the bossbabe podcast - E479: High-Functioning Burnout Exposed: The Overwhelm Loop

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Why is it that the very habits that drive ambitious women to succeed - the hustle, the long hours, the “I can do it all” mindset - are often the same ones that lead to burnout, anxiety, and resentment? In the first episode of our 5-part series with Awaken the Muse - Natalie, Alexi Panos and Emily Gallagher pull back the curtain on what they call the overwhelm loop - the cycle of urgency, overcommitment, and dysregulation that so many high-achieving women mistake for normal. Together, they share raw stories of postpartum identity shifts, hidden resentment in relationships, and the nervous system patterns that keep us chasing more even when we already feel depleted. You’ll learn what “functional freeze” actually looks like, why capacity can be a mask for self-abandonment, and the micro-practices that help you exhale, reset, and build a more sustainable kind of success. If you’ve ever felt like slowing down means falling behind, this episode will prove the opposite - that nervous system regulation is the real key to growth, profit, and fulfillment. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 The hidden cost of high-functioning burnout 01:26 From biohacking to balance: how hormones tell the truth before we do 03:35 The LA hustle spell and the pressure to “stay relevant” 05:24 Postpartum wake-up calls: splitting yourself between business and baby 08:49 The identity crisis no one talks about after becoming a mother 11:27 Why your nervous system equates chaos with safety 15:10 How relaxing (not pushing harder) actually expands capacity 16:40 Soft CEO era vs. hustle culture: finding a middle ground 25:36 Functional freeze explained and why high achievers miss the signs 33:37 Resentment as a red flag for self-abandonment 38:23 Simple regulation tools you can use in under a minute 41:34 The myth that transformation has to be hard, and what actually works RESOURCES + LINKS Click Here To Join Soft Success: A Free Masterclass Experience Taking Place On September 24th To End High-Functioning Burnout And Redefine Success On Your Terms. Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997).

Welcome to a special series on the Bosswave podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis and I'm joined this week by two women I deeply respect and admire Alexei Panos and Emily Gallagher for a raw and honest five-part series we're calling Red Flags Every Boss Babe Needs to Know. We are dropping one episode every single day for the next five days and each one is going to shine a light on the patterns that so many high-achieving women have normalized until their bodies, relationships or businesses start sending signals that something is off. These are the red flags that high performers tend to override. We keep pushing, performing and producing,

telling ourselves it's just a busy season when really we have disconnected from our own truth, intuition and vitality. This series is here to interrupt that cycle, not in a shame-based way, but with clarity, compassion, and the kind of perspective that makes you stop and ask, do I actually want to keep doing it this way? So in each episode, we're not just naming the red flag. We are breaking down the symptoms.

We are sharing our own lived experiences as uncomfortable and vulnerable as that can be and offering really implementable tools to start shifting the pattern right now. We are also inviting you into a masterclass where we're going to take this even deeper. Because the truth is, awareness is just the beginning, but embodiment is the goal. Today we're starting with a really big one, the overwhelmed loop. If you have ever been called high capacity while secretly living in a state, date of overthinking, urgency and anxiety, I think this episode is really going to hit home for you. Let's get into it.

I'm so excited that we're doing this because, yeah, think about 2018. We did that podcast series together and I feel like that's when all of us were in that full hustle mode, which I look back and I'm so grateful to that version of myself. But seeing, oh my goodness, the difference of just like all of our lives and should we start there of where we all were? I can go first. Maybe we'll talk about where we all were and what the journeys looked like. But for me, so it was seven years ago, which is so interesting. I feel like I was in the thick of the business really taking off.

And it was happening. I describe it as like a magic carpet right. It was just happening so fast. We moved into a we work office. Yes. Alexi, we obviously shared office. It was like two doors down. Yeah.

And it was just every opportunity I was saying yes to. Every idea I was saying yes to. But I remember even then, and I think I felt really good. But I was struggling so much of my skin, had really bad hormonal acne. My hormones were fully out of whack. I was like biohacking within an inch of my life. I was up at like 6 a.m. every day before I had kids. I'm like, why was I doing that?

Like, missed opportunity. Working out, working and just this endless cycle. And it was beautiful and like, look what it's produced. But it's just so interesting being seven years out now, how much life has changed. We're all in Austin now. And my nervous system is completely different. I mean, I haven't had a hormonal issue in, I mean, five, four, five years maybe. Yeah.

Which is insane. Crazy. It's just a completely different. Like I look at that person, I'm like, oh, that's so like, she was really like for it. Yeah. Trying so hard. But my God, had no idea that. Yeah.

That was really going on in her system. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. I think we were all in such an energized time. Like, we were so excited about our businesses and what we were creating and how we were serving and I had just had Kingston and so for me I was starting to really make that shift of oh I can't do things the way I used to do them and I used to work like 18 hour days and just like all ends of the night and the morning and the weekends just filling all my time with work because

I was so excited about it but coming from such a dysregulated place without knowing I was disregulated right like I was just ignoring every signal my body was sending me that hey you're pretty close to burnout you should probably slow down you should probably rethink this And it wasn't really until it hit me in a hard way where I was like, oh, I got to do something different. Yeah, for sure. That for me was like at the precipice of the time where like my full grind mode was kind of, I was definitely getting the signs and I was getting the disillusionment and the disenchantment with like the old way. Yeah. and was kind of trying to grasp for the next thing. Okay, so what's the next thing?

Grasping, grasping, grasping, like, because there's got to be, I wasn't fully in again, like now what we're saying, or even aware. Like, I think that's such a big thing. When you're in it, you're just not even aware that you're being run in that way. So it's still very much in that pattern of grasping for the safety of the next business or the next thing that was going to take all my energy and attention. But I was just thinking that when I was about to drive here of just, wow. All of us are so fundamentally different.

I'm like, I feel like an entirely different woman. Night and day. Then that girl, like that sweet, beautiful woman that I was, but just so different in like such deep ways. It's just so profound and expansive to be sitting in that like contrast and to be able to see that. Because yeah, we were and we were all in L.A. Right? We're in L.A. We're surrounded by that peak kind of vortex of, you know, you are what you produce.

You are who you know. You are like the, you know, the success that you have. It was very externally validated and you get caught into that as well. Well, and that's the thing too. I think that created this subtle. and subliminal. I got to keep up. I got to stay relevant. Not there yet. I got to produce. I got to get ahead. And it's this constant almost competition without feeling like we were competing with each other, but oh, I'm falling behind. And so there was this underlying anxiety and

overwhelm all the time of I'm not doing enough. There's got to be more. There's a new system. There's a new technology. There's this. And I just remember always feeling like I was behind. Yeah. Even though I was remarkably ahead of most people in our industry, I always felt behind. And it's so interesting because thinking back to that time, and I want to ask you guys some questions, too, maybe things I didn't see on the surface back then. But even back then, I had some beautiful friendships in L.A. But it's so interesting looking back how many of them were business focused. Right. The business masterminding, the collaborations and all amazing things.

But it really was so business focused. So for you, Alexi, we didn't really talk about this much in the podcast series back then, but you were very freshly postpartum. I remember that. And you were really the first of any of us to have kids. Yeah. How were you feeling in that space? It's an interesting thing because, again, I felt like, I still felt the surge of energy. Like, I didn't want to pull back from my business.

And I found ways to keep it going and be successful and all the things. But there was this pull of, okay, I'm on track. I'm still building. I'm growing. I'm doing all the things. But then there was this pull of like, but I'm supposed to be here. And I just felt this. It wasn't necessarily incongruence, but it was like a.

split within me where it was like the old version of me was so clear like just one foot in front of the other legs keep going they knew me was like slow down like be with your baby and i you know gave birth at home did a very holistic way of having my child did 40 days of no work nobody coming in and i just remember going like is this what it's supposed to be am i supposed to feel like i have to split myself in half i almost felt like i had to clone myself to be fully present for both and To be quite honest, I don't think I really nailed that until the twins, because I really tried to still be the same woman that I was while having Kingston, my oldest. Looking back, when I had the twins, I had to slow down because I had them one week before the world shut down from COVID. And so everything stopped.

Yeah, even just like flagging of the 40 days, I mean, I know you had a really beautiful not having people come in. It's so beautiful. But even that like 40 days of not working is a thing. It's like, it should be so much longer. Like in my mind, to be a mom and like to start. that like to be able to have so much more space that that feels but in my mind that wasn't even like 40 days was like crazy that's what I'm saying it's wild that that's the just like the context of that now it looks like a flash in the pan well then I flash forward to my fourth cash where I basically like took

off you know I took off I would do a call here and there but I was not researching things I was not on my phone I was just being with my child at this very fresh postpartum phase it was so good But I had to learn the lesson the hard way because, again, that first, my first baby, I was still trying to be like career woman, boss babe, doing all the things and mom and wife and homemaker. And I was burning myself out from trying to be so present with both. It just speaks to, again, like that mindset of like, I can't stop. I can't, you know, take that amount of space because it's like coming from this identity and this wiring of, like, I've got to keep going because I'm here to continue creating and, you know, like making space for this really important thing. I think it's just, again, the different women that we are now, like, we have such a different vantage point of, like, really getting the textual experience of our life of, like, what really

matters. Yeah. This work is, like, so crucial for that to really be able to drop into your life to be able to hold. And it's not about not being able to do the business or not being able to still be successful, right? But being able to, like, hold more, more holistically. Totally. Yeah. I'm curious, too, like, when you had Noemi, did you feel that same? Because I had almost like this very naive idea that, like, nothing would change. Right. Like everything's going to be the same. What do you mean? Of course I'm going to still want to do this at this capacity and X, Y, Z. Yeah. So I have very much had that mindset. I was like, and I remember my mindset back then being like, wait, why would work change? I'll just get a nanny. It didn't comprehend in my mind that I might feel different. Because I was so used to dealing with the logistics. I'm like, what if I work nine to five? I'll just get a nanny. Nine to five. Like, what's the big deal? I didn't think about myself changing. But when I had Noemi, that was my full come to Jesus moment. And it wasn't like one day and I had the realization because I resisted it really hard. I feel like my entire life came crumbling down over the span of 12 months.

And it started with just a birth that was incredibly traumatic and was not in any sense what I imagined it would be. And my nervous system was stuck in fight or flight. And I came home and I had this business where, you know, I had a co-founder relying on me. I had a full team. I had thousands of clients. The business was going. Yeah. And it felt like I was on this train I couldn't get off.

Yeah. But the anxiety in my body was so big. I couldn't get out of bed. And it was, it's hard because I don't want to diminish how amazing it was to have Noemi and the love I felt for her. But at the same time, I have to be honest about it was the hardest period in my life because, yes, I have this baby that I absolutely adore. But I do not have any clue who I am, what I care about anything because I was so used to running at 100 miles an hour. and putting the brakes on just my entire life shuttered around me. Everything shattered.

And my life's never been the same since, but it was a full 12 months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was not like, oh, I had this realization and then here we go. Yeah, it was like a full 12 months. And then after that, it was a full 12 months of reintegrating everything in. And then I feel like when she was two, I had the feeling of I understand who I am. I know what I want. I know what I care about.

But it did take those full two years. to push out. Kind of circle round, which is so big. And that you just mentioned something that I think is so big for so many female entrepreneurs is the same thing that helps us create our success, that like hustle, push, prove, produce, like all of that energy, which built so much is also the thing that almost becomes our Achilles heel, right? It's the thing that becomes the thorn in our side. And it's one of the red flags that from all the women we've worked with, eventually the thing that got them everything they wanted becomes a thing. that almost destroys them. And it's the chaos, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the constant feeling like my to-do list will never end. And, you know, we remind the women we work with. It's like you're always going to have stuff to do in life. It's not that. It's the fact that your nervous system is actually set to a safety point of chaos of I need a full plate all the time because that's what most female entrepreneurs and male entrepreneurs. That's what we grew up with with feeling safe. It's like a lot on plate taking it on chaos not feeling like we can ever settle or rest anywhere and so when we have a baby

and we have this like huge life moment that literally forces us to go that's not going to work anymore we have the reckoning and the reckoning is that ego death which i know i had it sounds like you had too whereas like who am i now if i can't be productive non-stop all the time and it's just such an important thing to really recognize that because again that's what allows us to really see that it's not It's not getting to the bottom of the list. It's not the next launch. It's not all of these things. It's actually that your system is really looking.

It's just so familiar with that sitting that that's why it takes the time to actually like have that initiation. You know, and we say this, right, the activation is the invitation. So it's like really seeing the strategy, that mentality that we're holding in our life as the invitation to actually be initiated into this new way. That's why it does take like it's not, oh, okay, it's done now. I learned the lesson. Like we have to actually really, life gives us that time and space and it doesn't generally also feel that good, right?

Mine was also several years and it was like, when is this going to be? Like, because I was still in that old pattern of trying to grasp because my system hadn't recalibrated, looking for the thing I thought was going to solve it, which is so just, again, what we're saying, like when you're a busy high achieving entrepreneur, I think, okay, the next launch, okay, this next, this next piece, but it keeps us in that perpetual chase. And so it does take that time to actually allow ourselves to rewire. I mean, I had, yeah, I had, like, I have a really anxious nervous system. Like, this was my red flag for sure. Constantly, you know, urgent, in a hurry, on time. There was always this, like, perceived urgency. And Capricorns and Virgo's here.

Right. I feel like we all relate. But it's like this rushing in my system that always made everything feel really urgent and pressing, you know? And it wasn't even until a few years ago that I realized, oh, like, I just, it's actually my system that's like looking and trying to latch on to the thing for like, okay, when, you know, when I lose five kilos, when I get this amount of money in the bank, when I, and that's why it's this perpetual piece because it's actually just a system, right, that is, am I safe yet? Am I, can I

stop yet? And that's why it takes the time. And that's the thing too. I think a lot of high achieving women, I know this was my story for a long time, is like, well, if I just do more, if I just do more, then I can finally, whatever it is, right? If I just do more, if I just do more, then I can land. And when we think about it from a biological perspective of our nervous system, which again, so many of us have gone so much deeper into this. And it's like the holy grail for actually getting to that next phase of our lives. But our nervous system literally needs to build the capacity to hold that more. And we're often overriding our body's capacity for more. So we just keep stacking more, more, more. And the body's like, wait, I haven't regulated into this baseline of more yet. And so then we send our body into a

spiral. We get stuck in these hypervigilant states. And I was thinking, about this on the way over here, like how much birth has really taught me about capacity. Like birthing a baby, right? There's more. It's like fundamentally more. You need more pushing, more this, more that, more. We have to birth this child. But it requires relaxing to actually expand our capacity. And when we think about the nervous system and we want to expand our capacity for more money, we want to expand our capacity for more success, more opportunities, whatever it is. The hustler mentality is work harder, go harder, go faster, you know, 2x everything you did last year. But really from a nervous system perspective, it's how can you

exhale, expand, soften, widen your perspective so that that from that place of clarity in the brain, like our brain's actually turned on now because we're not in survival mode, now we're thinking better. You know, our choices are better. Our conversations are better. Our receptivity is better to receive more. And so the big solve, if you're noticing like, oh, I've totally got the anxious thing. I've totally got the overwhelm. I'm totally going nonstop. is you've got to actually exhale and learn regulation techniques that when you feel yourself in that pace, which we still all do. Like we still all have that.

Like, oh, there it is. You have to have tools to help bring yourself down and go, okay, I need to expand. I need to relax. I need to rest. I need to widen so that I can actually be more productive with the right thing. Yeah. And I actually really love that we're talking about this. So I do feel like there is this wave of the soft CEO era on Instagram that we see, which

I love, but it's almost like a masculine feminine thing. It's one extreme to the other. Totally. And I see it and it's like fully switching off and going away for a few months and like romanticizing your life, which is awesome. But over like you know, the next 60 years

not that sustainable. And it's how can both things exist at the same time? How can your ambition and how can your drive to contribute to this world, whether that's in your home with your family, whether that's in your work, in things you're creatively lit up about how can you still pursue that but in a way that feels softer and i think that's like a really important conversation because i know listen if i'd heard

that conversation when we were recording seven years ago i don't know uh-huh to me what would have entered my mind is oh if i slow down i'm going to make less money i'm going to be less successful i'm going to fall behind what's so interesting and i i always tell this story not from a place of like oh look at look at what's possible so last year was the slowest year i've ever had in terms of the way I approach business you know I was fully I knew I really needed to focus on my nervous system I knew I really needed to focus on me first yeah just like the first time my life I ever did it so good we had our biggest revenue and profit year of our entire company's life so good yeah and it felt so good yes and I almost felt like I needed that proof yeah that this

works yeah because if it didn't i'd be like cool this is i'll do this for the next couple years while i'm in this season but then i'm going to get back to it yeah but now i now that i've had that proof i feel like my capricorn brain needed it to be like oh it's not it's not bullshit what they're saying it actually work yeah and that's why i'm so passionate about having these conversations so i think for a lot of the women listening what they probably don't realize is their next level isn't living on the other side of another 80 hour week yeah it is actually, I think when you, I'll speak for my own experience, when I learned to really regulate my nervous system and really drop in like neck down. Yes. God forbid. Yes. I was more honest with

myself. I was less of a people please. I was. I stopped just saying yes when I meant no. I was a lot more focused. Like I actually had like life force energy. You know when you wake up in a morning and you feel really energized. Like this and yes, still got toddlers and all of all the things. But I actually felt so lit. up from like a cellular level and that just I think poured into all areas of my life my parenting my marriage my friendships my business but I had been doing it the other way around I'd been doing it of like okay if I'm really crushing it in business and okay if I'm doing therapy and going on date nights and I'm doing like the to do list then I'll have what I want but it's like it came from the inside out always but I needed the proof I needed honestly I needed the profit proof I needed

the proof in the way my marriage felt. I needed the proof in like the relationship I had with my daughter to see shit actually works. Yeah. But see, you're like us. We're the same. We are such tangible results driven women. And I mean, if you would have told M and I when we first met that we'd be doing like feminine embodiment work. Right. Literally. We would have laughed you off a cliff because there is no way you could have told two hustlers that were like, no, we build businesses. We make money. we make moves. My business was conscious boss. He's like, brum, bum, bum. Like, we make money. We make moves. We make an impact. Like, we are here to bite all of the juice out of this lemon, right? But here we are, you know, however many years later. And we have the proof. Like, we have, the proof is in the pudding that we are actually living

lives that feel texturally so different because it's a total, like you said, inside out job, it's a totally different come from. And what's interesting is this whole wave of, you know, the soft CEO and and all of that, like part of that, if it's not truly an integrated approach, which some of it might be, but a lot of that, like, go and escape your life is functional freeze, is actually you're in burnout and you can't do it this way anymore. And your only option you think is to pull all the way out and, like, bake sourdough in your house. Which if you have left it so long can actually potentially be the way that it has to go. Like, we also see that when you get to the point where it's so bad, like, your bodies are like, this is all I'm actually available for because it hasn't,

we've ignored so many of the signs that it's like, oh, literally I'm done right now. I had to swing so far the other way. And we often do see that where it's like the swing. Because if again, if you fully leave it until your life is like, I've got nothing left for you, there has to be almost like this recalibration moment for our body to come back and also to find integration. Like often people swing the pendulum like become super feminine. I don't want to happen to me. Like I don't want to like have responsibility and like do my business. I want to frolic on the beach. Right. But it was like I had to get that also in my body and then kind of find integration. It's not saying it has to go that way, but oftentimes sometimes people swing, there's such a deficit in this other way to find their way back.

Sometimes it can look like that to actually figure out, oh, okay, that's what that feels like. That's what this, you know, more hyper, you know, we call it masculine, but right, vigilant controlling drive. It's really like the wounded masculine controlling way that a lot of women listening to this are probably more practiced in. That we have to kind of also flex this muscle to feel like what living like that looks like and then find the wounded. the balance because it's and I like that you also brought in not just the dollar amounts because like we're also growing our business massively from more ease and more expansion from this place but also like you say like your relationship with stephen your relationship no way me like the whole felt experience of your life and I think when we're in this

high achieving drive mentality as women we can be so sort of focused on that particular area and the outcome that we can miss and forget like the actual like what gives you a life that feeling like what is valuable because especially like when we all met in LA like I already see at the beginning it's so conditioned into like what makes you successful what makes you a life valuable that you can so easily forget and just even be able to wake up and feel excited about your life we've forgotten that that's that matters that's what we bring into everything that's the quality of your life right there well and like you spoke to something too that that was the first time you really focused on yourself not like myself as a business woman or you know like

we used to take all the business classes. Like, oh, I'll take a self-help business course. First is like actually working on myself. We didn't value that for a while. You know, I mean, we did in so many ways. But if you're not focused on the relationship, if you're not focused on your level of joy and aliveness, if you're not really truly dialed in on all these other aspects of your life outside of the business, they become weights. And those weights will get heavy over time. And yes, your business might be successful. You might be crushing it with your numbers and your impact and all things. But your life is going to say, hey, we've got some checks and balances do now. And at some point, and again, that's where a lot of the women that we work with come find us. They're like,

I'm at the point where I have all the things. I got the stuff that I thought was going to make me feel better and I feel heavier than I've ever felt. And it's often not because this is hollow. The success of the business is hollow. No, it's because we've ignored our aliveness. We've ignored the woman at the center of that life. And so when we come back and we do the work of really awakening the woman who we all uniquely are and are meant to be in this life, we feel different about everything our life touches. And I think that's the key piece that we had to get as business women, like, oh, this matters because I am the center point of everything I touch. And if I want a more successful business, I have to be a more fulfilled woman because that woman is a woman

behind everything, the work, the marriage, the kids, the relationships, all of it. So for someone listening who really resonates with that, can we talk about like the functional freeze symptoms because I do think that is where a lot of a lot of people get stuck because they've pushed themselves so far it's like all or nothing and you're like I can't keep going like this so I want to burn it all down or I want to go get a job or I want to like I just want to bake sour dough all day like yeah I can't do anything else and it is functional freeze yeah yeah well so we we say with this one it's really also the activation is the invitation like first like also really realizing and seeing that that is really this initiation like seeing that these feelings seeing that

all of this is a part of like it's like that little knock knock right to actually not because so much like so often the tendency is okay got to fix this okay got to fix or push through or fix this thing and really actually being invited into okay this is here this is what's alive like actually really starting to know that that's part of the invitation to cultivate that deeper connection with self because it's not that you need to then go and push past it, it's actually really seeing, all right, wow, like I'm, I'm being invited into something here. How can I start really checking in and tuning in and not from this place of fix and not from this place of trying to get through, but really creating the space to actually ask yourself what you need in that

moment and actually start to lean into, could I give myself even a micro bit of that, right? Because the more and more we start to do that, then the more and more we can start to cultivate the sense of safety that, oh, things didn't burn down, like things didn't, you know, diminish and actually build a practice of really checking in with that. And you may have some other pieces around the freezing. Freezing. Freeze and functional freeze are really interesting. And it's a fine line sometimes, right? So when we're so used to go, go, go, go, go, go, push, push, push. And that's kind of our blueprint. We are technically overriding the body's normality. We're now in a hypervigilant survival state. Well, we burn for too long in that state, which we can burn a long time. Our bodies are

very savvy on trying to figure out like, oh, this is where we have to be. Okay, let's do it. Some of us burn for decades in hypervigilance. That was me. And I was like, I remember when I got all my adrenals tested, she's like, um, your adrenals are like gone. And I'm like, really? I feel great. You know? Yeah, like you don't actually realize it. I didn't realize. Like, I didn't know that I could feel different. I just, I always felt the buzz and didn't realize that that was my body's like reserve tank. So my body's pulling from my hormones, pulling from my reserve tank, pulling from my adrenals, go, go, go, go, but at some point, all the reserves are going to run out. When those reserves run out, now we enter freeze. If you are a high achieving

woman and you've got a lot of responsibility, you can't just freeze and numb out and disconnect. Some people do. If you have the space, you do, or you just kind of like are walking through life feeling really numb and disconnected. But most high achieving women go into a functional freeze state. That's like where your body's pumping the brakes, like no, no, stop. You can't. We're going to die. We actually can't do this anymore. But your mind is going, but I can't stop, but I can't stop. I have to do this. I have to pay the bills. I have to take care of my kids. I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to and so we're fighting between these two states. And I remember I was in functional freeze for years, for years. Getting out of bed, every morning was like, oh, this feels so hard. Like I feel so heavy. I felt like I was walking through mud

every single day and getting the work done, showing up and being bright on the calls, but afterwards feeling mentally wiped. And this state is literally your body's last and final state of, hey, we've got to change something or else we're going to pull the plug and we're going to cause, you know, health issues. We're going to cause all these other things because this is not getting your attention. So we got to be louder. And that's when we start to, you know, sometimes it's a health issue. Sometimes it's a relationship issue. Like for me, my marriage almost fell apart. And that was like the red flag for me where I was like, oh, I got to start paying attention now. And that really shifted. okay, something's got to give.

And as Em was saying, when we're in a free state, Freeze is inviting us to really look and look with a wider view and say, okay, what have I been avoiding? Because clearly we've been avoiding the body signals. Knowing something. Yeah. We have not been listening to the body at all.

Avoidance queen over here. Oh, gosh, right. Sure. But then where are we avoiding what's actually going on in our life? The little things in our marriage or relationship that haven't been working, the things, you know,

maybe we're living in an environment, that we're not happy with like we're not listening to the grief that we never felt because that member of our family died like we have been so trained to ignore our humanness for the sake of productivity that guaranteed 99% of people are ignoring something and it's big and when we give space for that it starts to create space for that to move and sometimes it's hard sometimes it's heavy it usually is but the minute we allow ourselves to feel what we haven't been feeling, we actually give our body the space and the rest it needs because the body's also been spending all this energy trying to avoid. And so that's a quick way. It's not quick,

but it's an easy way. Easy slash hard way. It's a practice. So it can be quick in the sense of having it as a practice, but in terms of the actual transition from being on this track that we were all on into like the more integrated place, like that isn't necessarily quick. And again, it makes sense because for most of us, even the numbness or the avoidance, it's not even conscious. That's the thing. It's like you're probably not even sitting you're thinking,

oh, there's a thing I'm avoiding. And that's why we're talking about these red flags, right? Because it gives you the insight of, oh, this is how that's showing up as the insight versus an actual conscious experience. Because none of us, I mean, I know specifically more us,

because we talk about this, but I know you as well. We weren't aware that there was all this we weren't feeling that there was all of this that we weren't doing, right? It took me. No, because we were so well, we were so well, that's going to get in the way.

It didn't have the skill set. actually like really also be with it because it is it is a process and it can be a lot and it can be uncomfortable right and so and it's also the gateway it's the gateway to everything that we're talking about here well and that's the key piece i think a lot of people get wrong about nervous system regulation because it's so fuzzy right now like oh nervous system yes it's about relaxation yes it's about learning how to regulate but the second part is actually learning how to feel the unfeltz learning how to feel the experience and the wave of what it means to be human and a lot of women are not practiced in that.

We actually, you know, humans. Yeah, especially high achieving women. We have a story of like, I don't have time to feel sad. Like, I don't like, no, I'll feel all that later. But that is the access point to all of our aliveness, all of our joy, all of the happiness, all that fulfillment that we're searching for in like the next launch or the, you know, the next big paycheck. It's really we're searching for more of ourselves.

We want to bring more of ourselves online. And how we do that is we have to feel more of ourselves. And so that is a journey. that, again, for us was a long journey because we didn't know. We didn't know how to do that. But that's what we help women do now. It's like learning how to come back home to the unique experience of what it means to be them in their body, not from a conceptual, intellectual standpoint.

Like, yes, understand your traumas and all the things. We did that for 10 years before we got back into our bodies. Ages. Ages. Like, oh, I've done the work. Like, we thought we had done the work. I know all my parents. I know. I'm aware of it.

But does our body change? Is your life feel different, you know? And that's the thing. Yeah. And for me, I know too, when we talk about in this episode, we're really talking about these women who feel like, well, I have just more capacity. And I know for me, that was actually a bypass. Because when I talk about the things I was avoiding like my whole life came crashing down in those 12 months. Because I stopped avoiding them. And what I realized was I would use my capacity as an excuse. So if I was in a hard professional situation and someone had a really big emotional reaction, the thing I would tell myself is, is, do you know what? I have enough capacity to hold their emotions. I don't need to bring mine into it. I'll just appease. We'll sweep it under the rug. We'll keep moving on. Like, I can do my own work separately. Yeah. Or there would be, you know, if me and Stephen were dealing with something and it felt like things were like the load was really uneven. I would tell myself, do you know what? You have more capacity. You take it on. It's not a big deal. Like it's going to stress him out more. You take it on. And that excuse showed up in every single area of my life. And I just kept telling myself, well, you have more capacity. And so why don't you just take it on? Like, you can do it. But what I didn't realize was all of that was being stuffed somewhere. And for me, it was, it was starting to show up as resent. I was going to say, yeah. I was like, how are your levels of resentment? It was resentment. It was

resentment where I thought that I was doing the work, quote unquote, I'll bring this up with my therapist on Monday. But I wasn't dealing with it. Because when you are leaving things unsaid or when you are operating in a way that feels just, it just doesn't feel right to you. you are building resent. Yeah, it's like self-abendment. And I think that's such a big thing for high-performing women who have, quote-unquote, high capacity. The resent underneath that capacity is real. And it will eat you alive.

Oh, yeah. But again, it comes back to like you had a nervous system pattern, me too, so really, of if I do it, then I can control it, then I can feel safe. So then we just do it, even though we're mad about doing it, even though we're frustrated because we feel like nobody else is doing it. But actually to stop that pattern, we have to heal the pattern in the body. that says, I don't feel safe unless I'm doing it, unless I'm in control. And so that was a huge thing that came up in my marriage, too, where it's like, I'll just do it because I can. And I can do it faster. I can do it better. Way better. Yeah, that was my story. I can do it better. Hugh, every woman agreeing with it right now. Totally handled it. But recognizing like, oh, I actually wasn't giving him space to do these things because my need to feel safe and in control was actually trumping unconsciously the ability for him to step in and try anything.

And so this is where a lot of women come in and go, I want my man to lead in the relationship. And it's like, oftentimes we're not creating any space for that to happen. But then we're mad about it. Yeah. So big. So, okay, for the woman listening who's like nodding along. and is listening, what's the one thing we can leave them with today is just a starting point. Like, we're going to be talking to them every single day this week.

But the starting point, I feel like this episode hopefully is starting to open the door, put the door in front of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So just kind of looping back on what I shared before, it's realizing again like that even the little nods are feeling called out right now, those little pieces that they're seeing the, like where they're getting hooked in, like we have the saying, the activation is the invitation.

So instead of trying to push past, like, the way, the symptoms that are showing up in your life right now, really starting to kind of go, okay, like, this is an invitation, actually starting to see the beauty of this. You just said, you know, that 12 months that burnt your life down in the 12 months after, but like, I'm sure you wouldn't take that back, right? For what you have now. Right. Exactly. So it's like, while it was hell, while it didn't feel like what you wanted to choose, it was your invitation. It was your initiation into this new way. And so starting to really, because again, we have high performing women.

We want to fix. We want to get through. We've got a problem to solve. We're really patterned in that. So really seeing that what's showing up in your life right now is a beautiful invitation. And so if you can just really soften into seeing that and just giving it a bit of space to just kind of open to it. Like, all right. Like here's this anxiety that's really frigging prison. Here's this overwhelmed that's really present. Okay. Can I give it some space? Can I not make it a problem I'm trying to fix and really see this as a part of the initiation? And we're obviously going to continue to dive into that. But just that alone starts to soften us and gives us a moment to, all right, trying to fix anything. I'm not trying to get anywhere. There is some beauty and some magic in what's showing up here. Yeah, that awareness will change your life. It really will because, again, the high performing woman is always looking for the solution. And she's trying to get out of whatever she perceives is in a way of more productivity, right? And so when we start to see the symptoms of overwhelm anxiety, constantly feeling that push of urgency,

as, hey, this is actually an invitation to get us more. productive, but we have to look at things a little differently. So that's huge. And then a second piece you can add is a quick regulation tool. So anything, when you're feeling that up energy, that mobilization, we want to bring the energy down and down regulate. So this could be Havening. Havening is like rubbing your hands together and just bringing that warmth to your body and just giving your body like, it's okay. I am safe. I am here. I can slow down. I can take a breath. You can go for a walk. You can take a shower. Everybody's got different techniques. Trust yourself. You can't get it wrong as long as you feel like,

wow that's what we're looking for and the pause is enough so you know I hear women out there already going I don't have time for a walk I don't have time for this the pause is enough if you take a double inhale extended exhale that took three seconds that pause is enough to interrupt the pattern of the body that it's okay to stay in the survival loop when we interrupt we say it's not okay I'm actually aware of the survival loop and I'm coming out of it right now and I'm going to take a moment then you can go right back to writing those emails, right back to planning the launch, but give your body the pause. That's how we start to break the cycle. And for anyone that's just saying like, oh my God, that sounds so simple, it's not going to work. It's not going to move any dial. Like, all of this

is also like a practice. Like the more consistently that we notice that we're like, again, that we're being invited into a moment like that the dysregulation isn't that I need to spend another half an hour at my desk because I've got to get this done before the thing. Like when we start to notice that that's our pattern, again, when we stop and realize, oh, this isn't that I just have to get this task done. This is an invitation for me to notice that I'm dysregulated, that I'm going into my pattern of, you know, whatever my pattern is. Okay. Because the more and more and more and more that we do that as a practice, the more and more the pattern slowly starts to fade. And then we have more capacity for actually bringing our best self to everything. So whilst it may sound, you know,

again, especially because everything right now is about the nervous system and semantics and embodiment, it's becoming such a buzz that it can be easy to kind of discount anything that we're saying. but these simple and it's obviously deeper work to it, but just these small pieces, if you make them a commitment and a practice, it will fundamentally change your experience of your life, guarantee. Yeah, and I think with high performing women especially, we're used to things being intense. Totally. We're used to things being hard. Should it be harder?

Yeah. Exactly. And so maybe that's also the invitation of it actually probably isn't as hard. I mean, I know for me, the biggest breakthrough I had and there was all the deep work and all the stuff but the biggest breakthrough I had was I just stopped fighting it yeah that was it exactly that was the thing that got me to walk through the door and I was like oh shit now the work begins but that was the hardest thing I had to do was stop fighting it and so sometimes when I used to be being hard maybe it actually is us being used to it not because it needs to be that way yeah well and also

because a lot of this work is also inviting us into a new way to woman essentially and so when we're trying to come at this new way from the old way that's a part of the breakdown. It's a part of actually what we're being initiated into is this newer way, which can be fuller, can be easier, can be more spacious, can be all of these pieces. But the invitation and the initiation into that is that we can't get there from how we've done everything before, right, trying to fix, trying to get through, trying to bring the old approach into the new way of being. So that's why like even just approaching this from, okay, I'm not trying to like get through

or do this thing. It's like, ah, part of the initiation is cultivating a different way of approaching. Yeah, and being with everything that's showing up. If today's episode really hit close to home, if you find yourself nodding, recognizing patterns or just feeling seen, then you're going to want to join us for something we have created specifically for you. It is called soft success and it is the 60 minute master class we are hosting for high achieving women who are ready to lead, live and succeed in a completely different way.

One that is rooted in nervous system safety, alignment and actual job. not performance and pressure. We're going to walk you through the deeper frameworks behind everything we've talked about in this series so you can stop operating from survival and start building success that actually feels good in your body. So it's happening live and you can register right now at bossave.com forward slash soft success.

Come join us, I promise you will never want to build the old way again. We'll see you there. Wait, wait, wait before you go, I would love to send you my seven-figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my freedom-based daily, weekly and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama and high-performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself.

It includes a full video training from me and a plug-and-play spreadsheet to literally, create your own operating system. It's one of our best trainings and it's worth $1,997, but I will unlock access for you for free when you leave us a review. I know, wild, right? All you have to do is leave your review on the podcast, take a screenshot of it and then head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload it. And then you'll get instant access to the seven-figure CEO operating system. Again, head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload your screenshot and get access. We are so, so grateful for all of your support and can't wait to hear how the podcast has supported you.