Overwhelmed & Stuck? This Isn’t Procrastination — It’s Nervous System Freeze

This is Episode 100.

One hundred conversations about healing, boundaries, intuition, expansion, and stepping into your power.

And somehow, it feels fitting that this milestone lands in a moment like this.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed… numb… stuck…
 If you’ve been questioning your motivation, your clarity, your discipline…

This episode is for you.

Because what many spiritually aware, heart-led entrepreneurs are experiencing right now isn’t procrastination.

It’s a functional freeze.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why collective instability and global intensity are impacting your nervous system
• The difference between burnout and freeze
• The subtle signs of high-functioning shutdown
• Why growth and visibility can trigger immobilization
• The unique pressure of being the face of your business during uncertain times
• How to lead when you don’t have all the answers
• What it really means to “become the medicine”
• Micro-actions that rebuild nervous system safety
• How to show up without absorbing everything around you

You are not following a step-by-step blueprint designed for speed and scale.

You are walking a sacred path that has never been created before — especially not in times like these.

Your process will not look like anyone else’s.

For some, this season calls for bold leaps.

For others, it calls for micro-movements.

Both are leadership.

Both are sacred.

If you’ve felt like disappearing, questioning your mission, or wondering how to show up when the world feels unstable,  this conversation will help you ground, clear, and recalibrate.

Transcript

0:00

Hey there. Welcome back to the, 100th episode of Into the Work Therapy from Paths and Seekers. We've had 100th conversations about your boundaries, about your identity, about your intuition, your expansion, and definitely on how to step into your power. What I know now more than ever is this, that actually none of it matters if your nervous system doesn't feel safe enough to move forward. You'll stay stuck. And if you've been feeling overwhelmed and numb and stuck like so many of us right now, like you just wanna move forward, but you just can't, like in your brain you're saying, I should be moving forward. What's wrong with me? I haven't really done what I thought I was supposed to do. You're not on the plan. Whatever your plan is, I need you to hear this. I do not believe that you are procrastinating. I do not even think in any way, shape or form you are lazy. This is not even necessarily a lack of clarity. I mean, it could be you know that that's woven in there, but I believe this is functional freeze. And right now it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, we are living in a time where systems are being exposed, destabilized. Questioned, it feels like every day I turn on something, I am seeing with my eyes, with my ears, with every sensory part that I own, that like democracy is falling and the world feels really awful. News cycles feel intense and collective anxiety is high, and the ground totally feels like it's shifting. Your nervous system wasn't necessarily designed to metabolize this much uncertainty with this level of consistency. Does that make sense? and if you are a spiritually aware, heart led, Person, right? An entrepreneur, maybe you have a business, uh, perhaps, you know, you're out in the world doing whatever it is that you're doing, but you're coming from a place of being an empath, a sensitive soul, a seeker, somebody who is here to make a difference, somebody whose job, whose calling in some level of care is to impact people around you. You aren't just watching this. You're feeling it, I'm sorry. But we are all feeling it. And honestly, I do believe that so many of my heart led entrepreneur types are really, really feeling it And I wanna really call this out because I think this is actually really important to recognize for those of us that have, a business. You are the face of that business. You are the voice of that business. You are the values. Of that business. You are the nervous system of your business. This isn't a corporate machine with layers of separation. It's intimate. So when the world feels unstable, you don't just ask like, how do I grow? What should I, what should I be focusing on? You ask like, is it okay for me to sell right now? Should I speak up if I don't say anything? Am I hiding? If I do say something, will I alienate people? How do I lead when I don't even feel. Study at all myself, and there's a lot to hold. That's why I'm really calling it functional freeze because, well, burnout says you know that you've done too much, but this freeze, it says it's not safe to move and there's a difference, right? So it's, it's not just that you're burnt out by it all. You're actually struggling moving forward on things that you really want to. And for our business owners, this is really magnified right now. And, you know, there's, there's plans in place, there's milestones you wanna reach, there's things that you feel like you need to do. There's, Passion and purpose, that's always been behind it, but right now it might feel that's really far away and that you can't move. And functional freeze is protective, immobilization. So you're still scrolling. Unfortunately, for most of us, because you wanna know, you don't wanna, you wanna be aware. You don't wanna be totally shut off. You wanna understand what's happening. You wanna know what's happening. So you're still scrolling. You're still showing up to some degree. You're still tweaking things, potentially. You're definitely still thinking about things, but you don't move because your nervous system is, it's literally bracing right now. And I'm gonna tell you, I started this episode today because I recognized I was, I. Sitting here, my, my family was away. I had the whole house to myself, and I literally haven't talked to anybody. I'm being serious. I haven't talked to anybody in three days. Okay? Like I've been holed up in my house. I am. I was loving every minute of it. I'm not gonna lie. Like I don't usually get time like this alone. And so I've been home alone for three days and it's been. Glorious in some ways, but also it's showing me a mirror to how all over the place my brain is to, you know, trying to do a task when I'm trying to do 700 tasks, right? Like I'm, I'm spinning on my own in the house. Like, what am I gonna do now? What am I doing right now? Right. And it's, it's definitely been eye-opening for me because I've had some space to really look at how I'm doing. And up until this moment I have been, like many of you, I've been busy, busy, busy running from thing to thing, making sure I'm home, I'm home on time for this or that, getting to work. And this really has woken me up to the fact that I am in my own free state. And I kind of knew it, but I was operating at a level in which I was not truly a hundred percent present for it. And I saw the signs and I immediately sat down and I've taken some time to really recognize what's going on. And I share this with you because My, my own freeze state is not unlike yours. So I have shut down. I have all these things I was supposed to have done in my business by now. I have not done them right. I have, I haven't really been on social media at all. I haven't really put myself out there at all. I keep thinking in my head, all these things I wanna see. Say, but then I never really actually put them out there. I have all these epiphanies and things that I wanna do that feel I'll be impactful, and then they never get put into action. And so they actually never touch anybody and they never, nothing ever comes of them. But I'm frozen in action, not in mind. Right. And so I am noticing like, wow, wow, wow, wow. Wow. I didn't realize that I was avoiding moving forward and how it up in my head I had become, powerless. I started telling myself a story about being powerless, about,, I don't really know what I'm doing., I'm shifting some things in my business right now and I am truly, excited about it. It's all intuitive, but when we're in this freeze state, all that intuitive information, all that connection that you feel to something, it dissolves, right? Because we're in fear state, and so I'm not. Attached to it. I'm not feeling connected to my knowing, and I've just been operating up in my head like going through all the things I should have done, didn't do, and. Here's the difference is right now I created some space and I am able to acknowledge it. I'm able to sh turn the ship around and I'm able to get back on track as best that I can, and I can also, in the process, held a lot of compassion for myself right now that, you know, I'm holding so much and so are you, and I am taking in stuff that's, that's really triggering to my soul, to my being here and my purpose here and who I am here. I've had to have a really good talking with myself today, and it was really awesome. We had a really good conversation and I'm gonna share with you, um, some things I want you to, to sort of focus on for you, and I wanna help you get outta your free state, but the goal is not that you'll never freeze again. Here I am years down the road of this work, I help other people with this. And not once did I say to myself today, by the way, what's wrong with you? You help other people do this, you know what an imposter you are, that you are stuck. I didn't say that once to myself because that's bullshit. I'm a human being here. I don't get to be above it. I have this nervous system I was born with. I have this set of sensory, abilities. I have this, all the things that make me, me and uniquely me are going to get me here sometimes. And it isn't that I was supposed to be different and neither are you. You are not supposed to be different than what you are in this very moment. And we're gonna, we're gonna dive into some important things on that, that are gonna help you see this differently. But let's get clear and concrete here about what functional freeze you might be in. And I just wanna make sure you're, you're able to acknowledge some things for yourself. I want you to notice if instead of creating, whatever you're really want for yourself, right? If you're in business and you're an entrepreneur, then you've got. You've got something you're supposed to be creating right now, right? If you have a project, if you, whatever you're doing in your life, if there's something you wanna be doing, that you have a goal, there's something that's important to you and you're not doing it, I want you to notice if you're scrolling instead, if you're doing things that are, that are mindless, if you're doing things that are addictive, if you're doing things that you're, that are pulling you and leaving you depleted afterwards, they seem like they make us feel better because they almost. Quelch some sort of desire or need, but then in the end we usually feel less than I want you to notice if you know in your business or whatever out the world, you are kind of repeating things and redoing things and getting perfectionistic. You know those little perfectionism, you hear me say this all the time, but I love that term procrast learning. Like, have you been researching for weeks, by the way? Right? Like, are you researching and researching and researching? Are you waiting for clarity that never quite lands, right? Are you waiting for something that's gonna truly make or break it? And then you just, it's perfect now and you can push yourself out there. Are you feeling numb? Maybe you're feeling numb instead of anxious. Maybe you're just feeling like I felt detached. I feel nothing. I feel like I have no motivation. I just don't care. I'm just surviving, getting by. I want you to notice if you're avoiding visibility by telling yourself, you're refining, you know you gotta make it perfect first. That's my MO by the way. Doing busy work instead of needle moving work, right? Like, I can't tell you how freaking busy I have been, but did I do anything that moved the needle in my business? I haven't, not really. That's okay. It's really important that we just acknowledge it. Like, oh my god. Ha ha ha. Yeah. Look at you. There you are. Old friend. There it is. Right? It's happening. And are you noticing, are you like, this is one of the things I've been doing. I've been fantasizing about disappearing. I've been like fantasizing about like, I really just wanna go to like the mountain town or somewhere where I can just, I think I need like two months off. And wouldn't that be lovely? Of course it would. But feeling detached from your mission, starting things, not finishing them saying, I just need to feel inspired again, those are little cues for you. These aren't like character flaws. They're little cues for you that your your nervous system is probably overloaded and you're not functioning in your business. Right? So why expansion trigger shutdown. So when you think about doing something that that's expansive, I don't care even, I mean, honestly. You could think about this as your new exercise routine, but if you're an entrepreneur, you're thinking about this in terms of your business. But growth means exposure. Exposure means being seen. Being seen means other people's opinions. You know, people projecting stuff onto you, feeling rejection, making yourself vulnerable and feeling rejected, And most definitely for those of us that have a sensitivity to this feeling misunderstood. Like putting yourself out there and somebody doesn't get it and they re misread you and then they don't like it. And your nervous system does not interpret that as business growth. It is an exercise routine. If it's some goal you set for yourself, that's, you know, you know what it is for you. All these things and these things make you vulnerable as well. They're all things, you can still be rejected. You can still fail. You can still have other people's opinions fall upon you, but your nervous system does not. Interpreted as growth, right? So you're not like, oh, this is business growth, right? Failure isn't like your nervous system isn't like, oh, look at this business growth. It interprets it as risk. Our brain is about risk. It isn't about the warm, fluffy, fun stuff. It's about risk. It's about survival and I want you to add that. Your normal stuff, right? And you're gonna add that to the collective instability that's happening right now. And your system is literally like, Nope, no thank you. Nope, nope, nope. Not right now. We are not doing that right now. Right. And the sacred path and I think this is an important. That you are not following a step-by-step plug and play plan designed for speed and scale at lightning paste. You are not following someone else's footsteps because you are not replicating someone else's blueprint. And you get out there in the world and you see all these people doing things certain ways and, and you get all the messaging that you get about how to do things. And this is true for all of you and every goal you have, you are creating something that has literally never existed before. In a time that has never existed before because you have never existed before and this moment has never existed before. Your path is uniquely sacred. I. And sacred paths are not linear. Tell me, think of any example of anybody that's on that You would say they're on a really sacred, beautiful path and there isn't some harrowing story. I mean, there really isn't. It doesn't exist. Part of the sacred path is struggle and getting over that struggle. That's what it's about. And they don't all look the same though. You know, my path looks different than your path. And your path is gonna be looking different to everybody else's path. One woman might be called to leap boldly into visibility while another is called to take little micro action steps that rebuild trust in her own nervous system. Neither is more evolved, neither is more courageous. It just. They just are what they are, they are responding to their internal guidance comparison is totally useless. I want you to hear that comparison is absolutely ly, so if that's a word. Useless because no one has ever walked your exact terrain, especially not in these times. So I really want you to grasp that when you look at. Being frozen potentially right now and shutting down or feeling overwhelmed or not doing the thing right? I want you to hold space for this, that you have a unique path and it is a okay to be where you are. That this is never done, done before by you. And even if it has in the past, you're doing it somehow different now, or you know, something about it is freezing you up and it's not necessarily that you need to forcefully override the freeze because a lot of us think like, I just gotta discipline myself. I just gotta force myself to do it. And you might be able to do that. That's certainly what a lot of the gurus will tell you to do. But I think US sensitive souls, US soulful individuals here have different sensory systems. We're here for different reasons and I believe that for many of us, that is a crash and burn story. Um, some of us, it's not about like go out there and hastily launch a program. It's about micro movements and taking small steps and, outline one section, record one in one imperfect video, right? Write one paragraph, send one email. Do these small steps to get energy moving. Your body needs to know that it's safe to move. When you take somebody who's in freeze and you put something, anything bigger than that in front of them, they stay frozen. So for me this weekend, I was like, okay, I need to just spend some time meditating on it. I need to spend some time reading about it. I need to. Get back in alignment with what I'm doing here and why I want it. And it was really helpful. That really helped guide me. Into getting reattached to my vision, my forward vision. I highly recommend you do the same. I highly recommend that your job right now, one of your micro steps is to reengage. Reconnect with your why and who you are here to become. Because she already exists. She already lives within you, and this is exactly why you're here. And so is this freeze, right? This is as important as everything else, as much as we don't want it to be. Its intelligence. These micro movements are also great ways of navigating divine timing. So on some level, if we can acknowledge, this is what I acknowledge for myself. This is my path, this is my divine timing. I am right on time. I wanted to do this this way. I wanted to get things done already, but my brain. Was not in alignment with my divine timing. And sometimes it's almost feels, can feel a little bit impossible to be fully aligned with that because we, we, we are, I, dunno about you. I get very inspired and excited for things and so then I get disappointed when I don't follow through with them. But that just means that. You know, the divine timing, it was not was off. And it's okay to get excited about something, put it aside, and then return back to it. So, alright, let's talk about. What you need to do to regulate before you start to strategize, how are you gonna move forward? I want you to think strategy second, regulation first. You don't need a better funnel right now. I think you just need a regulated nervous system and then you can move to that step, right? To get what I'm saying, like you don't, whatever your goal is that you're working on, if it's not business, I want you to say, I need to regulate my nervous system and. Do things that get me going. Right, and that that might be just to reattach to. The connection between you and the thing that you really want and breathe in the safety that's necessary for you to move forward. We need to move our bodies. A lot of this freeze stuff is really caught up in our tissue, right? So I'm talking about truly physically moving your body. I don't care if you're dancing in the kitchen, you're shaking it out, you're working out, you're hiking, you're getting fresh air, getting outside. I want you to take slow, deep breaths throughout today, okay? You're listening to this podcast. If it's late, let's you know, do this tomorrow. I want you to see the real truth to what it can be like for you to stop and take slow, deep breaths multiple times a day. And that means breathing in for like six count, holding it, breathing out for like seven or eight, like you're breathing in like a pinhole in the balloon, and then you're breathing out. Like a pinhole in the balloon that is signaling to your autonomic nervous system that it is time to shut your sympathetic nervous system off and click on your relaxation response that you have embedded in your body, which is a beautiful gift. So I want you to do that multiple times a day. Safety first strategy and attack second. Okay. And if you wanna sit down and accomplish something, try meditating first. This is my surefire thing. Before I even wrote out, like I kind of put together an outline for this. I do put it together an outline for all my podcasts and. I just ask God source to move through me. I ask for guidance. I sit down, I breathe in open up my chakras. I breathe in. I ask for guidance, and I say, please let something flow through me. Versus spinning in my head about it. So I want to invite you to do the same. So if you have something that you wanna work out,, you wanna hash it out, you sit down, get yourself some tea, put on some music, right? I have to make the environment really like a place I wanna hang. If I don't make it a place I wanna hang and I just kind of go in like full start and I just like. You know, I, I'm an autopilot, like I just, I don't do as well. I don't last as long. I need it to feel comfy and then just really breathe in and really hand it over because we are connected to source God, whatever, right? We are connected and that energy is pouring through us at all times, and it's like a ripple effect, right? It's always coming out and always coming in, and I want you to imagine that you are grounding yourself in that way. So let's just review. So far we've got micro movements, small steps. I want you to regulate before you sort of try to throw yourself into action or strategize even. And then I also want you to look at limiting your input without avoidance. So you are allowed to consume information in doses that your body can metabolize. Okay? So I want you to ask yourself, at what point does this feel. Like I can't tolerate it. Staying informed does not require that you drown in something. I realize that it is a privilege to be sitting in my warm home right now and talking on this microphone to you. It is absolutely a privilege and I am not taking that for granted. And I have a lot of feelings, right, like you do probably and me drowning in it. Me suffocating and me collapsing, and me burning out and shutting down and being so overwhelmed that I'm not functioning the way that I want to in the world. None of that helps anybody. It doesn't help anybody using my voice. So you know how I feel. Educating people, making phone calls, doing things in spurts, right? That, that I feel like can make a difference. Some of you're out there, you're choosing to protest, like do things, but then bring yourself back. Limit with limitations because you've got to stay well in this. Awareness is powerful, but absorption is depleting. So I just wanna make sure that there's that delineation between awareness and absorption. Awareness is powerful. You can spread the message, you can get out there, you can connect with other people, you can be strong. And absorption is depleting. So there's two more tips here. Real quick. I want you to consider reconnecting to your mission. Connect to your why, right? Those headlines out there, they're shifting hourly and they are not good. I'm just gonna tell you, you don't even have to open your phone. I'm telling you they're not good. We do need to see what's happening. I get it. But at the same time, I want you to try to find a way to reconnect to your why. 'cause that's like a little flame inside you that needs to be re-lit and you'll be better, a stronger voice in the world. You will be able to be more powerful in the world when that. Is lit. So I want you to do what you need to do to light the flame within you if your work is about healing, truth, empowerment, expansion. It is not irrelevant right now. Okay? None of it. None of the work that we're doing is irrelevant at all. It is needed, what we're counting on you to do is embody. And be steady, and we wanna listen to you and we want to feel guided by you, right? We want to feel LED, and your job is to get grounded in who you are and be the most you. You can be out there in the world. And that's enough. That's it. And then the last one is I just wanna say your leadership right now is medicine. It isn't about having the answers, it's about holding the space, the steadiness the ground. I just wanna say that to you. There is a wound that is distracting all of us, and you can be medicine and if you viewed yourself as medicine and you knew that, putting myself out there on some level is medicine. For somebody. Somebody. What if it's just one person? What if it's like, five people That is in itself miraculous and incredible that we are the ability to do that. And so I just want you to know that now more than ever, leadership is medicine. We're all looking for medicine right now. Becoming medicine doesn't mean. Replicating chaos in your own nervous system. It doesn't mean amplifying your own fear. Being medicine does not reacting impulsively it's modeling integrity. It's modeling discernment, and it's modeling depth that we all feel drawn to. So you don't have to know how this ends. You just have to stay open hearted while it unfolds, because we don't know how this is all gonna go. What if what comes after this is something really beautiful. This moment feels like exposure. It feels uncomfortable. Exposure is uncomfortable. The wound is exposed. Right, the underbelly, the shadow has risen. And that never feels good. But exposure is also the beginning of healing because we see it. Businesses maybe, maybe they become more ethical, maybe leadership becomes more embodied across our country, across our world, maybe truth becomes less colorful, less performative, and more lived. Maybe real and more honest. Maybe this shifts how we approach things in our, our world. And maybe it all becomes more about integrity because we know there's a lacking of integrity. We, we seeing it, we're seeing it everywhere. I've always felt this way about politics in general, but I just want to shed that we are part of potentially a very meaningful time and you get to help shape that future. By how you show up now. Before we end today, I wanna give you something practical. We know the world feels loud as we're talking about all this stuff. Everything you know is we're bracing in the world. Everything is intense. I wanna help you clear. The most important thing you can do right now is actually clear and wherever you are. If this feels safe, I'm gonna have you take a nice, slow, deep breath right now as you're listening to me. I want you to imagine this, okay? Any chords, hooks, or energetic threads connecting you to people, headlines, conversations, expectations, projections. I want you to imagine them gently dissolving. You do not have to fight them. You do not have to rip them out. You just let them soften and release and dissolve. Take a nice deep breath. Now, imagine that you're calling. Back your energy, and you can say this out loud if you want, but I call back my energy from social media. As you're breathing in, I call back my energy from the news cycles. I call back my energy from clients. I call back my energy from old versions of me, breathe it in and breathe it out. I call back my energy from imagined futures for internal pressure. I call back my energy from past conversations, breathe it in, breathe it out, and I call back my energy from across time and space. I call it all back into my body. And as you breathe in, I want you to imagine that. Like a hundred little tiny orbs of light start floating into your body. They pass right through your skin, right into your soul self, right? Your whole core self, and you breathe that in and you are whole in a new way. You have released your connections, your attachments, to the things that drain you, and now you are plugged in like a battery. And as you breathe in this one last breath, I want you to feel your chest light up your belly all the way down to your feet, and just let all that light settle back in. It's exactly where it needs to be. It knows its place, it's home. So let's settle. You are allowed to be informed without being entangled. You can care without caring at all, and you are, you are allowed to lead without absorbing everything. And when your energy is yours again, you, you'll stop disappearing. You're likely going to let go of the freeze. So in this place right now, I want you to just take a moment to choose your next aligned micro step. What is one small thing that you can do that just starts the snowball effect? One small thing. Take a deep breath and just trust yourself. Later, I'd like for you to also get into attachment with your why. Again, why what it is that you want is important to you and really remember it. Really let it resonate. Now, if this was helpful and you'd like to do more work around clearing yourself and doing the energetic work that takes to be in this world right now, 100%. This is what I do all the time. I don't know if you have it or not already, but I have the squeegee method. For you to go into the show notes and download it. It is totally free and it is a 10 minute meditation. But it's really more than a meditation. What it really is, is a method and it's a way for you to learn how to do this on your own. Anywhere and everywhere. You can do it in an elevator, you can do it in a car, I do it everywhere. I do it in between my clients. I do it at the end of my day and it is incredibly helpful. The. Ground clear and protect factors of it are designed specifically to help you wipe away emotional energy that doesn't belong to you and restore your energetic clarity. So I have many of my clients doing this, many people have written into me who have downloaded it and said, oh my God, I got rid of my migraine, my brain fog has gone, my unexplained moodiness has gotten better, so go ahead and download that. And learn how to do this for yourself, so you'll know exactly how to hit the reset button. 'cause this squeegee method is the reset button. It really can be So as we end here today, remember clear what isn't yours, right. Call your energy back. Call your energy home, take care of it, and trust your sacred path. It's so unique to you and so special, and you're right where you're supposed to be. You are right on time. I'll be right here with you doing the exact same thing. Well, we got this. Okay, have a beautiful week and bye for now.