Lift OneSelf Podcast - Mental Health, Healing & Wellness Transform your mental health through real stories and real-time healing practices.
Host NatNat Be invites experts and everyday people to share their personal journeys navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, and emotional challenges, then guide you through the healing practices that helped them transform.
Experience breathwork, meditation, somatic techniques, and therapy tools in real time. Whether you’re seeking emotional healing, stress relief, or personal growth strategies, you’ll find raw, authentic stories and actionable practices you can use immediately.
This is emotional sobriety in action. This is LiftOneSelf. New episodes weekly. www.LiftOneSelf.com | @LiftOneSelf And remember always be kind to yourself.
Your week blows up, your mind starts sprinting, and suddenly it feels like someone dumped every drawer in your life onto the floor.
I’m NatNat, and I’m walking through that kind of season right now.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, tense, emotionally drained, or stuck in what feels like quicksand, come join me for an exhale.
In this episode, I explore what can sometimes sit underneath frustration and stress: helplessness, vulnerability, and despair. And how quickly we can make those feelings heavier by trying to fix them, fight them, or tell ourselves we should be over them already.
What I’m learning is that I can acknowledge what I feel without allowing every feeling to become an instruction.
I can feel helpless without deciding that I am helpless.
I can feel afraid without immediately assuming that I’m unsafe.
And I can feel something without handing it the steering wheel.
We’ll also move through a gentle mindful moment together using breath, grounding, and simple body awareness to help you find a little more support underneath you.
Because maybe everything coming to the surface isn’t always life falling apart.
Maybe sometimes it’s life revealing what can no longer remain hidden.
You do not have to solve your whole life today.
Sometimes you just need one place to stand.
If this episode resonates, subscribe to the Lift OneSelf podcast, share it with someone who may need an exhale, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
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If you've had a week like I've had, come join me for a moment. Let's allow ourselves to exhale. Because sometimes underneath what we experience as frustration and stress is helplessness or despair. And that can feel like quicksand. Yet the more we fight it, the more we try to force our way out, the more it can feel like we're sinking. When I feel that way, I notice the urge to fix, to run, the urge to make the feeling go away, some escapism. Yet what I know is fighting it often makes it worse. You sink deeper into the feeling. What it needs is to be acknowledged, to be felt, to be witnessed. And when I stop fighting so hard against what I'm feeling, something starts to shift. My tunnel vision widens. I can see a little more light. I can feel a little more joy. Not because everything is fixed, not because the storm is completely past, yet because I'm no longer fighting myself inside of it. And yes, I know that is easier said than done. That is why we practice. So when the storm comes, we can find our way back to the center instead of being dragged around by the winds.
Welcome back to the Lift Oneself podcasts. I'm your host, NatNat. And right now, my life feels like it's turning upside down. It feels like somebody came into the room, opened every darn drawer, and dumped everything onto the floor. All the corners of my home are being revealed. All the things that may have been tucked away, managed, avoided, or held together are all coming to the surface and unraveling. The muck is rising. And maybe you know those weeks too. Maybe you've had those weeks or those days. One thing happens, then another, then another. Emotionally, you're processing one thing. Mentally, you're trying to understand another. And your nervous system is responding to something else until eventually you're just like, oh my gosh, like enough, enough, enough, enough, enough, enough. I do not have any more mental capacity. That has been me for the past two weeks. There has been helplessness, vulnerability, the desire to run, to fix, the desire to make everything settle so that I can just feel settled. And that's the thing. Sometimes we start trying to control everything outside of us because things inside of us feel uncertain. If I can fix this, if I can understand this, if this person would just understand me, if this person would just follow what I was telling them, if I can make this stop, then maybe I can breathe. And I noticed the more I pushed against what I was feeling, the heavier it became. There was this quicksand again, because sometimes we're not only feeling the emotions, we're fighting the fact that we're feeling it. I shouldn't feel this way. I need to get over this. I need to be stronger. I need to figure this out. And suddenly there is the original pain, plus the pressure we've put on ourselves to make the pain disappear. Sometimes there is nothing to fix in that moment. Sometimes the invitation is simply to acknowledge this is what I'm feeling right now. I am in a storm, and storms move, and I have to remind myself of that. I have lived enough life to know this too shall pass. Yet knowing something will pass does not mean you don't feel it while you're still inside it. And when we have known pain before, sometimes we start anticipating the next thing before it even arrives. We brace, we protect, we prepare, we wait for the next thing to go wrong. We rehearse pain before it even arrives. We do a dress rehearsal with pain, thinking somehow it will protect us. And sometimes we become so focused on protecting ourselves from pain that we stop letting ourselves fully experience joy. It becomes hard to be where we actually are. One thing that has been present for me this week is choice. Not the choice to make everything disappear, not the choice to control other people, not the choice to control every outcome. What do I have is the choice of how I meet myself inside of it. And that matters because showing up does not always mean being strong. Sometimes showing up looks like saying, I'm having a difficult day. Sometimes it looks like crying, or maybe even it looks like admitting, I don't know what to do with this. Sometimes it looks like pausing before responding. And sometimes showing up simply means staying present enough that you don't abandon yourself. That is where the practice becomes real, not perfection, practice. I can notice what I'm feeling without allowing every feeling to become an instruction. I can feel helplessness without deciding that I am helpless. I can feel afraid without immediately assuming that I am unsafe. I can feel despair in a moment without allowing that moment to tell the story of my whole life. I can feel something without handing it the steering wheel. And that has been one of the shifts for me. When I stop wrestling with myself and simply acknowledge what is here, something softens. The clouds begin to move, the quick sand feels a little less consuming, and slowly I can feel some ground underneath me again. Not everything is resolved, not everything understood, just enough ground for the next breath, the next moment, the next choice.
So let's pause here together. Will you join me for a mindful moment? If it feels safe to do so, place your feet on the floor. Notice the support underneath you. Notice the chair, the bed, the ground, whatever is holding your body right now. You don't have to change anything. Just notice that you are being supported. Wherever you are in your breathing right now, just exhale. Let the breath leave. And now slowly breathe in through your nose and let it go without forcing it. Again, slow inhale and let it go. Maybe soften your jaw, let your shoulders drop a little. Notice if there's anywhere in your body that is gripping, that feels like knots, tightness. You don't have to make it go away. Just notice. And if you can, and not then clench. Maybe place a hand somewhere on your body that feels grounding. Your chest, your belly, your thighs, maybe your neck. Wherever feels natural. And quietly remind yourself, I am here. This is what I'm feeling right now. I do not have to fight it. I do not have to fix it in this moment. I can stay with myself here. Wherever you are in your breathing, exhale. Deep inhale through your nose. Gentle exhale out of your mouth. And notice if there is even one place in your body that feels a little more supported, a little more spacious, a little more solid. That is enough. You do not need the whole ground to return at once. Sometimes you just need one place to stand.
Maybe everything coming to the surface is not always life falling apart. Maybe sometimes it is life revealing what can no longer remain hidden. Maybe the drawers being dumped out allows us to finally see what has been sitting in the corners, what needs our attention, what needs compassion, what needs to be felt, and what we may finally be ready to put down. So if your life feels a little upside down right now, if the drawers are open, if the muck is rising, if you feel like you're standing in quicksand and the harder you fight, the more exhausted you become, you do not have to solve your whole life today. Maybe today is simply about acknowledging what is here. Allow yourself to feel it. Allow yourself to breathe through it and trusting that what feels like quicksand today can begin to feel like solid ground again. Not because everything outside of you suddenly changed, yet because you stopped abandoning yourself inside of what you're feeling. Come back to this breath, come back to this moment, come back to yourself. Be gentle with what is being revealed.
Thank you for spending this time with me on the Lift One Self podcast. I hope you took that exhale. And as always, remember to be kind and gentle to yourself. You matter. See you at the next episode.
