
My dad had one of those. It was a sharp little box sticking out of his left chest, just below his shoulder.
I’m 26.
How can I need a pacemaker?
I called my mother and she started heading to the hospital, but without a car it was going to take over an hour to get there. By a strange twist of fate two of my best friends happened to be off work, and one of them was a student nurse, so they came to get me.
While I waited to be picked up, I went straight to the bathroom and vomited.
A few hours later I was lying in the same hospital ward I used to visit my dad in at the weekends.
A&E had confirmed it. Third Degree Heart Block.
Heart block is a condition where the heart beats more slowly or with an abnormal rhythm. It's caused by a problem with the electrical pulses that control how your heart beats. Third degree heart block is the most serious and can sometimes be a medical emergency. My heart was beating around 40 beats per minute at an irregular beat, and in my sleep it was dropping dangerously low.
I couldn’t get past the metaphor - or the irony.
For years I had been struggling with relationship anxiety and OCD, feeling like love was just blocked off in me for some reason, and I was convinced it was connected to my father’s death. Relationships just didn’t seem to flow for me like they did for other people. I was convinced that I was broken.
Now here I was in a cardiology ward, waiting for the results of my broken heart. And finding out that I would need a battery to power it for the rest of my life.
I did the only thing I’d ever learned to do.
I acted like I was completely fine.
Daily panic attacks led me to hate my body
After 5 days they let me out of hospital.
As I wasn’t fainting or in great discomfort, I didn’t require a pacemaker as an emergency. The doctor wanted to continue tests for any other underlying causes so I was added to a waiting list and sent home with a small information booklet.
I was trying to stay strong for the people around me. I went back to work far too soon, and on my lunch break I had my first anxiety attack. And then another... and then another.
I had an anxiety attack at least once a day for the next 9 months. And I was furious!
Not only had my relationship with my body been feeling difficult for quite a while but now it had ramped things up a notch.
My heart wasn’t working properly. And as if that wasn’t bad enough on its own, the rest of my body decided to have a full scale breakdown.
It didn’t help that the anxiety attacks seemed to hit the worst when I was doing things I normally enjoyed, like walking in nature, visiting bookstores or going to the local market. I felt like every shred of comfort and enjoyment in my life had been stripped away.
I was full of hatred for my body for its brokenness, its lack of cooperation and its determination to deprive me of everything good in life.
I gradually started to become a shell of myself as I had just about enough energy to work and feed myself everyday (of course it didn’t even occur to me to take any time off sick).
Discovering the mind-body connection
About 2 months after my diagnosis I started counselling.
I requested it from my GP right away, who marked my case as urgent, and by the time I finally got to the counsellor’s room I was a tightly wound ball of nerves.
Everything came tumbling out during the preliminary questionnaire and I finally expressed just how hard I was finding it to make it through the day. As I stumbled over my confused mix of grief, fear and confusion, I told her that I felt like I had no idea who I was anymore.
She looked at me over the top of her glasses, and what she said next wasn’t what I was expecting.
You see, I had gone to therapy before - cognitive behavioural therapy - so I was expecting her to join me in analysing the situation I had found myself in, and perhaps start reframing the thought spirals I was going down.
Instead she laid out the following prescription:
Two or three epsom salt baths per week
A healthy meal every day and plenty of water
Really prioritise getting eight or nine hours of sleep a night
Get as much rest and down time as I can, especially if I can spend time with a close friend.
She would see me again in two weeks.
This advice was so basic I could have gotten it from a 5 second Google search. Many of you might read this and feel frustrated on my behalf, wondering if the counsellor was brushing me off.
But my exhausted brain clung to it for dear life. It was a permission slip to stop trying to sort out my whole life, and just look after today. I felt a sliver of relief for the first time.
I bought epsom salts on the way home and committed myself wholeheartedly to this instruction to do nothing other than focus on the foundations.
Then something miraculous happened.
By the time I visited her office two weeks later my anxiety attacks had reduced by about 40%. I was still struggling with my diagnosis, but I no longer felt as much urgency to figure things out. I felt calmer, more centred, and more capable of handling what was happening.
I cannot emphasise enough how groundbreaking this was for me.
I had spent my entire life believing that if I could just figure things out, then everything would fall into place. If I just thought hard enough then I could come up with the answer. If I could finally make everything make sense, then I could breathe a sigh of relief.
So of course life gave me an experience that was impossible to think my way out of.
Those two weeks were the first time I discovered that when I look after my physical body, and care for my feelings, the stuff that’s happening in my mind will fall into place.
I couldn’t believe it. All those years of rumination, overthinking and ocd compulsions, and no one told me that the wellbeing of my body had a role to play in this?
Alongside talk therapy I was sent to Stress Control classes, a free class that offers teachings about the nervous system.
Once a week I darted out of work and over to the library, where I learned about how trauma responses play out in the body, what happens biologically during a panic or anxiety attack, and how, at a scientific level, our mind and body affects one another.
It was mind blowing. How had I never learned any of this before? Shouldn’t everybody know about this?
I hungrily consumed the material and immediately looked for more.
It felt like I was following a trail of breadcrumbs, leading me towards something I didn’t even know I needed.
I stumbled upon Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and tiny glimmers of the spirituality I had never explored before started to shine through. But it felt entirely different to the teachings of the Presbyterian church I grew up in. I felt it in my body.
I could feel myself changing.
It was like everything about me was being stripped back and re-organised.
All the while I was attending tests and appointments at the cardiology department, which confirmed that I had no other underlying conditions.
The date for my pacemaker operation was set for 10 May 2019.
What happens during a pacemaker operation?
The operation was a strange experience.
During a pacemaker operation you’re completely awake. I was given a mild sedative along with an anaesthetic for my left hand chest and shoulder but the effect was no stronger than if I had drunk a small glass of wine.
The room was freezing cold to keep the x-ray machines at the correct temperature and I lay listening to the surgeons chatting about their children’s A Level results and the universities they were applying to.
The most frightening part was when they were trying to connect the electrical rhythm of my heart with the pacemaker. This doesn’t always work right away so I felt my heartbeat jumping around, going faster and slower, as they felt for the right beat.
Finally, I was sewn up, bundled up in blankets and sent back to the ward to see my mum.
Right away I noticed that the palpitations I had everyday were gone. I didn’t even realise how strong they were until they disappeared.
If this was a fairytale, this is where the story would neatly wrap up.
I would tell you about how learning to care for my body and my nervous system changed me in just a few months, and that I never had another anxiety attack after my operation.
But life isn’t a fairytale. It happens in spirals and waves, one lesson crashing into the other with no end point.
Despite my new found revelations about the importance of caring for my body, I was still struggling with the programming I had grown up with, about working hard and doing what’s expected of you.
I struggled with guilt during my recovery time because I was taking longer than the recommended one week off work*.
And as soon as I started feeling better I was eager to put this experience behind me and throw myself back into the career and volunteer work that I’d had to put to the side.
But I never forgot the lessons I had learned about listening to my body’s messages, and the intelligence of the nervous system. Discovering that my racing mind was usually a symptom of stuff that was going on in my body was life changing and I was forever changed by it.
And that’s why I made the choices that I did just one year later.
* I now believe that the idea of expecting my body to return to work after just one week is violent, and it reinforces my experience that the medical model offers many advantages but has a long way to go in learning to respect the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of our being.
The best discovery of my life: Embodiment coaching
It was late 2020, I was struggling with the impact of Covid-19 just like everyone else, and I was also in a long distance relationship that was falling apart.
The familiar patterns of relationship anxiety and OCD started to emerge. I noticed certain thought patterns arise to the surface and familiar compulsions kick into gear.
But this time I was armed with the knowledge of my nervous system.
On a basic level I was able to see what was happening. I could see how my mind was trying to “figure things out” so I wouldn’t have to face certain feelings. I could see that the more stressed my system was getting the faster the thoughts were running and the stronger the compulsions were becoming.
I instinctively knew that none of this was really about what was happening around me, but rather it was about what was happening within me. And life had taught me that my anxiety was always serving a higher purpose, even if I couldn’t see it right away.
I didn’t even know what language to use - embodiment and somatics were words I had never heard before - but I immediately went searching for support for relationship anxiety which was focused on the body.
I sifted through various resources until finally I landed on Healing Embodied.
And as I talked about in an earlier blog, the work I did with them was completely transformative, right from the very beginning.
“I realised that I was entirely disconnected from my body. I had spent so many years trying to make myself feel a particular way that I had no idea what I was actually feeling right now.”
As I began to pour myself into embodiment work, hungrily consuming all the books and podcasts about trauma and the body that I could find, all the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.
I finally understood that all those months of anxiety attacks had been my body’s way of staging the ultimate rebellion against the cultural programming that was keeping me cut off from myself and endlessly prioritising work and other people over my own lifeforce.
When I was desperately trying to carry on as normal, my body screamed at me:
“No! You must pause! You must slow down! This is the only way!”
Healing my nervous system meant learning how to identify and respect my own boundaries for the very first time. It meant disappointing other people, and learning to tolerate the discomfort of their disappointment. It meant choosing to do what my body needed in the moment, even if that didn’t fit with my mind’s expectations.
After years of ignoring it my body gave me no other choice.
Falling in love with myself through emotional healing
As I poured myself into the embodiment work, regularly sitting in the fullness of my sensations and listening in a way that I had never listened before, I was completely overcome by the depth of love there was for me.
This wasn’t just a mental concept, like repeating the mantra “I am loved” over and over. This was a full body experience. Waves of warmth crashed through my body as I felt my heart swelling and tears pouring from my eyes.
I felt the truth in the very, very depth of my bones that every cell of my body was conspiring for my survival and my thriving at every moment.
Every symptom that I had labeled as annoying or inconvenient was a message, guiding me towards what I needed, doing all that it could to keep me alive.
All those moments of dizziness were calling me back to my centre. All that exhaustion was insisting that I rest. All that overwhelm was ordering me to banish other peoples’ expectations from my space and reclaim it as my own.
And then I looked at my broken heart, and saw just how hard it had been working to let me keep going.
Each palpitation was my heart doing its utmost to get blood moving around its body, even when the conditions it was in weren’t perfect. Those months of tiredness had slowed me down, making sure that I was conserving the energy I had. The discomfort I was in had forced me to reach out for help, and put my own needs first.
As I sat in these realisations day after day, all the feelings of hatred and anger I had towards my body melted away. There was no forcing, no effort to reframe my thoughts and no trying to adopt a new attitude. It was just a soft dissolving into nothing, before they re-emerged as appreciation and gratitude.
Finally I felt the deep love that relationship anxiety and ocd had convinced me I was incapable of.
Heart block unblocked my heart by showing me how loved I was by Life, and teaching me how to love myself.
My body, which once felt like my enemy, was now my best friend.
I had fallen in love with myself.
Building an unshakeable foundation of self trust and confidence
I would love to tell you that I no longer struggle with societal conditioning and that I always prioritise my body’s needs over external expectations.
But that would be a complete lie.
Just last week I had a big cry as I wallowed in fears that I wasn’t doing enough and I wasn’t good enough.
These things are not linear. They never are - we flow in waves and spirals, revisiting them over and over, each time armed with the things we didn’t know before.
But each time we unpeel another layer there are some things that transform for good, changing us in ways that cannot be undone.
The depth of love I felt in my body and for my body left a lasting impression. While I may not always treat myself as well as I would like to, the respect and admiration I developed for my body’s wisdom has never left me.
And even when I find myself getting wrapped up in the drama of my mind, a quiet, deeper part of me is always watching, knowing that this isn’t the full picture, and that peace is waiting for me whenever I return to my body.
This transformation has given me a foundation of self trust and confidence that simply cannot be broken.
It’s not the kind that comes from “faking it til you make it”. It’s the kind that came from going to the depth of myself - breaking apart in every single way just to discover that I cannot ever be broken.
I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that every single part of me has my best interests at heart. And I know that my primary role in life is to listen deeply to the whispers of my heart and my soul, and follow them wherever they would guide me.
Each time I forget that, I remember again. And every time I remember, it grows stronger in me.
And this is why I do what I do.
I want you to know - to know on a level so much deeper than your thoughts - that you are bathed in love, and you were built to thrive, and there is so much more guidance and support available to you than you can even imagine, when you learn how to listen to what’s there.
Your body holds the answers.
The transformation I went through from hating my body with a passionate fury, to loving it deeply is the invisible foundation of this business.
It wouldn’t exist without that experience. And I need you to know that it is possible.
It truly is possible to fall in love with yourself.
I am living proof.
If you are ready to start reconnecting to the wisdom in your body and start uncovering that unshakeable self trust and confidence in yourself you can book a 1:1 coaching session with me. During these sessions I support you to go deep into your body and discover the unique guidance it has for you. And together we uncover your natural confidence so that you can start living life on your terms.
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