Relaxation Resistance

Let’s talk about something so many high-achieving women struggle with: relaxation resistance. That underlying belief that if you relax, everything will fall apart. That if you slow down, you're lazy. That your worth is tied to your productivity.

This week, we’re unraveling the deep-seated patterns that keep you stuck in fight-or-flight mode, constantly "doing" instead of simply "being." Because the truth is:

💡 You don’t fall apart when things get hard. You rise.
💡 The real challenge is learning to soften when life is good.
💡 Your worth is NOT measured by how much you get done.

In this episode, we’ll break down:

✨ Why you resist relaxation and what’s really behind it
✨ How busyness and stress addiction keep you disconnected from pleasure
✨ The power of intentionally softening & creating safety in rest
✨ How to shift from exhaustion to luxurious spaciousness—without guilt
✨ Why “I don’t have time” is a lie & how to own your choices

⚡ It's time to stop proving your worth through over-functioning and start living in your feminine power.

👂 Let’s keep the conversation going! What landed for you in this episode? How do you resist relaxation? Slip into my DMs on Instagram—I’d love to hear from you!

Accountability is the key to lasting change. I’m here to not only help you eliminate the desire to drink but to fall in love with your alcohol-free life. You've taken in all the information, now it's time for implimentation Book your free consultation now. 💫

DISCLAIMER: This podcast and its contents are not a substitute for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. It is for educational and inspirational purposes. I am not a therapist or doctor. The views here are expressed a personal opinion and based on first hand experience. Please consult a doctor if your mental or physical health is at risk.

Transcript

Mary Wagstaff: 0:02

Music. Welcome to stop drinking and start living the feminine way. I'm your hostess. Mary Wagstaff, holistic alcohol coach and feminine embodiment guide here to help you effortlessly release alcohol by reclaiming your feminine essence. Sobriety isn't just about quitting drinking, it's about removing the distortions that keep you disconnected, overwhelmed and stuck in cycles of numbing. Each week, I'll share powerful tools, new perspectives that transform and deeply relatable stories to help you step into the power pleasure and purpose that it is to be a woman. This is your next evolution of awakened empowerment. Welcome to the feminine way. Welcome back. Is anyone having spring fever? So I feel like a kid. I feel so innocent and playful, and I feel like my worries have just melted off of me. And I shared a few weeks ago about my morning devotional practice, and I have to tell you, it's been a practice of surrender. I'm just surrendering all my worries, because when his worrying ever created a positive outcome, it never has. There's worries literally just aren't even real. They're all a hypothetical situation. So I feel like it's just been a giant exhale. Flowers are growing, Spring has sprung, birds are chirping, and it's just going to be such a magical season, but I'm intentionally looking for it. I'm intentionally softening every day. And I'm so thrilled that you're here for the ride, and I hope that you are tapping into, literally, the most of all of the most feminine season of them all. This is this energy of the maiden springtime. The flowers are in bloom, the birds are buzzing, right? Is the energy of innocence? How can you tap into your innocence? And so before I get into our third, the third and final pillar of the feminine way, which I'm going to bring to you next week. I had touched a little bit on this idea of relaxation resistance last week, and I didn't get too deep into it. I was talking more about luxurious space. But you know, it's important to understand why, and you know why we have relaxation resistance, which the first episode of feminine sobriety about creating safety. This is really why there's this underlying belief that we aren't very conscious of most of the time as women, that if I relax and I let go, that it will all fall apart, right? If I let go, everything will crumble. And so we just try to hold it all together while we crumble, right? And so it's not productive. And we come back to the same question that I had a few weeks ago, which is, what's the worst case scenario? And we have to be willing to feel that, because for some people, that wouldn't the what you believe is the worst case scenario isn't always going to be the worst case scenario for someone else. So really, the worst case scenario is that you have to feel the emotion. And what I know about you, my sister friend, is that you can handle it. Because I know this to be true for so many women when when shit really hits the fan, like when there's a real crisis, I would say 98% of the women I know do not crumble. They show up. They know exactly how to delegate they know how to keep calm. That's when they stay the most calm. That's when I stay the most calm. That's when my nervous system is actually the most relaxed, when there is something that really needs to be attended to. And, you know, like Matthew has had accidents before, or he's broken down, or, you know, something like this, that feels like a little scary or a little shattering. Most women that I know that's when they are online, they are alert and they there is a groundedness in them. So everything else is kind of superficial. And the reason I believe that we have relaxation resistance is because of a few things, one, what we're making it mean about us and that we've had to use our action to claim our worth. So if you are relaxing, then that could be equated to too lazy, and you wouldn't want anyone to think that about you, right? Which is why we use the term busy a lot. I'm so busy. I, I do not use that term ever, mostly just because the connotation with it and what does it even mean, like, busyness. I don't love the energy of busyness that feels heightened. It feels frantic. It's like, Oh, I'm so busy. I'm so important. And it's okay if you use that. I always use the word full, because busy feels like, it's like, I'm not even engaged with it for me. So I use the word Oh, my schedule is really full, and it feels abundant, and it feels full, and it feels luscious, and I feel so privileged to get to do it, because words are spells. So if our schedule isn't full, like, what like, imagine if you're, if you're, if you said, you know, we talked about luxurious space. I have so much space in my schedule right now. It feels so good, like think about how what you would make that mean, or maybe how you even judge other people. If someone was to say that I was so much space in my schedule right now to to do what I want right now, I work for myself. So when I say that I'm there's a lot of judgment, like, girl get to work. Well, the thing is, is, if I decide to sleep in for an extra hour and then go for a walk, I get to do that. And the last time that that happened, recently, I looked around, it was a beautiful day, and this beautiful place that we live, and I thought this was just such a gift from God. Look at what God just gave me, right? Instead of, I'm lazy, I shouldn't be. And then I just softened and I received and I allowed myself to be in that pleasure. And then the thing that I thought I was going to get on the other side of honoring my schedule and doing this and doing that, and the busyness and like is always an emotion of satisfaction, but I could have that right here, right now. So we have relaxation resistance because of what we think it will mean. The other thing is, is that we are addicted to being in fight or flight. We are addicted to being kind of like in a trauma response. And so much of the so much of this episode could be 20 episodes, right? That there are actual chemicals that get released cortisol. You can get addicted to cortisol. You can get addicted to adrenaline. You can get addicted to these chemicals in your body, where in your body, where you kind of look for them, and so something that's relaxed and calm, and there's no problem, it's like, oh, this doesn't feel familiar. This doesn't feel safe. So we have to practice it, and you have to intentionally tell yourself, of course, this is safe. Let's just find out what happens, right? The other thing is, is because of the way that social media functions, and I read you all that post a few weeks ago about I'm 43 and I'm not afraid to admit they got so much, you know, response to it, which blew my mind. So if I was a person that wanted external validation, I would write posts like that all the time, right? I would write posts about being in a victim consciousness instead of my pleasure consciousness, but both could get me probably just as much feedback. But because we don't live in that world, there is more judgment and resistance around that, right? So you want to notice in your life, where do you judge other people, other women, for living a life to themselves that feels really pleasurable and really luxurious. People used to say this to me all the time when I was younger, it must be nice, as if I didn't make choices to get me right where I was, like, It must be nice. What that I had food stamps when I was growing up and like a broken house in an identity crisis, like, what must be nice? Because I would work as a waitress, mind you, and save up a bunch of money and go travel. Oh, it must be nice. Well, girl, I made those decisions, and I still do that, and I'm a married mother, right? So what are you choosing? How are you choosing to spend your time? What are the choices that you're making? And this is where you have to be really honest with yourself. So when we're getting attention for the thing we say we don't want that's going to create. It's just like kids getting negative attention, right? We want the attention. We want the validation. Well, what if we stepped into our own pleasure? You stepped into your own pleasure as a woman and gave yourself the attention.

Unknown: 9:37

Wow. What then? And

Mary Wagstaff: 9:40

how does that change the way other people show up for you, I know the more I take care of myself, it is so much more attractive to Matthew than anything else. He's told me, like he's told me it's extremely unattractive for me to put myself down. He's like, I I've chosen to be here with you because I think you're beautiful and I. I think you're amazing. So what does it say about me when you're treating yourself like shit right now? Of course, he knows that I'm not feeling good or whatever, but that alone has really shifted something for me, because I don't want to take that choice for granted, like he could be hanging out with anyone, right? And oftentimes the things that are right in front of us just to support us we neglect. So we have to take this inventory of our resources. Why we do what we do? Does it feel? What does it feel like in our body to just find out like it's nothing's gonna go wrong? If you take a week and you decide you know, whatever's not done at six o'clock at night, I'm going to leave it, or I'm going to ask for support, or whatever it is, and I'm going to go read a book. I'm going to put my feet up. I'm going to go for a walk, an evening walk with the dog, whatever it needs to be for you. Because when we tell ourselves we've tried everything, we've just shut ourselves down to possibility and the creative life force. So this is so important for you to ask yourself, Where am I in relaxation, resistance? And like, on the flip side of it, maybe there's apathy, and there's you're not engaging in pleasure, in in things that are really like lighting you up, right? So there's, there's kind of the both end, like I'm the extreme, where my buffering goes to action base, like, do, do, do more, do more. And there are some people that go to retreating, and I won't, you know, from a place of where they don't have the energy, where maybe it feels like they want to shut down and they don't want to engage, but they're still not receiving pleasure, and that could be just finding out what happens. You know, it's like the thing I always say, the reason you think you can't is the reason you need to. So I'm trying to offer more and more in person gatherings, because I really believe that, especially women, we need an opportunity to connect, to just have fun. Go do something that sounds really fun to you, but that maybe you're a little bit scared of, right? And what is the objection that tells you you can't go do that thing, because I need to do this. So something else I do, and I think this is really important, is to tell the truth. Tell yourself the truth when you say I don't have time or I can't afford it. What does that mean? And I did this recently with someone where a friend had asked me to come into Portland, OR said, Can you come? You know, you can stay at the house or whatever. And I said, No. I said, I don't have time. I said, You know what? That's not true. I do the time is there I have it, but I I'm choosing to do something else with it, right? I'm choosing to do something different with my time. I'm choosing to do something different with my resources. So when it comes to relaxation, resistance, we have to be willing to find out, and you can find out by setting you know, you know to just throw yourself into wild abandon, which you know I like to do that that gives me a thrill. But we have to be willing to find out by creating safety, asking, what's the worst thing that can happen, and trusting that we can figure it out, because you always do. How do you figure it out, even in in real, worst case scenarios, and that you are the one that's showing up to kind of create order, right? And what is it feel like to be held not by a person, not by a circumstance, but just by life. And this is where we have to go into, that place of silence, that place of solitude, and why this is so important to be in the living of life. And you can be held by your senses. You can be held by the present moment. You can be held by the elements. You can be held by the the changing of the seasons. And what that how that delights inside of you. So notice the resistance, and let the resistance be there and and you can even say to it, I see you. I'm here for you, but let's just soften. And then you intentionally soften your body, just like you would in a yoga pose, just like you would if you were giving birth to a baby, right? Just like you would melt into someone's arms giving yourself a hug.

Unknown: 14:26

Let me know what your method

Mary Wagstaff: 14:32

for overcoming relaxation resistance, what really landed for you? I would love for you to slip into my DMs on Instagram. That's probably the easiest way for us to connect. But you can also schedule a one on one call with me where we can talk more about your specific story and how we can continue to cultivate

Unknown: 14:52

this opportunity for relaxation,

Mary Wagstaff: 14:57

for surrender, for pleasure. Here right for living the feminine way. Have an amazing week. If something in today's episode spoke to you deeply you are ready for your next level of awakening, and I want to invite you to book a sober glow up activation session with me where we can rewrite your alcohol story. Right now, we'll remove the energetic blocks that are keeping you stuck and stagnant to activated and alive, to book a session and to learn more, just follow the link right here in the show notes, or head on over to my website. Mary Wagstaff, coach.com and find out what it means to truly live life from your most authentic self. I will See you over there. You