
Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they get access to you
When you’re young you did what you needed to do to get through the day.
You paid attention to your mom’s mood when she comes home.
You counted how many beers your dad had and registered the volume of his voice to gauge the danger level.
You put up with comments about your weight, how your siblings got better grades, or how they were killing it in their sport.
And more often than not, all that crap continues into our adulthood.

How to stand up for yourself after the fact
Sometimes when I’m in social situations and someone says something rude or innapropraite to me, I’ll go into freeze mode or shock.
I’ll get the deer in the headlights look on my face or laugh it off in the moment.
Sometimes we’re not able to say something because of who the person is. Maybe it’s your boss or someone else that has power over you.
Or maybe someone said something hurtful or humiliating to you when you were younger and it pops in your head from time to time now.
It’s not too late to do what you wish you could have done in the moment.

Friendship
Friendship.
It’s all the things.
Life giving, soul soothing, heartbreaking.
Gets you through life’s most crushing moments.
Sometimes you have to break up and move on which is really fucking hard because it feels like you’re losing a limb, but if you don’t, your soul dies a slow death.
It’s laughing until you cry or pee your pants.
They’re your oxygen, life raft, and glimmers when there’s so much suck.
I met my friend, I’ll call her Natalie because she looks like Natalie from The Chicks, in an Overeaters Anonymous group when I was 16 and she was about 18.

Coaching with me
Does life become all rainbows and unicorns when you coach with me?
Nope.
The world will still be a dumpster fire sometimes, people you love will still struggle physically and emotionally, relationships will still be challenging sometimes, and you’ll still have to deal with assholes at work.
But better than the rainbows and unicorns, you’ll have accessable, effective, science-backed, do-anywhere tools to support yourself and your nervous system when life inevitably gets, well, lifey.

How to ruminate less
Sometimes I’ll get stuck ruminating on something that happened.
Could be something that happened yesterday or 4 decades ago.
I’ll replay the scene or convo with a new outcome, sporting a zinger of a comeback that my brain couldn’t come up with in the moment, thanks freeze mode.
I can lay in bed in the morning, while in the shower, or at a stoplight rehashing and just sittin’ in that good ole dirty diaper of shoulda/coulda/woulda until the cows come home.
And I have, sheesh…

What happens in our brain when we avoid things
When we avoid something, we’re training our brain that the thing, situation, person, is dangerous and a threat to our safety and survival.
We don’t realize that’s what we’re doing, but subconsciously that’s the message that gets wired and solidified into our brain when we keep avoiding.
That avoiding also starts to create an elephant in the room, an underlying anxiety (because you’re training your brain that there’s a threat), and a rotting and rift from the inside out.
You think, feel, and act from a place of anxiety and avoidance.

Stop trying to fix someone else’s emotions
You’re not responsible for changing or fixing someone else’s emotional state.
Especially if they’re an adult.
We’re all responsible for the energy we bring to an experience or situation.
A lot of people are emotional children walking around in adult bodies.
And when we try to fix, alter, or improve their mood you’re doing two harmful things.

Don’t let exception bias keep you stuck!
Biases are one way our brains conserve energy in case you need it for a saber-toothed tiger.
Our primitive brains will never know what year it is so we need to keep reminding them and using our prefrontal cortex when making most of our decisions.
Our brains would prefer we don’t go all rogue and willy nilly thinking about and trying new things.
Nope, they’d like it if you'd keep doing what you’ve been doing, no matter the consequences or how you feel, thankyouverymuch!
And one tricky, sneaky, and honestly brilliant way our brains keep us from veering from our very well-worn patterns (even when they’re painful and keep us stuck and miserable) is by employing the exception bias.

Stop over-complicating your healing
Good news peeps!
You can stop spinning your wheels, feeling like sh*t about yourself, looking for the magic bullet or thing that will “fix” you, looking outside yourself for affirmation, self-esteem, confidence, and that general seemingly illusive feeling of okayness in your skin!
Cuz it’s only available from you and there’s an endless supply!
No more throwing yourself under the bus.
No more pleasing all the people except yourself.
No more trying to make changes you want, only to revert back to your old maladaptive patterns.
No more anxiety 24/7.
No more wondering, “What’s wrong with me and why is everyone else just dandy and I’m having a constant internal dumpster fire?!”
No more feeling broken or alone.
Here’s the simple truth.

How I avoided a panic attack during an MRI
For those playing along at home, here’s an update on how my MRI went.
It was such a different experience than my last one where I had to have the tech stop the procedure because I was having a panic attack.
By the end of this one I was almost asleep!
Like, WTAF?!

Two tools to use when you’re spirialing
We all want to know what the hell we can do for ourselves when we’re spiraling and you know I’ve always got your back, Sunshine.
We can’t think our way out of a spiral.
We need to tend to our bodies because 80% of our nervous system’s info comes from our bodies!
Who knew right?!
Here are two of my fave tools that I use throughout my day to regroup, soothe, center, calm, and just check in with my precious and hardworking nervous system.

The truth about imposter syndrome
Let’s look at what “imposter syndrome” really is, with a very common example.
A coaching client, I’ll call her Lilly, has entered a new line of work, and is feeling a metric ton of “imposter syndrome.”
She’s passed all the required exams and is licensed to do the work.
But she’s feeling wholly unqualified to actually do the work.
She’s getting fire hose after fire hose of information and feels out of her element.
She’s comparing herself with folks who’ve been in the field for 3+ years.

The truth about anxiety in the morning
Brains are wired for negativity.
Our ancestors didn’t need to know which berries tasted good, they needed to know which berries could kill them.
Brains are always scanning for danger because they want to keep us safe, i.e. alive.
So when we wake up and have immediate feelings of anxiety, nothing is wrong with you.
You’re not broken, messed up, nor do you have a screwy brain.

Stop the spiral and get the thing done
I have a page of blog posts on my site so people can get to know who I am, learn how I see things, and how I coach with my peeps.
And I haven’t updated the page since August of 2023, LOL!
I don’t think about it and when someone mentions a blog post they read on my site I think to myself, “Oh yeah, I have that and I really should update it regularly, damn it!”
And then I forget about it until that scenario happens next time and I say that again to myself and feel bad that I haven’t done anything about it.
Queue the shame and blame spiral.

Life is hard. What are you going to do about it?
Life isn’t hard because you’re doing it wrong.
It’s hard for every human on the planet regardless of what you see on someone’s social media.
Everyone loses someone, has to wait for biopsy results, wonders how they’ll pay for the broken washing machine, has to decide to keep or let go of a toxic friendship, or figure out where their career is going next.
Whoever started the lie that it’s supposed to be easy should be forced to watch “Baby Shark” until they cry for mercy.
When you believe consciously or unconsciously that life should be easy, you create a sh*t sandwich for yourself.

Self-trust is the missing key
It’s ok to change your mind about that thing that’s weighing on your mind and heart.
You have permission to reevaluate a friendship that’s all take and no give.
It’s ok to say, “This thing isn’t working for me this way anymore,” and take a beat to figure out your next step.
Just because you’ve been doing something one way for a hot minute, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way for the rest of your life until you die.
It’s ok that I ‘ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with sugar and/or alcohol for years, and now that I’m trusting myself in ways I never have, I’m figuring out what’s next.
This has been a small but huge shift for me that I didn’t see coming.

What to do when you’re in a panic
A client reached out to me in a panic.
She had an upcoming doctor’s appointment and was having a hard time, “settling herself.”
She was getting test results and was feeling anxiety about the unknown.
Makes perfect sense; of course she was feeling that way.
The normal and healthy primitive part of her brain was getting her amped up in order to be ready to respond.
It wanted her to be able to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn, and anxiety is a quick avenue to keep us on our toes.

What it means to manage your mind
What do I mean when I say, “I managed my mind while at a doctor’s appointment yesterday”?
I mean that when my new Endocrinologist (I have a tiny benign tumor on my Pituitary gland)
said I should have an MRI since my last one was 5 years ago, and my brain freaked out because I don’t like being “in the tube” and it makes me want to scream and fight to get out; I showed up for myself and didn’t spiral all day.

Anxiety redefined
Here’s one of the best analogies I’ve heard about anxiety.
Let’s say you’re walking on a trail in a park and you see something squiggly up ahead on the path.
Your nervous system causes you to freeze in your tracks because it can’t tell what said squiggly thing is.
It’s a “potential” threat.
Is it a snake or a stick?
You have 2 options with 2 different outcomes.

You don’t lack motivation
If you think you’re lazy, I bet that’s just an error in your thoughts about yourself.
I bet there are plenty of examples how you get sh*t done but there might be one thing or area where you seem to drag your feet or procrastinate.
Let’s look at what else could be going on besides the quick and dirty and shaming label of lazy.
The primitive part of our brains are only concerned with you staying alive from one day to the next.
Period. Hard stop.