Showing up as a calm mom has as much to do with your mindset as it does with what’s happening in your body—your nervous system to be exact. 

In this podcast, you’ll hear from Michelle Grosser (of michellegrosser.com) who is a professionally trained coach, attorney, pastor, nervous system fitness expert, and mom of two girls.

Michelle shares her personal experience over-working and what it took for her to become a calm mom. Now, she helps other moms do the same.

You’ll learn what it means to regulate your nervous system and practical steps you can get started with to become more calm in your everyday life.

This episode is a must-listen for over-achieving moms who struggle to stay calm. 

If you’re a mom, you’re in the right place. This is a space designed to help you overcome challenges and live your best life. I’d love for you to join me inside the Mom On Purpose Membership where we take this work to the next level.

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Full Episode Transcript:


Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. I am so excited for today’s podcast episode. We are going to be talking about how you can become a calm mom and more specifically specific nervous system techniques that you can use to get regulated. I have Michelle Grosser on the podcast today. Michelle helps high achieving women regulate their nervous systems to overcome anxiety, overwhelm, and burnout. She is a trial attorney by trade. She’s also a pastor and a nervous system fitness expert, a certified master life coach and host of the Calm Mom podcast. So Michelle’s kind of training is more centered on the body IE somatic modalities. And what I love so much among other things about Michelle, is that she is sort of the yin to my yang. So on this podcast I focus a ton on mindset and Michelle’s work starts with the body. So I think having her on is going to be just so helpful for you. I know recording this was so helpful for me, and I truly believe that you will find her tools and techniques to be just as impactful as I found them to be. So without further ado, let’s dive into today’s podcast with Michelle Grosser.

Welcome, Michelle. Thank you so much for being here. Before we get started with the content, I just want to start off by getting to know you more mostly, for the audience here. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself, both professionally and personally? Sure. So my name is Michelle Grosser. I’m so, so grateful to be here. I live in Miami with my family, my husband Jeff, and our two daughters, they’re five and seven. And for the better part of the last, I guess 15 years now, I’ve been a trial attorney here in Miami and at the beginning of the pandemic , I think like so many of us probably, by, you know, no decision of my own, I was just kind of forced to slow down for the first time in a long time and really realized I think how deep of a state of burnout I was in. You know, I had really young, young kids and I had just been working a lot. Like I remember taking my youngest, to the office when she was like five weeks old, like nursing her while I’m like on calls trying to settle cases.

And I, I didn’t really see anything wrong with it per se, and not that it’s wrong, but just not understanding that I was really burning the candle at both ends and I was just feeling really awful right in my body and in my mind and in my emotions and all the things. So I decided to do something about it and I had worked with a coach and I worked with like a functional medicine practitioner. And what I really started to notice was that the through line through everything I was experiencing was that my nervous system was really dysregulated. And I had been stuck in go, go, go mode and fight or flight without realizing it for so long and it was showing up in all of these physical symptoms and emotional and mental symptoms. And once I started to learn how to regulate my nervous system and everything kind of started to heal and dissipate, I just went down like the deepest rabbit hole and I’m like, I want to know everything about this so I can teach everyone I know.

Because I know there were so many people, so many women in particular moms, who were just feeling how I was feeling. And that’s when I started my podcast, the call mom. And then now really this coaching business where that’s what I do primarily, and full-time is I help high achieving moms like myself and like you,, learn more about their nervous system so they can live in a way that is supportive of a healthy nervous system and then kind of reap all of those benefits that really impacts us first, right? ’cause we deserve to feel really good, but then like the mom that we are and the community member we are, and the business owner we are and all those different roles.

I love your story so much in part because of the parallels with mine, but also just because I can relate so much to being in that go, go go energy. And obviously I talk a lot about the mindset component of it. And what I love about your work is the nervous system work that, isn’t my expertise. So I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what it even means to have a regulated nervous system.

Yeah, for sure. So our nervous system is this whole network of essentially like messages, right? Being sent in our body. It’s like our body’s command center. Everything that’s going on is controlled by our nervous system. So you know, much of that, I think the science is showing over 95% of it is subconscious. So we’re not even aware of the messages that are being sent by our nervous system that are controlling the ways in which we think right then become the ways in which we speak and the ways in which we act. And really every way that we show up in our life, it’s all a function of our nervous system. And when we talk about our nervous system, you know, if you hear about it, I don’t know, on Instagram from some influencer or something, you hear a lot about, like, I want to have a regulated nervous system.

And a lot of times we associate that with feeling calm, and feeling present and feeling connected. And there is something to that. But ultimately regulation means that we have a healthy nervous system. And a healthy nervous system is actually a resilient nervous system. So we are meant to experience all the highs and lows of life, right? And then our nervous system thus responds accordingly. So if something is, you know, unsafe or children’s about to do something that will hurt them or whatever it is, like we want our nervous system to spurse into fight or flight so we can respond appropriately. However, a healthy nervous system will understand when safety has returned and will come back to that baseline stress level. Same thing when we’re feeling kind of down, right? If we’re having a day where we’re like, man, I’m just like procrastinating everything today and I’m just feeling kind of like shut down and burnt out, that’s fine.

But we want to have a nervous system that’s resilient enough to eventually come back to feeling like ourselves again. That’s a regulated nervous system. What happens is that so many of us, right? You think about just our evolution, right? Thousands of years ago, like a real threat came, we were being chased by like a lion or something, and it’s like, ah, fight or flight mode activated and everything in our body prepares to run or to fight. And we actually do that, right? We have to like fight the threat or run from the threat. And eventually we’re like, wow, I’ve evaded the threat, I’m safe. I talk it over with my family, right? We eat a hot meal together on the campfire, I go to sleep, and that whole stress cycle loop, that loop completes, I feel activated and I come back down to baseline stress level.

But that’s not the life we live in anymore, right? We are hit with chronic stress almost 24 7. Our brain has not evolved in a way that it does a good job differentiating between real stressors and perceived threats, right? So it’s like, it’s an email or it’s, you know, my house not looking like the house on Pinterest or whatever it is, and it like brings up this fight or flight response in us and we don’t have the tools or the awareness or what, what have you to like complete that stress loop. So we get stuck in fight or flight or we get stuck in this freeze response. And over time when we’re stuck in that response, that’s usually what we refer to when we say like, I’m dysregulated or I feel dysregulated. We’re stuck in one of those stress responses and our body doesn’t know how to come back to baseline.

I love that explanation. That was really helpful. I’m sure for so many people listening and also for myself, so I’m just thinking about like the nervous system regulation techniques that you teach, and I want to hear all about those. Before we dive into those, kind of piggybacking off of what you just said with respect to why they’re so important, are they so important because it closes that loop or, or something else?

Yeah, so when we, so I guess let’s start here. Our nervous system, as we’re as, as the neuroscientists starting to develop, we’re understanding that 80% of the nerves in our body are what we call afferent nerves. And that means that they run from our body, the messages run from our body, that’s where they originate up to our brain, right? 20% are running from our brain down to our body. So if we are feeling really agitated, really frustrated, really annoyed, edgy, angry, what, you know, whatever it is that might be showing up for us when we’re quote unquote dysregulated a lot of us will try to just tell ourselves like, calm down, be positive, focus on the good right all and bypass everything that’s going on in our physiology telling us something is unsafe, right? The alarm is ringing. So yes, that mindset work is so, so, so important.

And at the end of the day, we know it’s 20% of the messaging. So if we can also communicate safety to the body and pair that with the messaging going on from the top down from our mindset work, that’s how we really see true transformation in the state of our nervous system and our body. All of the nerve endings in our body that are constantly gathering information about whether we’re safe or not, our body doesn’t speak a verbal language. So, so often we’ll say these words, right? Things we’ve heard and affirmations that we’ve heard and all of this stuff. And, you know, it’s like, I think it is kind of a different conversation to a certain extent it can be helpful. However, our body doesn’t really understand words. So we have to communicate that safety to our body, in a way understands how do we do that?

We do that through movement, we do that through breath, we do that through sound. We do that through gentle and appropriate touch. So we have to communicate that safety to our body in a way that, our body understands. And when we are in that fight or flight mode, the part of our brain that we want to be able to access that makes us like the best mom and the best wife and the best human being. That part, we don’t even have access to our prefrontal cortex. So we’re just in survival mode, right? We’re just seeing red. We’re just like, we can’t think straight, we don’t feel well, we’re snapping at everybody. And none of us want to live like that or show up like that. So we have these tools or techniques to bring safety and regulation to our body and our nervous system that opens up access to that part of our brain, which then changes how we show up everywhere, right? I love that. So I can hear people listening and they’re saying, how, how do I do this? So do you have any kinda simple beginner level? I’m I’m saying beginner level because, I need the I need the beginner level, techniques that we might get started with that I think could be memorable, helpful and simple.

Yeah. So the first step to any of this is awareness. And I know that’s a lot of what you teach too. So noticing, what do we want to become aware of? Well, we want to become aware of our somatic cues of arousal. So what does that mean? We want to become aware of what our body does. What does it feel like in my body when my body is starting to enter into that fight or flight mode, right? So is it, you know, when I’m starting to get aggravated with my kids or my husband or work or whatever it is, what happens in my body? So many of us are so disconnected from the sensations of our body, right? So does my breathing change? Does my body temperature change? Do I get a lump in my throat or like a weight in my chest? I know for me, like my jaw will clench, right?

When I wake up with like a sore jaw or I notice my tongue is just like pressed to the roof of my mouth. Yeah, that’s a signal for me. Like, okay, something’s going on here, Michelle, we’ve gotta like shift right now. And it, and it’s different for everybody. So just starting to notice like when I am, when my nervous system is feeling overwhelmed, activated, triggered, whatever you want to call it, how is that showing up in your body? And then I teach both like foundational big picture lifestyle things that help us to be more resilient in our nervous system. And then I also teach kind of like in the moment practices, that can help you that are like, you know, in two minutes if you just need to check, like this is what I do. I’m like, I’ll be right back. And then I’ll either go to the bathroom, I go sit in my car and I’m like, do one of these practices. And then when I come back in I’m like, okay, I’m ready. Like let’s go. I can, I can respond to this instead of reacting, which is a pattern so many of us are stuck in. So I can share briefly about,

Yeah, I love that because so much of this is similar to what I teach, but different. And so I’m just thinking about how I talk about processing emotions. And it’s similar because what you alluded to and what I want to say expressly is we are focused on what we think the trigger was. We are focused on what’s outside of us, our kids fighting what our spouse did or said or didn’t do. And I think it’s part of the brain survival because like you said, it was really important for survival purposes to be focused on that lion to make sure that you were safe. And yet, in our modern world, modern motherhood not so helpful to be focused on that when you are actually safe and when the loop isn’t closed. And so just training your brain to shift back to you and what’s going on in your body.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but for me it’s still something I consciously have to do because my brain’s like, no, that other thing that they did is really important, let’s focus on that. They’re the cause of it. But like you said, it’s starting with awareness because, mostly because we just can’t change that. We can’t change our kids, we can’t change our spouse, we can’t change the triggers, the circumstances. And so focusing on us really is the most helpful approach. And I love, the suggestions, the tools that you gave already because I am also a jaw clench and the the tongue thruster, which I didn’t even know was a thing until I did, uh, physical therapy a few years ago. But that is exactly right and, and I think a lot of people listening the overachievers particularly will, relate to that.

Kind of circling back to what you said with respect to in the moment and out of the moment, I love talking about that because it’s different, right? You’re, you’re kind of building skills out of the moment. You’re most likely calm already. So I would love for you to talk about the difference between tools in the moment and out of the moment. And then also for someone who does want to overall have a more regulated nervous system who’s just being introduced to this work, what should they focus on outside of awareness? Is it more of in the moment versus out of the moment? Is it both? And kind of what do you suggest?

Yeah, so I think when I think about it, I think the in the moment stuff are kind of like the bandaids where it’s like, I’m bleeding and I need a bandaid, and this is, this is, this is important. And I understand this isn’t like a sustainable long-term solution for whatever I’ve got going on, right? So let’s start here. We all have in our nervous system a window of tolerance, right? And our window of tolerance is basically the zone within which we can handle what life throws at us. So our capacity to handle life without being thrust into a fight or flight response and being triggered and activated. And the goal with these foundational like lifestyle practices is that we all want to expand that window of tolerance. We want all want to increase that capacity. And there are different things that we do every day.

A lot of them are mindset things and a lot of them are like patterns, right? And just like our way of being that will shrink our window of tolerance so quickly, like that window of tolerance can, you know, shift throughout a day even. It’s why some days like, maybe you guys will resonate with this, you wake up and it’s like, I don’t know, everything will go wrong. Like, my kids are, you know, throwing a temper tantrum to leave the house. I’m running late, get cut off in traffic, I’m late for a meeting, whatever, and I get home at the end of the day and I’m like, dang, like, like I crushed this day. Like it was really hard, but I like showed up. Like I don’t, I impressed myself today, right? Our window of tolerance is super wide. We have a high capacity for life, but then the next day, same things can happen.

And by like 7:05, I’m having my own meltdown at the bathroom, and I’m like, I can’t do this. It’s the same exact stimuli, it’s the same exact things happening and coming at me. I just have no bandwidth that day. I have no capacity. My my nervous systems resilience is shot. So when we’re talking about these tools, kind of think about it like that. Like, I want to grow my capacity to handle life. It’s not that I necessarily, you know, don’t want bad things to happen like life’s just going to keep lifeing. I just want better, better capability to handle when it does. So I like to teach three, kind of overarching lifestyle things that really help to grow the capacity of our nervous system. The first one is we’ve gotta incorporate daily movement. It’s just like a no brainer. We all know this, right?

We know what happens in our brain and our body when we move somatically so many of our emotions and our frustration just gets stored as muscle tension in our body. So when we kind of move and shake and like get our heart rate up and have our brain release, all these feel good neurotransmitters, it does so much to increase the resilience of our nervous system. When it comes to nervous system in particular and our nervous system health, 10 minutes of movement a day is like enough. So we don’t have to overthink this, especially as moms, like, put your kids in the stroller and go around the block. Especially if you’re outside, you don’t getting some sunshine and fresh air, like that’s enough. You don’t have to go to CrossFit. You don’t have to do this big, you know, routine. Just move your body to, to the point of elevated heart rate 10 minutes a day. The next thing I teach is 10 minutes of stillness every day. And, for those of us who are the type A like go, go, go all the time, this was the hardest one for me. I don’t know if you’ve struggled. Yeah.

This, yeah, I teach this, I call it 10 minutes of silence. So this is so, interesting because that’s It, It you’ll, I’ll let you talk about it. But one quick caveat, I had a client who did it for a few days and she said, yeah, it’s, it’s not working. I feel terrible the whole time. And I said, it’s working, it’s, you know, you’re doing it right. Give it 30 days. And after 30 days she couldn’t believe how much, it had changed and she was looking forward to it. And that was my experience as well. So I’m curious to kind of hear your experience and how you use it in your practice. Yeah. So that’s so good. I love that you do that. And there’s a couple of reasons why we do that. The first thing is from polyvagal theory, which tells us that there’s three different circuits in our nervous system or three different states in our, in our nervous system. And one of those is a state of, of stillness. But for so many of us who have been going for so long, right? That stillness can feel really unsafe to our nervous system because it’s so foreign. So it’s exercising that muscle that we can be in this state of stillness and calmness, without it being, you know, if you’ve tried to meditate and you’re like, I just can’t, like, it makes me even more angry or anxious when I’m meditating. It just feels so unsafe to your nervous system. So it’s an, it’s a practice of titrating it, right?

Start with 30 seconds, then go to a minute, then go to whatever and work your way up like you would any other muscle. And then the other part of it that’s so soothing and healing to our nervous system is that we are so constantly overstimulated, right? All the requests from all the people, the little people, like our phone, our work, all the things. So giving our nervous system that space to just be and heal and rest is going to do wonders and increasing your capacity. So that’s the second. And then the third one is my, is my favorite,especially for moms. And that’s 10 minutes of play every day. And I think when we think of play, especially as parents, we think of like either playing with our kids, which sometimes is super awesome and fun and then sometimes it’s not, not as as fun if I’m being honest.

But when I talk about play, I’m talking about those things that like we remember doing, you know, either when we were kids or teenagers or in college or before we had kids that just like lit us up. Like we could find ourselves lost in it for hours. Maybe it was playing an instrument, maybe it was skateboarding, maybe it was, you know, playing sports or doing art or cooking or whatever. Like these things that just like they’re us, right? It’s just like this is what Michelle loves. And I think through no fault of our own, it can be easy to lose a lot of that in motherhood. Right? Like so many women I coach and probably you too, they’re like, oh my gosh, like, I don’t even remember. I don’t have any hobbies. I don’t remember what I like to do. And I’m like, awesome.

What a great opportunity for us to explore that again together. But just finding those things and, and make it simple. Like you don’t need this whole big routine again. But man, just like sometimes for me it’s just putting on my favorite song and it’s like kitchen dance party while we make dinner and everyone feels different after. That’s regulating my nervous system, that’s increasing my capacity ’cause it’s fun and it lights me up and it’s healing. So those are the three, if you do them every day, it’s 30 minutes if you like, you can put ’em together, go for a walk, right? Get your movement in without your phone and your earbuds and that’s your stillness also. Like, you don’t have to overthink this, but man, if you start making progress on any of those three or all of those three, you’ll notice your capacity will expand and your nervous system is more regulated. It’s so interesting. I love each of these. And the last one, the play I think is where my focus is on right now. Because I, I went through, similar to you, the the stage of, where I thought even just sitting still for two minutes was terrifying. And seeing how far I’ve come has been really, rewarding. And now I feel very comfortable being still doing nothing. It’s such a gift. And that’s, that’s a transformation. And now I think I want to incorporate more play. And I, I think we like undersell it. We think of it as like, like leisure or luxury or, or just that, right? Yeah. Right. I have real things like, and it’s so interesting because your relationships completely change when you have more play because you feel different. And I love that you gave us kinda the background of why and it, how it has to do with the nervous system. I didn’t really know that, but I always talk about that. And for me personally, just increasing play. I’m curious too, when you think back to pre covid when you were just practicing as an attorney, kind of in that go, go go energy, that period of your life compared to now. I assume you practice these practices too, as well as you’re kind of recommending them to your clients. How has it been different for you being a mom? Like, do you show up differently, kind of how do you relate to your family differently having had that internal transformation?

Hmm, yeah. Without it sounding like I, I don’t think I can overstate it, but it sounds like it’s almost like you want to roll your eyes and it’s like, okay, gimme a break. But it changed everything. It changed everything. Like even when I think back to before kids, like even how I worked out and moved my body, it was like a super rigid exercise routine. And it was like, I’m going to do this Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I’m going to lift these weights and if I’m not sore, it didn’t even pop in or like, whatever it was like punishment and just like re like relearning how I look at everything I do. I had so many labels associated with like what was strong and what was weak that were completely backwards. So I had to like completely shift that I prided myself on being someone who like, I wasn’t one of those dramatic women, you know?

Like I don’t cry, I don’t like, I don’t even cry at sad movies. Like, I don’t know why I like thought that was like cool I was like, I dunno, I dunno why I was like so proud of that. And like, just realizing like, wow, Michelle, there’s so many ways that you were holding yourself back. I’m suppressing all these emotions. And when you were suppressing anger and sadness, you were also suppressing joy and like this deep ecstatic love that you that you were like, where’s that like bubbly joy. I haven’t felt that in a long time. And then that comes back and, parenting and in my marriage, like it’s changed everything. And I think, I think that’s really it ultimately is that I’ve shifted to a place where there’s just so much more joy. And when you do life from a place of joy, like I, my husband and I tell each other all like, we just have this little saying in our house, we’re like, who has it better than the Grossers? And then my kids are like, nobody . But it’s like, we get, it gets to be fun. Like we get to do this. But when you’re surviving and when you’re just like, you know, in that, in that fight or flight mode, there’s no space for that. Yeah. Like your, your focus is on like, I’ve just gotta make it through the day. I just gotta keep pushing and keep striving and keep proving and we can release all of that. It’s so freeing. And that’s what happens when your nervous system is regulated.

Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful. I love that. And I think that listening to it, we automatically assume you like won the lottery or something like we think it was like some external circumstance that changed. And I just want to reiterate that it is the, the inner work, however you find it in using these tools, it just sounds like you would’ve never said that little mantra with your family, pre covid. Pre-do any of this work, right? No, I I would, I I don’t even think it would’ve been in my awareness, it wouldn’t have been the focus. Right. Or a goal. Yeah. And do you think that, you started off talking about how you had thoughts about how you labeled, like what was strong and what was weak. And I’m just wondering if you labeled like suppressing your emotions and kind of having this rigid structure to your workouts and your days and your life. Were you labeling that as strong?

Oh yeah. That was like really, I was like proud of that. I was like, look at me, I get up at 4:30 and I’m in the gym. Like, I dunno, like that makes people, that makes me better than anybody, right? But like you’re, so it’s, and it wasn’t even really, I think from a place of insecurity, maybe some of it was, I think it was a lot of just like proving to myself that I can do hard things and mislabeling what is hard. Like sitting still and not doing anything was actually way harder for me than waking him at 4:30 and going to the gym. But I just didn’t have that awareness, right? Being vulnerable with my husband and my inner circle is actually much, you know, stronger than pretending everything’s fine. I can do it all by myself, but I just had such a misunderstanding of understanding strength and I don’t even know if that’s like the right word or the goal.

I think, you know, when you, when you’re going through something really hard and people are like, you’re so strong, it’s like that’s not really what I want to be. in that moment you like, that’s not particularly helpful. But just having all these associations between, and a lot of it’s, you know, conditioning and society and all those things that we’re just, just reinforced, especially as girls and as women for, you know, our whole life. But man rerethinking and reevaluating and asking myself like, one, is this actually true? And then like says who to everything. It was like a season of like just questioning everything. It was so powerful.

I love that so much. I was on your podcast, we just recorded it before this, I’ll link to that in the show notes. And one of the things that we were talking about, or I was talking about was, just questioning everything and how, we’re trained to look for that validation. Externally, we’re trained to look for the answers externally. And I think probably you were similar to me in so far as we were taught and trained and told to go to law school and be a lawyer. And I don’t regret any of that. And yet I wasn’t taught or trained to look inward and to ask myself questions like what do I enjoy and what are my hobbies? An, of course we are in school, you know, as a 10-year-old, but as an adult it’s, you know, get up. The earlier you get up, the better you are the stronger you are. And again, it’s, it’s not that getting up is wrong or bad, getting up early even. I still do it from time to time, but it’s just having like a more fuller awareness of, of yourself of what you really desire, of how you’re labeling things, right? Like you didn’t have the awareness back then that strength could be completely different than what you were thinking, right? And it’s so personal.

That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. I always say like, we’re all, every single one of us as human beings, we’re all playing always one of two games and it’s either an outside in game or an inside out game. And that’s, that’s a, that was a big shift for me is like, where am my life? Am I playing an outside in game where I’m looking for all of this external validation for me to be okay on the inside?And how can I shift that right and take radical accountability and responsibility for creating my own happiness, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, you know, you name it from the inside. And the other thing that was kind of coming to me through all of that is as we, you know, you guys are listening to this podcast, it’s because we’re people who want to grow and want to learn and want to expand our edges.

And we all have different edges, right? So for some people getting up at 6:00 AM and going to the gym might be an edge that actually needs to be expanded and that feels really uncomfortable for them. And that’s an area of growth. But for me, like that edge was, that edge was set. I did not need to expand there. I needed like what, what would it look like to expand my edge of softening, right? And that was like a whole season where I’m like, I’m just going to, like, I have been so in my masculine energy and like pushing and analytical and planning and like all of these things like what would it look like to really expand my edge of vulnerability and emotions and creativity and like this ease and flow that we hear about that I’m like, that doesn’t, people actually really like do that. Like that doesn’t seem possible. But what if I leaned into that and explored that and that in that season that was my edge, right? That I was looking to expand. So I just think it’s so, it’s so cool that life gives us all these opportunities.

I love that visual. That’s such a beautiful way of explaining it. Like edges that were expanding. I also went through that similarly where I expanded my femininity edge and just noticed how far masculine I was and in my energy right? It was still getting my hair done still quote unquote feminine. But I had no idea that, that there wasn’t even edge that I could expand. Like I thought it was just how I was because I didn’t have that awareness. And I think kinda the underlying message of all of this is that, as human beings we are continuously expanding and growing and that can be a beautiful, fun process. It’s like reinventing yourself at the deepest level.

Yeah. And I think it’s cool for our kids to see us do it too. Yes. Right? Like mine are getting a little bit older now. Well they’ll notice they’re like, oh ma, like I, so you guys can’t see the video now, but my nails are painted blue, bright blue, like electric blue, which is something I couldn’t do when I was going to court, right? It’s like you just couldn’t show up in front of a judge with neon nails. And then I got these, I had the most boring like, I don’t know, black framed glasses that I wore every single day. And I went out on like, I don’t know, some website where you could get $6 frames and I bought these like lime green glasses. I’m like, these are so not me. But they’re so fun. Like, I’m going to play around with this. And my kids are like, mom, like you look so cool. And I’m like, but they’re just seeing me play around with that that explore different parts of myself. And I think it’s like subconsciously giving them so much permission and so much freedom to like grow and change and explore, you know, not just in stupid things like your nails and your eyeglasses, but like what does it look like for me to explore different passions and different hobbies and like, I don’t know all the different parts of us and I think when we’re stuck in this, like rigidity just get lost, Right? I love that you’re really modeling that as an adult you continue to grow and as an adult life can be as fun and beautiful and amazing as it is when you’re a kid. Yeah. It’s awesome. Oh, It has been so fun at talking with you. Is there anything else on your heart that you want to share? Hmm, I, a couple things. I guess one, as we’re just talking even about these edges, I created this quiz a couple years ago called this The Five Personality Patterns and it’s just michellegrosser.com/quiz. But it’s so fascinating ’cause you answer, it takes like two minutes, but the landing page you get on is a personality pattern and there’s five of them. And I was, surprised the rigid pattern as someone who like loves rules and structure and you know, all the checklists and things like that. But there’s five different patterns and I think having an understanding of your pattern and how you got into your pattern and the gifts of your pattern and then how you can heal parts of it is so empowering, especially as a mom and then to even see it in your, in your kids.

So that’s a great resource. And then I think the other thing I, that’s just kind of coming to me that, that I’d love to leave you guys with is, I made a shift a few years ago. It was a mindset shift that really changed a lot of things for me, especially when I had really young kids like toddlers. And it was a shift I I became hyper aware of where judgment was popping in automatically and catching that and then shifting it to curiosity. And I did it with my husband and I did it with myself and I did it with my kids and it just opened up this whole new world for me because I was so quick, like, I dunno, let’s say I snapped at my, my 2-year-old or something. And the, the voice that was automatically coming up was like, you shouldn’t have done that.

Now she’s crying, you know, whatever comes through her head, right? She’s going to be scarred for life. Like all this stuff. But then when I would catch it and shift it to curiosity, it was like, well that’s not like you Michelle. Like what, what, what happened there? What was like, well how are you not taking care of yourself? How did we get to this point? Oh yeah. Like, you know, the baby had a fever and you didn’t sleep last night. That that’s what happened here. And then so much easier to access compassion for yourself and then repair and, and you know, go, go through whatever processes you have there from that space. But man, in my marriage and in my parenting, like when I look at my husband and like something’s starting to irritate me or I’m getting frustrated and instead of like letting that loop just being like, what’s like what, what, what, what might his fear be here?

Like how was it growing up in his house? That might be, you know, the, impetus for what I’m, what I’m on the back end of now or like just getting cur and asking him, I’d be like, Hey, I noticed that when I did that. You got like really upset. Like what was going through your head when like, I’m just so curious. And just going back to curiosity over and over and over, I got to know myself so much better. I got to know him, I got to know my kids so much better. And man, it just like brought me to a place where I can like help and just be and support instead of like judging and fixing and be hard or where, wherever else I was going with that. So, if that helps anybody maybe just like grab that and try, try it on for size. I see what happens.

I love it so much because I think really what you’re getting at is so much of, of what I believe in too, which is like that inner self-talk. It’s not necessarily that we want to just take our thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts. Certainly sometimes it’s like the low hanging fruit I call like, yes, let’s not call ourselves fat and ugly, let’s say like, we look great today. But more than that, I think it’s teaching the skill of learning about yourself and, and seeing how important that is. And I, I kind of think of like, you know, we can all relate to the analogy of being a kid and having a coach. Even if you never had one, you, you sort of get the analogy right. It’s like you want to coach who, who is kind and supportive but also who is curious and interested a and wants to see you thrive. And so most of us, I think our inner coach at first is really harsh and critical and judgmental and that’s kind of what you’re alluding to and it’s like you really learned how to have this inner coach of, of compassion and curiosity that has really served you personally, but also in your marriage and in your parenting and I’m sure in many other ways as well.

Yeah. And the thing I learned from that, and I found to be true the more I like tested it is that there’s a reason, there’s always a reason for everything anybody ever does ourselves, our kids, our partners, right? So like when we can start to examine that and be like, oh, my three year old’s not just being difficult, right? That’s not really what three year olds do. There’s a reason behind what’s going on here and when I can get curious about that. Yeah. Just, it just opens up a whole new world.

That’s right. ’cause not only then do you have compassion for yourself, but you also have compassion for others. Yeah. You see what’s really going on for them. Amazing. It has been such a delight to have you. Can you tell everyone where they can get more of you?

Sure. So my podcast is called The Calm Mom. And on there we really just focus on a lot of nervous system stuff. So, a lot of the episodes are really practical handles and tools in the moment. Stuff you can use. I know a lot of times we’re fed a lot of these like scripts for parenting or all this stuff. Super helpful when you’re regulated when you’re not so regulated, really hard to access that stuff. So I’m kind of like the precursor to all these beautiful parentin, tools. Get your brain in a space where you can, can, you know, respond using the tools that I teach and then you can, you know, show up and, and try all this different stuff out. So the Call Mom podcastand my website is michellegrosser.com. You can find me on Instagram at It’s Michelle Grosser. Awesome. And we will link to all of that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here today, Michelle. Thank You for having me. It’s been my pleasure.

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