Guest post: Body somewhere, heart somewhere else

I have written before about war anxiety, albeit in an abstract way.

Leila Moeeni

Recently I came across some writing by Leila Moeeni, which touched me deeply and I invited her to write a guest post for us.

Leila describes beautifully – although I'm not sure if that's the right word in this context – what many people carry and her words remind us that war is much, much more than we hear and see on the news.

It can live in the body, in thoughts, in memories, in sleep, in grief and in the constant effort of trying to carry on (remember that famous poster?) as normal.

I'd love to wave a magic wand and end all wars, conflicts and military operations of this world, but I can't.

What I can do, though, is offer a reminder that The Body Keeps the Score and needs support too.

Last but not least, alongside all the practical ways we can support ourselves and one another, may we continue to hope, speak, connect, pray and work towards a world with less violence, much more humanity, enduring peace and the understanding that we, in our own small communities can make a start and let the ripple effect do the rest.

Body Somewhere, Heart Somewhere Else

On remote trauma, living between worlds, and a careless cut of pickled cabbage

It was a Friday in early June, warm with that first real summer feeling. I was meeting an Iranian friend at one of our favourite sandwich places in South East London, a Jamaican beer outside, weather-dependent, and the forecast was perfect.

What no forecast could tell us was that the country we both rooted for would enter a war that day. It had been our nightmare for years. We'd come close before. But it had never actually happened.

We met up, sat down, and ordered. Acted normally. As if nothing had happened. And sat with the question neither of us could answer: what would happen?

My first eight years of life passed during the Iran-Iraq war. The war reached Tehran only in the last months, where I was born and grew up. I have almost no memories from those years.

I think that's my brain protecting me. What I do remember: cream-yellowish tape on every window in every house, crossed in an X, to stop the glass from shattering in a blast. And once, staying at my uncle's house near a hospital that was bombed, I sleepwalked for months after that.

All of a sudden, it all came back. Sitting in that sandwich shop, pretending to be normal, I felt the boxes I'd spent years locking creak open.

The exhaustion came first. Then, there was disrupted sleep. Then a deep sorrow without a source. A few days later, a friend sent me a link: Remote Trauma. Suddenly, the random physical pain, the dissociation, the not-quite-sleeping had a name. Something in me exhaled.

The war lasted 12 days. Twelve long days of interrupted internet, switching between social media for local updates and Al Jazeera for footage. Like the Saint Levant song, body somewhere, heart somewhere else.

I also learned, in those twelve days, how much energy it takes to answer the well-meaning questions. People ask for genuine empathy and curiosity, trying to understand beyond the headlines, yet it still drains you. By the second war, I'd learned I could politely step back from those questions. And I'd learned that when someone asks how I am, I can say, "I don't know."

Not because I don't want to answer. Because I genuinely don't know.

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Six months passed. I made a deliberate decision to have a quieter, more focused end-of-year break, working on something for 2026, while most people around me were travelling.

Part of that plan: no checking friends' Instagram stories. I have a small private account; 70% of the people I know in real life. I was trying to avoid FOMO.

I made that decision on the 25th of December, not knowing that on the 28th of February, there would be another war. Another national internet and network shutdown, which means missing your people's moments, checking every day to see if anyone from inside has posted a story, while avoiding the diaspora accounts and certain people who might reshare footage of explosions. Because once you've seen those images, you can't un-see them.

My phone is set to Do Not Disturb from 10 pm to 7am on weekdays, but not on weekends. At 6:30 am on Saturday, I woke up to use the bathroom. I don't know why I checked my phone.

There was a short message from my brother: don't worry, our family is fine.

Every sense went on alert.

Apple News confirmed it: another war. My brain couldn't process it, I reacted as though it were a bad dream and went back to sleep. I woke again around 9 am and caught up with the news properly.

I had lunch plans with two Iranian friends. One cancelled. The other said, "Shall we still go?" I thought: I don't want to be alone with my thoughts and my phone. I wasn't sure I was ready to face the outside world, which might not know what was happening. But the vibrant, colourful chaos of Brixton helped; it was enough to convince us both that life hadn't fully stopped.

Later, I met another friend, someone new to my life. I hadn't said anything. He said, “I read the news. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to”. And I didn't want to. I didn't have anything to say. I was too worried about my parents, my sister, and everyone I knew. At the time, I was naïve enough not to know this war would go on to destroy places that were part of my childhood memories. The beautiful mosques, palaces, and the square in Isfahan, which we visited on a family trip when I was 12. The museum and the palace in Tehran on a school trip.

I kept acting normal until the next day, when we had Sunday brunch at a Kurdish family-run restaurant near my flat. Familiar music. Familiar fonts on the jars of pickles. The interior design. And then they brought a small bowl of white and red cabbage in brine, cut carelessly, exactly the way my grandmother used to make it. My tears came before I knew. The same way they came when she passed away, and I realised I'd never fully had the chance to appreciate her.

This is how you go back and forth between places, memories and spaces while sitting perfectly still, with warm tears falling in silence. I looked around, and everyone was laughing, and the sun was shining.

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More than 30 hours after my brother's message, I finally dared to be alone with myself. I sat in the corner of my navy blue sofa, looked at the sky through the window, and started writing. It's always been how I process the hard things, but I need some time to get there.

In the weeks that followed, my brother and I kept having the same dream: our parents' house, all of us together, happy. I'm taking the most relaxed nap in my parents' enormous bed. As if we were both, while asleep, reaching for the same safe place to hold on to.

My boxing sessions have been another one. That one hour where you're completely cut off from everything, the dopamine is doing its work. It's where I know I'm ready to face the world again.

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Most of the time, the whole thing is hard to explain and sounds almost absurd. But over time, you learn to say “I don't know”, “I am not sure whether I have the answer to your question”, or “I don’t want to talk about it now”. You learn to look after yourself. You make a kind of peace with the fact that sometimes your body is in one place and your heart is somewhere else. It's still painful. It's still the reality for so many of us.

When I was just a few months old, the Iran-Iraq war broke out. My mum took me to a local clinic in Tehran to get my ears pierced. People in the waiting room raised their eyebrows: the country is on the brink of war, and you're bringing your baby here for this? Her answer has never left me: a baby's life and experiences cannot wait until the end of the war.

She was right. And they never do.

I'm trying to follow her. But it doesn't mean I don't feel guilty every time I have a nice day. It doesn't mean I don't sometimes feel strange going to the parties and dancing freely, the way I used to love.

Living between worlds was never the plan.

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Leila Moeeni is a human rights lawyer and social impact consultant with over a decade of experience across the UK, Asia, Europe, and the MENA region. She writes and speaks at the intersection of human rights, lived experience, and belonging.

Leila’s words are a powerful reminder that mind and body don't separate personal life from world events. They carry what is close, what is distant, what is spoken, what remains unspoken, what is past and what's happening right now.

If you recognise yourself in any part of this, whether through the weight of world events, the strain of uncertainty, or something closer to home, I'd like to invite you to explore what supporting your body more intentionally could look, well, feel, like.

TRE offers an innate, body-led way to release and to help the nervous system settle, especially when life feels overwhelming or difficult to process.

And as you might know, TRE was developed by David Berceli, PhD, while working in war zones.

He observed that even under extreme stress, the body holds an innate capacity to discharge tension and find its way back towards regulation.

On his return to the US, David worked with war veterans living with PTSD, who found TRE supportive, because it didn't require them to revisit or verbalise what they had lived through.

If you’d like to find out more about working with your body in this way, you’re very welcome to get in touch.