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
Energy Management Over Time Management: Spoon Theory for Neurodivergent Lives
We explore why time management fails when the real issue is capacity and how Spoon Theory helps us plan days that fit our nervous systems. We share practical tools to track energy, unmask gently, and build rhythms that restore creativity and self-trust.
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 **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 always honored, no matter how winding the road. I'm Autumn, licensed professional counselor, life coach, and yoga instructor. But ultimately, I'm your companion on this divine path of healing. Okay, jumping into it. So if you've ever looked at your calendar and thought, I should be able to do this. If you've ever looked at your to-do list and said the same thing, but felt an absolute no from your body before it even started, we're gonna talk about it today. Because sometimes it's not about time, it's about energy. When you've lived with trauma, neurodivergence, chronic stress, or burnout, the truth is your energy doesn't run on the same operating system as everyone else's. Most productivity advice assumes a stable nervous system. It assumes you can plan, prioritize, and stay on task without hitting a wall. But for many of us, that wall isn't about laziness, it's about capacity. We don't run out of time. We run out of spoons. Today I want to introduce you to, I want to talk about the spoon theory. Spoon theory was first created by Christine, and I may get her last name wrong, I'm sorry, I'm horrible at pronunciation. Mr. Mizerandino. And she created the spoon theory to explain what it's like to live with chronic illness. She uses spoons as a metaphor for energy. Each task in your day costs a certain number of spoons. And when you're out, you're out. You can't borrow endlessly, you can't hustle your way through. You have to rest, recharge, and rebuild. And what's true for chronic illness is also deeply true for neurodivergent and trauma experience lives. Because trauma lives in the body, it hijacks your energy economy, your baseline isn't neutral, it's a nervous system that's always scanning for threat, always working over time to keep you safe. And when your body is constantly managing invisible stress, the simplest task can feel like climbing a mountain, answering an email, making a phone call, or even getting dressed. So when someone tells you to just manage your time better, it misses the point entirely. Time isn't the issue. Your spoons are. Think of your energy as a currency. You wake up every morning with a certain number of spoons, maybe 12, maybe 8, maybe 3. For a neurotypical nervous system, getting ready might cost one spoon. For you, it might cost three because you're managing sensory overload, executive function fatigue, and internal dialogue all at once. Driving to work might cost two more. Masking through meetings might cost you five spoons. And by the time you get home, you're emotionally and mentally overdrafted. And that's before you even start dinner for yourself or open the mail or start dinner for the family or parent your kids. So when you find yourself frozen on the couch, scrolling, dissociating, unable to move, what's actually happening is that you've spent your last spoon trying to survive the day. This isn't a failure. It's a signal. Your energy system is asking for more balance. Energy management is the art of honoring your capacity. It's not about squeezing more out of yourself. It's about understanding how much you've actually, how much you actually have to give. When you manage energy instead of time, your day stops being minutes and hours, and it starts being about nervous system rhythm. This is where you can begin to ask new questions. What does my body need right now? How can I move through this task with less resistance? What would make this moment feel more doable? This is where you start to track not what's on your schedule, but how each part of your life makes you feel, affects you internally and externally. Does it drain you? Does it nourish you? Does it ask for more than you can give? This awareness becomes your compassion. And compassion for yourself is key. I say it over and over again, but we are toddlers and we need to treat ourselves like toddlers. If you've ever had a toddler and you're not alive or ever taking care of a toddler, there are certain key things you have to do. Make sure they're fed, always have plenty of snacks in case they want a snack. Should be a drink around so you can sip on a drink, or they could sip on a drink. Toys, a comfy blanket or a comfy animal, something that brings comfort, a sensory, tactile object. And play. Breast, play, and nutrition. Treat yourself like a toddler. Always have a go bag. For one week, I want you to imagine you're a scientist of your own energy. Each morning, check in. How many spoons do you have? I'm taking a sip of coffee. Give me a second. But really ask yourself, how many spoons do you have? What is your capacity? It's not something to overthink. Just fill into it. Maybe today you have 10 spoons. Maybe you have two. Then as you move through your day, notice which take which task cost you more than you expected. Did that conversation drain you drain you? Did that quiet walk refill something inside of you? By the end of the day, write it down. This is so you can start to see patterns. Start to become aware of what's taking your energy, what's using your energy unnecessarily. You might notice that certain times of the day are naturally lower energy. Maybe mid-afternoon, maybe the morning, maybe the evening. You might realize that social interactions, even good ones, take several spoons to recover. You might discover that multitasking drains you twice as fast. And I want to say something. Back in my day, when I was growing up, multitasking was the shit. Like you were, you were given gold stars, metaphorically, if you could multitask and do a bunch of shit and handle a bunch of things and solve a bunch of problems all at the one, seemingly same time. That is toxic culture. Science, evidence-based research shows that monotasking, doing one thing at a time, is more productive than any multitasking you can do. So if you've got that multitasking pride, throw that away. One thing at a time. One step at a time. Or you might discover that sensory overstimulation at the grocery store leaves you in a fog for hours. I mean, depending on what store you go in, they have certain lighting now that uh is not healthy for you. Wear sunglasses, wear a hat, put in earbuds, wear comfy clothes, have a drink available. My local shopping center or grocery store has a cup holder and a place to put my phone in the cart. I have my list in my phone holder, and I have my my coffee, my tea, whatever it is in the cup holder. I have my toddler supports. This isn't about judgment. This is about data. The goal isn't to fix it. This is all about trying to understand yourself better, to meet yourself where you're at without trying to be someone you're not. And also having compassion for who you are, even if it looks different from everyone else. Fuck what other people are doing. You live your life. I'm gonna assume you pay some of your bills. Even if you don't pay some of your bills, you still have the right to live your life on your terms. You are the master of your life. No one else. Don't let other people manage you. Partners, parents, others. Because when you understand your energy flow, you can begin to design your life around it. And this is where healing management becomes healing work. Because when you start honoring your natural rhythms, you begin to repair your relationship with your body. You stop demanding constant output. You stop punishing yourself for needing to rest. This is where you begin to believe that energy, not productivity, is the real measure of alignment. And I hope in that moment something shifts. Shifts so much that you start asking for help sooner. You plan fewer things in the day. Oh, you stop booking appointments back to back. When I first started my private practice, I was back to back to back because in before private practice, that's all I experienced in community health and in nonprofit world. I had to be billing hours from the moment I was there to the moment I left. And that means seeing people every hour with maybe five to 10 minutes in between. So I was already primed to act that way because that's what the culture had taught me. And it took me about a year, year and a half, almost two years, to really hone in my schedule. It started with small tweaks and then it just kept forming until I felt comfortable with my schedule. Now it's on my terms. I stopped paying attention to the rat race and started paying attention to what feels good for me. What capacity do I have each and every day? And I hope that this gives you permission. One thing I want to recommend is to stop forcing yourself to do everything in one sitting. Simple, not easy, says the neurodivergent. Simple, not easy, says the trauma-experienced individual. But I'm telling you, Pomodoro Technique is your friend. Take freaking breaks when it's break time. Get up, remove yourself from your workspace, craft space, whatever it is, into a new environment, and then come back when the break time's over. Because I want you to stop saying I should be able to handle this. And I want you to start saying, I want to handle this gently. Because that is growth, that is healing. Because every time you choose compassion over shame, you are teaching your nervous system that it's safe to rest. You don't have to manage your time in the way that society tells you to. You can move slower and still live a meaningful life. You can rest without guilt. It is a hard task to overcome, but it's worth going through it to teach yourself to learn inside and out that you can rest without guilt. When you stop chasing time and start listening to energy, you begin to live in a way that's sustainable for your nervous system. And that's when life starts to feel possible again. When you stop trying to for boo boo boo, when you stop trying to force your body and brain to run on the same schedule as everyone else, something sacred happens. You begin to meet yourself, not your performance, not your productivity, but your dang self. And in energy management, you start noticing what expands you, what drains you, what rhythms your body craves when you're not forcing it to comply. These are not indulgent questions, these are essential questions. Because when your worth is measured by your output, asking how you feel is an act of rebellion. And responding to that, that's liberation. You can think of your energy like a daily allowance. Each task, each interaction, or sensory experience cost you spoons. Some give you a few back, and some drain the entire drawer. When you wake up, instead of asking what time is it? Try asking yourself, how many spoons do I have today? Then I'd like you to name what you notice. Did I sleep deeply? Or do I feel like I've been running a marathon in my dreams? Is my body achy, tense, or tired? What's my emotional temperature? Am I calm, scattered, heavy, hopeful? The goal isn't to judge this, it's to work with it. If you have five spoons today, but your plan requires 12, that's not a failure, that's feedback. That's your body saying you're not lazy, you're overloaded. And sometimes, for many neurodivergent and trauma-experienced women, we spend half our spoons before lunch just pretending that we're fine, holding it together in conversation, forcing eye contact, smiling when they want silence, managing other people's comfort so no one notices that you're unraveling. Masking is exhausting. It's not sustainable. And it's not a lack of willpower that makes you tired. It's the constant micro adjustments of survival, constant acting. Unmasking, even in small ways, conserves your energy. And unmasking might look like saying, I need a minute instead of powering through. Keeping noise canceling headphones nearby on you at all times, the loop earplugs, letting your face rest in its natural expression. That's a good challenge. Not mirroring all the people and smiling and laughing if there's no smiling and laughing to be had. How about speaking slower or not at all when the words feel hard? Because all this, these are accommodations, these are not excuses. You're not asking for special treatment. You're just trying to create safety within yourself. Instead of writing a to-do list by time, try writing one by energy type. So for example, my creative energy to-do list. Maybe if you've got a creative endeavor in podcasting, writing a book, just journaling, creative writing, designing, creativity, creative energy, crocheting, crafting, cooking, baking, and then you have focus energy. Your admin work, emails, notes, the admin work, the data entry stuff. Then you have social energy, therapy sessions, phone calls, and meetings. And then you have recovery energy. Walking, resting, meditating, sitting outside, putting your legs up the wall with an ice pack on your chest, something covering your eyes, and just breathing deeply. This way you stop wasting spoons, fighting your biology. You give your nervous system a rhythm instead of a battle. You may even begin to notice like cycles, your hormonal cycles, emotional, lunar, seasonal, that affect your energy levels. When it comes to hormone cycles, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, getting your attention, ladies. Pay attention to your hormone cycles, even if they're irregular. Because it can tell you a lot about what you're going through emotionally. Because this awareness lets you play in with compassion, not pressure. Energy is a conversation between your mind, body, and spirit. It cannot be bullied into compliance. If you're constantly drained, you don't have a scheduling problem, you have a capacity problem. You're overloading yourself. And the answer isn't to push harder, it's to slow down and to tend to your capacity. What about shame? Shame is an energy leak. Every time you call yourself lazy, broken, too sensitive, too much, dramatic, crazy, all those stupid words, you drain spoons you could be using to heal. Self-compassion isn't just an emotional skill, it's energetic medicine. It helps your nervous system relax, your breath deepen, and your sense of safety grows. And safety creates energy. So I want you to start small. When you notice your inner critic trying to say something negative to yourself, oh, I can't do this. I should be able to do this. Why am I so behind? Why am I not like everybody else? Blah, blah, blah. I want you to say something different. Try saying, I'm doing the best I can with the spoons I have. Or I don't need to earn my rest for today. I can just do it. It's amazing how much you can do when you're not burning half your energy fighting yourself. So you can begin rebuilding or just building your relationship with energy through simple, repeatable practices. Energy journaling. At the end of each day, rate your energy one to ten and note what gave you energy and what drained your energy. Patterns will emerge. We are people of pattern recognition. Use your superpower to honor yourself, to notice your patterns just the way we notice everyone else's patterns. Schedule decompression time after social events or work heavy blocks. Build in 10 to 15 minutes of quiet time to reset. More if you need it. More if the social exchange was a lot, hours, days. Give yourself body check-ins several times a day. Ask yourself, what's my body saying to me right now? And then I want you to adjust your pace. When I say adjust your pace, I mean slow the fuck down. Slow down walking around your house, slow down brushing your teeth, slow down taking a shower, slow down driving, slow down moving from task to task. Slow the fuck down. Spoon banking. How about that? If you have extra energy one day, don't overspend it. Save it, rest while you can. In the neurodivergent world, a lot of us will do the things when we have the energy and we'll run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, and then we'll finish what we had to do, and then we'll crash and be down for a day or two. So it's about managing your spoons sustainably. If you have 10 spoons today and you only need to do six or seven, only spend six or seven. Bank the rest. Don't overspend. Don't push yourself just because the energy's there. You're still allowed to rest even when you're energetic. Treat yourself the same, as if you have low energy. And then there's micro replenishments. Even two minutes of deep breathing, stretching, or sitting outside can add some spoons to your plate. These are not luxuries, these are maintenance things to do to stay homeostasis, to feel joy, to not burn out, to not shut down. This is to recharge yourself. Rest is not a reward for finishing your list because there's always going to be a list. Stop trying to get some invisible gold fucking star for finishing a to-do list. Does it feel good to knock things off the list? Hell yeah. But that's not your life. That's not who you are. Rest is a requirement for living your life. And when you treat rest as an option, you teach your nervous system that safety is conditional. And when you treat rest as sacred, you teach your nervous system that peace is possible. Because the more regulated you feel, the more energy you'll naturally have. Not because you've become more disciplined, but because you're no longer living in fight or fight. The moment I was so dysregulated and I wanted to create and I wanted to create and I wanted to do things. I'm such an entrepreneurial spirit, and I just want to create and share. And nothing would come, nothing would stick, nothing felt right. My creativity was so just not there. And when I began stepping back from that rat race of performing, doing all this, and started regulating my nervous system, my creativity began to flow. This podcast became a desire. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do. So the more you tend to yourself, the more beautiful, bold, happy, loud you can be. And it is your job to teach your nervous system to show your nervous system that it is safe, that it is loved with compassion, and that it can rest. Treat yourself like a toddler. Be gentle, be compassionate, be curious, be supportive. All right, I got you some journal prompts, thought prompts, whatever you want to do. So get out your notebook, take a deep breath, whichever you want. Here we go. What activities or environments drain my energy the fastest? What replenishes me even a little? What would it look I need to slow down. Let me slow down. Number one, what activities or environments drain my energy the fastest? What replenishes me even a little? What would it look like to plan my week around energy, not time? What rules about productivity am I ready to question or rewrite or fucking throw away? How can I offer myself more compassion when my capacity feels low? All right, my dears, spend some time on yourself. Make a plan to do some energy management. You are never meant to function like a machine. You're cyclical, feeling, living energy, not a clock. Your body is not broken because it needs rest. And your mind is not lazy because it moves differently. And my dears, your worth was never meant to be measured in hours. Because the goal isn't to have endless energy, it's to honor the energy you have, to listen to it, to care for it, to let it guide you to balance. Because when you finally stop fighting your body and start collaborating with it, you realize that time was never the real limit. Disconnection was. And when you come back to yourself, when you come home to yourself, spoon by spoon, breath by breath, you find that life begins to open up. If today's episode resonated with you, I hope you take this as a reminder that your nervous system needs safety, and that's sacred work. If this episode helped you feel more understood and a little less alone, please share it with someone who might need it. I'd love to hear from you. Message me, comment, or follow. And if you want to go deeper, I offer private sessions for virtual therapy if you're in Texas and virtual life coaching if you're outside the state or abroad. Whether you're healing trauma, navigating a big life shift, or just ready to find yourself, I hold space for women just like you every week. If that's something you're curious about, you can fill out a consultation request via my link tree in the show notes. And then you can listen to a good playlist called Divine Women from on Spotify. You are never too much, never too late, and you don't have to figure it out all alone. Until next time, my dears, may you be happy and free. May mine and your healing ripple hour to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.
