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Have you ever found yourself saying “yes” when you desperately wanted to say “no”—and then wondered why it’s so impossible to break this pattern, especially now that your marriage is over?
If you’re feeling exhausted from constantly trying to keep the peace and worried you’ve lost touch with who you really are, you’re not alone. Many women discover, in the wake of divorce, that their tendency to people please isn’t just about being “nice”—it’s a survival response hardwired into their nervous system, keeping them locked in stress and self-doubt even after leaving toxic dynamics.
By tuning in to this episode, you’ll learn how your nervous system creates people pleasing as a form of sympathetic activation, discover how these patterns are rooted in childhood experiences and not personality flaws, and walk away with practical, body-based tools to finally break the cycle and reconnect with your true self.
Ready to reclaim your sanity and confidence? Press play and learn how understanding your biology can help you become your most authentic—and peaceful—self after divorce.
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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if I told you that your post-divorce
people-pleasing isn't apersonality flaw but a survival
response.
If you've ever found yourselfsaying yes when you really meant
no, it doesn't mean you're weak, it means your nervous system
is wired.
And today we're going to talkabout your nervous system's role
in the people-pleasing patternand how healing starts with
(00:23):
understanding that biology.
Hi love, welcome to DearDivorce Diary, the podcast
helping divorcees go beyond talktherapy to process your grief,
find the healing you crave andbuild back your confidence.
I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, atherapist, coach, integrative
(00:46):
healer and divorcee.
Join me for a fresh approach tohealing grief and building your
confidence after divorce.
Nervous system health is a verypopular conversation right now,
and so is people-pleasing, andthis episode is all about the
(01:09):
connection between those two.
In today's episode, we're goingto talk about the biology of
being nice, so we're going tolook at your sympathetic nervous
system, the part of your bodythat kicks into fight or flight
when you sense danger.
But we're going to talk aboutthe twist right, because for
most women, especiallypost-divorce, danger doesn't
(01:31):
always look like a threat.
It can look like disapproval orit can feel like rejection that
those are the threat, and sopeople-pleasing becomes a way to
stay safe.
Instead of seen right,people-pleasing allows you to
camouflage your environment sothat you don't have to feel
threatened or trigger into fight, flight, freeze, fawn.
We're also going to talk aboutthose of us who grew up needing
(01:56):
to earn love or to avoidconflict, that our body started
to learn fawning another termfor people-ple pleasing and that
it wasn't just emotional, therewas this neurobiological
conditioning.
So when you keep the peace thatyour nervous system actually
believes it's saving your life,we're going to look at how to
(02:17):
really positively impact thatand how you can start to work
with it differently.
And then, finally, we're goingto look at how important it is
to not shame yourself for thispattern, instead to really
understand it because and likewhat to do in the moment when
you feel it coming up.
Because once you understandthat and you can recognize
(02:38):
people pleasing as a symptom ofsympathetic activation, then you
gain power.
And it's the first step inbeing able to regulate, set
boundaries, speak your truth andbecome a version of you that,
rather than asking like willthey be okay, is able to ask
yourself but am I okay?
Let's dig in your nervous system.
We have talked about in manyepisodes this idea of your
(03:01):
nervous system as a trafficlight right, that when it's in a
green state it's flexible andyou feel safe to connect.
I would venture to say that nowoman going through a divorce
spends very much time, if any,in a green nervous system state
that most women are going tohover, like in the yellow,
orange, red, you know, trafficlight state of nervous system
(03:26):
dysregulation.
And the work is to be reachingtowards a green state right, a
safe to connect state.
And so the reason that I thinkthe post-divorce phase for
nervous system health and peoplepleasing is so acutely just on
fire is because most of us cameup through life already in this
(03:46):
state of nervous systemhyperarousal, not realizing that
people pleasing is a flashingred light sign that you are
already in a hyperarousal state,that you are already feeling
threatened or unsafe.
And so here we're talking abouthow disapproval or rejection is
the thing that caused yournervous system to feel like
(04:09):
you're not safe.
Nervous system threat where thebody says you must be quiet and
you must be good and you mustplease and you must pacify and
(04:30):
you must do all those things inorder to stay safe.
The problem here is that thelonger you do that habit, the
more your nervous system ispumping out all those stress
chemicals and you are becomingmore and more disconnected from
self.
And so many people talk aboutonce they're sort of moving
(04:53):
through the divorce process.
They're like realizing they nolonger know who they are, right,
they lost themselves in theirmarriage and they're not in
touch with.
Well, what do I like and whatdo I want, and can I see a
future for myself?
And, ps, did you know that notbeing able to see a future for
yourself is related to liverstagnation?
Isn't that interesting?
(05:14):
And most of us coming out ofdivorce, right, have a lot of
anger clogging our liversbecause we've suppressed all
that anger to be people pleasers, right, and so it clogs the
liver and you can't see your ownfuture.
So there's literally thisbiology of being nice that has
to be rehabilitated over time.
And so if you're someone who'sbeen following the nervous
(05:36):
system health conversation andyou've been working to get
grounded and you've been workingto reduce dissociation in your
body and you've been working tohelp your nervous system feel
more regulated and healthy, Iwant you to really take a look
at for a moment, just sort ofpause and reflect on how often
you have this urge to peopleplease or keep the peace.
(05:58):
And I want you to really startconnecting the dots that when
you have that urge to keep thepeace or people please, that, it
means you are in a state offight, flight, freeze, fawn,
that your nervous system is moreactivated than usual, and so,
if you struggle with insomniaand overthinking and all of
these things that say there'snot a groundedness, your root
(06:19):
chakra is not grounded, that youare in a chronic stress
response, that this is part ofit.
People pleasing has to be onthe list of things that you
tackle in order for you to feelsafe in your body and in the
world, and it's a feedback loopthat reinforces itself.
Right, the less grounded youare, the more you have nervous
system dysregulation, the morethat you have fear-based
(06:42):
thoughts that cause you to wantto keep the peace in your
environment, which then leadsyou to continue to be
disconnected from yourself andnot grounded.
And right, like it just isreally this feedback loop of
nervous system activation and alack of groundedness in who you
are and what actually is safety.
And so let's talk about alittle bit about how rejection
(07:05):
and disapproval could havebecome such a threat in your
nervous system.
Okay.
So let's look at our childhoodscripts that have now become
your adult form of coping.
So in your childhood, if yougrew up with any sort of
significant family dysfunctionright, let's say you had a
parent who tended towards anger.
Or let's say you had a parentwho tended towards anger or rage
(07:27):
, or you had a parent who tendedtowards addiction, or you had
any situation or maybe a siblingright?
I have heard so many women talkabout in their lives how maybe
there was a sibling that hadbehavioral issues or special
needs.
There are so many circumstancesin life that were just normal
for you, and so maybe it doesn'tstand out to you, or maybe
(07:48):
you've already startedconnecting these dots right, but
there are so many situationsthat cause us, as children, to
learn that keeping the peacemakes things go better.
Right, if I keep the peace, ifI don't say what's on my mind,
things are going to go better,my parent is going to feel
better and therefore myenvironment will feel safer.
But what ends up happening thenis the neurobiology of that
(08:14):
experience, right?
Is that your brain starts toperceive you speaking up as a
threat to your safety.
And so now here you are,picking your partner or your
spouse and gosh.
I was just talking to a womanabout that this week where she
loved her husband.
They were like best friends butshe was never like on fire
(08:37):
about him and they got marriedbecause it was like the logical
next step.
But she wasn't as into it asshe wanted to be and they ended
up having kids and all thethings right.
But she was so conditioned shehad some sexual abuse in her
teen years, she had addiction inher family life and she was
just so conditioned to suppressher truth, her pain, her fear,
(09:00):
her needs, in deference to thefamily dynamic that then she
married this person.
And now here we are, 15 yearsin, and things are falling apart
and she's questioning, right,like, what can I do to hold it
together?
Is this the right relationship?
Should I stay?
Should I go?
Should I try harder?
What should I do?
And in her gut she alreadyknows like this is not a viable
(09:22):
marriage, but keeps trying totalk herself into.
But maybe it could be salvaged.
And I think that so many of yourelate to that on some level and
this comes from a very long,rich history of people pleasing
in childhood and then it happensthroughout marriage and then
here you are at the end of amarriage and it's like gosh, it
(09:44):
doesn't feel safe to speak up,to truly, truly speak up to
family, to friends, to your boss, to whomever right, and
especially when it comes toanger.
And so there's work to do hereto reprogram your subconscious
mind and retrain your nervoussystem, because your nervous
(10:05):
system at this point thinks it'ssaving your life friend.
And so it's like we can say, oh, just set boundaries or just be
your authentic self.
Right, brene Brown taught us somuch the importance of
authenticity.
But now here we are in like apost-social media era where we
(10:25):
are just so conditioned to saythe thing that makes us fit in,
rather than be truly seen forwho we are and feel safe in that
right.
And so how do we even changethis childhood script?
How do we even shift away fromthis adult way of coping where
(10:45):
the nervous system literally hasprioritized suppression over
expression?
Because there is a negativebelief there in your
subconscious mind that yourreticular activating system is
then like scanning theenvironment to prove which is.
It is not safe to express whatI feel.
I have to be perfect, I cannotshow my feelings, especially not
(11:09):
my anger.
Right, there has been thisinternalized entire belief
system around prioritizingemotional suppression.
And so how can we move fromautopilot to awareness?
Where you are moving from, it'sjust the subconscious thing you
(11:29):
do, where you suppress, so thatyou don't have to feel that you
don't have to be in touch withthat nervous system distress,
right, you don't have to be intouch with the feelings, you
don't have to confront thatnegative belief system that
you've internalized,internalized.
How can we move from that waythat you just have been moving
through life to like truly beingaware and reprogramming that
whole cascade of events thathappens in your body, mind,
(11:58):
right, neurobiologically Okay.
So when you catch pause and askyourself, am I okay, am I okay,
take a deep breath, get intoyour body intentionally for a
moment and notice, okay, I havesome negative beliefs activated
(12:21):
that in order to be safe, I haveto suppress what I'm feeling.
But I am learning that thelonger I do that it's actually
causing my body to self-destruct, it is causing a disconnection
from self, it is reinforcingdissociation, it is reinforcing
stress hormones in my body.
And I have to in order toactually find peace, in order to
(12:46):
recover from an anxietydisorder, in order to not live
as a traumatized person withchronic nervous system
activation.
I have to change those beliefs,okay.
So then there's that mindsetwork that you're doing, but then
we have to do the nervoussystem work right, which is to
(13:07):
do some vagal breaths, which iswhere your exhale is longer than
your inhale and, ps, yourinhale has to go down into your
diaphragm.
If you're a chest breather,right, you have to train
yourself to breathe down intoyour diaphragm, because that's
what touches the vagus nerve,which is what you know is the
(13:29):
foundation of vagal breathing,right.
So there has to be these big,robust, deep breaths that
touches your vagus nerve, whereyour exhales are nice and slow,
because that's what sends thecue to your nervous system that
you are safe.
So, if you're going to gatheryourself and you're going to
drop into your body and you'regoing to do a little mindset
work and then you're going to gospeak truth to your boss, you
(13:52):
want to make sure you aregrounding your body and your
nervous system in behaviors thatsend the cue back up to your
brain that there is noTyrannosaur chasing you.
You'll maybe want to do alittle ear massage, not just
before but especially after,right, because again, we are
reprogramming and retraining thenervous system and this is a
(14:15):
process.
So doing this nervous systemhealth stuff very, very
specifically before and afteryou go and speak your truth to
somebody is going to takeconsistent repetition over time,
and I will note here that therehave been a number of
homeopathic remedies that I haveused in my own healing journey
(14:36):
and with clients which haveprofoundly expanded nervous
system capacity to tolerate thiskind of behavior.
So we've talked about startingto feature some homeopathic
remedies here on the podcast, sothat's probably something that
you can look forward to.
But Staph Sagria is a remedythat profoundly influences
suppression of anger in order tokeep the peace.
(14:59):
Kark is a remedy where there'sthis sort of loss of sense of
self and this inability to set aboundary verbally that really,
really, really transformswomen's ability to speak their
truth.
Lachesis is a remedy wherethere's a sensitivity to
rejection and, very specifically, a difficulty expressing
oneself.
(15:19):
Now, how to know if any ofthese three remedies are
remedies for you?
That's where it comes to thissort of nuanced case taking and
identifying.
Each of these remedies has theirown very specific profile,
right, and it matters to use theright remedy in the right order
and to use a remedy thatmatches your current vibration.
(15:40):
And if you pick a remedy and itdoesn't work, it's not because
remedies don't work, it'sbecause it wasn't the right
remedy for your pattern.
And so this is one of myfavorite things to treat
homeopathically is this tendencyto emotional suppression
because that's what homeopathydoes is it removes the blocks to
(16:01):
suppression so that we canexpress freely.
Now I will tell you that evenwith homeopathic treatment, I
still feel nervous systemactivation if I have to confront
something, but it's way shorter, it moves so much faster and it
has become quite easy to saythings and I might just feel
like a tiny bit of activation.
(16:21):
It's like, oh, look, okay, andthen I said that thing and I'm
safe.
So this work, in my opinion,gets a lot easier when you add
things like energy medicine,because otherwise you can
literally spend decadesimplementing what I just said,
recognizing when you are usingpeople pleasing to try to feel
(16:42):
safe, but it's actually creatinga lack of safety in your
overall body health, and thenhaving to use all of these
nervous system tools just to beable to speak your truth to
someone.
You could do that for a decadeand still have to really force
yourself to do that, whichsounds really exhausting to me.
(17:02):
So the most important thing Iwant you to take away from this
episode is to notice that if youare a chronic people pleaser
and I cannot imagine that youaren't that that means that
there is some real nervoussystem reprogramming to do there
and that once you start toconnect the dots and use some of
(17:22):
the new nervous system toolsthat we talk about here, you can
start floating back throughyour memories to see when this
behavior started and retrainyour subconscious mind to really
do the thing that it wasprogrammed to do originally.
Right, which is that healthcomes from free expression, and
(17:43):
that doesn't mean be a jerkthat's not what I'm talking
about, right, but being able tosay I feel sad, I feel hurt.
I really appreciate it when youblah right.
Being able to speak your truthis how you are able to be seen
in relationships, and if wecan't be seen and accepted in
(18:03):
relationships love then they'renever going to feel truly safe
and we're never going to feellike we're truly in our
authentic selves.
And that's what really brings asecure attachment style is
being in touch with who I am,feeling safe to express and
share who I am with the world,and feeling loved and accepted
by my group of people when I'mdoing that.
(18:24):
That's peace, love, being ableto be present in my body and
feel loved and accepted for whoI am.
And we can't get there whenchronic people pleasing is our
go-to behavior.
So, gentle reminder thatchronic people pleasing means
your nervous system is stressedand that's why you're feeling,
(18:46):
that's why your hair is fallingout, that is why you are
struggling to sleep, that is whyyou're feeling, that's why your
hair is falling out, that iswhy you are struggling to sleep,
that is why you areoverthinking all the time, and
that's even why your skin is dry, right, and that all is
clogging up your liver, and wegot to get working on that, all
right.
Last thing I want to say todayis over the last several
(19:07):
episodes, I've been asking youto DM me, and many of you have
done that, and I just can't tellyou enough how much it means to
me when you reach out and youtell me what's going on for you.
I want to ask you today to sendme a DM and talk to me a little
bit about what are the feelingsor fears that are currently
(19:28):
holding you back.
What are your feelings or fearsthat are currently holding you
back.
I know something just came tomind, and when you put the car
in park or whatever it is,you're finished folding that
load of laundry.
Shoot me a DM, right, and letme know.
What is it right now, the thingthat's on top, what's your body
(19:51):
saying right now that's holdingyou back?
And if it's related to thispeople pleasing and being able
to speak your truth, I bet it'srelated for a lot of women,
right?
And so let me know.
I love getting to know you,your authentic self.
That behavior of lettingyourself be seen is part of what
(20:13):
creates this new nervous system, health and this greater sense
of peace.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
You are pure magic Peace.
Dear Divorce Diary is a podcastby my coach, dawn.
You can find more atmycoachdawncom.
What if I told you that your post-divorce
people-pleasing isn't apersonality flaw but a survival
response.
If you've ever found yourselfsaying yes when you really meant
no, it doesn't mean you're weak, it means your nervous system
is wired.
And today we're going to talkabout your nervous system's role
in the people-pleasing patternand how healing starts with
(00:23):
understanding that biology.
Hi love, welcome to DearDivorce Diary, the podcast
helping divorcees go beyond talktherapy to process your grief,
find the healing you crave andbuild back your confidence.
I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, atherapist, coach, integrative
(00:46):
healer and divorcee.
Join me for a fresh approach tohealing grief and building your
confidence after divorce.
Nervous system health is a verypopular conversation right now,
and so is people-pleasing, andthis episode is all about the
(01:09):
connection between those two.
In today's episode, we're goingto talk about the biology of
being nice, so we're going tolook at your sympathetic nervous
system, the part of your bodythat kicks into fight or flight
when you sense danger.
But we're going to talk aboutthe twist right, because for
most women, especiallypost-divorce, danger doesn't
(01:31):
always look like a threat.
It can look like disapproval orit can feel like rejection that
those are the threat, and sopeople-pleasing becomes a way to
stay safe.
Instead of seen right,people-pleasing allows you to
camouflage your environment sothat you don't have to feel
threatened or trigger into fight, flight, freeze, fawn.
We're also going to talk aboutthose of us who grew up needing
(01:56):
to earn love or to avoidconflict, that our body started
to learn fawning another termfor people-ple pleasing and that
it wasn't just emotional, therewas this neurobiological
conditioning.
So when you keep the peace thatyour nervous system actually
believes it's saving your life,we're going to look at how to
(02:17):
really positively impact thatand how you can start to work
with it differently.
And then, finally, we're goingto look at how important it is
to not shame yourself for thispattern, instead to really
understand it because and likewhat to do in the moment when
you feel it coming up.
Because once you understandthat and you can recognize
(02:38):
people pleasing as a symptom ofsympathetic activation, then you
gain power.
And it's the first step inbeing able to regulate, set
boundaries, speak your truth andbecome a version of you that,
rather than asking like willthey be okay, is able to ask
yourself but am I okay?
Let's dig in your nervous system.
We have talked about in manyepisodes this idea of your
(03:01):
nervous system as a trafficlight right, that when it's in a
green state it's flexible andyou feel safe to connect.
I would venture to say that nowoman going through a divorce
spends very much time, if any,in a green nervous system state
that most women are going tohover, like in the yellow,
orange, red, you know, trafficlight state of nervous system
(03:26):
dysregulation.
And the work is to be reachingtowards a green state right, a
safe to connect state.
And so the reason that I thinkthe post-divorce phase for
nervous system health and peoplepleasing is so acutely just on
fire is because most of us cameup through life already in this
(03:46):
state of nervous systemhyperarousal, not realizing that
people pleasing is a flashingred light sign that you are
already in a hyperarousal state,that you are already feeling
threatened or unsafe.
And so here we're talking abouthow disapproval or rejection is
the thing that caused yournervous system to feel like
(04:09):
you're not safe.
Nervous system threat where thebody says you must be quiet and
you must be good and you mustplease and you must pacify and
(04:30):
you must do all those things inorder to stay safe.
The problem here is that thelonger you do that habit, the
more your nervous system ispumping out all those stress
chemicals and you are becomingmore and more disconnected from
self.
And so many people talk aboutonce they're sort of moving
(04:53):
through the divorce process.
They're like realizing they nolonger know who they are, right,
they lost themselves in theirmarriage and they're not in
touch with.
Well, what do I like and whatdo I want, and can I see a
future for myself?
And, ps, did you know that notbeing able to see a future for
yourself is related to liverstagnation?
Isn't that interesting?
(05:14):
And most of us coming out ofdivorce, right, have a lot of
anger clogging our liversbecause we've suppressed all
that anger to be people pleasers, right, and so it clogs the
liver and you can't see your ownfuture.
So there's literally thisbiology of being nice that has
to be rehabilitated over time.
And so if you're someone who'sbeen following the nervous
(05:36):
system health conversation andyou've been working to get
grounded and you've been workingto reduce dissociation in your
body and you've been working tohelp your nervous system feel
more regulated and healthy, Iwant you to really take a look
at for a moment, just sort ofpause and reflect on how often
you have this urge to peopleplease or keep the peace.
(05:58):
And I want you to really startconnecting the dots that when
you have that urge to keep thepeace or people please, that, it
means you are in a state offight, flight, freeze, fawn,
that your nervous system is moreactivated than usual, and so,
if you struggle with insomniaand overthinking and all of
these things that say there'snot a groundedness, your root
(06:19):
chakra is not grounded, that youare in a chronic stress
response, that this is part ofit.
People pleasing has to be onthe list of things that you
tackle in order for you to feelsafe in your body and in the
world, and it's a feedback loopthat reinforces itself.
Right, the less grounded youare, the more you have nervous
system dysregulation, the morethat you have fear-based
(06:42):
thoughts that cause you to wantto keep the peace in your
environment, which then leadsyou to continue to be
disconnected from yourself andnot grounded.
And right, like it just isreally this feedback loop of
nervous system activation and alack of groundedness in who you
are and what actually is safety.
And so let's talk about alittle bit about how rejection
(07:05):
and disapproval could havebecome such a threat in your
nervous system.
Okay.
So let's look at our childhoodscripts that have now become
your adult form of coping.
So in your childhood, if yougrew up with any sort of
significant family dysfunctionright, let's say you had a
parent who tended towards anger.
Or let's say you had a parentwho tended towards anger or rage
(07:27):
, or you had a parent who tendedtowards addiction, or you had
any situation or maybe a siblingright?
I have heard so many women talkabout in their lives how maybe
there was a sibling that hadbehavioral issues or special
needs.
There are so many circumstancesin life that were just normal
for you, and so maybe it doesn'tstand out to you, or maybe
(07:48):
you've already startedconnecting these dots right, but
there are so many situationsthat cause us, as children, to
learn that keeping the peacemakes things go better.
Right, if I keep the peace, ifI don't say what's on my mind,
things are going to go better,my parent is going to feel
better and therefore myenvironment will feel safer.
But what ends up happening thenis the neurobiology of that
(08:14):
experience, right?
Is that your brain starts toperceive you speaking up as a
threat to your safety.
And so now here you are,picking your partner or your
spouse and gosh.
I was just talking to a womanabout that this week where she
loved her husband.
They were like best friends butshe was never like on fire
(08:37):
about him and they got marriedbecause it was like the logical
next step.
But she wasn't as into it asshe wanted to be and they ended
up having kids and all thethings right.
But she was so conditioned shehad some sexual abuse in her
teen years, she had addiction inher family life and she was
just so conditioned to suppressher truth, her pain, her fear,
(09:00):
her needs, in deference to thefamily dynamic that then she
married this person.
And now here we are, 15 yearsin, and things are falling apart
and she's questioning, right,like, what can I do to hold it
together?
Is this the right relationship?
Should I stay?
Should I go?
Should I try harder?
What should I do?
And in her gut she alreadyknows like this is not a viable
(09:22):
marriage, but keeps trying totalk herself into.
But maybe it could be salvaged.
And I think that so many of yourelate to that on some level and
this comes from a very long,rich history of people pleasing
in childhood and then it happensthroughout marriage and then
here you are at the end of amarriage and it's like gosh, it
(09:44):
doesn't feel safe to speak up,to truly, truly speak up to
family, to friends, to your boss, to whomever right, and
especially when it comes toanger.
And so there's work to do hereto reprogram your subconscious
mind and retrain your nervoussystem, because your nervous
(10:05):
system at this point thinks it'ssaving your life friend.
And so it's like we can say, oh, just set boundaries or just be
your authentic self.
Right, brene Brown taught us somuch the importance of
authenticity.
But now here we are in like apost-social media era where we
(10:25):
are just so conditioned to saythe thing that makes us fit in,
rather than be truly seen forwho we are and feel safe in that
right.
And so how do we even changethis childhood script?
How do we even shift away fromthis adult way of coping where
(10:45):
the nervous system literally hasprioritized suppression over
expression?
Because there is a negativebelief there in your
subconscious mind that yourreticular activating system is
then like scanning theenvironment to prove which is.
It is not safe to express whatI feel.
I have to be perfect, I cannotshow my feelings, especially not
(11:09):
my anger.
Right, there has been thisinternalized entire belief
system around prioritizingemotional suppression.
And so how can we move fromautopilot to awareness?
Where you are moving from, it'sjust the subconscious thing you
(11:29):
do, where you suppress, so thatyou don't have to feel that you
don't have to be in touch withthat nervous system distress,
right, you don't have to be intouch with the feelings, you
don't have to confront thatnegative belief system that
you've internalized,internalized.
How can we move from that waythat you just have been moving
through life to like truly beingaware and reprogramming that
whole cascade of events thathappens in your body, mind,
(11:58):
right, neurobiologically Okay.
So when you catch pause and askyourself, am I okay, am I okay,
take a deep breath, get intoyour body intentionally for a
moment and notice, okay, I havesome negative beliefs activated
(12:21):
that in order to be safe, I haveto suppress what I'm feeling.
But I am learning that thelonger I do that it's actually
causing my body to self-destruct, it is causing a disconnection
from self, it is reinforcingdissociation, it is reinforcing
stress hormones in my body.
And I have to in order toactually find peace, in order to
(12:46):
recover from an anxietydisorder, in order to not live
as a traumatized person withchronic nervous system
activation.
I have to change those beliefs,okay.
So then there's that mindsetwork that you're doing, but then
we have to do the nervoussystem work right, which is to
(13:07):
do some vagal breaths, which iswhere your exhale is longer than
your inhale and, ps, yourinhale has to go down into your
diaphragm.
If you're a chest breather,right, you have to train
yourself to breathe down intoyour diaphragm, because that's
what touches the vagus nerve,which is what you know is the
(13:29):
foundation of vagal breathing,right.
So there has to be these big,robust, deep breaths that
touches your vagus nerve, whereyour exhales are nice and slow,
because that's what sends thecue to your nervous system that
you are safe.
So, if you're going to gatheryourself and you're going to
drop into your body and you'regoing to do a little mindset
work and then you're going to gospeak truth to your boss, you
(13:52):
want to make sure you aregrounding your body and your
nervous system in behaviors thatsend the cue back up to your
brain that there is noTyrannosaur chasing you.
You'll maybe want to do alittle ear massage, not just
before but especially after,right, because again, we are
reprogramming and retraining thenervous system and this is a
(14:15):
process.
So doing this nervous systemhealth stuff very, very
specifically before and afteryou go and speak your truth to
somebody is going to takeconsistent repetition over time,
and I will note here that therehave been a number of
homeopathic remedies that I haveused in my own healing journey
(14:36):
and with clients which haveprofoundly expanded nervous
system capacity to tolerate thiskind of behavior.
So we've talked about startingto feature some homeopathic
remedies here on the podcast, sothat's probably something that
you can look forward to.
But Staph Sagria is a remedythat profoundly influences
suppression of anger in order tokeep the peace.
(14:59):
Kark is a remedy where there'sthis sort of loss of sense of
self and this inability to set aboundary verbally that really,
really, really transformswomen's ability to speak their
truth.
Lachesis is a remedy wherethere's a sensitivity to
rejection and, very specifically, a difficulty expressing
oneself.
(15:19):
Now, how to know if any ofthese three remedies are
remedies for you?
That's where it comes to thissort of nuanced case taking and
identifying.
Each of these remedies has theirown very specific profile,
right, and it matters to use theright remedy in the right order
and to use a remedy thatmatches your current vibration.
(15:40):
And if you pick a remedy and itdoesn't work, it's not because
remedies don't work, it'sbecause it wasn't the right
remedy for your pattern.
And so this is one of myfavorite things to treat
homeopathically is this tendencyto emotional suppression
because that's what homeopathydoes is it removes the blocks to
(16:01):
suppression so that we canexpress freely.
Now I will tell you that evenwith homeopathic treatment, I
still feel nervous systemactivation if I have to confront
something, but it's way shorter, it moves so much faster and it
has become quite easy to saythings and I might just feel
like a tiny bit of activation.
(16:21):
It's like, oh, look, okay, andthen I said that thing and I'm
safe.
So this work, in my opinion,gets a lot easier when you add
things like energy medicine,because otherwise you can
literally spend decadesimplementing what I just said,
recognizing when you are usingpeople pleasing to try to feel
(16:42):
safe, but it's actually creatinga lack of safety in your
overall body health, and thenhaving to use all of these
nervous system tools just to beable to speak your truth to
someone.
You could do that for a decadeand still have to really force
yourself to do that, whichsounds really exhausting to me.
(17:02):
So the most important thing Iwant you to take away from this
episode is to notice that if youare a chronic people pleaser
and I cannot imagine that youaren't that that means that
there is some real nervoussystem reprogramming to do there
and that once you start toconnect the dots and use some of
(17:22):
the new nervous system toolsthat we talk about here, you can
start floating back throughyour memories to see when this
behavior started and retrainyour subconscious mind to really
do the thing that it wasprogrammed to do originally.
Right, which is that healthcomes from free expression, and
(17:43):
that doesn't mean be a jerkthat's not what I'm talking
about, right, but being able tosay I feel sad, I feel hurt.
I really appreciate it when youblah right.
Being able to speak your truthis how you are able to be seen
in relationships, and if wecan't be seen and accepted in
(18:03):
relationships love then they'renever going to feel truly safe
and we're never going to feellike we're truly in our
authentic selves.
And that's what really brings asecure attachment style is
being in touch with who I am,feeling safe to express and
share who I am with the world,and feeling loved and accepted
by my group of people when I'mdoing that.
(18:24):
That's peace, love, being ableto be present in my body and
feel loved and accepted for whoI am.
And we can't get there whenchronic people pleasing is our
go-to behavior.
So, gentle reminder thatchronic people pleasing means
your nervous system is stressedand that's why you're feeling,
(18:46):
that's why your hair is fallingout, that is why you are
struggling to sleep, that is whyyou're feeling, that's why your
hair is falling out, that iswhy you are struggling to sleep,
that is why you areoverthinking all the time, and
that's even why your skin is dry, right, and that all is
clogging up your liver, and wegot to get working on that, all
right.
Last thing I want to say todayis over the last several
(19:07):
episodes, I've been asking youto DM me, and many of you have
done that, and I just can't tellyou enough how much it means to
me when you reach out and youtell me what's going on for you.
I want to ask you today to sendme a DM and talk to me a little
bit about what are the feelingsor fears that are currently
(19:28):
holding you back.
What are your feelings or fearsthat are currently holding you
back.
I know something just came tomind, and when you put the car
in park or whatever it is,you're finished folding that
load of laundry.
Shoot me a DM, right, and letme know.
What is it right now, the thingthat's on top, what's your body
(19:51):
saying right now that's holdingyou back?
And if it's related to thispeople pleasing and being able
to speak your truth, I bet it'srelated for a lot of women,
right?
And so let me know.
I love getting to know you,your authentic self.
That behavior of lettingyourself be seen is part of what
(20:13):
creates this new nervous system, health and this greater sense
of peace.
Thank you so much for beinghere.
You are pure magic Peace.
Dear Divorce Diary is a podcastby my coach, dawn.
You can find more atmycoachdawncom.
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