Found in the Fire

EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode names something most high-functioning people have never had language for: the specific exhaustion of competent performance. Not burnout from doing too much — the deeper cost of managing your interior life before anyone ever has to witness it. The performing woman is not faking her life. She is doing everything she is supposed to do, with genuine skill and genuine care, while running a continuous background process of self-management that never shows up on a list and never gets to rest. This episode names what that actually costs her — in her nervous system, in her relationship with her own body's signals, and in the particular loneliness of being known only by the version of herself she has assembled to be acceptable. And it asks what it means when that performance begins to crack.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What the performing woman is actually doing — and why it is structural, not a costume, not a choice, and not a personality trait
• The three costs she has been paying without a name for any of them: the hypervigilance that never fully switches off, the loss of her own interoceptive signal (a concept we introduced last week), and the specific loneliness of being surrounded by people who love a version of her that is not all of her
• How the performing pattern is built — piece by piece, across a whole childhood, through ordinary environments and ordinary corrections, until the fawn response becomes automatic and faster than thought
• Why understanding the pattern is not enough to change it — and where the actual work lives (the body, not the mind)
• The crack: what it means when the performance begins to fail in small, persistent ways — and why that is not a breakdown but an invitation

FREE RESOURCE — THE INTEROCEPTION INVENTORY

Ten prompts over ten days to begin opening the channel between you and your body's signals. Not a diagnostic tool. Not a course. Just ten things to notice — one per day — structured to start the conversation.

→ untamedsovereigntycoaching.com/free-resource

READY TO GO DEEPER?

The Reclamation Primer is the best two hours you can spend if you want to actually experience all three modalities — somatic practice, EFT tapping, and an inner world journey — before you decide whether any of this is for you. Not an explanation. An experience.

→ untamedsovereigntycoaching.com/the-reclamation-primer

RESEARCH & REFERENCES

The following sources were referenced or inform the content of this episode.

THE FAWN RESPONSE:

• Walker, P. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote Publishing. — Pete Walker's foundational work identifying the fawn response as a fourth survival strategy alongside fight, flight, and freeze. Walker describes fawning as the pattern of becoming agreeable and accommodating to appease perceived threat — and the way that pattern outlives the threat itself. → pete-walker.com
• Porges, S.W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W.W. Norton & Company. — The neurological framework underlying the social engagement system and survival responses. The fawn response maps onto Porges' work on how the nervous system mobilizes connection and appeasement when direct fight-or-flight is not available. → stephenporges.com
• Maté, G. (2019). When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. Vintage Canada. — Documents the relationship between chronic suppression of emotional expression and physical health outcomes. Relevant to the episode's exploration of how managing the interior takes a cumulative toll the body cannot simply absorb.

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE:

• van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books. — The primary source cited in this episode. Decades of research documenting how incomplete emotional responses are held in the body as chronic tension, activation, and physiological patterning — and why insight-based approaches alone cannot fully address patterns that live at the body level. → besselvanderkolk.com
• Levine, P.A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. North Atlantic Books. — Somatic Experiencing, the modality developed by Levine, directly informs the idea that unexpressed physiological responses stay in the system. Relevant to the episode's description of ambient tension, bracing, and perpetual readiness as the body holding what performance requires you to ignore.

CHILDHOOD CONDITIONING AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM:

• Felitti, V.J., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. — The landmark ACE study documenting how early adverse experiences are encoded in the nervous system and produce measurable effects across the lifespan. The episode's account of the fawn response being built in "ordinary environments" is grounded in this body of research. → cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces
• Siegel, D.J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. — Interpersonal neurobiology and how relational experiences in childhood shape the developing nervous system. Relevant to the episode's account of how repeated correction of emotional expression becomes encoded below the level of conscious choice.

LEONARD COHEN:

• Cohen, L. (1992). "Anthem." The Future. Columbia Records. — Source of the closing quote: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

NOTE ON THE RESEARCH

The fawn response as a named concept originates in trauma therapy rather than academic neuroscience, and the research base is still developing. What is well-established is the underlying neurophysiology: survival responses are subcortical, automatic, and faster than conscious thought, which is why pattern-change work must happen at the body level rather than the cognitive level. The clinical literature on ACEs, somatic trauma, and nervous system regulation consistently supports the core claim of this episode — that the pattern is not personality, it is learned adaptation, and learned adaptations can be unlearned. That is the work.

CONNECT

Instagram: @untamed.sovereignty Website: untamedsovereigntycoaching.com

If this episode landed for you — share it with the woman in your life who holds everything together for everyone and has never once considered that the exhaustion might not be about volume. She needs to hear that the gap between who she is performing and who she actually is was never a flaw. It was a strategy. And strategies can change.

◆ UNTAMED SOVEREIGNTY COACHING · Found in the Fire — Season 1, Episode 03 · untamedsovereigntycoaching.com

EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode goes into interoception — the body's ability to perceive
its own internal states — and why it matters more than almost anything
else in this work. Research consistently shows that people socialized
as women receive stronger interoceptive signals than people socialized
as men, while also being more likely to distrust what they're feeling.
That gap between signal strength and signal trust is not a personal
failure. It is the predictable result of a culture that has spent
centuries teaching women to override their own knowing.

IN THIS EPISODE

•  What interoception actually is — and why it is the foundational mechanism by which you access your own emotional life
• The research on why people socialized as women receive stronger
    body signals and have a harder time trusting them
• The systematic, cultural process by which women are taught to
    dismiss their own interoceptive knowing — in medicine, in
    relationships, and internally
• What it actually looks like to start staying in the conversation
    with your body's signals — in specific, ordinary moments
  
  

FREE RESOURCE — THE INTEROCEPTION INVENTORY

Ten prompts over ten days to begin opening the channel between
you and your body's signals. Not a diagnostic tool. Not a course.
Just ten things to notice — one per day — structured to start the
conversation.

→ untamedsovereigntycoaching.com/free-resource


READY TO GO DEEPER?

The Reclamation Primer is the best two hours you can spend if you
want to actually experience all three modalities — somatic practice,
EFT tapping, and an inner world journey — before you decide whether
any of this is for you. Not an explanation. An experience.

→ untamedsovereigntycoaching.com/the-reclamation-primer

RESEARCH & REFERENCES

The following studies were referenced or inform the content of this
episode. 

• INTEROCEPTION — SEX AND GENDER DIFFERENCES:
  • Klabunde, M., Kaye, W.H., et al. (2017). Interoception and gender:
    What aspects should we pay attention to? Consciousness and Cognition,
    48, 42–52.
    — The primary study cited for higher interoceptive awareness in
    females (noticing bodily sensations more often, better understanding
    the relationship between bodily sensations and emotional states) and
    lower interoceptive accuracy (less efficient in consciously detecting
    heartbeats).
    → pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27866005
  • Ainley, V., et al. (2021). Sex differences in interoceptive accuracy:
    A meta-analysis. International Journal of Psychophysiology.
    — Meta-analysis examining sex differences across multiple
    interoceptive tasks, including heartbeat detection and gastric
    awareness. Finds that males tend to report greater confidence in
    interoceptive perception.
    → researchgate.net/publication/356412051
  • Mazgaj, R., et al. (2020). Sex-specific relationships between
    interoceptive accuracy and emotion regulation. PLOS ONE.
    — Examines the relationship between interoception and emotion
    regulation, finding sex-specific differences in how interoceptive
    accuracy relates to emotional processing in males versus females.
    → ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7324473
• MEDICAL DISMISSAL OF WOMEN'S SYMPTOMS:
  • Lichtman, J.H., et al. (2018). Symptom recognition and healthcare
    experiences of young women with acute myocardial infarction.
    Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes (Yale School of
    Public Health / American Heart Association).
    — Young women are more likely to have cardiac symptoms dismissed by
    providers as non-cardiac. Published in Circulation, a journal of
    the American Heart Association.
    → news.yale.edu/2018/02/19/heart-attack-symptoms-often-misinterpreted-younger-women
  • Safdar, B., et al. (referenced in multiple emergency medicine studies).
    Women presenting to emergency departments with chest pain wait
    approximately 29% longer than men to be evaluated for possible
    cardiac events. Women under 55 are up to seven times more likely
    than men to be sent home from the ER without proper cardiac testing.
    — Referenced in the Journal of the American Heart Association and
    cited across multiple emergency medicine research reviews.
  • Academic Emergency Medicine (referenced study). Women presenting to
    emergency departments with severe abdominal pain wait up to 33%
    longer than men presenting with the same symptoms.
    → northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/gaslighting-in-womens-health
  • NIH Policy on Sex as a Biological Variable (2016).
    It was not until 2016 that the National Institutes of Health required
    sex to be considered as a biological variable in most studies it
    funded — meaning the majority of prior clinical research, including
    pain research, was conducted primarily on male subjects.
    → orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender/nih-policy-sex-biological-variable

NOTE ON THE RESEARCH

The science of interoception and sex differences is active and
evolving. Some studies find clear differences in interoceptive
sensitivity between people socialized as women and men; others
find that differences in reporting confidence (women consistently
underestimating their own accuracy) account for some of the gap.
What remains consistent across the literature is this: people
socialized as women notice more, trust it less, and have been
given strong cultural reasons for that distrust. That is the gap
this work is designed to close.

CONNECT

Instagram: @untamed.sovereignty
Website: untamedsovereigntycoaching.com

If this episode resonated — share it with the person in your life
who has been doing everything right and still lying awake at 2am
reconstructing conversations. She needs to hear that the gap
between understanding and change is not her fault.

◆ UNTAMED SOVEREIGNTY COACHING
  Found in the Fire — Season 1, Episode 02
  untamedsovereigntycoaching.com

What You'll Learn From This Episode:

• Why years of therapy, journaling, and podcasts can leave you more informed about your patterns — and still running every single one of them.
• The difference between the part of your brain that understands and the part that actually changes — and why they don't talk to each other.
• What the work looks like from the outside: the traffic that doesn't ruin your morning, the invoice you send without changing the number, the Saturday you actually see the bees.
• Why the gap between understanding and change is not a personal failure — and what it actually is.

You have done the work. You have the language for all of it. You can trace the pattern, name the wound, explain the mechanism with clinical precision.

And you are still running it.

In the first episode of Found in the Fire, Erica asks the question most healing content won't: why does understanding so rarely produce change? The answer lives in the gap between the thinking brain and the body — in the fact that the part of you that holds all your hard-won insight is not the part of you that runs the pattern. Those two parts live in different rooms. They don't communicate. And all the frameworks in the world won't reach a pattern that doesn't live where the frameworks land.

This episode is an honest map of where the real work lives. Not the methodology. The specific, lived, felt-in-the-body moments of what actually changes when the work finally reaches the right layer. What Tuesday morning looks like on the other side of it.

If you have been doing everything right and still lying awake at 2am reconstructing conversations — this one is for you.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• The Reclamation Primer — the best two hours you can spend if you want to experience all three modalities before deciding if this work is for you: untamedsovereigntycoaching.com/the-reclamation-primer
• Next episode: What Your Body Has Been Trying to Tell You — on interoception, women's sensitivity as intelligence, and what gets possible when you stop calling it a liability.

If this landed: share it with the woman in your life who has been doing everything right and still can't quite figure out why it doesn't feel like enough. She needs to hear that the gap between understanding and change is not her fault.

Found in the Fire is a podcast about somatic healing, ancient wisdom, and the specific moments that change everything. New episodes every other week. Host: Erica Adams / Untamed Sovereignty Coaching.