We spend so much energy trying to push away discomfort—noise, obligation, tension, emotion. But resistance isn’t just a mindset issue. It’s a nervous system response. When we override our internal signals (to be liked, to keep the peace, to stay productive), we burn out. What if, instead of resisting, we practiced inclusion? Key Insight: What we resist owns us. What we allow—we can respond to. Try this instead: Notice when your body says “ugh”—that’s resistance talking. Pause. Bring Neutral awareness. Don’t judge it. Just stay with it. Ask: How much energy is tied up in this? What if I let this belong? This isn’t about liking discomfort. It’s about staying in relationship with what’s real. That’s how we move from automatic reactions to aligned choices. ======= Table of Contents What a Weed Eater Taught Me About Presence The Hidden Cost of Emotional Resistance Understanding Resistance as a Nervous System Response Real-Life Tools for Meeting Resistance with Neutral How My Clients Shift from Burnout to Self-Trust You Don’t Have to Fight What’s Hard to Feel Better ======== What a Weed Eater Taught Me About Presence I took a yoga class a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t done that in a few years, and the combination of a new space, a new teacher, and new movements felt unfamiliar. I was already a little on edge—trying to get comfortable, trying to find my place. Just as I began to settle, I heard it: the mechanical buzz of a weed eater outside—sharp, jarring, impossible to ignore. I felt a spike of irritation. This was supposed to be a peaceful space. And yet here was this harsh noise breaking the stillness. I tried to dismiss it and be "zen" about it, but I was annoyed. The yoga teacher noticed the noise, too, but she had a different response. She smiled and said calmly, “This too belongs.” She explained a bit more about it and it stuck with me after class. I even put a sticky note on my computer. She wasn’t pretending the noise was beautiful. She was simply choosing how to relate to what was present. There were times I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Wasn’t that just an excuse? A way to gloss over discomfort or inconvenience? Some kind of spiritual bypass? But the more I sat with it, the more it began to shift something in me. Because it’s not about surrendering to injustice, or pretending that every experience is good. It’s about acknowledging reality—with presence. It’s about letting what’s here be here, without needing to resist, fix, or exile it. What we resist, owns us. What we allow—we can respond to. The Hidden Cost of Emotional Resistance You might not be battling a weed eater in your yoga class, but you’ve probably felt a similar internal tension. That moment when something interrupts your rhythm or demands something of you, and a part of you says, "Ugh, no." Sometimes it shows up as a sudden irritation. Other times it’s a wearier resentment that’s been brewing in the background for weeks. Either way, it’s a signal from your body. You may sense resistance: when you feel obligated to say yes to something you don’t actually want to do. in an invitation to another event when what you truly need is solitude. when you see someone’s name pop up on your phone and feel yourself emotionally brace. You might recognize the emotion first—frustration, dread, or guilt. That's your body saying No, but your mind hasn’t caught up yet. This is what makes resistance so slippery. It doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers through fatigue, tension, or a lack of desire. When we override those signals, even for good reasons, we drain ourselves. Over time, this builds up until we find ourselves burned out. Disconnected from our own knowing, our joy, and our ability to choose freely. A practice like "this too belongs" matters—not because it makes everything feel good—but because it helps us feel everything. It keeps us in relationship with what’s real (and ourselves), so we can respond from a place of wholeness instead of pressure. Understanding Resistance as a Nervous System Response You’ve probably told yourself (or someone else) to "just let it go" or "don’t take it personally." But if your body is experiencing something as a threat, it doesn’t matter how much you know you shouldn’t be upset. Even small things—a sharp tone, a critical email, or an overflowing schedule—can cue your system into protection mode. "Your nervous system doesn’t speak logic. It speaks sensation. This is why resistance isn’t just a mindset problem—it’s a nervous system one. Your body constantly scans for cues of safety or threat. When it senses threat, it shifts into protection—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. That might look like overexplaining, going quiet, apologizing reflexively, or wanting to escape. These responses aren’t flaws—they’re smart, protective strategies that helped you survive. If you’ve spent years reading the room and managing others’ emotions, your own signals may feel faint or confusing. Not gone—just buried. You haven’t lost your inner signals—they’ve just been drowned out. That’s where interoception comes in: your ability to notice what’s happening inside your body. It helps you differentiate between: A genuine yes and a polite or fear-based one Numbing and true rest Avoiding something vs. honoring your capacity This isn’t about analyzing every sensation. It’s about re-learning how to listen to the language of your body. Real-Life Tools for Meeting Resistance with Neutral I wish I could tell you that once you recognize resistance, it disappears. It doesn’t. But what does change is how you meet it. These days, when I feel that subtle internal aversion—the "yuck"—I try to: Notice how strong the feeling is Ask how much energy is tied up in it Bring Neutral energy and just sit with it, without judgment (see the link below for an audio recording of how to find neutral) When I do this, something shifts. My body feels more spacious. I’m not in a tug-of-war with the discomfort. I can relate to it instead of reacting from it. That gives me more choice about whether to move forward, hold back, or shift direction entirely. Letting the resistance have some space brings me back to myself. How My Clients Shift from Burnout to Self-Trust A client of mine—let’s call her Jenny—once described how she used to move through her week in "torpedo mode." She was smart, efficient, and on the edge of total burn out. When we started working together, she thought she had a time management problem. But what she really had was a self-permission problem. Her nervous system had learned that forward motion = safety. Slowing down felt dangerous. Saying no felt risky. But when she learned to pause, check in, and bring Neutral, she began making clearer, calmer choices—without abandoning herself. She still excelled, but with less friction. And more freedom. She lost nothing and gained a lot. This is what it looks like to move from automatic to aligned. Not perfect. Just present. You Don’t Have to Fight So Hard to Feel Better Most of us are trying to do something meaningful—raise families, run businesses, show up well. Often while quietly managing stress, fear, doubt, or fatigue. As a recovering perfectionist and doer, here’s what I keep reminding myself: You don’t have to fight what’s hard. You don’t have to fix it right away. You don’t have to pretend it’s not bothering you. You don’t even have to fully understand it. You just have to include it. "This too, belongs" helps us pause, reconnect, and respond from presence instead of pressure. By meeting resistance with Neutral instead of force, we have more choice. Instead of reacting we're able to stop abandoning ourselves. Want support in practicing this? I’ve recorded a short audio that guides you through bringing Neutral energy to "something yucky." Try it out and let me know how it goes. Kathy Taylor Read my Bio

When you overthink your emotions—trying to figure them out, make them make sense, or stay composed—you’re likely disconnecting from what you actually feel. That can make it harder to connect with others, too. Real connection doesn’t come from analyzing emotions. It comes from experiencing them in real time. Try this instead: Notice what you’re feeling in your body Don’t rush to explain it Stay with the sensation, even briefly Speak from what’s real, not what sounds good If you’ve ever felt emotionally flat, shut down, or like you’re just going through the motions—this post is for you. (Keep reading for more insight, a personal story, and what to do differently.)  Have you ever left yourself behind? I was surprised by this experience a few years ago and it started me down a new path of groundedness and being present that I didn't even know existed. I was part of a workshop where we were exploring different kinds of attention: inward, outward, and something balanced in between. We started by finding Neutral. (Have you ever noticed that finding the middle can be harder than you think?) As I shifted my attention from Neutral, then backward to myself, then forward toward the others I had this strange sensation of someone behind me. Then I realized it was me. It was like I was in two places at once. It wasn't theoretical — it was physical. Weird, but very curious. The message was quiet and clear and helped me realize something I hadn't been aware of on this level before: Just because I think I'm present, or want to be, doesn't mean my emotions are actually with me. There's a big difference between showing up and truly being there. And when our emotional presence isn't part of it, something important gets lost. The Middle Ground We Keep Skipping We pay a lot of attention to our bodies — whether trying to look better and be healthier or get rid of pain, discomfort, or disease. However, in many cases, we're not actually listening . The multi-billion dollar health, medical and beauty industries are proof of our focus on optimizing our physical health. We spend time, money, and energy treating the body like a machine to be tuned and corrected. But something gets left out of that equation: our emotions. Pain, fatigue, tension, and illness are real — and they often have emotional roots we're not paying attention to. Our bodies might be trying to tell us something, but we're so focused on fixing the physical symptoms that we miss the emotional message underneath. Without tuning in to that layer, we only get part of the picture. It's like having an Oreo cookie with no creamy middle, or two buns and no burgeg. The part that connects everything together is missing. When emotions are left out and when we're functioning from head and physical body but ignoring the heart, we end up stuck. Not in a dramatic way, but in this subtle, persistent rigidity. We can't move fully into presence or connection, because we've left out the part that allows for movement: e-motion. That disconnection has consequences. Personally, when I'm operating from my head and body but not my heart, I might seem present. I can speak clearly, get things done, track what's happening. But I'm not fully with myself. Relationally, it's even more costly. I can listen. I can respond. I can do all the things that "look" like connection — but if I've left my emotional self behind, the connection between me and the other person feels more like empty calories than real nourishment. Presence without emotion is performance. And it's often what we've been trained to do. Cultural Pressure and the Shrinking Self Our society doesn't reward emotional presence. It rewards composure. Control. The appearance of regulation. We're taught to be polite, not expressive. To be pleasant, not honest. To "keep it together," even when we're falling apart inside. And when we do express emotion, we get told we're too much. Then we swing too far the other way and we shrink. We edit ourselves down. We learn to dial it down — to be just sensitive enough to seem intuitive, but not so expressive that we're inconvenient. Over time, "too much" becomes "not enough." We get caught in this exhausting loop of trying to be palatable, contained, acceptable. And we lose the full spectrum of who we are. Not only does that hurt us — it limits what others can connect to in us. The parts we hide are often the very parts that others need to see in order to feel less alone. The Compulsion to Solve One pattern I notice in myself is this tendency to want to define and fix hard things rather than feel them. It's a form of self-protection. My first instinct is often to move into solution mode. Find the reason. Make a plan. Solve the thing. But that problem-solving comes at a cost — especially when the real invitation is to feel something first. Something vulnerable. Something I'd rather not touch. One night when my daughter was about seven, I went in to kiss her goodnight and I could tell something was wrong. She told me that her friends had said something mean to her at school. I wanted to make her feel better — and the way I thought you were supposed to do that was to look at the situation from lots of different perspectives. I didn't want her to be in pain and I didn't want to feel helpless. Instead of staying with her sadness, and letting her know I was with her in it, I gave her all the ways she might see things differently. Maybe they didn't mean it the way she was taking it. Maybe it wasn't meant for her. That approach did not land well. She got more upset, not less. Looking back, I know that what she needed wasn't perspective. She needed empathy, not a solution. And while offering a new perspective can sometimes be supportive, in that moment, it created distance instead of closeness. It made her sadness something to get over, rather than something I was willing to sit with. When we skip the step of feeling, we also skip the truth. We miss the part where we encounter ourselves — and each other. And that's where the transformation actually begins. The Illusion of Control Here's a question I've been carrying: What if labeling emotions is just a way to feel like we're in control of them? When we name something as anxiety, burnout, or emotional dysregulation, it can feel like progress. We've labeled the discomfort. We've placed it inside a framework. We've made it manageable. Certainly that can be clarifying and helpful. It can create space for understanding. But sometimes, we use those labels to avoid the raw experience underneath. We turn emotions into diagnoses — not to help ourselves feel them, but to avoid having to. Pathologizing gives us the illusion of control. It helps us keep things contained. Defined. Solvable. But emotions aren't puzzles. They aren't errors in the system. They're the system's way of speaking. Feeling Before Fixing Naming an emotion isn't inherently wrong. But the order matters. If we name before we feel, we risk skipping the part that brings us into contact with ourselves. If we feel first , and then name, the naming becomes an act of integration — not avoidance. It's the difference between saying "I'm sad" because I felt sadness moving through me... versus calling something "grief" as a way to make it neat and tidy before I've let it move through me. Thinking is helpful. So is naming. But not at the expense of experiencing. Because real connection — with ourselves or with others — depends on actually feeling what we feel. Reflections to Sit With These aren't prompts for your journal — they're invitations to feel into your lived experience. Let them guide you back to what's real, not just what's thinkable. Think back to a recent moment when something felt off — a conversation, a disappointment, a stuck feeling. Did you try to solve it before fully feeling it? Can you recall a time when you stayed with an uncomfortable feeling without trying to change it? What happened in your body, in your breath, in your connection to yourself? Remember a moment when you were told (directly or indirectly) that you were "too much." Where did you feel that in your body? What part of you got smaller? These are not questions to answer — they're experiences to return to. Let your body respond before your mind does. Final Thought We're not broken for wanting control, and we're not wrong for using thinking as a way to feel safe. Most of us were taught to rely on our minds to make sense of the world, and that makes complete sense. Still, thinking is not the same as feeling. Emotional presence isn't indulgent. It's what helps us stay human. It's what allows us to connect. We don't need to treat our feelings like problems to solve. Often, what they really need is our attention, not our fixing. When we allow ourselves to experience what we feel, without managing or analyzing it, something soft and real begins to happen. We come back to ourselves. From that place, we can meet each other more fully. And isn't that what we're here for after all?

You’ve achieved a lot, held things together for so long, and... can you feel that quiet longing for something to shift? To finally stop pushing so hard. To live and give from a place that feels more whole. It often starts with a bold decision—a New Year’s resolution, a vow after a hard week, or a moment of clarity that says, "I want something different." You start out strong, but then it doesn't stick. And you wonder why. It's not because you didn't want it badly enough, or because you're lazy, or lacking in willpower. It's in the body. The body doesn’t like being commanded. It wants to be understood. To be met with gentleness and curiosity. Big goals aren’t the problem. It’s how we pursue them. Ambition can be a beautiful thing when it moves in partnership with the body, not in opposition to it. (But that's now how we're trained.) When the nervous system is overwhelmed with too much to do or too many requests, it can’t integrate what’s happening, so it resists. This can look like procrastination, anxiety, a sense of hopelessness, perfectionism-- even "forgetting." It's not that our system doesn't want healing, it's that it needs safety first. That’s where the minimum effective dose comes in. Or as I call it: baby steps. Gentle nudges. Starting small doesn’t mean staying small. It means creating the safety your body needs to go big. ​ So maybe today, you ask: What would feel like a gentle next step toward my goal or desire? How can I honor my body’s rhythm? This isn’t about doing less because you’re incapable. It’s about doing less because your body is wise. And it wants to heal—so you can thrive. One small, safe step at a time.

In the last post , we explored how perfectionism and people-pleasing keeps your system in a state of low-level threat. Many of you wrote back sharing how deeply you resonated with that feeling of guilt when finally allowing yourself to rest. Today I want to share some specific practices for increasing your capacity for rest that allow you to be creative and take meaningful action. Not through pushing or forcing, but rather through a dance of awareness and practice. I hope it will be especially useful to you around the holidays. Fear of Stopping There have been many days in the past when I had lots to do and I was on a roll. I could feel the tired coming on, but I was determined to finish without stopping. I knew if I did stop, it would take a LOT of energy to get going again. This cycle of over-functioning and collapse isn’t healthy or sustainable. I’ve been there. Starting Where You Are The most crucial step is to accept your current capacity not where you think you should be. Be honest with yourself. How much capacity do you have in this moment? (It’s OK if it’s not very much.) Can you notice and take a break when you’re at 80% rather than waiting for complete exhaustion? Celebrate those small shifts in awareness and treat your resistance to acceptance with curiosity rather than judgment. A little ​self-compassion​ goes a long way. The goal isn’t to eliminate stress or stay permanently relaxed - that’s neither possible nor desirable. Instead, it’s about developing flexibility to move between these states naturally, expanding what we call your “window of tolerance. Small Moments Matter Rather than waiting for long periods of rest, scatter micro-moments of regulation throughout your day. Here are some small steps to practice. Take 3 conscious breaths before checking email or scrolling (2-second inhale, 8-second exhale) Feel your feet on the ground between meetings—and even during them! Look around the space you’re in and notice 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you can touch or feel (inside or outside your body), Next notice 2 things your can smell and one thing you can taste. Share your wins AND your challenges - both build connection and resilience Practice receiving support in small ways (accepting help, taking in compliments) One Step at a Time Don’t try these all at once. That’s too big a bite. Instead, choose ONE practice to focus on for a week. See how you feel. Remember, every time you notice tension and choose to pause, every time you honor a need for rest, you’re rewiring your nervous system. This is neuroplasticity in action - your brain and body learning that it’s safe to operate differently and support you in sustainable success. What would become possible if you had just 10% more capacity? Where would you feel that first in your body?

I’ve been so energized by the concept of Honoring your Capacity -and it certainly resonated with you. As a follow up I wanted to explore how perfectionism and people-pleasing affect us and how reconnecting with ourselves is the way to increase our emotional and mental capacity. Have you ever noticed how your body feels when you’re caught in the loop of getting something “just right” or anticipating everyone else’s needs? Or before you make a decision, as you consider everyone’s response before your own? How does that feel in your body? That tension in your shoulders, shallow breathing, racing thoughts – these aren’t just random stress responses. They’re your nervous system’s way of signaling that you’ve stepped out of your natural capacity and into a fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. ​ The Origins of Our Patterns Perfectionism and people-pleasing are two sides of the same coin. They are brilliant adaptations we developed to feel love, safety, and belonging. Whether we learned that our worth depended on achievement, or that our safety required constant attention to others’ needs, these patterns live in our body, embedded in our nervous system. The result? Our bodies stay in a constant low level of stress, scanning for potential mistakes or disapproval. This perpetual state of readiness has exhaustive consequences on many levels. Our nervous system remains in survival mode, depleting our natural resilience (adrenal fatigue, anyone?) We lose access to our creativity and intuition Our ability to rest deeply becomes compromised We disconnect from our own needs and authentic impulses ​ A Return to Self In my work with clients (and personal experience), I’ve noticed a common compelling thread. When given permission to rest and turn their attention inward, many find a place of deep peace and comfort in their bodies. “It’s so quiet and relaxing here. I don’t want to leave,” they often say, sinking into a supported, nurturing posture. Yet almost invariably, guilt creeps in – that familiar pressure that they “should” be doing more. That pull to return to “doing” is different from an inner impulse to move. One feels like dread and obligation–which might even feel comfortably familiar; the other emerges naturally from a place of groundedness and inspiration–which might feel “selfish.” What I’ve found is the intensity of their desire to stay in that peaceful state directly reflects how much they’ve been living “out there” – in service of perfection and others’ needs, disconnected from their own center. (Ask me how I know.) ​ The Path Forward “Pushing through” or “toughening up” can backfire and leave you depleted. These approaches further dysregulate your nervous system, making sustainable success even harder to achieve. I’m not suggesting you never stretch yourself, just that it’s important to be aware of the kind of energy you’re operating from. Try this simple practice: Next time you notice yourself striving for perfection or scanning for others’ needs, pause and notice: The sensations in your body Where your attention is focused The story your mind is telling about what “must” happen This awareness is the first step toward working with your nervous system rather than against it. Next time, I’ll share ways you can build genuine, sustainable capacity. Until then, remember – those moments when you long to stay in peaceful connection with yourself aren’t lazy or selfish. They’re your system’s wisdom speaking.