If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t stop doing, fixing, and proving – even when you’re completely exhausted… this conversation might finally give you the language for what’s been happening beneath the surface.

There’s a pattern I’ve been sitting with lately…

The one where I over-function my way through life, jam-pack my schedule, make myself indispensable… and then look around at the people closest to me wondering why no one is helping. Why no one sees how much I’m carrying.

The first three or four years of my relationship looked exactly like this. Plaque buildup, as I called it in this week’s episode – layers of resentment stacking on top of each other while I kept proving how busy and important and productive I was. And then looking at my husband like, why aren’t you doing anything?

It’s a lonely way to live.

And what I’ve come to understand – through my own healing, through this conversation, through finally being willing to feel what’s happening in my body instead of thinking my way around it – is that we can’t lead our lives unless we’re leading the body first.

The body that braces when someone offers help.

The body that flinches before we even realize we’re triggered.

The body that says “lean away from me” while our mouths are asking for support.

That’s the territory Andrea Crowder and I explored this week. And honestly, it cracked something open in me.

When the paper cuts become the burning bush

Andrea has this framework she calls micro triggers – the tiny moments of flinching, bracing, shrinking that aren’t big enough to spin us out completely. They’re annoying. They create a micro moment of suffering. But we tell ourselves we can just mindset our way around them.

I know this pattern intimately.

For me, 2025 was micro currents building upon each other into one big, very difficult experience – because I kept putting band-aids over the paper cuts instead of actually looking at them. No big deal. I’ll just push through this one. And this one. And this one…

Until suddenly it was a big deal. Until the thousand paper cuts became what Andrea calls the burning bush – the thing you can no longer ignore.

What if we could catch it earlier?

That’s the invitation in this conversation. Not to be perfect. Not to never get triggered. But to start noticing the tiny flinch, the tiny brace, the moment where you shrink a little bit because you’re thinking “who am I to do that?” – and get curious about what’s actually underneath.

The question that changes everything

One thing Andrea said that resonated with me deeply:

“Is this my truth or my trauma?”

Because here’s what she’s learned through her own journey – and through working with high-achieving women who appear to have it all but feel completely alone inside it: instinctually, we already know what to do. We already know what we desire. The reason we can’t access it isn’t because we’re broken or because we need more information.

It’s because there’s trauma in the way.

And that trauma shows up in the body. In the grip. In the brace. In the tone we use when we say “I’ll take care of it” through clenched teeth. In the over-functioning that pushes away the very support we’re desperate to receive.

Andrea shared a story about a client who owns multiple businesses – successful by every external measure – who came to her saying “I know I have help, but I feel so alone.” And when they looked at the root of it, the grip was so tight that she was taking all the oxygen out of the room. Her biology was telling everyone around her to lean away, even while her words were asking them to lean in.

It’s not that you’re not being helped. It’s that you can’t feel it.

Those two things are not the same.

The spine of the queen

What I love about Andrea’s work is that it doesn’t stop at awareness. She offers a way through.

She calls it the spine of the queen – and it came to her during one of those silly fights with her partner that become not so silly. The dishes. The thing that represents so much more than dishes.

She felt rage building in her body. She knew the function of rage – her nervous system believed there was external threat. But biting her partner’s arm probably wasn’t going to be useful in that moment..

So instead of getting defensive, she heard the words: correct your spine.

And as she did – as she gave the emotion an extra breath, let there be air in the room, and remembered that she actually cared about this person – something shifted. She could say “I hear you, I will take care of those dishes” without the brace, without the tone, without the nonverbal communication that was screaming “I don’t trust you.”

And here’s the wild part: once she dropped the defensive wall, his devotion fired up. He never mentioned the dishes again. Not because she performed her way into earning his support – but because her biology finally stopped telling him to lean away.

The good girl leash

There’s a thread Andrea pulled that I think so many women need to hear.

She talked about the “good girl” conditioning as an electronic leash around most women’s necks – this programming that says: stay small to receive love. Over-function to preserve connection. Don’t ask for what you need or you might get abandoned.

And it starts so young. So innocently. A tired mom nursing a newborn who says “please be a good girl, Mommy can’t do that tonight.” And suddenly an eight-year-old learns that to keep connection with mother – which feels like survival – she needs to be the helper. The one who doesn’t need anything. The one who takes care of everyone else’s needs.

We take that into our businesses. Into our relationships. Into our leadership.

And then we wonder why we feel so unseen. So alone. So exhausted.

The reality is we’re not seeing ourselves – because we’re choosing to over-function at a subconscious level to perpetuate the story of “I’m not seen.”

What I’m taking with me

Andrea shared something her partner said to her before a difficult conversation with her son: “You can’t get it wrong if you stay in your heart.”

And I felt that land in my chest.

Because in the simplest terms, the core of my medicine has always been that of return back to your heart. Whatever element of study I’m teaching, whatever season I’m moving through… it always comes back to that.

The most powerful woman on the planet isn’t the one who loves herself the most. It isn’t the one who’s the most financially resourced. It’s the woman who understands herself the most.

And when you understand the tool you’re living in called the body – when you can recognize a micro trigger for what it is, return to your heart in a matter of minutes, and choose not to move from the heavy emotional state – everything changes.

The people around you feel it. They lean in. They offer help you can actually receive.

Life does actually get to be that simple.

This episode is now live, and I can’t wait for you to tune in. Andrea’s work is potent, grounded, and deeply practical. The kind of medicine that changes how you move through your days – not just how you think about them.

Xoxo, Lauren

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