Ep 11. What do you do when you don't feel like yourself?

"I just don't feel like myself."

It's one of the most common things I hear women say.

Maybe you've lost your motivation. Maybe your ambition has shifted. Maybe the things that once lit you up don't seem to anymore. Or perhaps you're grieving the woman you used to be and wondering how to get back to her.

In this episode, I want to offer you a completely different perspective.

What if nothing has gone wrong?

What if you're not disconnected from yourself at all...

What if you're simply becoming someone you've never been before?

Together, we explore the difference between being disconnected from yourself and being unfamiliar to yourself, why we so often romanticise old versions of ourselves, and how trying to "get back" can stop us from meeting the woman who's quietly emerging.

This is a conversation about identity, transitions, self-trust and learning to honour the season you're actually in, rather than longing for one that's already passed.

If you've been feeling lost lately, I hope this episode offers you a little more compassion and a little less urgency.

In this episode we explore:

• Why "I don't feel like myself" isn't always a problem to solve

• The difference between being disconnected from yourself and unfamiliar to yourself

• Why we romanticise old versions of ourselves

• What happens when your capacity changes but your expectations don't

• How to navigate seasons of transition with more self-trust

• Why The Comeback isn't about returning to who you were, but learning to trust who you're becoming

🌿 Work with me

If this conversation resonates, the first step to working together is a Deep Dive.

This is a 75-minute one-to-one coaching session where we'll explore what's really going on beneath the surface, identify the patterns shaping your experience, and map out the next chapter together. If we're a good fit, I'll also share how I'd support you through my signature three-month coaching container, The Comeback.

Book your Deep Dive:
Book here

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Instagram:
@olivialaraowen

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, my darlings. It's your girl live. I am back. Thank you for your patience. This is the Meet and Monogamy podcast. And this is where we talk about all things power as women, reclaiming our power as women, living nourished lives, taking care of ourselves, really being attuned to what life wants for us. And I'm going to be speaking today about what do we do when we don't feel like ourselves? The question for you is what do you do when you do not feel like yourself? Okay, so come on in, take a seat, get your listening ears on. Maybe you're out for a walk right now. Maybe you're watching this while you cook something in the kitchen. Maybe you're just lying in bed. But thank you so much for listening. And I just want to remind everybody that this is a relatively new podcast. We are still in the first six months of Meet in Monogamy. And it really means so much that people listen. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of this little crew that we're building. And I know that you get tons out of these episodes. I know that these little, especially these solo ones, they're so different to the interviews that I've done. And I know that these solo ones is really where you get to like feel me and you get to really feel like, what are some of the principles and philosophies of some of the things I work with and teach and live in my own life? And, you know, is there something here for you? Perhaps there's something here for you today. I really hope that there is. Okay. So just to kind of set the scene here, right? I'm sure you have, but I want you to think about a time where you have felt yourself saying, I just don't feel like myself. Like, I just don't feel like myself. Maybe you're experiencing that right now, right? Like maybe you've lost some motivation, maybe you don't feel as ambitious as you once were. Perhaps like things you used to really love doing, like you're not getting the same like juice and enjoyment out of that. And you're kind of sat here, like, well, where is this old version of myself gone? Like, where has she gone? Right. And I hear this a lot with women. I hear this a lot. Like, you are like, where have I gone? This old version of myself has just disappeared. And I want to offer today a really different perspective on this. I want to offer a perspective for you to think about, right? A completely different way of looking at this. Okay. So, as I said, there's been a while. It's been a while since I've been like behind this microphone solo style. And life has been really lifing for me. And it's been this beautiful time, a real stretching time. And these past few months have been completely different to how I imagined that they were gonna look. Okay. So I've been coaching a lot, I've been living, I've been learning a lot. And this question, like the biggest question in my life, hasn't really been about business, right? The thing that keeps coming up like repeatedly has been, I just don't feel like myself. Okay, like that has been a feeling that I have had, like a place that I have been in. And first of all, we assume when we say that, right? Like, I don't feel like me, I don't feel like myself. There's an automatic assumption that there's something wrong with that. Like there something somewhere has gone wrong, right? And you know, at times my mind has gone to that place where I'm like, maybe there's something really wrong, right? But I think when you say this, right, when we say this, there's usually some kind of grief happening. Like what you're actually doing is you're in a process of grieving, something has changed, okay. And what tends to happen is that you are comparing yourself, right? When you said just don't feel like myself, you are comparing yourself to a previous, previous version, right? And so that previous version may be someone that was like really high-functioning, maybe you like moved every day, maybe you built a business and you did it like with loads of energy, maybe you were traveling all the time, maybe you're really social. Maybe you were on and you were like creating constantly and you had all this kind of boundless, endless energy, and then you feel really different to that now, right? You're like, oh, like I don't feel like that at all. Like something must be seriously wrong, right? And there's this like a place where like maybe you're missing those parts of yourself, right? Maybe you're missing those parts of yourself, but the question really is about like who you are now, like what is actually true for you now, okay? So a question to sit with here is around like okay, you don't feel like yourself now, but when was the last time you did feel like yourself, right? When was the last time you did feel like yourself? Right, just think about that for a moment. Okay, I don't feel like myself now, but when was the last time I did feel like myself? And you know, most people will say, you know, well, it was before, you know, this illness, or this, like before I became a mother, or before, you know, this big breakup I'm going through, or before this season where I have no energy, right? And it's interesting because we're always trying to get back. We're always trying to get back to something. Like, what is that about? Okay. So what if you're not supposed to? What if you're not supposed to go back? What if you're not supposed to get back somewhere, right? I wonder if actually this getting back is actually chasing a ghost that does not exist. Right? The woman you have been existed at that time for a very specific reason, in the same way you exist now for a very specific reason. That woman that you miss that you're grieving carried you through such an important chapter. She carried you through that, but why do we have this assumption that she is supposed to exist forever? You know, like nature doesn't work like that. Like, nature doesn't stay the same and exist in the same way forever. Children don't, relationships don't, bodies don't, seasons don't. Like, why should our identity stay the same? Like, it is something that is constantly evolving and changing. And I see this in my work with women all the time. If we are not held and guided through identity change, if we try and sort of white knuckle it and we don't really know what's going on, we will constantly be stuck in trying to get back somewhere versus really understanding the distinction of like the difference of today versus then. Okay. And so how I would describe today versus then is it's the difference between being disconnected from yourself, which is something different, than being unfamiliar to yourself. Right. So being disconnected from yourself would look like self-abandoning, overriding yourself, people pleasing, ignoring your intuition, like those sets of behaviors, right, that you are like acting in a way, and this is not said with any judgment, but you're acting in a way where those choices are having you feel disconnected from yourself in this present moment.

unknown 8:42

Right?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

It's very hard to be connected to ourselves in a moment when we're kind of abandoning ourselves to overly accommodate other people or ignore something that's feeling very internally true for us. So say ignoring like a big intuition, that that usually creates the experience of actually being disconnected from yourself. But it's very different from being unfamiliar to yourself, okay? And unfamiliar is different. Even just take that in, unfamiliar with yourself, okay. This is when you're meeting a woman that you've literally never been before, right? Of course, she feels unfamiliar, she's literally never existed before. And then so for me, recently I have been in this season where my capacity has completely changed, okay. I have literally been at like 20% capacity almost overnight. Okay, it changed everything, it changed the rhythm of my life. I spent lots of time in bed, it changed my creativity. It's been a really inward time, and I was in a really outward time right before this. I was really like killing it, and I was loving being on, and I was loving doing the podcast, and I was loving sharing online, I was loving coaching, and I was doing my masterclasses, and I was just like, we were moving, and it was feeling great, right? And that changed, right? The motivation changed for me. My ambition changed. Like I went from like feeling so ambitious and hungry to like needing to just take such exquisite care of myself and like get through the day, right? My relationship to serving changed, right? I went and I turned all of my attention to my already existing cohort of clients I was working with because that was what mattered. I was not in a place of opening the door and like inviting lots of new people in because I wanted to be able to serve the people that were already here. The goals I had for this year changed. This the success I had in mind changed, right? So much changed. Okay. And there were moments where I was like, oh my God, have I lost something? Like, am I less me than I used to be? Like, what is going on? And I just had to be honest about the fact that this isn't about me being less. This is actually about becoming someone, you know, not overnight, but in this process, like that I had literally never had the privilege of meeting before. Right? Like I was becoming someone that I had never met, had never been this version of me before, and I was meeting her for the first time. Like, what a privilege that is. Can you see the shift in perspective here? To like focusing on all of the loss and feeling like there's something you're never gonna get back, but you're desperate to go back, to like, actually, this is just unfamiliar, and unfamiliarity actually feels very uncomfortable for me. Okay. You know, we really do romanticize old versions of myself, and I am ourselves, I am super guilty of this. Like, oh God, I have I've been so many different versions of live. And if you've been around, you know, the block with me, as many as you have. I know I have some ride or die veteran listeners and and and people that are, you know, some of some of you have just been in my world for so long. You know, I've been coaching now for 10 years, and like some of you have been there from the very beginning, right? And so you've seen all these old versions of me, and I'm sure you've seen so many versions, and maybe you romanticize old versions of me, right? But the old versions of me weren't perfect, right? There was lots of qualities of older versions of me where I was anxious and proving and hustling and terrified and overfunctioning, right? We can really look back and edit history and only remember the productivity and the output of that time and the results, but we can easily forget the cost. And usually, like the reason we change and the reason we like evolve and the reason people hire me as their coach is because they want something. You want something in your life, but the way you're currently going about it, the life you're currently living is costing you. And you want to like it not to cost you what it's costing you, right? You want to have what you want without what it's costing you to have it. And I'm not saying it doesn't cost us things to have what we want because it does. We do have to, you know, compromise and sacrifice on things. But there's there's a way of like a lot of people come to me now because you're anxious and you're improving energy and you are like trying to hustle your way and you are overfunctioning and you are feeling disconnected from yourself and you know there's another way. Right. So a lot of clients have hired me in the last year because they've seen the journey I've been on as I've been evolving in my own identity, and they've seen me slow down and they've seen me go back to my roots, and they've seen me step into deeper integrity, and they've seen me kind of right size and downsize, and they've seen me show up differently, and they say, I want that kind of authenticity in my journey. So I'm gonna hire live because that's somebody that I know has that and has done that, right? I hear that a lot. Like a lot of you are kind of wanting to return home to yourself, and you're done with the over hustling and the self-abandonment and the anxiety and constantly feeling like you need to prove your worth. You want power as a woman in a different way. You want power that's gonna be sustainable, you want power that's gonna be like not something I give you, but something that you access for yourself, right? Something that's actually gonna be useful for you for the rest of your life. That's what you want. That's why you come to me. That's why people hire me as their coach, right? You want to trust yourself. You are done with the mistrusting of yourself. You're done with the second guessing, right? These past few months, as my identity has been evolving and my circumstances have changed and I've been really low capacity. I have been like, gosh, this is, you know, my whole philosophy of my work right now is around deep self-trust and deep self-leadership. So deeply trusting our lives, deeply trusting where life is guiding us, deeply trusting ourselves, and then stepping into deeper leadership. So leading our lives, taking responsibility for what we want to create in our personal lives and our professional lives. Like that is what I'm working with people on. And so, of course, life came for me with a big old fucking, a big old juicy life change to be like, well, how much do you trust yourself now? You know, really put this to work, girl, because you know, we're gonna create a circle set of circumstances that's gonna challenge your sense of trust. You're gonna have to dig deep, right? And so I have had to really trust my inward journey over the past few months and trust that my voice would come back and I would have the desire to and the capacity to serve and share. Because life is seasonal. If anything, I have learned over the years in my own journey and holding and serving hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, hundreds of women, it's like your life is seasonal. Things do not function in your life in a linear way. Things are seasonal. We need time for rest and digest and integration, and we need time for outward and creation expansion energy. Okay. So think about this when you are thinking about who you've been, and maybe you're romanticizing an old version of yourself. Think about the way you edit the history. What was really true about that old version? If you weren't romanticizing an older version, this is true about we do this with other people, we do this about people as well. So it's just interesting to think about that as well. Like the way you see others, like when we romanticize people or versions of ourselves, we like to cherry pick the best parts of that time, right? And and and a place I do this is Paris, you know. I can be like, oh, Paris was so romantic and amazing, and you know, all of those things. And I got, you know, just had so much freedom and da da da. But I also worked like a dog. I was working crazy hours, 80 hours a week. I was working on different time zones. Yes, I was making a lot of money and I was serving at a really high level, and I was really growing in my skill and in my identity, and you know, it was really, really stretched, and it was like really what I had dreamed of, but it cost me a lot. It cost me a lot on many levels. There is a reason now where my life is slower and more spacious and more homey, and I live in the countryside, and I have chosen to partner up and really prioritize family building and really prioritize some of the deeper desires I had for my life at the cost of other things, at the cost of other kind of sexiness and success of like the free single woman that can just kind of live the life she wants, right? I've very, very much given that up, but it doesn't mean that, you know, that wasn't a really valuable experience. It doesn't mean that I reject that version of my life, but it's also about seeing it for what it was, right? And not trying to go back somewhere, right? We can never truly go back. That's the reality, right? And so, you know, what's funny is that my signature coaching program, the three-month program that I lead you through. So if you want to work with me, you start with a deep dive and then I will share with you exactly how I work with you in our three-month container. It is called the comeback, right? And it is, you know, people assume that the comeback is about helping women get back to where they used to be, right? But it's actually the opposite, right? I'm not interested in resurrecting an old identity that's no longer true. I'm interested in helping women like build a relationship with the woman that's emerging now. Right? Like that is what I'm here for. Because the old identity, yes, we do need to work and integrate and grieve and sort of look at the old identity. It's really important that you process and learn how to move from the old identity into the new one and let the new one emerge. And that's why I think being held through, you know, I say I work with women through thresholds because this is threshold, like moving from an old identity into a new emerging one is big work, right? It really does require being held through that. Like it's really beneficial to have somebody with you who's an expert in supporting people through transitions because it can be really beneficial to like take the gold and the lessons and the wisdom of who we've been without gripping and holding on and fantasizing and romanticizing that, and then moving into really holding space and creating the conditions for the new woman that is emerging now. Like, I fucking love that. I love this, I love this. This is my gem, right? And it's so amazing to see the women I've had the privilege of working with in these past few years like go through that. Like it's absolutely gorgeous, like what happens through the comeback container and this threshold work. Like it really, really is. And because ultimately what you're doing is you're learning to trust someone that you've never been before. What an immense gift that is to give someone. Like, I'm gonna support you in letting that immense identity emerge and then learning how to trust someone you've never been before. What a gift! And that is the thing that my clients, when they walk away from our work, rave about the most. Because that's it's it's harder to get that on your own. It's a lot easier to get that in collaboration with somebody else, right? Because it's harder to see, right? And so it's not work I do on my own. I have support through all my transitions. I have had so much support over the last few months. I value it very highly. Okay. So if you're sat here and you're like, I don't feel like myself, like maybe those words really resonate with you. Maybe don't rush to fix it. Like, maybe really ask yourself, well, who am I comparing myself with? To which version of me am I actually grieving? And like, what if the truth was she was not supposed to come back? Right? And what if the woman that's trying to emerge in your life is different? She's maybe she's slower, maybe she's softer, maybe she operates with like less urgency, maybe there's more peace, serenity, truth, love. Maybe you're more interested in being enough. Way more than you've ever been before, right? Like you do not need to become who you were. And I want to say that again. You do not need to become who you were. Like, really, right? You only need the courage to become who you're becoming. That's it. It's already happening. It's already happening. Okay. So I love you so much, right? Like this episode is really about how we have such an attachment to being certain about things. And there's just so much uncertainty, and that's not a bad thing. That's life. And the more skill we can have with navigating the uncertainty of life, it really takes us from like, oh my God, I've lost myself. And oh, I'm depressed, or my life's terrible, and oh my God, to like, you know, like, how can I meet my life? And how can I meet the woman that I'm becoming? Right. And so, you know, in-between seasons, like if you're resonating with this, you're probably an in-between season. These aren't problems that you need to solve. Like an in-between season is an in-between season, it's a particular kind of experience, right? And yeah, I love being with you in the in-between seasons. I think there is so much power and wisdom here. I really do. And so if you are ready and you want to be deeply supported and guided through this next one for you, then this is what I do. This is my jam, friends. So the first step is to book a 75-minute deep dive. And these are my one-to-one sessions where you invest your time and energy and money. So you there's an investment of 111 pounds for this session. And this is where you bring me like everything that's going on in your life right now, and everything you want us to look at. And we really look at the pattern that's running the show. We really get a good understanding of the mechanism and the pattern that is running the show here. Okay. And then we look at, okay, well, what would it look like if that shifted? What if it looked like if we could work with that? Like, what if it looked like if something massive was to change? And I will share with you exactly how I will work with you over the three-month comeback. So I will give you a very clear map of what I would recommend based on your very unique situation. And this is the beauty of one-to-one work, because I get to do this kind of like mapping and designing of our journey together, which really excites me and my clients love it. So if that feels like you're ready for it and you wanna take that step, then book your deep dive. The link is in the show notes of this episode. And so there are spaces for the rest of July and August to have your deep dive. And there will be, yeah, spaces to start in August and early September. So a tip to today, friends. Thank you so much for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed if you are a regular listener and you want to get the uh the fresh drops in your inbox. And if you love the podcast, please leave a review. Go to Apple. Apple is where you can leave a review, and you can specifically say why you love this podcast. And this really helps us to get out there a little bit further. We're very new here, so we're we're in this kind of early stages, which I love. And so the more you can share, and maybe you have someone in your life right now that you know is feeling a little lost, and you think this lady could do with this fresh perspective, please share it with her. That would mean the world. All right. I love you, and I will see you next time. Thank you for listening.