How to Trust Yourself with Anna Holtzman

What happens when the signals coming from your body feel real, urgent, and convincing — but may not be telling you what you think they are?

In this episode, I welcome Dr. Howard Schubiner back to How to Trust Yourself for a conversation about chronic pain, neuroplastic symptoms, emotional expression, self-trust, and the complicated process of learning how to interpret what our bodies are telling us.

Howard is an internist, Clinical Professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and a leading voice in the field of mind-body medicine. His work played an important role in my own recovery from chronic migraine, and it has deeply influenced the way I think about the relationship between emotions, the nervous system, and physical symptoms.

Howard joins me to talk about his new book, Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety and Depression, and about how his understanding of chronic symptoms has evolved over more than two decades of working in this field.

We explore what it means to say that pain and other symptoms can be generated by the brain — without suggesting that they are imaginary or “all in your head” — and why understanding neuroplasticity can open up new possibilities for recovery.

But our conversation also goes beyond chronic pain. We talk about the connection between symptoms and authenticity, what can happen when you’ve spent years suppressing anger or avoiding conflict, and why beginning to express yourself more honestly can sometimes initially feel worse rather than better.

We also explore one of the central questions of this podcast: How do you trust yourself when your own brain can sometimes misinterpret danger?

In this conversation, we talk about:

• What neuroplastic or brain-generated symptoms actually are

• Why emotional pain can sometimes show up as physical pain

• How the brain learns and reinforces patterns of pain, fear, anxiety, and other symptoms

• Howard’s evolving understanding of predictive processing and how the brain creates our experience

• The role of Emotion Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET)

• Why suppressing your authentic self can contribute to physical and emotional symptoms

• The difference between privately processing anger and publicly expressing it

• Why asserting yourself may initially trigger guilt, fear, or even physical symptoms

• How people-pleasing and conflict avoidance can become deeply ingrained nervous-system patterns

• Why repetition and practice can help the brain learn that new ways of responding are safe

• Howard’s own experience with symptoms and health anxiety while launching his new book

• How to distinguish between a symptom that needs medical evaluation and one that may be neuroplastic

• The risks of both over-focusing and under-focusing on bodily sensations

• Why “trust your body” isn’t always as simple as it sounds

• How to cultivate discernment rather than blind trust

• Why getting conflicting opinions can sometimes help you realize there may not be one objectively “right” answer

• The importance of becoming your own advocate

• How trusted relationships and co-regulation can support self-trust

• Why certainty, belief, and flexibility all matter when navigating uncertainty

• The role authenticity can play in healing

• Why humor, connection, and community are such important parts of this work

Connect with Dr. Howard Schubiner

Website: https://www.unlearnyourpain.com/

Book: Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety and Depression

Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms: https://www.symptomatic.me/

TMS Wiki: https://www.tmswiki.org/

Connect with Anna Holtzman

Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman/

What if the very patterns that helped you become successful are also the patterns limiting how much success, joy, ease, and visibility you can actually hold?

In this episode, Anna talks with Chartered Psychologist Farya Barlas about what Farya calls trauma-led success — the ways that perfectionism, hyper-independence, overworking, people-pleasing, and other survival adaptations can become highly effective strategies for achievement.

These patterns aren’t inherently bad. In fact, they may be part of what helped you build the life or career you have today. But at a certain point, the same strategies that once protected and propelled you can begin to create a ceiling.

Farya shares how she helps high-achieving women move from success fueled by survival into what she calls reparative success: building from desire, capacity, creativity, choice, and a deeper sense of self-trust.

Anna and Farya also explore why healing doesn’t have to mean losing your edge, why discomfort isn’t always a sign that something is wrong, and how nervous-system work can support expansion rather than simply helping us stay comfortable inside familiar patterns.

They discuss money, ambition, visibility, identity, inherited beliefs about success, and the subtle signals that can tell us we’re ready for something more — even when, from the outside, everything appears to be going well.

In this episode, we explore:

• What “trauma-led success” looks like in high achievers

• Why survival strategies are often rewarded professionally

• The fear that healing will make us less ambitious or successful

• The difference between trauma-led success and reparative success

• Why nervous-system regulation isn’t always about avoiding discomfort

• How perfectionism and hyper-independence can become a ceiling

• The difference between authentic visibility and performing visibility

• How childhood and intergenerational beliefs can shape our relationship with money and receiving

• Why people often enter this work through business, leadership, money, or relationship challenges rather than a desire to “heal”

• How Farya helps clients build greater capacity for asking, receiving, earning, and being seen

• Why healing can be the foundation rather than the destination

• The question at the heart of Farya’s work: How good can it get?

About Farya Barlas

Farya Barlas is a Chartered Psychologist with more than 23 years of clinical experience. Her work focuses on helping high-functioning, ambitious women understand and move beyond subconscious survival-based patterns that can limit their capacity for success, visibility, wealth, leadership, and fulfillment.

Drawing from trauma work, nervous-system regulation, psychology, identity work, and decades of clinical experience, Farya helps clients move from simply surviving their success to fully inhabiting it.

She is also the host of the podcast From Trauma to CEO.

Connect with Farya

Website: https://www.faryabarlas.com

Instagram: @faryabarlas.psychologist

Podcast: From Trauma to CEO

Farya also generously offered listeners access to her trauma-led success checklist along with one day of Voxer access to explore what comes up as you work through it. Find the link in the show notes.

Connect with Anna

Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com

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

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

What if your capacity isn’t a limitation to overcome, but information you can build around?

In this episode, Anna talks with business strategist and coach Nikita Williams about what it means to create a business — and a life — that works with your actual energy, needs, and rhythms rather than constantly demanding that you override them.

Nikita is the founder of Crafted to Thrive and host of the Business With Chronic Illness podcast. Since 2017, she has helped creatives, holistic practitioners, and entrepreneurs living with chronic illness build sustainable businesses that create consistent revenue without requiring them to constantly do more.

Together, Anna and Nikita explore the shame that can arise around having limited or changing capacity, the pressure to follow one-size-fits-all formulas, and the surprising discomfort that can come with allowing things to become easier.

They also talk about visibility, self-trust, boundaries, nervous system patterns, identity, and why so many entrepreneurs unintentionally recreate the same rigid systems they wanted to escape in the first place.

In this conversation, you’ll hear about:

• Why “increase your capacity” can be such an unhelpful message

• Learning to treat your energy as something to steward rather than exploit

• How chronic illness shaped Nikita’s approach to business

• Why ease can feel uncomfortable, even when it’s exactly what you need

• The vulnerability of being visible and sharing who you really are

• How success can still be unsustainable

• Why boundaries are essential to building freedom

• The difference between having offers and having an actual business model

• How doing less can sometimes create better results

• What it means to trust that your pace is your pace

• Why Nikita believes business is deeply personal

• Building around your values, strengths, health, and real life instead of someone else’s formula

One of the central ideas in this episode is simple but powerful: your pace does not have to match anyone else’s.

As Nikita puts it, “My pace is my pace.”

This conversation is for anyone who has ever wondered whether they’re doing enough, moving fast enough, working hard enough, or somehow falling behind — and wants to experiment with building from a place of attunement instead.

Connect with Nikita Williams

Website: https://thrivewithnikita.com/

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

Podcast: Business With Chronic Illness, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also explore Nikita’s free business audit and join her email community, Built to Breathe, through her website.

Connect with Anna Holtzman

Website: www.annaholtzman.com

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman/

What happens when you’ve spent decades becoming exceptionally good at succeeding inside a system — and then decide to build something of your own?

In this episode, Anna sits down with Deb Boulanger, founder of Life After Corporate, who works with accomplished corporate women leaders making the transition into consulting, fractional leadership, coaching, and advisory work.

Deb knows this transition from the inside. After a highly successful corporate career — including growing a new business from zero to $32 million in 30 months and leading a team of more than 50 people — she reached a point where the pace was no longer sustainable. Burnout, the end of her marriage, caregiving, motherhood, and menopause all converged into a larger question: What do I actually want my life to look like now?

What followed was not simply a career change, but an identity shift.

In this conversation, Anna and Deb explore what happens psychologically when the title, team, salary, and company name that once reinforced your sense of competence are suddenly gone — and you have to trust your own judgment in a whole new way.

They talk about:

• Why leaving corporate can bring up unexpected self-worth wounds

• The role perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, and fear play in entrepreneurship

• Why market research can feel much more emotionally loaded than it sounds

• The fear of being perceived as “salesy” — and how Deb reframes selling as service

• Why visibility is essential if you want to be discoverable

• The connection between pricing and self-worth

• Deb’s powerful reminder: “No one is buying your self-esteem.”

• Why underpricing can lead to burnout, resentment, and blurred boundaries

• The difference between overpricing and overpromising

• Why one failed webinar, launch, or sales conversation is simply a data point — not proof that your business won’t work

• The financial and emotional “wobbles” that often happen when building something new

• How to keep going when your nervous system wants immediate proof that your efforts are working

• Why leaving corporate and building your next chapter can become something much deeper than a career move

Deb also shares stories from her work with women who have moved through uncertainty, rebuilt their confidence, and turned decades of experience into sustainable businesses and high-value advisory relationships.

At its heart, this conversation is about learning to separate your value as a human being from the results in your business — and trusting that the expertise you built over decades did not disappear when you left your corporate role.

Connect with Deb Boulanger

Website:

https://lifeaftercorporate.com/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/debboulanger-thegreatdo-over/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/deb_boulanger/

You can also find the Life After Corporate podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Connect with Anna Holtzman

Website:

www.annaholtzman.com

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/

What if you didn’t need to know exactly where your creative path was leading before you took the next step?

In this episode, Anna talks with Margo Tantau, creative industry veteran, founder of Tantau Studio, and host of the beloved Windowsill Chats podcast, about the winding path of a creative life and career.

Margo has spent more than 30 years working across art, product development, licensing, creative direction, retail, manufacturing, coaching, and artist representation. Rather than following one perfectly mapped-out career plan, she has built her work by staying curious, noticing what lights her up, and following the opportunities, people, and ideas that pull her forward.

Anna and Margo talk about what it means to create a career that feels unmistakably like you, even when you can’t see the destination yet. They explore the importance of keeping your creative flame alive, why connection can be more useful than trying to solve everything alone, and how allowing other people to support your work can make a creative life more sustainable.

They also get into the vulnerability of visibility: sharing your work, telling your stories, putting an offer into the world, and trusting that what comes naturally to you may be exactly what someone else has been looking for.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How Margo’s winding creative career evolved from design and retail into product development, licensing, artist representation, teaching, and podcasting

• Why you don’t need to know the destination before beginning a creative path

• Following curiosity and paying attention to the things that “turn your head”

• The difference between forcing creativity and allowing inspiration to emerge responsively

• Why keeping even a small thread of creativity alive matters

• The role of specificity and storytelling in helping people connect with your work

• The fears that can come with sharing your work and making yourself visible

• Why putting an offer into the world sometimes reveals a need you didn’t know was there

• Building a creative career through practice rather than waiting for one breakthrough moment

• How Margo manages a multifaceted creative business without trying to do everything herself

• Learning to ask for help, collaborate, and let your work be held by more than one pair of hands

• The importance of creative community and finding people with whom you don’t have to explain yourself

• Margo’s encouragement to follow the small tug toward whatever interests, excites, or intrigues you next

About Margo Tantau

Margo Tantau is a creative industry veteran who has spent her career elevating artists and turning ideas into thoughtful, successful products. With over 30 years of experience in product development, art direction, and creative brand building, she’s collaborated with hundreds of artists, championing their work, mentoring their growth, and helping shape collections that truly resonate.

Now, as founder of Tantau Studio, Margo formally represents a curated roster of surface designers and illustrators, continuing her long-held passion for connecting art with opportunity through strategic, heart-led representation.

She also hosts Windowsill Chats, a beloved podcast where she shares candid conversations with artists, makers, and industry leaders about creativity, business, and the satisfaction of building a life in art.

Margo believes that doing more of your own thing, boldly and consistently, is the key to building a career that’s true to who you are. To her, that’s what real creative success looks like.

Connect with Margo

Website: margotantau.com

Podcast: Windowsill Chats

Instagram: @windowsillchats and @mtantau

Connect with Anna

Website: www.annaholtzman.com

Instagram: @anna_holtzman

What happens when we stop trying to outrun the parts of our story we wish were different—and begin to understand that those very shadows may hold some of the material for our healing?

In this episode, Anna sits down with Cassidy Gard, a three-time Emmy Award-winning television producer, former Good Morning America correspondent, and author of Cosmic Goodness: Surrendering the Shadows to Live in the Light. Cassidy writes and speaks at the intersection of spirituality, motherhood, sobriety, grief, and reinvention.

For years, Cassidy made a career out of telling other people’s stories, covering breaking news, mass shootings, the Me Too movement, and some of the most emotionally intense events of our time. Behind the scenes, she was carrying a story of her own: growing up with an alcoholic father, childhood anger and shame, grief, anxiety, and the exhausting work of masking the parts of herself she didn’t yet know how to hold.

Cassidy began journaling at seven years old, and writing became both a refuge and, eventually, a way back to herself. In this conversation, she and Anna explore what happens when we turn toward our own inner world, recognize the breadcrumbs we’ve been leaving ourselves all along, and begin trusting the story that wants to emerge.

They talk about:

• Being highly visible while still hiding in plain sight

• Why Cassidy began journaling as a child and how her relationship with writing evolved

• The “cosmic winks” and seemingly small clues that can guide us through reinvention

• Moving from telling other people’s stories to claiming your own

• The emotional toll of working in breaking news and covering traumatic events

• Cassidy’s experience caring for her estranged father at the end of his life

• Grief, alcoholism, estrangement, and finding peace without receiving the closure you wanted

• Why writing a memoir can require giving yourself permission to own your lived experience

• Motherhood, sobriety, and intentionally creating a different kind of family life

• Why spirituality doesn’t have to mean being endlessly “easy breezy”

• The idea that the shadow isn’t the enemy—and that we can’t surrender what we haven’t first acknowledged

• How to begin writing when you don’t have huge blocks of uninterrupted time

• Trusting that your story is worth telling before you have proof of where it will lead

Cassidy also shares a powerful reminder for anyone who feels intimidated by the idea of writing: start smaller than the big picture. A voice memo, an iPhone note, ten minutes stolen from an otherwise full day—all of it counts. The work can accumulate before you ever know exactly what it is becoming.

As Cassidy puts it, “The shadow is also where the medicine is that you’re seeking. You cannot surrender what you have not identified and acknowledged.”

Connect with Cassidy

Learn more about Cosmic Goodness: Surrendering the Shadows to Live in the Light at CosmicGoodness.com.

Follow Cassidy on Instagram at @cassidygard.

Cosmic Goodness is available wherever books are sold. If you read it, consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads—reviews can make a meaningful difference for debut authors.

Connect with Anna

Follow Anna on Instagram: @anna_holtzman

Learn more about Anna’s work: www.annaholtzman.com

Send Anna an email and tell her what stayed with you from this episode: [email protected]

In this episode, Anna sits down with Australian botanical artist and creative mentor Ros Gervay to explore what it actually looks like to build a thriving creative life grounded not in hustle, but in capacity, compassion, and sustainable momentum.

In this episode, we explore:

• The story behind “Paint Rest Repeat”

Why Ros insists that rest is a core business strategy, how she learned it the hard way, and why true artistic growth doesn’t come from pushing — but from honoring your actual bandwidth.

• How Ros balances creativity, business, and wellbeing

Especially for sensitive creatives and folks with chronic stress responses, we talk about how to create, grow, and share your work without overwhelming your nervous system.

• The challenges emerging artists face most

Including fear of visibility, perfectionism, comparison, pricing fears, creative paralysis, and the belief that they need to “earn” their right to call themselves an artist.

• How Ros helps artists move through those barriers

Through community, mindset work, permission-giving, capacity-based planning, and reminding them that they’re allowed to build a business that actually fits them.

• What lights Ros up most about her work today

Hint: it has everything to do with witnessing artists come home to their own voice, trust themselves, and grow in ways that feel aligned — not forced.

This episode is equal parts grounding and inspiring — a gentle permission slip to build your creative life in a way that honors your whole self.

Connect with Ros

• Shop Art: www.rosgervayart.com

• For Artists: www.permissiontopaint.co

• Artist Community: www.facebook.com/groups/permissiontopaintfreecommunity

• Podcast: https://www.permissiontopaint.co/podcast

• Instagram: @rosgervayart

• Facebook: @rosgervayart

• YouTube: @rosgervay

Connect with Anna

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/

• Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/

• Free workshop — Let Yourself Be Seen: https://www.annaholtzman.com/beseen

In this episode, Anna sits down with Lara Birk, PDH, founder of The Sage Practice and one of the most thoughtful, compassionate, and courageous voices in mind-body healing today.

Lara’s work is rooted in lived experience: her own journey through a rare medical condition as a teenager, 17 surgeries, structural complications, chronic pain, and decades of navigating a system that often has no place for complexity. Her mission is to expand the field of mind-body medicine so that more people see themselves represented — and more people can access hope.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The behind-the-scenes of her recent Curable interview

Why speaking publicly felt both empowering and terrifying — and what it took emotionally to step onto a platform where her perspective diverged from the status quo.

• Navigating fear before doing something that might “rock the boat”

The internal dialogue, the nervous-system responses, the questions of belonging, and the ways Lara grounded herself through the lead-up to that conversation.

• Why she chose to speak up anyway

The deeper calling beneath the personal fear — including representation, inclusion, integrity, and service to the people whose experiences mirror her own.

• How it feels now that the interview is out in the world

Relief, vulnerability, pride, activation — and the tender mix that comes when you’ve put your truth somewhere public.

• What she’s learning from the emotional aftermath

How this moment is shaping her personal journey, her self-trust, and her evolving voice as a leader inside her field.

• Her message to anyone considering sharing their own truth

Her advice on pacing, nervous-system safety, self-attunement, community support, and the reality that you don’t have to be fearless — just resourced enough to take the next step.

This is a beautiful conversation about courage, nuance, authenticity, and what it means to become visible in a way that honors who you really are.

Connect with Lara

• Website: https://www.thesagepractice.com/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesagepractice/

Find Lara’s courses, 1:1 and group coaching, somatic tracking recordings, and extensive free resources on her website.

Connect with Anna

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/

• Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/

• Free workshop — Let Yourself Be Seen: https://www.annaholtzman.com/beseen

Have you ever caught yourself thinking:

"I shouldn't complain. Other people have it so much worse."

Or...

"I have so much to be grateful for. I shouldn't feel this way."

If so, you're not alone.

In this solo episode, Anna explores why these seemingly innocent thoughts can actually become a form of emotional self-censorship. While gratitude is a beautiful and important practice, it can sometimes be used—often without us realizing it—to invalidate our own emotional experience.

Drawing from her work as a therapist, Anna explains how many people learn to interrupt their feelings before they've had the chance to be fully experienced. Whether you've been the strong one, the capable one, the caretaker, the successful one, or simply the person everyone assumes is "doing fine," you may have internalized the belief that your struggles don't deserve the same compassion as everyone else's.

In this episode, Anna explores:

• Why asking "Does my suffering count?" may actually be the wrong question

• The difference between genuine gratitude and emotional invalidation

• Why so many of us mistake expressing our feelings for "complaining"

• How emotional self-censorship becomes a habit

• The connection between chronic emotional suppression, anxiety, burnout, and mind-body symptoms

• What Anna means by the phrase disenfranchised suffering

• How practicing unconditional self-compassion supports emotional healing

If you've ever felt guilty for struggling because your life looks good on the outside—or if you've found yourself minimizing your own pain because others have it worse—this episode offers a compassionate invitation to stop judging your emotions and start listening to them instead.

Resources & Links:

Learn more about Anna's therapy practice: https://www.annaholtzmantherapy.com

Follow Anna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/

If this episode resonated with you, please consider following the podcast, leaving a rating or review, and sharing it with someone who might need to hear this reminder: your emotions do not have to earn the right to be met with compassion.

In this episode, Anna sits down with Mari Reisberg, therapist, performer, creativity coach, and host of the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. Mari’s work lives at the intersection of somatic therapy, performance, and play — and her core belief is simple: life gets a lot more fun when we tap into our creativity.

Together, they explore how creativity shows up in everyday life (even for people who don’t think of themselves as “creative”), why so many of us feel blocked or disconnected from it, and what it actually takes to sustain creative energy over the long haul.

In this episode, we talk about:

• What creativity really is — beyond art, performance, or “talent”

• Whether creativity is something we’re born with or something we can grow

• Why so many adults feel creatively shut down or “not imaginative anymore”

• Common barriers that get in the way of creativity, including perfectionism, fear of judgment, and productivity culture

• How nervous system states (freeze, overwhelm, stress) impact creative flow

• Why creativity coaching can be so supportive — and what it actually looks like

• Simple, doable tools Mari uses to help clients reconnect with their creative selves

• How play, movement, and silliness can become powerful creative practices

• Practices for sustaining creativity over time instead of only in short bursts

• How to start small if you’re feeling blocked, tired, or creatively “out of shape”

This is a gentle, joyful invitation to remember that creativity isn’t something you either have or don’t — it’s a relationship you can rebuild, one tiny experiment at a time.

Connect with Mari

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sustainingcreativity/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sustainingcreativity

• Podcast: https://sustainingcreativity.buzzsprout.com

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mari-reisberg-b1320151/

Connect with Anna

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/

• Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/

• Free workshop — Let Yourself Be Seen: https://www.annaholtzman.com/beseen