There Was Nothing Wrong With Me
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There Was Nothing Wrong With Me
I Was Just Disconnected From Who I Was.
by Sophia Gittings | 30 Jan 2025
I did not leave my corporate career because I was burnt out.
I left because, somewhere along the way, I stopped recognising myself.
I had a good job, a family, a life that looked fine from the outside.
And yet inside, I felt quietly disconnected and unsure of myself.
Not dramatically unhappy.
Just flat.
It took me years to understand this simple truth.
There was nothing wrong with me.
I was simply longing to come home to who I was.
When everything looks fine, but feels wrong
I started my career very young.
Straight after studying, I stepped into a corporate job that felt exciting and grown up. I was still in my late teens. I had a uniform, structure, a clear path.
It felt safe.
It felt validating.
Over the years, I moved through different roles, took trainings, grew within the company.
I stayed there for 22 years.
From the outside, my life made sense.
When self doubt becomes a quiet companion
In my early twenties, my life began to unravel in ways I did not yet have language for.
I went through deeply tumultuous experiences that shook my sense of safety, trust, and self worth.
Experiences that left me carrying anger, grief, and uncertainty while still trying to function. Still trying to hold everything together. Still trying to be the version of myself the world expected.
I questioned myself constantly.
Was I enough
Was I lovable
Was I doing life properly
Depression entered my life during this time.
Not as a mystery.
And not without cause.
It was a response.
A response to living through emotionally destabilising experiences while being expected to cope, perform, and carry on as normal.
At the time, I did not see it that way.
I believed the problem was me.
For seventeen years, I was on medication, trying to manage something I did not yet understand.
What I know now is this.
My depression was not a personal failure.
It was a sign of disconnection from myself after years of emotional survival.
“My body knew something my mind had not yet caught up to.”
When the body leads before the mind
The one place I felt different was in my body.
Long before yoga entered my life, movement was my refuge.
The gym became my escape. The only place I felt strong, capable, present.
When I was moving my body, the self doubt softened.
Even if only for an hour.
My body knew something my mind had not yet caught up to.
Yoga entered quietly.
At first, it was just a Sunday stretch class after the gym. Nothing profound. Nothing spiritual.
Until one day, it was.
The moment I realised I was home
Something I had never really done before.
I did not know what I was walking into. I just knew something had to change.
That weekend opened a door I could not close again.
Not long after, I found myself in a Vinyasa yoga class at a studio I had never been to before.
There were only two of us in the room.
The class was challenging. Familiar in a way I could not explain.
And then, in the final resting pose, the teacher played a song.
It was the same song I had heard during that weekend away.
As I lay there, tears rolled down my face.
Not from sadness. From recognition.
I am home.
That moment scared me more than it confused me.
Because I knew that if I followed this feeling, things were going to change.
Saying yes before I knew where it would lead
I started practicing regularly.
Yoga became something I needed, not something I fitted in.
Months before, I had weaned myself off antidepressants, knowing something had to shift, even though I did not yet know what.
My spiritual journey had begun.
And embodied movement became a vital part of it.
I began a teacher training.
Not because I wanted to teach.
But because I wanted to understand myself more deeply.
Those six months changed me.
I unravelled layers I had kept hidden for years.
I felt my joy return.
My creativity.
My desire for connection.
I experienced sistership in a way I never had before.
I began to feel like myself again.
Teaching anyway, even with the doubt
When I taught my first class, the doubt came rushing back.
The night before, I lay in the bath with a migraine.
Questioning everything.
Who was I to teach
Was I ready
Was I good enough
But once I started teaching, the doubt disappeared.
My body knew exactly what to do.
I was in my element.
I continued teaching while still working in corporate.
Hiring small spaces. Teaching evening classes.
Sometimes one or two people would come.
Sometimes more.
Slowly, organically, a community began to form.
And still, the question would not leave me.
How do I do this full time
Asking the question I could not ignore
Logically, it did not make sense.
I had responsibilities.
A family.
A secure job.
But something inside me would not let the question go.
During another training, I asked for clarity.
One word came through.
Retrenchment.
At the time, it felt impossible.
And yet, I carried that word with me.
I embodied it quietly.
I even changed my work password to include it, as a daily reminder.
Five months later, it happened.
I was retrenched.
Supported.
Given space to begin again.
I stepped straight into teaching full time.
Becoming who I never planned to be
I did not become who I thought I would become.
I did not just become a yoga teacher.
I became a woman who holds space.
A woman who creates community.
A woman who sits with other women in their uncertainty, their longing, their quiet knowing that something more is possible.
When I sit with women now, I am not pretending.
I am not performing.
I am simply being who I am.
And that is enough.
Becoming who I never planned to be
Looking back, I can see it clearly.
There was nothing wrong with me.
I was not failing.
I was not ungrateful.
I was not lost.
I was disconnected from who I was.
And I was allowed to want more.
I share this because I know how many women are living good lives while quietly feeling something is missing.
If this resonates, I share reflections like this in my weekly emails.
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