High-Functioning and Overwhelmed? How Somatic Work Helps You Feel Without Falling Apart

If you’ve ever wondered why you feel anxious, overwhelmed, or like you are going through the motions but not really there, even when life looks fine on the outside - this episode is for you. 

Your nervous system isn't broken- in fact it's working perfectly. In this podcast we dive into the wisdom of the body keeping score. Your dysregulation- no matter how destructive- it is a protective pattern. The snapping and yelling at the kids, the constant checking email, the lack of boundaries, the way you shut down and freak out when your husband is off- that's all dysregulation. 

Becca unpacks how your nervous system’s fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses (aka people pleasing and over functioning) aren’t flaws to fix but natural survival patterns that may be over firing. You’ll learn why hyper-vigilance, perfectionism, emotional shutdown, and people-pleasing aren’t just “personality quirks” — they’re embodied trauma responses that can quietly run your life, your motherhood, marriage, and even your business. 

This episode will help you:

✨ Understand dysregulation as a human experience, not a personal failure

✨ Recognize your patterns with compassion, not judgment

✨ Learn how regulation isn’t about eliminating stress but expanding your capacity to meet it

✨ Start building a new relationship with your nervous system and life, where presence matters more than performance

Ready to stop managing your nervous system like a problem to solve and start relating to it like a partner to care for? Tune in — and download the free worksheets in the show notes to explore your own patterns more deeply.

Download the free Somatic Workbook for guided practices and worksheets

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Somatic Healing
• 8:13 Understanding Dysregulation Patterns
• 15:13 The Fight Energy Response
• 22:28 Flight, Fawn, and Freeze Reactions
• 34:07 Building Regulation Capacity
• 42:49 Tools for Nervous System Health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health, healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do. It's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our soft and hard humanity as holy. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today we are talking more about somatic healing and I'm going to share today one of the most powerful concepts we can talk about, which is activation. We are going to talk about what it looks like to actually be regulated and what dysregulation looks like, what it feels like and how we can change our relationship and our capacity and the way that we move through it. Being dysregulated is a part of the human experience. A lot of what we call dysregulation is a natural, healthy human response to activation to our environment. It is a healthy pattern and we don't want to get rid of it. And that's very hard for those of you who are stuck in a trauma response pattern. And what I mean by a stuck trauma response pattern is maybe you are stuck in a functional fight or flight mode. A lot of what that looks like is hypervigilance, high anxiety, high control, perfectionism. You're there, but you're not really there. You're going through all the motions, everything looks great, you're checking off the boxes, but you don't feel like you're there. This can be a functional freeze where there's a lot going on. You're still going through the motions, but you're not there. The aliveness, the soul, the emotion. You feel numb, but you're still moving.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Or maybe, again, you're in that fight and flight mode where you're constantly accidentally over-responding to little things. You're snapping easily, you're feeling really angry or anxious or overwhelmed. That is your body being in hyperdrive. That is your body being in activation right Activation as in. You are hyper aroused. Your heart rate, your breath, your movements. There's a rigidity and a speed and your pace of your body is outpacing your presence. You're moving so fast that you're missing it. You don't feel present because you're constantly fighting and fighting. And what that can look like in modern motherhood you're constantly overworking, you're constantly overfunctioning. You're always in problem-solving mode and even when you're right here, you're never here. You're constantly in the future. You're constantly so far outside of yourself in motherhood or your business and marriage your energy and attention and presence is leaning so far outside of you and in front of you that you don't feel where you are, you don't feel deeply connected, you don't feel deeply present. You just feel so busy Busy is a huge word here where it's in the way your life feels.

Speaker 1: 3:46

That is the subtlety that so many people are missing, because most of the women, especially if you're listening to this podcast, this probably applies to you. This definitely applies to me and to most of my friends and my clients. Our responses are very functional. We are very high functioning people and what I mean by that is that your dysregulation is sneaky. It's not necessarily going to look like these obvious examples of burnout, for example. There can be women who are burnout in this hyper arousal or the hypo arousal, where you are so burnt out and you feel dead inside and you feel numb and you feel frozen, and yet you're still moving, you're still showing up, but you, you are. You're like I don't feel alive, I don't feel that spark, I don't feel that connection, I don't feel that presence. And so there's this activation or this lack of activation, right, too much or too little? This is what dysregulation can often look like. It's oh, when I'm in relationship to my kids, I'm under parenting or over parenting. I'm not in my agency. So a lot of people will talk about the window of tolerance with regulation, but I really like the language of the window of presence when I think of regulation. Regulation doesn't mean a lack of activation, a lack of emotion, a lack of fight, flight, freeze fawn. It means I have capacity to be present and have that happening in my body. There is a relationship to it. I am paying attention and I can feel those hinges. I can feel that place where I have agency and choice and I can find and feel whether my response is appropriate for right now.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Most of us, when we talk about dysregulation, when we talk about I'm in a trauma response, a lot of times what we mean is my response isn't appropriate for what I want to do. I'm not acting in accordance to my values and my decision-making and my authority. I'm acting out of a past experience and a pattern. My emotional response is either under or over responsive to what's actually happening. A perfect example and it's one of my favorites is my kids can be bickering and my body feels at level nine activation when what's happening isn't dangerous, it's not unsafe, nobody's being mean, nobody's being harmful, no one's being out of integrity, they're just bickering or they're having an argument.

Speaker 1: 6:36

But my body you guys, my body still, after all my regulation, after all of my healing, after all of my growth work, I don't like conflict. My body responds to my kids having conflict or my husband. If my husband, even if he's having emotions, my body can tend to respond with, like giant sirens and signals internally. I can go into fight and flight mode. I can go into that freeze mode where I'm like trying to like do something but I feel frozen. I can go into that fawning where I'm like overly attuning to like what do you need? What are you feeling? What can I do? How can I preemptively make sure I don't set you off or I don't make it worse? How do I make it better? How do I make you feel better?

Speaker 1: 7:22

Right, I can have this responsiveness, but it's not an appropriate response to what's happening right now and that's your very first sign that you are in dysregulation, and I think of dysregulation, not that you're having a fight, flight freeze response, but that you're having it not in response to what's actually happening right now, but that you're having it not in response to what's actually happening right now. It's a remembered pattern. Your body is perceiving what's happening right now as something that happened in the past or an expected future threat. The threat is not in the room with us. I want to say that again Is the threat in the room with you? Can your body, can your nervous system attune to and feel where you are right now, when you are how you are? Do you have a right relationship, an emotional response, an emotional presence and attunement and responsiveness to where you are, who you are, who you're with and what's happening? Can you feel your access to movement and mobility? This is really important because we need fight, flight freeze fun. I'm going to give you some language for these that is probably different than what you've necessarily heard. I want you to think of these not as trauma responses, not as dysregulation, but of movement patterns. This is a somatic, soma relationship and movement relationship and movement Fight energy.

Speaker 1: 9:09

That energy that happens in your body is an energy against. There's an energy forward, there's an up activation, right. So the energy is wanting to move up and out. It is wanting to mobilize you. It is trying to get you ready to throw a fist, it is trying to get you ready to put your arms up. It's getting you aggressively moving against something. So there is an energy, there is a mobility of muscle activation, there's a heart rate increase. You're moving faster. There's something happening in your mind, in your body, that is revving up. There's a fire burning, there's a speeding up, there's an intensity, and that intensity is moving up and out and against. It's moving against something with a fist. It's moving against something with an activation, an anger, a rage.

Speaker 1: 10:01

This can be passive, aggressive, if you're having a fight energy, but you're also trying to repress it, right. So there's there's the fight energy, there's the fist, but then there's also this energy in you that's trying to like, be kind and coy and nice and sweet, but it's still coming out. It's still coming out because it's been this pressure cooker and it's been building and building, and building and building, and then all of a sudden it comes out sideways and it's not even about that thing. That can be a fight energy in your body. And here's the thing fight energy can be and is often a very healthy response to things.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Fight energy is what gives you boundaries. It's what reminds you of your inner no or not right now, or I need to push this. This person is too close for us to have healthy relationship and I need some distance. I need some space. I need some time. This is your breaks. We need and want to have our bodies to have the ability to fight.

Speaker 1: 11:07

The difference is when is that fight energy keeping you from connection with your spouse? Because every time they say something that triggers you, you don't know how to access healthy fight energy and so you're accessing a maladaptive fight energy or a fight energy that's repressed from the past keeps coming out sideways at your kids because you don't know how to set boundaries. You only know how to yell, how to scream, how to overreact. How do we energetically have a posture that still allows us to fight? But we know it's a centered fight, so fight again. It's that movement forward and towards Flight energy. Flight energy is a very intense energy. Away from it is a mobilization again, so it's a hyper arousal. There is an activation that goes up and out, but this goes away from the problem. Anxiety can look like a flight energy because you're trying to preemptively prevent, you're trying to get away from the problem. You're trying to preemptively solve the problem, overworking, overthinking that flight energy of you. Preemptively don't say anything, you keep your mouth shut, you pretend it's not happening, you distract yourself. Right, that flight energy?

Speaker 1: 12:40

When conflict happens with your partner or with your kids, your instinct is I need to get away from this, I need this to not be happening. I need you to go somewhere else, I need you to go watch the TV, I need to distract you, I need this to be further away from me, but with my energies moving back and away from the problem. A fawn energy is an activation. So the fawn energy is very interesting because there's several different things happening. And remember, this is not happening logically and this is not happening in your own agency. Your body is doing this for you. When a fly comes your way and you swat it away, that is a nervous system response. This is the same thing, a perfect example.

Speaker 1: 13:29

So my kids, maybe like a month ago, went to a park by our house and there was another group of kids there who actually aggressively kind of attacked them. There was a conflict that happened and it was so fascinating because some of the kids had a fight energy. They moved towards it and against it with anger and aggression, and some kids wanted to just run away. Some kids shut down and they did nothing. They said nothing, they were frozen. Some kids had one response while the threat was active and then, as soon as they were safe, their bodies had a whole different response. Right, each of our bodies have a response. That's kind of our go-to. It's our most instinctual, it's our most natural pattern because it's so deeply ingrained.

Speaker 1: 14:19

When I think of regulation, when I'm teaching regulation not I mean one to my personal self and my personal life, but also with my clients I'm working with regulation. My goal is that your body, your brain, your agency, you have access to mobilize all of these responses in a healthy way. You have the ability to up-regulate and down-regulate. You have the ability to fight. You have the ability to run away. You have the ability to upregulate and downregulate. You have the ability to fight. You have the ability to run away. You have the ability to fawn. You have the ability to freeze, to slow down, to pause, but you also have the ability to move and mobilize and metabolize that after it happens. So let's jump back into fawn.

Speaker 1: 15:04

So the FON response the first thing that happens in a FON response that's very subtle is there's a disassociation of self. So there's a freeze that happens, and that freeze is an internal you don't feel your natural response. Natural response. So there's a freeze in that you don't feel you. You don't feel your emotions, your sensitivity, your boundaries, your capacity, your consent. There is a disassociation of I don't feel self. And then there is this all of your attention goes to the other. Now a lot of people will name this people pleasing, but it has nothing to do with people pleasing. It has sorry, it has nothing to do with pleasing other people.

Speaker 1: 15:53

If you think of this in the terms of there's a tiger, there's a tiger and the fight response is I'm going to fight this tiger. I'm going to throw some fists. I'm going to try to rip its hair. I'm going to aggressively move against it. Flight is I'm going to run away from this tiger? I'm going to throw some fists. I'm going to try to rip its hair. I'm going to aggressively move against it. Flight is, I'm going to run away from this tiger. Fawning is I am going. There is an activation in my body that says this is dangerous, this is not okay, I'm not safe, I'm not okay, but I don't think I can fight, I don't think I can run away and I don't think playing dead will work. I am going to try to appease the tiger. I'm going to try to pet the tiger. I'm going to try to play nice. I'm going to try to distract the tiger into thinking I'm its friend, not its food. That is the fawning response. It is not a I want to be nice and kind and loving.

Speaker 1: 16:41

It is a nervous system trauma response that you learned how you are safe in relationships, how you are safe in belonging to your partner, to your kids. I have to control, manipulate and I don't use the word manipulation as if it's this evil thing you internally have a over-responsibility of. I have to control the temperature of the tiger so that I don't get attacked because I can't fight the tiger, I can't run from the tiger, I have to be in relationship to the tiger, so I have to appease it. A lot of people who had complex traumas, a lot of people who had really dysregulated parents and that might not even be on the scale of trauma. This might just be that you had parents who got really, really angry really fast. You had to walk on eggshells. They didn't ever have emotional responsibility, they didn't have emotional intelligence, and so you, even as a child, had to learn.

Speaker 1: 17:47

It's not safe for me to have emotions because their emotions are so big. My body takes over the job. I will manage my behavior. I will manage my emotions so well because I have to protect myself from their emotions. Because their emotions attack me. Their emotions are pulled away from me. So I have to earn and appease and please and manipulate this other person into loving me. And how I do that is by needing nothing and wanting nothing and to make myself an image of what they want and need me to be. That's a lot.

Speaker 1: 18:25

That fawn response is fairly complicated and that's why it can be really hard for people to learn how to heal unless they have this subtle language of the nervous system of understanding. This is not your oh, I'm loving you. This is you have an existential fear. You have this deep, deep freeze of. It's not that you don't have boundaries, it's that you can't feel them and you don't know how to access the fight energy that says I'm going to stay here, but I know how to assert myself and what I need, while staying in connection and relationship to you. Your body can't feel is this a tiger? Or am I now married or in relationship to someone who's not a tiger? But my body still thinks of them as a tiger. So I'm still relating to you, like I did in that abusive or that dysfunctional relationship with my parents or with a previous partner.

Speaker 1: 19:21

I'm still responding, reacting as if that's still true, because what happens with trauma, what happens with dysregulation, is that your body continues the pattern even after it's over. Even after it's over. That is a huge part of healing. Can your body feel when the threat leaves the room? Can your body feel when the threat leaves the room? Can your body feel that you are no longer a child, that you are no longer so vulnerable? You are no longer in a position where you don't have access to fight and flight and community right. You have a way to get away. You have money, you have a car, you have a home, you have boundaries, you have ways that you can stay in relationship to this person while also being far enough away that you are safe.

Speaker 1: 20:14

And this fawn response is very, very common, especially in women, because a lot of times, especially historically, relationally, women were in a position where they couldn't fight off and they couldn't get away from the danger, especially because so much of our dysregulation, so much of our trauma, it's relational to people. So much of our trauma it's relational to people. Relational trauma and drama is very different than, let's say, a natural disaster or something like that, where there's a very clear threat, there's a very clear safety, there's a very clear, often community, response, there's a name to what's given. People recognize what's happening. A lot of times, when there's relational family issues going on, no one's naming it, no one's talking about it and there's no one there to witness and have an appropriate response to it. So you internalize it. So we've gone over fight, we've gone over flight, we've gone over fun.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Next we're going to talk about freeze, and freeze again, like fawn, can be very simplistic and clear and sometimes it can be really subtle and sneaky. So a freeze response is where there is an internal activation or numbness and sometimes on the I'm going to say more about this because I just said two things that kind of contradict themselves. Some people have a freeze where on the outside, they're paralyzed, they are, they feel like they can't do anything, they can't say anything. There is a frozenness externally, but internally there is massive amounts of activation. There's tons of anxiety, there's overthinking. It's like internally there's this activation of I want to run but I have to freeze. It's like you're trying to run through mud. It's like there's bees buzzing in your chest and your belly but you can't activate. So there's this internal activation and this external freezing that happens where there's a rigidity to your muscles, there's blood pumping and breath is moving so quickly but you're not moving.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Then there's the functional freeze. This is you are going through the motions, there's activity, it looks like there's activity there, looks like there's aliveness, but internally there is this frozenness, this numbness, this shutdown. So if fawning is moving aggressively towards with like I'm going to pet the tiger, I'm going to hug the tiger. I'm going to aggressively come towards you with this peasing and a pleasing and fixing and fight. Is this fist energy against and flight? Is this energy away? Freeze is either you're frozen but there's so much happening inside, or you're still going through the motions but you feel dead inside.

Speaker 1: 23:33

That's the functional freeze and I'm going to bring the language to of the shutdown, collapse, whereas externally and or internally, you're having this lack of mobility, this flaccidity right Of if some of the others. There's this muscle activation here. You're not accessing your mobilization. You're not accessing movement or response. You're not accessing movement or response. You're not accessing fight energy. You're not accessing even just walking. It's like everything takes too much energy. There is a shutdown, there's a lowness and slowness and if you are a visual person, I'm going to include some visuals and some worksheets in the description of this podcast so that you can see some visuals of these. It can really really help to be able to see and see some of the words, see some of the experiences. I have some more like examples of what these can look and feel like, but I hope that helps you to understand that these responses, they are a pattern.

Speaker 1: 24:45

It's a movement that's happening energetically and emotionally and it's happening in your actual muscles, your heart rate, your breath. It's happening in the way that you're either doing something or not doing something. So when you're parenting your kids, is there a hyper response or a hyper response, or are you responding in your window of tolerance? You're present. Your creative, problem-solving brain is happening. There's access to agency and choice. It's not like your arm is just moving on its own. You're doing the movement You're doing, the choosing.

Speaker 1: 25:23

The problem isn't dysregulation. The problem is that there's no relationship to regulation. There's no relationship to this thing that's happening underneath our mental thoughts and mindset. Everyone talks so much about mental health and mindset. This isn't just happening in your head, it's happening in your chest, it's happening in your throat, in your eyes, in the ways that you lose your words and you can't talk. Or you're having a conversation and you can't find your words until after the conversation ends and you get home. Find your words until after the conversation ends and you get home and all of a sudden you were like, oh, now I've got some shit to say, but I couldn't feel that when I was in their presence, I lost the fight and the fire to be able to say the hard thing and have a backbone. I literally can't feel my own backbone because I learned not to have any needs. I learned that my consent didn't matter. What mattered is what you wanted and needed from me. I don't even know what I want and need anymore.

Speaker 1: 26:28

When women say I don't feel like myself or I don't feel myself, we mean that literally I can't feel my mobilization, my activation. I can't feel when I'm shut down because I've't feel my mobilization, my activation. I can't feel when I'm shut down, because I've been taught my entire life to disassociate from my body, to disassociate from my emotion, because those are inconvenient. Those are inconvenient and they're uncomfortable. They're uncomfortable for everybody around me. They're uncomfortable for my parents. There's no room. I just need to do things. I just need to look at my to-do list, I just need to look at the roles and the performances. What do you want from me? What do you need? What do you like?

Speaker 1: 27:07

And you're not in tune with your whole body's aliveness. So when you think about your fight and your flight and your fun and your freeze, I want you to start thinking of it as a mobilization, a movement, a way that your body and your soul is alive and responding to the environment, but remembering that it's not just responding to here and now. Your body is a memory keeper. Your body I hate the saying, honestly your body keeps the score. I would say. Your body remembers patterns. Your body remembers how to survive. Your body remembers how to be in relationship to the tiger and survive. And maybe your body learned to fight or flight and freeze and fawn, or flight and freeze and fawn. However, your body learned how to do that.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Regulation comes from teaching your body that there's other options available to you and finding that hinge of choice, finding that hinge of agency of there are other ways to metabolize, fight energy than yelling at my kid. That's not effective, that doesn't work here and now. I need to update my nervous system responses. There's no such thing as resetting them. There are ways to update them.

Speaker 1: 28:31

There are ways to create more capacity, the ability to hold dysregulation without acting outside your values. For example, can you feel that anger happening in your body? Can you feel the sensation and the movement and the energy and the live wireness of it and know how to move, metabolize and mobilize that anger in a healthy way that is good for you and your kids? Do you know that that energy could also set boundaries or create masculine systems that you need to hold the nurturing that's happening in your home? Or did you know that there's quite literally ways that you can move that? Through music, through movement, through emotional regulation, through writing? There's a million different somatics tool right, somatics is just this umbrella term of the relationship to yourself, the relationship to your animal soma body, the holistic self. So when you're thinking of regulation, when you're thinking of dysregulation.

Speaker 1: 29:38

As you look at these worksheets, start thinking about what builds my capacity, what builds my ability to be able to move these things, what builds my availability to have this happen and to respond appropriately. And a big part of that is that presence is being able to feel where, when and how. Are you the ability to witness my nervous system is my body. So replace nervous system anytime you want with my body. My body is over or under responding to what's actually happening right here and right now in front of me. Can I witness this from an outside perspective? Can I gain perspective of zooming in and zooming out of? Is the threat in the room with us? Is this threat my control or my responsibility? Is this dangerous? My control or my responsibility? Is this dangerous?

Speaker 1: 30:41

So much of the work that I do honestly is helping women recalibrate their bodies and their nervous systems and their souls to right relationship to their agency. When it's parenting, are you under or over responding or are you appropriately responding? Are your decisions and your behaviors, whether that's action or non-action? Does your aggressiveness or your anger, or your fight or your flight or your appeasing does it match the situation? Can you, when you're in an argument with your partner.

Speaker 1: 31:18

Stop fawning, come back to yourself where you can actually feel your full self, so you're aware of what you want and need so well. You're so embodied, you're so with yourself that now you can actually connect to what your partner actually needs, because your head's not up their ass. That's my go-to right and especially in marriage, my go-to is fawning. And when I was trying to heal from fawning, I started over correcting and was starting to disassociate from him too, cause it's like, oh, I don't know how to feel myself when I'm with you, so I'm just going to disassociate so hardcore from you too. Neither of those felt like great responses.

Speaker 1: 32:01

What helped was am I centered in myself? Am I embodied and present? Am I in my creativity and my connectivity to me and to you, to the room? It is my brain and my body and my soul. Are they turned on and here and present and in the room, so that I can relate to you? I can connect to you without losing access to myself. I can hold a boundary with you without being an asshole. I can set a standard or an expectation with my kid without it being passive, aggressive or a martyr. Expectation with my kid without it being passive, aggressive or a martyr. I can understand when I need to pull away and have distance from my business without burning it down. I know when my body needs some space and some healthy disassociation, because I'm overly attuned to the world and the news and what's happening. I can feel that healthy, right relationship between me and not me, mine and not mine.

Speaker 1: 33:01

I have a relationship of movement, of mobility. Think of this as literal mobility. You need strength, you need muscle tension, but you don't want to be so rigid that you lose all flexibility. Right, because a lot of injuries happen because we are so overtraining one area that we have weakness or we have so much strength but it's like a rigidity, it's a hardness and it feels rigid. You have tension in your body and you're constantly bracing and you're never breathing. You're holding your breath or there's not enough tension breathing. You're holding your breath or there's not enough tension, there's not enough strength. You feel weak and you feel powerless and you don't feel your backbone. You feel like there's not enough tension, there's not enough strength, there's not enough mobility. You feel like a little wobbly noodle. You don't feel the rigidity of your bones and your muscle. There's this movement between the rigid and the strength and the fight and the flight, and then there's also this flow and ease and slowdown. It's this healthy relationship to.

Speaker 1: 34:12

I have this masculine, healthy energy in me and I also have this feminine, and it's not that I'm ever in the polar opposites, it's that I know when and how to move between the two. I know how to have a healthy, right response to what's happening right in this moment. I am in leadership and connection and awareness to who I am and where I am and what I'm doing. I can feel my leadership, I can feel my agency, I can feel what I'm doing and what I'm not doing. When women move into this, they become in such deep self-trust that I have watched them have so much capacity for things that would have thrown them into massive dysregulation. Because, again, it's not your window of tolerance, isn't this? Oh, if I'm regulated, I'll never have activation, I'll never have dysregulation.

Speaker 1: 35:10

I can tolerate having massive amounts of energy and emotion and struggle or conflict or boundary violations or triggers or conflict with someone else or even within myself, but I know how to hold it, I know how to meet it, I know how to match it with the proper response. I know how much to move towards or away from. I can stay centered and rooted in who I am, into my values, into who I'm becoming, into what matters to me. I can stay centered and rooted in who I am, into my values, into who I'm becoming, into what matters to me. I can make decisions and we didn't in this podcast, we didn't even get into the relational dynamics, especially of parenting that your kids might have a very different nervous system response than you do. Their dysregulation might mirror your own.

Speaker 1: 36:03

And let me tell you, when you create more capacity for your dysregulation, for your emotions, that will help you not fear your kids. Whatever you build capacity for in yourself, you will build capacity for your partner, for your kids, for your business, for your clients. The greatest, I truly believe that one of the greatest skills you can have as a leader is this emotional nervous system regulation. You need to have the strongest nervous system in the room, the strongest but also the most flexible, the one that can move between rigidity and flexibility, softness and hardness. You know how and when and where to meet things with more pressure or less. You know how to use your gas and your brakes because you've felt that You've leaned into your edges of high and low and medium health. You know how to mobilize and move and metabolize all of that energy of being human. So I really hope that today's podcast, this was a lot of information.

Speaker 1: 37:15

So just take a big, deep breath with me. Think of one small doable miracle of this. This could be the smallest piece of just noticing throughout your day. Maybe it's your marriage where you're struggling most, maybe it's in your motherhood, maybe it's with business, maybe it's your own inner healing. Start noticing what is the way that I get dysregulated. What is the movement of it? Is it towards and against? Is it away from? Is it soft? Is it a fist? Is it a fawning? Is it a running away? Is it a shutting down? What does that feel like? What are the signs and the symptoms and the emotions and the sensations that I get in my body that tell me that I'm losing my presence, that I'm losing my agency? What are the yellow and orange flags and what are the red flags where I can see? Oh my gosh, I am a dysregulated toddler right now.

Speaker 1: 38:15

I am a toddler throwing a tantrum and this response is over or under, reacting to the reality. How can I go co-regulate? Can I go get a drink a hot drink, a cold drink? Can I go for a walk? Can I put on music? Can I go put myself in a timeout, not as a punishment, not as I've done something bad, but like I need a minute. I need to go cry. I need to go wrap myself in a weighted blanket, I need to go hail Mary, text my friend, I need to go call my sister.

Speaker 1: 38:48

What do you need when you're in that state where you're losing yourself, you feel lost to the conflict, you feel lost to the trigger, where your nervous system in your body is taking over and you don't feel like yourself. You don't feel like you, you don't feel like you're responding appropriately how you want to. You're overeating or over drinking or overworking, or you're burnt out. And here's the hard thing. A lot of women have been in a global state of a functional trauma response for so long. You don't even know what it feels like to be outside of that. And that is a lot of the work that we do in coaching is reconnecting your relationship to your body, to your soma, to your soul, to the animal body that is remembering patterns, and we update those patterns. We notice them, we name them, we witness the subtleties and then we update them, we mature them.

Speaker 1: 39:52

If you want some more support in this nervous system, regulation and understanding the way that you respond to conflict, the way that you have these deeply ingrained patterns, and not just seeking back for why or finding who's responsible, but truly just seeing what is my posture, what is my movement, what is my mobility and how do we bring more health? Maybe you need a little bit more rigidity, maybe you need a little bit more flow, you need a little bit more softness. You need to be able to unbrace and unclench. You need to be able to unclench your fists and your jaw and you want to just be able to breathe and sink into life a little bit more. Or maybe you need a more sturdy, solid backbone. You need to be able to access your muscle. You need to be able to hit that gas a little harder. Or you need to find somewhere.

Speaker 1: 40:50

You live in those extremes, this like you live in the hyper or the hypo, and you want to find that happy balance, that happy medium where you can go fast but you can also go slow, and you can also find this medium place where there is health and calm and an appropriate pace, where you feel present, you're not going too fast or you're not going too slow, it's not too much or too little. You're not under or over responding, you're responding appropriately and you're connected. You're connected to yourself and you're connected to your kids and your partner. You're connected to your work. You feel like you're in the room. You feel like you're in the room, you feel like you're all there, you feel your aliveness, but you get out of that cycle of feeling everything all at once to the point where it's like you feel like you're being flooded, or you feel nothing, where you're like it's too much and not enough at the same time. Or it's this you feel lifeless, you feel frozen, you feel numb, you feel like you're floating above your life. These are all things that are happening in your body. It's happening in your soma, your soul, and so if you want help and support with that, I would love to work with you.

Speaker 1: 42:06

I have a few spots open for one-on-one in the fall. I also have a private podcast where you can listen to more deep dives into somatic healing, more tools, more workbooks. It's a very easy, accessible, low cost way to be able to dive into the somatic work, especially if you're someone who, just like you just want to DIY it right now. You just want to learn more and soak it in. Or maybe you're a practitioner or a therapist or coach who wants to be able to really integrate and learn more language about somatics. I have that private podcast available. It also has some breath work, some guided somatic sessions.

Speaker 1: 42:50

Eventually it's going to have some somatic movement. I have not figured out a good way to video it. Every time I have tried to video the movement it's like the worst. I need to find someone to help me, because I'm not in perfectionism anymore but I do want things to be quality and for them to like feel like a really good experience. So eventually there will be those. But right now it's just a private podcast and it's really a powerful place, but it's also really easily accessible. So those are just two different ways that I can help you and support you. But again, if you loved this, definitely go check out in the show notes. I have some of those workbooks that will really help give you visuals. There's also, if you look back, there's two of those previousbooks that will really help give you visuals. There's also, if you look back, there's two of those previous podcasts on somatics. And let me know.

Speaker 1: 43:36

I would love, absolutely love, to hear from you. What was your aha moment? What did you notice in this podcast? What questions do you have? Where are you noticing your fight, your fight, your freeze, your fawn? What resonated with you? I love hearing from you guys. I love hearing your questions, your aha moments. If you loved this podcast, will you take a moment and follow along? That way, you get all of the new podcasts sent straight to your podcast app and leave a quick review. It only takes a minute or two to leave a review, but this really helps the podcast. It helps me help more moms and if you have a friend who would love this, share the episode, share it on social media and tag me so I can thank you and send me a DM. That's why I do this is to support you and help you.

Speaker 1: 44:28

I think so many people are so hyper focused on what moms do. My heart is to always be a space and a place where we focus about who you are and how it feels to be you, and what your motherhood looks and feels like, and how you're moving through life and your pace and your heart and your healing and your nervous system. And, yeah, I want to give you language and I want you to feel seen and heard, but I also want to give you tangible, realistic tools that help you, because I think so often we hear either the super positive of like everything's great and pretty and perfect, or this everything's awful and pretty and perfect, or this everything's awful and we hate motherhood. And you know, I personally live somewhere in this weird messy middle where it's like I have this beautiful, wonderful life that I love and also it's hard sometimes. And healing for me, regulation for me. That shit was hard.

Speaker 1: 45:28

I had complex PTSD. I had massive amounts of sexual trauma and trauma in relationships that impacted me. The waves of that impact happened long after it ended. It wasn't just what I survived, it was how I survived, kept me stuck, it kept me frozen, it kept me feeling and acting and relating in ways that didn't feel like me, like I didn't know who I was outside of those trauma responses I didn't know. Oh my gosh, like I think back to my marriage, I think back to my like early motherhood of.

Speaker 1: 46:09

I was so frozen, I was so stuck in fawning and people pleasing and I was so numb, and yet I don't think anyone knew I really, truly. I mean maybe some people close to me somewhat saw, but I was so good at the functional, at being a high functioner, where the worse internally I felt sometimes, the better I showed up externally, the more controlled and the more I looked put together. And even when I was so burnt out, even when I was so exhausted, I was still going and I was still happy and grateful. I truly was. I was still so grateful and I loved my life. And so there was this dichotomy where I feel like I didn't know who or how to talk about it. I didn't have the language that I have now, especially of somatics, of how I could be feeling and experiencing something that didn't necessarily reflect externally that I could be doing the right things and going through the right motions, but that didn't feel right, that I could feel so, so stuck and paralyzed and alone, even when I was surrounded.

Speaker 1: 47:23

And so, anyways, I hope today's episode helped you, I hope it encouraged you and take some big, deep breaths. Go listen to some good music, go move your body. Moving your body is such an amazing way to mobilize energy. We're going to talk about that on a future podcast. I'm not going to go off that tangent because I need to end this podcast, but I hope you have a great day and I'll see you next time.

Speaker 1: 47:55

Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the motherhood mentor podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon. I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small, tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life. To get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review, send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women, and that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day, take really good care of yourself and I'll see you next time.