Emotional Badass

Emotional Badass

Hosted by psychotherapist Nikki Eisenhauer, M.Ed. LPC, LCDC. This show provides essential emotional education on Mental Health, HSP (Highly Sensitive People), Narcissists & Manipulative personalities, healing from Trauma and PTSD, calming your nervous system, inner child work, and setting healthy boundaries. Emotional Badasses are survivors, thrivers, seekers, and healers! Expand and awaken to your higher purpose, be more present and authentic, find strength in spirituality, quiet the monkey mind of modern society with meditation, and connect deeply with yourself and safe others. We let go of what doesn't serve us to heal old wounds, find our voice guilt-free, and learn to be the hero in our own story. Embrace guerrilla self care, and laugh with lightness on the self development path. Nikki Eisenhauer is an International Life Coach, Licensed Professional Counselor, Yoga and Meditation Teacher. This show is designed to mindfully be the emotional education so many of us crave; Emotional Badass is where we learn to love ourselves without apology. Emotional Badass is where Moxie Meets Mindful.

Episodes

The HSP Brain and Holiday Loneliness

December 21, 2025 • 31 mins
Loneliness during holidays gets weaponized by shame in highly sensitive people, turning togetherness expectations into daggers stabbing at your worth. That fullness of isolation doesn't mean you're alone - billions are yearning for connection just like you. The dangerous pattern happens when loneliness runs to your head and creates cutting stories: "You must be the only person alone on Christmas." Society has zero positive template...
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True Confidence isn't Arrogance

December 14, 2025 • 51 mins
Confidence doesn't arrive before you do the thing, it shows up after your feet hit the ground. Nikki and Chris break down how insecurity actually works and why sensitive people often avoid confidence because they're terrified of becoming the arrogant narcissist who hurt them. They reveal the specific moments that built their confidence, from food poisoning disasters to stage fright at 17, and explain why pretending confidence actua...
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Sleep Meditation: The Winter Bear

December 7, 2025 • 23 mins
A cozy guided sleep meditation to help you relax, unwind, and get in touch with your sleepy grizzly side. Perfect for a cold winter night tucked beneath the covers of your warm bed. Resources: PATTERNSCAPES DECK: https://getpatternscapes.com/ WORK WITH NIKKI 1:1: EmotionalBadass.com/coaching 30 Days to Peace Course EmotionalBadass.com/peace THE BI-WEEKLY WELLNESS NEWSLETTER EmotionalBadass.com/newsletter SUPPOR...
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This is What Confidence Looks Like

November 30, 2025 • 28 mins
Confidence isn't about being the loudest person in the room, it's about having faith in your own influence and ability. Using The Emotion Thesaurus as a guide, this exploration breaks down exactly what confidence looks like physically (strong posture, wide steps, relaxed muscles) and what it feels like internally (calm breathing, positive outlook, mental ease). Highly sensitive people often get their confidence knocked down by livi...
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How to Scare Away Human Predators: PART 2

November 23, 2025 • 38 mins
Predators can detect trauma on highly sensitive people, and it on us to learn how to stop broadcasting vulnerability. Our body language, posture, and energy signals either invite predatory behavior or repel it, and you can shift this immediately. The signs are specific: shrinking to appear smaller, avoiding eye contact, over-apologizing, and moving through the world trying to be invisible. These patterns read as "easy target" to ma...
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How to Scare Away Human Predators: PART 1

November 16, 2025 • 38 mins
Predators identify trauma survivors in seconds flat just by watching how you walk into a room. A hunched posture, downward eyes, constantly saying "I'm sorry"... This is a neon sign that screams easy target. Fawning and tiptoeing around people's moods tells manipulators exactly what they want to know: you won't fight back. Predators smell that shift in the air and know they can rewrite reality on you. Love bombing feels like the me...
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Your Social Media Algorithm is Harming your Nervous System

November 9, 2025 • 58 mins
Rage bait pulls your strings and your nervous system pays the price. Social media algorithms thrive on making you angry, fearful, and activated because those emotions keep you scrolling longer, but most people can't spot when they're being manipulated. The internet runs on manufactured outrage that tricks your brain into thinking extreme opinions are everywhere when they're actually held by tiny fractions of people. Your caveman su...
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What if You're Taught PTSD? How Fences Couldn't Protect Me as a Highly Sensitive Child

November 2, 2025 • 58 mins
Your brain splits off traumatic memories to protect you, but healing means discovering layers you didn't know were buried. A child taught to watch for kidnapping at school can't feel safe even behind fences while other kids play freely, and recording that memory decades later reveals the mind buried the worst part until feeling safe enough to remember. Real-time inner child work demonstrates how placing your hand on your heart and ...
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How to Feel Embodied After Trauma

October 26, 2025 • 50 mins
Dissociation isn't a personal failure, it's your mind's brilliant survival strategy when trauma overwhelms your system. The mind and body intentionally separate during abuse, creating distance like a referee stopping a brutal boxing match, but this protective mechanism can persist long after you're safe. You learn what it means when your body won't feel what your mind knows is true, why safer people trigger more alarm bells than da...
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Meghan Judge: Living with CPTSD & Misdiagnosis

October 19, 2025 • 56 mins
Complex PTSD doesn't show up like a broken arm - nobody opens doors for you when your nervous system is on fire. Meghan Judge shares how losing her sister at age two, then her father at twelve, then her best friend in her twenties created a lifetime of hypervigilance that looked like "something wrong with her" instead of what it actually was: a body that learned too early that people disappear without warning. The conversation gets...
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What Makes the Female Mind Capable of Bullying?

October 12, 2025 • 33 mins
The female mind works like an intricate spider web - connecting threads across time, memory, intuition, and care - which makes women's capacity for love extraordinarily powerful, but when twisted into bullying becomes devastatingly cruel. The same mental architecture that creates profound nurturing can transform into covert psychological warfare that reshapes perception with five words or less, magnifies mistakes across decades, an...
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Why Strong Boundaries are your Superpower

October 5, 2025 • 61 mins
Boundaries aren't walls to keep people out - they're your foundation for freedom, and most people get this completely wrong. Growing up in chaos teaches your nervous system that disappointing someone equals death, making you a gold medal people pleaser who manages everyone else's emotions while ignoring your own. Traditional boundary advice like "just say no" fails because it treats complex trauma responses like simple choices. Rea...
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We Survived The Challenge Retreat: Why Pushing Limits Is the Ultimate Growth Tool

September 28, 2025 • 69 mins
Nikki and Chris dive into their transformative experience at Emily Schromm's The Challenge Retreat Season 2, a wellness adventure in California’s stunning Teravana ranch, where they tackle grueling physical challenges and unexpected emotional breakthroughs. Despite personal grief and burnout, they push through steep hill races and puzzles, discovering resilience they didn’t know they had. Nikki’s horse therapy session sparks a visi...
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Beyond Charlie Kirk's Assassination: Cultivating Tolerance & Processing Trauma in a Violent World

September 21, 2025 • 64 mins
Violence like Charlie Kirk’s assassination or the recent Evergreen school shooting hits hard, especially for sensitive souls, but you can shield your nervous system from trauma’s grip. Talk out the details with trusted people to release the tension—your brain’s snapshot isn’t meant to haunt you, it’s trying to keep you safe. Write it out, don’t chase drama’s addictive rush, and refuse to globalize horror into hopelessness. Send pra...
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Why Stubborn People Are Actually Genius

September 14, 2025 • 27 mins
Most empaths and highly sensitive people get labeled as stubborn, but this trait might actually be a superpower. Stubbornness gets reframed from negative to positive, examining how HSPs develop this quality as protection in invalidating environments. Narcissistic parents view stubborn children as threats, creating shame around boundaries and independent thinking. Childhood stubbornness often masks deeper needs like safety that adul...
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Positive Masculinity: Why Real Men Cry

September 7, 2025 • 55 mins
Chris shares the raw reality of losing his father suddenly at 72 and how grief reveals the power of positive masculinity. Traditional masculine norms taught men to suppress emotions and avoid vulnerability, but this episode demonstrates a different path by processing pain rather than bottling it up. The discussion covers how an older generation was conditioned to never seek therapy or discuss problems, leading emotions to emerge si...
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Daddy Issues and Father Figures: What Healthy Masculinity Actually Looks Like

August 31, 2025 • 54 mins
The term "daddy issues" points to what happens when you don't get healthy fathering. A good father figure provides grounding and stability - like being the kite string that keeps you tethered while you soar. They teach protection through boundaries, not control, and help you learn the difference between genuine care and manipulation. Healthy fathers mirror back your strength and identity, offer direction without forcing their views...
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Building Intuitive Muscles to Repair Self Betrayal from Childhood Trauma

August 24, 2025 • 45 mins
Self-betrayal starts in childhood when trauma teaches you to ignore what your gut is telling you and go straight into overthinking mode just to survive. Your intuition isn't something you think about - it's something you feel deep in your center, quiet and calm, while anxiety creates this crazy mental chaos that spins you out. As kids, trauma survivors had to shut down their inner knowing to avoid getting hurt worse, which creates ...
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Goodbye George; Losing the Man that Made my Husband

August 17, 2025 • 28 mins
In this heartfelt episode, we're navigating grief after the sudden loss of my father-in-law, Chris's dad; George. We revisit a throwback discussion on the five stages of grief - denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance - but with a deeper understanding of how these stages work. Grief doesn't follow a neat checklist and we often move back and forth between stages. The episode breaks down how denial acts as a protective ...
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Getting Out of Your Head if You Had Narcissistic Parents

August 10, 2025 • 34 mins
If you grew up with narcissistic or emotionally immature parents, you know the frustration of having all the head knowledge about healing but struggling to actually feel calm in your body. This episode explains why you learned to dissociate and live in your head as a survival mechanism during childhood trauma. We dive into how children of narcissistic parents take on too much responsibility and develop an inner adolescent part that...
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