479: High-Functioning Burnout Exposed: The Overwhelm Loop

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 To Guide You In Ending 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).

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to a special series on the Bossway Podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis and I'm joined this week by two women I deeply respect and admire, Alexi 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.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  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 overwhelm loop. If you have ever been called high-capacity while secretly living in a state of overthinking, urgency, and anxiety,

• 1:31Speaker 00

  I think this episode is really going to hit home for you. Let's get into it.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  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, 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, that 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 ride. It was just happening so fast. We moved into a WeWork office.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Alexi, we obviously shared offices. It was like two doors down.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  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 on 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 six AM every day before I had kids. I'm like, why was I doing that?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Like a waste.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Missed opportunity.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is insane.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Crazy. It's just a completely different, like I, 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 that was really going on in her system.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Well, 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 eighteen hour days and just like all ends of the night and the morning and the weekends, just filling all my time with work. Cause I was so excited about it, but coming from such a dysregulated place without knowing I was dysregulated, 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 gotta do something different.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And was kind of trying to grasp for the next thing. Okay, so what's the next thing? Grasping, grasping, grasping, like, cause there's gotta 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.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Night and day.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Than 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. Cause yeah, we were, and we were all in LA, right? We're in LA, we're in that, 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 was very externally validated. And you get caught into that as well.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Well, and that's the thing too. I think that created this subtle and subliminal, I gotta keep up.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I gotta stay relevant.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Not there yet.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I gotta produce.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  I gotta get ahead. And it's this constant, almost competition without feeling like we were competing with each other. But, oh, I'm, I'm falling behind. And so there was this underlying anxiety and overwhelm all the time of, I'm not doing enough. There's gotta 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.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Even though I was remarkably ahead of most people in our industry, I always felt behind.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  And it's so interesting because thinking back to that time, and I, 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 LA. But it's so interesting, looking back, how many of them were business focused.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  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.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  I remember that. And you were really the first of any of us to have kids.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  How were you feeling in that space?

• 6:16Speaker 02

  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, Lex, keep going. The new 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?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, even just like flagging of the 40 days. I mean, I know you had a really beautiful not having people come in is 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 stop that, like to be able to have so much more space that that feels.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  But in my mind, that wasn't even like 40 days was like crazy.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. It's wild that that's the, just like the context of that now, like it's like a flash in the pan.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  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 like coming from this identity and this wiring of like, I gotta keep going. Cause I'm, 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 woman that we are now, like we have such a different vantage point of like really getting. The textural 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.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  I'm curious too, like when you had Noemi, did you feel that same? Cause I had almost like this very naive idea that like nothing would change. Right? Like everything's gonna be the same. What do you mean? Of course I'm gonna still wanna do this at this capacity and X, Y and Z.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I have very much had that mindset. I was like, I, 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.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Cause 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.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  And it wasn't like one day and I had the, the realization because I resisted it really hard. I feel like my entire life came crumbling down over the span of 12 months.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  And it started with just a birth that was incredibly traumatic and was not in any sense what I imagined it would be. And it, my nervous system was stuck in fight or flight.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  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.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  And it felt like I was on this train I couldn't get off.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  But the anxiety in my body was so big.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  I couldn't get out of bed and it was, it's hard because I, I, I don't wanna 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. Cause I was so used to running at a hundred miles an hour.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  And putting the brakes on just my entire life shattered around me. I, everything shattered. And, and my life's never been the same since, but it was a full 12 months.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  It was not like, oh, I had this realization and then.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Overnight.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Here we go.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was like a full 12 months. And then after that, it was a full 12 months. Of reintegrating everything in.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  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. So, but it did take those full two years to

• 11:02Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Kind of circle around.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  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 builds 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 want and becomes the 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.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  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 our plate, taking it on, chaos, not feeling like we can ever settle or rest anywhere. And so when we have a baby, we have this like huge life moment that literally forces us to go, uh, 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 nonstop all the time?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  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 setting 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 this 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, okay, it's done. Now I learned the lesson. Like we have to actually really Really, life gives us that time and space and it doesn't generally also feel that good.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Right?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Mine was also several years and it was like, when is this gonna be like, cause I was still in that old pattern of trying to grasp because my system hadn't recalibrated. Looking for the thing I thought was gonna solve it, which is so, just again, what we're saying, like when you're a busy, high achieving entrepreneur. 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, my-

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Which is such deep.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I had, yeah, I had angst, 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's always this like perceived urgency and-

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Capricorns and Virgos here.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Right?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  I feel like we all relate.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  On time, punctual, 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 peace, because it's actually just a system, right? That is, wait, am I safe yet? Am I, can I stop yet? And that's why it takes the time.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  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 and 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?

• 14:57Speaker 02

  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,

• 15:41Speaker 02

  our receptivity is better to receive more. And so the big solve, if you're noticing like, ooh, 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, ooh, 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 things.

• 16:12Speaker 00

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• 16:56Speaker 00

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• 17:39Speaker 00

  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, you know, going away for a few months and like romanticizing your life, which is awesome. Yeah. But over like, you know, the next sixty years, not that sustainable. Yeah. 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?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  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'd be like, no. 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 the story, not from a place of like, ooh, 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. Which is like the first time in 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.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  And I almost felt like I needed that proof to know that this works. Yeah. Because if it didn't, I'd be like, cool, this is, I'll do this for the next couple of 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 worked. 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 realise is their next level isn't living on the other side of another eighty hour week. Yeah. It is actually, I think when you, I'll speak from my own experience, when I learned to really regulate my nervous system and really drop in. Like neck down.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  God forbid.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  I was more honest with myself. I was less of a people pleaser.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  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, you wake up in the morning and you feel really energized. Like, listen, yes, still got toddlers and all the, 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 day nights and I'm doing like the to do list, then I'll have, then I'll have what I want. But it's like it came from the inside out.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Always.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  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.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  But see, you're like us, we're the same. Like, we are such tangible, results driven women. And I mean, if you would have told Em and I when we first met that we'd be doing like feminine embodiment work.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Right, literally.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Conscious boss, like bum bum.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  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 to, 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.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Which, if you've lived so long, can actually. Potentially be the way that has to go. Like we also see that when it, 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, 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. Cause if again, if you fully leave it into every, your life is like, I've got nothing left for you. There has to be an 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.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  It's not saying it has to go that way, but oftentimes, sometimes people swing. There's, there's such a deficit in this other way.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  It's really like the wounded masculine.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  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 balance.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Because it's, and I like that you also brought in not just the dollar amounts. Cause like, we're also growing our business massively from more ease and more expansion from this place. But also, like you said, like your relationship with Stephen, your relationship with Noemi, 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.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  We miss.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  That we can miss and forget like the actual, like what gives your life that feeling? Like what is valuable? Because especially like when we all met in LA, like I already said at the beginning, it's so conditioned into like what makes you successful? What makes your 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.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  That matters.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  That's what we bring into everything. That's the quality of your life right there.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Well, and like you spoke to something too, that that was the first time you really focused on yourself. Not like myself as a businesswoman or, you know, like we used to take all the business classes. Like, oh, I'll take a. Self-help business course versus 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 the things. But your life is gonna say, hey, we've got some checks and balances due now.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  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 gonna 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.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Because that woman is the woman behind everything, the work, the marriage, the kids, the relationships, all of it.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  So for someone listening who really resonates with that, can we talk about like the functional freeze symptoms? Cause 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.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  And you're like, I can't keep going like this, so I wanna burn it all down. Or I wanna go get a job or I wanna, like, I just wanna bake sourdough all day. Like, I can't do anything else and it is functional freeze.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  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, cause so much, like so often the tendency is, okay, I gotta fix this. Okay, I gotta 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, I'm being invited into something here. How can I start really

• 26:41Speaker 01

  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 the practice of really checking in with that. And you may have some other pieces around the

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so freeze, freeze and functional freeze are really interesting and, and it's a fine line sometimes. Right? So when we're so used to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, push, push, push, push. And that's kind of our, 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. Right? That was me.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  That was me.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  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?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you don't actually realize it.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  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 for my hormones, pulling for my reserve tank, pulling for my adrenals. Go, 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 gonna die. We actually can't do this anymore.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  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. 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. 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.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  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 freeze state, freeze is inviting us to really look and look with a wider, a wider view and say, okay, what have I been avoiding? Cause clearly we've been avoiding the body signals.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Knowing something.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have not been listening to the body at all.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Avoidance queen over here.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, right.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  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.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  And so that's a quick way. It's not quick, but it's an easy way.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  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 the numbness or the avoidance, it's not even conscious. That's the thing. It's like you're probably not even sitting here thinking, oh, there's a thing I'm avoiding.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  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 didn't weren't aware that there was all this. We weren't feeling that there was all of this that we weren't doing, right?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  It took me. Because we were so well-practiced at stuffing things down.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Well, and it was just.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  That's gonna get in the way.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Didn't have the skill set to 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.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Well, and that's the key piece. I think a lot of people get wrong about nervous system regulation because it's so buzzy 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 unfelt. 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.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Humans.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  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. And 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.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  We did that for 10 years before we got back into our bodies.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Ages, ages.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I've done the work. Like, we thought we had done the work.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  I know all my problems.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Aware of it.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  But does our body change?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Does your life feel different, you know? That's the thing.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Every December, I tell myself I'll be organised. And every December, I end up in this very specific little shop down the road, grabbing last minute gifts for friends and family. The whole store is full of really small, unique, perfect things that I feel like I've never seen anywhere else. I didn't, but the store owner did, probably back in October, probably on FAIR. So FAIR is a wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers with more than 100,000 unique brands worldwide. Home, apparel, beauty, food and more. Over 700,000 retailers already stock their shelves there. And if you are the one stocking those shelves, the timing is on your side.

• 33:34Speaker 00

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• 34:17Speaker 00

  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 realised 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, 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 and we'll sweep it under the rug. We'll keep moving on. Like I can do my own work separately.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Or there would be. You know, if me and Stephen were dealing with something and it felt like things were like the the load was really uneven. I would tell myself, do you know what? You have more capacity. You take it on.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  It's not a big deal. Like, it's gonna 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.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  And for me, it was it was starting to show up as resentment.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, yeah, I was like, how are you how are your levels of resentment?

• 35:30Speaker 00

  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.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  You are building resentment.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like self abandonment.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  And I think that's such a big thing for high performing women who have quote unquote, high capacity. The resentment underneath that capacity is real, and it will eat you alive.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  But again, it comes back to like, you had a nervous system pattern, me too, so relate, 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. Right? That was my story. I can do it better.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Cue every woman agreeing with that right now.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Most of the time.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  We're mad about it. Yeah, so big.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  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 as just a starting point? Like, we're gonna be talking to them every single day this week. The starting point, I feel like this episode hopefully is starting to open the door, put the door in front of them.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Yes. So, 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 and 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 and 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, cause again, we have high performing women, we want to fix, we want to get through.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  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, to, to just kind of open to it. Like, all right, like here's this anxiety that's really frigging present. Here's this overwhelm that's really present. Okay. Ha, 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. This, there is some beauty and some magic in what's showing up here.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  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 these 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 regularly. 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.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  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. And that's how we start to break the cycle.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  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 to me, 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 that we do that as a practice, the more and 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 somatics and

• 40:46Speaker 01

  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 there'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. Guaranteed.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, and I think with high performing women especially, we're used to things being intense.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  We're used to things being hard.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Should it be harder?

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Exactly. 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 this stuff, but the biggest breakthrough I had was, I just stopped fighting it.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  That was it.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  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.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  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 how the different way of approaching. Yeah, and being with everything that's showing up.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  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 masterclass 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 joy, 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 bossabe.com/softsuccess. Come join us, I promise you will never want to build the old way again. We'll see you there.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  On the podcast, take a screenshot of it and then head over to bossbabe.com/review to upload it and then you'll get instant access to the seven figure CEO operating system. Again, head over to bossbabe.com/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.