Finding Safety Within

If you often feel anxious, overwhelmed or alone, if you frequently find yourself in relationships that cause you pain, listen to this episode of the Awaken Your Wise Woman podcast as host Elizabeth Cush shares her experiences with finding safety within. 

“I can be the person who meets me where I need to be met, and I can do that with kindness and care.” — Biz Cush

Have childhood neglect, trauma, chronic illness affected your internal sense of well-being? Does the state of the world leave you feeling overwhelmed? If you’re a highly sensitive woman, chances are you have felt an outsized impact—and it’s equally likely that you’ve been told “you’re over-reacting” so often that you no longer trust yourself. That’s a hard place to be. The good news is, no matter where you are on your journey, you can heal, and keep healing. In this episode of the Awaken Your Wise Woman podcast, host Biz Cush, LCPC, a licensed professional therapist, founder of Progression Counseling in Maryland and Delaware, and a life coach for highly sensitive women, talks about safety and community, shares some of her own journey, and offers insight into the tools she used to settle the noise inside , reconnect with her inner wisdom and intuition, and really learn to trust herself. 

You can find the show notes and resources for all episode here.

Join the Circle of Sacred Sensitivity here.

Transcript

ep 6 season 6 

Fri, Oct 31, 2025 12:11PM • 25:41

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

highly sensitive women, inner healing, childhood trauma, self-compassion, meditation, anxiety, community support, emotional overwhelm, mindfulness, intuition, personal growth, mental health, coping mechanisms, trusting oneself, sensitive nature

SPEAKERS

Elizabeth Cush

Elizabeth Cush  00:01

Hi and welcome back to The Awaken Your wise woman podcast. We are here in episode six of season six. Hard to believe that things are just moving along and we're heading into the new year, but not yet. Not yet. We're still in December, and that's important to remember, because sometimes it does feel like that time just goes so quickly. And you know, we're not honoring what is happening right here in the moment, at this moment. Well, I just want to say thanks to all of you, listeners and followers. If you don't follow me on Instagram, I would love to find you there. I don't post a ton. I share a lot of content from the podcast and will share others content through my stories, but I always enjoy direct messaging with listeners of the podcast and with others who follow me. So I'm there. If you want to find me, there, I am also in the circle of sacred sensitivity. And if you want to be a part of that, I'd love to have you join us. The circle is for highly sensitive women who are feeling the need of building their community of highly sensitive women, and we're there showing up. There's no pressure to engage any more than you feel called to do, but there are resources there for you to utilize whenever you need them. And we do our monthly meetups, our monthly circles, and they've been really fantastic. So if that's something that interests you, you can check out my website and find more about the circle of sacred sensitivity, and that is at Elizabeth cush.com so I hope you'll check it out. If you're interested in joining me, you can DM me on Instagram, you can shoot me an email, lots of ways to find me, and you'll get the info on how to join. You can also click the link in my bio on Instagram. Lots of good info there too. And one of the reasons that the community has grown in a way that feels really nurturing is that I feel like it's drawing those who have done some form of inner healing in order to show up fully for others. But that inner healing can be really hard. It can be well for me, it has really been a lifelong journey, and each step along the way has led to a greater depth of healing, and I guess I want to normalize that, because I know sometimes it can feel as if we're repeating patterns or falling back into old behaviors, and that's normal like that is just a part of being human, but that continued healing can happen throughout your lifetime. And I think for me, how that shown up is that I've begun that I finally that I am now in a place where I trust my instincts, I trust my intuition. Because inside, inside me, in my body, there is a sense of safety and belonging and a real sense that I can trust me, trust myself in relationships, trust myself To to see danger or Unsafe people, if needed, and so that's really helped and been a big focus of this community, is that I feel like the work that we do for ourselves, then attracts that same energy in others, and that has held true for this beautiful circle of highly sensitive women.

Elizabeth Cush  04:49

But when you've experienced childhood neglect, trauma, childhood illness or illness in your life, potentially, just struggle with chronic illness. US or find that our political world is just impacting your sense of wellness, your overall wellness and sense of internal well being. I get that, and I also know that those we can work to heal, those things we can work to build an internal home base where our safety is with us always. Does that mean we won't ever be in danger or won't ever get hurt? No, but it does mean that we can always come back to ourself to find that safety, and some of the way our childhood experiences may show up in our adult life is Mental health issues like anxiety and panic attacks or depression, it may show up as hyper vigilance, so meaning we are always on the lookout for danger, so rarely in a state of rest, so easily startled, get annoyed, easily have difficulty settling inside. It may show up childhood experiences may show up as a mistrust of your body's sensations, or a fear of your body, as if, potentially your body is your enemy, because these symptoms feel out of control or you don't understand them, and therefore they feel foreign or alien. It can also show up as body shaming, not loving truly, loving our bodies for what they give us. And it can also show up as just an overall sense of fear of others and a greater sense of overwhelm in the world, and as highly sensitive women we I believe I'm not. I don't know that there's research out there, but based on my work with women and my personal experience, I believe that highly sensitive women experience childhood trauma and childhood difficult experiences more deeply than the average person, the less sensitive person, because we do experience external stimuli at a greater level than most People, right? So if we're getting overly stimulated, overwhelmed easily when we're already in a state of disruption or distress. External stimuli are going to make us even more responsive, reactive than the average person, because we're already in a state of distress, and that because we feel things so deeply that those childhood experiences land in us in different ways. And I can honestly say that, you know, I feel like my my sister's older than I am, and she and I have, for the most part, you know, we lived in the same family, we experienced a lot of the same things, and yet, I feel as if the childhood trauma really impacted me in a different way than it did her, because she's not highly sensitive.

Elizabeth Cush  09:09

How I see it is that she was able to handle or manage her emotional distress, her the feelings that she was feeling around our childhood experiences, she was able to manage them in relatively healthy ways to work through them. For me, my childhood experiences felt overwhelming. The lack of emotional condition, connection with my parents, childhood trauma by a trusted family member, and really not much being done to resolve that or help that at the time, left me feeling overwhelmed a lot of this. Time, very anxious, very stressed, always a sense of, is the world safe? I know I had a lot of nightmares. I didn't sleep well as a kid, I had a lot of school anxiety, and I think this was all a manifestation of the childhood trauma that really wasn't dealt with, but for me, I didn't have those. I couldn't find I didn't know what to do with that extreme emotional overwhelm, and so what I ended up doing was shutting it down, numbing, and there were lots of ways as a kid I could do that, just keeping quiet, not being vulnerable, not showing up fully, but also truly, just shutting the emotion down because it didn't feel safe to express it. Yeah, I think because those feelings weren't fully processed, I wasn't at a mature enough level to deeply process those feelings myself. Because I was a kid, it led me into some pretty unhealthy relationships, both in college, throughout high school, also later in my adult life, not with my husband, because he is a wonderful human Being, but in personal friendships where I didn't recognize the the pain those relationships were causing, an in a deep enough way, I shut the feelings down. I mistrusted my intuition. I always told myself I was imagining it, or I was too sensitive, or I was, you know, making too big a deal about something, you know, about being hurt that it ended up I was I spent time in relationships that were just not good for me, and although outside, I seemed confident and together most of the time inside I was an anxious mess.

Elizabeth Cush  12:31

And in high school, like as an adolescent, when you're already as a woman and a highly sensitive woman, your hormones are doing all kinds of crazy stuff to your body, and my anxiety ramped up, and I kind of got pulled around and pushed into different schools just because of my parents' divorce. So that sort of disruptive transitioning was really hard on me, and I ended up turning to substances I end up, I ended up smoking a lot of pot and trying other substances in order to find a sense of safety within to find something that helped me turn off the noise in my head helped me feel calm or numb. Really, it wasn't creating a true sense of calm, but the numbness felt more calm than what my internal dialog and my anxieties and worries were creating. At least it shut those off. And I'm very, very grateful to my body and circumstances that I never became addicted to a substance. I mean, I smoked cigarettes, so nicotine for a while was my addiction, but I was able to walk away from that and quit smoking many, many, many years ago, but other substances as well, I I found a path forward without using substances to make my life somewhat peaceful, but it also meant that I still didn't really know how to turn off the noise inside. I didn't know how to fully trust myself, to trust my intuition, to find peace within myself. So I thought I would share a few of the practices that have really helped me settle the noise inside to help me reconnect with my. Inner wisdom, my intuition, to really learn to trust myself. And I think the first step on that path for me was meditation. I took a course on mindful meditation for chronic pain. And although at the time, I didn't have chronic pain, I felt like my anxiety was a chronic pain. You know, it did cause me physical symptoms, and it felt as if it was ever present, and it was so helpful. It just helped me learn how to sit with discomfort in a compassionate, caring, quiet way, not trying to fix it, not trying to change it, to just be with it and sort of detach from the identity of, for me, of the pain of anxiety. So I feel as if I went from I'm an anxious person to I'm a person who experiences anxiety, and I don't know if you can feel that subtle difference, but for me, it just gave me some space around the anxiety, and it allowed me to notice that there were times when I didn't feel anxious, that I really felt okay and sometimes felt good, but in the moments where the when the anxiety was present, I was learning how to be with it with kindness and care. It's funny because I told myself the reason I was taking the class, the course on meditation for chronic anxiety, was because I wanted to become certified as a teacher for this program. But really what ended up happening was I found some some peace within myself, and that was a beautiful thing. And through learning how to sort of be quiet and listen to myself and my feelings and sit with whatever was going on, it helped me with my self compassion practice, and that's the second piece to me that really has made a big difference, because through a self compassion practice, I really began Building a foundational, kinder, compassionate, more compassionate relationship with myself, which I had never had I through the learning, through the practice of self compassion, realized how hard I was on myself, how unkindly I talked to myself, how Critical I was of myself, and through the practices that I learned from Kristin Neff and her work on self compassion, I was able to really honor who I Am, even in the messiness and the struggle and the the imperfectness in my humanness, and that's been a huge, huge shift in in in that dynamic within me, because I could see myself as a compassionate being, and I hadn't always viewed that relationship in the same way. And through that, it helped me build the trust within myself of like I can take care of me, I can be the person who meets me where I I need to be met, and I can do that with kindness and care. And that helped me learn how to trust me and my intuition, me and my heart, me and my soul. And that was. A just. It's been a lovely journey, and I'm not always kind to myself, but when I'm not, I notice right away, and I'm able to shift that dialog and through both using mindfulness and a self compassion practice, the combination has helped me better honor my feelings when they arise. Because I think for a lot of us, especially highly sensitive women, we've learned over the years to either not trust what we're feeling because people say You're too sensitive or don't be. Don't take that so personally or through other you know, because we do feel so deeply, we've learned to kind of tamp down or hide or dismiss or numb from our feelings, and through being more mindful so in the present moment, recognizing the feelings that are arising and then meeting them with compassion, I'm able to honor my feelings, whatever they are. You know, if my feelings have gotten hurt, or if I'm feeling overwhelmed or exhausted, if I'm feeling like I need a break to rest my my sensitive nature, I'm learning through these tools to help honor those feelings, and that's really a beautiful thing. And lastly, and not, not necessarily the only last thing. I mean, there are so many tools out there, including therapy or coaching, that can really support, support us through honoring who we are and helping us work through stuff. But there's also all kinds of amazing tools out there, like or resources out there, I should say, like

Elizabeth Cush  22:15

Reiki or craniosacral therapy, movement therapy, art therapy, so many, too many to go into great detail about all of those, and we do focus on some of those tools and techniques and resources in other episodes, but I would say for me, Lastly is having people in my life who support me, who understand my sensitivities, who can meet me where I am, has been like probably one of the best things for me as a sensitive woman and as a therapist and as a person, but it took me really honoring who I am before I was able to fully find that community and others, to feel at home in Myself, enough that I was confident, if you know, my intuition was pinging me that maybe a person didn't feel safe, or I was in relationships that were unhealthy. It took me treating myself with the compassion, kindness, understanding then to find that community who would treat me the same way. And I'm curious, what has supported you in your life? Are there practices that you come back to time and again, are there places and people that really fill you up? I would love to know. I would love to hear about them. We can share that on through Instagram or, you know, if you reach out to me through direct message or email me, I'd love to share any tips that you might have that really have supported you in building that Inner trust and and bringing your wisdom into the world. So that wraps it up for this week's podcast. If you are interested in joining with other highly sensitive women the circle of sacred sensitivity, membership. Is open for registration. You have the option of joining the membership for $19 a month. You get the 14 days free to check it out, or you can drop in to one of our monthly meetups. And either way, I'd love to see you, meet you, bring you into the circle. You can find out more at my website. Elizabeth cush.com and I hope to see you soon. I look forward to connecting with you next time here on the podcast.