The Body Knows Before the Mind

Tomasz opens his laptop at nine o'clock on a grey Warsaw Monday, coffee going cold beside him. His first patient is Marek, thirty-eight, a construction foreman who has been sober for four months after two decades of evening vodka. In the old rhythm of weekly therapy, Tomasz would greet Marek with the usual opener—"How was your week?"—and Marek would offer the usual response: "Fine. Nothing much happened." They would spend fifteen minutes excavating what "fine" actually meant.

But today, Tomasz has ninety seconds of data waiting. Marek's heart rate variability has dropped twenty-two percent since Wednesday. His sleep has fragmented—nearly five wake-ups per night against a baseline of two. His step count has cratered. And for the first time in six weeks, he has reported cravings: Thursday evening, Friday morning, Saturday night. When Marek sits down and says "Fine," Tomasz is ready. "Your sleep has been terrible since Wednesday. You're waking up four or five times a night, and you mentioned cravings for the first time in weeks. What's been happening?" Marek's eyes widen. "I didn't realize it was that obvious. Work has been insane. And yeah, I've been thinking about drinking again."

Marek genuinely does not know how close he is to relapse. His autonomic nervous system has been signalling distress for days, but his conscious mind has not caught up. This gap between physiological reality and psychological awareness is precisely the terrain that traditional weekly therapy cannot see.