Finding Your Freedom, Autonomy, and Independence - High Functioning Women Series Part Four [377]

Flying Free

Natalie Hoffman

Divorce, Religion & Spirituality, Spiritual, Self-improvement, Narcissism, Christian, Education, Christianity, Abuse, Emotional, Marriage

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is part four of the High Functioning Christian Women in Destructive Marriages series, and today we talk about a concept that ties the whole series together: sovereignty.

Synonyms for sovereignty include: freedom, autonomy, and independence.

If you've spent years managing everyone's needs, shrinking your own, and building an identity around your capacity to give without limit, this episode will challenge a misunderstood theology that was never meant for women who are already pouring out from an empty cup.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

There's a critical difference between two things that look almost identical from the outside, and which one you're living in changes everything about how you understand your marriage.
The "die to self" command you've been handed your whole life? It may have been written for the exact opposite kind of person from you.
Why does even asking yourself "what do I need?" feel like a threat to your survival, not just a little uncomfortable?
What Jesus actually modeled about rest, limits, and saying no might completely reframe what you think faithful living looks like.
The one question you could ask yourself in the mirror every single morning that could quietly begin to change everything.

Get Today’s Free Resource:

🧐 Are you wondering what is happening inside your own painful and confusing marriage? I wrote a book just for you called Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage. Get a free chapter by going to isitmebook.com

I will also send you my weekly Hope Letters for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying FreeNow.com, and you're listening to the Flying Free Podcast,
0:08.9	a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden emotional and spiritual abuse.
0:17.6	Welcome to episode 377 of the Flying Free Podcast. This is part four of our series about
0:25.3	high-functioning Christian women in destructive marriages. So far we have spent three episodes
0:31.2	looking at things like the double life, how our empathy was weaponized against us, all the ways your extraordinary
0:39.5	strengths have been recruited into a system that was used against you. Today we're going to talk about
0:45.9	what's on the other side of all of that. Today, we're going to talk about sovereignty. Not the theological
0:52.7	kind, although we will get there. I mean the daily lived the
0:58.3	practical kind. The shift that we, that happens within us when we wake up in the morning and
1:04.1	instead of asking, who needs me today? What do I have to do today to meet everybody's needs?
1:10.5	Instead asking, what do I have to do today to meet everybody's needs instead asking what do I need today I know I know
1:16.4	I can already hear some of you getting uncomfortable so let me just say that discomfort that you
1:20.9	have that little voice that says um but isn't that selfish and what about everybody else or
1:26.7	you know doesn't God call me to serve that voice
1:30.0	is exactly what today's episode is about all right let me describe someone you know her very very well
1:37.3	she's the first one up in the morning and the last one to bed she remembers everyone's appointments
1:43.4	preferences sensitivities, and needs.
1:46.7	She notices when someone is off before they even know it themselves. She anticipates problems
1:53.1	and solves them, usually before anyone else has identified that there even was a problem.
1:59.4	And she's probably been this way since she was a child,
2:02.7	the responsible one, the capable one, the one that other adults could rely on. And somewhere
2:08.7	along the way, she internalized a story that said, your value is in what you do for other people.
	...

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