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
Executive Dysfunction: How Can I Get You to Function?
When a simple task feels like a threat, your body isn’t being dramatic; it’s protecting you. We open up executive dysfunction through two powerful lenses: the inner child who learned to survive by freezing or perfecting, and the ADHD nervous system that craves novelty, urgency, and co-regulation. Instead of pushing harder, we focus on building safety, rhythm, and tiny wins that invite your brain back online.
This conversation is a permission slip to stop treating your brain like a factory and start honoring it like a river that is moved by rhythm, emotion, curiosity, and safety. If you’re ready to design your day around your wiring, not against it, you’ll leave with scripts, resets, and simple structures that help you start without self-blame and continue without burnout.
About Me:
I’m Autumn Moran, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas specializing in trauma-informed care for neurodivergent women and trauma survivors.
Therapy (Texas residents only):
I provide individual therapy in my private practice for women working through trauma, late diagnosis processing, relationship challenges, and healing from narcissistic abuse or toxic family systems. My approach is neurodivergent-affirming and focuses on helping you understand your patterns while building practical tools for nervous system regulation and authentic living.
Life Coaching (available anywhere):
For women outside Texas or those wanting support alongside therapy, I offer:
•Somatic Healing Coaching: Bridges the gap between cognitive understanding and embodied healing through nervous system work, movement practices, and practical integration tools. Perfect as a complement to talk therapy or for those ready to work directly with their body’s wisdom.
•Unmasking Journey Coaching: Specialized support for late-diagnosed neurodivergent women learning to reconnect with their authentic selves after decades of masking. We work on identifying your real needs, rebuilding your sense of self, and creating a life that fits who you actually are.
Whether you’re healing trauma, discovering yourself after late diagnosis, or both, my goal is to help you not just understand your story, but feel genuinely safe and at home in your own body.
Subscribe & Share:
New episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday. If today’s episode resonated, please share it with someone who needs to hear it or leave a comment—it helps other women find this space and know they’re not alone. Check me out on Apple Podcasts and many other platforms.
Work With Me:
Ready to start your healing journey?
Book a free 15-minute consultation: (http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub)
Listen to my DIVINE WOMAN Playlist (Apple & Spotify): Empowering songs for women healing through softness and strength - links are on the linktree link!
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 rope. I'm Audamoran, licensed professional counselor, a life coach, yoga instructor. But ultimately, I'm here today to be your companion on this divine path of healing. And if you want to dive deeper into your healing, into your growing, into your accommodating, I offer virtual sessions. You can click on the link tree in the show notes to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. All right. Last week we talked about executive functioning and trauma. And this week I want to continue the conversation of executive dysfunction. When I was thinking about this episode and thinking about executive dysfunction, it brought me back to my childhood days of watching schoolhouse rock cartoons. If you're not familiar, they're educational song cartoons that make up songs to help you remember things. So one of the songs was about conjunctions. Conjunction, junction. What's your function? And when I started thinking about this episode, I had that in mind. And so when I think of this episode and its title, it's executive dysfunction. How can you function? I'm not a singer or songwriter, but that's where my imagination went. And that's what I'm trying to do today. This is part one of two episodes about executive functioning. Today is how can I get you to function? Or what does that really look like? And Friday's episode is about emotional executive dysfunction. Because executive dysfunction doesn't just show up when you have too much to do, it shows up when you have too much to feel. So today and Friday will be all about executive dysfunctioning. Because here's the thing. Inhale deeply. Let that belly rise out. And let's exhale any shame you carry for requiring accommodations and systems. Let it go. Sorry for the cat in the background. I'm gonna keep going. He's vocal. So let's start by talking a little bit about executive dysfunctioning, assuming that you didn't listen to anything last week. So if you want more executive dysfunctioning before Friday's episode comes out, listen to last week's episode about executive dysfunctioning and trauma. That's it. That's my advertising. Here we go. So to start with, let's look at it through the lens of an inner child because this is the layer most people never really talk about when it comes to executive dysfunctioning. Because it's not just a brain thing, it's a younger you thing. So like imagine that there's a version of you, maybe five, nine, twelve years old, something around there, who learn survival through stillness, stillness, caution, perfection, or maybe even shutting down. Maybe you learn that doing things quote unquote wrong brought consequences. Maybe you learn that trying sometimes wasn't safe. Or maybe help wasn't dependable. And that younger self is now sitting inside your grown body, legs dangling off the control panel of your life. And every time you face a task, she responds first. And tasks aren't tasks to your inner child. They're threats, they're big, confusing, lonely threats. Your inner child may freeze because she remembers the consequences, the negativity, the uncomfortableness, whatever it was. And your adult self just keeps saying, just do it, just do it, keep going. While your inner child whispers, I can't, not alone. So executive dysfunctioning can often start with a frightened younger self trying to run a life that your younger self is never prepared for. And this isn't effective. You just gotta honor your inner child. You gotta tap into that younger version of you that had a life that's vastly different than what you believe, or had consequences or upbringing that are different than what you believe or ever wanted to have. So here's there's a technique called sit beside me. When your adult self tries to start a task and your body seizes up, I want you to imagine your younger self tugging you on the hem, like tugging your shirt and saying, This is too big. Please don't make me. Please, please, please, please. Little one, little you. And I want you to invite her to sit beside you instead of doing it for you. So you can just take a pause, right? When you start, when you feel the freeze, when you notice like your inner inner child, something in you is literally on the floor like a toddler, throwing a fit, banging the legs, banging the knees, kicking things, doing whatever just to avoid that task or event. If you could get away with it, you would do it. Right? That's your inner child. That's where some healing needs to happen. So take a pause. Put one hand on your chest, on your shoulder, whatever feels good, and say to yourself in your tone, not in a baby voice, you don't have to do this alone. I'm here with you. We're just going to look at the task together. And this can help lower the internal pressure that creates shutdown. Because you're telling her, hey, we're right here, sit beside me. Got you a little bit of visual visualization going. You got your little self sitting beside you and doing what you needed in that moment had it happened when it happened to you when you're little, right? Providing your inner self, yourself, the comfort you need in a task that seems overwhelming, that seems too scary to do it alone, because you've had to do it before. Let her sit along with you. Look at the task. How long does it take? What is it asking of me? Where is the danger, if any? How can I reward myself andor support myself during, before, during, and after? Another way to tap into the inner child when the executive dysfunctioning comes up is to co-regulate and then you start. So executive dysfunction often flares when the younger self is dysregulated and the adult self barrels in with urgency. So, co-regulating, what does that look like? Take 10, 20 seconds to breathe with a hand on your stomach, right? Feel your belly, rise and fall with a breath. Put your feet on the floor, feel your feet on the floor, wiggle your toes, get planted. Check in with the shoulders, relax the shoulders, relax the jaws. And then sometimes simple not easy, but just start the smallest part of the task. If it's dishes, maybe get your gloves if it's a sensory thing. If it's the dishes or a task, maybe turn on a special show, turn on a special playlist, turn on a speaker, set the lighting, get in the mood. Simple task to get you started. After you've breathed, after you've grounded yourself, after you put yourself here in the moment, not in the future or past. There's another technique. It's your safe space. You're safe to pause, reminder. A good paralysis killer is giving yourself permission to pause. So oftentimes our inner child still lives by old rules. Hesitating may equal getting yelled at. Not knowing where to start may equal danger. Messing up may equal punishment. And the goal here is to provide explicit permission to pause and think. You're not in trouble. We can take our time. Nothing bad happens if we start slowly. These are all variations of ways to reparent yourself, essentially, if you want to define it. Because what's happening is you're stopping and giving yourself the comfort, the compassion, the patience, the understanding, the space to process, to breathe, to plan, to take action. Because what is oftentimes not acknowledged in childhood and even adulthood is processing speed. You know, when you're having a conversation and then you leave five minutes late and you're like, man, I want to say this. Oh, I have this question. Or even two days later, it comes back to you, and you're like, oh, I really want to go back and ask my doctor this, this, and this. That's processing speed. You need time. Your pause is sacred. It's helpful. It's needed and necessary. So give yourself permission to go slowly, to take the time. There's other, many other ways to reparent the inner child. And I think I'm just going to have to do another episode on it because I don't want to overload you with too much. So I'm going to leave it at two to three per segment just to kind of keep it doable, not like, oh God, what did I just learn? And oh, there was so much. Essentially, when you think about executive dysfunctioning and freeze, an inner child, think about yourself as a toddler. Get down to your level, get her beside you, talk to her, look at the task, look at the perceived danger, look at all the safety measures, create safety in your environment within yourself, and then give yourself to slowly move forward. Now, let's talk about the ADHD nervous system. Because I think this is the real CEO behind the chaos, if you will. This is the part of your brain that loves fireworks but hates paperwork. The ADHD brain runs on a different rhythm. Imagine a conductor in charge of an orchestra. Except the sheet music keeps blowing away, the trumpets get distracted by the violins, and the drummer is playing at double speed because he drank emotional espresso. Your brain is tuned for curiosity, creativity, crisis, novelty, and intensity. All beautiful qualities, but they don't always play nicely with adult obligations. So the biggest ADHD culprits behind executive dysfunctioning are time blindness. One hour can feel like a minute or a lifetime. Deadlines sneak up like little ninjas. So for time blindness, I want you to be real with yourself, be kind to yourself, and be real. If you have time blindness, use your resources. Stop relying on the brain that doesn't give a shit, that out of sight, out of mind, that can't tell time right, that the the clock just goes all over the place. Use your timers, your reminders, whiteboards, visual checklists, recurring alarms. I'm talking about alarms when you eat breakfast, then I want you to open your alarm and set alarms for every four hours. Snack, lunch, snack, dinner. If you've got to schedule in pea breaks, get those pea breaks in. Use sticky notes, apps that are all about organization. Externalize everything. Because working memory is precious, and you do not need to waste it on trying to hold thoughts that can be held somewhere else with a reminder that can do it for you. Stop trying to do it all, be it all. Who are you proving this to? Who gives you some silly weird gold star at the end of the day? Like, this isn't something to be gold starred about. You're actually bullying yourself to do something that doesn't come easy to you and will never come easy to you. So like chill out. Use your resources, make them fun. Anytime the alarm gets dull and you want to snooze it, change the alarm, change the label. I got sassy there. I don't know why I got sassy there. Sorry about that. Uh all right. How about another executive dysfunction is initiation paralysis, right? I talked a little about a little bit about this in the inner child section, but you know what to do. Your body just won't start. It's like the ignition key is missing. ADHD brains don't do start, they do stumble and roll, if you if you think about it. So instead of beginning the task. How I was trying to say this, like instead of beginning with the task, begin with a momentum seed. A tiny neutral action that wakes up the dopamine pathways. Turn on a lamp, turn off some lights, open the blinds, put your hair up in a ponytail, fill a water bottle, change locations. These microactions can cue your nervous system that you're entering action mode. And once the engine stirs, task initiation becomes possible. One tiny thing. One tiny step. If your tiny step feels too big, find a tinier step. I like to say, like when you're in bed, right, and you can't get up. I want you just to rock something. If it's rocking your feet up and down, just nice tiny movement. It doesn't have to be big. You can wiggle a finger. And then I want you to wiggle two fingers. Then I want you to rock your legs back and forth. And I want you to slowly just build the momentum so that you are thrashing all over the bed enough to that you're like, all right, I'm up. Try it out. Task switching is very difficult. Stopping one thing to start another can feel like stepping out of a moving train. Here's the thing with this. Write yourself a note like you're writing it to a complete stranger, assuming that they don't know where you are, what you did, or what the next step is. This is where I was, this is what I'm doing, this is what I want to do when I get back, and these are the steps I can take. Write yourself a short little note, put it down, go take a break. If by chance you forget what you were doing, you have a detailed note. We get dopamine droughts. If your brain isn't interested, it refuses to release the chemicals that help you begin. So for this, I like to do some dopamine pairing. So tasks that feel impossible often need a dopamine buddy. Pair the boring thing with something your brain enjoys. Fold clothes while listening to your favorite YouTuber. Do emails with a snack you love. Tackle paperwork with a cozy blanket, fun little socks. Plan your week with your softest blanket or a cozy outfit. Clean and 10-minute music burst. This can satisfy the brain enough to reduce the avoidance. And body doubling. You don't need anyone telling you what to do. You just need a nervous system witnessing you. Have a body doubling Zoom session. Do your thing while I do mine with your friend. Just hanging out, but we're doing our own thing. A quiet coffee shop. A quiet cafe background on YouTube. If there's any like live stream accountability rooms, things like that. Because your ADHD brain activates when someone else is present, even if nobody's interacting. It removes the internal pressure and gives the nervous system co-regulation instead of feeling isolated. How about object permanence? Out of sight, out of mind. If you can't see it, it don't exist. Laundry becomes non-existent if it's in a different room. These are having this is where you can have hot spots. Instead of fighting the places your brain naturally dumps things, shape those spots intentionally. If your keys always end up on the kitchen counter, place a small tray there. If your makeup roams around the house, put a basket in the bathroom and by the bed. Your brain loves patterns, even messy ones. Because invisible equals gone. So make the gone visible. For items that live inside drawers or cabinets, get you some drawer organizers, clear containers, label you can labels that you can see, small lights inside the cupboards. Turn every storage area from a void into a window. And what about emotional tidal waves? One small frustration can overwhelm your entire system and shut everything down. This is where you need to treat yourself like a toddler. Step into the moment, step into your mind, your body. What are you feeling? What are you sensing? What's overwhelming? What's scaring you? Is anything coming up? Does this remind you of something else? Is there an expectation placed on you? Do you feel like it's a demand? Is there a fear of perception going on or a strong sense of justice? Like where are your emotions coming from? Tap into them, honor them. And then see if you can take a step forward. And before starting something, talk to yourself. Ask yourself, Halt. H-A-L-T. Are you hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? Eat if you're hungry. Get a bowl or a cup of ice and step outside and smash it on the concrete. Scream into a pillow. Punch your mattress if you're angry. If you're lonely, self-soothe or use your support system to not feel lonely. If you need someone to talk to, if things are heavy, 741-741 is a texting hotline for mental health crises. If you want to talk to someone that's a real person, they will text you. They will help you with coping skills. They will help you feel better before getting you on your way. Are you tired? Do you need a weighted blanket? Do you need to snuggle with your pets or your kiddos? Do you need to lay down? Do you need to rest? Take a nap. Go to bed. Your ADHD brain will shut down under unmet basic needs. Regulating the body is regulating the executive system. This can really help. And none of this is a lack of willpower. This is neurobiology trying its best with the wiring it was given. And when you combine an ADHD brain with a historically frightened inner child, no wonder like the simple stuff feels like you're pushing a boulder through mud uphill. And sometimes we are in a loop that traps a lot of us. It usually starts with overwhelm. Then we freeze, then we avoid, then we are shameful for avoiding, then more overwhelm because now the task has grown fangs, then deeper shutdown, then I'll do it later, then there's guilt, then dread, then there's exhaustion. You're not living in procrastination. You're living in survival biology. Your frontal lobe, the part that handles planning, organizing, starting in sequencing, goes offline the moment your nervous system senses emotional danger. You are dysregulated. Which means your brain can't literally function when your body feels unsafe. And the mistake we make is judging that shutdown as a moral failure instead of a stress response. Because it's not failing, it's overwhelmed. Show me, and I can prove me wrong. And I'm not saying, and this is not an absolute, but in general, show me a kid or an adult that is called lazy, thought of as lazy, or someone has claimed them to be lazy, lazy, and I will show you someone that is overwhelmed and lacking accommodations. And overwhelmed systems, honestly, they can't obey to-do lists, they can't obey fitness plans, they can't obey self-care plans because you are dysregulated. You must regulate. Ice chest on your pack. Ice pack on your chest. Or just put the ice pack on your chest. Put ice pack on the back of your neck. Take a walk outside in nature. Observe your surroundings. Sit in some sunshine. Hum the Star Spangled Banner or Happy Birthday or your favorite song. Dance, wiggle, shake it out. And I mean it, just let it out, shake, wiggle, jiggle. Be like a hippie under the full moon in the woods. Just let it out. Here's a radical invitation. I want you to stop trying to function. And I want you to start trying to flow. And by that, I mean matching task to the energy you actually have. I mean letting your body set the pace. Use natural rhythms instead of forcing routines. Working with your brain, not against it. Honor your inner child instead of ignoring her, scolding her, shaming her, pushing her aside. And I want you to build micromomentum instead of heroic bursts. Your brain is a river, not a factory. It's never meant to run on discipline alone. It's meant to run on rhythm, emotion, curiosity, and safety. Once you stop demanding factory behavior from a river, everything can soften. So let's see. I think there's some other tools I can I can provide. Hopefully you're taking notes. I didn't even say that, right? Uh you know, if I could edit and stuff, I'd go back and put it in there. But I, you know, here I am, and this is who I am. I'm telling you now. If you need a notebook, grab a notebook. Rewind it. Write what you have on the top of your head. What feels good, what's resonated. Open your notepad and your phone. Sensory anchoring is a good tool. Before beginning any task, take 20 to 30 seconds to regulate your sensory world. I kind of said this one a little bit earlier. If you have like a stone, like a grounding stone is good or a grounding fidget, cold water on your hands, essential oils, soft music. A few solid deep breaths that inhale deeply, and your exhale is longer than your inhal. This can tell your inner child, hey, we're safe now. You can rest while I'll handle this. And you can even say that to your inner child. When it comes to the flow, right? Honoring your energy and also having to adult. So maybe categorize your task by energy, not by category. Low energy, medium energy, high energy. Low energy can be folding clothes, deleting emails, wiping down a surface. Medium energy can be showering, cooking, walking the dog. And sometimes I know showering can be a high energy task, depending on where you're at. But also with showering, I'd like to say. Make sure you have a toothbrush in there, toothpaste in there to get that done. Make sure you have any novelty lotions or soaps or oils or shampoos to give you some excitement to be in there. Novelty, newness, and reward is what your ADHD rate craves all the time, forever and always. So if you can somehow bring in novelty, newness into the shower, that can help motivate you. Shower heads that you can take off that have the handles so that you don't have to jump in the shower or walk into the shower stream. You can take off that handle. Start by spraying your feet and moving it up your body until it's comfortably the temp that you want, until you're ready to be sprayed. Lighting, playlist, all this can be helpful in motivating you to get in the shower. And high-energy task. Paying the bills, making them phone calls, schedule them phone calls, girl, get your doctor's appointments. When it comes to mammograms, ask for an ultrasound. Do some research. I'm not here to tell anybody anything, but do some research on the outcomes of cancer from women that have mammograms. It's kind of like uh trying to get it. Ultrasound is what you want. That's just my piece. I'm not a doctor. I know nothing. I've just read some things. And I feel it's my duty to tell women if this is something, then give yourself the opportunity to research it and make your own decision. But all the doctor's appointments that you need, take care of them. Take care of yourself. You don't need a 12-item to-do list. You need three things. One low energy, one medium energy, and one high energy task. That's it. Three tasks in a day can change your world when you're no longer drowning in the expectation to get it all done. Executive function collapses when the body is in hyper-arousal, hypoarousal, survival mode, shutdown, and emotional flooding. Your brain can't plan while your body is panicking. It can't organize while your body is collapsing. The work isn't forcing the task, it's stabilizing the nervous system. Okay. Here's a quick way to regulate it. It's using your five senses slowly. So look around and name some things you see. Now, notice anything? Take a deep breath in. What do you smell? Any senses? Any odors? And then as you exhale, do you have any taste on your mouth? And what do you hear? Name some things that you hear. How do your clothes feel on you? Wiggle your toes. Where are your feet? And socks and shoes, bare feet. Where are they at? Welcome yourself to the present moment. Now take a nice long inhale. Let that belly rise. And as you exhale, let it be longer than the inhale. Let it all out. And I want you to tell yourself, I don't have to do this alone. I can begin from where I am. This is something to go back to time and time again. When you are dysregulated, when you are feeling some sort of way that's not a homeostasis, content, stressless, assume you're having a stress response. Ground yourself, regulate yourself, love the shit out of yourself, my dears. Treat yourself like a toddler. Be gentle. Get down to your level as if you were a little kid. And give yourself novelty, newness, reward, love, compassion, snacks, naps, toys, comforts, giggles, play. Executive dysfunction is not a flaw, it's a story. It's a story of a brain that learned to survive chaos, a nervous system that ran without support. And an inner child who possibly never got the nurturing she deserved. And honestly, we're not asking how can I get you to function? What I'm really wanting you to ask is how can I make this life feel safe enough for me to show up in it? And that's work. Softening the ground, offering yourself safety, patience, letting your adult self take the wheel with compassion, not force. All right. I'm wrapping it up now. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. I'd love to hear from you. Message me, comment, or follow. I offer virtual sessions, whether you're healing from trauma, navigating a big life shift, or wanting to learn more on how to accommodate yourself rather than push through. I hold space for women just like you every day of the week, every day. And it is my honor. It is a blessing. It is just my pleasure. I love it. It's what I do. If that's something you're curious about, you can fill out a consultation request form via my Link Tree. And then there is a beautiful Spotify playlist with some badass music and some resources. I gotta get on that link tree and shake it up. But it's in there. Check it out. Remember, you are never too much and you are never too late. And you do not have to figure this out all alone. Until next time, 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.
