Maria Connolly, LPC
If you’re prone to overthinking a thing so much that you can’t make a decision, then this is for you! Whether you call it decision fatigue, decision exhaustion, or analysis paralysis, overcoming it is not a problem of “being smart enough”. Rather, it’s a symptom of not “hearing” your body’s wisdom. In fact, you won’t be overcoming decision fatigue until you resolve the disconnect between your mind and body!
Are you drawn to the Olympics? There’s something captivating about watching an athlete stand at the starting line after years of training, setbacks, injuries, and near misses. We see the medal moment. We rarely see the quiet failures that shaped it. Yet, these winners have learned to live the mindset that every failure leads to success. How can we tap into this same Olympic secret?
We know how failure feels in our bodies. It’s a heavyhearted feeling that makes us sink, shrink, and pull in. It’s sweaty palms, nauseous stomach, and heat that radiates from our core to our face. Too often, we relive the embarrassment and discouragement over and over again. Therefore, many people try to avoid failure at all costs.
You know that feeling… you’re in the boardroom, about to challenge a flawed strategy. Or at dinner with your partner, needing to name what’s not working. Or on the phone with a client whose expectations have crossed a line. That uncomfortable moment when you need to speak up, push back, say what needs saying. And suddenly, inexplicably, the words stick in your throat, and you can’t say no.
It’s not that you don’t know what to say. You’ve rehearsed it. You’ve coached others through similar situations. You’ve built an entire career on your competence, your clarity, your ability to navigate complexity. But in the moments that matter most, when something important is at stake, your voice disappears. Or worse, it comes out apologetic, over-explained, and smaller than you are.
For high-achieving women, this particular challenge cuts deep. You’ve learned to excel in almost every arena, yet when it comes to protecting your own boundaries, advocating for your own needs, or simply saying no to someone you care about, the words stick in your throat like they’re glued there. You freeze. You fold. You override what you know is true because speaking it feels impossibly hard.
Every so often, a client says something that shifts the room. Not because the insight is shocking, but because it’s so honest it lands in the body before it ever lands in the mind. Years ago, a client offered such a profound truth about emotionally unavailable people. I still think about it today.
She said, “I keep choosing people who are emotionally self-focused, and I finally understand why. My parents were the same way. They couldn’t really see me. So I learned to disconnect from my own feelings. And now I realize I’ve developed that same self-focused quality inside myself.”
I watched her face as she said it. Something in her settled, almost as if she finally caught up with a part of herself that had been waiting to be seen. As a somatic therapist, I know that these patterns don’t just live in our thoughts or beliefs. They live in our bodies, in our nervous systems, in the way we breathe (or don’t breathe), in the tension we carry, in our capacity (or incapacity) to feel our own feelings.
There are obvious things we outgrow. Clothes. Jobs. Homes. Trends that once felt exciting but now feel like a different lifetime and no longer reflect who we are. Those shifts are expected and easy to explain.
But there are deeper layers of outgrowing that people feel too uncomfortable to talk about. Beliefs that used to protect us. Friendships that once felt like home. Roles we played so long that we forgot they were optional. Versions of ourselves that once made perfect sense but no longer fit.
These are the inner shifts that happen quietly. The ones that change how you see yourself, what you tolerate, and what you’re willing to carry. These are the outgrown parts of life that don’t come with instructions, yet shedding them is essential for your next chapter.