What if your people-pleasing isn't actually a personality trait?

In this powerful conversation, I sit down with somatic therapist and educator Luis Mojica to explore the nervous system roots of fawning, people-pleasing, and codependency in motherhood.

We unpack why so many mothers lose connection with themselves after having children, how our kids' emotions can become our emergency, and why self-attunement isn't selfish—it's one of the greatest gifts we can give our families.

Inside this episode, we discuss:

• What the fawn response actually is (and why it's often mistaken for being "nice")
• How people-pleasing shows up in parenting and relationships
• Why resentment is often a sign of unmet boundaries
• The connection between fawning, codependency, and motherhood
• How to tell when you're parenting from a trauma response instead of choice
• Practical ways to reconnect with yourself when you've spent years attuning to everyone else
• Why your child's discomfort doesn't mean you're doing it wrong

This conversation is compassionate, nuanced, and deeply validating for mothers who are tired of carrying everyone's emotions while losing touch with their own.

Because your children don't need a perfect mother.

They need a mother who knows how to come home to herself.

Guest: Luis Mojica. Holistic Life Navigation

Holistic Life Navigation integrates somatic practices, nutrition, and self-inquiry for a deeper understanding of the body and how to find safety within yourself for stress and trauma recovery.

https://www.holisticlifenavigation.com/

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If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

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Today's episode is a guided somatic meditation for feeling into and cleaning up boundaries. Please do not listen while driving and be sure you are in a space where it would be safe to be in a meditative state.

Your energy can feel “leaky” long before your mind finds the words for it. We’re slowing everything down with a guided grounding meditation designed to help you notice what’s happening in your body, name it clearly, and reconnect with what is yours.

We start with simple orientation for nervous system regulation: sensing the room, tracking tension, and locating emotion as sensation. From there, we explore the strange but real experience of feeling other people’s presence even when they’re not nearby. Using visualization, we picture each energy as a distinct color, notice distance as something tangible, and practice separating connection from enmeshment.

Then we build healthy boundaries in a way that feels protective without turning rigid. We call our energy back, let outside energy dissolve, and imagine a shield of light that can be sturdy and soft. We also bring boundaries into everyday life by acknowledging limits around time, space, capacity, attention, and finances, and by experimenting with “right distance” in relationships. To integrate, we invite journaling prompts that clarify what we want and need versus what others want and need, so agency becomes felt, not forced.

If you’re navigating burnout, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm, or just craving more presence and self-trust, press play and breathe with us. Subscribe for more guided practices, share this with someone who needs a reset, and leave a review with the boundary you’re practicing right now.

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If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Coming back to your body, regulating your nervous system, and learning to respond instead of react.

In this episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, we slow boundaries down and bring them back into the body. Because before boundaries become a conversation, a script, or a decision about contact, they often begin with something much smaller: a pause.

We talk about what happens when conflict, noise, parenting stress, or family dynamics overwhelm your nervous system and suddenly your reactions feel bigger, faster, and harder to control than you want them to. Rebecca shares practical somatic tools like orienting and pendulation to help you return to the present moment, reconnect to yourself, and respond from a more grounded place instead of survival patterns like freeze, fawn, shutdown, overthinking, or people pleasing.

This episode also explores the deeper layers underneath boundaries work: emotional overwhelm, sensory sensitivity, childhood conditioning, trauma healing, enmeshment, and the exhausting habit of managing everyone else’s emotions before your own. We name how motherhood often reactivates old wounds and why healing is not just about “staying calm,” but about building enough capacity to stay connected to yourself while emotions move through you.

We unpack:

• why your child’s emotions can feel so triggering even when nothing is “wrong”
• the difference between calming down and true nervous system regulation
• how overthinking and under-feeling create resentment, burnout, and reactivity
• orienting as a practice for coming back to where and when you are
• pendulation and how to move between activation and support in the body
• separating your emotions from someone else’s emotions
• unhealthy empathy, emotional merging, and enmeshment
• why naming harm matters before forgiveness and healing
• motherhood, trauma reactivation, and revisiting wounds at new stages of life
• practical regulation tools like movement, music, hydration, changing environment, and sensory support
• why the pause is often the very first boundary to practice

Rebecca also shares personal reflections on trauma healing, responsibility, consent, and how boundaries are not about becoming cold or disconnected, but about becoming more honest, differentiated, and relationally present.

If you’ve been searching for support around:

• nervous system regulation
• somatic healing
• boundaries with parents
• emotional overwhelm in motherhood
• people pleasing and fawning
• parenting triggers
• family conflict
• freeze responses
• enmeshment
• relational boundaries
• trauma healing
• emotional burnout

…this episode will help you feel more grounded, more compassionate toward yourself, and more equipped with practical tools you can actually use in real life.

Follow the Motherhood Mentor Podcast for the rest of this boundaries series, share this episode with a friend who’s carrying too much, and leave a review so more women can find nuanced support for nervous system healing, family boundaries, and motherhood.

Ready for better boundaries- to be able to feel where you end and others begin and build better relationships- first to yourself and then to others?

Find out more here.

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If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

IS your nervous system the reason boundaries feel so hard? Both with your parents and your kids or partner?

Freeze, fawn, people pleasing, emotional labor, and the family roles women never stop carrying.

If setting boundaries with your parents feels similar to a toddler meltdown, there’s probably a reason and it’s not because you’re weak, dramatic, or incapable.

In this episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, we unpack the invisible emotional labor many adult daughters still carry long into adulthood and motherhood: being the helper, the fixer, the peacekeeper, the emotional support system, the “easy one.”

We explore how nervous system survival patterns like freeze and fawn shape family boundaries, conflict avoidance, people pleasing, and overfunctioning — especially for high-functioning women who learned early how to read the room and manage everyone else’s emotions.

We also talk about:

• why boundaries with parents can feel emotionally impossible
• the messy middle between full contact and no contact
• how motherhood exposes unresolved family dynamics and patterns
• why your child’s emotions may trigger younger parts of you
• the difference between guilt and shame in healing work
• how over-responsibility quietly drives burnout
• building boundaries without dramatic ultimatums
• radical responsibility without over control
• healing “down” toward your children and “up” toward your family system
• the hard healing of being a cycle breaker

Using a personal example about taking space from social media, we also explore how clarity often comes from creating distance without needing scorched-earth decisions or permanent rupture.

This episode is for women navigating:

• boundaries with parents
• emotionally immature parents
• people pleasing
• family guilt
• freeze and fawn responses
• nervous system healing
• difficult family dynamics
• emotional burnout
• cycle breaking and motherhood
• family estrangement and low contact relationships

If you’re exhausted from carrying everyone emotionally and ready to lead your home from a more grounded, honest, and regulated place, this conversation will help you feel seen.

Follow the Motherhood Mentor Podcast for the rest of this series on family boundaries, estrangement, people pleasing, and nervous system healing. Share this with a friend who carries too much, and leave a review if this episode resonates.

If you would like 1:1 coaching and support on this topic, you can work with me here.

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

People pleasing, emotionally immature parents, nervous system triggers, and learning to protect your peace without disappearing or cutting others off.

There’s a space many women live in that we need to talk about.

You’re not fully in the relationship anymore… but you can’t fully walk away either. The current relationship isn't working, but a full cut off also doesn't work for you. You are wondering how to set boundaries without feeling guilty. You are wondering how to love people who in some way are draining to you.

In this episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, we talk about the messy middle between full contact and no contact with parents, especially for adult daughters and mothers navigating complicated family dynamics, people pleasing, nervous system triggers, and the grief of loving someone who still deeply impacts you.

Sometimes the hardest part is not deciding whether someone is “good” or “bad.” There isn't always a victim or villain in family conflicts or ruptures. And for some people, the hardest part is the lack of conflict. The lack of rupture or even naming that there is a problem and everyone just pretending that this is okay when the family is in harmful or toxic relational patterns.
You can see their love, understand their story, and still leave interactions feeling emotionally flattened, anxious, dysregulated, guilty, or resentful.

We unpack:

• why family boundaries are rarely clean or simple
• low contact options that are healthier than all-or-nothing thinking
• how people pleasing, freezing, and fawning make boundaries feel impossible
• why conflict can activate younger parts of us around parents
• the nervous system side of family triggers and emotional regression
• how guilt, grief, and relief often coexist
• practical micro-boundaries that protect your peace without dramatic rupture
• why forgiveness and love do not always mean access
• learning to tolerate discomfort instead of abandoning yourself

This conversation is for women navigating:

• boundaries with parents
• emotionally immature parents
• low contact family relationships
• no contact guilt
• family enmeshment
• people pleasing and fawning
• difficult mother daughter relationships
• nervous system healing
• family disappointment and grief

If you’ve ever felt torn between protecting yourself and protecting the relationship, this episode will help you feel less alone and more grounded in your own authority.

Follow the Motherhood Mentor Podcast for the rest of this family boundaries series, share this with a friend stuck in the gray area, and leave a review so more women searching for nuanced support around family dynamics and no contact can find this conversation.

If you would like 1:1 support and coaching on this topic you can learn how to work with me here.

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

You can love your parents, appreciate what they sacrificed, and still feel deeply impacted by the relationship.

In this episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, we talk about the messy middle between full contact and no contact with parents, especially for high-functioning women navigating motherhood, boundaries, guilt, and complicated family dynamics.

The internet often makes family boundaries sound clean and obvious: cut them off or keep the peace. But real relationships are rarely that simple. Sometimes no contact is necessary. Sometimes low contact creates more safety. Sometimes the deepest work is learning how to stop abandoning yourself inside relationships that are layered with love, grief, loyalty, obligation, and history. If like me you've listened to the recent podcast Oprah Explores the Rising Trend of Going No Contact with Your Family, and felt like there was more to the conversation- this series is for you.

We unpack:

• why motherhood can completely change how you see your parents
• why capable, successful women can suddenly feel emotionally young around family
• the hidden “family rules” that keep people pleasing patterns alive
• how resentment builds when your body feels micro no’s your mouth never says
• the difference between harmful behavior and old nervous system activation
• rupture, repair, accountability, and radical responsibility
• why emotionally immature family dynamics are so confusing
• the grief, loneliness, and even relief that can come with estrangement or no contact
• how to know when you need firmer boundaries, more distance, or deeper repair

This conversation is not about turning parents into villains or adult children into victims. It’s about naming the complexity that so many women quietly carry.

If you’ve been searching for support around:

• boundaries with parents
• emotionally immature parents
• family estrangement
• people pleasing
• toxic family dynamics
• no contact guilt
• low contact family relationships
• somatic healing and boundaries
• motherhood and family trauma

…this episode will help you feel deeply seen and less alone.

Follow the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, share this episode with someone navigating difficult family dynamics, and leave a review so more women searching for nuanced conversations about family boundaries and no contact can find this work.

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Most advice about boundaries says: “If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.”

But most of real life doesn't look or feel like that.

In this episode, we talk about why boundaries aren’t actually black and white—and why so many women (especially moms) feel like they’re failing when they try to force clear yes-or-no decisions in complex relationships and decision making.

The truth is… most of your life lives in the messy middle.

You’re navigating your kids, your partner, your parents, your work, your capacity—and suddenly it’s not a clean “no.” It’s a “maybe,” a “not right now,” a “I want to want to,” or a “this used to be a yes, but it’s not anymore.”

We take a somatic approach to boundaries, because boundaries aren’t just something you say—they’re something you feel, notice, and respond to in real time.

Inside this episode, we cover:

• why most boundary struggles aren’t a simple yes or no
• how your nervous system shapes your ability to feel and set boundaries
• what “micro yeses” and “micro no’s” look like in everyday life
• why you might not feel your “no” until later (and how to trust that)
• boundaries as behavior—not just words
• how co-regulation impacts your capacity and decisions
• using consent as a model for understanding the full range between yes and no
• soft no, sad no, and hard no—and when each matters
• how to set a boundary even when you feel guilt, discomfort, or doubt
• why overexplaining doesn’t actually prevent discomfort
• learning to trust yourself to change your mind

This episode is for the woman who is thoughtful, self-aware, and carrying a lot—
and is ready for boundaries that actually reflect her real capacity, not just what sounds good in theory.

If you’ve ever thought,
“Why is this so hard for me?”
or
“Why can’t I just say no?”

This conversation will give you language, permission, and a more honest way forward.

Want to go deeper?
Catch the replay of The Motherload Workshop replay here: https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/q4pm4wekhb

or book a drop in coaching call here: https://calendly.com/themotherhoodmentor/drop-in-1-1-support-call-clone-1

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

For many moms, that quiet “I’m fine” isn’t actually fine. It’s a nervous system pattern of holding it all together under bracing and control.

When you’re the one holding everything together - the schedules, the emotions, the invisible labor -your body often learns to stay braced. Literally and figuratively holding your breath.

In this episode, we sit down with Tabatha Debruyn to talk about 9D Breath work and somatic breath work and why it’s one of the fastest ways to shift your nervous system state without forcing yourself to think your way out of stress.

We unpack what suppression looks like in high-functioning women:

functional freeze, low-level anxiety, mind fog, and the subtle bracing that earns gold stars but slowly drains your joy.

Tabitha shares her own story through grief, caregiving, panic attacks, and insomnia — and how breath work helped her feel emotions she didn’t even realize she had been holding.

Together, we explore how breath can become a practical daily tool for nervous system regulation, emotional processing, and building more capacity for life’s stressors.

You’ll also hear and try a few simple breathing practices with us — including a down regulation breath that supports rest and digestion, and an activation breath that gently energizes the body while building resilience to stress. Because nervous systems and energy are meant to move and be dynamically alive. Learn how to change your state with breath work, one of the tools and skills always available to us in the middle of conflict, hard moments, and motherhood.

If you’ve ever felt irritated by advice like “just calm down,” this conversation offers something different: real regulation, not playing calm.

We talk about co-regulation with kids, why moms often become the emotional thermostat in the home, and simple practices like humming and singing that stimulate the vagus nerve and help your body shift out of survival mode.

And if breath work has ever felt intimidating, too “woo,” or too time consuming, this episode will leave you with clear language, grounded science, and tools you can use in just a few minutes.

Where to find Tabatha:

Website

Instagram

Free resources & email list

– A 7-minute cinematic introduction to 9D Breathwork

– A 5-minute nervous system reset

– A 7-minute guided morning routine

Book : An Inspired Guide to Living the Life of Your Dreams, is available on Amazon. It offers reflective prompts and practices that support many of the ideas we explored together.

Send us Fan Mail

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.