Does Healing Have to Be Intense?

Reading time: 9 minutes

There's a common perception that healing requires intensity, and that transformation needs to look big, be outwardly cathartic or even overwhelming to both the participant and onlookers. I see this reflected in the language people use when they're researching or describing breathwork, their experiences with it and what they're seeking from starting a practice. I also see it in the questions that get asked about different modalities, and in the way certain approaches are marketed and discussed online. There is a specific trend of ‘heavy breathwork’ which has become shorthand for effective breathwork, as though the depth of a person's healing can only be measured by the force of the experience.

This has me curious about what we've collectively come to believe about how change happens, not just in breathwork but in all areas of growth or personal improvement. We have absorbed the idea that if it doesn't feel intense, it can't be working. I find myself wondering where this belief comes from and how it shapes what we think we need in order to heal.

The Culture of Intensity

The way we consume social media today has reshaped what we respond to and what we seek. Platforms are built to keep us engaged for as long as possible by appealing to the most vulnerable parts of our nervous system. Outrage, shock and emotional intensity hold our attention more than subtlety or nuance, which has led us to unconsciously chase stimulation and the quick dopamine hit that comes from the next post, reel, or viral story. We have become accustomed to needing bigger, louder and more dramatic content, and we are all hooked.

Catharsis-driven breathwork fits perfectly into this landscape. Sessions that focus on chasing intensity, pushing for emotional release and equating visible outbursts with ‘healing’ create the type of content the algorithm wants. These videos show people screaming, crying or shaking under the belief that this is what transformation looks like, and that only when you reach this point has breathwork ‘worked’. There are certain modalities within the breathwork industry that favour intensity over presence and safety, and more often than not, this has nothing to do with real, nervous system healing and everything to do with performance. This mirrors the broader culture of hustle and optimisation that has infiltrated the wellness space. The phrase ‘no pain, no gain’ has woven itself into almost every area of life, now including a person’s healing journey.

There is an unspoken pressure to prove you are doing enough, and if you aren't taking the latest supplement stack or plunging yourself into an ice bath every morning, the suggestion is that you aren’t committed or simply don't want ‘it’ badly enough. Influencers know that the more extreme they are, the more engagement they will get, and this preys on the vulnerability of people who are beginning to sense that something in their lives is out of alignment, yet feel too overwhelmed, under-resourced or disconnected to trust their own path.

When we follow or adopt another person's journey, which is all too easy to do on social media given the way influencers sell blueprints of their lives and routines, without understanding our own physiology, we can find ourselves engaging in practices that our individual nervous system cannot tolerate. We unknowingly override our body's signals in the hope that we will look or feel the way we're told we should. When things don't go the way we hoped, we blame ourselves and our bodies for not being good enough or strong enough, rather than recognising that we attempted to force our unique nervous system into something it was either never designed for or simply wasn't ready for. We spiral into shame and move even further away from self-trust.

Why We’re Drawn to Intensity

We are living in a world that rewards stimulation over stillness, and boredom has become something to actively avoid. People are drawn to intensity because their nervous systems have adapted to expect it; this could largely be due to the constant stimulation of information we now have in the palm of our hands. In many ways we are desperate for connection, but the connection we are feeding on is usually digital, fleeting and driven by chemical reward rather than genuine presence. We have lost touch with what it feels like to be slow and quiet, and because this goes against the grain of society nowadays, it feels unsafe to seek it out.

This constant state of activation can lead to something called functional freeze, which is something of an epidemic in society today. This is where the nervous system shifts into conservation mode after spending too long in fight or flight. This is a natural physiological process our nervous system uses to protect us from sustained overwhelm, but the challenge comes when it becomes chronic, keeping us stuck in a state of disconnection long after any initial threat has passed. When disconnection becomes our baseline, we lose our ability to feel the full range of what's happening inside us. This numbness, though protective, can be deeply uncomfortable, and it's here that intensity starts to look appealing. If we can't feel much of anything in our day-to-day life, pushing ourselves toward extreme experiences can seem like the only way to break through and feel something again. It becomes easier to chase sensation or release, to grab at that immediacy, rather than to sit with the slower discomfort of processing, stillness and the gradual unravelling required to safely integrate our trauma.

Sometimes we gravitate toward intensity because it feels familiar, not because it's supportive. If chaos, pressure, or emotional overwhelm have been a part of our lived experience, they can feel like home. This means we can unconsciously seek out catharsis-driven practices believing they will help us heal, when in reality they end up reinforcing the very patterns we're trying to move away from, keeping us stuck in cycles of survival rather than supporting us toward safety and a healthy, regulated nervous system.

The Problem With Catharsis-Driven Breathwork

When we bypass the body's signals in the name of transformation, we move further away from the connection we are actually seeking. Forcing the nervous system into overwhelm through specific breathing techniques, overstimulating music and other intensive body-based practices can push someone far beyond their window of tolerance (their capacity to process what's happening without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down). This is particularly problematic for people who are already experiencing dysregulation or have become sensitised from their lived experiences. When a breathwork experience becomes too much, too fast, too soon, it mirrors the very conditions that created the trauma, reinforcing the patterns a person is trying to resolve rather than helping them heal.

The way breathwork is shared online has blurred the line between authentic healing and performance. The extreme approaches demonstrated rarely seek to safely build the foundations to support the expansion of a person’s capacity, they dive in at the deep end. The images and videos of breathwork circulating on social media create an illusion that catharsis equals depth, setting an expectation that a successful breathwork session must involve intense emotional outbursts or physical shaking.

When someone reaches the point where they want to explore a deeper healing process, they can be in a vulnerable and impressionable state, simply wanting to feel different. It can be easy to internalise these images and assume that if their experience is quiet or still it means that nothing is happening. This can lead them to push themselves beyond what they're ready for, perpetuating a cycle of comparison, frustration, and shame. They end up retraumatising themselves in the pursuit of healing, all while believing this is what transformation is supposed to look and feel like. In reality, the most profound healing experiences are often subtle, internal, and deeply personal.

When practitioners prioritise theatrics over safety, transformation over integration or equate healing with catharsis in the name of viral content and likes, they risk replicating the same patterns of invalidation and pressure that created disconnection in the first place.

How to Recognise Catharsis-Driven Breathwork

It can be difficult to discern between a supportive practice and one that risks overwhelming the nervous system, particularly when faced with the ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality.

Some signs that a breathwork approach may be catharsis-driven include encouragement to ‘go harder’ or ‘push past resistance’, and the belief that a big emotional release equals a successful session. Loud, outward experiences are celebrated without space for reflection or support, and there is little or no discussion of nervous system safety or integration. Breathwork should never feel like something you need to survive or endure. You should feel in control and able to pause or stop when you choose to.

A breathwork session can be activating or intense even within a gentle approach, but what matters is whether you're left in a state where you can regulate and integrate what came up, or whether you're sent home dysregulated and overstimulated. If a session consistently leaves you feeling untethered, anxious or unable to ground yourself, that's a sign the approach and the practitioner may not be serving you.

What Trauma-Informed Breathwork Offers Instead

The nervous system cannot be forced to heal, it responds to safety, consistency and building trust over time. When a breathwork practice pushes us beyond our window of tolerance, it can trigger survival responses that mimic the same patterns we're trying to move through. Instead of integration, more often than not, the outcome is overwhelm and instability.

Trauma-informed breathwork works with what is often referred to as the ‘body's natural intelligence’ or ‘inner wisdom’, honouring the pace at which the nervous system can safely process emotion and sensation. We do this by focusing on titration, meaning small, manageable steps that help the body expand its ability to feel without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. This is what allows for true integration to occur. A trauma-informed approach respects consent, pacing, and your choices and recognises that healing is not about breaking through resistance but building capacity to stay with what is present.

Not all breathwork practices are trauma-informed, and understanding that distinction is important if you're considering exploring breathwork. Many popular modern approaches to breathwork were not created through a trauma-informed lens, and while these methods can have benefits for some, they often prioritise performance, endurance, and intensity over nervous system safety. Without a trauma-informed foundation, breathwork can easily become another test of our will, or a form of endurance or self-punishment. Breathwork should not become another way we avoid or override our discomfort, but rather a tool to support our ability to sit with it.

What Makes Introspective Breathwork Different?

Introspective Breathwork® Therapy evolved from older modalities like Rebirthing and Holotropic breathwork, but it significantly addresses their limitations and has been adapted into something more nuanced. It was developed to meet the modern understanding of trauma and nervous system science, recognising what it actually means to hold space for someone in a vulnerable healing process, and that how we facilitate breathwork matters just as much as the breath itself.

Where other breathwork approaches place emphasis on intensity and outward experiences, IBT® offers something quite different. It places safety, integration, and the intelligence of your body at the centre of the work. Sessions are client-led, which means you decide how you want to breathe. There is no prescribed pattern to follow, no expectation or pressure to push yourself into intensity or to go deeper than feels right for you. If you want to change how you’re breathing, you can. If you want to pause, slow down, move, change position, you can. Your experience is yours, and my role is to witness and support whatever arises without imposing any agenda or steering you toward a specific outcome.

This distinction is important because breathwork can bring up stored emotion and unprocessed material from your nervous system. When that happens, your environment matters enormously. Being trauma-informed can sound intense, particularly if you’re not someone who would describe themselves as having experienced trauma. To put it simply, being trauma-informed means I recognise when someone is moving into freeze, dissociation, or activation, and I know how to work with those states rather than encourage you to push through them. It means I understand that your process might look completely different from someone else's, and that stillness or subtlety can hold just as much significance as visible release.

IBT® combines breathwork with somatic awareness and coaching because it recognises that the breath alone isn't always enough. Healing happens when we can stay present with what surfaces, integrate it into our understanding of ourselves, and find new ways of being in our bodies. The sessions I guide often reveal shifts that are internal rather than external. For example, someone discovering they can feel sadness without collapsing, or noticing their chest has space to expand when it used to feel tight and locked up. These aren't major, theatrical moments, but they certainly change how someone moves through their life.

Trauma is far more common than most people realise, whether from your own life or passed down through generations. Trauma isn't always a big memorable event, it can be subtle but research has shown that the impact of trauma is the same whether explosive or not. Trauma impacts the way we struggle to feel safe in our own bodies and breathwork is a powerful tool that we can turn to. When stored emotion and unprocessed experiences rise to the surface during a breathwork session, which often happens, being in the presence of someone who is trained in trauma-informed practice makes a big difference.

What you're working toward in this practice isn't a dramatic breakthrough. It's the restoration of connection between you and your body, between sensation and safety, between what you've been carrying and what you're ready to release. The work happens at the pace your nervous system can genuinely integrate, which is how transformation becomes sustainable rather than something surface level or temporary.

If you're interested in exploring Introspective Breathwork®, you can learn more about working with me here or contact me to book a session.