Cutting Loose follows Aimee Zaring’s journey from anxiety, shame, and compulsive hair-cutting toward a more embodied, courageous, and self-compassionate life through somatic healing. Why was this an important book for you to write? 

Cutting Loose is the book I wish I had read years ago, during the nearly ten years I was struggling with my disorder. I needed someone who’d been in the trenches, who could understand my shame and frustration and tell me I was okay, that I wasn’t broken or a freak, that my behavior was self-protective (and natural in the face of overwhelm), and that change was not only possible but almost assured–if I stayed committed to inner growth and self-exploration. The three somatic methods I write about freed me from the coping behavior that had hijacked my life for years, and I wanted to give others hope that they, too, could find more freedom and flow. 

 I also wanted to write this book as a deeper inquiry into my own healing journey. Why were these somatic practices helping me when so many others hadn’t? And if they were helping me, could they benefit others? I wanted to share what I was learning about the nervous system, our stress responses, how we get dysregulated, and the many ways we can release stress and restore balance through our own bodies. We can indeed influence our nervous system in meaningful ways and shift outdated coping patterns.    

How did practices like Linklater Voice, Bowspring, and the Feldenkrais Method change the way you understood healing? 

 For the longest time, I believed that the gateway to my mental health and well-being was through my mind. I had never considered that my nervous system could be the gatekeeper. Top-down approaches like talk therapy don’t always address what’s buried deep in the unconscious–or held within the body. Somatic practices have taught me that healing is a full mind-body process. It takes listening to all our brains (including the heart- and gut-brains), as well as our muscle tension, breath, posture, fascia, and so on. These internal sensory systems constantly communicate messages of safety and threat to us, affecting our thoughts, moods, emotions, and behaviors. Yet, we often don’t give ourselves the time, space, or permission to listen to what they are communicating. Unfortunately, it often takes something big—pain, sickness, disease, or a diagnosable disorder—to get our attention.

 Many of us believe we can think our way into feeling better. That with enough meditation, willpower, affirmations, prayer, journaling, or talking, we can eliminate our coping behaviors. But mind over matter doesn’t always work. While those things can be very effective and have their place in the therapeutic process, for people living with stress-related disorders and trauma history, starting with the body first can be a powerful approach. Body-based practices can help quiet the noise in the nervous system, bypass cognitive biases, release unconscious blocks and tension, and provide alternatives to ingrained patterns and habitual responses. With body-based practices, you speak to the body in its native language—specifically, sensation and movement. These can often offer a more direct and efficient route to self-regulation and inner balance.  

Your memoir often balances humor and grief. How did you decide when to let humor into difficult scenes? 

 Thanks for recognizing the humor! Those who know me know that I love to joke around, laugh, and have fun. That’s what was difficult about living with my disorder. I began to take myself—and life—much too seriously. My coping behavior had become a huge part of my identity. I tend to try to find humor in things, so I don’t believe it was a conscious choice to add comic relief. It just came naturally as I was writing. I think what also helped is that by the time I put pen to paper, I had healed enough to gain perspective and a sense of lightness around my disorder. I was aware, however, that many readers coming to this book might be in the thick of their dysregulation, and I didn’t want to seem insensitive or dismissive of their internal anguish, so I tried to balance the humor with the pain. Part of the frustration of behaviors like body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), which is part of the family of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRDs), is that you can often recognize the absurdity of what you’re doing. That’s where pain and humor intersect. As I write in the book, humor can mask pain, but it can also be a sign of healing and integration. Incidentally, smiles and laughter can be surprisingly helpful self-regulating tools!   

 What do you hope readers who feel trapped in their own coping mechanisms take away from Cutting Loose?

 You are not beyond help or hope. You are a marvel–complex, adaptive, and capable of profound change. You are worth exploring. Try to think beyond finding a cure or “fix.” Consider that you simply haven’t found the most effective tool for this stage in your healing journey. Maybe you haven’t yet encountered the person, place, thing, resource, or opportunity that will lead you to the next stage in your process. Don’t limit yourself to only traditional evidence-based therapies. There are so many healing modalities available today. I tried more than a dozen different approaches before I landed on my first somatic practice, Linklater Voice, which began to help me cultivate my somatic intelligence and release long-held tension and emotional pain. Stay curious. Try new things. Your brain—and body—love novelty. It’s how we learn, repattern, and become more resilient. 

 Keep reaching for the next best feeling, sensation, movement, or thought. What you focus on expands. So instead of focusing on your stuckness, focus on where there is already flow, and build on that. Deep learning—the kind that creates sustainable shifts in nervous system regulation and behavior—takes time, self-compassion, and practice. We are all ultimately in the process of becoming. There might not be a “magic cure,” but you can learn how to respond more adaptively to the stressors contributing to your unwanted coping patterns. The real magic is what you learn about yourself along the way. 

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