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Our bodies have unconscious patterns of responding to perceived threats that happen without conscious control, ranging from simple to complex defensive reactions.

• Fight response involves mobilizing energy against a threat with aggressive outbursts, criticism, or controlling behaviors

• Flight response means moving away from threats through anxiety, overthinking, or intellectual distancing

• Freeze response feels like "one foot on gas, one on brake" – internal activation with external immobilization

• Functional freeze allows you to operate normally while feeling detached from yourself and others

• Shutdown/collapse response creates complete disconnection, numbness, and loss of muscle tone

• Fawning response involves pleasing others while disconnecting from your authentic needs and feelings

• These responses aren't defects but natural protections that can become problematic when chronically activated

• Healing involves metabolizing these energies rather than eliminating them

• The goal is creating a nervous system that's both strong and flexible in its responses

• Understanding your default patterns helps you respond more authentically in relationships

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

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What if the thing sabotaging your communication isn't your words, but your body's stuck survival strategy just trying to keep you safe? We go deep with Enneagram coach Michelle McDonald to explore the instinct layer of enneagram-self-preservation, social, and one-to-one—and how these fast, automatic behavior patterns quietly steer your relationships, leadership, and daily choices. This is personal development that bridges the gap between insight and embodied change.

Instead of stopping at personality types, we map motivation to somatic awareness so you can notice dysregulation, pause, and choose a different path in the moments that matter. This is self-awareness tools meets nervous system regulation for women who've done the therapy and read the books but still get caught in the same loops.

Michelle shares how the Enneagram outperforms other typologies as a practical growth tool by revealing protective patterns and giving each Enneagram type a unique, actionable route to change. We break down the Enneagram instincts and Enneagram subtypes with vivid anchors—a vigilant rabbit (self-preservation), a cohesive herd (social), and bonded macaws (one-to-one)—and translate them into real life for conscious leadership and relationship repair.

You'll hear: the partner who withdraws to protect autonomy (classic pursue-withdraw pattern), the parent who pursues repair to protect belonging (attachment styles in action), the business owner who craves intensity to feel alive and effective. This is conflict resolution through the lens of fight flight freeze, not just better communication scripts.

We dig into why "just communicate" fails when you're dysregulated, how to spot your instinct's telltale moves through body-based healing cues, and what a simple pause can do to bring your body, head, and heart back online. This is emotional intelligence that respects your window of tolerance—self-regulation for the over-functioning woman who leads at work and home.

This conversation is rich with marriage communication examples, team dynamics insights, and grounded takeaways for breaking cycles: identify your lead instinct, strengthen the neglected one, and right-size the one that overdrives your system. You'll leave with a clear framework to navigate conflict in marriage more skillfully, set cleaner boundaries with somatic awareness, and feel more like yourself—present, resourced, and able to choose. This is inner work that translates to outer results.

If you've mastered the concepts but still feel the pursue-withdraw cycle in your relationship, if you lead teams but struggle with authentic leadership in conflict, if you're craving conscious awareness that lands in your body—this is your bridge from thought patterns to embodied change. This is mindfulness practice meets Enneagram subtypes, polyvagal theory meets real-life relationships.

Find Michelle:

Instagram @ origins_enneagram_consulting

Website

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

We guide a short morning practice to center attention, reclaim energy, and choose how to move through the day with grace and clarity. Gratitude, body awareness, and gentle course-correction help build presence without pressure.

• orienting to day, time, and season
• sensory check-in with the world outside
• body scan from head to feet
• deep breathing to build calm energy
• naming agency, choice, and intention
• calling energy back and setting boundaries
• releasing what is not ours to carry
• practicing pause, forgiveness, and reset
• ending with gratitude and a slower pace

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.