So many of us moms are trying to build resilience while living completely disconnected from our own bodies. We push through stress, override exhaustion, ignore anxiety, and keep functioning until our nervous systems finally demand our attention. In this episode of Leadership Parenting, we explore the powerful connection between resilience, nervous system regulation, and body awareness. Drawing from neuroscience research on interoception, emotional regulation, and Polyvagal Theory, we look at how the body detects stress before the mind fully processes it, why chronic overwhelm impacts emotional resilience, and how learning to listen to your body can help you feel calmer, steadier, and more emotionally regulated. I also share practical resilience tools from the Self-Awareness pillar of the Resiliency System, including simple body check-ins, grounding breaths, and awareness practices that help moms reduce stress reactivity, strengthen emotional resilience, and reconnect with themselves in compassionate, sustainable ways.
What You Will Learn in This Episode
From the episode script, here are five listener takeaways:
- Why mothers gradually lose connection with their body’s signals — and why it’s not a personal failing but a predictable result of how we live.
- What your nervous system is actually doing all day long, and why your body registers stress and threat before your thinking brain has caught up.
- Why overriding your body’s signals doesn’t make them go away — and what happens when the pressure finally finds somewhere to go.
- How to use the Awareness Box to catch what’s happening inside you before you react — body sensations, emotions, thoughts, and urges.
- Three simple practices for building body awareness into your day: the Awareness Box check-in, the body breath, and the daily appreciation practice.
Transcript
As moms, we tend to push through exhaustion, ignore discomfort, and treat our bodies like they’re supposed to just keep up. But real, lasting resilience begins with learning how to listen in. This isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing differently. So if you’re feeling tired, stretched thin, or just craving a better relationship with your body, this episode is for you. This is Leadership Parenting: Why You Need to Listen to Your Body.
Did you know that resilience is the key to confidence and joy? As moms, it’s what we want for our kids, but it’s also what we need for ourselves. My name is Leigh Germann. I’m a therapist and I’m a mom. Join me as we explore the skills you need to know to be confident and joyful, and then get ready to teach these skills to your kids. This is Leadership Parenting, where you learn how to lead your family by showing them the way.
Welcome back to Leadership Parenting. I’m so grateful we get a few minutes together today. I want to start with something I notice in almost every coaching conversation and therapy conversation I have with women. Sometimes it shows up right at the beginning, and sometimes it surfaces a little bit later. And honestly, it’s something I’ve noticed in myself for most of my life too. It’s the way we relate to our bodies.
So many of us have developed this quiet, almost unconscious habit of treating our bodies like they’re separate from us. Like they’re something we have to manage, negotiate with, push around, or ignore until we absolutely can’t anymore. Maybe you notice it when you suddenly realize your shoulders are up around your ears. Sometimes my husband will walk into my office, stand behind me, and gently place his hands on my shoulders, and I immediately realize how much tension I’ve been carrying. He could see it before I could even feel it.
Or maybe you’ve ignored your hunger all morning until suddenly you feel shaky. Maybe you’ve needed to use the restroom for an hour but kept pushing through. Maybe you recognize halfway through the day that you haven’t taken one real breath. I think this is a very predictable result of living a life that asks so much from us for so long without much invitation to stop and check in.
And I want to be careful here, because I’m not going to tell you that you need a better morning routine or that you need to become perfectly “in tune” with yourself in some aspirational way that just creates another thing to fail at. That’s not where we’re going. What I want to talk about is something much simpler and much more powerful. What becomes possible when we stop being disconnected from ourselves and begin becoming advocates for our own bodies.
I think this disconnection happens gradually. Early in motherhood, and honestly often even before motherhood, we learn that our needs don’t come first. Not because anyone explicitly teaches us that, but because caregiving naturally trains us in that direction. Someone cries and we move. Someone is hungry and we respond. Someone needs something and we go. And we do this with love. But over time, habits form. Our body’s signals get quieter, not because they actually are quieter, but because we become incredibly skilled at turning down the volume.
There’s always competition for our attention, and many times the thing that wins that competition is someone else’s needs. I was working with a mom recently who described this feeling of dull flatness. She wasn’t falling apart. She wasn’t in crisis. She was functioning well. But she said she felt like she was just moving through her days, going through the motions. No huge highs. No huge lows. Just flat.
So I asked her a question: “When was the last time you felt something in your body and actually responded to it?” And she looked at me and said, “I don’t think I understand the question.” Honestly, that makes sense. We don’t usually think about our bodies that way.
But what she was describing is something researchers actually study. It’s called interoception. Interoception is our brain’s ability to sense and interpret what’s happening inside the body — hunger, fatigue, tension, unease, restlessness. And research shows that our ability to connect with those internal signals is deeply connected to emotional regulation.
This matters so much because when our emotions become dysregulated, it becomes very difficult to access the higher, calmer, wiser part of ourselves. Instead, we get hijacked by big feelings. And if you’re a mom, you know exactly what that feels like. You want to stay calm, connected, and intentional, but suddenly you’re overwhelmed, reactive, or shutting down. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means your nervous system is trying to regulate.
Our children are learning emotional regulation. They naturally look to us for co-regulation. But many times we ourselves are dysregulated, not because we’re broken, but because our nervous systems are overloaded. Research shows that when we’re more connected to our body’s signals, we tend to have greater emotional flexibility and a stronger ability to recover from difficult moments. But when that connection becomes dulled, we lose access to critical information that helps us regulate, respond, and come back to ourselves.
This isn’t a fluffy idea. This is neuroscience. And it helps explain why so many moms describe feeling disconnected from themselves. When we lose touch with what’s happening internally, we often end up trying to regulate externally. That might look like scrolling on our phones to escape. It might look like eating in the pantry. It might look like snapping at our kids. It might look like shutting down emotionally.
The nervous system will always try to find balance. The question is whether we’re regulating in ways that are helpful and healing, or in ways that create even more distress. And this is why I want us to move away from shame. Because so often when people struggle with behaviors that feel unhealthy, we shame them instead of understanding what’s underneath.
Most of the time, people are not bad. They’re overwhelmed. They’re emotionally drowning and reaching for something that helps them survive. What we want is not more judgment. We want better regulation. And what research increasingly shows is that reconnecting with the body helps calm the nervous system. Awareness, curiosity, gentleness, and connection help us regulate.
Your autonomic nervous system is constantly operating in the background, always scanning for one primary question: Am I safe? And your body answers that question before your thinking brain even catches up. Stephen Porges, who developed Polyvagal Theory, calls this neuroception. Your nervous system is constantly detecting cues of safety or danger below the level of conscious awareness.
That means your body is reading tone, tension, facial expressions, breathing patterns, and environmental cues all day long. And sometimes your body reacts before your conscious mind even realizes what happened. You know those moments where you were fine one second and suddenly you weren’t? That’s your nervous system detecting something.
Maybe your jaw tightens. Maybe your chest feels heavy. Maybe you suddenly feel restless or overwhelmed. Those are not random reactions. Those are signals. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The question is whether we’ve learned how to listen.
Our bodies hold the accumulation of stress, tension, exhaustion, and emotional load. And when we consistently override those signals, they don’t disappear. The body simply finds another way to be heard. That’s why sometimes we have reactions that feel bigger than the moment itself. Part of us is watching ourselves react and thinking, “This is more intense than this situation deserves.” Usually, that’s because the body has been carrying something for a long time.
So here’s the reframe I want to offer you. Your body is not wrong. Your body is not overreacting. Your body is working exactly as designed. What’s happened is that somewhere along the way, we stopped partnering with it. We started treating it like a problem to manage instead of a partner to work with. And I think healing begins when we get back on the same side as our bodies.
The mom I mentioned earlier started with something very simple. Every day she would place a hand on her chest, take a breath, and ask herself, “What do I notice right now?” That was it. No analyzing. No fixing. No pressure. Just noticing.
A few weeks later she came back and said, “I didn’t realize how much I had to say to myself.” And honestly, I think many moms feel that way. You spend your days checking on everyone else. How are they doing? What do they need? How can you help? But very few people stop and ask you those questions. And I think one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is learning how to do that internally.
Research on body awareness consistently shows that brief moments of inward attention can improve emotional regulation and reduce stress reactivity over time. This is why self-awareness matters so much.
I often guide moms through four simple questions: What’s happening in my body right now? What am I feeling emotionally? What thoughts are moving through? What do I feel an urge to do? Not to fix anything. Just to notice. Curiosity instead of criticism. The way you would gently check in on a friend you care deeply about.
Many of us have had seasons where we’ve felt frustrated with our bodies. Why are you so tired? Why are you anxious? Why can’t you just cooperate? We take our nervous system responses personally, as if they mean we’re failing. But your nervous system is not your enemy. It is responsive. It is protective. It is wise.
Fatigue is information. Tension is information. Anxiety is information. And when we learn to approach ourselves with gentleness instead of frustration, we begin co-regulating with ourselves. Just like we calm our children by holding them, soothing them, and staying present with them, we can learn to offer that same steadiness inward.
Here are a few simple practices to carry with you. The first is the awareness check-in. Pause during the day and ask: What’s happening in my body? What am I feeling? What thoughts are moving through? What do I feel an urge to do? You don’t need to fix anything. The noticing itself is the practice.
The second is what I call a body breath. Place your hand somewhere on your body and take one slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Slow breathing activates the vagus nerve and signals safety to the nervous system. One breath matters.
The third is an appreciation practice. Once a day, acknowledge one thing your body did for you. Maybe it carried you through a difficult day. Maybe it let you hold your child. Maybe it healed. Maybe it rested. This isn’t forced positivity. It’s simply telling a different truth.
And our children are watching how we relate to ourselves. They are learning from us every day.
Here’s what I know to be true. The path to resilience runs through the body, not around it. We cannot build lasting emotional steadiness while fighting ourselves internally. We cannot create calm while treating our bodies like inconveniences. And we cannot become the grounded, present parent we long to be while remaining disconnected from ourselves.
This isn’t about adding more pressure. It’s about learning how to trust and listen to the body you already have.
I’m still learning this too. I still catch myself holding tension, overriding rest, and pushing too hard. But every time I pause, breathe, check in, and respond with gentleness instead of criticism, something settles inside me. Not because life suddenly became easy. But because I stopped fighting myself while trying to survive hard things.
And that is available to you too.
So this week, simply check in once in a while. Offer yourself a little attention. A little gentleness. A little appreciation. You are doing important work.
Take care of yourself this week, and I’ll see you next time.
The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general informational purposes only. It is not therapy and should not replace meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information shared on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness, or disease, nor is it intended as legal, medical, or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional regarding your individual circumstances.
Thanks again, and take care.