EP 171: The hidden signs you're about to uplevel

You asked for the next level… and now everything feels like it’s falling apart.
Your body’s exhausted.
Your emotions are louder than your strategy.
Your clarity? Gone.

This isn’t failure. It’s ascension.
And most people misread it because they’ve never been taught how to hold themselves in the stretch between who they were and who they’re becoming.

In this solo episode, Jessica breaks down the raw and rarely-named reality of energetic expansion: the identity recalibration that happens after you say yes to your next level - but before it fully lands.

If you’ve been feeling foggy, fatigued, overly emotional, or suddenly unsure of everything… this is the conversation that will help you finally exhale.

This episode offers the emotional language and energetic clarity to meet what you're moving through, not as something to fix, but as something sacred.

🧠 What You'll Learn:
▫️ The difference between emotional misalignment and nervous system growth
▫️ How to recognise “ascension symptoms” for what they are - not self-sabotage
▫️ Why physical illness, emotional chaos, and relationship friction are often signs of expansion
▫️ How your nervous system tests for safety before it lets you rise
▫️ The energetic mirror of challenges (and how to meet them from your next-level self)

🌿 Reflection Questions:

Where am I confusing discomfort with misalignment?

What patterns repeat every time I say yes to more?

How might this be a sacred reconfiguration, not a setback?

💥 Ready to decode what your ascension symptoms are really trying to tell you?

Book your Embodied Business Mapping Session with Jessica for a 2-hour deep dive that makes the invisible visible - and maps your next move with nervous system alignment, not pressure.

Limited spots available.
Details at jessicaread.com/offerings

Or come share your experience over on Instagram: @jessica.read.ilc
Let us know what ascension symptoms are showing up for you right now.

You’re not spiraling. You’re stabilising.
And you don’t have to meet your next level alone.

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Resource with Jessica Read. This is the podcast for visionary entrepreneurs who are here to build a thriving business and luminous life, fully resourced from the inside out. Here we unlock the magic of inner alignment, emotional mastery, and energetic strategies, so you can lead with clarity, confidence, and ease. This is your space to shed what no longer serves you, embody your highest potential, and expand into the next evolution of your business and soul's work. You are meant for more, and it all starts here.

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You asked for the growth and now you feel like everything is falling apart. That clarity that you had gone your body, exhausted your emotions all over the place, here is the truth that most people are not going to tell you. We are not treating these symptom by symptom. This is not a breakdown. This is actually a part of the becoming. Welcome back to resource. This is the space that we hold, the human behind the business, and the nervous system behind the strategy. If we have not met, my name is Jessica Read I am an intuitive business mentor, a clinical hypnotherapist, EFT, tapping practitioner and creator of the energies of Success, which is the only way to create a successful, scalable, and Sustainable Sustainable business and today we are diving into a phase that most entrepreneurs misread. One that I am so personally, deeply familiar with and one that I see as a starting point of so many clients come into work with me for the somatic, emotional and energetic signals that don't mean that you are breaking or that you need to give up on your business, that actually mean that you are expanding. This is the part of growth that no one warns you about, where everything that you've outgrown starts to ache on its way out. And that next version of you, she's there and she's starting to whisper in, but she's hard to hear because the challenges that you are facing, the problems that you are facing in the ways that they are coming in that you don't see to be related to your business, they are distracting you. So by the end of this episode, you are not only going to understand what is happening in your body, but you are going to know how to hold yourself through it because your nervous system is not failing you. It is simply being stretched into a new identity So let's talk about these symptoms, first of all, because. They are not a problem, but you are likely seeing them as a problem. Symptoms like physical illness, changes in your relationship dynamics changes in the way that your clients are interacting with you, people dropping away from your world. So often we sit in these challenges and we're sitting there and we're going, what is happening? Something's wrong. But that moment when you said yes to your new level. Yes to pitching to the big podcasts. Yes, to launching the high ticket offer. Yes, to launching your own podcast. Yes. To that next thing. And then suddenly your energy crashes and you're tired, and you're unclear, and you're emotional. You might be thinking, oh my gosh, did I just make a huge mistake? That discomfort, that's not failure. That is your system recalibrating to receive more. The emotional surges, the brain fog, the tight chest, the sudden fatigue, the questioning of your messaging, your prices, your offer, your strategy, your whole business. Sometimes you join your life choices. It is your body releasing that version of you that can't go with you to that next level. But we see these as a setback. I have experienced countless ascension symptoms, and at first they used to really put me off. And now I, I get excited by them. So for me, ascension symptoms were coming in the form of physical illness for a long time. As I was moving into holding more space, being a deeper healer, I had purge after purge in the form of stomach bugs. I did a launch a couple of weeks ago and I had my live launch event, and the next day I got a head cold. Previously, every time I would launch, the dynamics in my relationship would change. Okay. This is your upper limit. This is ascension symptoms. I had a great call with someone the other day who framed these as growing pains. He was like, I, didn't hear, well this session, it was one of my one-on-one sessions. He said, I'm here for this session because I have growing pain. And I love that. And sometimes they're going to come in the form of thoughts and old beliefs and stories that are coming up for you to deal with. And sometimes they're going to come up in other ways, like a difficult client who you then is gifting you the opportunity to enforce a new level of boundary. People dropping away from your world who's actually creating space for new to come in. But you are there going, oh my gosh, these people are leaving me. And we're bringing in fear and scarcity. So that moment when you are ghosted in the dms, or that moment when the clarity that you had turns into chaos, the minute that you finally raise your prices or that moment when that aligned action that you know you need to take in your business makes you want to throw up. This is what I call meeting your edge, okay? And not the edge of burnout, not the edge of how much you have can tolerate, but the edge of your breakthrough. This is where your nervous system says, are we safe to expand into this? Like it's picking up over the wall, looking over, Hmm, what's this like? Is it safe? Can we expand into this? And if you don't have the tools to regulate this moment, then you will shrink and sabotage and spiral yourself back into old patterns that feel familiar, that are quote unquote. Safe, but are keeping you stuck. And there will always be friction inside of you between the part who wants to grow into that next step and the part of you who wants to keep you safe. And guess what? Survival will win if we're not aware of it. So I hear a lot, you know, if it's uncomfortable, it must be misaligned. A lot of women that I work with, they confuse emotional intensity with misalignment. Not all tension is a no. And to be honest, when people are coming into my world, ascension symptoms is generally why they're coming in. There's two levels of awareness that they have. They're either well aware it's an ascension symptom and they're saying that to me. Trying to increase my income. I'm releasing this thing. I'm about to go on a, you know, tour, speaking on stages. I'm about to do X, Y, Z. This is a new level. I can see this pattern. It's come back. I can see this sabotage. This is a new sabotage for me. I just became unwell. Whatever it is, they know it's an ascension symptom. They label it a growth symp, a growth pain, an ascension symptom, a next level block. Then I have women come in who are experiencing the same things, but they don't have that level of awareness yet. And that's what I really hope that this episode gives you is a level of awareness of around your ascension symptoms. Okay? So they're coming in thinking that this emotional intensity is meaning that everything is misaligned and the clients who are leaving their world, that they're doing something wrong and that the person saying no. Is a personal attack and that the problems in their relationship that happen to come up every time they try and launch that, that's just a coincidence. And the illness that comes up when they go to raise their prices or they go to actually launch that new program, but then something takes their attention away and there's a crisis in their life and they have to give all of their energy to that, that that's a coincidence too. And now they're struggling to run their business. None of that is coincidence. It is ascendent symptoms, and every time you get to these edges, you are going to be gifted challenges, okay? Challenges that you can either meet at the same as the same version of you who's having the challenge or challenges that you can meet as the ascended version of you. In which case, it's almost like that ding, ding, ding. You get to pass into the next level. Some tension is growth. Some fear is wisdom. Some fear is trauma, and some fear is just a nervous system. Learning how to hold a bigger vision and there is a difference, and you learn to feel and understand the difference and how you experience it as you learn how you body moves through safety. How it expresses the nose, how it expresses the fear and the contraction. Misalignment might feel still heavy or certain expansion will feel raw, chaotic, but alive. Your body knows the difference, okay? So you don't need to panic. You need to listen because your growth is happening in layers. There is a timing to this. There is a timing to all of the layers. I did not begin this work from a spreadsheet and a five year plan. I began it from navigating one of the deepest, darkest holes that I'd ever been in in my life. My body cracked open, everything that I had suppressed, everything that was ready to come up. The urgency, the proving, the pressure, the beliefs that were ready to come up to be healed did because I stopped blocking it because I stopped seeing it all as a challenge that I couldn't get past. And believe me, I have the channel of struggle and a channel of crisis. I've recorded a whole episode on that in my chart. They don't stop. The challenges always come up, but what I have deeply seen, even through the depths of agoraphobia and panic disorder and illness and all, even through the depths of some of the hardest times of my life, the PTSD, the hardest times, I know that on the other side of those challenges that I have so much more to give. I have so much more internal capacity to hold for others, and I have so much more to give and so many lessons to share. My next level of receiving comes on the other side of every challenge, and I know that deeply you cannot build a sustainable business from the patterns that you were praised for in survival. Understanding these is so important. You're overgiving, your overachieving, your overthinking to start to observe where your ascension symptoms are coming up for you. What is happening? And again, it might not be directly related to your business. What is happening in your relationship, in your health? What is happening each time you are stepping in? You're saying, I want this thing, I want this next level. I want this experience. What are the things that you are thinking is getting in your way? The buts. The things that seem out of your control that seem random but are not random, that seem like a coincidence, but not a coincidence. The things that seem to always happen every time you try and grow. Have you heard yourself saying that every time I try and do this, this happens, something goes wrong. Well, let's look at that from a different perspective. If that is an ascension symptom, then how do you deal with that differently? Because these mean that something deeper is ready to leave your field. So if you are thinking, why does this feel heavier now that I've said yes, or why do I feel like I'm grieving my own growth? Because that's a thing too. Then let me be the mirror. Okay? This is the beginning of a sacred reconfiguration. You are stabilizing, you are falling into alignment. And if you're moving through this in between space, but you're not quite anchored yet. I have a one-on-one container. That is the only way to work with me privately outside of a retainer. It is a one-time call, an embodied business mapping session where we will make the invisible clear for you. We will meet whatever needs to be met in your energy, your mind, your strategy, your truth. Okay, so we can refine or redefine what needs to be dealt with from a grounded nervous system and map your next move from alignment, not panic, okay? Your ascension symptoms deserve to be seen, held, and moved through, but bring awareness to them now so they don't sabotage you again next time. And if you would like to book an embodied business mapping session, then these are limited because I highly, highly value my time and my space and my capacity. So we spend two hours together, two hour deep dive into whatever is coming up most for you in this moment. We break through, you can leave with clarity, leave with mapped out next steps. I'll give you those too that are deeply aligned to you and your nervous system health and your capacity. So come to me with your ascension symptoms in our embodied business mapping session, but also come over to Instagram, jessica.read.ilc and let me know what kind of ascension symptoms do you experience, and I'll see you next week inside resourced.

13:58

Thank you for tuning into resource with Jessica Reed. If today's episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to share it with another soul led entrepreneur who is also ready to rise. Make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected because when you are deeply resourced, you become unstoppable. Until next time, my friend, stay resourced. Stay radiant and trust in the magic that is you.