E037 Presence & Perception: How to Feel Like Yourself in a Room Even When You're Running on Empty

Have you ever had to show up somewhere when you had absolutely nothing left? You walked in already running on empty, acted like you were fine and then got home wondering why you felt completely spent. This episode explores what happens when you have to show up in a room, read what’s happening around you and still try to feel like yourself when you’re not at your best. 

Sometimes the hardest part is that you can still function. You can still talk, smile, listen and get through it, but it costs more than usual because your capacity is lower than you realise. The $7 Season Mapping Quiz will help you understand where you’re at right now and how your current season may be shaping your Window of Tolerance, capacity and ability to feel like yourself in certain situations. 

Presence & Perception: How to Feel Like Yourself in a Room Even When You’re Running on Empty

In this episode, I bring the whole Presence & Perception arc together. We look at what happens when you’re reading the room, responding to the people around you and trying to stay connected to yourself at the same time. We also explore interoception, the difference between depth and drain, and three things worth paying attention to before, during and after an interaction. 

📋 What we covered:

• Why showing up depleted can feel like you’ve run a marathon
• Bringing together the internal and external sides of a room
• Why your season shapes your capacity before you even walk through the door
• What happens when you read a room and your tone, stance and choices start changing
• Why reading the room is useful until you lose contact with yourself
• The difference between conversations that create depth and conversations that drain you
• What interoception is and how your body reads what’s happening inside you
• Why feeling like yourself starts with internal orientation
• The three things worth noticing before, during and after an interaction
• How your season shapes your Window of Tolerance and the cost of faking it
• What the deli story reveals about presence, perception and how differently people can read the same room

🧭 Season Mapping Quiz

Identify your current season and understand how it may be shaping your Window of Tolerance, capacity and ability to feel like yourself right now.

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

🌟 Key takeaways:

• Getting through it is not the same as having capacity for it 
• The version of you that shows up running low still deserves your attention 
• Reading the room can help you until it pulls you away from yourself 
• Your body often knows a conversation is draining before your mind has caught up 
• Your current season changes how much of yourself you have available 

🔁 Episodes referenced in this episode:

E035 Presence & Perception: Why Certain Rooms Make You Feel So Uncomfortable (It’s Not What You Think)
E036 Presence & Perception: Nobody Is Watching You as Much as You Think. Here’s What’s Really Happening
E008 The Myth of Balance: Let’s Talk Seasons
E025–E027 Grounded & Growing Arc

🎧 Related listening:

E004 Self-Care: Nurturing Your Nervous System
E020 Create Calm On Purpose: Finding Intention and Equilibrium for 2026
E032–E034 Boundaries in Business Arc

If you’ve been pushing through events or conversations when you’re already running low, this will help you see what that’s actually costing you. More importantly, it will help you understand the three moments that matter most if you want to feel more like yourself before, during and after you show up.

📱 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 had shop somewhere? A work event? A social thing? Something that mattered, and you just had nothing left. You were running on empty before you even walked through the door, and then you spent the whole time faking it. In this episode, we're getting into why that happens, what the nervous system is actually doing in those moments, and three things worth paying attention to so you can feel a little bit more like yourself when you're not your best. Welcome to the GA Wellness Podcast. Small steps, lasting change. I'm your host, George Duran, 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 full life. Not just one version of it. Let's dive in. So tell me, have you ever faked it through an entire evening and then sat in the car afterwards wondering why you felt like you just ran a marathon? Please tell me I'm not the only person. If so, you are totally in the right space, and I got you. I'm that bestie that you go and grab a coffee with when you just want to have a chat about what happens because I get what you're going through. It's the struggles and the moments. You literally just want to be validated for feeling the way you do, not just fix it. Am I right? And I get it. There are days you just want to talk about what happened, like when you had to show up, be present and engaged, when honestly you had nothing left. Or maybe it's the events you pushed through, or the conversations you faked your way through, and that feeling when you got home afterwards wondering why you're completely spent. So around here, we get real about that version of you that shows up when you're running low. Because that version deserves just as much understanding as the one who walks in with a full tank. Now, if you've been following along, welcome to the concluding chapter of the presence and perception arc. And if you've jumped in here for the first time, I love that energy. But I'd really encourage you to go back and start from episode 35 first, because today builds directly on both the previous two episodes, and it'll make a lot more sense with that foundation behind you. As a bit of a recap though, in episode 36, we went fully internal. We looked at what's actually happening inside you when you walk into a room, like your nervous system scanning for safety before your conscious mind has even caught up, and why certain rooms make you feel uncomfortable. And most importantly, how the life season you're in shapes all of it. Not sure what I mean about seasons. I go into a lot of deep detail in episode 8, but I'll cover it later on on here as well. In episode 36, we flipped it and we went fully external this time. We looked at what's happening in the room around you, including the people in the room as well. We covered topics like the spotlight effect and why nobody is watching you as much as you think, what co-regulation and social mirroring really mean, and what actually creates that magnetic presence some people seem to be born with. And now in episode 37, we're bringing those two worlds together. We've looked at you, we've looked at the room, now we're looking at what happens when the two meet, and what that means when you're not at your best. And look, I'm raising this because no one talks about it. We talk a lot about how to show up well. We don't really talk nearly enough about what's actually happening when we show up depleted. And so much of that depletion comes down to the season you're in, because your season determines your capacity, and your capacity determines everything. How you read a room, how you respond to it, how much of yourself you have left to give once you're in the thick of it. Okay, before we dive in, if you've got your phone on you, open the notes up right now. Or even better, if you're not already doing this, I would love for you to start a dedicated GA wellness podcast journal. Somewhere just for the aha moments, the things that land, the stuff that you want to come back to, because this arc in particular across all three of these episodes is full of gems that are worth holding on to. So whether you're listening to this one fresh or going back through episode 35 and 36, have something to write in and you'll thank yourself later. Okay, and while you're at it, make sure you hit the subscribe button because there are so many goodies coming your way that will generally change your perception of what's happening in your interactions with the people around you and within yourself. Have you got that ready? I'm gonna assume or hope you do. Okay, let's dive in. So I want to describe something and I want you to pay attention to whether this feels familiar. You arrive somewhere, a gathering, a work event, a new group, you walk in, you read the room quickly, and almost instantly you've made your own assessment of it. Some of it is due to the actual room itself, like the decor, lighting, the ambiance. It's really what you can feel in the air. And there's also the other part where you can tell instantly whether it feels easy or hard, warm or cool, somewhere you can relax, or somewhere you literally feel your guards start to come up. And then there's this part that I really want you to pay attention to. You start adjusting your stance, not just physically, but also mentally. In the previous episodes, we spoke about how your body does this subconsciously and your tone changes as a result. And what I mean by this is what you're willing to say or not say changes. And that version of yourself you're projecting starts to steer towards what the room is seems to call for rather than what you actually came in with. Now, I've noticed this in myself so many times. You walk in a room as one version of yourself, and within 10 minutes, you're literally becoming a completely different person. I remember there's a work event that I went into, and I was feeling a little nervous because I was going in in an official capacity and knowing that networking was going to be important. After I walked into the room, saw the way it'd been laid out, it was very elegant, very tasteful. And then because of some serious serendipity, I ended up becoming part of Someone's Speech to due to a previous event they attended that my team ran. And that was the turning point for me because suddenly there was a level of authority in that room that I hadn't walked in with. Networking became so much easier after that because I had an icebreaker to lead with. So the energy in that room changed, and so had I, but this time in a direction that actually worked in my favor. And there's this thing about reading a room, it is a real skill. Noticing those moments, honing in on them, taking advantage of them when they present themselves, all that really matters. The issue though is when adjusting yourself goes so far that you lose contact with yourself, when you're so focused on reading and responding to what the room needs that the inner voice that knows what you actually need goes silent. And when you're already running on empty before you've even walked through the door, that adjustment can happen really fast because a depleted nervous system looks for the path of least resistance. It doesn't have the energy to hold its own. So it looks outward for clues or for cues about what to do. And before you know it, you're faking a version of yourself in a room that's costing you energy you actually really don't have. And one of the clearest places that you feel this is in conversations, specifically the difference between the ones that give you energy and the ones that take it. We touched on reciprocity in episode 36. And if you hasn't listened to that one yet, it's worth going back to. And you usually don't feel the full weight of it until you're in the car on the way home thinking, why am I so exhausted? I didn't even really do that much tonight. That's your body being really clear about something, and that's exactly what we're going to explore next. And I want to be very careful here because I think there's a distinction between drain versus depth. Discomfort and drain feel completely different in your body, and they mean completely different things. A conversation that challenges you or stretches you in a way that feels slightly uncomfortable can actually leave you feeling tired, but also generally glad that you had it. That's true depth and that's a real connection. There are many of those I've had with my mentors over the years and with people I admire. Some of those conversations have aha moments and also leave you with a lot to ponder. And for someone who like me who likes to think in systems, which is what I spoke about back in the grounded and growing arc, this is huge. It gives me a completely different perspective to the one I might have walked in with. Now that kind of tide is worth it every single time. But what I'm pointing to though is the specific kind of tide that comes from being in an environment where you're required to be something other than what you actually are. From adjusting yourself so far towards what the room seems to need, then you lose track of what you need. Pretty much acting like you're fine when you're not, or faking warmth when you're honestly running an empty, and really you'd rather just be home on your couch. And I think a lot of us do this without even realizing it. We push through because we feel like we should and we should be able to handle it, or because we don't want to let anyone down, or because we're judging ourselves for needing space, so we ignore the signal, and then we wonder why we're feeling so depleted. Your body was trying to tell you something the whole time. And I don't think you need me to tell you which one of these you've been in recently. You already know. What I'd be paying attention to though is how often one is showing up versus the other, and what that might be telling you about how you are feeling right now. And here's the science bit because I think this is one of the most validating things you'll hear. So in episode 35, we talked about neurosception, your body's unconscious scan of the external environment for signals of safety or threat. This is the flip side of that. It's called introspens, your nervous system's ability to sense what's happening inside your own body. Things like tension in your chest, a heaviness in your limbs, a tightening in your throat, that uneasy feeling in your stomach. This is your body's internal scan. Think of it like your body's way of communicating your internal state with you. The research on introsion, much of it is actually been building on the work by neuroscientist Andro Damasio. And it actually suggests that the body processes social and emotional information before the conscious brain does. So what this means is that your body knows you're in a draining environment before your brain and your mind has even had a chance to think about it, which is why you can be mid-conversation saying all the right things, and your body is already signalling that something is off. And I actually had a situation like this recently where I was really excited to see the person that I was going to see, but midway through I realized that I needed to put up a boundary, and then I realized that that boundary that I had put in place wasn't being honoured. I was disappointed that because I that this had happened, but also because my body was literally telling me that I wasn't happy in the situation or in the conversation. And you know, that mismatch gives you something really to think about. Just your body gives you that information about how you're feeling, and then it's time, and then that's when you really have to sit down and think to yourself, well, is this conversation now really worth my time or not? And then look at the difference between the draining effect versus the depth effect in the conversation. And that's exactly what the science describes. When our nervous system senses that a situation is asking for more than what we have available, or that something just doesn't feel right, your body starts moving into protection mode. So coming back to polyvagal theory here, we move more from a social engagement state where we open, connected, easy to be with, into a more defensive state where we're scanning the room, protecting ourselves, and working out how to get out of the situation. And that shift is where you feel that particular kind of drain. So the body sensation is real. Your body is giving you a real read of the environment. Learning to trust it rather than ignore it is one of the most useful things you can develop. Okay, so there's something that I want to say here because I think it gets misunderstood a lot, and I've heard it framed the wrong way so many times. When we talk about someone who seems completely at home in a social environment, there's often this assumption that they must be incredibly skilled at reading room or reading rooms, really tuned to what's happening around them. But honestly, in my experience, it's actually almost the opposite. The people who feel most at ease in rooms are usually the most internally oriented. They're not hyper focused on how they're being perceived or looking for validation from those around them. They know what they think, how they feel, what they actually want to say, and that self-awareness is what creates that confidence. And I saw this in classes constantly. The people who seemed the most comfortable in the room weren't the ones thinking about the room at all. They were just in their own bubble, their body, the music, and how they were moving to the music. And that is exactly what made them easy to be next to. And that's actually the foundation for everything I'm about to share. Because I think that this is the part most people skip over, and it also makes the biggest difference. So I could give you a step-by-step process for navigating rooms when you're running on MT. But here's the thing, and I mean this honestly and with my whole heart, without understanding what we've talked about across this whole arc, about your nervous system state, your past experiences, your current season, and what you're actually dealing with right now, those steps might not even feel relevant to you to where you are. So the real starting point is getting honest with yourself about what's actually happening before you even try to do anything about it. What I've been able to pay attention to is the people who feel most confident in the rooms are the ones that stop asking questions about what they should be doing and start asking questions about how they're actually feeling. So do you see the difference there? One is about doing, the other one is about more internal, about being curious. And this is what happens. So they get more curious rather than trying to fix it. They have their moment where they think, hang on, this isn't actually me rather than realizing an hour later on, like in the car park. And the interesting thing is that you can't think your way into it. You have to feel your way there first. So there are three things worth paying attention to. The first one is what you feel before you walk in, and I mean how you actually feel, not what you think you should be feeling. I've seen women sit in the car park for two minutes before going in and just checking in with themselves on how they actually are. And that two minutes changes how they walk through the door because they're not caught off guard by the gap between where they are and what they think they should be. And they've also given them that chance to really sit with it first. The second one is when you start reacting based on the energy in the room rather than what you come in with, because that's going to happen, and we've talked about that. But there's a difference between paying attention to it early and realizing you've completely lost yourself an hour in. The moment you notice that your tone has changed or that you've gone quiet or that you're saying things you don't actually mean, that's the moment worth paying attention to. Now the third one is when you feel when you leave. Not necessarily how you thought it went, more what your body is actually telling you on the way home. The car ride is one of the most honest reads on the interaction that you've had. Were you energized, flat, relieved, depleted in a way that surprised you? Your body is telling you something worth paying attention to. And really, and this is going to help you a lot more than what the room might have cost you. So none of these are bad things, but they're the difference between going home feeling like yourself and going home wondering what that person was in there or who that person was in there. So before you ask yourself what to do differently in rooms, start by asking what you're feeling first and getting curious about what the room is telling you. So this is where the real work begins. Okay, so this is where I want to stop and actually think about this for a second. Because we've covered a lot across this arc, and there's one question that I think is going to bring it all together. What season is your nervous system actually in right now? Because the honest answer to the question will tell you more about why rooms have been feeling the way they do, rather than anything else that we've talked about. And here's why. Your season directly shapes your window of tolerance, which we talked about back in episode 35. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, it's worth going back to. The wider the window, the more capacity you have, the narrow it is, the faster things tip. And your season is one of the biggest things that determines where that window sits on any given day. So in a growth season, you've got more to draw on. The gap between who you are and who you're representing is smaller. You can adjust to a room without losing yourself in the process. You have enough left over to actually catch yourself when you're starting to fake it. So in a rest season, that gap starts to widen. You're working harder to keep up with what the rooms are asking you. The cost of faking it is so much higher, and you feel it faster often before you've even left the room. And in a survival season, the gap is at its widest. Your nervous system is already switched or stretched before you've walked through the door. The version of yourself you're faking and the version that's actually there are the furthest apart. And coming home depleted isn't a surprise, it's almost inevitable. And in a transition season, it's inconsistent. Some days you've got it, other days the same room costs you more than you expected, and that unpredictability in its own way is exhausting because you can't always tell in advance which version of the day it's going to be or what you're going to be. So which one of these sounds more like you and where you are right now? Because the season you're in doesn't just explain why the rooms feel the way they do, it often tells you something about what you actually need. And that's hard to act on when you don't actually know what season you're currently in. If you're generally not sure, and a lot of people aren't, because we don't often spend a lot of time thinking about it or asking the questions, the season mapping quiz is the place to find out. It'll tell you exactly what season your nervous system is in right now. And once you know that, a lot of what we've talked about today will start to make a lot more sense. So the link is in the episode description. Now, before I bring this arc together, I want to come back to something from our own life because I think this one example actually shows everything we've talked about across all three episodes in a single moment. My parents used to own a deli, and we're European, so we're pretty boisterous as a family. We're loud, we're direct, we speak with a lot of energy. And I remember one time it was late, mum and I were just having a completely normal conversation, and one of the girls that worked for us, Jenna, came through the door and she stopped and she said, Are you two having a fight? And mum and I just laughed because no, we weren't having a fight. We're just talking, and it was just our guess our our normal. But when I think about that moment now, I can actually see three separate things happening at once, and they're the three things this arc has been about. The first one is what happened to Jenna the moment she walked in. She probably came through the door with her own energy. Maybe it'd been a good night where she was happy to chat or ready to chat in her own bubble, but the second her nervous system picked up on the tone of the room, our volume, our directness, the intensity of how we were speaking, something in her changed. So that easy, bubbly version of her that walked into the room contracted. So she herself became a bit smaller. She was cautious because the room was signalling something that felt like she needed to be careful. She didn't decide to do that. Her nervous system did it for her before she formed a single conscious thought about what she'd walked into. The second one is that her nervous system had flagged a threat that wasn't actually there. So she filled the gap with the worst case read conflict, hostility, something wrong, and depending on what kind of day she had, what season she was in, what state she was in when she walked through the door, that read could have been something completely different. Someone familiar with our family dynamic would have just laughed. But Jenna's nervous system didn't have that context. So it did what nervous systems do, it reached for an explanation and it landed on threat. And the third one, and this is the one that really stays with me, is that mum and I had absolutely no awareness of the gap between what we were feeling and what we were projecting. We were just talking. That was our normal, that was our presence, but we had no idea how it was landing. We couldn't see it from the inside at all. So three things in one daily conversation: someone adjusting themselves based on what they sensed in the room, a nervous system reading threat where there wasn't one, and two people completely unaware of the gap between their presence and how it's being perceived. So that's episodes 35, 36, and 37. And that's exactly what emotional intelligence and this kind of a self awareness helps you start to see so you can understand what's actually happening for yourself and the people around you. Now, before I bring this arc together, I want to say something about how I want you to leave today. I don't want you to walk. Away from this arc with a little list of things to do differently, and that was never the goal. What I wanted to cross these three episodes was for you to understand yourself a little bit more clearly in those rooms from the moment you walk in, when you're in the room, and when you leave the room, and why you can feel differently in the same spaces at different times and in different seasons. The first episode explained you what's happening inside when you walk into a room. The second episode explained the room, what's actually happening around you. This episode is the intersection between the two. What's happening when your nervous system meets the world, and how that interaction changes depending on where you're at. Most of all, I want you to leave this arc more curious about your own patterns than where you started. Curiosity is the first step in everything I teach. Always. Always has been. Because before you can change anything, you have to understand what's actually going on. And you can't do that until you give yourself permission to look at it honestly. If something across these three episodes have landed, if you found yourself thinking that explains a lot, or I want to understand my patterns a bit more, then I'd love for you to take the season mapping quiz because that's where the personal part of this begins. It tells you what season your nervous system is actually in right now, and from there we can work with that. So the link is in the episode description. And before I tell you what's coming next, I want to do something a little bit different to how I usually close this art. If something across these three episodes have landed for you, if you wrote something in your journal that made you stop and think, or had one of those moments where you thought, oh, that actually explains what's been happening, or that explains a lot. I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at geogia at gawness.com.au and tell me what your biggest gem was from this arc, what stuck, what shifted, and what you're going to be paying attention to differently from now on. I'll read every single one and honestly those messages are part uh are my favorite and it's why I do this. Now, one thing before we go, something I've noticed more and more with the people that I work with and the women I work with in the conversations I have and honestly in my own life is that the challenge isn't always that we don't understand ourselves. Sometimes is that we're being asked to understand ourselves in the middle of complete and constant noise. Do you know where I'm coming with this? Notifications, tabs open, comparison, information coming from every direction, the never-ending scroll, switching between tasks, between platforms, between identities, and never quite finishing things properly. I get it, and that is exactly what we're gonna explore next. The next arc is called switched on and stretched, and it's going to look at what's happening in your nervous system when the world around you never stops asking for your attention. Why modern life is making it harder to stay focused, stay present, and stay consistent with the things that actually matter, and what to do about it from a nervous system perspective. I think it's gonna be one of the most relevant arcs I've done. And if this arc made you think that explains a lot, I have a feeling the next one is gonna be doing exactly the same thing. Until next time, give yourself credit for showing up, even on the days that you have nothing left. That takes much more than people realise. Stay happy, and as always, I am so glad you're here. Thanks for being here, lovely. If today's episode gave you a light bulb moment, helped you feel seen, or sparked a small step, I'd love to hear about it. Tag me over on Instagram at GRWellness 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 offer some 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 Ran.