REWILD + FREE - Secrets to Stop Self-Shaming and Find More Joy

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

Another solo episode sharing what's alive on my heart 💃This week I continue to talk nerdy to you about the nervous system! I get into my own self shaming tendencies and share my personal experience currently thawing from a freeze response.  I explain why we need to stop looking at our nervous system with a binary lens and also discuss: the importance of finding space for restintegrating slowness in your life to create space for joyunderstanding pleasure beyond sexuality The conversation highlights the importance of holding space for circumstances instead of trying to control, fix or micromanage.  This is an invitation to you to slow the f down and get curious about the symptoms in your body without judgment.  Questions to ponder: How have societal pressures to perform or achieve impacted your self worth? Have you ever found yourself believing that you have to work hard and endure suffering in order to experience pleasure and joy?How do you practice slowing down and creating space for rest in your own life? Are there any specific activities or rituals that you find helpful? Do you wait till it's too late How do you personally experience the concept of intensity in your own life? Do you see it as a positive or negative?    Books mentioned in this episode that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND The Healing Power of Pleasure: Seven Medicines for Rediscovering the Innate Joy of Being by Julia Paulette Hollenbery Call of the Wild by Kimberly Ann Johnson Connect with me on IG (@nicolepasveer)Want to be a guest on the podcast?  Fill out this form If this show has inspired, transformed or made your life a tinyyy bit better in anyway and you’ve been searching for a way to say thank you, and support me in producing more episodes, you can now buy me a donut 🍩 (see link below)Support the showConnect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer) Want to be a guest on the podcast? Fill out this form

Welcome to the Not Just a Mom Show, where we have open and honest conversations about the vulnerabilities and the victories within entrepreneurship and new motherhood. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pazvir and I'm going to be your host. Here on the show, we don't subscribe to perfection. In fact, being present is the new perfect and showing up messy is the new norm. We are worthy, just as we are, as all that we are, not just the label we put on ourselves. We are more than just a mom. And I'm so glad you're here. I wish I had some better ways to start a podcast without saying,

welcome back to another episode. But I don't. I will try to think of some better ones. But otherwise, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It's just me again today. And that is very intentional. Like I mentioned last week, I do have some batched recordings of myself and special guests having conversations. Um, and they are going to be really juicy, juicy, really potent, really awesome episodes, but I have not been having fun editing. Um, it's just like, I don't know. It's just really felt heavy and like a thing on my to-do list. And I've been playing around with trying to find ways to make life more easy. And as much as things on our to-do list do need to get done, I've really, really, really become a believer that we make things harder for ourselves. And I know this to be true because this has been my life.

And this isn't necessarily like for lack of efficiency or lack of knowing how to do something in an easier way. It can be as simple as just like holding tension in our body or I don't even know, like some examples that are coming to mind are like, I've noticed myself while I'm pushing Aubrey in the stroller, having a death grip on the handlebars. And it's like, why am I doing this? Like, I don't need to be holding on so tightly here. This can be easier. Or like when I'm journaling, holding my pen with like a death grip.

And again, like this can be easier. I don't need to hold onto the pen so tightly. So for me, one of the biggest things has been noticing where I'm holding tension. But I see it in other instances too, especially in the creation of content on social media or the creation of this podcast and really gets getting stuck in trying to make things perfect and try to make things look a certain way to impress a certain someone. And that's just not an easeful way of doing things. That's putting unnecessary pressure on yourself. And I think this probably will resonate with other people that are recovering perfectionists and, um, yeah, just, just starting to notice

like where you're making something harder that it needs to be. Um, anyways, so yeah, like I said, I've been kind of noticing that for me, that's editing. Um, I don't love it. So I'm kind of trying to find ways to make it easier. And one thing I've done instead of telling myself to sit down and edit an entire podcast episode, which like, by the way, I don't know, maybe this is something that will come with practice. Maybe it will start getting easier and more efficient as I do it more. But for right now, it usually means me sitting down and obviously listening to the entirety of the podcast, but also like re-listening because it's like, oh, I'm going to potentially clip that. And then I

need to re-listen to make sure like it flows. And then I don't know, there's just, it just doesn't feel very efficient. And I think that's part of why it's not fun for me. But anyways, what I've been doing is just doing it in smaller chunks. So instead of telling myself to sit down and complete it in like one, um, sit down, I just do like 20, 30 minutes at a time or whatever I have the capacity for in that moment. So obviously, um, editing is now a slower process because of, instead of it happening just like at one point in time, it's now taking multiple days. And that's totally fine because it's ensuring that it's still enjoyable for me. Because I know myself and I know that as soon as it's not fun anymore, I will start resenting it and not wanting to do it.

And just all these really negative emotions and feelings and energy that I don't want to be in, in terms of the creation of this podcast. So that's what I've been doing. I've been slowing down my editing process, which I think in turn has actually made it more efficient because then I'm actually more present as I'm doing it. And I'm not having to like repeat what I just listened to because it's like, Oh shoot, I wasn't paying attention. What was just said. So I'm more, I'm more focused and, um, just more in tune to the task at hand. And I think that's a good lesson that we can all probably take away in almost like everything we're doing in life. It can be so easy to end up splitting our attention and not even realizing we're doing it. And by splitting attention, by splitting our attention, that basically means we aren't putting all of our attention onto one thing. And this is especially true, I think, in motherhood because we are always

mothering. I mean, so there's always a kid that you have to be watching and making sure they're not getting into some sort of trouble or hurting themselves or whatever it is. But you're also trying to get stuff done around the house. And so it can be a real balance and just being completely, I guess, like aware and conscious of the thing you're doing on um an example I'm thinking of is like vacuuming like if I'm vacuuming but I'm also watching Aubrey okay that's actually a bad example because I can kind of vacuum while looking up so it's actually a really bad example forget I brought up vacuuming um I don't know the direction I wanted to go was more in the context of screens because I've noticed myself, I will, for example, like be watching something on my phone, like a, the module to like a course I'm taking, but I will, I don't know how to explain

this, but like when you're watching a video on your phone, there's like that option to like move the video box like up so you can still do other stuff on your phone. And so I'm notorious at doing that. I will just kind of put the video up away so that it's kind of in the background. And then I continue doing whatever I'm doing on my phone. And so I'm multitasking without even being intentional about it. I'm splitting my attention and then I'm obviously not giving my full awareness to that video I'm watching. I've also noticed myself doing this, like when we're, I don't watch a lot of TV, but like if I did, I feel like I would naturally just pull out my phone and start scrolling or start checking my texts.

And it's like, hey, Nicole, can you just be present with what you're doing right now? Whether that's texting a friend or watching TV or even, again, the computer thing. I've noticed myself being on Zoom calls and I will intentionally keep my camera off because I don't want the other people on the call seeing what I'm doing. And what I'm likely doing is something on my phone. So it's like this double screen thing. And so that's something I've kind of been trying to practice is not allowing myself to engage in double screens and instead just focusing my attention on whatever I'm doing. That was kind of a tangent and not at all in the direction of where I wanted this episode to go,

but that's always the case. So anyways, for this episode, I was just kind of reflecting back on last week's episode. And last week I shared a little bit about just how I've been like rewiring my nervous system and unlearning hustle culture and just practicing getting more comfortable with the discomfort of slowing down. And I think at the end of the episode, I started talking a little bit about my menstrual cycle and just being in like ovulatory energy and how I'm using that and just all those things. And I also started talking about how things in life are going fairly good right now. And while that is true, I was just reflecting on that a little bit more and actually realized like, it's funny I said that because it's true. And I've also noticed myself

being in this freeze response the past couple of weeks. And I feel like when I say those two things in the same sentence, they sound contradictive. So I want to get into that a little bit more. And I kind of want to just dive into how I can be in a freeze response while also saying that life is really good right now. And I guess just like kind of share my own experience on how I've navigated this freeze response and just a little bit more detail and insight into that. So I guess first I'll start with kind of explaining how I knew I was in a freeze response and if you're not super um just like well-versed in the nervous system and like what kind of symptoms show up in the body based on what nervous system state you're in um basically the freeze response is

your parasympathetic nervous system, basically like putting the brakes on and slowing down. And our parasympathetic nervous system, when it's not under stress is for rest and digest. So it's a really good thing. It means you're relaxed. It means you're calm. It's the state in which you can be creative and make connections

with people and just like all the feel good things. And so we want that. But when the parasympathetic system is under threat, it goes into a freeze response. Actually, that's not quite true. This is kind of a nuanced topic. So it's actually a little bit hard for me to explain, but a freeze response is actually, I believe, a mix of basically the brakes and the gas pedal at the same time, because you, I don't even know how to explain that. I feel like I have now dug myself a hole and I don't know how to get out of it. Anyways, my interpretation of the freeze response and how it's kind of shown up in my own life is, I don't want to say a state of depression,

but almost like depressive symptoms in the sense of just lower energy, not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, having very little motivation, just feeling very withdrawn and not having interest in some of my usual things that might bring me joy. So I've been experiencing all those things over the past couple of weeks. And I feel like it could be very easy to have judgment towards that state and kind of tell yourself like, oh, why, why am I here? Like, I need to fix this. Like, this isn't good. What did I do? How do I get myself out of this? And all these like, just like controlling type thoughts of wanting to control the situation and pull yourself out of it. And instead of having that approach, which I think I would have even a year ago, I,

I had a much more, um, just like curious, nonjudgmental watch from the sidelines approach. And so instead of wanting to manipulate or control or fix the circumstance, I really just poured my attention into holding space for it and just being with it and getting curious about it. So getting curious about the symptoms in my body, the slowness or the heaviness and looking at those things without judgment and I think that's the hardest part is removing the judgment from it I think it's really really easy because we live in a society that puts so much praise on like achievement and getting things done that it can be really easy to start kind of shaming ourselves for not getting things done and for being slow or lazy or taking rest without

working hard for that rest. And so, yeah, the freeze response that I feel like I was experiencing when I kind of take a step back and look at it from a bigger picture and kind of look at the context of what was happening in my life before and during, it all makes sense because like I've mentioned in the previous episode and on my Instagram, June was a chaotic month. I navigated a launch and the start of Recalibrate and a sick toddler and in and out of the hospital for the sick toddler. And it's my birthday and my husband's birthday and like all these things, which I mean, each on their own aren't necessarily enough to send someone into like a spiral or some sort of like charged activation. But I'm looking at it kind of in a bigger picture and it

totally makes sense. Like that's a lot of stimulation. And so it's no wonder that my body was putting on the brakes. It's no wonder that my body was forcing slowness and rest. And I think that's super, super cool. It allows me to have so much more compassion for myself when I see it that way, instead of seeing it as something that I needed to fix or something that was wrong with me. Like, Nicole, why are you so lazy? Why aren't you getting out of bed? So yeah, I just wanted to kind of share that little experience with you. And then I also wanted to talk about how I, I guess, just, just sat with it. So, and I truly do believe that just sitting with it and not trying to fix it is actually how you get out of it faster. But I

also want to kind of reframe this mindset of trying to get out of it and reframe this mindset that being in a freeze response is bad. Um, like none of the nervous system states like fight, fight, freeze, fawn, none of them are inherently bad. So I really invite you to remove good or bad from your vocabulary in the sense of when we're defining the nervous system states, they are all there for a reason and a purpose. And like I said, it offers me the opportunity to have so much compassion for myself when I can see it through that lens. What's really, really cool about all of this is I am rereading a book right now. I'm actually part of a book club for a book that I read last year. And the book is called The Healing Power of Pleasure by, I literally have it

in front of me one second. I have a Kindle and I've never had a Kindle before. But I think, I think I like it. It's kind of, it feels very new. It feels kind of weird to have to like tap to get to the next page instead of flipping a page. And I put like a lock screen on it because Aubrey would go in and flick like all the pages and then I'd lose my spot. Um, so I have this lock on it and I have it in front of me right now and I'm trying to remember my password to open it. Okay. I got it. Um, and I'm still just getting used to like how you get back to like the main page in your library and like all of these things.

So one second, because I pulled up a quote that I wanted to share with you. Okay, here it is. So the book is called The Healing Power of Pleasure, Seven Medicines for Rediscovering the Innate Joy of Being. It's by Julia Paulette Hollenberry. And like I said, this is the second time I've read it. The first time was, I don't remember, like sometime last year. And I read it right after reading, or actually maybe during. Sometimes I read more than one book at a time. I'm that person. I never

used to be that person, but I am now. So that's interesting. Anyways, I was reading it during the time that I was also reading Call of the Wild by Kimberle Ann Johnson. And these are probably two of my top book recommendations in terms of deepening your understanding of your nervous system. And for me, they were both really a turning point in the trajectory of my own self-awareness and my own healing journey for lack of a better word so highly recommend both books anyways like I said I'm rereading The Healing Power of Pleasure and it's been really cool just noticing what things are standing out to me versus what would have stood out to me the first time I was reading it I think that's really cool about like rereading books. I don't often reread a book because I have such a long list of books I want to read, but this one is definitely worthy of a reread. So I'm glad I'm going through

it. I'm glad I'm going through it kind of with a slower pace and I guess more of a fine tooth comb. And like I said, I have a Kindle now. So it's kind of cool how on the Kindle you can highlight things to create like a list of clippings. So one of the clippings or quotes that I wanted to share with you is, actually there's a couple. So in this book, there's seven medicines for rediscovering the innate joy of being. And one of the medicines is slow.

It's basically to slow down. And Julia talks about how important it is for our nervous system because we aren't supposed to just be go, go, go. We really need that slowness and that reset. And yeah, so I'm going to share this quote with you because I think it really just paints the picture of the importance of this. And so it says, we might imagine stress nervous activity as a line in a chart. When we are anxious, our emotional vibrations move faster and the line is agitated, showing sharp excited peaks and steep depressed troughs slowing down is calming vibrationally from agitation to relaxation the line on the chart softens stepping down the voltage or vibration of the energy in

this way we deeply slow entering a realm of more realness and different and truer dimension and i really like that visualization and that analogy of looking at the nervous system as like this vibrational energy and like the lines on a graph. And like the way I visualize it is like when we are go, go, go in that like hustle mindset and often in a state of survival, our vibrational energy is what's agitated. And like she describes these sharp, excited peaks, but it's also like, I visualize like the lines on the graph being very, very close together. And like, there's no space for anything. And that to me just truly resembles kind of how I feel when I'm in those states. There's literally no, I have zero capacity for anything outside of like whatever my attention

is focused on and no space for nuance, no space for pivoting and flexibility in like anything. And obviously in those states, that's when I'm most irritable. That's when I, um, I'm feeling burnt out and just like that, like short fuse that we've all kind of experienced. And so, like I said, this visualization really paints the picture for me in terms of the importance of slowing down. And when we do slow down, it calms those vibrations. And so the lines on the graph are more spread out and there's actually space now to breathe and just like

enjoy the pleasures of life. And I think that's why this is the first medicine in the book is because slowing down really sets the tone to start noticing the pleasures in the mundane and all the moments of joy that we can find in just like the little things and like the simplicity of life. And this entire book is just a really, really good reminder of how and where to add pleasure into your life and not like in the context of sexuality. Although I, if I remember one of the chapters is on that, but, um, just looking at pleasure as this, um, innate joy, innate state of joy. Um, and I think for so many of us, we've, we've kind of fallen in the trap of believing that we have to work really hard to experience joy and we have to work really hard to experience pleasure.

We might even have the belief that we almost have to injure some sort of suffering in order to experience pleasure. And that is so far from the truth. This really hones in on some of what I shared in last week's episode about just having space for rest and having space to slow down. And I'm sharing all of this with you because I had a chat with my friend Sila this afternoon and Sila is truly the catalyst for me in how I grew my understanding of my own nervous system and all of these things. And so it was really cool to just kind of reflect back with her

some of my own transformation. And we were talking about this freeze response that I feel like I am currently thawing from. And we both agreed that the freeze response has a purpose and that purpose can be seen as this like opportunity to reset and recharge. And so the body's forced slowness, which so many of us can be quick to judge is actually like needed in order to start experiencing all the good things that are to come. And I feel like I could easily go on a tangent here and I'm trying to stay on track and trying to make this make sense for you guys. Um, and this was much easier to explain when I was having the conversation with Sila, because of course she's, she's kind of like mirroring things back to me, but I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is just back to how I said about removing our

vocabulary around the nervous system states as good or bad and not looking at them with such a like binary way of thinking and instead almost seeing the freeze response like especially in the in the context of you not actually having to like shut down in order to keep yourself safe although that is exactly what the body is doing right the body is literally putting on the brakes because it's thinking if you keep going at the rate you're going you're going to burn out if you keep injuring the stimulation you've been experiencing you are going to burn out it sees that as a threat and um again like just just understanding that like this freeze response is actually a good thing much like having to charge your phone and your phone when it's being charged is likely attached to a cable that's

attached to the wall and you can't use it in the same capacity that you would if it wasn't attached to the wall I feel like when we're in this like frozen response, we can sometimes feel like stuck or just like bound down to our lack of energy and lack of motivation. And I feel like I'm a broken record saying this, but again, like just removing the judgment around that, removing the shame and instead just becoming curious to the context and like what's actually going in your world, going on in your world and having compassion and holding space for all that is happening. That's kind of what I wanted to share here today. And like I said, I have my Kindle in front of me

and I have all these clippings from this book. So maybe I'll just share a couple more from the chapter on slow, because I think it really does set the tone for how to experience pleasure in your life. important is, oh, where is it? This one's good. This literally kind of summarizes what I just said in a much more concise way. So it is useful to interrupt our nonstop doing and consciously pause. This does not mean reaching a state of unconscious collapse, but simply slowing, but sorry, but simply allowing a little space and time for ourselves. A moment of not doing, of emptiness and potential. When we consciously pause, nothing is lost. Rather, there is a gathering of energy and focus. A pause is a refresh button, a mini transformation point. As we pause, we are contained.

We can recognize and shift. The pattern changes, opening into something new. I love that. Could you imagine if we saw rest as this transformational opportunity to shift and like just recognize the potential of newness that can come after that instead of thinking of rest as almost like the the outcome of working too hard i don't know i'm kind of just like reflecting on that in real time and it just is kind of mind blowing in the sense of how society views hustle and productivity and all of these things. One other clipping is where attention goes, energy flows. Attention is a wisdom that is often overlooked because it is

receptive, subtle and hidden. And our culture usually only values what is visible, obvious, and loud. And I think that's an important piece in all of this too, is kind of the things that are happening beneath the surface and the things that are invisible to the outward world. And like I said, our society really praises achievements and hustle and getting things done. And it's because those things are visible. Those things are outside of us. And those things are things that can be measured and quantified. And there just really isn't a lot of space for the things that are happening behind the scenes, the rest and the recharge and the things that probably feel hardest to do because we've never really been taught how to do them. It's never really been modeled to us. And so many of us don't end up doing those things until it's almost too late, until our bodies start crying and screaming for whatever rest is looking like in that context.

And I think in my experience, and even in this, the last couple of months and noticing myself get into that freeze response, I could easily kind of judge myself and say, oh, well, why didn't I catch this sooner? Why didn't I do more things that I wouldn't get here? And I'm not allowing myself to go there. One, because I don't think it's true, but two, because, well, it's too late. But also so many things that happened in June were outside of my control

that I don't think there was anything I could have done differently. I really don't. The other anything I could have done differently. I really don't. Um, the other thing is, is it's not just about, uh, like, how do I say this? Like, it's not just about like negative or traumatic things that might put you into this state of freeze or into the state of your body crying for rest or um it's also like anything that's stimulating so it's things that are exciting and it's things that are expansive and it's it's truly anything that is new or unfamiliar to your nervous system and uh again it's about holding space for all of it and just

being with it all instead of trying to micromanage it. It's funny because before I sat down to record, I was like, oh, what direction am I going to go? There's so many things alive on my heart right now. There's so many things that even just kind of unfolded today that we're like oh I could talk about that when I go to record tonight oh I could talk about that and as I'm sitting here and actually starting to spit some of the words out loud it's kind of cool because in my mind I'm seeing how they all interconnect and I'm seeing how it all kind of weaves together and so all of this brings me into the the other thing I wanted to bring up in this conversation and that's intensity. Intensity can be in the form of pain, can be in the form of

pleasure, can be in the form of busyness or not busyness. It can be in the form of money, not having enough money, can be in the form of money, not having enough money. It can be in the form of fast or slow, hot or cold. I just want you to like sit and reflect a bit on how much intensity can you handle? Where are your edges? Where do you notice discomfort versus where do things feel comfortable and familiar? I think when we can start bringing our awareness to that, that is when we can start expanding our edges. We can start expanding our threshold for intensity. And this is really cool when I think about intensity in the context of birth, because in my opinion, from my perspective, birth, labor, contractions aren't painful, not inherently painful.

They are intense. And pain comes when we start writing stories about it in our mind. Or if there's other things happening within labor that is causing pain, that's different. I'm talking about just like a contraction in its most natural state. Anyway, so just noticing where your capacity is for handling that intensity and one of the biggest ways to start expanding our threshold for intensity is to start expanding our capacity for pleasure that's like one thing that we do have control over. And it's one thing that is likely tolerable. Obviously, you're not going to go. I mean, some people do, but you're likely not going to go like see how much pain you can handle. Nobody wants to like

put pain onto themselves. Although I feel like in the context of exercise and context of like running or weightlifting, you kind of do, right? Like you, you, you, that's a tangible way to notice where your edges are and then move past it. But back to pleasure, I think pleasure is one of the easiest ways to start expanding our threshold. And this is exactly why I brought up the book in this episode is because the book literally is talking about where to find pleasure and how to increase your capacity for it. All of this to say that there's so many simple ways to start noticing pleasure. Um, yeah, I've totally like gone off track, man. These like solo episodes, they're either like amazing or awkward. And then as soon as I get in my head that it's awkward, I have a really hard time coming out of it. So here we are. Thanks for listening this far. Got awkward. Um, I'm just going to name it as that because that's what I'm feeling and we're gonna move on just dropping back into my body and trying to notice where things are feeling expansive

trying to feel where the air meets my skin and see how much skin I can take up. See where I can bring my breath and I find my center again so I can come back to what is actually alive on my heart and what I wanted to come through in this episode. And I think, I guess one of the main messages, asides from the importance of rest and the importance of of not looking at our nervous system states through a binary lens of good or bad is creating the space in our life to find pleasure and to experience joy.

And I guess I just want to share some examples of how simple it can really be. Some examples that are coming to mind are noticing the scent and the softness of the bubbles as you're washing your hands. Actually slowing down enough to pour love into yourself as you are brushing your hair, brushing your teeth or rubbing lotion on yourself. So often we just move through those things as quickly as possible to get them off our to-do list.

And instead that's actually an opportunity to just slow down and give ourselves some love. Some other opportunities are actually like holding yourself. You can do it right now. Literally just like hold your hands in your lap or cross your arms, holding like the opposite arm, almost like a hug, and just play around with the tightness of your squeeze and like what feels good. Bringing your awareness to your breath

and noticing where it feels most expansive to breathe into. Can you go there? Can you bring more breath there? Can you contain and hold your energy there and just let that feeling good sensation land and stay? Or do you let your mind start wandering and the mind chatter start blabbering? That's okay if that's what's happening. It's also okay if you're not feeling expansive anywhere. I just intuitively started swaying, rocking like side to side, and that feels really good. Can you notice when your leg starts tapping because you enjoy the song that's playing?

Or when a smile lands across your face and you don't even know why, can you just like hold that smile a little bit longer? What about when you're eating? I feel like I'm a very fast eater. I have been as long as I can remember. And that's something I've been playing around with too, is just almost allowing myself to indulge and not seeing indulgence as something that's bad. So when I'm eating something that is really, really delicious, I mean, often those delicious things aren't super nourishing, but they are for your soul. So let yourself indulge.

Permission to go have a piece of chocolate cake tonight or a glass of wine. Like, why are we, again, this binary thinking of good or bad and thinking that these things are either good or bad and then not allowing ourselves to have what we deem as bad. I think this is a really big thing in the context of what we eat and what we consume, especially for those of us that are trying to be just a little bit more holistic and naturally minded and conscious to some of the toxins we're consuming. It can be so easy to just start restricting and limiting ourselves to so many things.

And yeah, obviously those toxic things aren't great, but everything in moderation. And if it's causing you more stress to restrict and limit and say no, just allow yourself to say yes. Last week I shared about finding opportunities to say no and how that actually creates space in your life or saying yes. And it just, the example of saying no to a workout, even though you know that workout would be really good for you and like your future self would probably thank you for that workout. It could also be that your current self just needs to rest, or maybe your current self needs a modification to that exercise. Maybe your current self needs to get something else done off her to-do list in order to feel fulfilled and productive and worthy that day. I just wanted to drop that in because I think that's something else we can get stuck in doing is doing these things because we know they're good for us and doing them with the purpose of benefiting our future self. And when we're doing that, we're not actually being present. We're not actually attuned to what our current needs are. We're once again again bypassing what our body is asking of us

we are trying to micromanage and manipulate and control even though the intentions are really good can we instead just be with what the body is asking in that moment. And if it's rest, can we do that unapologetically and without shame or judgment? As always, I hope something I've shared is helpful and resonates. If it wasn't helpful, if it didn't resonate, thank you for listening this far. Thank you for being here. I mentioned in last week's episode that I've kind of been playing around with this idea of doing solo Sundays and then continuing to have the guest expert interviews air on Tuesdays. I think at this point in time, I don't have the capacity for that. Like I said at the beginning, I don't love editing and that will just mean double the editing. So I don't think I'm going to add that to my to-do list right now, but I do definitely want to put more energy into some of these solo

episodes. It's really, really just nourishing for my soul and supportive to my nervous system to sit down and actually speak whatever's on my heart. I find myself so often still, even through all the work I've been doing to be more authentic and feel safe in my self-expression and feel safe to use my voice, I still find myself thinking, oh, is that too much? Or is that too little? Am I not sharing enough? Am I sharing too little? Am I posting too often? Am I not posting enough? Are my episodes too long? Or are they not short enough? or are they, you know what I mean? It's this constant questioning of, am I worthy really at its core? That's kind of what I'm

challenging myself on. And it can be easy to feel frustrated that some of those things are still coming up for me, but I'm not going to be frustrated by it. I understand that it's just some insecurities that are still there. It's still some things that I need to pour more love and attention into and ultimately need to continue creating more space and safety in my nervous system. And the podcast for me is that. And by showing up alone, doing these solo episodes, that is really what helps to increase my capacity for some of the discomfort of all of that. Much like showing up live on Instagram.

The more times I do that, the more times I allow myself to just use my voice, even though at the end of it, I probably want to retract a bunch of things I said, it still shows my nervous system that, hey, it was okay. It was okay. We went there. We're not dead. There's no bear chasing us. There's no actual threat here. And really it's just an opportunity to start quieting my ego and tuning within and allowing whatever's on the heart to just come out and shine through. So yeah, that's why solo episodes are so important to me. Um, again, like I've said before, I really don't come into these episodes with much of an agenda, as you can probably tell, I certainly don't have like notes or bullet points that I'm going off of.

Um, it's really just what's alive on my heart. And so thank you for seeing me. Thank you for witnessing me through this messy podcast creation phase that I'm in. It really does mean a lot. Even if no one's listening, it means a lot to me. I'm proud of myself for continuing to show up here and continuing to talk to my microphone. Good. And that here, thank you again. I appreciate everyone's love and support. Um, yeah, I will see you next week, next week. I, uh, actually, so I'm literally like five minutes away from finishing the editing process of my interview with Robin from wild child sleep. And it's a, Oh, how can I put it? Um, I was certainly unapologetic in some of my shares in that episode, talking about sleep and my experience with navigating infant sleep and my opinions of sleep training and everything in that subject.

Robin is a, I think she calls herself maybe like a holistic sleep coach. And she's not a sleep trainer by any means. She really just helps teach parents what is biologically normal for infant sleep. And there's not enough conversation like that going on in our world. So the conversation is really important to me. It's honestly a conversation that I wish a previous version of myself could have heard. I think it would have saved myself from a lot of stress, stress, and a lot of judgment and a lot of feelings of inadequacy. Sleep is, was a huge trigger in my life. Infant sleep. I'm not talking about my own sleep. I'm talking about Aubrey's sleep. And again, it kind of falls into the same context of what I've been sharing about

in these last two episodes about society's obsession with hustle and just having something outward to show. Um, I think that falls into some of society's obsession with infants sleeping through the night because we are expected to be productive and get things done and meet our achievements throughout the day. And we can't really do that once we have a baby. A baby really is an opportunity to slow in a really beautiful way. And it's really sad to see the societal pressures of basically teaching parents and women to not trust their own instincts and instead to really go against what their body and their nervous system is asking. And anyways, I don't want to get too much into it. The whole episode is really good. There's lots of things that I feel like might ruffle people's feathers, but I think it's also

things that need to be said and it's things that need to be talked about more often. So I hope you give it a listen and give Robin a follow. That's going to be next week. And then what else do I have going on? I have three more guests that I'm going to be... I don't like the word interviewing. If you've ever been on a podcast with me, you know that I don't interview you. I really am just the person that is recording the conversation of you getting to share what's live on your heart that day and sharing bits of your story and yeah, just whatever is kind of going on in your world right now. And I've loved being that person. I've loved that this podcast has created space for people to storytell. And I've really, really, really loved the authentic conversations that have come out of it.

So if you'd like to be on the show, the link is always in the show notes. By all means, apply anytime. And by apply, I mean, basically just raise your hand and tell me that you want to be on the show, the link is always in the show notes. By all means, apply anytime. And by apply, I mean basically just raise your hand and tell me that you want to be on the show and then I'll send you the booking link. There is no formal application. I honestly can't think of something that would make me not want you on the show. This really is like an open space for anything and everything. But yeah, going forward, I'm interviewing

a couple of really cool people in the next coming weeks. So stay tuned and someone take this mic away from me so I don't keep blabbing your ear off. 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, 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