This one really blew my mind — and I was asking questions I'm genuinely grappling with myself. Kristen Schwartz is a certified trauma recovery coach, author of The Healed Empath, and founder of Realized Empath — a wellness community supporting highly sensitive people and empaths since 2016. Kristen and I dig into how to tell the difference between a trauma response and your highly sensitive nature, why labelling yourself an empath can sometimes mask unresolved trauma, what to actually do with emotions you absorb from other people, and why the next step in the empath journey is taking full responsibility for your own inner state.

Connect with Kristen:

www.realizedempath.com

www.instagram.com/realizedempath

WORK WITH ME 1:1:

❥Softening into self- 3 month 1:1 with Whats App Support:https://marina-yt.mykajabi.com/offers/PAWQhZHu

❥❥1:1 Coaching with me: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWcZM5s9c2OjOLwoGMI5jE6rh_JAzjN2d_vCtuVe7e3pVGxw/viewform

DOWNLOAD FOR FREE:

• Stay or Go: 5 Clarity Questions to Reconnect with Your Inner Knowing: https://marinayt.com/stay-or-go-guide

• Attatchment Practice: Discover the actual blocks beneath the surface so you can actually have the deep intimacy you crave: https://marinayt.com/attachment-practice

• Connect & Ground: 10 Incredible Somatic Practices for Nervous System Regulation: https://marinayt.com/connect-and-ground

• Alive & Aligned: 7 Embodiment Practices For Self Connection: https://marinayt.com/alive-and-aligned

• Trigger to Rooted: A step by step process of working with your triggers: https://marinayt.com/trigger-2-rooted

VIEW MY COURSES & RESOURCES:

https://marinayt.com/resources

CONNECT WITH ME:

Follow me on Instagram:⁠ ⁠www.instagram.com/marina.y.t⁠⁠

Subscribe to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@marinatriner

Top Episode Quotes:

"Labelling yourself highly sensitive can mask being a trauma survivor. The coping mechanisms you developed to feel safe — those aren't your sensitivity. Those are survival." — Kristen Schwartz

"Once your mind gets involved in an emotion — once you're questioning it, dissecting it, asking whose it is — it's already yours. You've made it your responsibility." — Kristen Schwartz

"Someone's opinion of me felt like an emergency in my nervous system. Because how they saw me would determine how they treated me. Therefore they were unsafe." — Kristen Schwartz

"We've created a culture that looks outward for inner peace — blame, control, trigger warnings. And it's made people less able to sit with their own stuff." — Kristen Schwartz

"You can still be deeply sensitive without losing yourself. The goal is to feel everything — and still stay at peace." — Kristen Schwartz

highly sensitive person, empath healing, trauma and sensitivity, nervous system healing, somatic healing, empath vs highly sensitive, trauma response, emotional regulation, absorbing others emotions, inner peace, people pleasing, hypervigilance, fawn response, trauma recovery, embodiment, realized empath, deep within podcast, Kristen Schwartz, Marina Triner, emotional responsibility

One of the most confusing parts of the healing journey is not knowing whether what you're feeling is a trauma response or the discomfort of actually growing. I've been teaching about this in my group program and I wanted to bring it here too — because getting this wrong is one of the biggest ways we stay stuck. I walk through what a trauma response actually feels like in the body, what a dis-confirming experience is and why it's so important, the five F's of nervous system response, and the three options I always give my clients when it comes to relational triggers. This one is practical, grounded, and something I wish someone had taught me a long time ago.

Join Safe to Connect:

https://marinayt.com/safe-to-connect

WORK WITH ME 1:1:

❥Softening into self- 3 month 1:1 with Whats App Support:https://marina-yt.mykajabi.com/offers/PAWQhZHu

❥❥1:1 Coaching with me: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWcZM5s9c2OjOLwoGMI5jE6rh_JAzjN2d_vCtuVe7e3pVGxw/viewform

DOWNLOAD FOR FREE:

• Stay or Go: 5 Clarity Questions to Reconnect with Your Inner Knowing: https://marinayt.com/stay-or-go-guide

• Attatchment Practice: Discover the actual blocks beneath the surface so you can actually have the deep intimacy you crave: https://marinayt.com/attachment-practice

• Connect & Ground: 10 Incredible Somatic Practices for Nervous System Regulation: https://marinayt.com/connect-and-ground

• Alive & Aligned: 7 Embodiment Practices For Self Connection: https://marinayt.com/alive-and-aligned

• Trigger to Rooted: A step by step process of working with your triggers: https://marinayt.com/trigger-2-rooted

VIEW MY COURSES & RESOURCES:

https://marinayt.com/resources

CONNECT WITH ME:

Follow me on Instagram:⁠ ⁠www.instagram.com/marina.y.t⁠⁠

Subscribe to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@marinatriner

Top Episode Quotes:

"Our minds and bodies confuse threat with safety really easily. We can read safe situations as threatening — and threatening situations as safe."

"When you receive something that was absent in your childhood — love, support, connection — it can register as unsafe. But what's actually happening is the emotions from that time are finally coming to the surface."

"Dis-confirming experiences are uncomfortable because they are filled with the emotions from childhood we haven't yet felt. That's not danger. That's healing."

"Fix is trying to be somebody's therapist when they don't need one. It is a trauma response — and it lives in the nervous system, in the body."

"If somebody does not take in your feedback given from a regulated state, that's important information. That's when boundaries aren't optional — they're necessary."

trauma response, nervous system healing, somatic healing, discomfort vs trauma, healing journey, triggers and trauma, five trauma responses, fawn response, freeze response, fight flight freeze, relational triggers, inner child healing, embodiment, self trust, safe attachment, deep within podcast, Marina Triner, somatic coaching, complex trauma, emotional regulation

I was so excited for this one, and Nicole did not disappoint. Dr. Nicole LePera, the Holistic Psychologist, trained at Cornell University and the New School for Social Research, is the founder of SelfHealers Circle and the author of three books including the number one New York Times bestseller How to Do the Work. In this conversation, Nicole and I go deep into covert narcissism, how growing up with emotional unavailability shapes every relationship that follows, what re-parenting actually looks like in the body, and why healing is never a straight line from A to B. I had so many personal realisations listening back to this one, about my own relational blueprint, my expectations, and how narcissism in my family has quietly shaped how I show up with others.

Connect with Nicole:

theholisticpsychologist.com

www.instagram.com/the.holistic.psychologist

WORK WITH ME 1:1:

❥Softening into self- 3 month 1:1 with Whats App Support:https://marina-yt.mykajabi.com/offers/PAWQhZHu

❥❥1:1 Coaching with me: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfWcZM5s9c2OjOLwoGMI5jE6rh_JAzjN2d_vCtuVe7e3pVGxw/viewform

DOWNLOAD FOR FREE:

• Stay or Go: 5 Clarity Questions to Reconnect with Your Inner Knowing: https://marinayt.com/stay-or-go-guide

• Attatchment Practice: Discover the actual blocks beneath the surface so you can actually have the deep intimacy you crave: https://marinayt.com/attachment-practice

• Connect & Ground: 10 Incredible Somatic Practices for Nervous System Regulation: https://marinayt.com/connect-and-ground

• Alive & Aligned: 7 Embodiment Practices For Self Connection: https://marinayt.com/alive-and-aligned

• Trigger to Rooted: A step by step process of working with your triggers: https://marinayt.com/trigger-2-rooted

VIEW MY COURSES & RESOURCES:

https://marinayt.com/resources

CONNECT WITH ME:

Follow me on Instagram:⁠ ⁠www.instagram.com/marina.y.t⁠⁠

Subscribe to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@marinatriner

Top Episode Quotes:

"We all become self-focused when we feel threatened — that's survival. But when someone is consistently unable to hold anyone else's perspective, that's a different pattern entirely." — Dr. Nicole LePera

"I was a million miles away, demanding someone feel close to me — while every instinct in my body was pushing them away. That was the contradiction I had to face." — Dr. Nicole LePera

"Re-parenting begins in the body. Teaching your nervous system how to come back to safety — that's the foundation everything else is built on." — Dr. Nicole LePera

"The familiar thing that's causing harm still feels safer than the unknown thing that might heal you. That's just how a nervous system works." — Dr. Nicole LePera

"You don't have to get rid of your past entirely. The goal is to give yourself a choice — to bring forward what still serves you and break free from what's overtaking your present." — Dr. Nicole LePera

inner child healing, reparenting, covert narcissism, nervous system healing, somatic healing, childhood emotional neglect, attachment wounds, relational patterns, hypervigilance, emotional attunement, people pleasing, family estrangement, self healing, trauma recovery, embodiment, deep within podcast, Nicole LePera, holistic psychologist, Marina Triner, How to Do the Work