How the Nervous System Affects Your Skin: A Skin Therapist’s Perspective

Skin Doesn’t Freak Out Without a Reason

Michele Renee from Michele Renee Beauty and Cloud Nine Beauty and Wellness

A reflection on why nervous system work is becoming a focus in my work.

This is not medical advice, instead is it a recollection of my own experience and why I believe this work is so important to all of us.

First, I just want you to know, I get it. I have been there multiple times. If you’re at the end of your rope physically or emotionally (usually both), I want you to consider something outside the usual framework that you have been told.

You don’t need to believe this right away and you even might physically, mentally, emotionally resist it. You might shelve it for later because it peaks your curiosity.

That’s okay. You do you.

Just know this: this way of understanding my body has changed, and quite honestly saved, my life more than once. It has changed how I think about pain. About work. About grief. About motherhood. About skin.

Maybe one day, when something in you feels stuck, this will resurface.

When nothing was “wrong”, but everything was

In late 2016, my late husband Evan and I bought our first home. For two entrepreneurs it was a huge milestone. The kind of moment you expect to feel grounded, excited and want to celebrate.

The very next day, my body began to feel… off.

It started with a sensation I’d noticed before, but brushed it aside. I became worried about it this time around because I thought it meant something more sinister was going on with me and I had been ignoring it for years. This time it stayed.

That moment marked the beginning of a year-long descent into chronic pain. Real pain. Consuming pain. The kind that hijacks your thoughts and strips away your sense of safety in your own body.

I couldn’t work, which compounded my stress. I was convinced something catastrophic was being missed. Cancer. A neurological disorder. Something unnamed and undetected. The medical professionals I was trusting to help me were clearly failing me.

MRIs came back clear and tests showed nothing.

And yet I was in agony. There was absolutely no way that this pain wasn't pointing to something immensely sinister.

What made it worse was the implication (spoken or unspoken) that if nothing showed up on paper, maybe it was “just anxiety.” As if that made the experience any less real.

It didn’t.

Summer of 2017. I was absolutely exhausted (we both were). I was learning how to let go of control.

What I eventually realized (and resisted)

At some point, exhausted and desperate, I stopped searching for what was wrong and started asking what my body was trying to say.

I fell into the world of the mind–body connection to help give me a different perspective on what might be going on with me. And it hit me quickly: I was a textbook case.

Highly self-critical. Socially anxious but high-functioning. Overworking. Disconnected from joy. Living in my head. Dissociated from my body.

I looked calm. Capable. Put together. No one would know what was truly going on with me.

Inside, my nervous system was in constant overdrive.

I quickly realized that my body wasn’t betraying me, rather it was demanding my attention. It truly needed me to start doing things differently than I was.

The part no one wants to hear: letting go

The shift didn’t come from forcibly fixing the pain.

It came from stopping the fight against the pain. One of the most profound statements that I connected with was "what you resist, will persist". It rang through my mind multiple times per day.

Through months of yoga, meditation, reading, listening, and sitting with discomfort, I learned something deceptively simple and brutally difficult: I had to stop trying to control my body (I was hoping all of these amazing wellness practices would just fix everything for me instead of realizing they were complimentary to my journey).

I learned to connect with my body and notice sensations without labeling them as dangerous. To feel without spiraling into a google sinkhole (might have been the most difficult part). To exist beside discomfort instead of organizing my life around it.

I was learning how to stop dissociation and start being more present with what was going on inside me.

Eventually, without realizing the exact moment, the pain lifted.

Other symptoms came and went. But they no longer terrified me. I understood them as signals from my body to start looking at what was going on that I wasn't fully paying attention to that was causing me stress.

Now, when my body speaks or screams, I always listen (well not always - I am a Taurus aka. stubborn). My body and I have developed a different relationship since 2016.

Why this matters beyond pain

This experience changed how I moved through grief after losing Evan. How I make decisions in business. How I navigate expansion. How I approach motherhood.

And, it changed how I see skin. It was actually the reason why I entered the skin field. I wanted a way to be able to help women connect with this side of themselves (the power within them), in a way that seemed much more accessible than connecting with it through chronic pain.

The skin is not separate from the nervous system

The skin is the nervous system.

It is sensory. Protective. Reactive. Intelligent.

It responds to stress, insulin imbalances, inflammation, nutrient depletion, hormonal shifts, environmental exposure... and emotional load.

Premature aging doesn’t happen on it's own and neither does acne or sensitivity.

One thing I know to be sure, your body is always communicating to you. For some of you it is through pain, others through exhaustion, others through skin (and many more ways).

We, as women, especially, are taught to override these messages. We are taught to push through, correct, conceal, and normalize discomfort.

Please understand, you are not powerless.

Not even close.

The Kansa wand works on more than just your skin - it works with your energy and nervous system to ground you

Why I can’t separate this from my work anymore

This is why my treatments are not just “relaxing facials.”

And why I can’t pretend they are.

At Michele Renee Beauty, we work with the skin and the system beneath it. We slow things down. We regulate. We support. Sometimes that means skin protocols. Sometimes it means nervous system care. Sometimes it means referring you to practitioners like Dr. Midori.

My responsibility isn’t just to improve your skin, it’s to honour the intelligence of your body and create space for real change.

Some clients are ready for that immediately. Some aren’t. Both are okay.

But I’m not hiding this part of the work anymore because I truly believe that this knowledge can change so many lives. It is never a straight line on this journey, and I have had my fair share of challenges even since knowing this work, but I keep coming back to it because it is so powerful.

And if there’s even a chance it helps you feel more at home in your body (now or someday later) it deserves to be shared.

An invitation from me to you

You don’t need to do anything with this today.

Just know: if your skin feels stuck, reactive, or unpredictable…If you feel like you’ve “tried everything”…If something deeper is asking for attention...

There may be another layer worth exploring.

And when you’re ready, I’ll meet you there.

-Michele

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