BPF #3 - Nervous System Healing: How Midlife Women Start Loving Themselves Again

Butterfly Practice Fridays are short, intimate episodes designed to land in your body, not just your head.

Consider this your weekly permission slip.

Every Friday, a simple practice to help you come home to yourself. Press play. Do the thing. That's it.

Feel alive again!

Share your experience with me on Instagram @midlifebutterfly

💜 I created Coming HOME for the woman who has done everything right and still feels something is missing. It's free, it's private, and it might be the most important thing you listen to this year — sign up here!

🦋 Midlife Butterfly is a podcast for high-achieving midlife women navigating emotional exhaustion, people pleasing, self-abandonment, nervous system healing, identity shifts, and midlife awakening. Hosted by Kena Siu, Identity & Embodiment Guide.

Instagram: @midlifebutterfly
Website: midlifebutterfly.ca

Music: Back Home by Alex Productions and  Reborn by Alexander Nakarada

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kena Siu: Would you ever talk to your worst enemy the way you talk to yourself? Hmm. Hey, beautiful. Welcome to Beautiful Practice Fridays [Upss Butterfly], your weekly dose of coming home to yourself. I am Kena Siu, and today we're talking about how to start loving yourself, and it starts with becoming your best friend. Mm-hmm.

[00:00:29] Your inner critic, if you have noticed, is the most judgmental voice that exist. I mean that. I bet there are things that you say to yourself that you wouldn't even dare say to someone else. Am I right? I've been there. Ay, not even to my worst enemy would I say what I used to say to myself, and how horrible is [00:01:00] that?

[00:01:00] Do you know that researchers have found that it takes several positive experiences to balance out the emotional weight of just one negative one? So when you spend your day calling yourself names, criticizing, and being harsh with yourself, that weight doesn't just disappear. It lingers. It adds up.

[00:01:29] And here is what your body experiences when that happens. Every time you talk to yourself with harshness, your nervous system reads it as a threat Because it doesn't know the difference between an enemy attacking you or you attacking yourself. So it responds the same way.

[00:01:55] It tightens, it braces, it goes into protection mode. [00:02:00] But when you talk to yourself with kindness, your nervous system

[00:02:05] gets the opposite signal. I am safe. I am supported. And that's when it can actually soften, regulate, and let you feel at ease in your own body. So how do you actually start loving yourself? As I mentioned before, become your best friend. It may sound silly, but believe me, it is not. So to do that, you got to start treating yourself like your best friend, and it starts with your vocabulary because it determines how you perceive the world. So no more names, no more insults, no [00:03:00] more harshness. That's where we begin today, just with those three.

[00:03:08] And for that, you need to be more present. You gotta be more aware so you can catch yourself in the act and be the observer, because you gotta remember that you are not your mind and you are not your body. You are the observer. You are the witness. So just imagine, you know, like here, my little octopus here, imagine like someone here is observing you.

[00:03:37] That's your higher consciousness. ,

[00:03:41] And here is the part that changes everything. Every time you catch yourself saying something to yourself that you will never say to your best friend, shift it. Say what you will actually say to her instead.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] So into this practice, we have four steps. Step one is notice. Simply notice. When a name, an insult, or harshness towards yourself shows up in your mind, don't judge it, just catch it. That's step one. Step two is pause. The moment you catch it, pause, and ask yourself, what would I say to my best friend right now?

[00:04:36] Step three, replace it. If you normally said to yourself, "Oh, you're such an idiot," shift it to something like, "Oh, it's okay, beauty." Or, "It's okay," and say your name with the same softness. Notice how he shifts one voice to [00:05:00] the other one.

[00:05:02] And step four, talk to yourself like your best friend as often as possible. Because your mind is always talking to you. That continuous talk is there. So when something goes wrong and you start going in spiral into giving yourself a hard time, if you know you screw it up or whatever, ask instead, "How can I fix this?

[00:05:32] What will I do differently next time?" So you don't go into that rabbit hole. You lift yourself from that mistake that whatever happens. Okay? The truth is you already know how to do this. You've done it with other people, with your family, with your friends, with your children. So now it's [00:06:00] time to offer yourself the same.

[00:06:02] As simple as that. 

[00:06:04] Shifting how you talk to yourself shifts how you feel inside yourself, beauty. And that's huge. Notice it in your body. Every time you choose to treat yourself as your best friend, notice that shift in your body. And if you want to go deeper on this, go listen to the previous episode, number 77, The Real Reason Midlife Women Struggle to Love Themselves.

[00:06:37] It will give you even more context for the work we just did today. I'll see you next Friday, and as usual, much love to you. Take care.