Today's topic is one that I bet many of you are going to feel deep in your bones. It's that quiet, nagging feeling that so many women have. It sounds a lot like this. I know exactly what I want my life to look like. I even know what I need to do to get there, so why can't I just do it? If you've ever thought I should be able to fix this by now, or I guess I'm just lazy, or gosh, other people have it so much harder, what's wrong with me? I want you to pause, take a breath, and stay with me for this episode. I promise you this is not just about you being lazy, unlucky, or failing at life. Today we're going to break down why getting unstuck feels so impossible, even when you really want change what the science says about how your brain and nervous system literally keep you frozen, and how systems like the patriarchy and racism gaslight you into blaming yourself. I will also talk about how there is good news in this, and that is that your brain can change with practice. And we'll go over some specific action steps that you can start taking today to break out of that free state. And finally, we're gonna break it down by looking at small real life things you can do right now to unfreeze and build the life you actually want. Let's start with a moment you might know all too well. picture this, you're lying awake at 2:00 AM replaying all the ways you wish your life looked different. Maybe you wish you could leave that draining job, or you dream of setting real boundaries with your family, or maybe you wanna get healthy and fit. Maybe you wanna finish that degree, move to a new city, or buy a house and finally say yes to the version of your life that feels true and wonderful to you. You map it out in your mind. You know the steps. You can really see that future and you want it. Maybe you've even talked about this in therapy. One common tool that therapists use to help clients identify what they really want in life is the miracle question. if you woke up tomorrow and a miracle occurred overnight while you were sleeping, that miracle being that all of your problems have been resolved, when you wake up the next morning, how would you know that that miracle happened? What would your first clue be? Would you be in a different house? Would you be waking up in a different city? Would the weather outside look and feel different? What would be different about your life from the moment you wake up all the way through ending the day and going back to sleep? Think about what would look different through every category of your life, work, school, family, relationships, including the relationship with yourself through this exploration, you'll solidify the vision that you have for your life. And maybe by doing this with a therapist, you've identified the action steps or behavior changes that you need to make this dream a reality. But when morning actually comes, that miracle hasn't happened, and you do nothing even though you want to. Day after day, you find yourself not actually taking the change or stepping into that next action step that you know you need to take because you just feel frozen. instead of taking the action that you want to take, you find yourself scrolling on your phone. Maybe you help someone else first. You take time to tidy the kitchen or do the laundry, and you tell yourself that you'll try again tomorrow. Then comes the shame spiral. You find yourself lying awake at night like I just described, asking yourself, why can't I just do it? Other people work so hard, why can't I? Maybe I'm just lazy or maybe I don't have self discipline. Does this all sound familiar? If that's you, then first I want you to hear this. You are not broken, you are not lazy, and you are definitely not alone. That shame story in your head, it didn't come from nowhere. We live in a world that needs you to believe your stuckness is your personal failure. This keeps you stuck and keeps you in a life of service rather than a life that you love and can truly thrive in patriarchy and many other oppressive systems thrive on women blaming themselves. when women see our exhaustion as our own fault, we stay quiet. We keep giving to others because we don't believe we deserve more. We stay in our place as what feminist philosophers call human givers, the caretakers, the fixers, and the givers who pour our energy into everyone else while ignoring our own needs. And when we burn out or get angry or want more, the system gaslights us. It tells us you're selfish, you're lazy. You should be grateful for what you have. And that shame spiral that we lie awake at night thinking about that self-judgment talk. Is essentially perpetuated. This is not a voice or a message that comes intrinsically from you. This is something conditioned and taught by the society that we live in. This pattern is how the patriarchy stays safe and keeps turning by keeping women exhausted and then shaming us for it. So if you feel stuck, the first radical truth is this. Your exhaustion is not a moral failing. It's the predictable results of living in a world designed to keep you small. that's the social piece. Now, let's add in the science, because I find that once we understand what's happening in our bodies and brains, so much shame melts away. One big obstacle that people can develop is called learned helplessness. Decades ago, psychologist Martin Siegelman found that when animals and people are repeatedly put in situations where their actions don't change the outcome, they eventually stop trying altogether. So what this means is that your brain essentially learns that trying doesn't help. Nothing will change anyway. So that intrinsic motivation and drive to keep working and trying to create the life you want just evaporates. You grew up in an environment where you felt powerless, maybe you were ignored, dismissed, or punished for speaking up, your nervous system might still hold onto that lesson today. Even if you consciously know what you want, your survival wiring whispers don't bother. It won't work anyway. Now, we've all heard of flight or fights. There's actually a third response that doesn't get nearly enough attention, freeze, and it's close cousin Fawn. When your brain senses danger, it quickly runs through its options. If it's safe to fight, you'll fight. If it's safe to run, you'll run, and if neither feel safe, your body hits the brakes, it chooses to freeze or to fawn. I want you to know, especially those of you who are trauma survivors out there, which response your body and your nervous system decides to go with is not a conscious choice. The prefrontal cortex part of your brain that makes active decisions is literally not online when this type of, response comes up in your nervous system. So there is absolutely no reason to feel shame about fawning or freezing in a situation instead of fighting or running away. This was not a conscious choice you made. It's one that your nervous system makes for you. So if you are holding onto any shame for the way that you responded in a former trauma situation, I invite you to let that go. And I get that it's a lot easier said than done. I wanna touch a little bit more here on fawning, because that is the one that maybe some of you have not heard of before. Fawning is another protective response where you instinctively try to please or appease a person or a situation that you see as threatening in hopes of avoiding danger. Danger can mean any situation with the potential for harm, whether it's physical injury, emotional pain, or psychological distress. These are all forms of danger and are deeply connected. Your mental and emotional wellbeing can directly impact your physical health, and the reverse is true as well. Understanding the connection helps us see why these responses are so powerful and why they can be hard to shift. For many women, especially those with a history of trauma, freezing or fawning is the safest option. Maybe speaking up as a child wasn't allowed, maybe resisting an authority figure put you at risk. Maybe saying no at work could have cost you your paycheck. Sometimes in situations like this, not pushing back and not standing up for yourself was the thing that allowed you to get out of that situation with the least amount of harm in those moments, freezing kept you safe. The challenges that years later, your body can still default to that same protective pattern. Even in situations that are uncomfortable but not truly dangerous, like applying for a new job, setting a healthy boundary, or saying no to a friend, it is frustrating, but it's also your body saying, I've got you. Your nervous system is doing its best to protect you, even if in the present it's holding you back. Another reason why so many women feel stuck is chronic stress. Chronic stress doesn't just wear you out. It literally reshapes how your brain functions. Your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning, decision making, focus and follow through. is especially sensitive to long-term stress and trauma. when you've been under chronic stress and pressure for months, years, or even decades, this part of your brain doesn't work the way it used to or the way it's intended to, at the same time, your amygdala. The brain's danger detector or fire alarm becomes more active and reactive. It becomes more and more sensitive over time when you're under chronic stress and when you've experienced a traumatic event. This means your nervous system is more likely to stay on high alert scanning for threats of any kind, instead focusing on your goals and on that beautiful vision of the life you have that you're wanting to work towards. So when you finally sit down to take that first step doing the thing that you need to do to make the life you're living what you want it to be, whether that's updating your resume, signing up for a class, or just having a difficult conversation with your partner, your mind might feel foggy, scattered, or just completely shut down. that is not laziness or lack of discipline, or not wanting it badly enough. It's your brain doing exactly what it was trained to do, protect you in a world that has been unsafe and overwhelming under chronic stress, your brain prioritizes survival over creativity, motivation, or ambition. especially for women with intersectional oppression, gender, race, sexuality, and more, if you've been in those chronic cases of oppression, chronic stress and trauma is pretty much a given. for those of you that fit into those different categories or potentially multiple categories, I wanna honor here that you are disproportionately affected by this. The encouraging news is that our brains are plastic, meaning that they can change and adapt with safety support and small, consistent steps, you can strengthen those prefrontal circuits. Again, we can get them firing correctly and in a way that is going to actually help you unfreeze and move forward on some of these goals that you have. But first, you have to stop beating yourself up for something that is quite literally your biology doing its best. When you go into those shame spirals and you beat yourself up and you are flooding your brain and your nervous system with negative self-talk, you're actually creating more of that chronic stress that is keeping you frozen. So the first step is to truly learn, to identify that and to let that go and stop that behavior of being unkind to yourself. Self-control does work like a muscle. That means it can get exhausted. The more you use it throughout the day, the less capacity you have later on. think about who's using that muscle nonstop. women have a vastly higher mental load than men in particular. We tend to carry more in terms of planning, logistics, and decision making. Throughout our days, we suffer disproportionately higher levels of decision fatigue compared to other genders. women especially carry a high load of invisible labor, the mental, emotional, and logistical work that keeps households, relationships, and workplaces running smoothly. It's things like remembering the grocery list and the pediatrician appointment, keeping track of deadlines at work, while also soothing, a frustrated coworker showing up to family gatherings with a smile, even though you're running on fumes. It's managing other people's moods while quietly swallowing your own frustrations. All of that leads to a high level of decision fatigue. You can look up statistics on this, but in general, women make over double the amount of decisions per day. So each of these moments demands a high level of self-control, Regulating your emotions, biting your tongue, redirecting your attention, staying calm, staying patient. By the time you get a moment to focus on something that matters to you, whether it's exercising, working on a passion project or applying for that dream job, your self controlled muscle is spent, you're not failing, you're just depleted. you don't need to be tougher. You need restoration. Rest, joy and genuine support are not luxuries. They're actually fuel. Without them, your willpower will keep you running on empty, no matter how much you care about your goals and how much you want that life that you envision. here's the best part. All of this stuckness is real, but it doesn't have to be permanent. Your brain has something beautiful called neuroplasticity. Its ability to change and form new pathways throughout its entire life. your brain can literally retrain itself. So no matter how much chronic stress you've been under or trauma you've experienced in your past, those frozen survival pathways can soften. New braver and stronger ones can grow. But here's the catch. Neuroplasticity takes practice and repetition. it takes safe experiments, little risks and wins that add up over time. think about this as a hiking trail. The more you walk on the same path, the clearer it gets. But if you stop walking over that path. eventually it grows over When you start choosing a new path, the first few times feel rough, branches hit your face, and there's rocks under your feet. But if you keep going, it does get easier. So I want you to think about neuroplasticity as if you are cutting across a park on your way to work every day. If you cut across the grass in the exact same spot, you would eventually, Where down a path through the grass and you would see a walking trail start to develop where no grass is growing and maybe it's just dirt, and you take that path day in and day out. Eventually, if you decide that taking that shortcut and that path across the grass is no longer serving you, and you wanna instead walk around the park and go on the sidewalk. Or maybe developing a new pathway altogether that is a little bit more efficient. We have to stop walking on that original trail that we have ingrained through the grass. So we'll notice as we take a different pathway, that original one we had worn down starts to get less and less obvious. The grass starts to grow back and that one trail you had taken over and over again starts to erase itself while the new path you're taking starts to develop and become more and more prominence and easy to walk through. So what does this look like in real life? How do you practice new brain paths when your old survival mode keeps telling you, just don't bother? Breaking free from freeze isn't about waiting until it feels easy. It won't. at least not at first. There will be days when everything in you says it's safer to stay still, and in those moments you face a choice. Keep letting that old wiring run the show or take one small step forward anyway. It's like that scene from Rocky Balboa movie. When Rocky tells his son, it's not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. life will hit hard sometimes over and over. You as a listener probably know that better than anyone, it's not fair, but it's real. the only way through is to study yourself, to push past the urge, to give up and keep moving forward even when your body and your brain are screaming at you to freeze or fawn, or to stay small. This is where the real work happens. It's not about suddenly feeling brave or motivated. It's about choosing to act even when you don't feel ready. Think of it like learning to lift weights. The first few times your muscles will shake. You might not even be able to lift the weight all the way up, and it feels uncomfortable and pointless. But with every rep, you get stronger and the act of lifting gets a little bit easier, and suddenly your confidence. Starts to grow and your enjoyment in the process starts to grow with it. And yes, that does take conscious effort every single time. You have to notice the old messages saying that it's pointless to stay safe, don't try that. You're too tired today. Thank that voice and that thought for trying to step in and protect you. Then override it with action, this does not need to be huge action, just the next doable thing, whatever that is for you. This is not about shaming yourself into just doing it. It's about honoring that resistance and deciding to keep going anyway, especially on the days when it feels the hardest, because in the end, unfreezing isn't a one-time breakthrough. It's a muscle, a neural pathway that you build. The more you practice, the more that you'll find yourself standing back up, taking the next step and moving forward. Starts with small, intentional moves. Gentle actions that start to build your courage and your confidence and retrain your system. you don't have to do this perfectly or all at once. The key to this is to break it down into teeny tiny baby steps, and once those steps feel easy, you move on to the next one. here are five simple ways that you can start practicing that today. Step number one is to name the fear. next time you know what you should be doing, but you have a hard time making yourself actually take the action of doing it. Name that you feel stuck, and then pause and ask yourself, what exactly am I afraid of? Say it out loud or write it down. Sometimes just acknowledging the fear and the fact that your system is stopping you can help you move beyond that. Fears can sound huge in our heads, but when we externalize them and shine a light on them, they often shrink right before our eyes. Tip number two is make it laughably small. Whatever the action step is that you're needing to take, think about the very first baby step that you need to do in order to achieve that step. Shrink it down, and then shrink it again. If you want to change jobs, your Step zero may just be Googling one job listing. It may be just opening the Indeed website. Make it a game for yourself. How small can I make my next task and just do that next baby step. if you want to set a boundary, maybe your first step is writing it down in your journal. It's not even actually talking about it or setting the boundary yet. It's just saying it on paper. Tiny steps like this, tell your brain, okay, I can move. I'm safe, I can do this one thing. If you can do that one thing, you can do the next. It's kind of like proving to your brain that each step was safe enough to take, and if that last step was safe, maybe we can do the next one too. over time, you'll notice you'll be able to make your steps just a little bit bigger. Step number three is to also notice your body in this. Try your best to tune in to where you feel that fear, where you feel that stuckness and that wall come up inside of you. Is it in your chest, in your stomach, in your shoulders? Take a pause, place your hand there and take a deep breath, say softly to yourself. I'm safe. I deserve this, and I'm allowed to want more. Then try to take that baby step action again. If you're still not able to move forward, practice it a couple more times. Put your hand on that spot where you're feeling the resistance. Breathe into it. Let that resistance exhale out, and then try again Recommendation number four is move your body. one of my very favorite interventions to help people get unstuck and to improve their mental health is to move their body. Even five minutes of exercise and healthy, joyful movement in your day can do wanders for your ability to. Improve your mental health and to ultimately reach your goals. Exercise in particular is a physical practice of doing something hard now that will feel good later. that delayed gratification and that practice of doing something unpleasant now because it's going to benefit you later, is part of that muscle that we are developing here, allow yourself to celebrate every single win. And we're even talking micro wins here. Successful neuroplasticity and motivation loves evidence. So each tiny step that you take, allow that to be proof to your brain that we can move, we can try, we can survive doing hard, scary things that we didn't think we could do yesterday. So every time you do something small, even if it is just open up your laptop as one step towards applying for a new job. Take a moment to celebrate that win. Write that step down, that it's something you achieved. Give yourself the satisfaction of crossing it off of a to-do list. Tell a friend, even brag to your therapist about it. We are here to celebrate and support every step with you because every win, no matter how tiny is a victory on your path towards moving away from free state and into action. My final tip for you is to get support in the areas that you personally need it. You do not need to go through this process alone. You didn't get here alone. Remember all of those societal messages and childhood and relational traumas we talked about earlier, all of that contributed to you feeling stuck frozen and unable to take the next step to build the life you wanna live. Healing stuckness is a slow, messy work, and therapy can help you feel safe enough to do that practice. At her time therapy. We believe so much in the power of exercise that we are now offering online certified personal training alongside our mental health therapy we know mental health and physical strength go hand in hand. you deserve support in both. So if you're finding it difficult to take this recommended step of adding an exercise to your daily routine or maybe you've never exercised before and you need someone to show you how to do it right, to prevent injury, please reach out to us. Personal training can help your body feel strong and learn to handle discomfort physically. mental health counseling sessions can help you expand the bounds of your emotional discomfort and what you're able to handle psychologically and mentally. You're not alone and you deserve support and encouragement. You are not lazy, you are not broken. You are surviving in a world that was never built for your freedom or your empowerment. You can build new paths and you can build that life that you dream of. You can do hard things just one step at a time. We are here for you if you'd like help doing it. Before we wrap up today's discussion, I wanna leave you with a reading list that can help you unpack all of this. Because sometimes saying your story in someone else's words is exactly the nudge your nervous system needs to understand that you aren't alone and have the confidence to take that first step. I've broken this reading list down into the best books to read if you are personally struggling with feeling stuck and if you are a therapist helping clients work through this as well, please take a moment and look at the show notes for this episode to find that reading list to pick the next book that's going to help you along your journey. Thank you for choosing yourself by listening today. That alone is a brave step and it is one that you can cross off your list. Until next time, keep taking care of your mind, your body, and your brilliant worthy self. We'll see you soon.