The body keeps its own clock.
You can decide to move. You can pack the boxes, sign the lease, hand in the keys, fly into the new airport. The mind makes the decision in a moment. The body takes much longer.
Bessel van der Kolk wrote:
"The body keeps the score."
He meant something specific by it. But I think it applies to ordinary transitions too. Not only trauma. Not only catastrophe. The body keeps the score of every leaving. Every goodbye that did not get said properly. Every neighbourhood walked past for the last time without knowing it was the last time.
If you have moved to Victoria recently and you have noticed that you are more anxious than you were before, or you are sleeping worse, or you wake up at four in the morning for no reason, or your chest is tight on Sunday afternoons, this is part of what is happening.
The body is still in the old city. The body has not received the new address.
In therapy, I work with people who say: I do not understand this. The move was the thing I wanted. I have the apartment I wanted. I am near the ocean. Why does my chest feel like this?
They feel guilty for the anxiety. As if they have somehow betrayed the dream by not feeling delighted by it every day.
But anxiety in transition is not a sign that the move was wrong. It is a sign that your nervous system has not yet processed the change you asked it to make.
When you move, every reference point shifts. The route to the grocery store. The sound of your neighbours. The taste of the tap water. The light coming through the morning window. The smell in the lobby. Hundreds of small somatic anchors that you used, without knowing it, to feel safe.
The new place does not know you. And until your body learns it, every cell is still slightly on alert. Even at rest. Even in a beautiful room. Even in Victoria.
What helps?
I would tell you: time. But time alone is not always enough. Some people land in a new city and never quite settle.
What helps is doing the work of arrival deliberately.
In therapy this looks like bringing the body back online. Noticing where the activation lives. Naming what is being grieved that you have not let yourself grieve. Building new somatic anchors slowly. Letting the new walks become familiar. Letting the new coffee shop become a place. Letting the light coming through this morning window become known.
Carl Jung wrote:
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
The unconscious of a recent move runs in the background. It says: this is not home. It says: where are the people who know me? It says: I do not feel like myself here.
If we leave it unconscious, it shapes everything. The way you sleep. The way you eat. The way you choose your evenings. Whether you reach for someone or pull away. Whether you give the city a chance to become home, or hold it at arm's length so it cannot disappoint you.
Therapy is one of the places that material becomes conscious. Once it is conscious, you have a choice.
If you have just moved to Victoria and you came here looking for a fresh start with your anxiety, I want to be honest with you. The anxiety usually arrives in the new city before you do. It is in your luggage. It is in your nervous system. The new city does not erase it.
But the new city can be a place where it gets seen. Where it gets understood. Where the pattern underneath it can finally come into focus.
I work somatically and from a depth orientation. That means I do not only work with the story of what happened. I work with what the body is still holding. The chest that tightens. The shoulders that will not drop. The breath that stays shallow even in safety.
EMDR is one of the tools I use when something has not finished processing. So is parts work. So is slow, present, attuned conversation that lets the body remember it is allowed to settle.
There is a line from the poet David Whyte I think about often:
"What you can plan is too small for you to live."
You planned the move. You planned the new apartment. You planned the new chapter. And then the body, which cannot be planned, started writing its own story underneath.
Listening to that story is what therapy is for.
What is your body holding that has not been put into words yet?
I am Utku Ucay, a Registered Clinical Counsellor in Victoria, BC. I work with anxiety, trauma, and life transitions, in person and online across British Columbia. If something here resonated, you are welcome to book a free fifteen minute consultation.