January 2021

On January 6, 2021, I posted a video.

It wasn't about politics.

It was about how to stay regulated when the world feels overwhelming. Techniques for empaths. Nervous system support. Ways to treat yourself without turning to food.

I talked about Donna Eden's exercises for balancing your qi. I shared a visualization I use—imagining yourself in the stands at a football game rather than on the field—so you can stay connected and informed without feeling everything viscerally. I mentioned that shouting "NO" at the top of your lungs activates your vagus nerve and can help release intensity. I offered a warm blanket, a cup of tea, and bunny slippers.

Four days later, I was removed from a community that had been my lifeline for years.

I've been quiet about this for five years. On this anniversary, I've been reflecting—and I want to share what I've learned. Not to settle scores, but because there's a teaching here that we desperately need right now.

The Shattering

Being kicked out of a community—for any reason—is shattering and scary.

If you've experienced it, you know. The ground drops out from under you. The people who were your safety net are suddenly gone. You question everything: What did I do wrong? Who can I trust? Where do I belong now?

But here's what I've come to understand: you don't have to be formally removed to feel kicked out.

Maybe you're in a community where abstinence is everything, and you're quietly struggling but can't say so. Maybe you're watching social media where everyone looks perfect, follows all the rules, posts their wins—and you feel like a fraud because your reality doesn't match. Maybe you've evolved beyond what the group teaches, but leaving feels like losing your entire support system.

That feeling of I don't belong here anymore? That's its own kind of shattering.

And right now, so many of us are feeling something even bigger: the struggle to connect with and love and support the people in our lives when there's this HUGE divide. Family members we can't talk to. Friends we're walking on eggshells around. The sense that one wrong word could blow everything up.

It feels like a grand canyon between us and the people we love. And we don't have a way to bridge it.

We've Forgotten How to Talk About Hard Things

Here's what I've realized in the five years since: we've lost the ability to be in community with each other when things get charged.

Politics has become more divisive. The world feels more overwhelming. Our nervous systems are more activated than ever. And instead of learning how to hold space for each other through difficulty, we've learned to avoid, to silence, to remove.

Many people are afraid this topic can't be managed—that bringing up anything charged will blow up the room, end friendships, fracture families. So we stay silent. We stuff it down. We pretend we're not affected.

But here's what I've discovered: this unsettled feeling that most—if not all—of us are experiencing to one degree or another? It's the basis for why our emotions go outsized. It's a HUGE underlying reason we reach for food, for numbing, for anything that will quiet the overwhelm.

We can't heal our relationship with food while ignoring the world that's activating us.

And we don't have to. I've been supporting these conversations in my community for five years now. It can be done. Not easily, not without care—but it can be done.

We don't talk about the hard things because we don't know how to talk about them.

And that's costing us everything—our communities, our connections, our ability to support each other when we need it most.

The Story

I was part of a weight loss community that had genuinely changed my life. The program gave me structure when I desperately needed it. I released 170 pounds. The community became my safety net—finally, people who understood food dysfunction without judgment.

I believed in it so much that I went to work for them. I poured myself into that mission for 18 months.

But as I maintained my weight loss and grew in my understanding, I started evolving. I began needing conversations about the why underneath the food patterns—not just the rules about what to eat. I needed space for complexity. I needed permission to adapt rather than comply perfectly.

There is no perfect program. Every approach has gifts and limitations. The gift of our brilliant minds is that we can take what serves us and leave the rest behind—not as rejection, but as evolution.

I started creating space for deeper conversations. And my path began to diverge.

In June 2020, I was let go from my job. I was never told why.

I asked only one thing: to stay in the community that had carried me. I was told I could—if I agreed not to coach and not to share my own before/after photos. My own photos. My own 170-pound journey. My own evidence of what was possible.

I couldn't agree to erase my own story. That was a bridge too far. 

I wasn't removed then. I stayed for six more months.

The Video

January 6, 2021 was an intense day.

It doesn't matter where you were on the political spectrum—something significant was happening, and people were activated, overwhelmed, frightened.

As someone who had spent years helping people navigate overwhelming emotions without turning to food, I knew what my community needed. Not political commentary. Not debate about what the images meant. Support for their nervous systems.

So I posted a video.

"Are you sad? Are you disappointed? Are you angry? Are you rage-filled? Are you fearful? Are you worried about your own safety? Any number of these things could be coming up for you. All of them could be coming up for you. But we don't want to eat over it. Because that's not going to help."

I shared techniques for regulation. I talked about how our parts get activated when emotions are oversized. How we can treat ourselves without food.

I sent "all of my love and comfort and support and a nice warm blanket and a cup of tea and some bunny slippers."

That was the video. Support for activated nervous systems, regardless of what people believed about what was happening.

Four days later, I was out.

What This Revealed

I wasn't removed for taking a political stance. The video didn't take one.

I was removed for acknowledging that something was happening and offering support for people who were activated by it.

And that's when I understood something important: many communities can only hold us when we wear blinders. When life gets charged—when politics enters the room, when tragedy strikes, when the world feels overwhelming—these communities don't have the tools to hold space for our humanity.

So they silence. They avoid. They remove.

This isn't unique to the community I was in. This is everywhere.

We've created a world where we can't talk about the things that are actually affecting us. Where acknowledging difficulty is seen as divisive. Where supporting each other through charged moments is somehow against the rules.

No wonder we turn to food. No wonder we numb. No wonder we feel so utterly alone in our overwhelm.

What We're Missing

Here's what I've learned in the five years since:

We need communities that can hold difference.

Not communities where everyone agrees. Not communities where we pretend the world isn't affecting us. Communities where we can show up as activated, overwhelmed, frightened human beings and receive support—regardless of what we believe about the thing that's activating us.

We need to learn how to talk about hard things.

Not debate them. Not argue about who's right. Talk about how they're affecting us. Share our experience without requiring agreement. Offer presence instead of positions.

We need nervous system support, not just behavior management.

When I posted that video, I wasn't trying to change anyone's politics. I was offering tools for regulation. Techniques for getting through an overwhelming moment without numbing with food. That's what people actually needed—and still need.

We need permission to be human.

To be scared. To be activated. To feel things deeply. And to receive support for our humanity without having to perform neutrality or pretend we're not affected.

A New Way to Approach This

My purpose in sharing this story isn't just to process my own experience. It's to offer you something practical—a way to connect with your friends and loved ones, even when the world feels impossibly divided.

Here's what I've learned works:

Start with "I feel."

When you say "I feel scared" or "I feel angry" or "I feel overwhelmed"—no one can deny that. It's your experience. It's not up for debate.

The moment we shift from "This is wrong" to "I feel frightened by this," something changes. We're no longer arguing positions. We're sharing our humanity.

Respect how others feel—even when you disagree with why they feel it.

This is the hard part. Someone you love might feel relieved about something that terrifies you. Someone might feel hopeful about something that fills you with dread.

Can you honor their feeling without needing to change it? Can you say, "I hear that you're feeling hopeful" without adding "but you shouldn't"?

This doesn't mean you agree. It doesn't mean you're betraying your own values. It means you're choosing connection over conversion.

Accompany instead of fix.

When someone shares how they're feeling, our instinct is often to change it. To argue them out of their fear. To explain why they shouldn't feel that way. To fix them.

But people don't need to be fixed. They need to be accompanied.

Accompaniment sounds like: "That sounds really hard." "I'm here with you." "Tell me more about what's coming up for you."

It doesn't sound like: "Well, actually..." "You shouldn't feel that way because..." "Have you considered..."

Practice being uncomfortable.

This approach is foreign. It requires stepping outside your comfort zone. It asks you to sit with someone's experience without needing to correct it, debate it, or make it match your own.

That's uncomfortable. Especially when you feel strongly.

But here's what I've discovered: the discomfort of learning to be resonant with others is so much smaller than the pain of losing connection entirely.

Remember: you're not trying to change anyone.

The goal isn't to get your loved ones to see things your way. The goal is to stay connected—to them and to yourself—through whatever is happening.

When we stop trying to change each other, something remarkable happens: we can actually hear each other. And sometimes, in that hearing, we all soften. Not because anyone won the argument, but because we remembered we're on the same team—the human team, trying to navigate an overwhelming world.

Is It Possible?

Is it possible we can practice talking about these things in a way that breeds more respect?

I believe it is. I've seen it happen. I've watched people with opposite political views sit in the same virtual room and offer each other genuine care. Not because they agreed, but because they chose to honor each other's humanity over their need to be right.

It requires care. It requires attention. It requires stepping outside what's comfortable.

But the alternative—losing our connections, our communities, our relationships to the people we love—is so much worse.

We can learn this. We can practice this. And we can teach each other how.

Five Years of Silence

I stayed quiet because I didn't want anyone's recovery affected by taking sides. I didn't want people feeling they had to choose between supporting me and staying in a community that might still serve them.

Some people thought I'd been pushed out unfairly and felt they had to pick sides. Others thought I'd abandoned them. Neither was true, but I couldn't correct the record without creating the very division I was trying to prevent.

So I absorbed the misunderstanding. For five years.

But silence has its own cost. Being misunderstood has its own weight.

And more importantly: the world has only gotten more charged since then. The need for what I was offering in that video—and what I've been building ever since—has only grown.

What I Built From the Loss

Being pushed out led to creating what I'd actually needed all along.

I founded a community—the Magic Membership—based on everything I'd learned about what real support looks like:

Resonance over advice — Being witnessed and understood rather than fixed

Support for individual journeys — Honoring that everyone's path looks different

Safe space for activation — A place to explore what's really happening for you without shame

Holding difference — Space to share how things affect you without requiring agreement on what they mean

Nervous system first — Understanding that we can't think our way out of overwhelm; we have to regulate first

And for the past five and a half years, I've been helping people do exactly what I was trying to do in that January 6th video: express their own feelings, share how something impacted them, and receive support without judgment.

Every day in Magic, people bring what's real. Fear and delight. Family crises. Health scares. Big concerns. The stuff that activates us, overwhelms us, makes us want to reach for food to numb the intensity.

And instead of avoiding it or debating it, we practice something different: How is this landing for you? What's coming up in your body? What do you need right now?

We've held space through elections, pandemics, personal crises, and national ones. We've had people with wildly different beliefs sitting in the same virtual room, finding resonance with each other.

How? By focusing on the shared humanity underneath the differences.

You can absolutely talk about how you feel. About how you're being hit by whatever is happening. And that means you can find a way through regardless of your belief system—because at the end of the day, we need to be honored for where we are, not who we support in the next election.

The Video

Watch the video

This is the video I posted on January 6, 2021.

Watch it. It's not about politics. It's about how to stay regulated when the world feels overwhelming—techniques for empaths, nervous system support, and ways to treat yourself without turning to food.

I still believe every word of it.

What I'd Add Now

Five years later, with everything I've learned about nervous system regulation, neuroplasticity, and why we turn to food, I'd add this:

Your reaction to overwhelming events—whatever those events are, whatever they mean to you—is valid. Your nervous system is doing its job, trying to protect you. And you have tools now that you didn't used to have.

You don't have to eat over it. You don't have to numb it. You can feel it fully, move it through your body, and find your way back to regulation.

And you don't have to do it alone.

We need each other. Especially now. Especially when things get hard.

The question isn't whether we'll face more charged moments—we will. The question is whether we'll learn how to hold space for each other through them.

I believe we can. I've seen it happen. I've built a community where it happens every day.

The Invitation

I'm not asking you to leave any community that serves you. Take what you need and leave the rest—that's always been my philosophy.

But if you've ever felt like you couldn't bring your whole self to a space... if you've ever been silenced for acknowledging that something hard was happening... if you've ever needed support for your nervous system and received judgment instead...

There's another way.

We are not our politics. We are nervous systems trying to regulate in an overwhelming world. We are humans who deserve support regardless of what we believe.

Come find your people.

The food is a symptom. The puzzle is underneath. Let's solve it together.

About the Author: Sonja Irina Johansen is the author of Thinking Outside the Box: A Revolutionary Approach to Food Dysfunction and founder of Transform with Sonja. After releasing 170 pounds and maintaining that release for nearly a decade, she's spent the last five years studying the neurological, psychological, social, and biological reasons we turn to food—and helping others find their way to freedom. Learn more at transformwithsonja.com.