Why Soul Nourishment Feels Impossibly Hard
…And What's Really Happening Beneath the Surface; a companion guide to Episode 23 of Midlife Moxie with Nicole Hate
You listened to the podcast episode. (if you haven’t, you can listen HERE). You heard the practices. Maybe you even wrote down the one that called to you.
And then... nothing happened.
Or maybe you tried for three days, felt uncomfortable, and stopped. Or you did it perfectly for two weeks and then life got busy and you never came back to it. Or you're sitting there right now thinking, "This all sounds great, but I already know I won't actually do it."
Here's what I want you to know, Your inability to nourish yourself isn't a character flaw. It's conditioning.
And until we understand what's actually happening beneath the surface when you try to feed your soul, you'll keep starting and stopping, feeling like you're the problem, wondering why everyone else seems to be able to do this except you.
Let me show you what's really going on.
The Nervous System Doesn't Believe You're Safe Enough to Rest
When I work with women using hypnosis and nervous system regulation, here's what I see constantly: Your body doesn't believe it's safe to slow down.
You've spent decades in a state of hypervigilance, scanning for everyone else's needs, staying two steps ahead, making sure nothing falls apart. Your nervous system has been running on high alert for so long that it's become your baseline.
So when you sit down to meditate, journal, or simply be still, your body interprets that stillness as danger.
Your nervous system starts screaming: "Who's watching the kids? What if someone needs you? What if something goes wrong? What if people think you're selfish? What if you're not doing enough?"
This isn't resistance. This isn't laziness. This is your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do: keep you performing, producing, and available at all costs.
The practice isn't just about doing the thing. It's about teaching your nervous system that you're safe enough to stop.
What This Looks Like in Real Life:
You sit down to write in your journal and suddenly remember 47 things you need to do. That's not ADD. That's your nervous system redirecting you back to "productive" activity because stillness feels threatening.
You try to take a bath and spend the whole time mentally planning tomorrow. That's not failure. That's a nervous system that hasn't been given permission to truly rest in years.
You commit to morning meditation and find yourself "too busy" every single day. That's not lack of time. That's a nervous system protecting you from what might come up if you actually got quiet.
The Good Girl Programming Runs Deep
In my work with Gene Keys and belief transformation, I've seen how deeply the good girl conditioning runs. It's not just about behavior, it's embedded in your identity, your sense of safety, and your nervous system responses.
Here's what the good girl programming tells you:
"Your worth comes from what you do for others."
So when you try to do something just for yourself - something that doesn't produce results, help anyone, or create value for someone else - your nervous system interprets it as a threat to your worth and safety.
"Choosing yourself is selfish."
So every time you sit down to nourish your soul, there's a voice that says "Who do you think you are? There are dishes to do. People who need you. More important things to accomplish."
"If you're not producing, you're not valuable."
So practices that are just for being, not doing, not accomplishing, not producing - feel fundamentally wrong. Your body literally recoils from them.
This is why you can read about soul nourishment, understand it intellectually, even want it desperately... and still not be able to do it. The programming is operating beneath your conscious awareness.
The Belief Loop That Keeps You Stuck:
Using some basic frameworks, here's the loop I see playing out:
You believe you should be able to care for everyone and yourself
You try to add soul nourishment to your already full life
Something has to give (usually the self-nourishment)
You judge yourself as "not disciplined enough"
That judgment reinforces the belief that you're not good at taking care of yourself
The next time becomes even harder because you're carrying shame
The loop doesn't break by trying harder. It breaks by understanding what's actually running it.
The Scarcity Belief About Time
Here's a belief that almost every midlife woman I work with carries: "There's not enough time."
Not just "I'm busy." But a deep, primal belief that time itself is scarce, that there will never be enough, that choosing to nourish yourself means something else will suffer.
This belief creates a constant state of urgency in your nervous system. Everything feels like it needs to happen RIGHT NOW. Everything feels equally important. Everything feels like a crisis.
So when you try to take 10 minutes to sit in silence, your nervous system starts calculating: "That's 10 minutes you're not spending on work, or the kids, or the house, or that project, or returning that email."
The scarcity belief makes soul nourishment feel like a luxury you can't afford, rather than the foundation everything else is built on.
What I See in Gene Keys Work:
When we look at someone's Gene Keys, particularly in their Pearl Sequence (which shows the story of your life's work and purpose), I often see this pattern:
The Shadow frequency of their Pearl is usually related to pressure, rushing, or survival. Their entire life has been lived in the Shadow of "not enough time, not enough me, not enough resources."
The Gift frequency, where transformation happens, almost always requires learning to trust time, to move at the pace of nature, to stop rushing.
But you can't access the Gift while operating from the Shadow. The practices aren't just nice-to-haves. They're the bridge from Shadow to Gift.
The Permission Block
This is the most insidious one, and it's where I see women get most stuck.
You're waiting for permission.
Permission to take time for yourself. Permission to want more than you have. Permission to be angry, disappointed, or dissatisfied. Permission to admit that doing everything "right" still left you feeling empty.
But here's the thing about permission: The people you're waiting to give it to you never will.
Not because they're bad people. But because the system that benefits from your compliance has no incentive to free you from it.
Your partner isn't going to say "Hey, you should really take more time for yourself and let me figure this stuff out." Your boss isn't going to cut your workload in half. Your kids aren't going to stop needing you. Your aging parents aren't going to become less dependent.
Everyone around you has adjusted to your over-functioning. They've come to rely on it. And asking them for permission to stop is asking them to deal with the discomfort of you changing.
The Truth About Permission:
You're not waiting for permission. You're waiting for someone else to take responsibility for the consequences of you choosing yourself.
And no one can do that for you.
This is where my work as a guide becomes crucial. Not because I give you permission (I do, but that's not enough). But because I hold space for you to give yourself permission, and I help you metabolize what comes up when you do.
What Actually Makes Soul Nourishment Possible
Now that you understand what's running beneath the surface, let's talk about what actually works.
1. Nervous System Work First
Before the practices, we need to teach your nervous system that it's safe to rest. This might look like:
Gentle regulation practices that don't feel like "one more thing"
Working with your breath to signal safety to your body
Tracking sensations without needing to change them
Building capacity for stillness in micro-doses
In my work, I don’t force relaxation, but to help your nervous system remember what safety feels like. We're not overriding your system , we're giving it new information.
2. Belief Transformation, Not Positive Thinking
We need to work with the actual beliefs running your life, not just slap affirmations over them. We work together on the following:
Identify the core beliefs about your worth, time, and deservingness
Understand where they came from (usually family patterns and culture)
Create space for new beliefs to emerge organically
Integrate them at a level deeper than conscious thought
This isn't about thinking yourself into new beliefs. It's about experiencing yourself differently until new beliefs become inevitable.
3. Permission That Comes From Within
I can give you permission a thousand times, and it won't matter if you don't believe you're allowed to take it.
So instead, we work on:
Understanding what you're actually afraid will happen if you choose yourself
Meeting those fears with compassion and reality testing
Building evidence that choosing yourself doesn't destroy everything
Practicing receiving your own permission in small, safe ways
The goal isn't to become "selfish." The goal is to stop abandoning yourself and calling it virtue.
4. Integration Over Perfection
The practices don't need to be perfect. They need to be integrated into your actual life.
This means:
Working with your resistance instead of overriding it
Adjusting practices to fit your real schedule, not an ideal one
Celebrating micro-movements rather than waiting for transformation
Understanding that consistency matters more than duration
When I share my own messy practice, meditation that's sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 5, I'm not being modest. I'm being real about what sustainable transformation looks like.
The Real Reason You're Here
You didn't come to this blog post (or the podcast episode) just to learn some practices. You came because something in you knows there's more.
More depth. More meaning. More aliveness than you're currently experiencing.
And that knowing? That restless hunger for something you can't quite name? That's not a problem to fix. That's your soul trying to get your attention.
The practices I shared in the podcast episode are valuable. But they're not magic. They won't work if you're trying to use them to become a "better" version of the good girl you've always been.
They only work when you're ready to exit the system entirely. When you're ready to stop performing goodness and start living authentically. When you're ready to honor your rage as sacred information and your so-called "selfishness" as necessary self-preservation.
Soul nourishment isn't self-care. It's self-reclamation.
Where Do We Go From Here?
If you're reading this and thinking, "Yes, but how do I actually do this? How do I work with my nervous system, transform my beliefs, and give myself permission when everything in me is screaming that it's not safe?"
That's where working with a guide becomes essential.
Not because you can't do this alone - you're capable as hell, that's not the question.
But because trying to dismantle your conditioning while still living inside it is like trying to see your own face without a mirror. You need someone outside the system to reflect back what you can't see from inside it.
In my work, I combine:
Gene Keys contemplation to understand your specific conditioning patterns and the pathway to your gifts
Working with the language and beliefs actually running your life
Teaching your nervous system safety and access states you've forgotten how to feel
Integrative practices that honor your whole self - including the rage, grief, and "difficult" parts
This isn't about fixing you.
This is about helping you exit a system that was never designed for your freedom in the first place.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If this resonated and you're tired of understanding what needs to change but not being able to actually change it, let's talk.
I work with midlife women who are done performing goodness and ready to reclaim their authentic power. Women who want a guide that won't spiritual bypass their legitimate anger or tell them to be "nicer."
Book a Call - Let's explore what's really keeping you stuck and whether working together is the right fit.
Or if you're not ready for that yet, join my email list where I share deeper explorations of these topics without the Instagram-friendly polish. Real transformation for women who are ready to be dangerous.
Because the world doesn't need you to be a better good girl. It needs you to be free.
This content is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. If you're experiencing concerning symptoms, please consult with a qualified mental health professional.