In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Evi Kyriakopoulou, who spent fifteen years as a corporate overachiever, a director, an expat climbing the ladder in the Netherlands, the kind of person who could push through anything. Until her body stopped letting her.

Evi names something Victor sees everywhere: a nervous system that learned worth had to be earned, and never learned how to stop. The chasing. The nightly replay of every conversation. The small panic attacks at the first sign of uncertainty. We call it drive, when it is often a body bracing for a threat that never clocks out.

The conversation follows one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. The warning signs built quietly. No coffee, no alcohol, no stimulants, and still a resting heart rate of one hundred twenty beats a minute. Then, on a summer trip to a Greek island, the collapse. A hospital bed, numb hands and legs, an extreme panic attack the tests could not explain. Her body had finally said stop.

The turn did not come from one clean fix. A two day reaction to SSRIs closed that door fast and left her one path forward: natural remedies, talk therapy, hypnosis, and CBT, given as much time as it needed. Six months in, steadier, she took a Harvard course to understand what had actually happened in her brain, and started to uncouple her identity from her job title. At thirty seven she chose to start over, helping people move from what she calls anxious surviving to liberated thriving.

The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Evi's answer is simple. She has learned to read her own cues, to treat anxiety as a notification rather than an emergency, and to take the day off before the body forces one.

IN THIS EPISODE

Why high performance can be a nervous system that never learned to stop. The early warning signs that get explained away. What a resting heart rate of one hundred twenty is really telling you. Why her recovery went past positive thinking into slow, unglamorous relearning. Uncoupling identity from job title, and building a self around your own values. A practical close you can use tonight: breath work, ten minutes of stillness, and the truth that the benefits accumulate over time.

ABOUT EVI KYRIAKOPOULOU

Evi Kyriakopoulou is a former corporate director turned guide for people moving from anxious surviving to liberated thriving. After a nervous system collapse ended a fifteen year career, she studied the neuroscience of her own breakdown and rebuilt with natural remedies and talk therapy. She is based in Greece and, by her own choice, still mid journey.

Find Evi: https://www.ennoia.me/

FROM VICTOR

If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time.

BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio

This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Adam Anthony learned to read rooms before he could name why. As a same-race Black adoptee who came up in spaces that were not always safe, his body got good at sensing the shift before it happened, knowing who was safe and who was not. He calls it sharp attunement. It kept him safe as a kid, and it did not switch off when he grew up.

In this episode, Victor Goenka sits with Adam around one arc: what the wiring looked like, what started to change it, and what safety feels like now. They get into the cost of staying alert, the difference between a personality trait and a survival adaptation, and the day Adam felt his body want to respond differently but not yet know how.

Adam works with young men of color carrying their own versions of this, navigating identity and belonging in a world that is not always safe for them. He names the two directions he sees a young nervous system go, high alert or numb and zoned out, and the internal experience that rarely matches what people see on the outside.

We also get into the turn. Therapy with someone who understood and made space to unpack it. Faith as the steady thread that tells his body who he is when the old alertness fires. And the move from rebellion to self-care: choosing his spaces on purpose, and the line he lives by now, that his presence is a gift wherever he goes.

In this episode:

- Sharp attunement, and why reading the room is a skill, not a flaw

- How a child in an unsafe space builds a threat radar that stays online for life

- The difference between your personality and what your body learned to survive

- What constant alertness costs a young man over time

- Therapy, faith, and the first thing that quieted the radar

- The signature question: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now?

- A doable first move for anyone exhausted by always being on

About Dr. Adam Anthony

Dr. Adam Anthony is an educator, leadership consultant, and speaker, and the founder of EmpowerMENt, where he builds intentional spaces for men with adoption and foster care backgrounds to explore identity, belonging, and healing with honesty and care. He holds a Doctor of Education in Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University, and his scholarly and community work centers male adoptees and Black male college students and educators.

Find Adam:

Website: https://www.empowermentbydradam.com

Instagram: @empowermentby_dradam

From Victor:

If your mind runs loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the BreathX Collective and one-on-one with a few people.

https://nas.com/breathxio

Feel Safe in Your Body is hosted by Victor Goenka, psychologist and breathwork coach, based in Tulum, Mexico.

In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Sherri Grieve, a peer support coach, author, and founder of Life Rewired who works from lived experience. For most of her life Sherri ran on survival mode without knowing that is what it was. From the outside she looked like she had it all together. Single parent, full-time job, putting herself through college, volunteering for every one of her son's sports.

On the inside she was anxious, switched off, and slowly disappearing.

This conversation is about the moment the picture flipped. The people pleasing, the fixing everyone, the over functioning, the need for control. Sherri stopped seeing those as flaws and started seeing them for what they were: nervous system adaptations her body built to keep her safe. As she puts it, we are not our patterns.

She talks about what survival actually cost her, how the patterns turned into habits that went against her own values, and the night she hit a wall and asked for change. That was the start of the rewiring. She walks through the difference between coping and healing, and the first time she could sit in silence and hear her own heartbeat instead of running from it.

Victor maps each turn to the nervous system in real time. People pleasing that earned safety through approval. Fixing that borrowed control where there was none. Chaos that felt safer than calm. The guest brings the story, Victor brings the map.

The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Sherri answers with peace, acceptance, and the tools to remind herself that a hard moment is a moment in time, not proof she is unsafe.

She closes with gentle first steps for anyone who feels like their whole personality was built out of survival. Start small. Speak to yourself differently. Ask what happened to me instead of what is wrong with me. And keep the line she wants you to hold: you get to choose who you are.

IN THIS EPISODE

High-functioning on the outside, dying on the inside. People pleasing, fixing, over functioning, and control as nervous system adaptations. How the patterns turned into habits that went against her values. The night she asked for change. Coping versus healing. Learning to sit in silence and hear her own heartbeat. Turning lived experience into books and coaching. The signature question, and why you are not your patterns.

ABOUT SHERRI GRIEVE

Sherri Grieve is a peer support coach, author, and founder of Life Rewired. Through her own journey of overcoming trauma, abuse, and life's challenges, she discovered that healing is possible with the right support, practical tools, and a willingness to grow. Today she helps others move beyond survival mode by building healthier boundaries, strengthening resilience, and creating lives rooted in hope and authenticity. We are not our patterns.

Her books, This Is Me (a bilingual English and Spanish memoir) and Dig Deep Shit (a workbook), are on Amazon worldwide.

Find Sherri:

* Linktree: https://linktr.ee/life.rewired.sherri

* @life.rewired.sherri on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads

FROM VICTOR

If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time.

* Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio

This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.