September 16, 2025 • 23 mins
Ever found yourself smiling and agreeing to something, only to walk away wishing you had said no? Do you wonder why you keep accidentally ending up resentful or burnt out? You wonder why boundaries and conflict feel like you could die? That’s not just “people-pleasing” it’s your nervous system working overtime to keep you safe through fawning.
In this episode, we dig into what’s really happening beneath freeze and fawn responses. These patterns aren’t flaws to fix; they’re survival strategies that once protected you. But if they’ve become your default, they can quietly erode your boundaries, your voice, your capacity, and your sense of choice.
You’ll learn:
- Why people-pleasing isn’t the same as kindness or empathy
- How freeze shows up when you feel the activation but can’t mobilize it
- Why true nervous system health isn’t perpetual calm it’s healthy anger being utilized as energy for your good
- The surprising role of physical practices (like kickboxing!) in waking your body up to new options
- How to set emotional boundaries with your kids (without shutting them out)
- The 1% shifts you can make today to reclaim agency in your responses
Your freedom and regulation isn’t about escaping conflict or erasing your human complexity. It’s about befriending all parts of yourself and gaining access to your power, softness, and everything in between.
If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here
💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.
🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
you won't stop people pleasing and freezing until
your body no longer feels likeit's prey.
Welcome to today's episode ofthe Motherhood Mentor Podcast.
Today is a hopefully probablyquick episode, just about some
insights to people pleasing,fawning and freezing that so
(00:22):
much is missed in our poppsychology culture of nervous
system work.
And I'm going to say thatsentence again you won't stop
people pleasing and freezinguntil your body no longer feels
like it's prey.
I know so many women who arestuck in chronic freeze and fawn
(00:45):
and shutdown and what your bodyneeds is access to your fight
and flight.
But a lot of times your bodyquite literally either doesn't
have access to it, or it doesn'tbelieve it does, or you are
afraid of accessing those partsof you.
(01:06):
You are afraid of accessing theenergy and the mobilization
that come with those, andthere's so many different
reasons why this could be, butwe're not going to get into that
today.
Today we're just going to talkabout here's where you are and
here's how we get to whereyou're going.
So if you are in a body that ischronically people pleasing and
(01:27):
by people pleasing I'mreferring to fawning I am not
talking about your niceness, Iam not talking about your
empathy for other people, yourability to pay attention to the
subtleties of conflict and yourability to witness what other
people want and need as animportant measure of
(01:49):
relationship and community.
Those are not people pleasing.
People pleasing and fawning iswhen your body this is so, so
important your body, yournervous system are unconsciously
and impulsively saying yes whenit means no.
(02:10):
You are disconnected from yourown consent.
You are disconnected from yourown desires, your own needs.
So when someone asks you aquestion, you will reflexively
and impulsively say yes.
You might not even feel that nountil later.
Or maybe you feel the no.
You feel it somewhere deep inyour belly, in your chest.
(02:31):
You feel a resistance.
You don't want to, you don'tlike it, you don't want to.
But you find yourself smilingand saying yes and you don't
realize that you meant no untillater, when all of a sudden
you're out of their presence andyou get done with the
conversation, or you leave theroom, or they walk away, or the
conflict's over and all of asudden there's something that
(02:54):
comes alive and you go.
I didn't even realize I wasdoing it.
You're at a party, you're at awork function and you find
yourself talking or acting orbehaving in a way that isn't
quite you.
It's a version of you, it's anaspect of you, but you feel like
there's this deep disconnectionfrom the essence of who you are
(03:17):
.
That is fawning andpeople-pleasing.
Fawning and people-pleasing sooften is that you aren't even
aware that you wanted to say no.
You just feel compulsivelycompelled not only to say yes
but to overexert yourself intoother people's lives, into other
people's decision making, intoother people's problems and
(03:39):
preemptively solve it for them.
Now, that's a pretty extremeversion and this can happen on a
spectrum.
So there's people who areexperiencing this in micro
moments.
They're experiencing it inspecific environments or
relationships, and then there'swomen where this feels like it
is compelling their entirepersonality.
(04:00):
They don't even know who theyare anymore.
And part of both fawning andfreezing, which are nervous
system responses, is that thereis an aspect of you that you
lose contact with.
Contact with is very differentthan you losing it.
It's not that it's gone, it'sthat you've lost that connection
(04:23):
and the contact with it and theability for that part of you to
mobilize.
So when you are stuck in thispeople pleasing and this
freezing and freezing, I thinkis a little bit different than
the fawning, because freezing.
There's an underlyingactivation that you feel
connected to.
There's a part of you that'salive, that feels the
(04:46):
mobilization, and then you'restunting it, you're stopping it.
So you want to say something,you feel it, you want it, but
you can't seem to find the words.
You go to set the boundary andyou can't seem to do it.
You keep overthinking it,fawning.
A lot of times you don't evenfeel the activation because
(05:07):
there's a disconnection.
There's a disconnection fromeven feeling like you can
mobilize.
Mobilization means that thereis an energy, there is an
activation that is moving you todo something.
This is where it is soimportant for you to be able to
(05:32):
feel your fight and flight.
People who are stuck in thatconic freeze and fawn and
shutdown their bodies, theirnervous systems, need to be able
to find activation andmobilization within safety.
So they need to find theiraccess and their connection to
(05:57):
that part of them that says andfeels and knows when it's a no
and when it's a yes.
When it's a conditional yes, soit's a no, and when it's a yes.
When it's a conditional yes, soit's a maybe.
It's not like a always yes,it's a sometimes Like Okay,
we're going to talk aboutmarital sex, because I think
that's a huge thing that so manywomen have never learned that
(06:22):
there is a big differencebetween no and my body doesn't
want to and I want to want to.
I don't have a desire for sayit's not necessarily a yes, but
it's a conditional.
Maybe a yes, but it's aconditional.
Maybe it's yes, I want to, buthere's what I need to get there.
(06:44):
Whether that's from you or fromme, there's a conditional yes,
there's a conditional.
Maybe If you've been here for aminute, you know that I have a
bone to pick with that wholesaying of if it's not a hell yes
, it's a hell no, and it's likethat is almost never my
experience.
My experience in so many arenasof my life is I have so many
(07:09):
like I think of my life rightnow I have much, much more
ambition than I have capacity,and that's a frustrating space
to be in.
It is frustrating to have allof these things that I want to
do, that I want to accomplish,that I want to build, that I
want to write, that I want to do, but like I don't necessarily
have the time or the emotionalfocus or availability to do all
(07:33):
of that, at least not all atonce or not right now.
I think of last week with work.
We made it two whole weeks ofschool before one of my kids got
sick.
So I had a sick kid home withme all week and that meant that
I had a little bit less capacityfor work.
It didn't mean that I didn'thave a hell yes for work, it
(07:55):
just meant that my hell yes wassplit between the work that I
wanted to do and also thenurturing that my kid required
but also that I want to do.
Sometimes what we want iscomplicated and complex and
there is tension in that, and somany of us we are avoiding
tension in our lives because wefear it.
(08:17):
We see tension as conflict andconflict as a dangerous thing,
not only in ourselves, butdangerous within the things that
we want.
And one of the ways that wecome back into agency agency
being that you feel that youhave a dynamic range of ways
(08:40):
that you can move.
There is nothing inherentlyinnately wrong with your nervous
system.
Your nervous system is notbroken and it certainly doesn't
need a reset because you are nota computer.
It doesn't work, that's not athing.
It doesn't work, that's not athing.
What is a thing is that yourbody.
(09:06):
Can you feel where and when andwho you are right now?
Do you feel access to a dynamicrange of responses?
Let me give you an example ofthat.
I want you to think of one ofthe areas in your life where you
are struggling.
Maybe you're struggling with aspecific kiddo.
(09:29):
Maybe you have a spicy kiddo.
Maybe you're in the toddlerseason and your toddler's big
emotions, or their no or theirwildness, is really triggering
to you.
Maybe you're in a season whereyour relationship is hard to
this person.
Maybe you're in a season whereit's work.
I want you to think of a veryspecific struggle with a
specific person or a specificthing.
(09:49):
Maybe it's emotional eating foryou, maybe it's the
relationship to yourself, and Iwant you to think of the pattern
that you are in relationship tothat person or to that thing
with.
There's a pattern, there's away that they act and there's a
way that you respond that youwitness isn't working.
(10:10):
We'll use the example of you'restruggling with this kid A.
We're struggling with your kidnamed Aaron, right, and when
Aaron does this, you tend to doX, y, z and some of this is
unintentional and it doesn'tmatch up with your values.
Let's say you lecture or youyell or you freak out or you get
(10:33):
overstimulated and overwhelmed,or you keep finding yourself
opening your phone and scrollingon social media because you
need to, like disassociate anddistract yourself from how
activated and irritated andfrustrated you feel with said
kid and you don't want to takeit out on them, so you're just
trying to, like, help yourselfcope.
What I want for you is to havea relationship to that part of
(10:59):
you that you know how tomobilize into many different
responses to their actions.
Sometimes you need a fightenergy and fight does not always
mean a fist.
Sometimes it means a steady,sturdy, staying energy.
(11:20):
Fight energy means I'm stayingmy ground, I'm holding my ground
.
It doesn't always mean anaggressiveness against someone.
It can, and there's anappropriate time and place for
that.
There's an appropriate andtimely and healthy place for a
fist.
There's also a healthy,appropriate time for a boundary.
(11:41):
So maybe your kid Aaron.
He needs more specificboundaries and you need more
specific boundaries in order tohave a healthy relationship to
each other.
You need more emotional spacefrom him.
You need to stop over over overassociating with his emotions.
If you are an empathetic mother,if you are a fawning mother, if
(12:03):
you are a people-pleasingmother, it is so, so important
for you to learn how to haveemotional boundaries with your
kids' emotions, that you witnesstheir emotions as their own and
you start to change thatrelationship to them.
Having emotions is notinherently dangerous.
Them having emotions is notinherently dangerous, but your
(12:27):
body is responding as if it does.
And if you can find thatboundary, if you can find that
fist energy or that push energyand I don't mean physiologically
, I can mean emotionally,spiritually, quite literally you
can put distance between youtwo, but there's an energetic
pull.
Maybe you need that bubblebetween you and your kid.
(12:48):
Maybe you need to both besitting and holding a cold drink
while you talk about this.
There's different ways to relateto your kid.
There's different ways toassess and respond to perceived
threat, and that's what we wantin your nervous system.
We don't want a nervous systemthat only has one way to deal
with threat.
(13:08):
We want a nervous system thatcan feel access to walking away,
to saying no, to saying maybe,to having a conversation, to
moving towards conflict or awayfrom conflict, a nervous system
that can create a gentle barrieror a roar or a push or a run or
(13:30):
a fist.
This is what it means to have aregulated nervous system.
It is a nervous system that isnot so stuck in one response.
You likely have your oneresponse that you are so good at
.
This is just it's nature, it'snurture, and maybe you got your
(13:55):
response from your parent, Maybeyou started emulating your
parent and you learned when mykid does X, oh that's when
parents yell.
Even if that doesn't align withyour values, you like picked
that behavior up.
You picked up that pattern andsometimes what happens with kids
is you counteract your parents'responses.
(14:18):
So let's say you had a parentwho was emotionally volatile,
who was a yeller, or maybe theywere a collapser, so they would
just like collapse into tearsand emotions and they were so
driven by their emotions or theyhad anger that was always
coming out at other people.
You might respond emotionallyby disassociating, because you
(14:39):
had to counterbalance that theirpattern.
You had to create symbiosis andbalance in the dynamics in the
family by creating thecounterweight, the
counterbalance to what theirswas.
And what this creates is, evenas adults, those patterns are
(14:59):
almost always still at playuntil we become conscious of
them and until we bring backthis big piece, this big hinge
of agency and choice, becausehealing from trauma, healing
from patterns, healing yourboundaries, healing and
restoring your nervous system isabout helping you develop
(15:22):
contact with and a relationshipto these responses, and it's not
that you have to come in andchange them and make them go
away.
It's that you learn the medicineof them.
You learn the wisdom of fawningand where and when and how it
works for you and where and howit's getting you stuck.
(15:43):
Because my fawning abilitiesand capabilities that's also one
of my greatest strengths inlife.
That's why I'm such a goodcoach, that's why I'm so good at
helping and holding otherpeople.
And your greatest gifts alsotend to be your greatest
weaknesses.
Your greatest weaknesses areoften your gifts under or
(16:05):
overutilized.
Greatest weaknesses are oftenyour gifts under or overutilized
.
So let's say you feel right nowin your life that you are an
overly angry person, like youare.
You are like I have too muchfight in my system.
Okay, you are over utilizingthis strength and this boundary
and this, this staying power.
That's not a problematic thing,but you might be using it in a
(16:28):
way that doesn't work for youanymore.
You might have been using thatanger as a counterbalance, as a
way to metabolize or movethrough feeling like a victim or
feeling taken advantage of.
There is a reason that yournervous system is dysregulated.
And bringing your nervous systemback into regulation is not
(16:50):
about always being calm.
It's about having the abilityto metabolize and move these
activations, these differentways that your body wants to
dynamically move.
And again, it's not just thatyou have strength and fight and
the ability to get away, it'salso that you have staying power
(17:12):
and softness and flow.
I think of physically in mylife I'm trying to be really,
really strong, but I don't wantto be so strong that I become
inflexible, because then I'mmore prone to injury.
I don't want to be so flexibleand flowy but have no strength,
because then I'm more prone toinjury.
I don't want to be so flexibleand flowy but have no strength,
because then I'm going to haveno staying power.
(17:33):
I want a body that can run andfight, but also a body that can
rest and paint and hold andnurture.
That is a dynamic, healthynervous system, one that can
access slow health, mediumhealth and fast health.
A nervous system that can moveagainst and move away from and
(17:55):
move towards and move with.
That is dynamic health.
So to put this into practiceand to make this so, so
practical.
So, to put this into practiceand to make this so, so
practical.
If you are someone who feelslike you are stuck in people
pleasing and freezing, one thingyou can do in your life is
(18:16):
integrating movements that allowyou to get more comfortable
with metabolizing those higherenergy reactions literally in
your physiology.
This is one of.
This was, honestly, my firstintroduction to somatic healing
is before I even had thelanguage of it, I had started
(18:37):
doing kickboxing workouts justin my house, just doing
kickboxing videos, and everysingle time I got done I was
crying and having this emotionalrelease and I could literally
feel my body shifting.
I could literally feel myidentity and my relationship to
trauma changing, becausekickboxing was one of the first
(19:00):
times in my life where Iaccessed fight energy, where my
body witnessed I am no longerfrozen, I no longer have to play
dead, I no longer have to playnice.
I have fists and I know how touse them.
I can kick, I can yell, I canmove against, I have fight.
I am not a victim anymore, I amnot in this trauma anymore and
(19:25):
it started to bring me out ofthat mode, out of that fawning,
out of that people pleasingsimply because my body started
realizing I have barriers.
I have fight in me.
I am not just this person whohas to play nice all of the time
(19:46):
.
I hope this little drop-inpodcast helps you, supports you.
Take a moment and notice how itfeels in your body to hear this
.
What comes alive for you, whatyou want to walk away with
Because, at the end of the day,to walk away with, because, at
(20:11):
the end of the day, headknowledge is just inspiration.
What matters is what does it doto your bones, how does it make
you want to move or thinkdifferently or change in your
life?
And how can you go do one small, doable piece of that work?
How can you do 1% of that worktoday?
Finding that, no, finding that,yes, finding that maybe maybe
(20:35):
it's just even feeling it beforeexpressing it.
And, of course, as always, ifthis is work that you want to
dive deep into, that you want tointegrate, not just know in
your head, but truly feel theeffects of it in your life, if
you want that freedom not of thehuman experience, because I'm
(20:58):
so sorry to tell you there is nofreedom from the human
experience, there is justlearning how to live differently
in your wild human self.
And let me tell you it is socool to see in my clients.
I have some long-term clientswho recently were finding some
(21:23):
new language of the work that itis that I do, because sometimes
it's hard for me to put intowords, because is it nervous
system regulation, yes, but notin the way that it's been sold
to you, not in the way that it'sbeen monetized and whitewashed
into being calm.
It's like no, I want to teachyou how to utilize your anger.
I want to teach you how towield your boundaries not just
(21:47):
as a knife, but sometimes asstaying power, as sturdiness.
I want to teach you how tothrow your weight around.
I want to teach you how rage andanger and disappointment and
dissatisfaction and grief andfeeling guilty or shame actually
enhance your life, actuallymake you feel better by not
being afraid to feel worse for alittle bit Like.
(22:08):
I don't just want to teach youhow to bring more lightness in
your life.
I also want to teach you how tobe in the dark, how to be with
those dark parts of yourself,because there is no escaping
that part of life and the morethat you can hold that within
yourself, the more that thatenables you to hold and witness
and see in other people.
So again, I hope today you cantake one piece of this and take
(22:35):
even more health into your life,that dynamic movement.
If this podcast resonated withyou, if you appreciated it,
would you take one moment pleaseand leave a review?
It only takes a few moments,but it really helps the podcast
and I would appreciate it somuch.
(22:55):
And feel free.
I love hearing from you.
You can send me an emailthere's a button below that you
can text or you can always DM meon social media.
I would love to know if youloved this episode and what you
want to see in the future.
I hope you have an awesome dayout there, utilizing all of the
beautiful, wonderful, magicalparts of you and your nervous
(23:19):
system.
you won't stop people pleasing and freezing until
your body no longer feels likeit's prey.
Welcome to today's episode ofthe Motherhood Mentor Podcast.
Today is a hopefully probablyquick episode, just about some
insights to people pleasing,fawning and freezing that so
(00:22):
much is missed in our poppsychology culture of nervous
system work.
And I'm going to say thatsentence again you won't stop
people pleasing and freezinguntil your body no longer feels
like it's prey.
I know so many women who arestuck in chronic freeze and fawn
(00:45):
and shutdown and what your bodyneeds is access to your fight
and flight.
But a lot of times your bodyquite literally either doesn't
have access to it, or it doesn'tbelieve it does, or you are
afraid of accessing those partsof you.
(01:06):
You are afraid of accessing theenergy and the mobilization
that come with those, andthere's so many different
reasons why this could be, butwe're not going to get into that
today.
Today we're just going to talkabout here's where you are and
here's how we get to whereyou're going.
So if you are in a body that ischronically people pleasing and
(01:27):
by people pleasing I'mreferring to fawning I am not
talking about your niceness, Iam not talking about your
empathy for other people, yourability to pay attention to the
subtleties of conflict and yourability to witness what other
people want and need as animportant measure of
(01:49):
relationship and community.
Those are not people pleasing.
People pleasing and fawning iswhen your body this is so, so
important your body, yournervous system are unconsciously
and impulsively saying yes whenit means no.
(02:10):
You are disconnected from yourown consent.
You are disconnected from yourown desires, your own needs.
So when someone asks you aquestion, you will reflexively
and impulsively say yes.
You might not even feel that nountil later.
Or maybe you feel the no.
You feel it somewhere deep inyour belly, in your chest.
(02:31):
You feel a resistance.
You don't want to, you don'tlike it, you don't want to.
But you find yourself smilingand saying yes and you don't
realize that you meant no untillater, when all of a sudden
you're out of their presence andyou get done with the
conversation, or you leave theroom, or they walk away, or the
conflict's over and all of asudden there's something that
(02:54):
comes alive and you go.
I didn't even realize I wasdoing it.
You're at a party, you're at awork function and you find
yourself talking or acting orbehaving in a way that isn't
quite you.
It's a version of you, it's anaspect of you, but you feel like
there's this deep disconnectionfrom the essence of who you are
(03:17):
.
That is fawning andpeople-pleasing.
Fawning and people-pleasing sooften is that you aren't even
aware that you wanted to say no.
You just feel compulsivelycompelled not only to say yes
but to overexert yourself intoother people's lives, into other
people's decision making, intoother people's problems and
(03:39):
preemptively solve it for them.
Now, that's a pretty extremeversion and this can happen on a
spectrum.
So there's people who areexperiencing this in micro
moments.
They're experiencing it inspecific environments or
relationships, and then there'swomen where this feels like it
is compelling their entirepersonality.
(04:00):
They don't even know who theyare anymore.
And part of both fawning andfreezing, which are nervous
system responses, is that thereis an aspect of you that you
lose contact with.
Contact with is very differentthan you losing it.
It's not that it's gone, it'sthat you've lost that connection
(04:23):
and the contact with it and theability for that part of you to
mobilize.
So when you are stuck in thispeople pleasing and this
freezing and freezing, I thinkis a little bit different than
the fawning, because freezing.
There's an underlyingactivation that you feel
connected to.
There's a part of you that'salive, that feels the
(04:46):
mobilization, and then you'restunting it, you're stopping it.
So you want to say something,you feel it, you want it, but
you can't seem to find the words.
You go to set the boundary andyou can't seem to do it.
You keep overthinking it,fawning.
A lot of times you don't evenfeel the activation because
(05:07):
there's a disconnection.
There's a disconnection fromeven feeling like you can
mobilize.
Mobilization means that thereis an energy, there is an
activation that is moving you todo something.
This is where it is soimportant for you to be able to
(05:32):
feel your fight and flight.
People who are stuck in thatconic freeze and fawn and
shutdown their bodies, theirnervous systems, need to be able
to find activation andmobilization within safety.
So they need to find theiraccess and their connection to
(05:57):
that part of them that says andfeels and knows when it's a no
and when it's a yes.
When it's a conditional yes, soit's a no, and when it's a yes.
When it's a conditional yes, soit's a maybe.
It's not like a always yes,it's a sometimes Like Okay,
we're going to talk aboutmarital sex, because I think
that's a huge thing that so manywomen have never learned that
(06:22):
there is a big differencebetween no and my body doesn't
want to and I want to want to.
I don't have a desire for sayit's not necessarily a yes, but
it's a conditional.
Maybe a yes, but it's aconditional.
Maybe it's yes, I want to, buthere's what I need to get there.
(06:44):
Whether that's from you or fromme, there's a conditional yes,
there's a conditional.
Maybe If you've been here for aminute, you know that I have a
bone to pick with that wholesaying of if it's not a hell yes
, it's a hell no, and it's likethat is almost never my
experience.
My experience in so many arenasof my life is I have so many
(07:09):
like I think of my life rightnow I have much, much more
ambition than I have capacity,and that's a frustrating space
to be in.
It is frustrating to have allof these things that I want to
do, that I want to accomplish,that I want to build, that I
want to write, that I want to do, but like I don't necessarily
have the time or the emotionalfocus or availability to do all
(07:33):
of that, at least not all atonce or not right now.
I think of last week with work.
We made it two whole weeks ofschool before one of my kids got
sick.
So I had a sick kid home withme all week and that meant that
I had a little bit less capacityfor work.
It didn't mean that I didn'thave a hell yes for work, it
(07:55):
just meant that my hell yes wassplit between the work that I
wanted to do and also thenurturing that my kid required
but also that I want to do.
Sometimes what we want iscomplicated and complex and
there is tension in that, and somany of us we are avoiding
tension in our lives because wefear it.
(08:17):
We see tension as conflict andconflict as a dangerous thing,
not only in ourselves, butdangerous within the things that
we want.
And one of the ways that wecome back into agency agency
being that you feel that youhave a dynamic range of ways
(08:40):
that you can move.
There is nothing inherentlyinnately wrong with your nervous
system.
Your nervous system is notbroken and it certainly doesn't
need a reset because you are nota computer.
It doesn't work, that's not athing.
It doesn't work, that's not athing.
What is a thing is that yourbody.
(09:06):
Can you feel where and when andwho you are right now?
Do you feel access to a dynamicrange of responses?
Let me give you an example ofthat.
I want you to think of one ofthe areas in your life where you
are struggling.
Maybe you're struggling with aspecific kiddo.
(09:29):
Maybe you have a spicy kiddo.
Maybe you're in the toddlerseason and your toddler's big
emotions, or their no or theirwildness, is really triggering
to you.
Maybe you're in a season whereyour relationship is hard to
this person.
Maybe you're in a season whereit's work.
I want you to think of a veryspecific struggle with a
specific person or a specificthing.
(09:49):
Maybe it's emotional eating foryou, maybe it's the
relationship to yourself, and Iwant you to think of the pattern
that you are in relationship tothat person or to that thing
with.
There's a pattern, there's away that they act and there's a
way that you respond that youwitness isn't working.
(10:10):
We'll use the example of you'restruggling with this kid A.
We're struggling with your kidnamed Aaron, right, and when
Aaron does this, you tend to doX, y, z and some of this is
unintentional and it doesn'tmatch up with your values.
Let's say you lecture or youyell or you freak out or you get
(10:33):
overstimulated and overwhelmed,or you keep finding yourself
opening your phone and scrollingon social media because you
need to, like disassociate anddistract yourself from how
activated and irritated andfrustrated you feel with said
kid and you don't want to takeit out on them, so you're just
trying to, like, help yourselfcope.
What I want for you is to havea relationship to that part of
(10:59):
you that you know how tomobilize into many different
responses to their actions.
Sometimes you need a fightenergy and fight does not always
mean a fist.
Sometimes it means a steady,sturdy, staying energy.
(11:20):
Fight energy means I'm stayingmy ground, I'm holding my ground
.
It doesn't always mean anaggressiveness against someone.
It can, and there's anappropriate time and place for
that.
There's an appropriate andtimely and healthy place for a
fist.
There's also a healthy,appropriate time for a boundary.
(11:41):
So maybe your kid Aaron.
He needs more specificboundaries and you need more
specific boundaries in order tohave a healthy relationship to
each other.
You need more emotional spacefrom him.
You need to stop over over overassociating with his emotions.
If you are an empathetic mother,if you are a fawning mother, if
(12:03):
you are a people-pleasingmother, it is so, so important
for you to learn how to haveemotional boundaries with your
kids' emotions, that you witnesstheir emotions as their own and
you start to change thatrelationship to them.
Having emotions is notinherently dangerous.
Them having emotions is notinherently dangerous, but your
(12:27):
body is responding as if it does.
And if you can find thatboundary, if you can find that
fist energy or that push energyand I don't mean physiologically
, I can mean emotionally,spiritually, quite literally you
can put distance between youtwo, but there's an energetic
pull.
Maybe you need that bubblebetween you and your kid.
(12:48):
Maybe you need to both besitting and holding a cold drink
while you talk about this.
There's different ways to relateto your kid.
There's different ways toassess and respond to perceived
threat, and that's what we wantin your nervous system.
We don't want a nervous systemthat only has one way to deal
with threat.
(13:08):
We want a nervous system thatcan feel access to walking away,
to saying no, to saying maybe,to having a conversation, to
moving towards conflict or awayfrom conflict, a nervous system
that can create a gentle barrieror a roar or a push or a run or
(13:30):
a fist.
This is what it means to have aregulated nervous system.
It is a nervous system that isnot so stuck in one response.
You likely have your oneresponse that you are so good at
.
This is just it's nature, it'snurture, and maybe you got your
(13:55):
response from your parent, Maybeyou started emulating your
parent and you learned when mykid does X, oh that's when
parents yell.
Even if that doesn't align withyour values, you like picked
that behavior up.
You picked up that pattern andsometimes what happens with kids
is you counteract your parents'responses.
(14:18):
So let's say you had a parentwho was emotionally volatile,
who was a yeller, or maybe theywere a collapser, so they would
just like collapse into tearsand emotions and they were so
driven by their emotions or theyhad anger that was always
coming out at other people.
You might respond emotionallyby disassociating, because you
(14:39):
had to counterbalance that theirpattern.
You had to create symbiosis andbalance in the dynamics in the
family by creating thecounterweight, the
counterbalance to what theirswas.
And what this creates is, evenas adults, those patterns are
(14:59):
almost always still at playuntil we become conscious of
them and until we bring backthis big piece, this big hinge
of agency and choice, becausehealing from trauma, healing
from patterns, healing yourboundaries, healing and
restoring your nervous system isabout helping you develop
(15:22):
contact with and a relationshipto these responses, and it's not
that you have to come in andchange them and make them go
away.
It's that you learn the medicineof them.
You learn the wisdom of fawningand where and when and how it
works for you and where and howit's getting you stuck.
(15:43):
Because my fawning abilitiesand capabilities that's also one
of my greatest strengths inlife.
That's why I'm such a goodcoach, that's why I'm so good at
helping and holding otherpeople.
And your greatest gifts alsotend to be your greatest
weaknesses.
Your greatest weaknesses areoften your gifts under or
(16:05):
overutilized.
Greatest weaknesses are oftenyour gifts under or overutilized
.
So let's say you feel right nowin your life that you are an
overly angry person, like youare.
You are like I have too muchfight in my system.
Okay, you are over utilizingthis strength and this boundary
and this, this staying power.
That's not a problematic thing,but you might be using it in a
(16:28):
way that doesn't work for youanymore.
You might have been using thatanger as a counterbalance, as a
way to metabolize or movethrough feeling like a victim or
feeling taken advantage of.
There is a reason that yournervous system is dysregulated.
And bringing your nervous systemback into regulation is not
(16:50):
about always being calm.
It's about having the abilityto metabolize and move these
activations, these differentways that your body wants to
dynamically move.
And again, it's not just thatyou have strength and fight and
the ability to get away, it'salso that you have staying power
(17:12):
and softness and flow.
I think of physically in mylife I'm trying to be really,
really strong, but I don't wantto be so strong that I become
inflexible, because then I'mmore prone to injury.
I don't want to be so flexibleand flowy but have no strength,
because then I'm more prone toinjury.
I don't want to be so flexibleand flowy but have no strength,
because then I'm going to haveno staying power.
(17:33):
I want a body that can run andfight, but also a body that can
rest and paint and hold andnurture.
That is a dynamic, healthynervous system, one that can
access slow health, mediumhealth and fast health.
A nervous system that can moveagainst and move away from and
(17:55):
move towards and move with.
That is dynamic health.
So to put this into practiceand to make this so, so
practical.
So, to put this into practiceand to make this so, so
practical.
If you are someone who feelslike you are stuck in people
pleasing and freezing, one thingyou can do in your life is
(18:16):
integrating movements that allowyou to get more comfortable
with metabolizing those higherenergy reactions literally in
your physiology.
This is one of.
This was, honestly, my firstintroduction to somatic healing
is before I even had thelanguage of it, I had started
(18:37):
doing kickboxing workouts justin my house, just doing
kickboxing videos, and everysingle time I got done I was
crying and having this emotionalrelease and I could literally
feel my body shifting.
I could literally feel myidentity and my relationship to
trauma changing, becausekickboxing was one of the first
(19:00):
times in my life where Iaccessed fight energy, where my
body witnessed I am no longerfrozen, I no longer have to play
dead, I no longer have to playnice.
I have fists and I know how touse them.
I can kick, I can yell, I canmove against, I have fight.
I am not a victim anymore, I amnot in this trauma anymore and
(19:25):
it started to bring me out ofthat mode, out of that fawning,
out of that people pleasingsimply because my body started
realizing I have barriers.
I have fight in me.
I am not just this person whohas to play nice all of the time
(19:46):
.
I hope this little drop-inpodcast helps you, supports you.
Take a moment and notice how itfeels in your body to hear this
.
What comes alive for you, whatyou want to walk away with
Because, at the end of the day,to walk away with, because, at
(20:11):
the end of the day, headknowledge is just inspiration.
What matters is what does it doto your bones, how does it make
you want to move or thinkdifferently or change in your
life?
And how can you go do one small, doable piece of that work?
How can you do 1% of that worktoday?
Finding that, no, finding that,yes, finding that maybe maybe
(20:35):
it's just even feeling it beforeexpressing it.
And, of course, as always, ifthis is work that you want to
dive deep into, that you want tointegrate, not just know in
your head, but truly feel theeffects of it in your life, if
you want that freedom not of thehuman experience, because I'm
(20:58):
so sorry to tell you there is nofreedom from the human
experience, there is justlearning how to live differently
in your wild human self.
And let me tell you it is socool to see in my clients.
I have some long-term clientswho recently were finding some
(21:23):
new language of the work that itis that I do, because sometimes
it's hard for me to put intowords, because is it nervous
system regulation, yes, but notin the way that it's been sold
to you, not in the way that it'sbeen monetized and whitewashed
into being calm.
It's like no, I want to teachyou how to utilize your anger.
I want to teach you how towield your boundaries not just
(21:47):
as a knife, but sometimes asstaying power, as sturdiness.
I want to teach you how tothrow your weight around.
I want to teach you how rage andanger and disappointment and
dissatisfaction and grief andfeeling guilty or shame actually
enhance your life, actuallymake you feel better by not
being afraid to feel worse for alittle bit Like.
(22:08):
I don't just want to teach youhow to bring more lightness in
your life.
I also want to teach you how tobe in the dark, how to be with
those dark parts of yourself,because there is no escaping
that part of life and the morethat you can hold that within
yourself, the more that thatenables you to hold and witness
and see in other people.
So again, I hope today you cantake one piece of this and take
(22:35):
even more health into your life,that dynamic movement.
If this podcast resonated withyou, if you appreciated it,
would you take one moment pleaseand leave a review?
It only takes a few moments,but it really helps the podcast
and I would appreciate it somuch.
(22:55):
And feel free.
I love hearing from you.
You can send me an emailthere's a button below that you
can text or you can always DM meon social media.
I would love to know if youloved this episode and what you
want to see in the future.
I hope you have an awesome dayout there, utilizing all of the
beautiful, wonderful, magicalparts of you and your nervous
(23:19):
system.
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