Part of me tried to convince myself to not record this episode…gulp.

There is a particularly humbling kind of experience that happens when you do the exact thing you have devoted an enormous amount of your time, gifts, and resources helping other people to not do.

Recently, I self-abandoned.

Not because anyone forced me to or because I didn’t know what I wanted. I really freaking knew. My body was giving me a very clear no, and my brain immediately started building a case for why I should ignore it. It sounded like various versions of…

“Everyone else is having fun.”

“Don’t be difficult.”

“Maybe you’re being closed-minded.”

“Don’t make this needlessly weird, Libby.”

You know the drill, right?

Self Approval School is a listener and reader-supported publication. To support this labor of love, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I was on a girls weekend with a group of women I completely adore, the host an utter queenly expression of love, beauty, and generosity. We were staying in one of the most staggeringly beautiful places on the coast of Maine. Think massive cliffs, flowers + bees, crashing waves, seals bobbing in the water, and a bunch of women who were genuinely thrilled to finally be in the same room together.

Above is the view from my room to give you an idea of how magnificent this place is.

At one point over the lobster-roll-filled love-fest weekend we were having, someone generously offered to teach the group a chakra reading and clearing process using pendulums. Everyone was into it. People were having beautiful, profound experiences.

Witnessing their play and joy felt delightful for me, truly. But everything in my body was screaming from the moment we sat down, “This is not right for you!”

And instead of honoring that, I overrode myself.

What happened next was deeply activating. I went into a bit of what is best described as a brownout, not remembering much of the experience except a couple of details spattered here and there. After we finished, everyone leaned in asking how I felt. I just kept repeating, “I don’t know how I feel.” I was almost frozen.

There is so much more that I share in great detail about in the episode; but for now I want you to know that in the hours and days after this experience, I had to reckon with something that felt brutal, humbling, and REALLY important at this particular moment in my healing and embodiment journey:

I teach self approval. I teach embodiment. I teach hearing your intuition. I teach consent.

And even though I am absolutely brilliant at what I do, I STILL ABANDONED MYSELF.

What unfolded after actually almost feels more important, which is the real reason why I knew I had to tell this story.

This episode is about consent, belonging, truth-telling, and the places where we say yes because being the one who says no feels too risky.

It’s also about something I keep coming back to. That it’s okay for me to say I’m not okay even though most of my lived experience is everyone thinking I’m okay when I’m not fucking okay. Do you know what I mean??

And also that sometimes honoring yourself means risking becoming the turd in the punch bowl.

So I want to leave you with one question before you listen:

Where are you giving a yes that looks like consent from the outside but does not actually feel like consent inside your body?

Come listen to the full story in the newest episode of Self Approval School: Confessions of a Coach: Consent, fitting in, and the willingness to be the turd in the punch bowl.

It means a lot to me that you not only hear the confession that I abandoned myself. But I think it’s even more meaningful to me to share about what happened after that.

I would love to hear any stories you have of experiences like this, how you repaired with your self, and anything other details that feel important to you.

Thank you for holding the tenderness of this share with me.

XO

Libby

PS I recorded this episode on the Full Moon lunar eclipse, which felt wildly appropriate because I have been thinking about what we are ready to eclipse out of our lives. Empty yeses. Old roles. Dynamics we keep agreeing to. The version of ourselves who thinks being easy to be around is the price of belonging. What would you add to this list?

Hello, my loves.

I had one of those moments recently that felt so obvious that, once I processed it and landed back on Earth, I was actually able to get to a place where I laughed my ass off at myself. And also had some serious compassion for myself.

You know those moments where you’ve known something intellectually for years, you’ve even taught it to other people, and then all of a sudden your body catches up? That’s what happened to me. I call it an embodied experience. When what you know fully lands in your body in a way that is just a deep, deep knowing.

It started with a disagreement between my and my husband, Paul, over selling a piece of equipment. It sounds completely ordinary because it was in many ways. But my reaction wasn’t. I was so much more activated than the situation called for, which is usually my cue that there are more people in the room than I can see.

My husband was there.

I was there.

But apparently, there was also little me and some members of my family.

I refer to this type of experience as “knowing there is history in the room.” Meaning we know there is a lived trauma or wound history showing up when our response to something is exponentially stronger than the obvious incident or stimilus.

As I slowed myself down afterward, I found myself asking the same question I’ve asked clients for years:

What is my body remembering?

The answer surprised me and didn’t surprise me at all.

Self Approval School is a reader/listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I realized I wasn’t reacting to my husband.

I was reacting from a little girl who spent years believing that if she could just keep everything together, she’d finally create enough safety.

That’s a lot for a child to carry.

It’s also a lot for a grown woman to keep carrying.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about since then is how often women confuse doing with safety. Not because we’re weak or broken. Because somewhere along the way, the doing worked.

It helped us belong.

It helped us avoid conflict.

It helped us feel needed.

It helped us survive.

Of course we kept doing it.

The invitation isn’t to judge those adaptations. Honestly, I feel a tremendous amount of compassion for mine.

The invitation is to ask whether they’re still necessary.

I’ve been doing what I’ve playfully called a pleasure audit lately. Looking at my calendar and asking myself things like, Do I actually want to go? Did anyone even ask me to do this? Am I saying yes because I desire it, or because some old part of me still believes my usefulness is what makes me worthy?

Those questions have changed more than my schedule. They’re changing my life.

When I say, “Ladies, do less,” I don’t mean become less ambitious or to stop contributing. And I sure as hell don’t mean care less.

I just mean...what if we stopped carrying the things that were never ours to carry in the first place? Especially the things that weren’t explicitly asked of us!

What if we trusted that our dignity isn’t something we earn through exhaustion?

What if we believed that the woman we’ve become no longer has to live by the rules that helped the little girl survive?

That’s the conversation I wanted to have this week.

I’d love to know what came up for you from listening to this episode. And I want to know if and how you are going to do even 1% less.

XO

Libby

For more information on how to coach with me, visit my website here. If you feel called to join my monthly coaching membership, THE SISTERHOOD, get information and join here.

In this episode we discuss what many women in a Patriarchalized culture struggle with - The Sisterhood Wound.

We define it, unpack it, and talk about ways to heal it.

If you're a woman who is exhausted with performative friendships and ra-ra-ra spiritual bypassing versions of sisterhood, this one is definitely for you!

Over the past several years as I’ve run deeply intimate and powerfully revealing groups with women, many themes and common threads emerged. As women unlearned their conditioning, as women relaxed into truly being seen and held, as women started to shine their light in front of a group of other real live women - all of these things pointed them directly back to the one thing they needed most. THEMSELVES.

Not another diet, or HIIT program, or sales funnel, or blah blah blah…

Not a savior. Themselves.

In a kind of reverse engineering, a model emerged and almost channeled into me about what it takes to be a fully expressed woman in a world that wants us silenced and invisible. And that model is something I call Embodied Self Leadership.

In this episode, I talk about the three core leadership mechanics that make up this model. We get sold a lot of intellectual and mental processes, checklists, and linear strategies, but even when we “accomplish the goal” by way of these things, we still end up feeling confused, empty, and burnt out. That is because the body is not included in these so-called strategies.

I’m here to make the case for the foundational strategy we all need in order for everything to be successful, aligned, and sustainable. And it must always include the wisdom of the body.

I also have created something really special for you that you can check out here that might be able to help you on this journey of becoming a fully Self Approved Woman.

Thanks for listening and I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences around what is shared here.

Love you so hard!

XO

Libby

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode references sexual assault, violence, and what is being referred to in the media as “the online rape academy.”

This isn’t the episode I was planning to record today. I took the last few weeks off from recording because I was fully immersed in the the pleasure and joy of being celebrated for my birthday for the entire month of April. I brag.

In that time I oriented entirely around connection, appreciation, Sisterhood, and plain old fkn fun! It was a much needed reprieve from producing anything and it felt great.

And I approve of having taken that time off.

But during that time, as most of you probably know, a news headline broke about what is being referred to as “the online rape academy”. I was at home alone in the evening when the headline rolled across my screen.

I stared in a state of shock. NOT SURPRISE…because, sadly, none of this is surprising to me. But my system was just in shock trying to process what I was reading.

I started sweating, shaking, crying, and a wave of total nausea crashed over me. I was flooded with rage, fear, and grief - all completely normal responses to reading something so vile and disturbing. I’ve had many conversations and interactions with the women and men in my life about this since the news broke, covering a wide range of reactions, emotions, and questions.

So rather than step over it and stick to my regularly scheduled programming, I knew I had to come here and talk about it.

This episode is one of many to come that I am calling Relevant Rants - episodes where I speak candidly and totally off the cuff about something that is coming up in the world, our culture, or even just my personal life that is relevant to Self Approval School. Especially things that many people who claim to be in the healing industry DO NOT want to talk about publicly.

This episode is raw, messy, unedited (as they all are, I brag), and is a space to open a conversation with all of you about this devastating violence we are trying to navigate. And although sharing this episode is simply a drop in the bucket of change, it feels like an important drop on my journey with this podcast.

Please leave comments, share about your experience, and feel free to go off about your huge feelings about the matter.

Love you so hard.

xo

Libby

*Edit to episode: In an inspired moment I vaguely referenced Brene Brown’s research on belonging and I misquoted it in my excitement. A more accurate reference is below:

According to Brené Brown, fitting in is the opposite or even, in stronger words, the enemy of belonging. Fitting in is contorting your authentic self to be accepted by others, while belonging is being accepted for who you truly are. True belonging doesn’t require editing yourself; it requires the courage to show up as in your true self, which sometimes means standing alone out on the skinny branch. Or, as I like to say, showing up in full self approval!

In short, true belonging falls in line with being loved just as you are. xo

Hello, my love.

There are places in your life where you are still seeking approval.

But you’re calling it something else.

You’re calling it being thoughtful.Being emotionally intelligent.Needing more time.

But underneath all of that, you’re waiting.

Waiting to be validated.Waiting to be reassured.Waiting for someone to confirm what you already know.

In this episode, we’re getting honest about the subtle, socially acceptable ways you abandon yourself and call it “being a good person.”

The over-explaining.The checking.The softening of your truth so it lands better.

Not because you don’t know…but because somewhere along the way, you learned it was safer to be approved of than it was to be fully yourself.

This isn’t about fixing you.

It’s about catching the exact moment where you leave yourself,and choosing, instead, to stay.

Self Approval School is a reader and listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We talk about:

* the quiet ways approval-seeking is still running your life

* why it feels so normal and so hard to see

* what it actually feels like in your body when you override yourself

* and what it takes to start trusting your own authority again

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re just being thoughtful,this one might call you out a little.

And confront you - in the best way!

Thanks for listening!

Love you so hard!

xo

Libby

Trigger Warning: This episode includes mentions of suicide, trauma, and addiction. Please listen with care and honor your body's limits. It you're not in a place to hear that right now, you might want to skip this one or come back when you have more support.

Episode Description: In this episode of Self Approval School, Libby shares why she is the one talking about self-approval - and why this work is so deeply personal. She takes you back to her early years growing up poor in a wealthy town, navigating classism, chaos, and powerful but exhausted women who carried everything. Libby talks about parentification, achievement as a survival strategy, eating disorders, body hatred, codependency, and the trans-generational trauma and poverty that shaped her nervous system. She also shares about her mother's deterioration and eventual suicide, and how that loss became one of the deepest reasons she refuses to abandon this work - and why she's so devoted to helping women learn to fully embody self approval and to live it out loud!

In this episode, you'll also hear about:

• Growing up in a tiny town, steeped in classism and scarcity

• How abuse, chaos, and fierce love coexisted in Libby's home

• The link between achievement, safety, belonging, and love

• Early self-disapproval: eating disorders, body hatred, and codependency

• Trans-generational trauma, addiction, and loss

• How Libby's mother's death became part of her "why" for this podcast

• Why she chose self-approval (not just confidence or mindset) as her life's work.

If you've ever wondered "Who am I to do this work?" or felt like your story disqualifies you, this episode offers a raw, honest look at how one woman's pain, lineage, and healing became a devotion to helping other women stop abandoning themselves.

Connect with Libby:

Website: https://www.libbybunten.com

IG: @thelibbybunten

In this first episode, I share why I created Self Approval School and what you can expect when you're in this space.

We talk about:

-What "good-girl" conditioning looks like in real life

-How internalized patriarchy and misogyny keep us doubting ourselves

-Why self-approval isn't a mindset hack, but a practice of internal intimacy and embodiment

-The kind of convos and stories you'll hear on this show if you're ready to feel it all FULLY

Love you so hard! xo

https://www.libbybunten.com/