Amanda Carpenter on Feminine Leadership: From Armor to Receiving | Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode

the thing that kept me alive. was exactly one of the beliefs that I had to let go of recently. The thing that kept me alive was what are they gonna do without me? I'm responsible for everybody.

I'm responsible for responsible for that entire clinic downstairs I'm responsible for my mom who's my receptionist, my husband at the time who was my office manager. Like I adored all my staff. What are they all gonna do without me? That limiting belief that it was my responsibility to take care of everybody is exactly what kept me alive.

Because I can tell you if I wasn't carrying that, I would have checked out Hi, I'm Govindh Jayaraman and this is Paper Napkin Wisdom, episode 369. And I'm gonna say right up front, this conversation is a little different. There's no napkin in front of us except for the question that I sort of laid out today. In some ways, that feels really right because sometimes the wisdom doesn't arrive to us in a phrase written down before the conversation begins.

Sometimes it appears slowly as someone tells the truth about what changed inside them. Today, Amanda Carpenter returns to Paper Napkin Wisdom. Amanda has been here before, and if you heard that first conversation, you already know she brings a rare kind of honesty and transparency to the conversation. She is powerful, direct, and deeply intuitive.

She's a coach, a healer, a leader of leaders, and someone who spent years helping people understand the connection between the nervous system, the body, and the way we live and lead. This conversation began somewhere else. It began with my conversation in episode 339 with Alex Sharfin on masculine containment. Amanda listened to that episode, and something inside of it touched her in a place that she had not fully understood yet.

And definitely not because it gave her all the answers, but because it gave her a way to recognize something that she had been living. The armor, the need to control, the pressure to be strong, the exhaustion of always trying to be the one with situational awareness, the hidden cost of being needed, and underneath all of that, the part of herself that been waiting to feel safe. And as you listen today, you may find yourself thinking about your own version of strength, the version that helps you build, the version that protected you, the version that got you through seasons that other people may not and may never fully understand.

And maybe as Amanda shares her story, you'll begin to notice something quietly. That the question is not about whether the armor worked. It probably did. The question about is whether or not that still belongs on your body today.

This conversation is about feminine leadership, nervous system, safety and regularity, receiving control, courage, and what happens when a very powerful person. Person stops finally using fear as a driver. And somewhere inside this conversation, there's an idea worth carrying. You don't have to control the room to be safe in it.

Here's my conversation with Amanda Carpenter. Let's dive in. uh Manda Carpenter, it's wonderful to have you back. Thank you, Govern.

So this is a this is gonna be different. This is gonna be a different conversation. I'm really excited about it and and uh and I really wanna thank you for initiating it. So where this conversation starts is you listened to my conversation with Alex Sharfin about masculine containment and and and it really touched you in a in a place that you weren't quite ready for at the time, I think.

And you've done a lot of thinking about that since. And Amanda, you're a great friend of me and you trusted me with some of your thoughts and then said, We should do a conversation that's a follow-up. That's the yin to the yang, the uh other side of the same coin. And I I I I want to really applaud your courageousness to suggest that because Really what you're talking about is is a discovery that happened for you around that conversation and some realizations you've been making yourself.

And and so what we're really talking about is the the feminine, the divine feminine side of this masculine containment conversation and how you perceived what Alex was sharing and how you related or didn't relate to certain parts of it along the way. Would that be fair? Yeah. absolutely.

Yeah. And I would say the so the podcast came out November, December, January. When did it come out? Do you even remember like okay, it was January.

Okay. So it just gives me a little bit context. Um, because when I heard that podcast, like I cried because I actually felt so supported and so validated and so understood for the first time ever. And so for those of you who don't know Amanda, Amanda, you are a powerful woman.

I mean, I I don't think there's any other way to to describe it. You're a powerful woman, you are strong, you uh you are a leader of leaders, you have coached some of the the top industry giants in a lot of different places, from music to uh to to lumber and all places in between. And um and and you're I think you would have described yourself and you still describe yourself as a pretty tough person. And so this that this that that I I'm sure that realization that conversation felt kind of jarring to this to your own identity and how you felt and it sort of upset the apple cart in a lot of ways, didn't it?

It did but in a really good way. So let me just give a little context of what I was going through in January. Now that I remember it came out in January. Um so a year about a year ago, my husband and I separated.

My husband of twenty years, so now my ex-husband separated about a year ago. And then I relatively quickly got into a relationship with dear friend of mine. And that relationship, we mirrored each other so strongly. And I saw so many of my patterns.

that were at play, and there was a lot of going on, and so the separation that relationship in November, and I was in the midst of processing all that. So, for the first time since I was born, I found myself alone. in a house for a prolonged amount of time. So let me explain.

I was the third born of four children. So there was already kids in the first born. Then go off to college, have roommates. Graduated college, back home with my parents for a very period of time, moved in with a roommate to the roommate, and then with my boyfriend, who later became my husband, and we were together for 25 years.

So I really hadn't spent any alone time in my entire life. And then from November to begin to marry. I was alone in a house taking care of of things on my own. And you and I had conversations during that time, which you were such a blessing to me.

Um, you know, just the the father energy that you brought to everything and the support because I remember telling you, Govin, I feel terrified. Like I it didn't make any sense to me that I had been alone before, I had traveled alone before, I had done so much on my own as a strong, powerful woman, but I was terrified to be alone. And I didn't really understand what that was all about, like terrified to be alone, but it didn't seem to be about being alone or what that was all about.

And so, fast forward a little bit, what I realized is the the Second relationship that I got into, the relationship that I got into shortly after my marriage ended, was one where for the first time in my life, I felt safe and secure, where I didn't have to be the one with the situational awareness. I didn't have to be the one scanning everything. I didn't have to be the one making sure the doors were locked and this was taken care of and you know everything was secure. I was able to let my guard down for the first time and kind of, you know, surrender into somebody else's situational awareness, somebody else's masculinity.

And again, not realizing this until I've now had time to process that. So I kind of let my guard down and then that's gone again. And I have to go back into my own masculinity. But what I didn't realize is it was my unhealed masculine.

It was the armor that I put on. It was the toughness that I put on from being a little girl. So I had a very, you know, strong, I was a very strong, powerful woman, but I did it at the point of putting on armor despite moving forward. And that came out of my life in all sorts of different ways.

I had my first um health crash and transformation back in 2012 because I would make myself do hard things and just have to show up and with that armor on. Like I would move forward despite the terror and I was compensating. And so I had decompensated in that previous relationship for the first time in my entire life. And then suddenly to have to turn that back on again, I couldn't find myself.

But what I was really looking for was my own kind of divine masculine, um, but didn't understand why I was feeling so terrified like a little girl. And Alexa and your podcast gave me the reason, the nervous system understanding. And although I consider myself somewhat of an expert in the nervous system, that's what I teach a lot, but all the heart mass certifications, um, certified in trauma, I'm a myofascial release therapist. But I didn't realize how compensated I was myself that I was actually regulating through my trauma, it was still underneath.

I didn't realize it was still underneath until the mirror of that relationship had showed up. So I was in a lot of judgment at first. And then when I realized, oh, it's really about the foundation, the physiology of the nervous system where I felt safe for the first time in my life, and then that safety was gone again. And then that's why I'm terrified.

But exposing that terrified little girl was as much as it sucked, and I still cry about it today, was the greatest gift ever because now I can actually find that within myself. And I remember saying to you, Govin, like, well, how do I like take care of my own safety and still step into my creativity and making my business work and all this other things? Like, I feel like I'm having to use so much energy just to keep myself safe that I don't have the other energy for my business and to move things forward and my creative and my dynamic and you know, my adaptive kind of that part of me.

And I remember thinking, I need another person to do this. I need a I need somebody to co-regulate me so that I can make my business work, right? Like I was looking outside of myself. And as much as I know not to do that, at the end of the day I'm still that same human.

I'm still a little girl and can't rationalize. And you know, you kind of helped me come back on track in so many different ways um to bring me back home. So now I sit here with so much more awareness that I did. when we had our first conversation back in January about the podcast.

And because you and Alex are such great friends, you were bringing his concepts to me and you were sharing your perspective of what you know long before you know I actually heard the podcast. Um so the podcast just really to hear it in the story the way that you guys told it just kind of put it all together and like I said, made me feel seen. Like it made me feel like it was okay as a powerful female to have collapsed the way that I did into the terrified little girl. Like I understood it for the first time.

And by understanding it, I could, you know, see myself and have compassion for myself versus j and I wasn't judging myself in a bad way because I'm not afraid to be vulnerable and fall apart. I just didn't understand it. Like why am I so terrified? Is it like lineage stuff?

Like nothing traumatic happened to me that bad when I was a little girl. What is it? I just didn't understand it. And then the whole idea of masculine containment made me realize that that's what it was all about.

Because I got a taste of that for the first time in my life. You know, one of the things you said, and I I wanna push back just ever so lovingly and gently, Amanda, is that you said you weren't being hard on yourself, but you had a ni a different nickname for that little girl when we first started talking about it. And I think I think that's not necessarily true. I forgot.

my God, because I totally retired. I even wrote her a eulogy. my goodness, I forgot. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually called her, well, I'm not sure it was a little girl. I think it was the protector of the little girl. I called her the spidey little bitch.

Yeah. And I was like so, every time that spidey little bitch would come out towards my partner, I was so like, why did I do that? Like I would I would regret it and I would beat the hell out myself so much. And I didn't understand that.

And now I can understand that that spidey little bitch was the protector of the terrified little girl. So when the little girl felt terrified, the spidey bitch came out. And you helped me to recognize that that spidey bitch was the protector, right? Like she was the energy of protection.

And then another friend of mine also pointed that out to me and suggested that I write a eulogy and really appreciate her. And I did. And like, thank you for bringing that up because here I sit several months later and totally. Like I didn't forget about her.

I had just to kind of like laid her to rest. Like, thank you. You protected me. You've been there my whole life because that that's that had been my problem my entire life.

Somebody crosses my boundaries too many times, or I allow my boundaries to get crossed too many times, right? It's on me. Um, and she comes out. And then I would be like, I would always regret what she said.

I would always feel, like I can remember actually. She would come out and unleash on my partner, and then I would like call and turn myself in to one of my other friends. Like I can't believe what she just said. Like I literally would like turn myself in.

Like, why did she just do that? Like, why I don't understand. And I didn't understand at the time. Like I just cringed.

And then now I can recognize that she was the protector of the terrified little girl. So i i it it feels really interesting to me that you feel more empowered now that you recognize that inside you is there's this terrified little girl as opposed to this spidey little bitch. And and isn't it interesting that recognizing that vulnerability has actually been a source of strength as opposed to the other way around? Am I am I wrong in hearing that?

No, total totally, totally. You know, because sitting with the consequences and everything that I felt after the spitey little bitch unleashed herself on my partner was a horrible feeling and just like, you know, beating myself up within. Sitting with the terrified little girl was a horrible feeling in its own self. But I feel like that really served me because by sitting with that terrified little girl, by reparenting her, by loving her, by holding her.

That has actually changed me. Whereas just by judging the spite of little bitch didn't do anything for me except make me feel worse about myself, right? But the healing really occurred once I sat with the terrified little girl and felt that. And I can remember like the terror would just come up in my body, it would run like across my chest and almost like everything would just like pull in so tight.

And I it would start to come and I would feel that contraction and I would just like dread it. But knowing what it was, I started to lean into that and started to release that. And I did a lot of spiritual work and I went and did a emotional release program with um Saima, an enlightened master that I follow, which was life changing to me. Um, you know, that weekend was unbelievable as far as like really releasing the energy from that terrified little girl.

And then, you know, slowly I was able to continue to reparent her. And, you know, now here it is May. And in some ways it feels like it's been so long, that's five months. Um, but so much has happened in that time and I'm so grateful, so grateful.

So when you say And and I think a lot of people are gonna struggle with this as as you did going through this. So what did what specifically did feeling safe in someone else's masculinity allow you to do that at the time you couldn't access on your own? Mm, soften, surrender, not have to have all the answers. Um, not have to be on.

Like from a situational awareness standpoint, a lot of people who would observe me would say that I was paranoid, that I was like always scanning for danger. And there's absolute truth in that. Like, you know, for one, I actually grew up with a mother who was afraid of everything. Um, She actually used to say, like, you know, I once had a friend die running with a lollipop and I had a friend die running with scissors.

And my dad used to joke and be You no friends, they all died of things happening. Like there was so much fear. She was so afraid. And there was a lot of fear in my family in general growing up, fear of loss.

My dad lost his his dad very unexpectedly when he was fourteen years old. Um, and then I had a like perceived potential loss when I was six years old. My dad had a very bad logging accident and We didn't think he was gonna live. He had a tree come down on his head and crushed his skull, he had a brain injury, um, his jaw was was fractured.

He survived and came back from that, but I had this fear of losing him, and then I continued to like dress rehearse the tragedy that I was gonna lose him. And then my mom was always afraid. So I was living since I was six years old, living in this state of contraction, so afraid to lose people that I got close to, even animals, like so attached to my animals. And so this created this state of um this like it wasn't quite a paranoia, but it was a fear that caused me to be very controlling.

It caused me to be like, and a lot of people who knew me, I was very like nice in my controlling, I was very loving in my controlling, but it was still control, right? I was like taking care of everything, and it was really about keeping people, you know, safe and close to me. Even so much that it's the reason that I have the degrees and certifications that I do today. Like I'm a doctor of physical therapy.

Certified in functional genomics, have a bunch of heart mass certifications, uh, have trauma certifications. It was always something would happen to me and I'd be like, let me figure this out, let me solve it. And I would go learn something new. And a lot of that was my dad.

My dad was the one that I was emotionally attached to. And, you know, so his accident really led to me being like the natural-born caregiver of being able to take care of from a physical standpoint, but then also the emotional caregiving needs. Um, of you know, keeping dad calm and making sure that he was happy. And um, you know, I could feel my entire life, I could feel the grief that he carried within his body and was constantly trying to distract him from that grief, not understanding that until just the last few years of of um, you know, now really understanding trauma the way that I do, realizing what I was doing with my dad.

But it made me it was the trauma that, you know, was passed down, but it also gave me my superpower to be able to read the emotions of other powerful people. You know, so what happens to us becomes our superpowers. So I'm grateful for all of that. But because this whole like fear of losing people, it caused me to really be the fixer and the figure it outer, you know, the one that everybody could come to, and I was able to to you know keep them alive.

Like I actually have a couple of stories where really I was able to save the lives, like even my own father, he had pancreatitis and it couldn't be solved, and that's the whole reason I'm certified in functional genomics. was because of that and then prostate cancer. And then I learned a ton about that and learned how to solve that. My sister-in-law was dying in the hospital from Lyme disease and I was able to help that.

and so it wasn't about for me it wasn't about being the hero saving these people. It was about keeping them close to me so that I would never be alone. And that's something I also have just recently realized, you know, within the past couple of years, is that if I if I create a need to be needed Somebody will always need me and I'll never be alone. So it was again, it was a strategy to for myself to protect my little girl inside.

And then having been alone from November um until now, and also right now to be alone and not have anybody need me. Like my parents are on their own. They, you know, and what for me always creating that need to be needed was on me. Nobody asked me to do that.

It was on me. Right. So without having that, it's like, who was I? Over the past couple months, I'm like, who the hell am I?

Like there's this emptiness and this aloneness when my mind wasn't going trying to fix and figure something out. You know, it was like, I don't know who I am without those roles. And that created its own level of aloneness and loneliness that I had to work through, which was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, because I was running myself ragged doing that. You know, just to not feel what I didn't want to feel.

So I think what it all boils down to is this powerful woman that everybody sees in the world who can solve whatever was really this terrified little girl inside who was so afraid to be alone. So What were you protecting yourself from exactly? Like I I know you said being alone. So was would would you say looking back that you were putting on that armor just to protect yourself from being alone or was it something else?

Like alone so that what would happen? Hm. Well that's a really good question. Yeah, being alone.

Being alone and when I'm alone, I'd have to feel. but also being alone. So, you know, when I was processing this aloneness over the past several months, I felt very much like a little girl who was left home alone. And I kept having these flashbacks from like the nineteen eighties when I really was a little girl.

Like I could remember the couch that I was laying on. I could remember being home sick from school. I could remember getting dropped off at kindergarten and um not wanting to be dropped off at kindergarten. Like I can actually and I remember because so kindergarten you're like five ish years old that would have been before my dad's accident.

My dad used to drop me off at kindergarten and then go on to work. Um and like I said I had this attachment to my dad. So there was there were all these feelings that came up that I didn't recognize. And I think it's those feelings that we all carry.

So we all carry memories from the point of conception, you know, forever and and even in the DNA line we carry memories. So I think it was from those memories. I just would have never been able to tell you that had I not processed what I processed over the past few months. Was it all those feelings of aloneness.

And then also with this uncertainty of the future. Um, I can recall like this early May, late April, early May, I went through this period where I was feeling um like just discomfort around uncertainty and also feeling alone again and feeling scared, but it was a different feeling. This time it was a feeling of like not knowing where I'm gonna live, which I am in the process of selling my place and moving, and I don't know where I'm moving. So people are like, What do you mean you don't know?

You don't have a plan. You always have a plan. And um, but I know I'll be guided. It just feels right to get out of where I'm at.

and so it felt very much like college. When I graduated college, there was very few physical therapy jobs at the time, so I applied all over the country for whatever jobs. And I really only wanted to do orthopedics and I was like afraid of doing you know acute care rehab or something that I wasn't, you know, as good in, and also not knowing where I was gonna end up in the country. So that feeling came back in as well.

So I think that I wouldn't have been able to tell you this like two months ago, but I think now that I've lived through this season, I think what I was trying to protect myself from was those old feelings of abandonment, right? So for the in the first seven to eight years of life, our body is in a download state. And we absorb the energy and emotions of those around us. And so during that time, again, I I remember my dad just carrying so much grief.

I can remember like absorb I can remember the feeling of that, you know, and then trying to like turn myself or contort myself into who I needed to be to make him happy. And that's what we do as children. We become who we need to be to shift the energy and emotions of those that are around us, our caregivers. Because it's a survival need.

It's a basic survival need. And we don't call it trauma at the time. It's adaptation. We become who we need to be to keep ourselves alive.

Because like the mother bear, you know, is going to take care of the child for the baby bear for the first one to two years of life. And then the bear can survive on its own. As humans, we really can't survive on our own until about eight or nine years old. So we have to contort ourselves and become who we need to be in those first seven, eight, nine years of life to meet our own survival needs.

And none of us would call it trauma. But what happens is we continue to carry on that role later on in life when it's no longer our role to play anymore. And that's exactly what I did. I became this like caregiver, then I continue to take that, became a superpower.

But then it's ultimately what led me to be controlling and what ended my relationships. Right. You know, one of the things I think is a powerful thing about the unconscious mind is the unconscious mind prov preserves memories and preserves the body by by repressing memories until such time as you're ready to be able to deal with them and learn from them and let go of the negative emotion and accept the learning. And so the armor that you put on also kept you away.

From accepting the learning that you had along the way. So let's let's think about, you know, you said you couldn't find yourself for all that time. What would it look or feel? Like I won't, you know, looking through your own eyes and feeling this with your body, what would it sound like when you did find yourself?

What did that, what did that moment feel like for you? Well, so we have to make space in order to like become somebody new. So I would say that, you know, initially it was the crying, the releasing, you know, and one of the things that I know to be true is that in order to release true emotion, emotion is energy and motion, we have to there has to be an energy movement. and when it comes to crying, there needs to be sound associated with it.

So the The law of conservation of energy says energy can't be created or destroyed. It just changes forms. And an emotion is energy and emotion. And stuck emotion in the body is stuck.

It becomes density and matter, makes us sick. So in order for me to like to clear out, to become and to feel underneath, I had to clear out the emotion. So there initially was crying. I remember saying to myself, you have to make noise with your cries.

And again, great, great part of being alone was that I was able to cry in this big huge house and nobody, the dog didn't care. And I was able to weep. You know, I was able to really go into that feeling like that that little girl. So I first had to make space.

And in that space, there was then this, like there was this exhale. There was this emptiness. There was even a little bit of loneliness, but it felt different within that. And then slowly came some of the new downloads of like what I was going to fill that space with.

And what's interesting is that that's where some of the new femininity came in. You know, like my body has changed so much in the past year. And people are like, with all the GLPs on the market and everything else, people are thinking that I did something like that. No, it was really shedding the emotions, my own emotions and the weight of other people's emotions that I was carrying that I took on myself that caused this.

And so in that that feeling of the like this newness. It's like meeting this new person. I don't even know who she is. Like I'm actually taking feminine Moroccan dance classes, which is so fun.

So fun. Like learning how to move my hips and and be like sensual. And um so I would say like this new version is so it's it's fun. It's and joyful.

Something I didn't allow myself as that powerful armored woman to like joy was one of those things like you're never gonna know when the next shoe is going to drop. So just brace for that. So I was never really present with that joy. Now I would tell you that I was present because I didn't know the difference.

I was present at times and I could be joyful when I was other with other people, but I was never joyful with myself. And that's something that's been new as well and has come in is like, you know, can I just like dance in the mirror and laugh at myself without anybody else around prior to all this? No way. I would have never done that.

I would have been like, what's the point in doing that? Like, you know, if life is only worth living if it's being shared with somebody else, you know, because I I wasn't willing to give that. To myself and to share with myself. So one of the things you said before we go too much on the joy side of the equation, though I want to go there.

Um, you said able to weep. And you know, I think uh going back to this idea of masculine containment and how you set yourself free, that that you felt seen, felt and heard in that in that conversation for the first time. One of the things that I think is really powerful is that is the recognition that a lot of us men are afraid of emotion. And and I think women learn to suppress the extremity of their emotion both positively and negatively because men don't understand it.

You know, th that we're threatened And I I say threatened by it, not to say that we're physically threatened by it, but don't understand it. And that not understanding it necessarily is getting it wrong. And getting it wrong is to again want to avoid that whole issue as opposed to just sitting with it and allowing, you know, letting that flow and containing it, containing that little bit of chaos, so that we can be with it. And that and there's a lot of power in that.

my god, there's there's so much in that. Yeah, so growing up, you know, all my emotion was suppressed. There was no expression of emotion in my family whatsoever. so as I mentioned earlier, I'm the third born of four kids.

So I have two older sisters and then myself and my brother. And because of my dad's head injury, my dad was two separate people, although most people wouldn't say this. And I only discovered it myself within the last five years or so going, like, yeah, my dad had a major brain injury. He fractured his skull, it was brain injury.

So, but what everybody would have told you is that my two older sisters were different than me and my brother. It was almost like two different families in some ways. And so from an emotional standpoint, my brother and I just put on this toughness and this armor and we weren't emotional at all. My sisters were a little bit more emotional, but my brother and I were not emotional whatsoever.

My dad not emotional. You know, my dad in his, I don't know, early 70s uh lost a a dog unexpectedly. She got hit by a car and that dog was everything to him. And that was one of the first times I really saw my dad cry.

The first time ever. And I was like, my gosh, what a gift Daisy was her name. What a gift g Daisy gave Dad. She came, her soul came to let him release all the grief that he never released before, you know?

And then my brother rarely saw my brother cry. In fact, just this morning, my brother embraced, and you know, he's been so supportive through um this process kind of coming in and out of my life. We have our own um, you know, struggles. But even just this morning we were embraced, and I was able to weep with my brother.

And I could still see that he was not perfectly comfortable with that yet. Like he's still, you know, not sure about that. Um, but it but I didn't, an old version of me would have held back because I knew he was uncomfortable and I would have changed the subject and would have like, you know, pivoted. And I didn't.

I just continued to weep. And then what's interesting is a friend of mine also came walk it's Memorial Day today and was down the street for a parade, and he came walking in and he's like, What's going on? I was like, we were just having an emotional moment. And then we started chit chatting.

And talking about some different things. And then he goes to to say goodbye and we embrace and a hug. And this is a childhood friend from like kindergarten. We've been friends since kindergarten.

And I just started to weep. And so he just like pushes me out. He's You're gonna make me cry. I'm like, that's okay.

Like, it's okay if you cry. And then we hugged again, and you could tell that he was uncomfortable by it. And I said, just because I'm like weeping doesn't mean I'm suffering. It's okay.

I'm just releasing. I'm like, this is the soft version of Amanda, the one you've never seen before. Because like I said, this is somebody who's been friends with me for forty some odd years. And I'm like, it's okay, I'm okay.

And so, you know, he went his separate ways and you could tell like something shifted in him. And so that's what's new in me is no longer feeling like I've gotta regulate my emotions to protect somebody else. And going to the whole mask and containment thing, Michael, my previous partner, When I could embrace with him, I could weep and he would hold me. And that's when I felt safe.

And and it didn't necessarily pull him as long as he was grounded and he was in his masculine containment, he didn't get pulled into it. And that was the first time I had ever been able to experience like really crying on a powerful man's shoulder and not having to regulate myself because of them. Again, that's something that I then became like addicted to because I hadn't felt that before. And then suddenly I feel it and like, my gosh.

Like this is amazing. Like I I started to process some of my childhood stuff, you know, and then when we separated, I think that kind of added to the abandonment piece um of things. But I can only see this all in reverse now, right? Like I can only see it in reverse and say, like, you know, why did I get so attached and addicted to that feeling?

And it's because I had never experienced that in my life before. You know, I was the one so I would say that in listening to Alex's stuff, one of the things I recognized is I was the one holding the mask in container. Mm. so much of my life.

I was the one regulating everybody else. If there was some sort of disaster, tragedy, whatever, I was the one regulating the family. I was the one regulating friends. You know, I was the one regulating and holding it all together.

And thinking that I was doing it from a place of of groundedness, but I was using my armor a bit. You know, I was using I was truly regulating. I truly was regulating. But there still was armor on my heart because if I was really feeling I wouldn't have been able to contain Nor is it my job to contain because I have a feminine nervous system, right?

And physiologically masculine is meant to contain, you know, but that was a role that I took on. So yeah, the weeping, especially on a powerful man's, you know, shoulder or chest, I'd say chest, because I'm not that tall. Um has been one of the most healing things that I've experienced in my life. So what would have to happen for you to feel completely safe within yourself?

What would that look like? Well, I think that I'm in the midst of like learning that. So what does it look like? What does it feel like?

You know, being able not having to have somebody else to feel safe. And the key is, so I didn't have to have somebody else to feel safe when I had my armor on. Right? But to not have to have somebody else to feel safe when I don't have my armor on or the discernment of that armor, right?

Because, you know, protection isn't always a bad thing. I think everything is is up for discernment of use, right? So, you know, I can kick in. I am amazing in chaos if I have to be.

And in the midst of chaos, we have to disassociate a little bit. So I can I can do that if I need to. So really to feel safe within myself, I'm learning to, I'm learning to do that. In fact, you know, God, the universe, whatever we all believe in, I believe in something bigger than me, tested me because somebody tried to break into my house.

And not and it was back in March where I wasn't where I am now. So I wasn't as grounded as I am now. I was still a little frazzled. And I was able to stay aligned through that.

I was able to sleep through the night after that happened. Um, and I was able to have so much gratitude at that time for my own situational awareness, the fact that I can have safety within myself, that I don't have to rely on somebody else. You know, now I don't want to, I don't want to um call out like the the feminism and the feminine movement of like I don't need anybody else. Like no no no no no no no no no I am not equal to a male or a masculine, right?

Like we have equal rights, but we're not the same. So I'm not saying that I want to be so independent that I have to do it on my own or can do it on my own and I don't need a male. I think a bit of my armor and the spidey little bitch thought that before. But to recognize From an attachment standpoint, right?

Because this is this is the problem with relationships, is we become attached, and then there's addiction this addictiveness to the attachment. So, what does it mean to feel safe within a relationship is to to allow myself to speak my truth and not be afraid of somebody leaving, right? To be able to stand on my own, to be able, like, okay, somebody can call me paranoid, and it's okay, I'm just being me. To be okay being myself without having.

that attachment to somebody else or without having to like, you know, not owner honor my own boundaries or my own values in order to people please somebody else so that they don't leave. That's really what it's all about, you know. So when you say you're making space for that, right? And you said become someone new, but it's not really becoming someone new, it's becoming who you really are, is I I think the evolution of that thought, right?

So when you say you're making space to become who you really are, what specifically for you needs to go to create that space? Well, what needed to go because I like there's definitely the the shedding um was the need for control. And so I would have told you that I have the spiritual belief of like we're not in control. There's something bigger than us.

But when the nervous system when my nervous system got contracted, ooh, did I want control? Did I want certainty? Also, certainty is something that like, you know, I something that I would have told you that I don't believe in. So living into my core beliefs.

With an aligned nervous system feeling safe. So what has to go, or what had to go for me, and what has to go, I think for a lot of people, are the traumas, the things that are holding us back from our nervous system feeling safe. So that we can align ourselves with our spiritual core beliefs and live into that higher perspective of who we want to be. You know, so I had all that stuff in place.

I had, and if my nervous system felt good, I could surrender. there's no mistakes, and I could surrender to uncertainty of the synchronicities, and I'll be guided. But then as soon as I didn't feel safe, control kicked in. And I think that it's so I can help myself to feel safe or on a consistent basis by doing my work to release the trauma and release all of my patterns and armor that I put on from the childhood stuff and the things that have happened to me in life.

But really to stay safe, it's an ongoing process. Life is life is ongoing. And so there's gonna be situations where my nervous system doesn't feel safe. Maybe it's appropriate, maybe it's instincts saying I'm not safe, and then it kicks in.

And maybe it's still some of the old stuff because I think healing is really if we think of like a vortex or we think of a fractal, we heal in layers. Like you said, our subconscious is only gonna let us go where we feel safe enough to go. You know, and I always say that in the in the therapy world and the trauma world is that we're only gonna dive into a layer and release once we feel safe enough to release that layer. So I think the key is nervous system safety, which is nervous system regulation and trauma.

So let's let's think about this trauma work, right? You said trauma held you back and you're talking about trauma work being an important part of the evolution to becoming who you really are. What specifically did it stop you doing from before that you can do now? What did the trauma stop me from doing?

Well, it prevented me from having the energy. I was using so much energy to control and create safety within my life that I didn't have the energy to truly put into um my passion and my purpose. Right. So the work that I was doing in the world, I mean, from the outside looking in, the world would tell you that I was successful, I had freedom.

And there was truth to that. But all of that success was built on hard work and fear. There was so much energy that went into that. There was so many long hours.

There was so much, you know, contracted nervous system. There was so much force. And I would say that I moved, and a lot of successful business people, entrepreneurs, we build it based on fear. And that's exactly what I did.

I used fear as a driver, and fear can be a driver. Fear is what got my ass out of bed every single day when I was like sick as hell back in 2012. I had Lyme disease, Lyme encephalitis. I was so sick, but yet I had an orthopedic physical therapy practice to run.

And every single day I got up and out of bed because fear was my driver. And it worked, it totally worked. And being over-responsible, which was one of my patterns, was the reason that I did not check out and commit suicide when I was so sick. I had Lyme encephalitis and they kept telling me there was nothing wrong with me.

It was in my head. I had such a bad headache that I remember thinking to myself, if I have to live this way, I don't want to live. And I just imagined taking a gun and blowing my brains out, and my head would explode and feel so much better. And I didn't have any access to a gun.

So I imagined, okay, I can take pills. I I Started to think all these ways that I could kill myself just to escape the pain of how bad my head felt. But the thing that kept me alive. was exactly one of the beliefs that I had to let go of recently.

The thing that kept me alive was what are they gonna do without me? I'm respon I'm responsible for everybody. I'm responsible for responsible for that entire clinic downstairs because I lived above my office. I'm responsible for my mom who's my receptionist, my husband at the time who was my office manager.

Like I adored all my staff. What are they all gonna do without me? Right? So that over responsible That limiting belief that it was my responsibility to take care of everybody is exactly what kept me alive.

Because I can tell you if I wasn't carrying that, I would have checked out because the suffering was, the physical suffering was so horrific at the time. And so again, the body won't let go of what it's, you know, until it's ready to let go of things. So that is what I retired this past season was it's not my responsibility to take care of everybody. It's not my responsibility to protect people from their own suffering, right?

Like that's God's work. That's not Amanda's work. Right. But yet that's what I was trying to do and it felt like control to everybody.

Did you have to consciously recognize that it's your job to take care of yourself though? Absolutely. Absolutely. that's the that's the other part of that equation.

That's the other piece that if could have kept you going in that phase, instead of everybody I gotta I gotta get well to take care of everybody else, is I gotta get well for me. Mm-hmm. And I and first time around, first transformation in 2012, I didn't see that. I did it for everybody else, which fear was the driver again, right?

Fear, fear was the driver. But then this time around, courage is the desi was the driver, right? So courage of like, I need to or courage, my own courage of moving forward despite the fear that I'm willing and and or I'm worth it rather, in order to to move forward, I need to take care of me. I need to honor me.

I need to not put this energy into everybody else. And I learned at a young age to like, I can suffer so that you don't have to suffer. And really, that's so such judgment. Like, who the hell do I think I am?

Like, I'm more capable of suffering than you are? Like, I mean, if you think about it, it's absolute crazy, right? But that is exactly what I was carrying. So fear was the driver.

And then now it's more courage. And my intention when this whole thing started a year ago at a myofascial release seminar. back in June, my intention going into that was to move forward despite the fear was my intention. And I thought it had to do with business opportunity because I really thought my life was in, and the world would have told you my life was in a good place.

But I just had a I was in a marriage that was flat. Like we were we were roommates, we were good friends, we were starting to keep uh track of everything, and we just didn't have an aligned vision. And so was starting to just really feel flat, but I was dealing with it and I knew how to not trigger him. He knew how to not trigger me.

And so we were just living that way until I set this intention. Be careful what you pray for, be careful what you wish for, be careful what you set intention for, because it never drops in the circumstances that facilitate the transformation, the change, or what drop in. So for me to set this intention of to move forward despite the fear, and then boom, all these circumstances. All right, girlfriend.

You're gonna move forward despite the fear, all these circumstances start to fall and drop in. And so I would say to circle back to your original question, the big difference is fear was the driver before, and now courage is the one that is in control and really surrendering and being present. Presence is another key. Is that you know the old version of me using fear was all about future-based and having things figured out and certainty?

And now it's more about the present moment, being dynamic. Adaptive, being able to take in the information, using my intuition versus using my smarts and my brain. That was the other version. Fear based, fear used my smarts and my brain, which is very limited, right?

But courage uses the heart's capacity to read information within the field. And that information has no time or space. So we can make better decisions from the use of the heart field and the use of the heart's intelligence than we ever could from the mind. So when you think about that terrified little girl and if she felt completely courageous.

What would she do that Amanda hasn't allowed herself to do yet? Receive. What does that mean? Which is really big word for you.

I cannot believe in a lot of ways. I'm just so surprised to hear you say that. I'm laughing because you and I on the podcast, I don't know, a year ago, year and a half ago, whenever we did, you know, my internal mantra for for a year, my internal mantra was Amanda, open your vagina and receive. Like because I had to learn to receive, right?

And we had a great conversation on that previous podcast. Um, so maybe you can put it in the show notes or something. oh Go listen to it. it it it is metaphorical, not necessarily literal, just so we're clear.

And so and I and I don't say it to females unless they're close good friends of mine and I know them well, but my male clients, you know, the ones that were always the doers and figuring out, and in the future I would tell them, open your vagina and receive, right? Like to receive. So yeah, I I spent so much of my life believing that I had to be the one that led and guided and fixed and figured it out and like, you know, was the one that led other people to their success. Б то акшли.

And to receive from others. And even, you know, this morning when my brother was hugging me, when my good friend Adam was hugging me, that's what I recognized I was doing. I was actually receiving from them for the first time versus you know holding myself and being the driver of the emotion or the emotion, the emotional containment before. So and then receiving means so much.

Receiving means receiving other people's, you know, love, support, um, receiving money, like. I have been financially successful, which I'm so grateful for, but it has been from that fear as the driver. It's been from the long hours and the hard work versus the attracting. And I've believe me, I've seen moments of this attracting.

Like I know, like I have all sorts of stories out there um on ways that I've attracted money for sure, but to really embody that ability to receive. And then I believe when we're in our Our beingness. So it's not like what will I do? It's who will I be, and then what will I do from that, right?

Like who will I be to be embodied in the feminine, to be able to receive, to be able to just to be love. And to me, love, and that's something that I've always taken very, very seriously. And you know me, like I I love my brothers, I love my sisters so much. And love to me is about non judgment.

As soon as a human being shows me their vulnerability. shows me where they're they're truly human, instantaneously I love them. Like they will get an I love you. Whether it's a client, whether it's a professional corporate colleague, as soon as I see their humanness, I love them.

And I don't judge people for being human because if we were to all like take our armor off and sit around, we would realize we're more alike than different. There is no hierarchy when it comes to human fear. None. And I've worked from, you know, the people who use their body for a living up to the multimillionaires, nearly billionaires.

It's fear. Right. We all have our fears. The flavor is just a little bit different.

And when it comes to money, the zeros are just a little bit different. It's all the same. Right. Yeah.

think I think it's really powerful so when I'm when I'm uh when I'm in a group of powerful men and and I'm lucky enough to move in these circles they will all say all it's a universal thing that they have a challenge with receiving but it it it's something and they'll say yeah no no it's okay I can I can cash your check but really really feeling like you're worthy of But you earned it. That and you can feel grateful that you have these opportunities and feel like you earned it, right?

You don't have to, it doesn't have to come from a place of ego. And so a lot of men struggle with receiving. And I know this is where your coaching you coined that phrase, open your vagina to receive, because it comes from that, you know, like receive this this thing. And And it's interesting to me that you said receive because it's been so much of your work.

I think I think it's also really interesting for you, um, because when you released this, you transformed yourself, like physically. Massively physically. Talk about that. What changed for you?

Yeah, so from a physical standpoint, um, you know, our subconscious knows before our conscious knows. So in May of last year is really when um the discussion began that I'm gonna start to live for me. In fact, at the the my ex-husband it was about a year ago. Yeah, it was early May.

It might have been late April, late April, early May. So my ex-husband and I were on vacation together in Aruba, and both of us came to this conclusion that we're gonna start living for us. Like we don't, as we're looking back and as we were processing the divorce paperwork and everything, we know that it happened and we don't quite know how it happened. But both of us left that, not hating each other, not thinking we were gonna divorce, none of that.

But just saying to each other, we're gonna start living for us. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I'm gonna start living for me. And what that meant to me is I'm gonna start exercising more. I used to have a massive exercise addiction, so I had to be really careful most of the rest of my life um with exercise.

I'm gonna start um eating a little bit differently, which also like when it comes to control, we all have addictions. Addiction is just what we do to not feel what we don't wanna feel. So my addictions were exercise and controlling what I put in in my mouth from a food standpoint. Like I could, I could, you know, do any protocol or whatever, but I had gotten softer with myself.

Or so I thought I got softer with myself and I wasn't exercising the same and I wasn't eating quite the same because I was allowing myself to soften. But something in me in late April of 2025 changed and said, start living for you, which meant eating differently again and exercising. So I came home, started exercising more, and went on a liver cleanse that I guide my clients on. The same liver cleanse that I had done, I can't even tell you how many times I've done the same liver cleanse.

And I didn't drop the weight that I dropped at this time. And so I did this liver cleanse diet, which is which is just a diet change. It's no major supplementation or anything big, no medications, nothing. But I also guide my clients through shedding the emotions and the patterns that don't serve them.

And so this was the difference here is that I started to recognize I had patterns and I had things that didn't serve me. And that's when I started to realize, I found an entry in my journal not too long ago about me carrying the emotions, the masculine emotions for everybody. Like I even used the word masculine long before Alex's podcast of masculine containment. I even said something along those lines.

And so I started also doing that emotional work. And then with two friends of mine, I went and did a myofascia release seminar in Sedona. And it was so amazing. Talk about receiving.

So I went to Sedona in June of last year with my dear friend Tim and my dear friend Michael, who later became my partner. So in that workshop, it was a workshop that anybody could take. You didn't have to be a professional practitioner. To just receive.

I didn't have to be the practitioner. In fact, they called me the passenger princess because I just got to sit in the backseat with my hair blowing, freedom, release, you know, relaxing, whatever. My body released so much energy. Like I've done trauma work since 2006 in the myofascial release world.

I've never released as much as I did in that seminar. And then one release in particular, remember, my intention was to move forward despite fear. One release in particular. Um, there were three people doing some work with my body.

Michael was on my feet, Tim was in my abdomen, and then there was another girl that was up on my upper body. And I went into like a past life experience that I was being tortured for speaking my truth, and my toenail was being ripped off. I came out of that release, and my body was having this, you know, remembering and kind of fighting to get away. My left big toenail spontaneously ruptured off in the midst of that release.

So Michael said, like in the middle of it, your toe was just all of a sudden bleeding. And then afterwards my toe is like killing and I'm looking and it's half hanging on there. And so I just so we remember this there's no physical energy. There's no physical trauma.

There's no like nobody was doing nail extraction on you. It just it just it just it felt that way. And then it physically happened. And then it physically happened.

Now I've done this work a really long time. If it didn't happen to me, and there were three witnesses, I would have been like, people are crazy. So after, so after that happened, um, and now I gotta tell you, this is the second time in my life that left big toenail has come off. The first time I stubbed it off in 2018.

So the later on that day, I remember sitting at the creek, we went to this manifestation point. And I just remember this grief coming off of me and just crying. And the water was rushing over that toe. And something in me said, My life is never gonna be the same.

And there was like so much shedding. I could feel my body just changing, physically changing in that moment. And it's not uncommon when we do this type of trauma work for the body to lose like 10-15 pounds, you know, because the fash holds on to water, the fasgures restrictive, holds on to inflammation. So it's not uncommon at all.

But I could feel my body softening, I could feel this letting go. And I can remember like life is never gonna be the same. And so came home from that seminar and you know, surely life was never the same. It was shortly after that that um my husband and I split and um and again just continued to like shed the emotions.

And shortly after that, Michael and I get into a relationship. And in the relationship initially, I'm able now remember he was at this myofascia release seminar with me as well. So we were able to continue doing some of this work together. And my body would release, do safe releases with him, and um, and then just go into my emotion.

Just I mean, I I hadn't cried from a grief standpoint, it all felt like grief initially. I hadn't cried like that in my entire life. And like there was so much grief. And I think like again, now I think it was my dad's grief that I was carrying all those years, it was everybody else's grief.

Like there's so much grief and literally the weight's like continuing to come off of me. Now I'm eating and I'm eating a really good, you know, healthy diet at that point in time. Like I there was no starving, there was no there was witnesses to the fact that I'm eating. And yet my body is still doing all of this shedding and shedding and shedding.

And I ended up losing about fifty pounds. So just s aga again I want to announce you at five zero. Five zero fifty pounds. Yeah.

Yeah, from and it was from like May to November, like May to October even. Like I didn't I can't tell you I didn't weigh myself exactly. Um, but yeah, it was relatively quickly. But I also have never shed as much emotion as I shed in that period of time.

Different emotion though, because during that time I wasn't the terrified little girl, remember? I didn't become the terrified little girl until um November. And then the the terrified but at that point in time my body had already physically changed. So you you yeah, so you physically transformed, you emotionally transformed, and what are you doing with this sense of need, this this sense of needing to be needed?

How how's that feeling for you now? Well, I realized it served me. Right. Like I really believe there's there's different versions of ourselves.

And I even teach this in my program, my coaching. You know, there's our initial operating system is that first seven years of life. That's the initial operating system. Then it continues to run us and change is so hard because we have to actually go back and change some of the original, you know, installation.

Then we become like the 2.0 version of us, and that's the evolved version that used the f the superpowers from childhood to become who we needed to be. And we can build success on that. You know, and we always do, we either do what our parents did or we do the opposite of what our parents did.

And so for me, you know, growing up in a family that didn't have very many resources, I used fear to say, I'm never going to be like that. I'm going to make sure that I can take care of myself, take care of my family, and I'm gonna have all the resources that I need. So I used fear to be the driver. So not only did I use fear to be the driver, but I also this need to be needed.

And then now Amanda 3.0 still has access to that same the The same version, but now I get to discern versus it creating my value and my worth, it creating the need to be needed, you know, it keeping people close to me. It's I get to discern how I use that. You know, if somebody and and consent.

When you're giving advice to friends, to family, and there's no consent to it, it feels like control or judgment, right? So family, I'm still willing to help family, but they have to ask for it now. You know, or what created a problem in my relationship was that I was actually giving the advice, which felt like judgment, you know. But then when I would withhold it at times and wait for, you know, them to come and say something, then that didn't always feel comfortable because we teach people how you know we're gonna we're gonna interact and that would create initial tension.

So you have to you have to be able to be with a partner who knows. That I'm gonna show up a little bit differently. It's not about you, it's about me. You know, and for my men, for my male clients, I have them read the book Um No More Mr.

Nice Guy. And it's all about for them, you know, discerning when they want to utilize that or not. And so that's what it's been for me is I still get to discern the use of it, but I get to receive and adapt and be joyful and have all these things that I didn't have. It doesn't have to come from the force and the control.

So that's courage is the new driver, how does that s feel differently than fear? How do you recognize the difference? Well, I think that courage is there's still a little bit of fear there, but we move for forward despite the fear. And I also think courage is using a little bit of of intuitive knowing to move forward versus like the control and just, you know, Amanda's will moving me forward.

So, you know, there's still the butterflies with the courage. There's still this like it's almost like what's the the difference between like excitement and and anxiety. It's the perspective, right? So there still is this little bit of fear of the unknown with the courage.

But there's a grounded confidence in I'm using my intuition, it feels right. Versus the forcing. You know, when it comes to business decisions, the courage would be more alignment, is the word that I use. It's an aligned, it feels like everything just falls into place and it feels right and it feels easy and there's a flow state to it, versus having to work hard and to drive and use the smarts and use the brain um when fear is the driver alone and our own will is at play.

You know, so yeah, courage still has a little bit of that like uncertainty and unknown and uncomfortable and butterflies in the belly. But there's also this like excitement piece of it, this this feeling of um childlike uncertainty versus fear-based anxiety-driven uncertainty. I like that. So as you continue your experiments with receiving.

You know, if you think about it, what stops you and in that moment that receiving becomes available? And what are you either going to experiment with or do moving forward to ensure that you're ready to receive? Yeah. So what stops me with receiving, as long as I'm, as long as my nervous system is in a good grounded state, I would like to say that I'm very capable of receiving now.

When my nervous system is contracted and fear is at play, receiving feels like control of the other person, feels like a power struggle, right? And again, we touched on this at our um on our previous podcast that we did together. It feels like now I owe somebody something. They have power over me because they gave me something or they did something for me.

You know, and I would also say that there is a lot of um, you know, when resentment comes up, when somebody does something for you and then holds it against you later on, that resentment, it makes it difficult to receive in the future. You know, so again, when fear is at play, we we use all of those filters of the old version of us. Do I really want to receive? Do I not want to receive?

You know. um And so, and growing up with, you know, a family structure that was like when somebody does you a favor, you owe them back you owe them. When somebody gives you a gift, now you have to give them a gift, you know? And then also that resentment of like, well, I did this for you, and then it gets used against you, right?

So I would say that that's one of the things that made receiving difficult before, but then it was also the power. I think if we look at just the physiology of the human nervous system. The giver is in the power play position compared to the receiver, right? If we think of even masculine and feminine, right?

The masculine is the giver, the feminine is the receiver. We think of the nervous system, the masculine nervous system physiologically is the more powerful nervous system. So I think we need to be, you know, grounded to be able to um to discern that receiving. And I also believe that there is a filter.

I don't believe with all of the things that are happening in the world right now, um I think we have to be cautious because if it's too good to be true, sometimes it is, you know. We have to have a filter. You know, if somebody calls up and says you just won twenty thousand dollars, blah, blah, blah, blah, am I really gonna open my vagina and receive that? Or am I gonna filter that and say, wait a minute, is this a spam?

Is this a you know, so I think that we do have to be aware. However, when Amanda's nervous system is in a good place and I can discern and it truly is open and safe to receive, I can receive. So what's the what's the hygiene piece? How do you keep your nervous system in a good place and feeling safe?

Yeah, what a great question. Yeah. Cause that's the key, right? There's so many components of it.

It is our responsibility. I love to use the term um vital energy. We are the leaders of our own vital energy. It is our responsibility to keep our nervous system in a good place, right?

There is a hygiene, as you just mentioned. There is a hygiene component of it. And it includes all the stuff that I previously used to talk about, Amanda 2.0 version.

Um now I'm so focused on the nervous system. It's all of the diet. Things that we need to do. We need to eat a whole foods diet.

We need to make sure that we're eating the right foods. We need to make sure we're getting enough sleep. We need to make sure that our nervous system is not overstimulated with LED lighting and Wi-Fi, artificial sense. ah You know, our cookware and our and our house is clean.

Like there's so many foundational things. We need to make sure we're engaging in nature on a consistent regular basis. So all those pieces are things that add to our vital energy. We also have to be aware of the people we're interacting with.

That are draining our vital energy. You know, it's our responsibility to know who's coming in and out of our circle. I love to use the Dunbar's circle analogy: the six, the 12, the 150 around us. We are responsible for who we allow in our circle.

You know, and if there's people, especially people in our six that are draining our vital energy, that's up to us to have boundaries and to shift those energetically, shift those relationships, right? So there's so much that comes into because it's not just regulating my nervous system in the moment, it's the capacity. Capacity of my nervous system. You know, every single day I wake up, my battery, my charge, I have so much vital energy to give.

When my vital energy gets drained, I'm gonna be more triggerable. When it's drained, what happens to our cell phones when they're below 50%? You know, they go a lot faster. Same thing with human.

And there's a science and physiology behind exactly how this happens. We're more emotionally hyper-reactive when we're depleted. So all the things that we need to do to not deplete our system is the hygiene that it requires. And it's, you know, not just the nervous system component.

There are so many biological pieces as well. But that was totally Amanda, you know, 2016 health coach version of Amanda. I believe in all that stuff, love all that stuff. It needs to be honored.

I don't discount or discredit it. It's just not the primary aspect of what I talk about anymore. But I live it. Like the stuff that I do on a regular basis, the castor oil packs, the you know, hydration, the hydrogen water, the electrolytes, the grounding earthing, the sunshine, you know, being naked in the sun, the infrared sauna, like the mouth taping at night.

There's so many things that I do to maintain my health, you know, so that my nervous system has capacity. And I would have told you had great capacity, but apparently that fractal I expanded, needed to expand my capacity even more based on what's happened to me over the past year. And I'm grateful for all of that because I thought I had good nervous system capacity before and now after my last year's experience, I re I realize I'm gonna have even greater capacity. And which I also think is gonna serve because with how we're moving forward, humanity is moving forward.

There is so so many people are being challenged right now. There is so much just dysregulation in human nervous systems, humanity at large, right? That those of us who have done this work and those of us who know the nervous system need to have greater capacity to be able to hold the container for others. You know, I I believe that Alex is onto something with masculine containment, that those of us who are aware, so you know, even though I'm not just a masculine energy, I can discern and utilize that masculine containment if I was in a situation where I needed to do that.

I think that's the beauty is that there's enough of us around the planet to be able to hold that container for others. So as you talked about, you know, discovering this and letting go of the trauma of the past and how you and showing up with courage and you said life would never be the same. And I and I imagine there's a femininity to that that you're embracing that maybe you didn't embrace as actively or consciously as before. But really what do you mean?

Like what what is this how is it gonna be different? How is life gonna be different now? As you as you think about the forward, you said you didn't have energy for that. So w what does that look like?

And you're lighting up even just thinking about it. Well, I am, and I'm lighting up and I'm excited and scared at the same time. Because when you when you say that to me, it's like, what's it gonna look like? I can tell you how I'm gonna feel.

I'm not sure what it's gonna look like because, like I I mentioned, I'm putting my place on the market. I don't know where I'm moving. Right? So there's this uncertainty, so there's there's this fear associated with that, but at the same time, there's this excitement.

So I can tell you how I'm gonna feel. And I think that's a key. I know you coach your clients to this too. Like we have to feel it.

before we actually experience it, right? Before we even know what it's gonna look like, there's a feeling. So the feeling again, she's joyful. You know, she wakes up with enough energy.

She's joyful. She is, you know, not too much for the world. I can't tell you how many times I've been told that I'm too much, that, you know, I'm I'm a lot to handle. I quit caffeine in my whole cleanse that I did, I quit caffeine over a year ago as well.

And and I'm just as hyper without the caffeine. I didn't need the caffeine. In fact, caffeine was just more of that fear being the driver. So I wake up with energy.

I'm excited about life. Um, I feel joy without any sort of guilt. Joy, I used to, when I was experiencing joy, I used to feel guilty about it, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? And um, being present and in the moment and enjoying life and not worried about the future and not in the scarcity contracted.

You know, where is everything gonna come from? It's my responsibility to take care of everybody, you know, financially take care of everybody. It's like not having that responsibility, right? It's my responsibility to take care of me and to take care of me emotionally, take care of me.

And then if I emotionally take care of me and I raise my frequency and vibration and I open to receive, life will provide for me. I know that to be true. And I can I can start to feel it, and although I knew it to be true before. I didn't embody it the way I can embody it now because I was still held back by that terrified little girl who was, you know, just gripping and so contracted.

But I can start to like feel that. That's what you saw light up in me. I can start to feel this excitement that life is gonna provide. Life happens for me and through me, not to me.

I truly, truly believe in that. And I'm scared of shit some days. Scared chillless, you know, like how's it gonna happen? Because, you know, we go back in, we go back into that, but I don't stay anchored to that.

So I know there's also going to be palm trees. Palm trees keep coming up. Um, and I've always loved, you can actually even tell the theme in my office, I've always loved the Caribbean. So that has been like my rib of blue.

So there's a softness to the Caribbean, to the ocean, to the to the um, so I know that there's gonna somehow be that in my future as well. At least temporarily in my future. Um What does being a strong woman anchored in her feminity femininity mean to you now? Mm.

Yeah, what does being a strong woman anchored in her femininity mean to me now? You know, I knew I was a strong woman before, but I would have never said I was anchored in my femininity. Would have never said that. You know, I would have said that I was a strong woman, but from a matriarchal per standpoint.

You know, in fact, my nickname my clients nickname me Boss Lady Mama Bear. but anchored in my femininity is that, you know, not having that matriarchal, not having that control, not having that mothering energy to everybody. But having that joyful, childlike, you know, that I can still be powerful. I can still make those same badass business decisions.

I can still, you know, coach those same um masculine men, but from a joyful, dynamic perspective, softer as well. And I've always had a softness like from the love of a mama bear, but a feminine softness is different than a mama bear's love. You I think of a mama bear's love of just this big belly and these big breasts and just like, you know, laying on that. But I think that the softness of the femininity is like there's this gentle sensual movement.

Um yeah, so so to me, not having to use so much of fear as the driver, but waking up every day from a business standpoint and being a powerful woman to like attracting, to being in my nervous system in a healthy way. And then what needs to be a priority, I'll attract that into my life. Right. That's what that's what and it's already, I'm already starting to see it happen, little pieces of it as well.

Like opportunities coming along and just like, you know, falling into place. and so that's what's different is that not having to force things, strong, powerful woman in my feminine is not having to force things. Whereas when I was a strong, powerful woman not in my feminine, in my matriarchal energy, it was there was still a force to it. There was still a doing aspect to it.

And now this is more of a beingness. And I've said it before too, like, you know, who you be and what you do from who you be is what's important. Like I'll text my friends like how you be in or my clients, how you be in, not what you doin'. So I said it before, but now that I've actually released some of that terrified little girl, there's really truly more openness to what I said before than there ever was.

It wasn't that I was not authentic about it before. I just have deepened my own understanding by releasing another layer. And there's probably more layers to be released. Right?

Like this whole healing journey, it's not a destination. There's no achievement. There's no diploma that we get at the end of healing. Like that's death, I think.

So if this powerful feminine version of Amanda walked into a room, how would she be different than the one that walked in before? The big difference would be that she wouldn't feel it was her responsibility to shift the energy of the room. That's the key. It's not her responsibility to shift the energy of the room.

So before, you know, I would walk into a room and I would walk onto a stage where I'm, you know, speaking to several hundred people, and I still felt like it was my responsibility to shift their energy. And now this version is it's my responsibility to carry the frequency to inspire them to shift their own. It's very subtle difference. And is that what you mean by attracting versus forcing?

Mm, yes. Yeah. Yeah, because there's gonna be some people I can't inspire. And before, if I would see somebody sitting there, you know, with their arms crossed, whatever, I would really, you know, work hard at trying to break down their barriers and, you know, turn in from we we call this, you prisoner, though they're the because they're a prisoner, to turn into at a vacation or where they're kind of like open and like, okay, I'll hang out and see.

So it used to be my responsibility to do that. And now it's not my responsibility. I'm gonna be able to inspire some people and some people are gonna sp stay stuck in the victimization. And I can be okay with that now.

previous version of Amanda wasn't okay with that because I wasn't okay with not feeling the energy in the room. If I was feeling somebody's energy that wasn't in a good place, well I wanted to shift it, which was control. And now I can observe without absorbing it or needing to control it. I think it's really powerful because what you described is this like really courageous thing.

And it's not like climbing something or a destination travel experience. It's not jumping out of a plane, but it's going back for the little version of you you left behind and then inviting her to come along with you. And um and and I and I like how you combine that. By doing that, you could let go of the need to perform.

on stage or in a meeting or anywhere else because that armor's not necessary and you're safe enough to be home wherever you are. And I think that that nurturing, gestational side of it is also a big part of it. Does it f does that feel right and alive for you? Yeah, absolutely.

You know, be before whether I was in a meeting or on stage or whatever, I felt like I needed to command the energy of of the room and in order to feel safe. And I and I did that in a very beautiful, successful way. You know, there was a l a lot of people who would have said like, you know, beautiful, beautiful things. But there was control with it.

There was absolute control. And there also wasn't very much joy and fun within that. You know, there was there was definitely authenticity because I would I would be real. But there wasn't the joy and the fun.

And like you said, going back to get the little girl, that's what definitely has changed with me. Everything that I left behind in childhood. Because when we give up these parts of ourselves, like when the when I started to control the powerful men's emotion or the powerful people's emotions around me, I gave up my childhood innocence, my childhood joy. Like that's what I exchanged in order to take that on as a child.

We all give up something. When we take on something from, you know, childhood, we give up something. So I gave up my childhood you know, innocence. I gave up my childhood joy, the the fun, the the little girl, right?

To become, you know, this six year old who was controlling other people's emotions or managing other people's emotions. And so I went back and I got her. And what's so interesting about all of that is that I was spending so much time with the little girl version, like the three or four year old version. But really the version that kind of hardened the little girl is this the six year old.

That's when my dad had his trauma and that's when I really started to like you know, become this caregiver um to my family in general. My brother was also diagnosed with asthma around that time, very severe asthmatic. And, you know, one of my jobs was to tell mom when he stopped breathing. So it's my job to kind of like keep him breathing.

Um, we shared a room when we were younger. And so as a six-year-old, I took on all this stuff. And what's really interesting is I actually for years I've had this um picture that I have actually read on my desk of the six-year-old version of me. And so you can see in that picture that my hair was cut short.

And prior to that, my hair was long and it was kind of like straight, didn't have much curl or wave. And then my hair got cut short and when it grew back in, it grew in curly. And, you know, they used to say that, it was because it it was layered and it grew in curly. But what I now know about genetics is my genetics flipped.

I went from straight hair to curly hair because of the stuff that happened to me, because the trauma that happened to me. And what's so interesting is I just in January of this year cut my hair. And I never really correlated the two. But she was the girl that I had to go back because you could actually see how she lost so much of her joy even in that picture.

She's just this little, you know, girl who's stoically holding it all together. So I went back and got her and she's the one I'm having fun with now. And she's the one that I'm bringing up with me on stage and bringing into the the meetings and letting her know that, you know, we can make up for lost time. I love that.

Thanks for this, Amanda. Absolutely. Thank you, Govin. Love you.

Maybe two. Amanda, what a powerful conversation. Today, Amanda Carpenter brought something today that was something truly personal, of course, but also incredibly relevant for so many leaders, entrepreneurs, and builders. Because there comes a point that the strength that carried us this far starts asking a different question.

And the question isn't, hey, can I just keep on going? But what is this costing me? Amanda's story reminds us that armor can be useful. It protects us, helps us survive.

Helps us build, lead, and solve, carry maybe even more than we thought was possible. And then at some point, we might begin to notice that the armor is no longer protecting us. Maybe it's keeping us away for something. It's keeping us away from receiving.

It's keeping us away from joy. It's keeping us from being held, supported, loved, and fully present in the life that we've worked so hard to create. And that's what made this conversation so powerful. Amanda didn't reject.

The strong version of herself, she understood her, thanked her, and saw how that part of her had served so well. And then she began to make room for something softer, more present, more courageous, and even more alive. And one of the lines I'll carry from this conversation is you don't have to control the room to be safe in it. And that's leadership wisdom.

That's nervous system wisdom. It's life wisdom. And maybe as you listened, you something in you recognized your own version of that. The part of you that sort of scans the room and holds it all together, the part of you that believes that being needed is the same as being loved, the part of you that has been so busy protecting everyone else that it forgot to ask what it needs.

So here's the invitation: take out a paper napkin and write down the piece of armor that helped get you here, but may not need to come with you in the next chapter. Maybe it's control, over-responsibility, overperforming. Maybe it's Always being the strong one, the belief that receiving makes you owe somebody something, whatever it is, write it down and look at it with respect and ask, what would become available if I no longer had to carry this in the same way anymore? If this episode and conversation moves something in you, I hope you share it with someone who has always been strong for everyone else, somebody who needs to hear it.

And if you share your own napkin, tag us with it, hashtag paper napkin wisdom. Amanda, thank you for trusting me with this conversation. And thank you for showing us what courage can sound like when it stops performing strength and starts telling the truth. And everyone listening, remember, sometimes the next level of leadership does not begin when you become stronger.

Sometimes it begins when you finally feel safe enough to soften. I'm Govind J. Rahman. This is Paper Napkin Wisdom.

We will see you next time. I believe in you. Make it a great day.