This is feminist wellness and I'm your host, nurse practitioner, functional medicine expert and life coach Victoria Albina. I'll be Welcome my love let's get started.

Hello hello my love I hope this finds you doing so well on this absolutely gorgeous day. So I was talking with my

client, Alene, the other day, about this shift from being reactive in the world to being responsive.

About learning to pause,

when you feel that little flood of anxiety,

worry, upset annoyance.

Well, when you feel it when it's more of a trickle, a drop

than a flood, actually.

When you feel that ping or zap in your belly

that comes often with sympathetic activation.

And when we think we've done something wrong,

when someone says something in your defenses perk up,

and you want to say, or you do actually say, you're wrong. You've got me all wrong.

I didn't mean to say something hurtful. I'm not a bad person. You're mischaracterizing me.

When that little voice of defensiveness raises its head urging us on to defend ourselves, our character, our spirit, our being against someone else's thoughts about us. It is in that moment of pause that you

get to remind yourself. You're not actually seeking to defend yourself against their

thoughts about you.

Because if they said something about you that resonated nowhere in your body,

you would just let it go.

It wouldn't touch in,

register.

But when it does, what we're doing in that defensiveness

...