REWILD + FREE - 54. RIPPING THE BANDAID OFF WITH MY FIRST RECORDING IN MONTHS (IG Live Sept 27/24)

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

It's been a hot minute since I've recorded but it's time to rip the bandaid off. This episode brings some very random musings and lessons from 4 months offline, as well as a new (and evolving) perspective on bUrNoUt I'd love to hear what stirs (or lands) for you from this episode. My dms are open on IG, connect with me @nicolepasveer

You're listening to Rewild and Free. This is the go-to podcast for conscious and holistic mother entrepreneurs who are ditching society's to-do list for intentional living, freedom, and abundance, while creating impact and legacy in their home and business. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pasvir, your like-hearted mom friend and biz bestie wrapped in one. I'm an ex-nurse turned matrescence guide and business coach, leading women just like you into the new paradigm, where thriving in motherhood is your birthright and so is a successful and sustainable online business keep listening if you're ready to unsubscribe from patriarchal motherhood bro marketing and boss babe culture because in this space we use nature as our framework as we move

towards feminine embodied business development cyclical orientation and slow living together let's rewild and remember as we break free from survival and reconnect to what truly matters. Okay friend, steep your tea and take the most loving breath you've given to yourself today and let's go. Here we are. Oh my gosh, I'm ripping the band-aid off. I have set the intention for myself to record a podcast episode and just kind of come back to this space for many weeks now and I keep getting in my head. I keep thinking, oh my god, like I need to know what to say. Oh, what will people want to know how much do I share what do I want to protect it's it's just been this like maddening spiral maddening because I've been there before and I I go there often and

I know when I'm there it's it's me becoming crippled with self-doubt and it's me beginning to ultimately like betray myself and my heart because I'm putting other people before me in the sense of wanting to make sure they're comfortable and wanting to make sure that their judgments of me aren't changed wanting to maintain my own reputation and wanting to maintain this like sense of respect and sense of belonging ultimately so there has been a lot of fear of coming back into this space there's been a lot of fear of coming back to my podcast and saying the wrong thing and being perceived the wrong way and with that it makes me yeah just become crippled with self-doubt and overthinking which is under feeling and um yeah so I'm ripping the band-aid off I just need to do it I just need to

show my body my nervous system that this is safe there's no bears coming after me while moments do feel like a real threat, I feel resourced enough right now and I'm grounded and have been spending months now really deeply nourishing myself. So it feels safe to be here. Hello to those of you live with me. I'm recording this as a podcast because, again, when I think about sitting down to record a podcast one the thought of editing just bores me to death I fucking hate editing podcasts um and two the process of editing just opens up this really gnarly can of worms for me to allow my perfectionist the perfectionist part of me to kind of take the driver's seat and I again become crippled with like self-doubt and second guess

everything I say and cringe over my own words and potentially even the shakiness of my own voice so I'm just going to even remove that option there is no editing we're just here hello um I in case you haven't been here for long I took a sabbatical offline for what ended up being almost four months it's almost five I don't know four months May June July August yeah four months um which is crazy to even think about, because when I decided to take some time off, I think it was on May 1st, I set the intention that it would be a month, I started it on the first day of my bleed, I was going to take that entire cycle offline, and kind of re-evaluate, recalibrate, restore, renew, regenerate, all of those words.

That was my intention. I wanted to just like come back home to myself. And joke's on me because obviously that didn't happen in a month. I think that first month really just gave me the invitation to meet myself where I was at, recognize the edges of my capacity. I was going to say limitations, but that word doesn't feel right. The edges of my capacity. And it was an invitation to just be in a place of making a choice. Like, do I want to push myself here like it it would have been any actions in pursuit of my business and in pursuit of growing this online community would have ended up being a form of self-extraction and I knew I didn't want to show up from that place from a place of like overflow and not depletion and so it was an

opportunity for me to really focus on me and to turn inwards and to um focus on my family and my mothering and my own relationship to self um and it ended up illuminating so much shit, so much shit. I have been dancing with shadow, y'all. I've been dancing with shadow for the past like three, four months. It has been dark. It has been heavy. It has been edgy and stretchy. It has also been juicy lot and I realized maybe a month or so ago that I had been attaching to this story that I spoke out loud very often basically anytime I came in contact with basically anyone and they'd ask me how I was doing my default answer would be like this season is hard this season of motherhood is really hard this is intense um and I recognize that by verbalizing that over and over and over again and having that story that that that narration being played in my

head over and over and over again was basically how do I want to word this it ended up being like a self-fulfilling prophecy or whatever it's called like I it's almost like I was manifesting that to come true in my life so the more I kept saying it the more my I mean the sciency terms my reticular activating system RAS which is like confirmation bias so our our brains literally look for things to confirm whatever it is that we are wanting confirmation and validation on so subconsciously this is all subconsciously um it didn't kind of come into my conscious awareness until about a month ago that the longer I was

attaching to this story that this season is hard the more things were just coming into my reality to prove that and to validate that this season is hard so things just kept feeling harder and harder it was like this this loop and as much as I was really trying to nourish myself and um be more selfish in the way I just show up for myself I where did where was I going with this I I completely just lost my train of thought that is hilarious and nothing even happened to break it don't you love when that happens who's here hello hello friends um what was I saying so yeah I was caught in this loop confirmation bias basically validating and proving to my subconscious and my nervous system that this

season was hard okay so yes in my pursuit of like self-care and my pursuit of being more selfish in the way I show up for myself I was so getting so comfortable in shadow I was getting so comfortable in this season of heart in this state of of stress and hardship that I was completely forgetting like where to even find light I was completely forgetting like where to seek pleasure I was completely cock blocking myself from even being open to the pleasure and the goodness and the lightness always around me. And I think I needed that time. I needed that time to kind of have a moment of feeling the hard

and actually surrendering to the grief and the anger and the confusion and the long list of other emotions that needed to be felt that I had been suppressing for so long I needed I needed to kind of be in that like victim-y whiny and this is hard I just want this to stop kind of place to do that and I don't know if that's right or wrong I don't really care if that's right or wrong that was my process I needed to do that and I don't know if that's right or wrong I don't really care if that's right or wrong that was my process I needed to do that I needed to kind of um see myself as like oh poor Nicole like yeah this like I think being in that state was a really awkward and messy way of giving myself the permission to like just rest to do nothing to literally give up on my to-do list and potentially be a vegetable on the couch or like lay in bed all day um obviously there's probably healthier ways of getting to that place but I needed to do that for myself um and in that in that period of

darkness yeah I totally was forgetting to even look up. It was almost like my head was down and I was so deep in the mud that I forgot that, okay, no, this is the analogy I want to play with. It felt like I was drowning. But looking back, the silly thing is, is all I needed to do was like lean back and I would have been able to breathe. So I forgot that it could be that simple I was making it harder for myself by like panic breathing and like just constantly saying this is hard this is hard wow wow wow um anyways once I came out of that so a month ago when I kind of had this like realization that oh

wow like I'm making this harder for myself it doesn't need to be this hard um there is lightness and pleasure and joy and um greatness all around me if I'm willing to look at it things started to shift funny how that works right um but like I said I needed to be in that darkness in that deep mud and in that state of feeling like I'm drowning to actually rest because I wouldn't have allowed myself to be as unapologetically lazy as I was so it's just like a really messy way that my nervous system was desperately um trying to negotiate slowing down with me um which is actually what I want to talk about I want to talk a little bit about like burnout and what um our bodies are communicating to us when we kind of get in in states of deep depletion um maybe I'll just move there anyways because I again

forget what I was saying so I have spent the better part of like the last two years trying to avoid burnout because I spent the better part of the last however many years I've been an adult or like teenager teetering into burnout because I've been that person that has been an overachiever and a perfectionist and constantly trying to get ahead and impress other people by scratching off the things on society's to-do list and in doing that I've completely sidelined my own needs I've completely sidelined my own desires to the point of like not even knowing what's mine and what's like a projection from cultural and societal systems and expectations and conditioning and so the past two years, I've been kind of shedding those layers to get closer and closer to my own desire and getting closer and closer to what it is I actually want to do

and what actually makes me feel alive and what actually feels like pleasure to my body um and I feel like in my pursuit of avoiding burnout I have done so many things to better understand my own nervous system I've done so many things to just better understand the communication that my body is trying to um share with me and um trying to really stop just being like ahead walking around and actually be reconnected to my body I know um my pregnancy and birth experience really was the catalyst for this for me and kind of the moment that I realized like oh my god I've never been in my body before so um oh this is it's actually been three years now of kind of reconnecting to my body and within all that I've almost forgotten how important it is to also tend to the mind and

the stories you're telling yourself so I think that's where that realization about a month ago of like oh shit this story I'm telling myself is actually what's manifesting my reality and so it reminded me of how important mindset is and um just witnessing the mind chatter going on to give yourself the opportunity to just make different choices and like rewrite the script and flip the script for yourself because I was almost like so deep in my body um anyways back to this this topic of burnout I had been trying to avoid burnout because my ego really wanted to believe that I was some nervous system expert and someone that coaches other people around the nervous system must have to like avoid burnout I really started to see burnout as like this thing to avoid and this thing to this thing that would need to be fixed if if I ever

experienced it and something to get out of and my experience the past couple months where I truly was in burnout um really opened my eyes to seeing it in a different way not in this like negative thing that um needs to be avoided not in this thing that needs to be fixed but instead in quite simply just something just just a way that your body is communicating to you and a way that your body is kind of showing you this is where the gaps are this is where extraction is happening this is where self-betrayal is happening this is where we need to be nourished this is where boundaries need to be nourished. This is where boundaries need to be tighter. So I now see burnout as this beautiful mirror to my life in a way

because it showed me so much. And it also, like I said, it forced me to rest unapologetically in a way that I wouldn't have if I didn't kind of surrender to the state of my nervous system and the edge of my capacity that I was at, the edge of my window of tolerance. And so where am I going with this? Like I told you, I'm ripping the bandaid off here. If I would have tried to actually think about what I wanted to say, this might be coming out a little bit better, but it wouldn't have happened. So we're here now. We're rambling.

We're processing out loud, as one does. I think this whole thing around burnout too is we think what in the nervous system world we know that there's various states and so just to keep things simple, looking at like the common three of fight, flight and freeze. Burnout would be closely resembling the state of freeze where your body is like, nope, no more. And I feel like in the nervous system world, in the online buzzy spaces, there's a lot of talk of, like, oh, um, to get out of, like, freeze, you need to actually, like, increase your productivity, and you need to, um, like, increase your, your capacity, and, um, I don't know, things like activating breath work and things like cold plunges and things like

maybe exercise. Oh my god, the visceral reaction my body has when I think about exercising. It's too much. It's too much. And I'm so proud of myself for being able to recognize all those things because it could have been really easy to push myself into a deeper state of depletion and a deeper state of burnout or freeze if I would have tried to, um, like move my way out of it. And I know that that does work for some people. I guess I'm just trying to explain the nuance that needs to be talked about in the nervous system world because what my body truly needed was not more doing it needed more being and so that didn't look like doing nothing on days it just looked like bringing more intention to what I was doing and being more attuned with myself so instead of it being kind of from the ego thinking like oh well I don't know

like when you think of being depressed or something I feel like the the common advice is like oh well make sure you're getting dressed every day make sure you're you're feeding yourself make sure you open your windows and you're letting daylight in and make sure you're exercising all of those things would have been too much for me in some of the darker days this past summer um what I really needed was actually just this the slowing down to actually just listen to my body and sometimes my body just needed to binge tv sometimes my body just needed to like sip on herbal tea infusions all day my body still needs that by the way um sometimes my body just needed the window open and like breathing fresh air and the respect of my ego to know that going for a walk would have actually been too much um

and I think yeah I think just the point I'm trying to make is like the nuance that needs to exist I think the point is like building nervous system flexibility and building nervous system resilience but you can't do that by forcing um it's funny again coming back to the analogy of me drowning and like trying to like gasp for air and really all I needed to do was like lay back and float. I think like there's wisdom in that because the medicine there is that it gets to be easy. Healing and bettering yourself doesn't have to be hard. And I think as soon as it feels like a stress and as soon as it feels like a form of self-extraction um then it's not actually in service to you anymore

I don't know I feel like I've now rambled for like almost I don't know like 20 minutes or something um hello friends that are here hi Lauren yeah yes it's yeah we talk about this all the time um I don't know where else I'm going with this I think again I've already said this like I just needed to rip the band-aid off I just needed to like start using my voice again I wanted to talk about this I probably will continue to talk about this as I continue to integrate the lessons that came from it it's all complex and it's nuanced and there's obviously way more context to this story that I could give but I don't know if I want to give and I'm I'm choosing to respect the indecision that I'm in right now I'm definitely still in this like liminal phase I'm in this like in between I've been deep in the underworld and I'm now coming

back up but coming back up is also in my perspective almost a more uncomfortable place to be because the fear of who am I is very loud who am I after I've like let go of all these things who am I after I've been in the dark underworld for this long and there's this opportunity to bargain and renegotiate and recalibrate and take back the pen of my own life and as much as that feels really scary because there's a lot of pressure and responsibility to like maybe get it right I'm choosing to not let it be that way I'm choosing to move forward with the intention of playfulness and um seeking pleasure in everything that I do I really do I mean I've done pleasure practices before and pleasure not being I'm not talking about like sexual pleasure although that is absolutely an aspect of it I'm talking about just like heightening your senses and like experiencing

the world. Like I truly believe that seeking pleasure is, is the way to feel alive. And seeking pleasure is the way that we actually get to like hear our own heart and hear our own intuition and our own just like inner compass um at least that's kind of like my gateway into it it's almost like the key to unlock my heart is that like poetry or something um where else am I going with this I I guess I also want to weave into this conversation just the the multi-dimensionality of all of this like something else that this season of burnout for lack of a better word like I almost say that with an eye roll now um because that word is just so overused is that it's not just as simple as like not taking care of myself I think that's another thing it can be so easy to like shame and

judge yourself for getting to that place and I think I was there for a bit and I think that's where I was trying to go in this conversation is because I've spent the better part of the last two three years really learning about the nervous system and coaching other people to support their own nervous systems, it felt like a massive fucking failure. Like, oh my god, the nervous system coach is burnt out. She must not be a very good nervous system coach. I know that's not true. I know that now. A couple months ago, those were the thoughts that were spinning through my head. So not only this like deep sense of failure, but also like imposter syndrome. And that could be a whole other conversation for what that's kind of doing to our

inner world. But the multidimensionality of all of this in the sense that yeah it's not just as simple as um what you did or didn't do to take care of yourself it's not just as simple as um hustle and grinding to the point of like your body screaming for help it's not just as simple as any of those things it's also like witnessing the context of your entire world and your entire landscape and so for me that was like looking at the way I was showing up to my business looking at the way I was showing up to myself looking at other relationships so like my marriage and um the relationship with like my parents and my inner child it was also um how I was nourishing myself with like food and water and exercise or lack of um it was the relationship I had to my own like inner cycle

my menstrual cycle and how I was tending to myself there or not tending to myself. It was also like social and economic stuff and like the constructs around systems of oppression and capitalism and trauma from like many, many years ago that I maybe haven't looked at yet it's like all of these things and um I think when you can kind of step back to just be that radical witness for yourself and begin to actually see the multi-dimensionality of it and that it's not just like one thing it kind of like takes the pressure of your ego like being so quick to try to fix because it's not that simple and on the flip side it also like is so simple so I guess my invitation um for myself for my future self, and for anyone listening, is, like, to just continue to, like, not overcomplicate things, and let it be simple, and do the things you need to do to

just be in closer relationship to your heart, because when you can lead with heart, when you can lead with heart when you can lead with love for yourself and for the things that really matter to you um I think that's when the answers and the wisdom come in it's not yeah it's not about fixing it's more about tending to I know I've said that in other spaces um but I think that was something that became really clear to me in this season um there was also a big invitation for radical radical radical self-compassion and self-acceptance um because I learned or I've noticed that I'm so quick to gaslight myself I'm so quick to also hold on to binary ways of thinking and desperately wanting things to fall into a box of either being black or white good or bad right or wrong and when I get in that mindset there's no room for

that nervous system flexibility there's no room for nuance there's no room to ever build my capacity or my resilience to anything um again it's almost like this cock block and so anyways this this whole season of my life without giving you a whole lot of context has been a beautiful invitation to really deepen and embody this idea of nuance and this idea of the word flexibility keeps coming to mind but that's not even the right word here maybe self-attunement and not even self-attunement because it's also attunement to the things in my life that are of high value and important to me um and like I mentioned earlier like seeing where boundaries need to be tighter seeing where paying attention to where I'm giving resentful yeses when I actually need to say no,

bringing my awareness to where I'm kind of caught in victim mindset. And like I said, I did need to be there for a bit in order to actually cool down. But being stuck there isn't of service to anyone. So noticing when it's time to kind of take that main character energy back and take back the pen and get back in the driver's seat of all the wounded parts that might have been driving for a while. I got to go pee and I need to eat lunch, so'm gonna stop here I ripped the band-aid off I'm proud of myself this will be a podcast episode um random ramblings random musings maybe there was something here for you if so I'd love to hear it I'd love to um kind of expand on this conversation if there's

anything that you have more questions about or you're curious and you want to know more about what I mean because I feel like I was kind of all over the place and I'm happy to try to connect dots um if you need some dots connected I'd also love to hear your own experience if any of these things um felt resonant to you or that you have shared similar experiences to me. Um, yeah. So, I mean, I'm, I guess I'm back on Instagram, so my DMs are open. Um, yeah. Okay. Bye, my friends. Thanks for listening to this rant. Okay, before you go, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you were thinking of anyone while listening, please send it their way. And if anything resonated with you or you love these conversations, please subscribe and leave a review.

This really helps the podcast algorithms put my show in front of more people just like you. And the last thing, I would love nothing more than hearing from you so say hi dm me on instagram and give me a follow at nicole pasvir until next time