DECODE YOUR MIDLIFE STRESS:

Chronic Stress & Selfcare Assessment + Nourishing Action Plan for Over-functioning Women in Midlife

A guided 1:1 chronic stress assessment and practical recovery action plan to clear physiological stress that causes false anxiety, soothe your system, and reclaim your vital energy.

It’s hard to build sustainable health when your nervous system is actively locked in a physiological stress cycle.

Ease chronic stress in the body with simple dietary and lifestyle adjustments and learn simple, effective somatic tools for embodied presence — so you can feel less stressed, regulate your nervous system, regain energy and capacity to step into the driver’s seat of your health, without overhauling your life.

You know something feels off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.

On the outside, your life looks full, accomplished, and beautifully organised. You are highly successful in your career, excellent at managing pressure, and deeply practiced at being the steady, capable support for everyone around you.

But on the inside, you are carrying a persistent, low-grade anxiety - an unsettled "not-quite-right-ness" humming in the background of your body and mind, even when there is nothing specific to worry about.

You wake up already tired, experiencing a profound fatigue that a night of sleep cannot fix. Your digestion feels constantly irritated, unpredictable, or completely turned off. To keep your energy up, your body automatically seeks out over-stimulating fixes to force a temporary spike of energy: extra caffeine to push through the morning fog, sugar spikes to overcome the fatigue, or alcohol to force your system to unwind at night.

Most women who enter my practice believe this is a personal discipline flaw or a mental failure.

But it isn’t. Much of it isn't ‘all in your head’ - it is actually coming from the body.

In my larger framework - the journey from From Stress Stress to Self-Trust - we look at your health through a clear, hierarchical lens. Before we can dive into deeper patterns, we must first address what I call False Anxiety.

False Anxiety is simply physiological stress your body is experiencing from hidden, external triggers that over-stimulate your system. Blood sugar crashes, poor sleep, inflammation, gut distress, and a heavy reliance on caffeine or stimulants all mimic psychological panic. Your cravings and overthinking are high-level coping mechanisms your system uses to survive daily pressure, but they trap you in a continuous loop of alert and exhaustion.

Sometimes, when this internal noise becomes too intense, your system drops into a state of Somatic Shutdown - a flat, heavy fatigue where you function flawlessly on autopilot but feel completely numb and disconnected from your own body.

Unlike True Anxiety (which is your inner wisdom and compass calling you back to alignment), False Anxiety is entirely avoidable. It can be identified, adjusted, and eliminated through simple, low-hanging fruit shifts in your diet and lifestyle.

To clearly hear your True Anxiety and begin building lasting capacity, we must clear the physical static of False Anxiety first.

The Midlife Chronic Stress & Self-Care Audit

A gentle, 1:1 exploratory assessment and 7-point recovery plan to eliminate False Anxiety, soothe your nervous system, and feel your body settle.

This is a spacious, structured 1:1 engagement designed specifically for busy, successful women at the threshold of midlife who are exhausted, who have tried a lot of prescriptive health routines without success, and who are starting to doubt their ability to get healthy.

Because my approach is deeply trauma-informed, there are absolutely no prescriptive rules, rigid routines, or restrictive dieting here. We look at your daily habits with kindness and curiosity. Our goal is to bring your own agency and choice back on board, using gentle exploration to help you notice your body and make simple, enjoyable adjustments that replace draining habits with genuine, stabilizing nourishment.

The Guided Audit + Action Plan Elements

What you receive:

1. The Asynchronous Chronic Stress & Self-care Assessment

Before our live session, you will complete a gentle, reflective assessment in your own time. Together, we will look at your relationship with the 7 Hidden Physical Stressors driving physiological stress (including nutritional depletion, digestive distress, poor sleep, toxicity, hormonal imbalance, and mental and emotional stress).

2. The 75-Minute Exploratory Session

We meet for an unhurried, deeply held 1:1 session online. Together, we will trace the sources of chronic stress that leads to the states of false anxiety. You will learn the essential skills to notice signs of activation or shut down in your nervous system and recognise the chronic states of fight-or-flight-or-freeze responses. We will shift from shame- and blame-based self-talk to curiosity, tracking your triggers with somatic curiosity, allowance and awareness.

3. Your Personalised 7-Point Nourishing Recovery Plan: Simple ways to complete stress cycles in your day

Within 48 hours of our session, you will receive a personalised, low-friction plan tailored explicitly to your current capacity and supporting you in eliminating false anxiety in your day to day life. Free from overwhelming homework, your plan maps out 7 distinct points of nourishment and release to help your physiology recover:

  • 1. Stimulants Adjustment: Gentle, practical options to replace over-stimulating triggers (like caffeine, sugar, alcohol, screen time…) with choices that you deeply enjoy and nourish your body instead of draining it.

  • 2. Blood Sugar Balancing: Simple, immediate strategies to stabilise your blood sugar for a calmer nervous system response and stronger digestive and immune systems.

  • 3. Movement Recalibration: Simple adjustments to ensure your physical exercise isn’t adrenaline inducing and cortisol crashing, supporting your energy recovery rather than driving you deeper into physical exhaustion.

  • 4. The Pausing & Noticing Practice: A foundational tool to shift you out of a disembodied autopilot state, teaching your brain how to safely track and notice your physical sensations when you feel wired-but-tired or have a racing mind.

  • 5. Sensory Body Awareness: Body-based awareness tools that create space between stimulus and response, helping you notice your body's signals so you can give yourself what you need.

  • 6. Transition Rituals: Tailored micro-practices for starting, stopping, and switching gears throughout your day, signalling to your brain that it is safe to slow down and discharge stored stress.

  • 7. Closure Rituals: A simple structure to create intentional closure for moments that have passed, helping you safely complete active stress cycles and reassure your system that the urgency has ended.

The Essential Bridge: This plan brings together simple lifestyle adjustments blended seamlessly with a trauma-informed nervous system approach. By using Pausing and Noticing as your primary regulation practice, you are already introducing the practical tools needed to gently repattern your nervous system from the ground up, building capacity for deep-level, lasting change. Because it’s not about what you are doing, but how you are doing it.

What becomes possible:

When you eliminate the physiological stress and false anxiety, your body can finally begin to settle.

  • That wired-but-tired feeling starts to ease, and the racing mind at night calms down.

  • Your cortisol level rebalances as a result of a more balanced blood sugar.

  • Your practice of becoming a little more present in your body helps to build interoceptive sense that’s key to healing and recovery.

  • Your digestive comfort improves, sleep quality deepens, and your physical energy stabilises.

  • You experience clearer thinking, less rumination, and the first true sense of your body finding its natural, healthy rhythm again.

Most importantly, space opens up in your body, mind and heart. You begin to reclaim your vital energy, and your system gains the essential foundational capacity required to later look at true anxiety and safely navigate the deeper, stored patterns in the body and the nervous system.

Included: A curated selection of blood-sugar balancing and nervous system supporting meal templates to support your physical recovery plan.

Your Investment:

£395

Book & Schedule Your Assessment & Plan

Ready to clear the noise of false anxiety triggers and begin your journey to feeling less stressed, less triggered and having more energy?

The Midlife Chronic Stress & Self-Care Assessment is structured as a dedicated, two-step 1:1 engagement to help your physiology to recover with simple but potent adjustments and tools. Your investment includes your asynchronous intake assessment, our live 75-minute somatic mapping consultation, your personalized 7-Point Nourishing Recovery Plan, and a follow-up integration check-in.

By clicking below, you can securely process your payment, select your live session date on my calendar, and immediately receive your intake assessment to complete in your own time. If you have any questions before booking, please feel free to email me directly at katarina@katarinahunter.com.

Let’s take this first foundational step within the journey from Chronic Stress to Self-Trust together.

‘The practice of feeling my sensations has helped immeasurably in my recovery of energy levels and emotional regulation.

‘To any woman who is thinking about doing this work with Katarina I want to say that if you would like to feel at ease with yourself and with what goes on around you, and you feel that you're worth it, do this work, and all you'll do is reaffirm that you're absolutely worth it, and it'll leave you so much more open and capable and nourished.’

- Amanda (client)

‘I feel miles better than where I was at the beginning... I am less triggered with everything that is happening around me, because there's a lot of exhaustion connected to that.

I feel like I don't react all the time anymore. And when I feel anger coming in my body, I just sit with the sensations for a bit and it helps to process it better without going into the story or blaming or shaming myself for it.

I don’t feel so exhausted anymore. More resilience, more capacity to just respond to things in slightly different ways... not like the usual previous trigger reactivity that was just instant.’

- Katka (client)

Who I Am (and why I can guide you through this).

Like you, I lived the majority of my life doing everything to look capable on the outside while on the inside I felt like my soul was disappearing.

I was tired and wired from over-functioning but didn’t know it until I felt burnt out but still functioned through it because I am very strong willed and determined. My health issues were creeping up and I started to join the dots between emotional trauma, chronic stress and physical health. I lived with IBS for two decades that doctors couldn’t fix. Recuring infections, feeling lost and drained but still saying ‘I’m fine’.

I was doing everything - yoga, supplements, elimination diets. Doctors kept saying 'manage your stress' but couldn't tell me what that really meant and at no point was there a mention of a nervous system. The only reference to my nervous system was reference to me being highly strung. That I was too sensitive. Too reactive. Easily triggered into emotional outburst. But only ever in the context of this being my actual personality. No one ever explained to me that these were actually my system’s survival response and living with this into adulthood meant that my body was deeply depleted, not broken!

This understanding changed everything for me and helped me stumble upon embodiment and nervous system work session which was life changing. Something was happening when I was guided to work with my own system. It felt like coming home to myself, finally and for the first time I connected to the deeper wisdom and who I always knew deep inside that I was. All this without me having to talk about or remember trauma or analyse my past. My body knew what it needed - I just had to learn to listen.

I was relieved to learn that I didn’t need to work on my mindset as I disliked gratitude journals and repeating affirmations as they kept me stuck in my head while my being shut down from my body and my felt sense. When I discovered that the work was to simply come back to sensation and felt sense in my body - I was deeply relieved.

I learnt: I wasn't broken. My symptoms were communication. Change was possible. My body held wisdom and wholeness I'd been disconnected from.

That discovery then became the focus of my work. I trained in integrative nutrition, somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, and trauma-informed practices. I created my Embodied Resilience & Vitality Method because I needed it myself.

The self-trust piece changed everything. Not ‘trust yourself more’ as a concept - but actually feeling trust in your body, sensing what you need, knowing you can count on yourself to honour those needs.

That's what I help you build.

Now I share this method with women who are done with prescriptive wellness and ready for something real.

Training & Certifications:
Focalizing Practitioner (Trauma-Informed Somatic Healing), Integrative Nutrition Health Coach (IIN), Trauma-Informed Embodiment & Nervous System Regulation with Sukie Baxter, plus extensive study in structural body work and movement, polyvagal theory, and somatic therapy.

    • This programme is for you if you're experiencing tiredness which sleep doesn’t fix - the kind of tiredness that has wired energy underneath a collapse, so you keep moving and are functioning, but feel stuck deep inside. If you are noticing that the more depleted you become, the harder your mind wants to push. You feel stuck in over-giving, over-performing, and perfectionism and/or procrastination. If you are experiencing chronic health symptoms and doctors are telling you to ‘manage your stress’, or ‘remove the triggers’.

    • You've tried stress management, yoga, breathwork, meditation apps, supplements, and elimination diets—but nothing has created lasting change in how you feel. Your self-care has become performative, just another thing on your to-do list or you’ve given up on it altogether.

    • You're curious about trying something different, even if you've never done body-based or nervous system work before. You don't need to have your life together or be in a ‘good place’—in fact, most women who join know that their mind is saying one thing but their body is doing another. If you're willing to try a gentle, trauma-informed approach that works with your body (not just your mind), this is for you.

  • The programme runs for 4 weeks from Thursday, 13 November through Thursday, 4 December 2025.

  • Live group sessions are held weekly on Thursdays at 1-2:30pm UK time via Zoom. Each session runs for 90 minutes. All sessions are recorded, so if you miss a live session, you'll have access to the recording.

  • The minimum commitment is attending (or watching recordings of) four 90 minute weekly sessions. Between sessions, you'll receive optional daily practices (5-10 minutes) and simple exploratory experiments to try—but these are designed to be gentle and doable, not overwhelming. You choose what feels accessible based on your capacity. This isn't another demanding wellness routine that becomes a burden.

  • Yes. During each live session, there's time for Q&A and personalised guidance based on what's arising for participants. You can ask questions specific to your situation. Additionally, if you join from the waiting list, you'll receive a complimentary 40-minute one-on-one somatic and nervous system work session with Katarina during the programme for even more personalised support.

  • Not at all. This programme is designed for beginners. Everything is explained in plain language with practical examples. Many participants are completely new to body-based work and trauma-informed approaches. If you've never done anything like this before, you're in the right place.

  • All sharing is completely optional. You can participate as much or as little as feels right for you. Many women prefer to listen and absorb in the early sessions before feeling ready to share. You'll never be put on the spot or pressured to speak. Your comfort and safety are prioritised and I ask all participants to respect confidentiality.

  • Yes. This is trauma-informed work, which means we work gently, respect your boundaries, and never push you beyond what feels safe. You're always in control. We don't dig into past trauma or require you to share traumatic memories. The work focuses on present-moment body sensations and building capacity for regulation. Nothing is mandatory.

  • While we don't diagnose or treat specific medical conditions, the biology of chronic stress and trauma shows that chronic stress-related symptoms improve when we address nervous system dysregulation. Women doing body-based work and nervous system regulation work report improvements in sleep quality, digestive function, anxiety levels, chronic tension, and energy. This work addresses the root physiological patterns that contribute to many chronic symptoms.

    This programme is however educational and complementary to (not a replacement for) medical care.

  • This is an educational programme with embodied practices, not therapy or medical treatment. We're teaching you about your nervous system and giving you practical tools to connect and regulate yourself. The focus is on building skills and capacity through body-based practices, not talking about problems or past experiences. Although we do talk about the systemic and cultural conditioning and the impact that the environment we live in has on shaping our nervous systems and trauma. This work can complement therapy beautifully, but it's a different approach—working from the body up rather than the mind down.

  • No. Video is optional for all sessions. You can keep your camera off and still fully participate, ask questions, and benefit from the teachings and practices.

  • All sessions are recorded and you'll have access to watch them afterwards. However, the live experience and community connection are valuable components, so we recommend attending live when possible. If you know you'll miss one session, that's fine—you can catch up with the recording.

  • We offer a full refund if you request it 48 hours before the first session. After that, no refunds are available, though you'll retain access to all recordings and programme materials.

  • Yes. Many participants (including me ) are introverts. The group is intentionally kept small to create an intimate, safe container. There are no forced ‘fun’ icebreakers or networking activities. The format balances teaching, guided practices, and optional sharing. You can participate at whatever level feels comfortable without pressure to be ‘on’ or perform.

  • Email me at katarina@katarinahunter.com and I'll be happy to answer any questions about whether this programme is right for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ready to Restore Your Energy and Come Home to Yourself?

Next programme runs in mid-February 2026.

Join the Waiting List today