The Awakened Heart: A Podcast for Healing Women
The Awakened Heart: A Podcast for Healing Women is a safe space for trauma survivors and neurodivergent women ready to claim their voice, soften into their truth and feel at home with themselves.
I’m Autumn Moran, a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), certified Life Coach, and 500-hour trained yoga instructor who understands this journey intimately as a neurodivergent woman, trauma survivor and as a therapist and life coach.
Each week, I offer soulful episodes where I intertwine my lived experiences with insights from my therapy practice all with the goal to help women unmask and find peace in their lives by healing trauma and learning how to accommodate their neurodivergence.
Through real talk, mindfulness practices, and gentle healing approaches rooted in trauma-informed wisdom and nervous system care, you’ll find practical tools to help you feel safe in your body, seen in your story and supported in your journey.
This is your sanctuary to soften, heal, and remember that you were and are never too much.
Work with me: Click the link to schedule a free 15 minute consultation.
The Awakened Heart: A Podcast for Healing Women
Stop Calling It Lazy: The Real Story Behind Executive Dysfunction and Trauma
We explore how executive dysfunction is often a nervous system issue, not a willpower problem, and why safety must come before productivity. I share body-based tools, micro steps, and practical supports that melt freeze and honor invisible labor.
In this Epi:
• clear definition of executive function and dysfunction
• shame cycle and women’s invisible labor
• HALT check‑in and basic needs first
• micro tasking and reverse Pomodoro technique
• sensory grounding and co‑regulation
• redefining productivity around capacity
• journal prompts to identify triggers and supports
Connect with Me:
I offer private sessions for therapy if you’re in Texas, and life coaching if you’re outside the state or abroad. Whether you’re healing trauma, navigating a big life shift, or just ready to come home to yourself, I hold space for women just like you everyday.
Fill out a consultation requests via my linktree (http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub) for a free 15 min chat to see if we are a good fit!
Also you can find my link and follow me on instagram & there’s also a badass **Spotify playlist** made for women healing through softness and strength!!!
Welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women, a space where your voice matters, your body is sacred, and your journey home to yourself is honored, no matter how winding the road. I'm Audemaran, a licensed professional counselor and licensed certified life coach. I offer virtual sessions. You can click on the link tree in the show notes to schedule a 15-minute consultation to see if we're a good fit. If you want, if you like what you hear and you want to work with me. I'm also a yoga instructor and I have had to stop yoga since my surgery, and I'm so ready to get back in the beach. I teach beach yoga once a week. So hopefully in two weeks, I will be back on the sand. But ultimately, ladies, I am your companion on this divine path of healing. And today we're going to talk about, we're going to explore executive dysfunctioning. You know, the moments, the times, the life-lived experience of feeling like everything is too much. When your brain knows what to do, but your body just can't. When you tell yourself, just do it, it's not that hard. Just keep going. After this, you can rest. But somehow hours go by and you're frozen, frustrated, maybe even ashamed. And this is not about being lazy or broken. You're experiencing what happens when a nervous system wired for survival collides with a world that demands constant productivity. Today we're going to unpack why that happens, what's really going on in your brain and body, and how you can begin to work with yourself instead of against yourself. But first off, let's define what executive functioning is. Executive functioning is a set of mental skills your brain uses to get things done. It's what helps you plan things, prioritize things, remember things, organize, focus, start and follow through. It's what helps you manage time, make decisions easily. Oh, and let's not forget, it helps with emotion regulation. So when we talk about executive dysfunction, we're talking about a disruption in all some or many parts of these systems. You might have trouble starting tasks, even ones you want to do. You might feel paralyzed by decision making, like I don't care what we eat, just fix it. Just tell me. I don't care where we go, just do it. Just tell me where you want to go. You may forget small things constantly, even though you care. You may get overwhelmed by steps, lists, or clutter. Or you may swing between bursts of intense productivity and total shutdown. And when you live with trauma, complex or developmental trauma, those executive functioning skills can go offline more often, are never fully developed the way they would in a safe, regulated nervous system. Because trauma changes your brain's priorities. Instead of it focusing on planning or time management or organizing, your brain is simply focused on being safe. It's scanning for danger, tracking cues you're in your tracking cues in your environment, or it's managing internal sensations that feel too big. So even though your mind might say, I should clean up the kitchen, your body says, we're not safe enough to do that right now. And your body wins almost every time. So when you've lived through trauma, chronic stress, neglect, relational trauma, your amygdala becomes overactive. That's your brain's alarm system. It tells you when there's a threat and when it's loud, everything else quiets down. Your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that helps you plan, make decisions, and get things done, then starts to go offline when your amygdala is firing because your brain doesn't care about executive tasks when it thinks you're in danger. Then there's the hippocampus, which helps you tell time to know what's now versus what's old. And trauma can shrink or dysregulate the hippocampus, making it hard to sense when something is safe enough or when it's okay to start. So you might know logically that doing laundry isn't dangerous, but your body remembers overwhelm, failure, or criticism around chores and it freezes. Your nervous system says, we've been here before and it didn't feel good. And that's the key. Executive dysfunction and trauma isn't about motivation, it's about safety. When we can't seem to start a follow-through on task, we often feel ashamed. You might think things like, what's wrong with me? Everyone else can do this. Why can't I be like everyone else? I'm so behind. If I just tried harder, I'd be fine. And that shame itself is activating. It keeps your nervous system in a stress loop. You try to push through, your body resists, you freeze, and then you blame yourself. That cycle of overwhelm, avoidance, and self-blame becomes a trauma pattern. And because women are socialized to be caretakers, to hold it all together, and to appear capable no matter what, we internalize the message that struggling with basic tasks is a personal failure. But the truth is, it's not. It's a sign that your brain is trying to protect you in the only way it knows how. That freeze response isn't laziness. It's your body hitting the brakes because something inside doesn't feel safe to move forward. For many women, trauma was either missed or misdiagnosed. And when we say misdiagnosed, the average woman is probably either diagnosed with anxiety or depression. They seem to not want to go outside the box for us women. And for many neurodivergent women, living in a world not designed for our brains can create chronic stress that causes trauma. You were probably told and also experienced and probably still experience a range of anxiety and our depression, and that's all that was treated. When in reality, they were symptoms of unmet needs, unsupportive environments, signs that you're lacking accommodations. So when your executive functioning falters, it might not just be trauma or just neurodivergence. It's often both interacting. That's why traditional advice, like just make a list or use a planner, rarely fucking works. Those tools assume your nervous system is calm and your brain is in access mode. But if you're dysregulated or overwhelmed, no system will stick. You don't need stricter rules or color-coded productivity hacks. You need a nervous system that feels safe enough to engage. And something else that is often experienced is invisible labor. The invisible labor it takes to just exist when you're healing. You're managing symptoms, relationships, sensory overload, emotional flashbacks, maybe physical pain, and still trying to show up for work, family, and daily life. Even tiny acts like getting out of bed, making a meal, sending an email can take 10 times the energy of someone with a fully regulated nervous system. That's not exaggeration. That's neuroscience. I'm not making this a big deal. This is real shit. When you're healing from trauma, everything requires more energy because your body is constantly working to maintain a sense of safety. So if you feel like you're always tired, behind, or struggling to keep up, that's not you failing. That's your nervous system doing its best under impossible conditions. And from there, we often become numb or frozen, stuck because we continue to push through despite our mind and body screaming, begging for it to be differently. And freeze can look like numbing out with TV or scrolling because things feel heavy. It could look like staring, sorry, it could look like starting a task, unable to begin, even though you want to. It can also look like forgetting appointments or losing track of time, feeling disconnected from your body. Or it could be simply going into autopilot, doing the bare minimum just to survive the day, just to make it to that bed, just to turn off, just to not have to deal. Freeze is your body's way of protecting you when fight or flight didn't work. It's like a built-in emergency break. The problem is in modern life, that break gets stuck. Your system doesn't realize the danger is over. So your brain says, do the dishes. And your body says, no, we can't. It's too much. And that conflict between desire and capacity feels awful because it is awful. But here's the truth: you don't need, you don't break freeze by forcing action. You melt freeze by restoring safety. Most of us, most of us women, don't just experience executive dysfunction and isolation. We experience it layered with guilt and comparison. The world rewards visibility, productivity, not invisible healing. So when you're in a season where just keeping yourself fed and alive takes everything you have, you might feel unseen, or even worse, you might feel broken or defective. That's why one of the first steps toward healing executive dysfunction is radical compassion. You have to recognize the labor you're already doing, the emotional labor, the sensory regulation, the invisible caretaking, and start honoring that as a real work because it is, my dear. Just because no one can see it, just because you don't have solid proof of something that you've made doesn't mean you're not doing magical fucking work, necessary work to get to a place where you can produce something if you want. And here's a news flash. If you haven't figured it out by now, you can't think your way out of executive dysfunction. You have to soothe your way out. That means your first goal isn't productivity, it's regulation. Because a regulated body naturally becomes more organized, more focused, and more capable. So instead of asking, how can I make myself do this? Try asking yourself, what would make this feel safer to start? That small shift can change things. It moves you from self-blame to self-support. When you're noticed you're overwhelmed, pause and check in with yourself. Check in with the body. Is it tensed, collapsed, numb? Am I hungry? Thirsty? Overstimulated? Lonely? I have an acronym for that. Like when things feel off, first and foremost, ask yourself, HALT. H A L T. Am I hungry? Feed yourself. Am I angry? Throw some ice cubes on the concrete, scream into a pillow, beat your mattress up with a pillow. Am I lonely? Do I need to phone a friend? Do I need to self-soothe? Cuddle with a pet? Cuddle with a kiddo? Spend time with some elders? Put on a weighted blanket? And tired. Do you need a break? Do you need to rest? If so, please do. Halt. Handle all those things before you try to jump into something else. Do you need movement or stillness? Is it about being still and relaxing, or do you need to shake it up, get the body moving? Do you need comfort or clarity? Is what's expected of you or what you're doing not clear? Is your role to yourself not clear? Are you assuming to take it all on because it wasn't explained or because other parties aren't quite showing up like you thought they should if it's not on you? So ask for clarity. Ask clarifying questions. Or do you need comfort? Do you need to relax? Do you need to rest? Do you need a good conversation? If you have no one to talk to, if you have no support system, 741-741 is a texting hotline for mental health. You can talk to them at any time. It is a real human. They will ask you what's going on and they will try to give you good coping skills before they part. You have resources. You are not alone. Meeting one of these needs, even in a micro way, helps your nervous system come back online. If you are dysregulated, if you are offline, you're not making rational thoughts, rational statements, rational actions, it is a sign that you need to regulate. When things aren't making sense and you feel discombobulated, regulate your nervous system. Hum a song, shake your body, shake and wiggle, put an ice pack on your chest, tell yourself that you're safe, that all is well, that you are allowed to breathe. Ground yourself in the present moment using your five senses. And if you can access deep breathing, inhale deeply and make sure that exhale is longer than the inhale. Make sure the belly is rising, not just the chest. So, what are some trauma-informed body-based ways to start supporting your executive functioning without pressure or shame? First off, micro tasking. When something feels impossible, shrink it down to the smallest possible action. This is where I recommend my reverse, not mine, this is not mine. The reverse Pomodoro technique. So Pomodoro technique assumes, okay, Pomodoro technique is 20 minutes of work, a five-minute break, you do that three times and then you take a real break. If you have control over your daily schedule, work schedule, I encourage you to adopt this. There are apps, there are alarms that are strictly Pomodoro. But when we're talking about executive dysfunctioning, I'm talking about doing something when everything feels impossible. So reverse that Pomodoro technique. Five minutes of work, 20-minute break. Repeat that three times, then take a real break. Somewhere in the middle, you'll start to get into the groove. Energy will start going. And you can switch to the Pomodoro technique once it starts going. But if not, stay in the reverse. Have a special playlist or show playing to get you moving, to help you do the dishes. To help you do shores, to just get you going. Reward yourself after the task. Have it planned before you start the task. I'm gonna do this, and this is gonna be my reward. Create a list of two to three three two to three things to do, or two to three steps. Anything more than two or three overwhelms a neurodivergent brain. So give yourself two or three things, and that's it. But also no pressure if you don't get those two or three things. One is enough, half is enough. Each micro step signals safety, and momentum often follows once the freeze begins to thaw. You can do externalized structure. Don't rely on memory or willpower alone. Use sticky notes, alarms, or visual, visible reminders. Any visuals you need. Think of these as supports, not crutches. This is scaffolding that helps your brain feel held. When I talk about reminders, alarms, I'm gonna talk about nutrition here for a second. You should be eating every four hours. I'm a neurodivergent human being who experiences avoidant restrictive food intake disorder where textures, colors, sights, smells, all of it messes with me. But there are still safe and easy foods to eat every four hours. Set your alarm after you eat breakfast for snack, lunch, snack, and dinner, dessert if you feel if you're feeling it. Once you eat breakfast, set labeled alarms. Let them be specific. Label the alarms with what you plan to eat. Fruits, nuts, cheese sticks, applesauce pouches, roasted vegetables, veggies and hummus. These are all quick and easy snacks to have on hand. I understand that this takes time and effort and planning, and you don't have to be perfect, and you don't have to do all the things all the time, all the right way. The act of eating every four hours keeps your body from going to the extremes internally, and it keeps you satiated to so large cravings don't really happen. This isn't about calorie counting. This is about keeping your internals even, steady, and supported. Use dry erase markers to write notes to yourself and reminders on mirrors. Get a dry erase note for your refrigerator to write things that you need. Keep visuals and reminders active and in use. Don't snooze, don't ignore. Stop and take care of yourself because no one, no one else is going to do it. And because you owe it to yourself to be the best version of yourself. And that always includes eating properly. You've got to take care of your machine. And then there's sensory grounding. If you feel scattered, connect with your senses. Press your feet onto the floor. Feel your feet. What are your feet and your toes touching? Feel texture, smell something soothing. Run cold water over your hands. These small sensory anchors bring your body back to the present where executive functioning can resume. Hell, step outside and take in all the life around you. Hear the sounds, the sights, the smells. Get out of your get out of the house. Get some sunshine. And then we've got co-regulation. Sometimes your nervous system needs another person to feel safe enough to start. And that might mean body doubling, working quietly alongside a friend or a virtual companion, or simply talking out loud while you prepare to act. Connection restores safety faster than isolation. Find a safe person, find a safe resource, even if it's a therapist, a life coach, the texting hotline. Find a way to connect. And then I would like you ultimately to reframe, redefine what productivity means to you. Productivity isn't proof of worth, it's a reflection of regulation. So when you find yourself frozen, remember the goal isn't to get more done. The goal is to feel safe enough to engage life again. And I want you to really create your personal definition of productivity. Not what your parents say, not what culture says, not how society does it, but what feels good to you when you think of being productive, when you think of your ideal day, your ideal choices, your ideal responsibilities, like what is enough for you. Do not compare it to what everyone else is doing or to what is expected or the norm, but what is productivity for you? Productivity isn't waking up and going, going, going until you crash out in bed. It isn't doing all the tasks on your playlist, on your to-do list and trying to prove something to someone. The to-do list will always be there. Calm the fuck down. Pick one to three things to do and leave everything else like it doesn't exist. Pick your high priorities, eat the fucking frog, right? Like get the hard shit out the way first, and you've got smooth selling for the rest of the day. Okay, moving on to environment. Your environment can either overwhelm your nervous system or help regulate it. Look around your space. Does it invite calm or signal chaos? I'm not saying you have to redecorate your live, but you can make small accommodations. Keep your most used items visible so you don't have to remember where they are. Create one clear surface you can rest your eyes on. Use soft lighting. I'm going against the grain. If you've got LED lights, chuck those in the fuck it bucket. Throw those away. Get old school lightings. You can still get it on the evil Amazon, but do not use LED. Use grounding scents. I'm not talking about wall plug-ins. I'm not talking about spray can stuff. I'm talking about essential oils, something really natural that's not going to interrupt your endocrine system. So stay away from all those freezies. And comforting textures. Nice clothes, a good blanket, a good pillowcase. And give yourself permission to close doors on messes rather than spiral about it. If you can put it in a closet and throw it and shut the door, if you could put it in a room and shut the door until you get to it, I'm not saying forever and always. I'm just saying until you have the capacity to get there. Each choice tells your nervous system you're allowed to rest here. Women often believe that they must manage everything alone, that asking for help means weakness. And I want to blow that shit out of the water. We do not have to be strong. We do not have to hold it all together. We don't have to know all the answers or know the right ways. We are human fucking beings learning it as we go along, just like every other person. And asking for support is a trauma-informed accommodation. Delegation isn't failure. And I'm not saying go load off your shit so that you have nothing to do. I am saying be a good human and let go of what you're holding too tightly to that you just maybe not need to do anymore. Maybe stop performing for the locals. Maybe stop performing for people to think you're a great person. Like you're a great person, whether you bake that extra goods for that team event or not. Your worth is not defined by your productivity, what you can produce. Your worth is defined on how you feel inside about yourself and your life and how you make others feel when they're with you, when they're around you, and when they walk away from you. Those are goals to hold on to, not what fucking cake you can make. Ask family members to take turns with meals. I want to breathe dragon fire when I hear people still in relationships where the household responsibilities and the parenting is not on equal standing. I underfund things are not equally 50-50, but 60-40. Let's do it. Fuck that. If you find yourself in that position, it is time to ask family members to take up their responsibility. Help with chores, help with mills. If I'm cooking, you're cleaning. We're doing this together because this is y'all's house, y'all's life. If you're the default parent, then the other one needs to go. They need to find their own way to live life because they're sucking your soul dry. So what I'm saying is have a hard, deep conversation with your partner or partners about equality, about what it means to run a household and what it means to have responsibility, everyone, not just you. This is about making your life easier, not making it harder. And one of the biggest myths is like you just need to be more organized. The truth, you need nervous system regulation. Organization strategies only work when your brain feels safe enough to access them. Color-coded planners, checklists, and productivity apps won't touch a dysregulated nervous system because executive functioning isn't about discipline, it's about access. When you feel safe, your prefrontal cortex comes online naturally. When you feel unsafe, it shuts down. No matter how many systems you try, you have to bring it back online by regulating the nervous system. And while it's offline, there's no rational thought going on. So you're just flying around making all kinds of cuckoo stuff. So instead of forcing order, focus on restoring safety. Tai chi, Pilates, yoga, restorative, gentle yoga, gentle stretching. All these things are a good way on focusing on restoring safety. Another one that's hard for most people is resting without guilt. Watch the show without scrolling. Scroll without guilt. Take a nap without feeling bad about it. Lay down on the couch and crochet. Once your body trusts you again, the systems will start to stick. As safety grows, your energy begins to return gently, inconsistently, but noticeably. You'll start to notice moments when you when Tasks feel easier when your mind feels clearer, when the freeze softens. That's your nervous system recalibrating. Don't rush it, but definitely honor it. Each small act of self-accommodation, each moment you choose compassion instead of criticism is a new neural pathway forming. You're teaching your body that it's safe to exist even when things aren't perfect. So I want to close this with some thought prompts, some journal prompts. So if you can, take a moment, take a pause, maybe place your hand on your heart, one hand on your belly, and rest your body where it feels supported. Take a nice deep breath in. Let that belly rise along with the chest. Inhale deeply. Hold it up at the top. And we're gonna exhale out of the mouth. Let it go. Let that exhale be longer than the inhale. Now, pause it if you want to write these down. Come back to it later, or just think about them as I go through. When do I notice myself freezing, procrastinating, or shutting down? What sends you to the freeze state? What sensations or emotions usually come right before that freeze? So I want you to think about that freeze, re-rind the tape just a bit. What happens before that? What were you thinking? What were you feeling? Who was around you? What was going on? What was going on in the environment? Really dissect what happened before the freeze. What tiny action might help me feel safer in those moments? So when you identify the triggers of the freeze, could you ask for an accommodation? Can you adjust your environment? Can you remove yourself from it to calm down? Can you advocate for yourself in some way? What support or accommodation would make my daily life feel softer? Let's start with the Pomodoro technique or the reverse Pomodoro technique. If you have control over your schedule at work and you're not micromanaged, try Pomodoro and reverse Pomodoro. What would it look like to honor my current capacity without shame? That's reparenting, my dear. That is going inward and saying, I know this is hard. I know you feel disconnected right now. And that means you're unsafe. And I want you to feel safe. I'm going to breathe deeply. I'm going to hug myself. I'm going to self-soothe in some way so that you feel safe, so that we can begin again. You don't have to answer them all today, but even reflecting on one can begin to shift the way you relate to yourself. Your worth is not measured by what you accomplish. It's measured by your willingness to keep showing up gently for yourself, one breath, one task, one moment at a time. All right, my dears. If today's episode resonated with you, I hope you'll take it as a reminder that your nervous system needs safety and that sacred work. And you can do this. You owe this to yourself. Be good to yourself. Treat yourself like a toddler. Toddlys need food, always need rest, always need fun and snacks. Always have a go bag with fidgest, snacks, and comforts. And when toddlers have a problem, we get down to their level. We talk to them. We get into the feelings and we work it through. And that's how I want you to work with yourself. If this episode helped you feel more understood and less alone, please share it with another who might need it. I'd love to hear from you. Message me, comment, or follow me. I offer private sessions, like I said in the beginning, for virtual therapy and life coaching. Whether you're healing from trauma, navigating a big life shift, or just ready to come home to yourself and make the life that you know you deserve and want, the one that you can't stop thinking about. I hold space for women just like you every week, every day. It is my honor. I'd love to help you. If it's something you're curious about, you can fill out a consultation request via my LinkTree, along with a badass Spotify playlist called Divine Women. It is made for women, healing through softness and strength. It is hella empowering. And there are some more resources for you in the Link Tree. Remember, my dears, you are never too much, never too late, and you don't have to figure it out all alone. Until next time, may you be happy and free. May mine and your healing ripple outward to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.
