Too Powerful to Feel Safe? Healing the Witch Wound and Reclaiming Your Intuition

Episode 4 – Healing the Witch Wound: Why Sensitive Women Hide Their Power

If you’ve ever felt like you needed to shrink in order to be safe, like your sight or intuition was too sharp to be welcome—this isn’t just personal. It’s ancestral. It’s cultural. It’s systemic. And it’s time we name it: this is the witch wound.

For so many intuitive, sensitive, deeply-seeing women, there’s a constant inner battle between the desire to speak and the fear of what will happen if we do. We learn to soften our edges, smile when we want to scream, become palatable so we can survive.

But the truth is—we don’t need healing because we’re broken. We need healing because we’ve been taught to fear our own power.

The Witch Wound: What It Really Is

The witch wound is the deep-seated fear that being seen in your full intuitive, powerful self will lead to punishment, abandonment, or death. It’s not just metaphorical. Historically, it happened. Midwives, herbalists, seers, and women who lived outside sanctioned systems of power were persecuted—violently, systematically, often publicly.

But here’s what’s often missed: trauma doesn’t just vanish when history moves on. It gets passed down through nervous systems, epigenetics, behaviors. It shows up as:

• People-pleasing even when it hurts you
• Feeling “too much” in social spaces
• Dimming your insight so others feel comfortable
• Exhaustion after gatherings (not because you’re introverted—but because you’re masking)
• Deep shame around your own desire, appetite, or intensity

You were not born with this fear. But you did inherit it.

You’re Not “Too Much”—You’ve Just Never Been Fully Welcomed

There’s a difference between being too much and being too much for them.
Many healers and seers are raised in environments that subtly or overtly suggest their gifts are inconvenient. Maybe you heard, “You’re so sensitive,” like it was a flaw. Maybe your truth-telling got labeled as rude. Maybe your way of seeing the world didn’t make sense to the systems around you, so you assumed you were the broken one.
You weren’t.
Your energy, your way of processing the world, your ability to read between the lines, your bone-deep desire to create a more just and loving world—these are not liabilities.
They are gifts that threaten unjust systems. And that’s why they’ve been feared.

Why We Hide: A Nervous System Story

Let’s get really honest here: hiding isn’t just psychological. It’s physiological.
When your body perceives threat, it will do what it needs to do to survive. And for centuries, women with power were not safe. So it makes sense that many of us—whether consciously or not—have learned to fawn, mask, adapt. Not to betray ourselves, but to stay safe.
But safety and belonging are not the same.

The more you step into spaces where your full expression is actually welcomed—not just tolerated—the more your nervous system will begin to feel safe being big, being true, being clear.

This is not a mindset shift. It’s a slow re-patterning. It takes time. But it’s happening.

The Myth of the Selfless Healer

Another way the witch wound shows up? Believing we must always be gentle, always be kind, always put others first—otherwise, we’re bad. Dangerous. Shameful.
This is spiritual conditioning in disguise.

There is room in your healing work for sharpness, for clarity, for power. Your insight doesn’t have to be watered down to be loving. In fact, true insight often disrupts before it soothes.

And here’s the radical truth: you can be soft and fierce. You can hold clear sight and deep compassion. You can hold boundaries and hold space.
These things are not opposites. They are your wholeness.

Reclaiming the Power of Desire

Many healers carry shame around their own wanting. We’ve been told our appetites—sexual, emotional, creative—are selfish, sinful, or silly.
But the truth is, desire is a compass.

Desire is how your soul pulls you toward the world you’re meant to build. When we deny our desires, we outsource power. We consume more. We chase approval. We shrink.

When we reclaim our desires—slowly, safely, sacredly—we reconnect to our vitality. Our fire. Our why.

This is not indulgence. This is holy.

So What Do We Do Now?

We don’t bulldoze over our fear. We don’t shame ourselves for not being more visible, more expressive, more “authentic.”
We move at the pace our nervous system can handle. We speak our truth when it’s ripe. We find (or build) spaces where we don’t have to dilute ourselves to survive.

And we remember:
You don’t have to be everything to everyone. You don’t have to be safe for systems that never made room for you. You’re allowed to be whole, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

You’re allowed to want, to know, to speak, to rage, to rest.
And you’re not too much.
You’re just remembering who you are.