208 Pausing without a Plan

We talk a lot about slowing down and how it's really good for us, but we talk much less about what it means to stay.  Like really stay.... without doing it for productivity gains.  

This episode explores holding space for yourself,  not as a technique, but as a way of inhabiting yourself, experiencing yourself without the need to learn from it yet (and why that's really good for your HPA axis!)

Join me for this short but profound episode. 

******************

‘Becoming’ is the new membership I’ve created for this phase

Becoming is a space for women in this in-between phase where old identities no longer fit, and new ones haven’t fully arrived yet.

The waitlist is now open.

🔗 Join the waitlist:
https://www.sallygarozzo.com/becoming

*********************************************

📲 Connect with Sally:

Email: info@sallygarozzo.com 

[On-Demand Masterclass] How To Heal The Trauma Underlying Your Menopause Symptom Severity [£17]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/healingtrauma 

[Online Practitioners Diploma - Self Paced] Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner [£127]: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/meno

[One to One] Bespoke Transformational Hypnotherapy & Coaching: https://www.sallygarozzo.com/rapid-transformational-therapist 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallygarozzo/

Send me a WhatsApp: https://wa.me/message/FTARBMO7CRLEL1

Transcript

Sally Garozzo (00:01.208)
So today we're talking about holding space for yourself first and also slowing it all down so that you can hold space for yourself first. And I want to start with a metaphor because this whole topic is actually hard to explain in a straight line. It's more like you feel this stuff, you know? So metaphor is a beautiful gateway into this. So I want you to imagine that you are driving on a motorway.

It's not a dramatic drive, nothing's gone wrong. You're not lost, you're not in a crisis or anything like that. You're just driving. And something in you starts to feel tired. I need to stop. It's not a forever stop. It's not like a huge life decision, not like I'm falling apart or anything. Just stop. And you see one of those lay-bys. It's not the hard shoulder. It's just, you know, those little pull-ins side of the road places where you can just park up.

And so you pull in, you stop and you breathe and your body starts to feel different. You can sense the vibration of the car that was going. You can sense that residue of the hum and you don't even realise how tightly you were gripping the wheel until your hands start to unclench. You don't realise how fast your mind was going until it has nothing to chase or focus on for a moment.

The engine of your car might still be ticking over and cars are still flying past, the world is still moving, but you're not. And in that moment, no one is asking you to justify it. It's just a pause. No one's saying, what's wrong with you? Have you tried breathing exercises or what the hell is the plan then? You're just stopped.

And I think a lot of women in midlife and especially in menopause are experiencing this kind of lay by moment. Sometimes it happens gently and gradually and sometimes it happens like your body just pulls the handbrake for you and you have no control. You're just in the lay by.

Sally Garozzo (02:17.954)
And what's confronting about it isn't even the tiredness, it's the fact that we don't really have a template for stopping without turning it into a breakdown or some kind of productivity strategy. And this is what I want to explore today is this idea that it doesn't have to be the big dramatic transformation, but it can be just a simple radical act of just being with yourself without rushing, just sitting there.

in the lay-by without having to be productive or going anywhere. What a nice idea, hey? So let's just bridge this whole idea to last week's episode, which was all about the thing you didn't know you needed, attunement. It's this idea that so many women don't need.

Sally Garozzo (03:17.26)
It's this idea that so many women don't need more information about menopause now, they just need to be met in what is happening to them, with them. Because you can read all the books, you can listen to all the podcasts, you can understand all the hormone stuff and still feel like something is missing. And often what is missing is the thing you didn't even know you needed. It's the thing you didn't even know to ask for, attunement.

being met, being held in someone's presence, not analyzed or fixed or corrected, just met. And what I want to say this week is that attunement is the beginning, but it isn't the whole thing. Attunement is the moment of recognition. Holding space is what happens next. Holding space is staying. It's remaining present.

And this is where many of us struggle because we've become very good at noticing ourselves and having those breakthrough moments and then immediately overriding ourselves. We notice that we're overwhelmed and yet we push through. We notice we're sad and we distract ourselves and button up again. We notice we're tired and we start planning how to be less tired so that we can keep going. And it's very subtle. It's not like we're consciously thinking,

I must not feel anything. It's more like our system has learned that feelings are bit of an inconvenience. So even when we do have the insight, we don't actually stay with what we've noticed. We go straight from recognition into management. And honestly, this is why so many women feel like they're doing all the right things, but they still don't feel settled because insight alone doesn't settle the nervous system.

doesn't settle the hormones or the body or the HPA axis. What does settle all of those things is presence, feeling met. And so for many of us, the missing piece isn't just another tool, it's actually space.

Sally Garozzo (05:34.4)
and breathe.

Now there's a concept that I love and it's this phrase, host yourself first. And I want to talk about it in a really normal real life way because it can sound a bit lofty. Hosting yourself first basically means this, anything you are likely to meet out there in the world, you need to be willing to meet in

here in yourself, I'm pointing to my body in here first, because if you're not willing to meet it in yourself, it will run your life from the shadows, from the shadow parts of you, from the shadows that you experience as interruptions, inconsistencies, irritations in the outside world. For example, if you're afraid of conflict, you probably have

unhosted anger in your system. If you're exhausted but you can't rest, you probably have unhosted fear about what happens when you stop. If you can't tolerate uncertainty, you probably have an old imprint that says, not knowing is dangerous.

And what happens is that we become extremely skilled at managing ourselves to avoid those internal states. We're talking about internal states that we micromanage. We keep moving, we keep doing, we keep coping and looking for coping strategies. And then we wonder why midlife feels so confronting because suddenly the coping strategies stop working in the same way.

Sally Garozzo (07:30.873)
This is the thing I keep seeing, especially around menopause. It's not that you suddenly become weak. It's that the body is no longer willing to keep carrying what was never processed. It's no longer willing to keep buffering, suppressing, overriding. And hosting yourself first is learning to meet what arises without immediately trying to do something with it.

Sally Garozzo (08:04.204)
Now, you might think, well, that's a bit indulgent, but we're not, we're not indulging in it, we're not spiralling in it, we're just meeting it, and that is really it. It's about having that intention to just meet it.

to be able to say, there's irritation here. And this is what irritation feels like in my body. Hmm, there's sadness here. And this is what it feels like in my body. There's fear here. And this is what it feels like in my body. There's apathy here. And this is what it feels like. There's resentment here. And this is what it feels like.

So instead of immediately asking how do I get rid of this, we're asking how can I just be with it for a moment and where is it in my body? What does it actually feel like in my body? And for that we need patience.

That's holding space for ourselves. That's hosting ourselves first. And as we do this, we start to regain an inner sense of compassion for ourselves and a deeper understanding of the world around us. And it allows those fears and anxieties that were running from the shadows to soften automatically and stop being the horror movie in our head. When you face the thing you're afraid of,

Internally, it no longer needs to scream at you to get your attention.

Sally Garozzo (09:46.06)
Okay, so let's take another breath.

Sally Garozzo (09:51.161)
So I hope that's all landing for you. And now I'd love to talk about something that we have to acknowledge in order to be able to host ourselves and hold space for ourselves. And that is slowing it all down. Because slowing down helps us to access the internal state that we need to hold space for ourselves.

And I get it, some people say slow down, like that's a really cute lifestyle suggestion. yeah, have you tried slowing down? Have you tried drinking more water? Have you tried doing less in this day and age? And for many women actually slowing down doesn't feel soothing. It feels threatening. And if that's you, I just want to normalize that, especially if...

You're living inside a fight or a flight trauma response. Because we essentially live inside that kind of culture that treats speed like some kind of safety mechanism. Quick replies mean you're on it. Fast action means you're competent. Getting over things quickly means you're strong.

So if you've been rewarded your whole life for being capable, productive, and being the one who holds it all together, slowing down can feel like stepping off a ledge. It can feel like, well, look, if I stop, I just won't start again. If I slow down, I can't risk falling behind. If I rest, like the whole entire system and structure that I've created will just collapse.

And it might. I think menopause really exposes this because in earlier years, a lot of women can run on adrenaline and cortisol and determination and people pleasing and perfectionism and sheer force of will. And then midlife comes along and your body goes, no, we're not doing that anymore. We can't.

Sally Garozzo (12:08.908)
And it's not because you're failing, it's because you're changing tempo. It's because your physiology is asking for a totally different rhythm now. And here's what I want to say really clearly. Slowing down isn't opting out of life. It's actually stepping back into it, stepping back into the natural rhythm, coming back into your own body. Because when we live too fast,

You can't hear your true needs. It's drowned out by speed and a false sense that speed will make us or getting everything done, everything ticked off the list will make us finally settle. It won't.

Sally Garozzo (12:56.782)
So one of the things I find really helpful is looking at nature, because nature doesn't rush. A tree doesn't panic because it's not blossoming yet. A forest doesn't rebuild itself in a weekend. A season doesn't apologize for being slow. I mean, if there's one thing we can learn from January, right? And yet human beings are walking around with this internal pressure that says faster is better.

Faster is safer. Faster means you're doing it right. So when we slow down, we often collide with something. We collide with what we've been avoiding. We collide with a grief. We collide with extreme fatigue, with anger, with resentment, with bitterness, with blame, with things we think we're supposed to not feel.

things we've been trying to cover up because we've been told that they're vulgar or not palatable. But what we're doing is we're colliding with the truth of how much we've actually been carrying. And this is why the liminal space can feel so dreadfully uncomfortable because it's the space where you've left the old rhythm behind, but you're not fully in the new rhythm yet.

you're not who you were and you're not yet who you're becoming. I'll say that again. You're not yet, you're not who you were, but you're not yet who you're becoming. It's the space between the not now and the not yet. And the mind hates it. It hates it. It's scratching around for a label. It's

madly looking for a plan. It wants a timeline to enable it to feel settled. But the body is doing something different. Your body is reorganizing. And in this space, holding space for yourself often looks like letting go of the belief that something needs to be achieved right now. Letting go of the belief that you must get somewhere quickly. Letting the moment just be the moment.

Sally Garozzo (15:19.278)
even if the moment is messy or unclear or just you sitting there thinking, I really don't know what to feel. I just know I can't do what I used to do. And that's exactly how it's meant to be. But we label it as a failure, as something gone wrong. It's really not.

Sally Garozzo (15:43.491)
And so what does holding space for yourself actually look like then? It's not glamorous. It's not an Instagram morning routine. It's often really small. It can look like just not forcing yourself to be fine. It can look like not demanding clarity or not scratching around for clarity, just being with un-clarity, being with the mud.

not rushing to make things mean something. It can look like tears without a story.

Maybe it looks like just noticing an irritation and not immediately turning it into self-criticism or blaming others.

Or it might look like feeling that familiar tightness in your chest and saying, okay, you're here. I'm listening. Acknowledging that feeling. Now just to be clear, holding space for yourself is not the same as wallowing. It's not definitely not spiraling. It's not collapsing into helplessness. It's actually quite steadying.

It's the part of you that can sit next to what is true, what is actually emerging right now. Like you're sitting beside a friend on the beach or on a bench. You're not lecturing them. You're not trying to cheer them up. You're just there.

Sally Garozzo (17:25.142)
And their nervous system registers that and so does yours. Because what the nervous system craves is not advice, it's not fixing. It craves safety. It craves being accompanied. It craves connection and knowing that someone's with us. And for many women, the first time they experience this,

is in the presence of someone else, a therapist, a friend, someone else going through what they're going through, a community. And then eventually we learn how to become that presence for ourselves. That's the work. That's the return to self, the return to love. They say that all anxiety is separation anxiety. When we return,

to ourselves that separation, that anxiety dissolves.

And as I'm saying all of this, I'm really aware that for most women, the reason...

Sally Garozzo (18:36.472)
And as I'm saying all of this, I'm really aware that for many women, the reason this is hard is simply because you've never had it modeled. You've never had a space where you didn't have to perform. I speak from experience here. I know I'm saying the word you, but I mean us, everyone. Where we didn't have to be productive, where we didn't have to show up with a neat story and a neat conclusion. We've never had a space where we could just be mid process.

And that is exactly why I created my membership, Becoming. Because I kept meeting women who didn't need more tips. They needed a place to inhabit this stage of life while it's happening. And if you've been listening to my podcast for the last three episodes or so, you'll know that Becoming isn't a course, it's not coaching, it's not therapy. It's designed to be a conversational space for women in midlife and menopause.

who can feel that something is rearranging and they don't want to rush it. They want a space to slow down without falling behind. A space where we can all practice holding space for ourselves with others nearby. Witnessing. It's a beautiful thing. And the wait list for becoming is now open. There's absolutely no pressure to join. It's simply there if this episode has touched

something in you and you've realised you want more of this kind of space in your life that is reciprocated. And of course you can find that link in the show notes. So let's just come back to the lay by now. You don't live there, you don't build a house there, you don't analyse it to death, you just pull over and you let the engine idle.

So this week I want to offer you a very gentle invitation. Notice where your body is asking you to pull over. We're not about fixing anything, not to decide anything, just to pause, to soften your grip, to stop rushing and allow whatever wants to be noticed to be noticed.

Sally Garozzo (21:01.898)
if it even does. Maybe something rises up but maybe something sinks down, maybe your awareness sinks down. Maybe it's subtle, maybe it's just a body sensation like a buzz or a restlessness.

Sally Garozzo (21:21.762)
because you don't need to know what comes next for this moment to be enough. Maybe that noticing is enough.

Sally Garozzo (21:34.296)
Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you in the next one.