E035 Presence & Perception Why Certain Rooms Make You Feel So Uncomfortable (It's Not What You Think)

Have you ever wondered why you can feel completely like yourself in one room and uncomfortable in another? This episode explores what influences those moments and how understanding them can change the way you interpret them. 

You might suddenly become aware of yourself, question whether you belong there or notice you're holding back in ways you normally wouldn't. The $7 Season Mapping Quiz will help you understand where you're at right now and why the same situations can feel easier to navigate in some seasons and more challenging in others 

Presence & Perception: Why Certain Rooms Make You Feel So Uncomfortable (It's Not What You Think)

In this episode, I unpack why certain environments affect you more than others. We explore what your nervous system is doing before your conscious mind catches up, why belonging matters more than we realise and how understanding your capacity changes the way you interpret these moments.

📋 What we covered:

• The dating event that sparked this entire conversation
• How the stories you tell yourself shape the way you show up
• Why perception and presentation are more layered than we give them credit for
• What neuroception is and how your nervous system scans a room before you're aware of it
• Why humans are wired to seek belonging and familiarity
• What the Window of Tolerance is and how it shapes your capacity in social situations
• Why the same room can feel completely different from one day to the next
• What growth, rest, survival and transition seasons can look like in social environments
• Why understanding your season helps you stop taking these experiences personally
• What it means when your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do

🧭 Season Mapping Quiz

Identify your current season and understand what your body needs right now.

👉 https://gawellness.myflodesk.com/seasonquiz

🌟 Key takeaways:

• The same room can bring out very different versions of you
• Your nervous system notices cues in the environment before you're consciously aware of them
• Capacity changes how you experience social situations from one day to the next
• Seasons influence how much energy you have available for unfamiliar environments
• The stories you tell yourself about a moment shape the way you experience it 

🔁 Episodes referenced in this episode:

E032–E034 Boundaries in Business Arc
E011 Mum Guilt Explained: Reframing Rest, Guilt and Self-Care for Mums

🎧 Related listening:

E008 The Myth of Balance: Let's Talk Seasons
E012 FOMO Detox for Mums: Spotting & Soothing the Fear of Missing Out
E020 Create Calm On Purpose: Finding Intention and Equilibrium for 2026

If you've ever wondered why you can walk confidently into one room and feel completely out of place in another, this will help you understand why. More importantly, it will help you stop questioning yourself every time it happens.

📱 Let’s Connect 

• All links, resources and ways to connect are here https://linktr.ee/GAWellness

🔔 If this episode spoke to you, lovely, please:

• Follow the podcast.
• Leave a quick review (it truly helps!)
• Share with a bestie who’s ready to reclaim wellness on her own terms.

 © 2026 GA Wellness with Georgia Ann® . All content is for educational purposes only and is not medical or psychological advice. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Have you ever walked into a room and thought, why do I feel so uncomfortable? You can't place it, but something in you just felt off the whole time. You were aware of yourself in a way you normally aren't. Like you just can't find your footing. And the confusing part is that it doesn't happen everywhere. Some rooms feel completely easy, but others, they just get to you and you don't really know why. In this episode, we're getting into exactly what's happening in those moments in your body and in your nervous system. So you can stop wondering what's wrong with you and start understanding what's actually going on. Welcome to the GA Wellness Podcast. Small Steps, lasting change. I'm your host, Georgia Ran, health coach, solo mum, and a woman who's lived through the chaos, the curveballs, and the craving for something steadier. After 20 years in the fitness industry and my own journey through grief, motherhood, and starting over, I've learned that real wellness isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters. Each week we cut through the noise and get real. With simple, doable tools to help you feel stronger, calmer, and more like you. This isn't about perfection. It's about steady, soul-led progress. Because you deserve wellness that fits into your whole life. Not just one version of it. Let's dive in. Hey lovely, welcome back to the GA Wellness Podcast. Okay, how many times have you walked into a room and suddenly not know what to do with yourself and not really know what's happened? You feel strangely odd and can't pinpoint it. Yes? Well, you're in good company. I created this podcast to feel like you're grabbing a coffee with someone who legit gets your life. The juggle and the overstimulation. Around here we talk about why your body reacts the way it does in social situations, why some rooms feel easy and some feel like a lot, and what your nervous system is actually doing in those moments. We want to help you catch what's happening sooner, stop taking it so personally and maybe too seriously, and feel like yourself even when the environment around you isn't making it easy. If that sounds like your jam, strap in, cause in this episode, which is our first episode in our brand new presence and perception arc, this is exactly what we're going to cover. Now, before we dive in, and if you just found this little pocket of the internet, or my little pocket, or our little pocket of the internet, a huge welcome to you. And if you've been here for a while, you'll know we just wrapped up our boundaries in business arc, which was a big one. We looked at what happens in your nervous system when something feels off in a work relationship, how to recognize the signs early, how to actually speak up, and what to do when things don't change the way you hoped. If you haven't listened to that one yet, it's episodes 32 to 34 and it's well worth a listen. But today we are starting fresh. And I want to tell you where this one started from. Its origin story, if you will. Because this one started from something really unexpected. It started at a dating event. Yep, a dating event. Okay, so let me set the scene for you. Yes, George's movie obsessed mind is starting to come in. So I wasn't nervous going into the event and into that room, literally, at all. You could say it was the ambient lighting, the music, the fact that you got a drink on arrival. Yes, that one really does matter. But I really wasn't nervous at all. I'm in a really good place at my life at the moment. I'm happy to wait for the right person. So I went in with this very calm, whatever happens, happens vibe. There were no stakes for me really. I was just curious to see what the experience was like. And because of that, I walked in really comfortable, relaxed, and just really there in the moment. So while the event was happening, I was noticing that there was quite a few things happening around me at the same time. And side note, I've learned the skill of reading the room from the age of 20 when I first started group fitness classes. So this is something that I naturally do. Okay, so some of the guys we were speed dating with were showing their current state in that moment, and I'm talking, their hands were shaking like visibly, their voices had that nervous quality to them, you know, that slightly high pitch that sometimes happens. Now I could feel their energy, and I just honestly remember thinking at the time that I wanted to reassure them and say it's okay, there's nothing to be worried about. I mean, I never said it out loud, but I felt that. And the funny thing is, afterwards when we had the debrief, because every event has a debrief, doesn't it? I was chatting to some of the other women and some of the men, and what came back was that my presence in that room had apparently felt very magnetic. People had noticed something about how I was showing up. And when I thought about why, it was because I just had no agenda. I didn't put up a front and I wasn't being a try-hard, I guess. I was just being me. So a consequence was that my nervous system was calm because the stakes felt low. So what came through was just me. Now on the opposite side of the scale, in a different setting, like a work event or a business situation where for me the stakes feel much higher, I can notice myself becoming more self-conscious about what I say and how I come across. So it is the same me, but a completely internal different state. And that difference in internal state changes how I present. So I've given you now two different situations here and two different scenarios. And you know what the difference is between the two? The story that I told myself. So the stories we tell ourselves affect how our presence shows up differently in one room to another room. And that comes out in our nervous system or our body and how it responds. And you know what really drove that home for me? Going back to that dating event in my head afterwards. Because what happened in that room, believe it or not, took me straight back to my group fitness days, to all those rooms I stood at the front of for 19 years because I'd seen the same thing play out thousands of times with myself and other people. Strange, isn't it? But because I was transported back to that space, it reminded me how instinctive this is for me now and why I picked up on it at this dating event. Now that night kind of cracked something open for me, and literally the next few months, because this ARC has honestly been sitting in development for about three or four months, I just kept having moments. There was a work situation, a business conversation, there was something personal, I chat with my team, and we were actually just having a discussion about how perception and presentation are just so more laid than we give it credit for. And the vibe I got from my team and the people that I was chatting with is as humans, we truly don't realise how we're being perceived. They literally said, Oh, I didn't realise I was coming across like that, or I didn't realise I sounded like that. And it's such a common experience. But what we don't really know, or what we don't really talk about or consciously think about it, or especially in that way anyway. This is also connected to something called emotional intelligence. And I think it's worth talking about it here because emotional intelligence is genuinely something that develops over time as you get more aware of yourself and other people. This means that you become more aware of the gap between what you're feeling and what's actually landing with the people around you. So this arc will help you notice that gap. So there are actually three layers to what we're gonna be looking at across this arc. There's how the person feels within themselves, that's today, how that gets projected outwards and how people perceive it, which will be next week, and the final week, which is what happens when the two meet. But today we're staying right here on the inside, on you, and what's actually happening in your body when you walk into a room. And before we go any further, I just want to be really clear about where we're going with this. We're coming at this specifically from a nervous system lens because that's where my work comes from and that's where my methodology comes from. So to be clear, we're not talking about presenting better in a room, leadership's presence, or commanding attention. That's a whole different conversation. But you might find that indirectly that might actually improve based on what we're going to talk about these next few weeks. Okay, so if you have a notebook close to you, or you can open the notes app on your phone, I encourage you to do that now because there will be some nuggets you'll find today and the next few weeks, especially when you see a lot of this start to click. So even if you need to pause the pod to go and get it, okay, have you got it? I'm gonna assume you do, and then we can get going. Okay, so I just want to start with something really specific, and I think you're gonna recognize this immediately. Picture yourself about to walk into a room. Maybe it's a work event or a party or a new class you've never tried before. You're standing just outside the door and there's a moment right before you go in where something changes in you, or there's just a moment of something. So maybe a little flicker of something you just or just something you literally just can't put your finger on. This is something I've watched consciously over my years of teaching group fitness classes, thousands and thousands of times. And what I noticed is that the door to a group fitness class is one of the most revealing social moments you'll ever observe because people pause there. They literally freeze. They look through the class, they scan the room, they check out how full it is, they see if they know anyone, and they decide do I join them, do I push through, do I just hover around the outside, or just slip away. In my early days, I literally used to take this to heart and I used to think, why don't you just come in? I'm not an ogre, especially in a body balance class, which is all about mind and body. So I mean that was my perception, yet theirs was totally different. And what always got me was just how consistent that was. It doesn't matter whether the class was brilliant or whether the instructor was their favorite, that pause happened regardless. Something was being assessed before a single conscious thought had actually been formed. So yeah, I used to think that pause was about confidence. Now I kind of understand it a little bit differently. Okay, so here's where some of the science comes in because I think once you understand what's happening in your body in those moments, it starts making a little bit more sense and you can get a little bit more clarity. So there's a process your nervous system runs called neurosception. It was by a researcher named Stephen Porgis, and he developed something called polyvagal theory, and it's become one of the most fundamental frameworks in nervous system science. So neurosception is essentially your body's unconscious surveillance system. It's scanning the environment for signals of safety or threat before your conscious brain has even registered what's happening. And I want to pause on that word, unconscious, because this isn't something that you're actually choosing to do. You're not deciding to feel on edge when you walk into a room. Your nervous system is running that assessment automatically underneath awareness, which is literally happening in milliseconds. So what it's picking up on is the vibe. Specifically things like faces, tone of voice, body language, the general energy of the space. Are people making eye contact? Does the body language in the room feel open or closed? Is it loud or quiet? And I mean this with the actual noise in the room as well, because sometimes uncomfortably loud noises isn't great for the vibe either in the room. So it really does depend. Or if you have a class which I'm gonna say, like body pump, for example, you need loud music. You can't really pump weights without loud music. So it does depend on the vibe in the room as well. So all of this is being processed in the background and your nervous system is responding accordingly, often before you formed a single conscious thought about the room. So when you walk through the door and feel that flutter or that tightening, that's neurosception doing what it's designed to do. And here's what I find so reassuring about that. Your body is paying attention on your behalf before your mind has actually caught up. So we also spoke about this in our boundaries in business arc. So understanding that allows the feeling or the story to shift from something being wrong with you to something working for you, even when it's uncomfortable. So here's the thing, and I find this really fascinating. Your nervous system is always a step ahead of you. Before you've formed any real thought about the room, your nervous system has already run its own assessment of it. It's asking something really simple, is this safe? Now I want to be clear that I'm not talking about physically safe, okay? No one's walking into a Pilates class thinking they're in physical danger. Although I have been whacked by someone's map before. Seriously though, your nervous system also scans the social threat for uncertainty, for newness, for environments where the rules aren't quite clear yet, or where you're not sure what's expected of you. Because here's the thing about humans. We are deeply wired for belonging. And I mean that in a really primal sense. For most of our evolutionary history, being on the outer of a group was actually really dangerous. The wiring doesn't just switch off because we're standing in a Lululemon centered room at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. So the nervous system scans. Is there anyone I know? Does the energy feel good? Does it feel familiar? Do I know what's expected of me here? Am I gonna be okay? And then it responds. Sometimes with clarity and that lovely sense of being somewhere familiar, and sometimes with that tightening, self self-conscious and sudden awareness of yourself that you absolutely did not have five minutes ago in the car park. You might be listening to this and recognizing that feeling immediately, that particular kind of uncomfortable when you're suddenly very aware of your own existence in space. And I just want to say this is one of the most human experiences there is. It is completely normal and it just means your nervous system is doing its job. Now, you've probably heard me speak about this before, especially when we spoke about Mum Guilt back in episode 11. And I'm about to add another layer, and I really want you to hear this because this gets really interesting. Your nervous system isn't just responding to the room, it's responding to the room through the filter of you, your personality, your past experiences, your expectations walking in, and the season you're currently in. All of that shapes what gets picked up and how your nervous system responds. So two people can walk in exactly the same room, have completely different experiences because their nervous system is working with different information. And guess what? Even the same person can have a different experience at a different time. So I saw this player all the time. The same woman, same class, same instructor, same playlist. Actually, I hope not because you know that would get quite boring after a while. Um, would show up completely different depending on the week. So on a good Monday, she'd walk straight in, set up near the front, chat to whoever was next to her, and then Thursday, after a rough few days, she'd slip in quietly, find the spot towards the back, and just keep her head down until the music started. So she didn't become a different person, she was just in a different state, and her nervous system was responding accordingly. And I think about how many times women have judged themselves for that Thursday version, told themselves that they're being antisocial or that they're used to being more outgoing or that something has changed in them when actually nothing has changed. Their nervous system was just telling them what it had capacity for for that particular day. And there's also a really good science reason for this as well. And I find this quite reassuring, and I hope that you do too, once you understand it. Your nervous system doesn't just respond to what's in front of you right now, it also responds based on something called your window of tolerance. So this is a concept developed by psychologist Daniel Siegel, and it describes a zone your nervous system can comfortably operate within before it starts to feel overwhelmed or starts to shut down. When your window is wide, so think when you've had enough sleep, when your stress load is manageable, or when you're in a season that feels relatively consistent, unfamiliar environments and uncertain social situations actually become a lot easier to navigate. Your system has capacity and it can handle the uncertainty and still feel okay. Now, when your window narrows, which is when you're being depleted, or when you're in a hard season, when your nervous system has been dealing with a lot, so the same room, the same situation can actually tip you outside that comfortable zone much faster. And when that happens, your nervous system responds the way that it always does when it senses threat. It pulls back, it goes silent, it scans more and further wide, which makes you feel more visible to yourself. So this is why the same person can walk into a room with confidence one week and feel overwhelmed by the same room just a few days later. The room hasn't changed. Their window of tolerance though has. So this flips the script because it means your experience in a room is your current nervous system state and not a measure of your social capability. Okay, so I have another nugget for you. When you walk into an unfamiliar room or room where you feel uncertain, one of the most common experiences is the feeling that people are watching us, that we're being assessed or evaluated, that if we do something wrong or awkward, someone is gonna notice. And it feels incredibly real and it can feel really uncomfortable. But here is something I started noticing from the front of fitness classes and group fitness classes. And honestly, once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. So a lot of times someone would stand at the back of the room because they were worried about doing the move wrong or doing the moves wrong, and then having someone see them and start see them starting to struggle. Now, was this the case? Actually, not really, because most people in that room were not looking at them at all. They were looking at me in the front or they were watching themselves in the mirror, checking out their form, their own posture, their own reflection. The confident people up the front, the ones who looked the most relaxed and getting into their groove, were actually the most internally focused. They were not scanning anyone to see if they were struggling, they were completely absorbed in their own experience. And I really want you to hear this. The feeling of being watched does not mean you actually are being watched. What your nervous system is doing is turning up the volume on your sense of visibility, making you feel more exposed than you actually are. So from a survival standpoint, feeling like someone's watching keeps you alert and careful, right? So it's really old programming. And in a fitness class on a Tuesday morning, honestly, pretty unnecessary. But your nervous system doesn't know that, it's just doing its job. And I think back to all the times I've heard women say that they stopped going to a class or didn't go back to a group or stayed quiet in a room because of how watched they felt when the watching was almost entirely happening inside their own head. Now I want to pause for a second and say this is incredibly normal and actually really significant. That's the nervous system creating a story that changes what people do. It comes back to what I say at the start about the stories we tell ourselves. And this is the thing I really want to say clearly because I think it changes everything once you hear them. The flutter before you walk through the door and the scanning of familiar faces, gravitating towards the edges of a room and becoming suddenly very conscious of yourself has actually got nothing to do with your personality or whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. In fact, my friend who is an introvert is actually quite chatty when she's in the right situation, right room, and right people. So why is that? It's your nervous system and the response is based on it scanning the environment and responding to what it finds. And this is such a meaningful difference between thinking I'm just a socially awkward person or socially anxious person and thinking, you know what, my nervous system is just responding to the room. One feels fixed and it's just that's who you are, and the other feels more subjective based on the information around you. And information is something that we can actually work with. So this is a really, really good place to be. And let me say this clearly, you are the person whose nervous system is responding to the conditions it's in. That distinctions matter more than I can tell you. So I'm gonna give you another scenario when this comes through. Yeah, I know I've given you so many scenarios, but I really wanted to hear this one as well. So the same person can feel completely confident in one room and nervous in another. So the conditions are different, and one of the biggest conditions is how prepared and how familiar your nervous system feels. So this is exactly what I was saying before about my friend. Plus, I know this very well within myself, and it's actually something that my colleagues picked up on before I even registered myself. So they work that out that when I'm nervous or unsure of what I'm doing, I speak really fast, like almost incoherently fast, because I'm trying to work out where things are, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I need to go all at once, and I'll rehearse something four, five, six minutes. maybe seven times, trying to get it into my body so then I can feel s ready for what it is I'm about to do. So I mean I even had an event a few weeks ago where I had a fairly important role. And the thing is I didn't actually know what my role was until that day. So I walked in uncertain. My nervous system had no map for what was expected of me. And you could tell apparently because it came through with how fast I spoke and how I had to try and orientate myself in real time. Now compare that to 18 19 years of teaching Greek fitness classes where I walk in and it is literally water off my back. I know my material I know exactly what I wanted to do. I knew what the room needed of me and because of that all my energy went outwards. I wasn't thinking about myself at all. I was looking at the people in front of me, reading the room, making sure they were getting the best experience. That's only possible when your nervous system feels completely at home and comfortable in what it's doing. Same person, completely different experience. And the difference wasn't confidence it was familiarity and preparation. So when those are there your nervous system can breathe and when it's not it scrambles. So that event that was a transition season moment. A role I'd never done before in a context that was new to me and my nervous system responded exactly the way you'd expect it to in those conditions. Which is actually the perfect bridge for where I want to go next. So I want to bring in one more layer here before we wrap up because this is woven through everything I do and it's really relevant to what we've been talking about today. The season you're currently in has direct effect on your window of tolerance and this means it has a direct effect on how rooms feel. So the four seasons I work with are survival, growth, rest and transition and each one creates a really different experience in social environments. So in a growth season rooms tend to feel more accessible. You've got more capacity for the uncertainty more willingness to push into something unfamiliar more energy for what social situations sometimes ask for you. New rooms can feel exciting rather than threatening and your window of tolerance is wider and your nervous system has more to draw on. So in a rest season the same room that can feel completely manageable a few months ago can start to feel like a lot. You want and crave what's familiar. You want what feels safe and that's your nervous system having a completely appropriate response. It's telling you what it can handle right now. In a survival season ever even rooms you love can be more draining than usual. Your window of tolerance is low. Your nervous system is already managing a heavy load and there's no room left for navigating any new or uncertain environments. You might even come home from something that should have felt fine and feel completely spent in a way that really surprises you. And in transition season you're somewhere in between things are shifting and changing. Your nervous system is still finding its feet rooms can feel inconsistent which means they could feel easy one day maybe hard the next because your capacity is still finding its new level. So if rooms have been feeling really stressful, take a lot of energy lately or if your experience in social environments has been changing in a way you just can't quite explain it's really worth asking what season your nervous system is actually in right now. Because once you know that so much else makes sense and you can stop taking it personally and most importantly you can start to take action. I've created a season mapping quiz which is a gentle and really practical way to work out exactly where you are sitting it takes into account how your nervous system is responding right now not just what's happening in your life on the surface and if you're curious about what season you're in the link is in the episode description I'd really love for you to check it out and if you have any questions you can email me at georgia at gawellness.com dot au Okay lovely before we wrap up today let's bring this all together. We talked about that moment before you walk through the room and what's actually happening in it. We spoke about neurosception which is your nervous system scanning the room before your conscious mind has even caught up. We looked at your window of tolerance and how it explains why the same room can feel so different depending on the week. We explored the feeling of being watched and how it almost never matches the reality on the outside and we looked at how the season you're in shows your capacity and presence in rooms. This is so beneficial when you do know what season you're in because you can start making decisions and making choices that work for you not just you a week ago. What I really want you to take from today is this the way you feel in certain rooms is not a reflection of who you are. It's your nervous system doing its job in the conditions it has with the resources it currently has available. That's it. And once you understand that you can start making it mean something about your worth or your capability. Okay so next week we're flipping the lens completely we're going external what's actually happening in the room around you what people are noticing and what creates that magnetic presence some people seem to carry in a room. Because that part is really fascinating and I think it's going to change how you see the rooms you walk into. And if you're already feeling conscious about your own patterns the season mapping quiz is the in the episode description I'd love for you to check it out. Until next week stay happy stay healthy and I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being here lovely if today's episode gave you a light bulb moment, helped you feel sane or sparked a small step, I'd love to hear about it. Tag me over on Instagram at GereWellness and share your wins so I can cheer you on. And if there's a woman in your world that needs this kind of support send this to her because wellness feels better when we do it together. Make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and check the description for all the resources mentioned today. Plus the link to join my email list which is where I share exclusive content, early access to offers and freebies and little love notes that are only sent to my community. If you love this episode it would mean the world to me if you left a review. Until next time take a deep breath and take care of you. With love, George Oran