For a long time, I thought detox just needed more time. I didn’t realize my body was trying to detox while also staying on constant alert. Once I understood that exposure keeps the nervous system in defense, everything about my stalled progress finally made sense.

I spent months wondering why detox felt like it kept undoing itself. I wasn’t getting dramatically worse — but I wasn’t getting better either. It wasn’t until I faced the possibility of ongoing exposure that the pattern finally made sense.

There was a point where I followed every recommendation carefully, paced myself, supported drainage, and still didn’t feel better. What I eventually learned was that doing things “right” on paper doesn’t always mean the body is ready to respond yet.

I heard the phrase “drainage first” everywhere, but no one explained what it actually felt like in a real body. I followed the advice without understanding it — and it wasn’t until I misunderstood it that I finally learned what it was trying to protect.

For a long time, I believed that if I wasn’t doing enough, I wouldn’t heal. Gentle felt passive. Aggressive felt responsible. What I learned instead was that gentleness wasn’t a lack of effort — it was the first time my body actually felt safe enough to respond.

Once I realized drainage mattered, my instinct was to do everything I could to “move lymph.” What I didn’t expect was how easy it was to turn support into pressure — and how quickly my body told me when I crossed that line.

There was a stretch where I felt like I was doing everything right — and nothing was moving. Detox hadn’t failed. My body wasn’t broken. What was missing was flow.

I assumed movement would help me heal faster. Exercise had always been my outlet, my regulator, my proof of strength. During mold recovery, it became one of the clearest ways my body showed me that timing matters more than intention.

I kept telling myself I just needed to build tolerance. That the uncomfortable after-effects of sauna were part of the adjustment. What I eventually realized was that my body wasn’t adapting — it was asking me to stop pushing.

I used to treat sweat like a scoreboard. The more I sweated, the more successful I believed detox was. It took time — and a few hard crashes — to understand that sweating wasn’t a measure of healing. It was just a response to heat.