Personal Development / Self-Help
Somatic Healing / Mind-Body Wellness
Trauma-Informed Personal Growth
Date Published: April 25, 2026
In You’re Not the Problem: You’re the Possibility, you’ll learn:
- Why feeling stuck is not a failure, but an intelligent adaptation
- How your nervous system has been running the show, and how to begin creating safety and more room inside to respond
- How to relate to yourself in real time: see yourself, meet yourself, talk to yourself, understand yourself, and support yourself so your inner world becomes steady and trustworthy
- Simple, practical steps to restore your energy and reconnect with your true self
Tell us about yourself and what you do—a
concise bio focusing on relevant experience, background, and achievements.
Author Introduction
My work centers around a simple but powerful
idea: many of the patterns people struggle with are not evidence that something
is wrong with them. They are adaptations created by a nervous system that has
been trying to help them survive stress, pressure, and difficult experiences.
I am a somatic healing practitioner and the
creator of the Freedom Formula, a framework that helps people move out of
survival mode and into a life that reflects who they are. My work blends
nervous system science, somatic practices, emotional processing, and mindset
work to help people understand why they feel stuck and what it truly takes to
create lasting change.
Before stepping into this work, I earned my
law degree from Harvard Law School and spent years in high-performing
environments where discipline and achievement were highly valued. From the
outside, my life looked successful. Inside, I was quietly struggling with many
of the same patterns my clients now describe: chronic stress, emotional eating,
anxiety, and the exhausting habit of showing up for everyone else while
ignoring my own needs.
Understanding the role of the nervous system
changed the way I approached those patterns. Instead of seeing them as
failures, I began to see them as intelligent adaptations. That realization not
only transformed my own life, it became the foundation of the work I now share
with others.
For more than sixteen years I have helped
people understand their patterns with compassion, reconnect with their inner
guidance, and build lives that feel meaningful, aligned, and sustainable. My
book, You’re Not the Problem, grew out of that work and out of a deep
desire to help more people experience the relief that comes from realizing they
are not broken.
Your Author Journey
Writing You’re Not the Problem was not
simply a professional project for me. It was the natural result of more than
sixteen years of personal healing, study, and working with people who were
trying with everything they had to change their lives.
Before I began this work, I believed what most
high-functioning people believe: that if something in your life is not working,
you should try harder. I knew how to work hard. I had a Harvard Law degree, a
career that demanded discipline, and a life that required constant
responsibility as the mother of six children. From the outside I looked capable
and successful. Inside, I was exhausted and deeply disappointed in myself
because certain patterns in my life would not change no matter how much effort
I applied.
Understanding the role of the nervous system
was the beginning of a completely different way of relating to myself. I
started to see that many of the behaviors we judge most harshly in ourselves
are actually adaptations that once helped us survive stress, pressure, or
emotional pain. When we treat those patterns as enemies to eliminate, we stay
locked in the same cycle. When we understand them and provide the conditions
for change, something very different becomes possible.
My writing process reflects the same
philosophy I teach. I write from lived experience, from years of working with
real people, and from the growing body of research on trauma, nervous system
regulation, and emotional processing. Much of the book began as conversations
with clients, reflections on my own journey, and the questions people asked
again and again when trying to understand why change felt so hard.
My hope in writing You’re Not the Problem
is simple. I want readers to feel the same relief that changed my life when I
finally understood that the patterns keeping me stuck were not proof of
failure. They were intelligent adaptations. Once we understand that, we can
begin the meaningful and sustainable change.
Share your path to becoming an author,
including your writing process.
I wrote my first book when I was about seven
years old. I don’tt remember every detail, but I do remember the main
character. Her name was Soap Girl. She was a sudsy superhero who couldn’t be
caught. Whenever someone tried to grab her, she slipped right out of their
hands.
After that early masterpiece, writing took a
back seat for many years. I wrote essays in school and later memorandums and
contracts in my legal career, but I did not begin to write in a meaningful way
until my late thirties.
That was the time in my life when I began
trying to understand who I truly was. I started journaling every day and filled
countless notebooks as I worked through a lifetime of self-disgust, disordered
eating, anxiety, and a deep sense that I somehow was not enough. Those journals
became the place where I asked hard questions, told the truth about my
patterns, and slowly began building a different relationship with myself.
As I eventually trained and began working as a
somatic practitioner, helping people understand and shift long-held patterns of
stress, anxiety, overwhelm, self-sabotage, and coping behaviors, writing
naturally became part of my work again. I started creating programs, teaching
materials, and integrative workbooks that supported the process I was guiding
people through.
Over time, that work evolved into what I now
call the Freedom Formula, a roadmap that helps people move out of survival mode
and into a more authentic and aligned life. I always wanted to find a way to
put the entire system in one place so people could really sink their teeth into
it and move through the process at their own pace. The book gave me the space
to do that.
I had started a few books over the years, but
something in me always knew the timing was not quite right. Then one day, a
coach asked me a question that let me know it was time. She asked, “What is
the one thing you want every single one of your clients to know more than
anything else?”
The answer was immediate. You’re not the
problem.
The moment I said those words, I knew the book
had to exist. Realizing you are not the problem opens the door to compassion
and curiosity, which are the cornerstones of change. I started writing the next
day.
My process was fairly simple. I wrote most
days, often beginning in my journal and then moving into the manuscript. Many
of the ideas that appeared in the book started as journal reflections that
eventually grew into sections of chapters or sometimes entire chapters
themselves.
What surprised me most about the process was
how challenging it was. There were days when I spent an hour deciding on a
section title or three full days working on the opening paragraph of a chapter
or a metaphor I wanted to get exactly right. I am not a perfectionist, but
there was something about this project that felt sacred to me. I wanted the
words to land in a way that helped the reader feel safe and understood.
Originally, I did not intend for the book to
include so much of my personal story, but my editor would not let me hide
behind the teaching. She pushed me to share my experiences honestly and refused
to let me skip over the parts of my life that shaped the work. I am very
grateful she did.
There are moments when I feel like I’m in one
of those dreams where you get on the bus and suddenly realize you forgot to get
dressed, standing there exposed and hoping no one notices. Fortunately, I can
handle the vulnerability now, which is something I never would have imagined a
decade ago. In the end, the openness made the book far better. It allowed me to
speak to readers not just as a teacher, but as someone who has walked the same
path.
My hope is that when readers finish the book,
they feel the same sense of relief I once felt when I finally understood that
the patterns keeping me stuck were not proof that I was broken. They were
intelligent adaptations, and they could change.
The “Why” -Your personal reason for writing
the book—this helps make pitches more authentic and compelling.
The “Why”
I wrote You’re Not the Problem because
I am deeply tired of watching good, capable people blame themselves for
patterns that make perfect sense.
For more than sixteen years I have worked with
people who want to change their lives. They want to stop overworking, stop
emotionally eating, stop people pleasing, stop the constant anxiety and
pressure they feel inside. Almost every one of them begins from the same place.
They believe the problem is their behavior and that the solution is more
discipline, more willpower, or trying harder.
That approach always fails.
The reason it fails is simple. Behavior is not
the root of the problem. Behavior is the visible expression of deeper
adaptations the nervous system has made in response to stress and earlier life
experiences. When we try to change behavior without understanding those
underlying mechanisms, we end up fighting ourselves.
One of the most painful things I see in my
work is how quickly people turn that struggle into self-blame. They assume they
lack discipline or character when in reality they are brilliantly adapted human
beings whose nervous systems have been trying to protect them.
Once someone sees their patterns through the
lens of adaptation rather than failure, compassion and curiosity naturally
begin to replace self-attack. From there, meaningful and sustainable change
becomes possible because the work shifts from forcing behavior to understanding
the system that created it.
I also wrote the book because the world we are
living in right now is profoundly stressful and often out of sync with our
natural human rhythms. The anxiety, overwhelm, and exhaustion many people feel
today are not signs that something is wrong with them. They are normal
responses to environments that place constant demands on our attention,
productivity, and emotional capacity.
Rather than numbing those experiences with
medication, distraction, or endless coping strategies, I believe we need a much
deeper cultural understanding of how the nervous system works and how human
beings can find safety, heal, and grow. This book is part of that larger
mission.
It offers readers the complete Freedom
Formula, the framework I use in my work, so that people who may never sit in a
session with me can still understand their patterns, reconnect with their inner
guidance, and begin adapting again in ways that move them toward their truth,
their wholeness, and a life that feels like their own. When enough of us begin
doing this work in our own lives, we will collectively create a more
trauma-informed, somatic-literate world, and the difference that will make is
profound.
About the Author
My work centers around a simple but powerful idea: many of the patterns people struggle with are not evidence that something is wrong with them. They are adaptations created by a nervous system that has been trying to help them survive stress, pressure, and difficult experiences.
I am a somatic healing practitioner and the creator of the Freedom Formula, a framework that helps people move out of survival mode and into a life that reflects who they are. My work blends nervous system science, somatic practices, emotional processing, and mindset work to help people understand why they feel stuck and what it truly takes to create lasting change.
Before stepping into this work, I earned my law degree from Harvard Law School and spent years in high-performing environments where discipline and achievement were highly valued. From the outside, my life looked successful. Inside, I was quietly struggling with many of the same patterns my clients now describe: chronic stress, emotional eating, anxiety, and the exhausting habit of showing up for everyone else while ignoring my own needs.
Understanding the role of the nervous system changed the way I approached those patterns. Instead of seeing them as failures, I began to see them as intelligent adaptations. That realization not only transformed my own life, it became the foundation of the work I now share with others.
For more than sixteen years I have helped people understand their patterns with compassion, reconnect with their inner guidance, and build lives that feel meaningful, aligned, and sustainable. My book, You’re Not the Problem, grew out of that work and out of a deep desire to help more people experience the relief that comes from realizing they are not broken.
Youtube: Lori Montry -Somatic Healing Practitioner
Facebook: You're Not the Problem!
Lori Montry (@lorimontry) • Instagram photos and videos
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