Understanding Self-Harm from a Nervous System Perspective

This episode kicks off a new 3-part series on capacity and support. Amanda unpacks why so many of us are chronically overfunctioning and under-supported, and why that imbalance, not just the stress itself, is often what drives anxiety and eventual burnout or depression. She shares a personal story about operating at ninety-five percent capacity as her default for over a decade, including a callout from a friend and a moment in therapy that both named the pattern before she could see it hersel...

Sparked by a real question from a member Q&A, this episode tackles something Amanda hears constantly: weight gain during a season of depression, and the shame that tends to follow it. She walks through why those behaviors, low energy, less movement, food as comfort, made complete sense given the context, and why "getting back to your old body" is the wrong goal to chase. She also pushes back on the trendy claim that regulating your nervous system alone will melt off the weight, offers a c...

A client's offhand comment about crying through a sad movie sparked something Amanda hasn't been able to stop thinking about: the contained cry. In this episode, Amanda unpacks the real difference between containing an emotion and suppressing it, why giving a feeling boundaries can actually be one of the smartest moves your nervous system makes, and how the concept of titration explains why touching the edge of something hard, then coming back, then touching it again, is often more healing th...

Your gut and brain are in constant conversation, which means what’s happening in your gut can influence your mood, stress response, sleep, and overall mental health—and chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation can influence your gut right back. In this episode, we unpack the gut-brain axis, microbiome, inflammation, and common gut disruptors; explore when gut health might be a missing piece in persistent anxiety or depression; and talk through the foundational habits and functional tes...

In this episode, Amanda tells the story of a cancelled flight, three kids, a dog, and three extra days away from home, and the strangely flat, checked-out response she had to it. Instead of treating that numbness as a problem, she breaks down why it was her nervous system doing exactly its job. Along the way, she offers a new way to actually measure healing (hint: it's not whether you still get anxious), a guardrail against turning nervous system work into one more thing to grade yourself on,...