You’ve got the plan, the task list, and the desire - but you still can’t bring yourself to post, present, or speak up. Whether you’re freezing before a big meeting, ghosting your own marketing, or endlessly tweaking without hitting publish… the problem isn’t your productivity…. Or your mindset… Or your strategy…
In this episode, we break down how nervous system shutdown (not laziness or lack of discipline) is behind burnout, perfectionism, and the paralysis that keeps you from showing up. Whether you feel disconnected at work or drained by visibility, you’ll learn why pushing through isn’t working—and what to do instead.
By the end of this episode, you’ll know:
Is your body is asking for a different way? Join us in the Soma Pilot Program. Click here.
How the freeze response sabotages business & sustainable income - Click here.
Nervous system alignment to prevent burnout and leave an impact.
Learn to regulate with practices you'll actually use. No need for more time, space or privacy. Download here.
Join The Academy where visionary leaders build their businesses and bank accounts without sacrificing well-being.
Through nervous system regulation tools, body-based trauma therapy, and practical business tips, you learn how to create a business that leaves a positive, lasting impact on the world.
Soma helps you shift out of spirals, self-doubt, and stress-based decision-making—so you can lead from your most grounded, self-aware state. Access here.
This podcast explores the intersection of sales, money, and business success, offering entrepreneurial insights on overcoming the inner critic, burnout, and the unique challenges of ADHD and autoimmune conditions, while integrating polyvagal theory, Ayurveda, coaching, resilience, regulation, and trauma healing to support holistic growth and thriving in both life and business.
📍 If you had to do this is a mild long, but you just keep feeling blocked and freezing or showing up online or at work feels more like acting and performing and putting a mask on than it feels like being yourself. This is for you. By the end of the episode, you will know the evidence-based study that helps understand why visibility in doing work in this way, in this phase of your lies is triggering that internal resistance.
The two steps my client took to move from freeze to confidently speaking on stage, asking for the role that she wanted and sharing online without pretending that she was someone that she wasn't. And how I'm using these exact same tools while running a business, expanding into corporate coaching, and also studying psychology full time without collapsing into burnout or working and or studying on weekends. 📍
Before we move on, and I forget if you enjoy this type of conversation, but you want to experience the work firsthand, I have two invitations for you. First doors are open for the Somar Pilot program. This is a nervous system based kind of incubator, designed to help you regulate without needing to show up to a coaching call and rebuild and structure and strategize using ai.
It. Is one of the most accessible ways to work with me right now. You'll find the link below in the show notes, and it's for you if you're like extremely busy as well, and you're really curious about how you can use AI without bypassing your own intuition, without going into privacy. That is a problem, and just organizing your life, your day, your feelings, emotions, and your strategy.
Second. If you haven't already, you need to get my book, somatic Intelligence for Success. This is the deep inter integration and self-study on. Nervous system, wisdom, trauma, healing, and then how we build that into sustainable business practices. You'll find the link down below. It has got tools, it's got stories.
You will become emotionally attached to the characters inside. It's like semi fiction, semi nonfiction. It's got science. It's a frigging work of art. Alright, let's talk about visibility freezing, and what you can do about it. I am gonna speak specifically to a client who I've just watched grow over the last couple of months.
This individual came to me with something that I hear all the time, to be honest. She was showing up, she was working part-time inside of her online business, and part-time inside of like a, a. Contracting consulting role, and she was doing the things right, like she was posting, she was going to work, she was emailing, she even had a podcast, and underneath that she felt so deeply disconnected.
She was exhausted. It felt like every time that she would go up and share something, or even just like drag herself to work or drag herself to serve. It. It was so exhausting. It was like she was extracting something from herself, like pulling it outside of herself is the words that she would use. And I remember we would sit there and she was, you know, she was like, I feel fake, but then I feel guilty for not showing up more.
And then I worry about money. And then I think, well, maybe it's supposed to be easy. And I would just like go around and these loops in my head and what I could see based off of. One, my deep knowledge of you guys, and two, the way that her, her body and her mind and the way that she was speaking was emotional labor.
ten by grande. It was only in:So when you fake feelings outwardly, so you, oh yeah. Like this is something, and then deep acting where you actually try to convince yourself to feel something different. And both have a toll on your nervous system that utilize your emotional and cognitive and mental resources and. Contribute to feelings of burnout and disconnection and make everything harder than they need to be.
So this client in particular, she was doing that constantly because she felt pressure maybe from myself, maybe from other people, maybe from past experiences where things didn't go the way that she thought, the way that she needed them to. And she felt that she had to appease or manage other people's emotions, take on emotional labor to keep the peace where.
She was surface acting constantly, so her body is working in overtime just to keep this appearance of calm and confidence, and because it can't do that for a long period of time, she goes into functional freeze. If you haven't listened to my Nervous System episode on Functional Freeze and how it shows up in business, please do it's episode number 41, I believe.
I can put the show, the link in the show notes.
With this client, and what I find when I work with so many of my clients experiencing similar things is that this emotional labor pattern didn't start with business. It often begins in childhood when you grow up in a home where expressing yourself your needs, asking for what you want isn't safe, or you don't receive that love, care, attention, and celebration consistently.
Maybe you learned that when you people please, or you overperform or you stay small to avoid other people's jealousy or rejection, is that that's the best way to get you through life. And then you step into a professional role, corporate education leadership, where emotional labor is actually expected, particularly if you are a woman, and particularly if you were in a helping profession, you are expected to smile under pressure, suppress what you actually think, prioritize the financial goals of the business over everything else, and also regulate the emotions of everyone around you.
And if you're a woman, you might find that this is just kind of an expectation that you pick up. So we have this funny combination of childhood survival and then career conditioning that trains your nervous system to treat authenticity like an absolute threat. Your body can't hold that threat for decades.
At one point it freezes. So you start delaying and hiding and suppressing, and then you feel lonely and sad and bitter and disconnected from everything that is true to you. And life is hard and you start to feel really sick. Not because you are unmotivated, not because you've done anything wrong, not because the world is against you and you don't have any agency, but simply because the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions are there trying to protect you.
And oftentimes you go up in your head and you'll speak to a business coach online or a career strategist or something, and you'll try to figure out all these strategies and nothing actually works, even if you try block your day perfectly because your body is in this constant state of survival in ways that you don't even realize even if you've been doing the work for a long time.
And trust me, even if you've been doing work for a long time, you can still be. Experiencing this in a way that you are, you're just unaware of, and that's okay. So what happened on the other side from my client, what happened was we didn't start with like batching your content. We started with pillar two of my book, trauma Healing.
We explored where that freeze response came from. For her, it was memories of being criticized, for speaking up, particularly in her first job where her ideas weren't seen as quote unquote, good enough. She was afraid of being too much. She associated visibility with people judging her, just like she'd seen her friends and family members judge other people who were more visible.
We used breath work, parts work and nervous system mapping to help her feel safe, expressing her thoughts, feelings and opinions. And then we brought in pillar three protocols, simple repeatable systems that work within her capacity. We replaced high effort captions with just really natural voice notes.
We created a rhythm and a titration that aligned with her natural energy peaks, and we made a point to build up her belief system and build in rest and regulation into her launch timeline. As a result, it started to feel more like expression rather than pretending she felt like she could let go of needing to perform.
She found solace in other parts of different types of safety, and it wasn't immediate, but her income consistently began to grow and she's been able to keep it that way. And we worked together a year ago. I think most importantly, she felt really good doing it. She became happy again.
And just to be really real with you, this comes from my own kind of alchem this week of managing all of these different parts of me and. I am welcome this alongside of you guys. Right now. I am balancing full-time study and full-time work, and it's not just any work. It's coaching transformational coaching work and it requires a certain level of creativity and authenticity and vulnerability.
And the truth is I have to use these tools. Not just to say regulated and okay, but to actually stay connected to myself. I remember why I'm doing this and connected to that deep feeling and deep inner knowing inside, especially when there's AI and a thousand different things and all the fear in the, the media about the economy and all this stuff and politics.
And we had an election here and I'm trying to keep up with my friends and, you know, it's, it's a law. And I have to use this stuff all the time so that I don't burn out so that I don't collapse, so that those own protective parts of me that wanna run forward and, and push and hustle and rush don't move forward.
And so this is what I use. I notice that when I. I lean into, or I start going into the push through mode that leads to burnout for me. I, I get foggy in my brain. I get like a, like a rush in my chest and I feel like this big block inside, just like my client from last year did, it feels like dread opening my laptop.
And I use these tools. I connect, I ask what am I trying to override? I use compassion. I have my own systems and protocols and I breathe. I slow down, I recenter, and I just ask what wants to be expressed and, and come through. And luckily today it was this podcast and it's not about getting it right and perfect.
It's about having a practice to return to it serving other people. So. If you're juggling a lot right now, I see you. I get you are not alone. This work can support you just like it's supporting me. A podcast is not enough, unfortunately. That is just a way that we fuel ourselves. So here is some steps that will bring you towards enough.
If you're navigating business marketing leadership, join us in the SOMA Pilot program. This is two weeks, it's AI chat. GPT based, you'll find the link below all that information. And if this episode resonated, please help me spread the word by sending this to a friend who is just doing a lot right now, and you want to make them feel seen and give them a little bit of reprieve from carrying the weight of the world.
Let them know that it's not their fault, that there is another way and that somebody cares about them. Love you. Bye.