If you’re listening to this in January (or any other time of the year) and feeling heavy, flat, emotional, or quietly overwhelmed — this episode is for you.

January 1st is supposed to feel hopeful. Fresh. Motivating.

But for so many women, it actually brings pressure, comparison, and a deep sense of “I should be feeling better than I am.”

In this episode, I’m unpacking why January 1st can feel so dysregulating — and why New Year’s resolutions often make things worse, not better.

This isn’t about mindset failure or lack of discipline.

It’s about conditioning, shame-based change, and a nervous system that’s been trained to scan for what’s missing.

We’ll talk about:

1. Why New Year’s resolutions are often fueled by shame
2. How performative change keeps you stuck in all-or-nothing cycles
3. Why willpower always fails (and what actually works instead)
4. The real reason behaviors like overeating, drinking, people-pleasing, or overworking don’t change through control
5. A gentler, more effective way to approach the new year without pressure
6. How self-concept and emotional safety create sustainable change
7. Powerful reframes you can return to all year long

Instead of asking “Who do I need to become this year?”

I invite you to explore questions like:

1. What would make me feel a little safer this year?
2. What do I want more of emotionally, energetically, and relationally?
3. What helps me come back to myself?

You don’t need a big vision.

You don’t need a perfect plan.

And you don’t need to fix yourself.

You just need to be willing to stay with yourself while this year unfolds.

1. Episode 293: You Are Not Who You Think You Are — How to Change Your Self-Concept
2. Join the membership for a free week at 👉 joinamanda.ca
3. (Includes coaching calls + an upcoming full class on self-concept)
4. Book a private coaching discovery call at 👉 amandahess.ca/bookacall

You don’t have to know where 2026 is going yet.

You don’t have to feel motivated.

And you don’t need a resolution to be worthy of change.

What if this year was about trusting yourself instead of forcing yourself?

What if your only intention was to love yourself — and be more you?

I’m so glad you’re here.

And I can’t wait to keep talking with you in 2026.

As the year comes to a close, many of us are taking stock — not just of what we did, but of who we believe we are.

In this episode, we’re talking about self-concept: the thoughts and beliefs you hold about yourself, how they were formed, and how they quietly shape your emotions, relationships, and choices — often without you realizing it.

So many of the things we believe about ourselves feel like facts… but they’re not. They’re thoughts — many of them inherited from childhood, authority figures, culture, or past experiences — and they can be changed.

Inside this episode, I share:

1. What self-concept actually is (and what it’s not)
2. How early experiences shape the way we see ourselves
3. Why “positive thinking” often backfires
4. A powerful question that opens a new path forward: Who would I be without this thought?
5. How to shift self-judgment without forcing yourself to believe something that doesn’t feel true
6. Why changing your self-concept isn’t about becoming someone else — it’s about freeing yourself

If you’ve ever felt like you aren't capable of changing your life, this conversation offers a gentler, more empowering way to look at yourself — one that creates possibility instead of pressure.

If you want support with this work:

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1. Weekly group coaching calls
2. My private daily podcast (500+ episodes)
3. A supportive, thoughtful community of women doing this work together

Go to joinamanda.ca to find out more.

✨ 1:1 Coaching

I currently have limited availability for private coaching.

Book a discovery call here:

👉 amandahess.ca/bookacall

If this episode resonated, I’d love to hear from you.

You can find me on Instagram at @theamandahess — send me a DM and tell me what stood out.

Whether you celebrate or not, I’m sending you so much love as this year comes to a close.

You are not stuck. You are not broken.

And you are allowed to change.

Feeling is part of being human. Suffering is not.

In this episode, Amanda breaks down the crucial difference between feeling emotions and suffering because of them. You’ll hear a raw, honest reflection on what it’s like to try to “hold it all together,” why doing more never actually fixes emotional overwhelm, and how learning to slow down is the real way out of suffering.

This episode is a reminder that you don’t need better tools, better behavior, or more discipline — you need to take your foot off the emotional gas.

• Why 50% of life is always uncomfortable emotion (no matter how well you’re doing)
• The difference between feeling pain and creating suffering
• How “trying not to feel” actually extends suffering
• Why doing more, pushing harder, or expecting yourself to cope better doesn’t work
• The compounding factors that turn pain into long-term suffering
• What it really means to “take your foot off the emotional gas”
• Simple, practical ways to slow your nervous system in real time
• How to start asking yourself, “What do I need right now?” — and listening to the answer

• Feeling is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
• Pain happens. Hurt happens. Loss, rejection, and grief are real.
• Suffering comes from:
• Judgment
• Pressure
• Emotional acceleration
• Not slowing down
• Not regulating your nervous system
• You don’t need to fix yourself — you need to pause
• Slowing down is not quitting; it’s leadership
• Self-trust is built in small percentages — 5%, then 10%, then more

• Taking your foot off the emotional gas
• Regulating through the senses:
• Look around
• Notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch
• Breathing and grounding (takes seconds, not minutes)
• Asking yourself:

• Choosing support instead of speed

If this episode resonated and you find yourself thinking, “I need more of this — consistently,” that’s exactly why my membership exists.

Inside the membership, you get ongoing support to help you:

• Slow down instead of pushing harder
• Regulate your nervous system in real life
• Build self-trust one moment at a time
• Learn how to feel without suffering

This is the work — and you don’t have to do it alone.

👉 Join us at:

joinamanda.ca

Bring your questions.

Bring the overwhelm.

Bring the part of you that’s exhausted from trying to hold it all together.

You know where to find me.

What most women call overwhelm or anxiety is often something deeper: emotional burnout — the kind that happens when you’ve spent years trying to tolerate your emotions instead of learning how to expand your capacity for them.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a private training from the podcast I create exclusively for my clients. We’re breaking down the real difference between emotional tolerance (the rigid, finite jar that eventually cracks) and emotional capacity (the flexible container you can actually grow).

You’ll learn:

• Why simply “tolerating” your emotions exhausts you
• The glass-jar metaphor that explains emotional burnout perfectly
• What true emotional capacity looks like — and why it’s a skill, not a personality trait
• How nervous system regulation expands your capacity in real time
• The 4 pillars of capacity-building (regulation, nature, pleasure, and thought quality)
• How to stop outsourcing control and reclaim it in a way that’s actually sustainable
• Simple daily practices to grow your internal bandwidth so you don’t get knocked over by life

If you’ve felt like you’re at the end of your rope — irritated, overstimulated, or one small thing away from snapping — this episode will help you understand why… and what to do next.

This episode comes from the private podcast feed I create for my 1:1 coaching clients — the kind of deep, practical emotional work we do together.

If you want to explore the ways you can work with me, head to:

👉 joinamanda.ca

Share it with someone who needs it, or post it to your stories and tag me.

And if you want your own questions answered join one of my coaching containers — we can go even deeper there.

The holidays bring everything — family dynamics, overwhelm, expectations, pressure — and underneath it all is the fear of speaking up in a way that feels good. In this episode, we break down what a boundary actually is, why it feels so hard to set one, and how fear and nervous system dysregulation keep you stuck in people-pleasing or emotional shutdown.

You’ll learn how to identify fear in your body, regulate before you respond, and create clean, grounded boundaries that support the life you want. This is the episode to listen to if you want to stop abandoning yourself and start honoring what works for you.

• What a boundary really is (and what it’s not)
• Why fear makes speaking up feel impossible
• How fight/flight/freeze/fawn sabotage your voice
• How to regulate before having brave conversations
• Why self-worth must be chosen first

Sign up for my 1:1 coaching at JoinAmanda.ca without a discovery call and receive:

✨ 5 months for the price of 4

✨ 20 private sessions

✨ A $250 credit after completing the program

Join me for a live class on setting boundaries & having brave conversations.

Link in bio on Instagram/TikTok @theamandahess. or https://amandahesscoaching.as.me/brave

If you’ve spent your whole life trying to “think more positively,” “change your mindset,” or “just stop spiraling,” this episode is going to shift everything for you.

Because here’s the truth most sensitive women never get taught:

Thoughts are not facts.

They never have been.

But when your nervous system is dysregulated (Part 1) and your emotions feel too big to hold (Part 2), your brain grabs the easiest, most familiar thought it can find — even if that thought hurts you.

This episode breaks down why your overthinking isn’t caused by the thoughts themselves…

It’s caused by the beliefs you’ve practiced for years, the ones that have become so familiar your brain mistakes them for truth.

You’ll learn how beliefs become well-worn paths in the brain, why new thoughts feel impossible at first, and how to practice thinking in a way that creates safety, self-trust, and actual change. This is the step that allows everything you learned in Part 1 and Part 2 to finally land.

This is the third and final part of my overthinking series — and it’s where the transformation really locks in.

• Why thoughts feel true (even when they aren’t)
• The real reason you can’t access helpful thoughts when your emotions are at a 9 or 10
• How practiced beliefs become mental “paths” your brain walks automatically
• Why your brain prefers painful familiarity over unfamiliar possibility
• What it actually takes to create a new belief you can rely on
• How radical self-love, compassion, and hope build the thoughts that change your life
• Why you keep ending up in the same emotional patterns even when you try to “think differently”
• A simple, repeatable three-step system to create thoughts that serve you instead of sabotage you
• How changing your thoughts becomes effortless when your nervous system and emotions are balanced

🔗 Get full show notes, transcript, and more:

amandahess.ca/289

👉 Interested in working with me?

Sign up for a free discovery call: amandahess.ca

📱 Connect with me on TikTok & Instagram:

@theamandahess

If you’ve been trying to “fix” your overthinking by changing your thoughts, but nothing ever seems to stick, here’s the truth:

You don’t have a thought problem — you have an emotion problem.

When your emotions feel too big, too fast, or too overwhelming for your system, your brain does the only thing it knows how to do: it starts thinking harder. It analyzes, spirals, replays conversations, imagines every worst-case scenario — not because you’re dramatic, or weak, or too sensitive, but because your body is trying to protect you from the intensity of unprocessed emotion.

This episode explores why overthinking is always rooted in emotional dysregulation, how a sensitive nervous system amplifies feelings, and why “controlling your emotions” has never worked. You’ll learn what emotions actually are, how they move through the body, and how to start building emotional capacity so your mind can finally take a breath.

You don’t need to out-think your feelings — you need to learn how to experience them in a way that feels safe.

This is Part 2 of my three-part series on overthinking, and it’s the piece no one teaches sensitive women… but it’s the one that makes everything else finally click.

• Why overthinking is an emotional issue long before it becomes a thought issue
• The difference between “reacting” to emotion and actually processing it
• What emotions really are — and why they’re not good, bad, or logical
• How a sensitive nervous system intensifies emotional waves
• Why unprocessed emotion always comes back bigger, louder, and more overwhelming
• How emotional capacity makes difficult feelings easier to handle
• The simple skill of “feeling emotion in the body” without being consumed by it
• Why learning to process emotion is the key to ending the overthinking cycle

🔗 Get full show notes, transcript, and more:

amandahess.ca/288

👉 Interested in working with me?

Sign up for a free discovery call: amandahess.ca

📱 Connect with me on TikTok & Instagram:

@theamandahess

Overthinking isn’t a flaw — it’s a survival response.

If your brain feels like it never shuts off, if you replay conversations, worry about every decision, or try to anticipate every possible problem before it happens — this episode is for you.

When your nervous system has been running in survival mode for too long, overthinking becomes your body’s way of trying to keep you safe. But the truth is, it’s not protecting you — it’s exhausting you. In this episode, we break down why overthinking isn’t a mindset problem, it’s a nervous system problem, and how learning to regulate your body first changes everything.

When you understand that your “racing thoughts” are really a sensitive nervous system doing its best to help you survive, you stop trying to fix yourself — and start working with yourself.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series where I teach the Love Yourself No Matter What Method — starting with nervous system regulation and why your gas pedal and brake are always out of sync.

• Why overthinking is your nervous system’s way of trying to keep you safe
• How a sensitive nervous system gets triggered — and what it really means
• The difference between the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (and how to balance them)
• What “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn” actually looks like in real life
• Why your brain doesn’t know the difference between a bear chasing you and your friend not texting back
• The simple daily practices that start rebalancing your nervous system — without hours of meditation

amandahess.ca/287

👉 Interested in working with me?

Sign up for a free discovery call: amandahess.ca

📱 Connect with me on TikTok & Instagram:

@theamandahess