Broken to Brave | Guiding you to heal & break free from anxiety
On the outside you look like you have it all together. On the inside you feel anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, or stuck in survival mode. Broken to BRAVE is where high-achieving women learn they’re not failing and finally find the calm, confidence, and freedom they’ve been craving.
I’m Dr. Steph, a former NASA psychologist turned healing coach. In this podcast, I’ll walk with you through the patterns that keep you over-functioning, people-pleasing, and second-guessing yourself, and I’ll show you how to break free. You’ll hear real stories, simple steps, and the brave questions that change everything.
You don’t need another set of coping tools. What you need is a way back to yourself.
Week by week, I will help you calm your nervous system, build self-trust, and see yourself in a new way….not as failing, not as too much. Instead, as a woman who is capable of peace, presence, and joy.
Follow on Instagram @drstephanielopez
Broken to Brave | Guiding you to heal & break free from anxiety
Why Your Body Has Everything to Do with Your Emotions
Do you ever find yourself trapped in a cycle of anxiety, emotional volatility, and overthinking? It's a common struggle for those of us raised by emotionally immature, narcissistic, or toxic mothers.
In this eye-opening episode, I reveal the importance of downregulation - learning how to come out of fight or flight mode and find calmness - and the mistakes we often make in trying to control our emotions and environment. Discover the power within you to break free from this detrimental cycle and become the unstoppable version of yourself that you were always meant to be!
Ready to rewire your nervous system and stress response to regain control of your body and reclaim your power in any situation? I discuss my new Brave Breathwork Program, which can help you do just that.
https://www.brave-method.com/breathwork
______________________________________
[FREE TRAINING]
How high-achieving women can
DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day
www.brave-method.com/anxiety
[FREE CALL]
Book a free call to ask me questions directly.
www.bravemethod.com/book
Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most?
www.brave-method.com/testimonials
💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com
Hi, i'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are, in fact, not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back All right.
Speaker 1:Today I want to share a public service announcement that I have found. Every single time that I share it with others, light bulbs go off. So, first, if you're someone who considers yourself an anxious person or a worrier, feels emotionally volatile or even occasionally hostile, struggles with ruminating thoughts and overthinking, then keep listening, because you will get value from this episode And, if I'm being completely honest, i really think every single human needs to listen to this. So if I were in your shoes, i would keep listening regardless. Okay, let's get into it. All humans are born with the innate ability to upregulate, and you can think of this as, like your gas, the gas of your physiology What brings you into fight or flight mode. So I just want you to think about this for a second. You don't have to try to do this, do you? Or does it just happen? For most, they say it just happens. You just go into fight or flight because that is something that you were born with the innate ability to do. So here's the thing As humans, we are not born with the innate ability to downregulate, to come out of fight or flight mode or to calm down. You can think of this as the breaks within your physiology.
Speaker 1:So picture yourself, after an intense argument or a situation where you felt criticized, unheard or judged, what happened for you. Your heart is pounding, your breathing is irregular and you probably notice many other sensations in your body. Now, i said probably, but some people don't notice the sensations because they've turned the volume down. It's happening, though, and then, after the fact what happens, do you feel immediately calm Or do you take hours or even days replaying and ruminating about what happened? I know some of you that are listening are going to say well, it depends. Sometimes I feel immediately calm, so you can ask yourself what happens. More often, for most, it's the latter. It takes hours or even days of replaying and ruminating about what happened, meaning that your body, you are still in fight or flight mode. Your body is still under stress.
Speaker 1:And this may be particularly true if you identify as being raised by an emotionally immature, narcissistic or toxic mother. And just to be clear, my intention is not to blame here, because I've found that that really isn't helpful, but it does give you context and deepen your understanding about why you may struggle with this. So in childhood, you may have noticed that your mother denied her own feelings, numbed her emotions, maybe with food or shopping, or overworking, or prescription medication or alcohol, something like that, and or you may have been expected to take care of her feelings, meaning that you were put in a parentification role. You were in a parent role. Now, these signs I think that this is obvious, but I might as well just state it these are signs that a healthy relationship with her emotions didn't exist. And why does that matter? Because if you were not raised by someone who could teach you to downregulate in a healthy way, to put the brakes on the system, to calm yourself, to stay centered, now it is your responsibility to give that gift to yourself. You are the only one who can meet your unmet needs from childhood and who can heal those things that you should not have experienced. And when you hear that, what I hope is that you feel empowered, because it is your choice and under your control. Okay, so let's get back to down regulating, putting the brakes on, calming yourself down, remaining centered.
Speaker 1:I want to share with you a few mistakes that I have made to keep myself in a positive mood, or to calm myself down, or to keep myself from freaking out. Essentially, to down regulate, to put the brakes on. Okay. So I admittedly leaned heavily on control and I made the mistake of suppressing my emotions rather than feeling them. I'm going to talk more about that over the coming episodes. But what would happen is it would work for a few months and then I would lose my mind, either yelling, crying uncontrollably, or both. And not only would I try to control myself, but I would also try to control the environment around me. I'd plan things out meticulously, to the last detail, and put lots of structure in place, but when things wouldn't go according to plan because they rarely do right I didn't know how to cope in a healthy way, and it would send me over the edge. So, just based on what I've said so far, does it sound like that was working for me? Well, i'm sure all of you know know it wasn't, or I wouldn't be here today. So I want to give you another way to think about what I just shared about controlling your environment, like a specific example.
Speaker 1:So another way to think about this is having rigid boundaries. So a lot of times people are encouraged to set boundaries. I've encouraged my clients to set boundaries. I've worked on setting boundaries myself. However, there's a difference between rigid boundaries and boundaries, and I don't think anybody's talking about this. I literally have not come across anyone talking about this, because rigid boundaries are not healthy and they're not actually truly boundaries. It's a way to control.
Speaker 1:If you actively avoid situations that trigger you, that put you into fight or flight or that result in you feeling dysregulated, you don't accomplish anything. Why? Because you're not addressing the actual problem. You are not increasing your tolerance to feel all of it. You're not increasing your tolerance to feel uncomfortable or to feel inadequate. So the more that you allow yourself to feel what you don't want to feel AKA letting go of rigid boundaries, the more solid, the more grounded and the more in control you will actually feel. So I'm not suggesting put yourself in situation after situation after situation after situation after situation that triggers you. I don't want you to take it like that, but I want you to really actively look at your life, the way that you show up and think about am I doing this? Am I using the word boundaries to actually prevent myself from feeling anything uncomfortable?
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to go to the last mistake that I'll share today in this arena, and it is I made the mistake of taking Xanax when I was upset, when I was in fight or flight or when I was dysregulated, and this was a mistake for me because I wasn't addressing the actual root cause of the problem. I was just addressing the symptoms that were happening. So what happened? Well, i never improved my ability to cope, so anytime things would feel really difficult or really triggering or really dysregulating, I was back in the same boat, and if you're anything like me, you want to feel in control of your emotions and your reactions and those ways that I just went over. That is not how to actually feel in control. So let me know how this is resonating with you. Send me a DM, let me know like what stands out. And if you have any questions based on what I shared, i'm going to go back to physiology.
Speaker 1:So I talked a lot about what is happening in your body And why do you think I've done that. Here's what you need to know, and this is another public service announcement. If I'm being honest, 80% of emotion regulation happens in the body. You can think of that as like below the neck. So you will not have the success that you have if you regulate using your body. Let me say that in a different way. You can work on regulating yourself with your mind, with your brain, cognitively, and you will only have so much success.
Speaker 1:The key is to regulate using your body, and one of the first steps And that is getting more in tune with what is actually happening in my body. Because if you listen to the episode where I talked about defensiveness, what is actually happening with defensiveness is that we are avoiding the physiological sensation. There's other details there, but I wanted to make that connection for you. Okay. So if right now you're like okay, steph, how do I do that? How do I regulate through my body?
Speaker 1:The short answer is through your heart, and the most effective way to control your heart is through breath work, and I'm talking about clinical breath work, to be specific, and that incorporates biofeedback. So if you've heard people talking about biohacking, this is one of the ways that you can biohack And just to share a little bit about who has success with this essentially any open-minded person that uses it. So this approach and methodology is often used on a wide range of individuals female and male, parents, trauma survivors, athletes, performers, actors, doctors, executives you name it. And what is it being used for? To rewire your nervous system and to rewire your stress response so that you can show up as your best self in any situation. So I would like to invite you today to become a founding member for Brave Breathwork, which is my 12-week virtual program, where you will be guided step-by-step on how to control your body's fight-or-flight response, and what that means for you is that you will know exactly what to do in your body when you're triggered, so that you are in control of reclaiming your power and so that you feel calmer, happier and lighter.
Speaker 1:And you can reserve your spot in the program today at wwwbrave-methodcom slash breathwork. That's brave-methodcom slash breathwork, and if you have any questions at all about the program. You want to know the details. You're not sure if it's for you. You haven't tried breathwork before. You want to see if it's a good fit. Do not hesitate to either email me or send me a DM on Instagram at drstefanylopez, and I cannot wait to see you on the inside. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal, so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead.
