Hi friends,

Hope you are all doing well and enjoying August! I just got back from spending three weeks in Ohio with my family, and it was such a dreamyyyy trip. There is truly nothing like Midwest summers. IYKYK!!! ❤️‍🔥

This week, I wanted to break down a really important topic for you all: protective strategies. I use this term all the time in my content, especially my content focused on couples/relationships, and I want to make sure you all really understand the concept because it can explain SO so so much about yourself and how you show up in relationships.

So what is a protective strategy?

The term comes from parts work and IFS (Internal Family Systems). I don’t have time to go super in-depth on it today, but it’s a healing modality that recognizes that our psyches are made up of many multiple parts. If you’ve ever felt indecisive, then you’ve experienced yourself as having multiple parts within you: a part that wants to go to the party tonight, and a part that wants to stay home. Each of our parts has different needs, desires, feelings, fears, and motives. Here’s a video that helps break this down a little more, if you’re unfamiliar.

What’s important for you to know for the purpose of this newsletter is that protective strategies are the things different parts of us do to protect something deeper and more vulnerable within us:

• if you have a fear of abandonment, maybe you have a protective strategy around seeking reassurance or needing certainty in your relationship to feel in control, a.k.a. safe

• if you have a lot of unprocessed shame, maybe you have a protective strategy around anger or blame as a way of directing attention outward, away from your shame

• if you’re afraid of conflict or rejection, maybe you people-please, suppress your needs, or make yourself as easy as possible to love

• if closeness has felt unsafe or overwhelming in the past, maybe you withdraw, shut down, or convince yourself you don’t need anyone

There are so many examples of this, and I’ll get into more of them throughout this article. But protective strategies are especially important to understand in the context of relationships because so many of them get activated once someone becomes emotionally significant to you, or you’re deeply attached.

Being in a relationship is inherently vulnerable because now there is a fear of loss - and in addition to that, your insecurities, attachment wounds, unmet emotional needs, and limiting beliefs are all coming to the surface. So your protective strategies often get really activated in an effort to protect you from all of that vulnerability.

Sometimes these behaviors can feel irrational, especially when you’re watching yourself do something you know is making the situation worse. But underneath so many of our most frustrating relationship behaviors is a protective strategy.

And this is the paradox of protective strategies: they are trying to meet your internal need for safety, but they often end up creating rupture, distance, disconnection, or dysregulation within your relationship, which actually leaves you feeling unsafe.

• if you’re someone who seeks constant reassurance as a way to soothe your anxious attachment, you may feel better temporarily, but you’ve probably also noticed how that can push someone away over time

• if you shut down or withdraw to protect yourself from the intensity of conflict, you may feel safer in the moment, but your partner may experience that distance as abandonment or hurt

• if you become angry or critical to protect yourself from feeling unseen or unsupported, your partner may become defensive and even less able to hear what you actually need

So while the protective strategy may meet one internal need temporarily (usually an inner child need), it can keep you from getting the thing you probably want the most: to feel close and connected to your partner.

This is why it’s sooo important to understand what your specific protective strategies are, because they WILL get activated in your relationship. It’s also important to understand what those strategies are actually trying to protect within you, so you can tend to that deeper pain yourself and find a different way of meeting the need that doesn’t perpetuate disconnection with your partner.

Here are some of the most common protective strategies in relationships, what they’re often trying to protect, and some prompts to help you identify your own:

Read more

Hi friends,

Last week, I started a new series on my Instagram called “Relationship Reframes” and the first reel ended up resonating with a lot more people than I expected. The reframe was simple and sits at the heart of my coaching practice and what I support individuals and couples on:

What if the moment your relationship started feeling harder wasn’t actually a sign that something has gone wrong...but a sign that the relationship had become emotionally significant enough to activate your attachment system and nervous system?

In other words, what if the relationship didn't suddenly become "wrong" or "incompatible" simply because it suddenly became activating?

What if it had simply become deep enough and emotionally significant enough for your deepest fears, insecurities, unmet emotional needs, limiting beliefs, and protective strategies to finally come to the surface?

Because that’s what often happens as relationships deepen. At the beginning of a relationship, you’re getting to know someone - dopamine is high, things feel easeful and exciting and you’re often experiencing the relationship through a rose-colored lens. But eventually, and sometimes suddenly, something shifts. This person stops being someone you’re just dating and starts becoming an adult attachment figure.

And when someone becomes an attachment figure, your nervous system suddenly has a lot more at stake, and everything unresolved from your past has the potential to come to the surface and get enacted within the relationship. The possibility of loss becomes real, and the relationship starts carrying more emotional weight.

With that often comes more anxiety, more conflict, more insecurity, more questioning, more fear, and more doubt. And it’s not necessarily because the relationship has changed, but because your experience of the relationship has.

From the feedback I’ve gotten, this reframe has sparked tons of conversations and allowed so many people to understand the activation they're experiencing in an entirely different way.

**getting feedback like this from you all is truly everything!! please never hesitate to share it with me :)

But every time I post something like this, I get a version of this question back:

“Okay...but how do I know if the activation I’m feeling is incompatibility...or my attachment wounds?” (and if you’re new to my work: attachment wounds are emotional injuries that happen when early needs for safety, love, attunement, and care are not met by parents or early caregivers).

I think this is one of the most important questions we can ask in relationships, and it’s also one of the hardest and most nuanced to answer, and what my coaching helps people tease apart.

Because from the inside, these two experiences can feel remarkably similar:

• both can create anxiety

• both can make you question the relationship

• both can make the spark feel like it’s disappeared

• both can leave you wondering whether you’ve chosen the wrong person

So where do you even begin? I actually think where most people go wrong is by starting with this question (even though it’s a very reasonable place to start):

“Are we incompatible?”

So I’d like to offer a different starting point:

What happened when this relationship became emotionally significant?

Because when we’re activated on a nervous-system level, we’re not just trying to figure out the relationship, we’re actually trying to figure out whether we’re safe inside of it.

As relationships deepen, they naturally become more emotionally significant and more complex - they carry more weight, there’s more at stake, and the possibility of loss and hurt becomes more real. Vulnerability can wake up a lot in our system. And when this happens, our nervous systems don’t just change how we feel.

They change how we perceive the relationship (!!!)

And while I wish I could tell you there was one simple answer to distinguish between these two experiences, there really isn’t. This work is nuanced because people are nuanced, relationships are nuanced, and every nervous system is different.

But what I can offer you is better questions - questions that help you do the U-turn back to self and really understand what’s happening for you within your activation. Because when you’re activated in a relationship, it’s very easy to fixate on your partner as the problem or the source of your pain.

But so often, they're also mirroring back something much deeper that's already living inside of us - an old fear, an unmet emotional need, a limiting belief, a protective strategy, a part of us that no longer feels safe.

So the steps in this guide are designed to slow you down, help you separate fear from reality, and bring you back into relationship with yourself before making such a life-changing decision.

But before we dive in, just a quick disclaimer - I never want “attachment wounding” to justify toxic, manipulative, abusive, or consistently disrespectful behavior - there is a big difference. And I never want this framework to give people a reason to gaslight themselves into staying in relationships that genuinely aren’t healthy, aligned, or meeting our needs. Attachment wounding can contextualize certain behaviors or experiences, but it cannot be used as an excuse to justify them indefinitely.

At the same time, I don't want us to mistake attachment activation for incompatibility and walk away from relationships simply because they've become emotionally significant enough to bring our deepest fears to the surface.

Like I said, this is nuanced! Working through a power struggle requires two people who are both willing to look honestly at themselves, take responsibility for their part, and stay curious about what’s unfolding between them. And unfortunately, not everyone is ready for that…and that’s important information too.

So instead of asking, "Should I stay?" or "Should I go?" right away, I'd invite you to walk through these six steps first. It's the same process I guide clients through when we're trying to understand whether the activation they're experiencing is pointing toward genuine incompatibility...or an attachment pattern that's asking to be seen, understood, and healed.

The Relationship Reframe Method:

1. Restore safety before you seek certainty.

2. Make the U-turn back to yourself.

3. Let your body tell you the story.

4. Find the need underneath the protection.

5. Look at the pattern, not just the partner.

6. Now come back to the relationship.

Step 1: Restore safety before you seek certainty.

One of the biggest mistakes we make when we’re activated is assuming we need to figure the relationship out immediately.

• Should I stay?

• Should I leave?

• Is this my person?

• Have I been ignoring red flags?

Activation creates a really powerful sense of urgency, and it totally makes sense why. When your nervous system perceives a threat, whether that’s physical danger or the possibility of losing someone you love, it shifts into protection. To your nervous system, activation often means something isn’t safe. And when something doesn’t feel safe, your brain wants certainty, immediately.

The tricky part is that urgency and clarity are not the same thing, and activation doesn’t just change what you feel, it actually changes what you perceive.

Fear has a way of shaping the story your mind tells about what’s happening: a delayed text suddenly feels loaded with meaning, a conflict starts feeling like proof you’ve chosen the wrong person, distance becomes evidence that something is fundamentally wrong.

And biologically, there’s a reason for this. When your nervous system becomes activated, you actually have less access to your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for reasoning, perspective, and thoughtful decision-making. Your brain shifts into survival mode because its primary job becomes protecting you, not helping you make nuanced relationship decisions.

This is where I often bring in parts work or Internal Family Systems (IFS) with clients - it’s almost like a younger part of you has climbed into the driver’s seat.

• the part of you that’s terrified of abandonment

• the part of you that’s afraid of rejection

• the part of you that learned, years ago, that love wasn’t always safe

• the part of you that just wants to feel chosen

This part isn’t trying to sabotage your relationship (even though it can certainly feel like it), it’s trying to protect you from pain and loss. The problem is that it’s often responding to the current moment through the lens of unmet childhood needs or past relationship pain.

And while that younger part deserves so much compassion, it’s usually not the part you want making such a big relationship decision. That’s why I almost never encourage someone to decide whether to stay or leave while they’re highly activated - because your feelings are being filtered through a nervous system that’s trying to answer one question before anything else: am I safe?

So before you seek certainty about the relationship, see if you can restore a little safety first. Maybe that’s breathwork, maybe it’s tapping, maybe it’s going for a walk. Maybe it’s calling a friend. Or maybe it’s simply putting your phone down and letting your body settle before trying to solve anything.

I’ve found that when our nervous systems settle, our perception often shifts too - because we’re finally seeing the relationship through our grounded adult self instead of through a younger part that’s desperately trying to keep us safe.

Journal prompts

• What feels so urgent for me to figure out right now?

• What is my nervous system afraid might happen?

• What would help me feel just a little bit safer before trying to answer any of these questions?

• If I didn’t have to decide today, what might become clearer?

Step 2: Make the U-turn back to yourself.

Once your nervous system has settled a little, it’s time to get curious about what’s happening inside of you - this is where I invite people to make what I call the U-turn back to self. It’s a powerful practice for self responsibility and awareness building. Because when we’re activated, our attention almost always goes outward.

• What are they doing?

• Why did they say that?

• Why didn’t they text back?

• Why aren’t they meeting my needs?

• Are they emotionally unavailable?

• Are they pulling away?

Again, this is completely understandable. Our brains are trying to solve the perceived threat - but before spending all of your energy trying to understand your partner and their intentions, I want to invite you to become curious about yourself.

What’s actually happening inside of me right now?

This is one of the biggest shifts I help clients make. And it doesn’t mean that your partner isn’t contributing to the dynamic or the activation you’re experiencing, they absolutely might be. That's because it's vvv difficult to understand what's happening in the relationship until you understand what's happening inside of you first.

So often, when we’re activated, we become convinced that our partner is the source of our pain. And sometimes they are contributing to it, but so often the relationship is also bringing something much older to the surface and mirroring something really important back to you:

• old fears

• unmet emotional needs

• limiting beliefs

• a younger part of you that suddenly doesn’t feel safe anymore

That’s why I always encourage people to make the U-turn before making a conclusion. Because once you understand what’s happening inside of you, it becomes much easier to distinguish what’s yours, what belongs to the relationship, and what might actually be a combination of both.

Journal prompts:

• What am I most focused on my partner doing right now?

• If I bring the attention back to myself, what am I actually feeling?

• What feels threatened in me?

• What feels vulnerable underneath my reaction?

• Am I trying to understand my partner...or am I trying to escape the discomfort I’m feeling inside myself?

Step 3: Let your body tell you the story.

Once you’ve made the U-turn back to yourself, I want you to get out of your head for a moment and into your body because my work is rooted in somatic and subconscious healing. In my work with clients, we don’t change and heal through insight alone, we let the body and subconscious speak to us and guide our healing. Your body is often holding information your mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

That’s because your nervous system lives in your body, your attachment wounds live in your body, your protective responses live in your body, and your core beliefs live in your body. So before trying to think your way through what's happening, see if you can feel your way into it instead:

• Close your eyes

• Take a few slow breaths - bringing your attention inward to your body

• Notice where the activation lives in your body

  • a tightness in your chest

  • a lump in your throat

  • a pit in your stomach

  • a heaviness in your shoulders.

• Place a hand over that part of your body

• Bring your full attention to the sensation and imagine breathing directly into it

  • You don't need to change it, analyze it, or make it go away. Just stay with it and keep breathing, and notice what happens.

Then, get curious: what emotion is here?

• Fear?

• Grief?

• Shame?

• Anger?

• Loneliness?

• Disappointment?

Stay with it a little longer and keep breathing into it. Then ask yourself:

How old does this part of me feel?

These sensations are often connected to younger parts of ourselves. So instead of overthinking it, just notice what comes up. Does this feel like a really young part? An adolescent part? An adult part? Trust the first age, image, or feeling that comes to mind.

• maybe it feels six

• maybe twelve

• maybe sixteen

• maybe you don’t get an age at all, and that’s okay too

Then keep following the thread - what does this younger part believe about me or others?

Does it believe...

• “People always leave”

• “I’m too much”

• “I’ll never be enough”

• “Love isn’t safe”

• “I have to earn love”

• “If I really let someone in, they’ll hurt me”

As you stay connected to the sensation, notice whether any memories, images, or earlier relationships come to mind. Maybe it reminds you of a dynamic with a parent, a sibling, an ex, or maybe it’s just a familiar feeling you’ve carried for a very long time.

You don’t have to force anything - sometimes just making contact with the sensation and these younger parts, is enough to begin shifting the way you relate to what’s happening inside of you.

This is the moment the story often starts to change. You’re no longer just reacting to your partner - you’re beginning to understand the deeper wound that’s been activated inside of you, and that’s an incredibly different place to relate from.

A few questions to sit with:

• Where do I feel this activation in my body?

• What emotion is underneath the reaction?

• How old does this part of me feel?

• What does this part believe about me, love, or relationships?

• Does this remind me of another relationship or an earlier experience in my life?

• What might this younger part need from me right now?

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Step 4: Find the need underneath the protection.

By now, I hope you are starting to understand what’s happening inside of you a little differently. Maybe you’ve connected with a younger part of yourself or maybe you’ve noticed an old belief that keeps showing up or maybe you’ve realized this feeling didn’t actually begin with your partner.

Now I want you to ask one more question: What is this part of you actually needing right now?

Because every protective strategy exists for a reason and is trying to meet a need. Think about how you’ve responded since this all got activated (these are some common protective strategies):

• Have you been asking for a lot of reassurance?

• Overthinking every interaction?

• Shutting down?

• Pulling away?

• Trying to control the relationship?

• Questioning whether this is your person?

None of those responses are random - they’re your nervous system’s best attempts at protecting something that feels really vulnerable. So instead of asking, “How do I stop doing this?” I’d get curious about what’s underneath it.

• a longing to feel chosen

• a need to feel safe

• the need for certainty or to feel secure

• to know you’re enough

• to know you’re loved

The next question I’d ask is:

How am I trying to get this need met? How much of this need am I asking my partner to meet for me?

This is where so many of us get stuck. We unknowingly outsource our sense of safety, worth, okayness, or security to our partner. Then, when they can’t perfectly provide something they were never meant to be solely responsible for, our protective strategies get even louder.

And one of the most helpful things I remember learning in my own journey is this - the very strategies we’re using to get our needs met often create the disconnection we’re trying so hard to avoid.

How is the way I’m trying to get my needs met actually perpetuating disconnection with my partner?

• the reassurance seeking becomes exhausting

• the criticism makes our partner defensive

• the withdrawing creates more distance

• the overthinking pulls us further away from ourselves

Another question I find really help is, does this remind me of the way I learned to get my needs met in childhood?

So before asking your partner to meet the need, see if you can ask yourself two questions first:

• How can I begin meeting some of this need inside myself?

• And how can I communicate this need from my vulnerable self instead of my protective self?

Here’s an example:

Protective self: “You never make me a priority.”

Vulnerable self: “I’ve realized that when we go a few days without intentional time together, a really old fear of not being important gets activated in me. I know that’s not all yours, but I’d love to talk about how we can create more intentional time together.”

Just from reading these, you can probably feel the difference in energy of how each of these lands in your body. The first comes from a protective part that's trying to create safety through criticism or blame, while the second comes from a more vulnerable part of you that is rooted in self-responsibility and gives your partner a clear understanding and way to meet your needs. One tends to create defensiveness, while the other creates much more possibility for connection.

Journal prompts

• What need is underneath my reaction?

• What is this protective strategy trying to accomplish?

• How did I learn to get this need met growing up?

• Am I outsourcing this need to my partner?

• Is the way I’m trying to get this need met bringing us closer...or creating more distance?

• What would it sound like to communicate this need instead of acting it out?

Step 5: Look at the pattern, not just the partner.

In addition to helping couples and individuals work through power struggles, a huge part of my work is helping people get to the root of and transform relationship patterns they find themselves in. So when I hear someone say, “This happens in every relationship” or “This always seems to happen around the same point,” my antenna goes up!

Because when something repeats, I become much more interested in the pattern than the person. One of the biggest beliefs that guides my work is this: patterns are protective.

They didn’t develop because there’s something wrong with you or you’re cursed/destined to live out shitty relationship experiences. They developed because, at some point in your life, they helped you survive, stay connected, or protect yourself from getting hurt.

So that’s why I don’t believe in shaming our patterns, I really believe in getting to the root of what they’re protecting and trying to communicate to you. If you can understand what they’re trying to communicate, they will often lead you back to your deepest healing. Here are some examples:

• always start wondering if you’ve chosen the wrong person once the honeymoon phase ends

• scanning for signs they’re losing interest

• pulling away the moment someone gets too close

• needing constant reassurance that everything is okay

• every conflict starts feeling like the relationship is in danger.

• ending up with the same feeling: “i’m too much,” “i’m not enough,” or “i have to earn love”

So even if the partner looks different, if the emotional experience stays remarkably similar, it’s usually a clue pointing you back to something in you.

And our patterns don’t just live in romantic relationships - they can show up in friendships, at work, with our parents, with authority figures. Any relationship that carries emotional significance or something meaningful at stake. And once you start seeing the pattern, you stop asking,

“What’s wrong with this relationship?”

And you start asking,

“What’s this relationship pattern helping me see?”

Because one of the most important things I’ve learned is that our patterns don’t just automatically disappear when a relationship ends. If we don’t become curious about what they’re trying to reveal, there’s a good chance they’ll follow us into the next relationship. So if the pattern is here anyway...you might as well let it teach you something.

Journal prompts

• Is this emotional experience familiar?

• Have I felt this way in previous relationships?

• Does this pattern show up outside of romantic relationships?

• What tends to happen once someone becomes really important to me?

• What keeps repeating, even when the people are different?

Step 6: Now come back to the relationship.

Only now do I want you to come back to the relationship itself - but notice we didn’t start here :) We spent time understanding your nervous system, your patterns, and your wounding first because it’s incredibly difficult to evaluate a relationship clearly when fear is in the driver’s seat.

Now ask yourself: Has something actually changed about this relationship?

Not just how it feels, but the relationship itself.

Has your partner stopped showing up in ways they used to?

Are there consistent issues around respect, honesty, emotional availability, communication, or repair? Do your values or visions for the future genuinely differ?

Or has this relationship simply become emotionally significant enough to bring your own attachment patterns to the surface?

Sometimes the answer is the relationship, sometimes the answer is your own history, and very often...it’s both. And one question I come back to a lot is this:

If I felt deeply safe and grounded right now and in my most empowered, adult energy - would this concern still matter?

If the answer is yes, it sounds like there’s something to pay attention to. If the answer is, “I’m actually not sure,” that’s important information too.

The goal isn’t to convince yourself to stay or to leave - the goal is to understand what’s actually happening before making such a big decision about the relationship.

Journal prompts

• Has something objectively changed in this relationship?

• If I felt completely grounded right now, would this still concern me?

• What evidence supports my concerns? What assumptions am I making?

• Am I responding to who my partner actually is...or to what this relationship is bringing up in me?

• What feels true when I imagine responding from my grounded adult self instead of my activated self?

One final reframe

To wrap it alllll up, I believe that the question is never simply,

“Is this the right relationship?”

I think the first question is,

“What is this relationship revealing?”

Because relationships are not just places where we find love - they’re the places where our unconscious patterns, unmet emotional needs, and unprocessed pain finally have somewhere to surface 🌀

Sometimes the activation reveals a genuine incompatibility, sometimes it reveals an old wound that’s asking to be healed, and sometimes it’s revealing both.

But the real lesson that I hope you take away from this guide is that the work isn’t rushing to an answer - it’s becoming regulated, self-aware, and honest enough to tell the difference.

I truly believe relationships have the potential to become some of our greatest teachers and most potent healing opportunities because every meaningful relationship has the potential to reveal something important about ourselves.

And the more we understand what’s ours, what’s theirs, and what’s happening between us, the more freedom we have to make relationship decisions from clarity instead of fear or wounded parts ✨

💖 If this guide supported you, I’d love your support in return 💖

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The passion I have for this work is rooted in my deep belief that none of us are taught how activating healthy relationships can be, or how much they can bring to the surface as they deepen. My hope is that by understanding what’s happening beneath the surface, more people can move through these moments with curiosity instead of fear, and use them as opportunities for healing and transformation instead of something to avoid or run from.

Thank you, as always, for being here 🫶🏻

With love,

Lindsey 💖

https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/

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Hi friends,

Summer has been wildly busy! I celebrated another solar return, spent a week on the beach (eating ice cream cones) in Venice, and filled up my whole coaching practice! Which means I officially have a waitlist :) if you are interested in working together and want to add your name to it, you’ll be the first to know when a spot becomes available! I should be taking on more folks as soon as September.

One other thing that’s been happening is that as I continue creating content on social media, I keep finding, time after time, that the message that resonates most deeply with people is just how activating relationships can be.

It’s like we ALL know and experience it, but so few people actually talk about it. There can be so much shame around how we act when we’re activated and so much fear of being judged for the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come up. So we suffer quietly, assume everyone else is handling relationships better than we are, and become even more isolated in the experience.

Lately, I’ve felt so called to support and educate people around the power struggle phase of relationships. And it seems like people are hungry for a different way of understanding the things so many of us experience in relationships.

So thank you, as always, for being here. This week, I want to go back to something foundational: WHY are relationships so damn activating in the first place?!

Have you ever noticed that you can feel relatively secure, grounded, and emotionally regulated in most areas of your life, and then completely lose access to that version of yourself in a relationship?

Maybe you’re confident at work, deeply self-aware, surrounded by wonderful friendships, and have spent years in therapy. Then the person you’re dating takes a little longer than usual to text you back, seems distant one evening, or asks for space after a conflict, and suddenly you’re spiraling.

You’re rereading messages, scanning for changes in their tone, replaying your last conversation, and trying to figure out what went wrong. Or maybe you go in the other direction: you shut down, feel trapped, become irritated by everything they do, or start questioning whether you want the relationship at all.

You may even watch yourself acting in ways that don’t feel like you and wonder, why am I like this in relationships? There’s a reason romantic relationships activate us so intensely that I don’t think is talked about enough.

As an adult, your partner becomes an attachment figure

As a relationship deepens, your partner stops being simply someone you enjoy spending time with, and they actually become an adult attachment figure, which activates your entire nervous system. Now you have something to lose, and that fear of loss can do a number on your system.

Your nervous system begins to associate them with safety, belonging, comfort, and connection. Their presence can help your body settle. Their affection reassures you that you are loved, and their responsiveness tells your system that you aren’t alone.

This creates the possibility for incredibly deep intimacy. However, it also makes the relationship feel incredibly high stakes.

Once someone matters to you in this way, anything that threatens the connection can register in your nervous system as danger: a change in tone, a moment of distance, a missed bid for connection, or an unresolved conflict can activate a much larger response than the present moment seems to warrant.

Your thinking mind may know that your partner is tired or needs an evening alone, but your body and subconscious may experience their distance as the beginning of abandonment.

Your present relationship activates your relational past

We learn what to expect from love through our earliest relationships.

If love was inconsistent, you may have learned to monitor people closely for signs that they were pulling away (hello, hyper vigilance). If your emotions were dismissed, you may have learned that expressing your needs leads to rejection or shame. If a caregiver was unpredictable, explosive, or overwhelmed, you may have learned to stay hyperaware of everyone else’s emotional state.

If closeness felt intrusive or overwhelming, you may have learned to protect yourself through distance, independence, or emotional shutdown.

These strategies made sense when you developed them. They helped you remain connected, protect yourself, or create some feeling of safety inside relationships you couldn’t control.

But then you enter an adult relationship, and those same strategies come with you. Your partner forgets to call, and suddenly you aren’t only responding to a forgotten phone call. Your nervous system is responding to every earlier experience of waiting for someone who didn’t come.

Your partner is upset with you, and you aren’t only navigating one person’s disappointment. A younger part of you may be preparing for anger, rejection, humiliation, or withdrawal.

Your partner wants more closeness, and your body may remember all the times closeness meant losing yourself.

The past doesn’t always return as a clear memory - often, it returns as a feeling, a sensation in your body, an impulse, or a certainty that something bad is about to happen.

The closer you become, the more your protection appears

This is one reason why the beginning of a relationship can feel so easy. Before deep attachment forms, there is often more spaciousness. You have less to lose, so your protective strategies don’t need to work as hard. You can be more open, playful, curious, and present.

But as the relationship becomes more meaningful, the stakes rise. The parts of you that fear abandonment begin looking for signs that you’re about to be left. The parts that fear engulfment begin looking for signs that you’re losing your freedom. The parts that carry shame begin searching for evidence that you are too much, inadequate, or impossible to love.

This often happens around the end of the honeymoon period, when idealization begins to fade and you start encountering each other more fully.

You see your partner’s limitations. They see yours. Differences become more visible. Conflicts arise. Needs that were easy to accommodate in the beginning begin to compete…the relationship starts asking more of both of you. This is where many couples enter the “power struggle.”

Two protective strategies begin colliding

One person senses distance and reaches for more connection. The other experiences that pursuit as pressure and pulls away.

The first person experiences the withdrawal as abandonment and pursues harder. The second experiences the increased pursuit as criticism, control, or proof that they are failing, and retreats even further. Soon, neither person is responding to what is actually happening.

One person is protecting against abandonment. The other is protecting against shame, engulfment, or inadequacy. Each person’s protection activates the other person’s wound, and the cycle begins feeding itself.

From inside the cycle, it can look like one person is needy and the other is avoidant - one is emotional and the other doesn’t care, one wants to communicate and the other refuses. But underneath those surface behaviors are usually two people trying to feel safe in different ways.

Activation isn’t the same thing as incompatibility

This is where relationships become confusing. When you feel anxious, resentful, shut down, or disconnected, it’s natural to wonder whether you’re with the wrong person. Sometimes there are genuine incompatibilities, patterns of harm, or limitations in the relationship that need to be taken seriously.

But activation itself cannot tell you whether a relationship is right or wrong. Activation tells you that something inside of you feels threatened.

That threat could be connected to something happening in the present relationship. Your partner may be inconsistent, dismissive, emotionally unavailable, dishonest, or unwilling to repair. Your nervous system can respond to real information.

The intensity of your response may also carry material from your past. A present moment can be painful on its own while simultaneously touching every earlier version of that pain.

The work is learning how to separate the two:

• What is happening in this relationship right now?

• What is this moment reminding my body of?

• What belongs to my partner, what belongs to me, and what is being created between us?

Your triggers are always trying to show you something

A trigger is often treated like an inconvenience to eliminate so you can return to being calm and reasonable. But what I am trying to help people reframe is that your activation contains information.

It can show you where a younger part of you still expects to be abandoned. Where you learned that having needs makes you difficult. Where closeness became associated with losing yourself. Where anger became frightening. Where you started believing that love had to be earned.

It can also show you where your boundaries are being crossed, where your needs are going chronically unmet, or where you have been trying to convince yourself to accept something that doesn’t feel right.

The goal isn’t to assume every trigger is your past or treat every painful feeling as proof that your partner is wrong for you. The goal is to become curious enough to understand what the activation is communicating.

Healing happens through a different experience of relationship

We develop relational wounds in relationships, and so much of their healing also happens through relationships.

Healing can look like expressing a need and discovering that the other person doesn’t leave. Staying present during conflict without abandoning yourself. Allowing someone to be disappointed without collapsing into shame. Giving your partner space without assuming that the relationship is ending. Receiving love without waiting for it to be taken away.

It also looks like learning to become a safe attachment figure for yourself.

You begin noticing when a younger part of you has taken over. You learn how to stay with the sensations underneath the story. You offer yourself reassurance before demanding that your partner remove every uncomfortable feeling. You build trust in your capacity to survive disappointment, loss, uncertainty, and change.

Over time, activation becomes less consuming. You develop more space between what you feel and what you do with that feeling.

You may still feel the old fear arise. You simply have more of yourself available to meet it.

The relationship becomes the place where you meet yourself

The parts of you that surface in love aren’t random. They are the places within you that are asking for your attention and care.

Your relationship may reveal where you still abandon yourself to keep someone else. Where you grip for control when you feel afraid. Where you disappear to avoid conflict. Where you confuse being needed with being loved. Where you protect yourself from intimacy while longing for it at the same time.

This is why relationships can feel so activating. They touch the places in us that most want to be loved and the places that are most afraid love won’t last.

And this is also why relationships can become such powerful portals for healing.

So the activation is not a sign of incompatibility but where the real work of intimacy really begins 🌀

Want to go deeper?

If you’re in the power struggle phase of your relationship and wondering, Okay, but how do we actually move through it?, I’m creating a mini-course to help you understand and transform the deeper cycle playing out between you.

Join the waitlist for How to Actually Move Through the Power Struggle here 🫶🏻

And if this newsletter made you think of someone, I’d love for you to share it with them. You can also follow along on Instagram for more about relationship patterns, attachment healing, and why these experiences bring so much of our deeper, unprocessed emotional material to the surface.

With love,
Lindsey 💖

🌊 Recently on the podcast 🌊

Last week, I shared a really special conversation with my former client Lizzy about what it actually looks like to heal relationship triggers through the body.

When we started working together, Lizzy had already spent years in therapy. She understood her anxious attachment, knew where it came from, and could recognize her patterns as they were happening. Yet all of that insight still wasn’t changing how the activation actually felt in her body.

In the episode, we talk about the somatic and parts work that helped her finally access and metabolize the grief, shame, and “not enough” wound beneath the pattern, and how that changed the way she experienced her triggers moving forward.

Listen to How to Turn Relationship Triggers into Healing on Spotify, or on Apple Podcasts.

https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/

That's where Lizzy was when she found me. Painfully self-aware, years of therapy under her belt, and still getting activated in ways she couldn't shift in the moment. In this episode, I'm bringing a former client onto the podcast for the first time to share her story, her experience of our work together, and what actually allowed her to create change.

This episode is for anyone who knows their attachment style, understands where it came from, and still feels like their nervous system takes over the moment relationships start to deepen.

In this episode:

• Why insight alone is often not enough to shift deep relational patterns

• What somatic parts work actually looks like in practice, through Lizzy's real experience

• The "not enough" wound, where it comes from, and how it shows up in dating

• How to tell the difference between your own projection and genuine incompatibility

• What it feels like when grief actually metabolizes from your body rather than just being managed

Key takeaways:

• You can't do all your healing alone. Some wounds only reveal themselves in relationship

• Triggers are not the enemy. They're a roadmap back to the parts of you still needing tending

• Worthiness isn't just a belief. It's something that has to shift in your body to change how you show up in relationships.

• The goal isn't a perfectly calm, regulated nervous system. It's a flexible one

Reflection question: What if your triggers weren't evidence that something is wrong, but a roadmap back to the parts of you that are asking for your attention?

Connect with Lizzy

IG: @lizzyfromtheblock__

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

Hi friends,

Happy summer solstice!! I just spent a very magical weekend camping in Grass Valley, swimming in the Yuba River, and playing/dancing/listening to bluegrass music at what felt like a big family reunion of all my favorite musician friends. Hope you did something meaningful to honor the transition of the seasons, too 💫

——

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately in my work, and in our society/culture at large, is the quiet, cumulative cost of avoidance.

I think most of us associate avoidance with attachment styles or with the way certain people show up in relationships. But avoidance is so much bigger than that. It’s an entire strategy — a way that your psyche and nervous system learned to move away from feelings and experiences that once felt too painful or overwhelming to face. Abandonment, loss, rejection, shame, inconsistent love, conditional love. At some point, those things were genuinely too much to feel…so that response made sense and it was protective at the time.

But that comes at a cost to you now: when you avoid the lows, you inevitably start to avoid the highs too. Because the highs almost always come with some amount of risk, vulnerability, and the willingness to sit with discomfort. And when your nervous system is wired to move away from discomfort, it doesn’t really discriminate.

So I wanted to write this week about the true, far-reaching costs of avoidance— in the hopes that it might reach someone who’s struggling in this area and ready for something to shift…because while avoidance often feels protective in the moment, it quietly shapes our lives in ways we don’t always recognize.

Every avoidance strategy comes with a tradeoff. It may help you escape discomfort in the short term, but over time, it distances you from so many of the things you’re longing for most: intimacy, connection, growth, fulfillment, and so many of the experiences that make life feel meaningful.

Avoidance is what happens anytime we move away from an uncomfortable feeling, experience, conversation, truth, or need. And while it often feels like relief in the moment, it comes with a price. The cost is rarely immediate, it’s cumulative.

Avoidance costs you intimacy.

And not just intimacy with a partner, but intimacy with yourself. Every time you distract, numb, shut down, intellectualize, stay busy, overwork, scroll, overeat, vape, or convince yourself you don’t care, you’re sending yourself a subtle message: I don’t want to be here with this.

Over time, you lose access to parts of yourself: your grief, your fear, your longing, your joy, your desires. The very things that make you feel alive.

Avoidance costs you connection.

Because real relationships require vulnerability. They require honest conversations, expressing needs, tolerating disappointment, navigating conflict, risking rejection. Avoidance protects you from discomfort - and it also protects you from closeness.

So many people spend years believing they’re protecting themselves from getting hurt, while simultaneously protecting themselves from being deeply loved. Both things are true at the same time. That’s what makes it so painful and so hard to see.

Avoidance costs you growth.

The life you want usually lives on the other side of fear and/or discomfort. A difficult conversation. A boundary. A risk. A truth you’ve been sitting with for a while. A feeling you keep trying not to feel.

Most people think growth happens by learning more or making the right, calculated choices. In my experience, it more often happens by avoiding less. Because what we’re unwilling to feel ends up running our lives from the background - quietly, persistently, in ways we often can’t trace back to the source.

So how do you actually work with avoidance?

Most people try to force themselves into action. Push through…just do it. And that rarely works, because avoidance isn’t a motivation problem. It’s a nervous system strategy.

At some point, your system learned that certain emotions, experiences, or situations felt too overwhelming, unsafe, or painful to face. Avoidance became protection. It made sense then, and it was highly adaptive and creative at the time. But it’s been running in the background ever since.

Which means the solution isn’t self-judgment or willpower, it’s curiosity.

Start by noticing where avoidance shows up for you. What conversation are you postponing? What feeling are you trying not to feel? What decision are you endlessly analyzing instead of making? What truth do you already know but keep talking yourself out of?

Then, instead of trying to tackle the whole thing at once, practice staying present for just thirty seconds longer than you normally would. Sit with the feeling and breathe into it. Stay in the conversation. Keep breathing. Let yourself be with what you’ve spent years moving away from.

Because healing doesn’t happen when the discomfort disappears, it happens when your nervous system learns: I can stay with this and be okay. I can actually tolerate this. And in doing so, I can metabolize what’s been sitting in me, stuck and waiting.

And eventually, something shifts. The thing you were avoiding stops feeling dangerous. You stop spending so much energy running. And all of that energy - the energy you’ve been pouring into managing, numbing, and staying one step ahead of yourself - becomes available for something else.

For connection. For intimacy. For the life you’ve actually been trying to build all along :)

If this landed for you and you’re interested in facing your own avoidance - I’d love to connect.

I have just a few coaching spots available right now for both individuals and couples. Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together.

With warmth,

Lindsey

P.S. If you have a friend who might need to hear this today, feel free to pass it along :) it really helps my small business spread the word.

🌊 RELATIONAL ALCHEMY 🌊

I’m excited to share that I’ve been busy releasing my first few solo podcast episodes!

Two new episodes of Relational Alchemy dropped over the last two weeks, and they pair really beautifully together.

In the first episode, The Phase of Relationships Nobody Talks About (But We All Need to Know About), I unpack the power struggle phase of relationships: what it is, why it happens, and why it’s actually one of the most important opportunities for growth and healing that a relationship can offer.

After that episode came out, I kept getting the same question: “okay... but what do I actually do when I’m in it?”

So last week’s episode, How To Actually Heal Through Relationships, is the answer to that question. I walk through the U-turn back to self, how to work with triggers in a way that creates real healing instead of just temporary relief, and the six reflection questions I use with clients to get to the root of almost any activation.

If you’re in a relationship where the honeymoon phase has worn off and things suddenly feel harder or more activating, or you find yourself caught in the same conflict over and over again, I’d recommend starting with part one and listening to both episodes back-to-back.

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

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Recently on 🌀 RELATIONAL ALCHEMY 🌀

6.9.26 The quiet power of a flexible (not calm) nervous system

6.2.26 Every pattern has a root

5.26.26 The real roots of anxiety

4.23.26 Why you keep trying to figure it all out

4.13.26 The one thing underneath all your patterns

3.26.26 How to make the unconscious conscious

3.11.26 The quiet belief shaping your relationships

2.24.26 This belief might be running your entire life

2.10.26 How to actually heal your anxious attachment

Website

Book a Free Consultation

6.30.26

Hi friends,

Hope you are all well today 🫶🏻

As you may have noticed, I moved my newsletter to a new home: Substack. But nobody panic! Everything is staying the same, it's just coming from a new address from here on out.

And there is one new thing: Substack gives you the option to stay a free subscriber or upgrade to paid.

If you want to stay a free subscriber, I will keep sending out these newsletters — it’s always been important to me that the content I share is accessible to the people who need it. You'll continue to receive my deep dives into relationship dynamics and emotional patterns, and practical tools and reframes to support you in your relationships and your life.

And if you feel like supporting my writing and my small business in a bigger way, you can explore paid options. I’m going to be sharing more of my personal writing and stories for paid subscribers — the patterns I'm untangling in my own life, the things I’m learning along the way, the moments that shape the way I work. This is a place for me to be a little bit more honest and intimate and unpolished, like conversations I’d have with my best friend :) Plus you’ll receive some extra offerings and opportunities each month as a way to show my appreciation.

However you choose to be here, I'm genuinely so grateful you are!

Giving language to the invisible patterns and stories that shape our lives and helping us alchemize the unique pain that relationships inevitably bring to the surface.

There are lots of new folks here, and since I’ve never really done this before, I wanted to share a little bit more of my origin story and why I do the work that I do.

My work has always been rooted in service of others — before getting my Master’s and becoming a coach, I worked in nonprofits for ten years, and volunteered for many beyond that. Supporting others has always been in the fabric of my being and my purpose in the world.

But I really came into this line of work — of deeply and directly supporting people — by way of San Quentin (a state prison in California).

Back in 2019, my friend was transitioning out of her volunteer role there — facilitating narrative therapy groups for incarcerated veterans who suffer from PTSD — and offered it to me. She knew about my connection to veterans — my brother, Robbie, joined the Army after his junior year of high school, and spent almost twenty years in the service.

At the time, I was working remotely and feeling very disconnected from purpose, so this felt like a perfect opportunity. Robbie was also about to embark on his third tour overseas. I thought it’d be a great way to stay connected with him while he was away and also better understand his military experience. At the time, we weren’t very close and he was really struggling with his mental health.

The experience at San Quentin changed the trajectory of my life and career, and also my brother’s. For the next six years, almost every Monday afternoon, I sat in a circle of 15 men as they processed the most traumatic experiences of their lives. Watching these men slowly piece together the fragmented stories of their lives was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. In an institution and a system that’s quite literally designed to strip you of your humanity, watching these men use the power of self-reflection, writing, sharing, and group processing to reclaim their humanity and create meaning for themselves was profoundly inspiring.

Even though I loved my nonprofit work, I oftentimes felt far from the mission, and after only a year of volunteering at San Quentin, I decided to pivot and pursue my Master’s in counseling psychology. I became fascinated by the idea of storytelling as our most ancient and enduring tool for individual and collective healing and liberation. And I began to see how woven into the practice of counseling that storytelling was.

Only later did I realize storytelling had quietly been a thread running through my own life all along. I started my career working at two very special nonprofits — 826 National and Youth Speaks — both youth development organizations focused on empowerment and identity formation through creative writing. This was also the time where I fell in love with writing and discovered my own identity as a writer.

Sitting in that circle every Monday, I started to realize that the men in front of me weren't fundamentally different from the clients I would eventually work with. The circumstances were different, but the human experience wasn't. The shame, the abandonment, the fear, the longing to be loved and to belong. The stories we create to survive pain…we all have them.

Then I got to grad school and learned about the power struggle phase of relationships, and everything clicked. Relationships aren't the source of most of our pain; they're the place where the stories we've been carrying our whole lives become impossible to ignore. I knew almost instantly that this was where I wanted to spend my career.

Relationships have a way of bringing our oldest stories to the surface. The fears we didn't know we were carrying. The beliefs we learned about love, belonging, worthiness, and safety. When we get triggered, we project onto our partners and we begin relating from those stories instead of from who we are in the present.

And over time, I realized that what I loved most wasn't just listening to people's stories. It was noticing the invisible patterns running through them. The beliefs that quietly shaped people's lives. The themes that repeated across relationships. The ways someone would tell me one story about work, another about their family, another about dating, and I'd realize they were all expressions of the same underlying pattern. Helping people finally put language to those invisible patterns became one of the things I love most about this work.

At its core, I believe therapy, coaching, and counseling are all rooted in storytelling. They're about helping us understand the story of our lives. Why we became who we are. Why we keep repeating the same painful patterns. What our nervous system learned to believe about love, belonging, and safety. The stories we inherited. And then helping us release those old stories held in our bodies and our subconscious so we can consciously choose what comes next instead of unconsciously repeating the past.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of service, storytelling, and pattern recognition. I love supporting people who are struggling in their relationships — whether that be their relationship to self, their romantic relationship, or otherwise, we all depend on relationships in our lives. We are social creatures hardwired for connection and belonging, we need our relationships to thrive and live a meaningful life.

It is such a great gift and honor to get to support people in their relationships, especially as relationships are literally designed to activate all of our unprocessed pain, fears, insecurities, and limiting beliefs from our past. But we’re not supposed to stay in that activation, we're meant to use it as a mirror. To turn inward. To shine a light on the parts of ourselves still longing for love, belonging, freedom, and healing.

So that’s why I do this work — because beneath every relationship conflict is a story asking to be understood. Beneath every pattern is a younger part of us still trying to protect us. And beneath all of it is the possibility of a completely different way of relating to ourselves and to the people we love.

There is so much freedom waiting on the other side once you can finally put language to the invisible patterns and stories that have quietly been shaping your life all along.

I hope this sparks something for you, and helps you see yourself and others with a little more compassion and a little more curiosity. If it does, feel free to respond and let me know. I read and reply to every response and genuinely love hearing from you all!

Thank you, as always, for being here ❤️‍🔥

With warmth,

Lindsey

https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/

Book a Free Consultation

What if the relationship that collapsed was actually the thing that brought you back to yourself?

What if reinvention isn't something you plan, but something your body leads you toward when you finally stop running from the pain?

In this episode I'm joined by Helen Phelan, founder of Helen Phelan Studio. Helen and I went to college together, but ended up on opposite sides of the country. What started as following her movement work on Instagram turned into watching someone navigate divorce, identity collapse, and a full creative and professional reinvention in real time, and sharing all of it with radical honesty and so much realness.

This conversation goes deep on what happens when your whole sense of self was wrapped up in a relationship, and what it takes to find your way back to who you actually are.

In this episode:

• How disordered eating and a dance career shaped Helen's relationship to her body and eventually led to her intuitive movement framework

• What intuitive exercise actually means and why pleasure is a more sustainable motivator than punishment

• Movement as a creative practice and pathway to flow state

• The identity collapse that followed the end of her marriage and what the rock bottom period actually looked like

• Why her female friendships saved her and what that taught her about where she'd been placing her sense of worth

• The role of somatic release, EMDR, and daily improv in processing grief that words couldn't reach

• The difference between circling around grief intellectually and actually releasing it from your body

Key takeaways:

• Grief that stays in the head doesn't fully process. The body has to be part of it

• The relationship ending wasn't the loss - staying would have meant continuing to lose herself

• How female friendships are just as, if not more important, than romantic love

• Movement doesn't have to be punishment. The more pleasurable you make it, the more consistent you'll be

Reflection question from this episode: Where in your life have you been trying to think your way through something your body is actually asking you to feel?

Where to find Helen:
helenphelanstudio.com
Instagram: @helenvphelan
Substack: Well Hell by Helen Phelan Studio

Free Friday Pilates Zoom class: available to Helen Phelan Studio members and Substack subscribers, Fridays at 12pm ET

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

What if the urge to control, fix, or chase reassurance from your partner isn't about them at all?

What if your partner isn't the problem, and isn't the solution either, but the mirror?

In this follow-up solo episode, I'm picking up where last week's power struggle episode left off. If that episode helped you understand why the power struggle happens, this one is about what to actually do with it. Because naming the phase isn't enough. The real work is learning how to use the triggers, the activation, and the conflict as a doorway back to your own healing, rather than evidence about your partner or your relationship.

This episode is for you if you listened to last week and thought, okay, but now what? It's also for anyone who finds themselves constantly trying to get their partner to change, to validate them, to text back faster, to be more reassuring, to just be different, so that they can finally feel okay.

I'm walking through the exact reflection process I use with clients to help them metabolize old wounds instead of just managing them, plus a real client story about a "not enough" wound that almost convinced her to leave the right relationship.

In this episode:

• Why this episode focuses on your individual healing, not on changing the dynamic with your partner

• The U-turn back to self: what it actually means to stop outsourcing your safety to someone else

• Why relationships don't heal us by touching our wounds, they heal us by revealing them

• How to tell the difference between your old wounding and a partner who genuinely isn't showing up for you

• A real client story: the "not enough" wound that almost ended the right relationship

• The fork in the road: what happens when you project a trigger outward versus turn it inward

• Six reflection questions to find the root of any trigger, from body sensation to the belief underneath it

• Why metabolizing an emotion is different from managing it, and why healing isn't about making the feeling go away

Key takeaways:

• Not every trigger is about your partner, but not every trigger is only about your past either. Discernment requires doing your own work first

• You can't accurately assess your relationship from an activated, younger part of yourself

• Healing happens by feeling, not by avoiding. The goal isn't a calm nervous system, it's a flexible one

• Every defense mechanism, blame, control, scrolling, reassurance-seeking, is an attempt to avoid feeling something underneath it

• The goal isn't to stop getting triggered. It's to learn how to meet your triggers differently

Reflection question from this episode: Next time you're triggered, can you find where it lives in your body, and ask what part of you is actually activated before deciding what it means about your relationship?

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

In this solo episode, I'm diving deep into one of the most misunderstood phases of relationships: the power struggle. It's the phase that follows the honeymoon, and it's the one that ends more relationships than it should. Because most people don't know it has a name, don't know why it happens, and don't know that it's actually one of the most transformative portals available to us if we know how to use it.

This episode is for you if you're 8-12 months into a new relationship and suddenly feeling more triggered, more reactive, or questioning whether you chose the right person. It's also for anyone who keeps repeating the same dynamic across relationships and wants to understand why.

I'm sharing real client examples, the frameworks I use in my work, and my own personal story of moving through the power struggle phase in my relationship.

In this episode:

• What the power struggle phase is and why it follows the honeymoon

• Why getting triggered is a sign the relationship is deepening, not falling apart

• How your partner becomes your adult attachment figure and what that activates in you

• Why we attract partners who trigger our deepest wounds

• Why so many couples break up or get stuck in this phase forever

• The U-turn: how to redirect attention inward instead of fixating on your partner

• What conscious love looks like on the other side

• My personal story of navigating the anxious avoidant dynamic in my own relationship

Key takeaways:

• The power struggle phase is a completely normal part of the relationship arc

• You're not just reacting to your partner, you're reacting to something much older

• We unconsciously attract partners who mirror our unresolved childhood wounds

• Leaving doesn't solve it. Until the wound is addressed, a version of the same dynamic will keep showing up

• The power struggle is a portal, not a dead end

Reflection question from this episode: When you're triggered in your relationship, what are you doing to get your needs met that might actually be perpetuating disconnection with your partner?

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

Hi friends,

I’m fresh off a really beautiful, life-giving trip to Peru, and apparently ready to talk about anxiety :)

I’m always struck by how many people experience anxiety and just accept it as part of being human. So many of us live with at least low-grade anxiety every single day and barely even question it anymore. We normalize the overthinking, the tension, the urgency, the inability to fully relax, the constant mental noise, the nervous system activation.

And while anxiety can absolutely be part of the human experience, I don’t think it’s something we’re meant to live inside of all the time.

I also don’t think anxiety is “just the way we’re wired.”

To me, anxiety is a deeply protective strategy. A system trying to solve for something deeper underneath. Because when you really slow down and look closely, anxiety is rarely just anxiety.

Underneath it is often fear, grief, uncertainty, shame, helplessness, vulnerability, heartbreak, loss, lack of safety, emotional pain that never fully got processed, old beliefs your body still carries, or younger parts of you that learned the world was not entirely safe.

And when we don’t know how to actually feel those deeper emotions, the mind starts working overtime trying to manage them instead.

That’s why anxiety so often becomes:
overthinking
obsessing
controlling
reassurance-seeking
hyper-independence
perfectionism
over-preparing
difficulty resting
difficulty letting go

And over time, anxiety can actually become incredibly addictive because the mental activity creates the illusion of control (a.k.a safety).

The spiral starts to feel productive, protective…necessary.

“If I can just think about this enough, maybe I can prevent pain.”

So even when there’s no immediate danger, the system keeps scanning.
Trying to predict, trying to prepare, trying to solve uncertainty before life actually unfolds.

I see this constantly in relationships.

Someone waits a few hours for a text back and suddenly their whole internal world changes. Not because of the text itself, but because uncertainty enters the room. And for many people, uncertainty does not feel neutral. It feels deeply unsafe.

So the mind starts moving:
Did I do something wrong?
Are they pulling away?
Should I say something?
Should I not say something?
Maybe they’re losing interest.
Maybe I’m too much.
Maybe I should leave first.

The mind would often rather create anxiety than sit in the vulnerability of not knowing.I think this is where so much healing work gets stuck.

People become incredibly insightful about their patterns. They understand attachment theory. They know where the anxiety comes from intellectually. They can explain their childhood dynamics perfectly.

But insight alone does not create safety in the body.

The deeper work is learning how to stay present with discomfort without immediately escaping into control. To let uncertainty exist without treating it like an emergency. To notice the compulsion to spiral without fully disappearing into it. To stop organizing your entire life around avoiding difficult feelings.

Because underneath anxiety is usually a nervous system that does not yet fully trust its ability to handle pain, loss, rejection, grief, disappointment, conflict, vulnerability, or uncertainty.

And most anxious people did not become anxious randomly. Usually at some point, being hyper-aware, hyper-attuned, hyper-prepared, hyper-vigilant, or emotionally careful actually helped them survive something.

Maybe there was unpredictability growing up, an angry parent.
Maybe love felt inconsistent.
Maybe emotions were overwhelming or unsafe.
Maybe you learned to anticipate other people’s moods in order to stay connected.
Maybe you learned that mistakes led to shame.
Maybe your nervous system simply never got to fully exhale.

Anxiety is adaptive…until it isn’t anymore.

Because eventually the strategy that once protected you starts limiting your life.

It becomes harder to rest.
Harder to trust.
Harder to be present, to experience joy.
Harder to enjoy intimacy.
Harder to access and listen to your intuition.
Harder to feel joy without immediately anticipating loss.

And this is why I talk so much about building a more flexible nervous system. Because healing anxiety is not becoming fearless, it’s becoming more emotionally flexible. More capable of staying connected to yourself even when life feels uncertain.

A flexible nervous system can feel discomfort without immediately collapsing into panic. It can feel vulnerability without compulsively reaching for control. It can feel uncertainty without spiraling into catastrophe.
It can experience emotional pain without becoming consumed by it.

And over time, this changes your entire relationship to life.

You stop needing certainty before you can relax.
You stop believing every anxious thought your mind produces.
You stop treating discomfort like proof that something is wrong.

You begin trusting that you can actually handle the uncertainty, the messines, and the beauty of being human.

Because life will always contain uncertainty.
Love will always contain vulnerability.
Close relationships will always stir things in us.

The goal is not to eliminate fear entirely, it is to become open enough, grounded enough, and emotionally flexible enough that fear no longer runs your life ✨

If this resonates and you struggle with anxiety in your life and/or relationships, I’d love to support you! I work with both couples and individuals. Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together

You can also follow along on Instagram and listen to my new podcast Relational Alchemy for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

P.S. If this resonated, feel free like, comment, or pass it along to a friend! It really helps my small business reach more people :)

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Hi friends,

Something that’s been feeling really alive for me in my work lately is how much time we spend trying to figure things out. What they meant, where it’s going, whether it’s right, if it’s going to work, whether I made the right decision. It can feel thoughtful, even self-aware. Like you’re doing your due diligence.

But a lot of the time, that impulse isn’t actually about clarity. It’s about not wanting to sit in the unknown (which makes us feel not in control, and we humans love control).

Because when you stop trying to solve it, you’re left with uncertainty. And uncertainty doesn’t just live in your mind, it lands in your body. It stirs things up. Fear, grief, insecurity, old beliefs about being left, being too much, not being chosen. The kinds of feelings that don’t resolve neatly and don’t respond to logic.

And when you sit in the unknown, you have to come face to face with all of it. The unprocessed emotions, the fears, the insecurities, the limiting beliefs that have been living under the surface. That’s the part most people don’t realize. It’s not just that you don’t have answers, it’s that not having answers removes the distraction and brings you closer to what’s actually there.

So instead of feeling it, you think. You analyze. You replay. You try to predict outcomes. You get caught in “what if” loops.

You reach for certainty as a way to steady yourself.

Overthinking, ruminating, obsessing, even spiraling into shame, these can all become ways to avoid feeling what’s underneath while giving you a sense of control. (If I think about this hard enough and long enough, surely I’ll figure it out and FINALLY feel the relief I’m looking for!!!)

And it makes perfect sense. Your system is trying to protect you from something that once felt overwhelming.

But the cost is that you stay in your head, circling the same questions, without actually touching the thing underneath that’s asking for your attention.

Trying to “figure it out” can become a very effective way to not feel.

There’s a quiet question in here that’s worth asking yourself: how often am I reaching for certainty as a way to defend against potential pain?

Because when you don’t feel safe to be with the unknown, you start to relate to life through scarcity and control.

Scarcity says there’s only one right outcome, one right person, one narrow path where things work out. Control says you need to think your way into that outcome, manage it, predict it, get it right.

And that combination will keep you in cycles of anxiety, hypervigilance, and self-doubt.

But when you begin to notice this pattern, something shifts. You start to recognize the moment where your mind speeds up, where the urgency to solve kicks in, where it suddenly feels like you need an answer right now. And you can pause, even briefly, and check in with what’s actually there underneath.

Usually it’s something simple and somatic. A tightening in your chest. A drop in your stomach. A familiar sense of not knowing where you stand.

The work isn’t to get rid of that. It’s to learn how to stay with it without immediately trying to escape to your mind.

This is where so much of our relational patterning lives. Not just in who we choose or what we tolerate, but in how quickly we move away from our own internal experience when it becomes uncomfortable.

When you can slow that down, even a little, you start to build a different relationship with the unknown. One that doesn’t pull you straight into urgency or fear or scarcity or grasping or clinging. One where you don’t need immediate answers in order to feel okay.

And from there, your choices start to come from a much clearer place. Not from anxiety or grasping, but from a steadier connection to yourself.

You don’t need as much certainty as you think you do. But when you’re willing to face the feelings and beliefs that come up in uncertainty, you start to build trust with yourself… and that’s what allows you to relax into the magic of the unknown✨

If this resonates and you struggle to be with uncertainty in life or your relationships, I’d love to support you! I work with both couples and individuals. Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together

You can also follow along on Instagram, subscribe to my Substack, and listen to my new podcast Relational Alchemy for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

P.S. If this resonated, feel free to pass it along to a friend! It really helps my small business reach more people :)

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

Book a free consultation

Recently on 🌀 RELATIONAL ALCHEMY 🌀

4.13.26 The one thing underneath all your patterns

3.26.26 How to make the unconscious conscious

3.11.26 The quiet belief shaping your relationships

2.24.26 This belief might be running your entire life

2.10.26 How to actually heal your anxious attachment

1.28.26 The part that everyone misses in relationships

1.14.26 Why you don’t trust yourself (yet)

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

Book a free consultation

Hi friends,

The more I sit with clients and help them navigate their inner worlds, the more I’m struck by just how much fear quietly (and sometimes loudly) runs the show.

Most of what people struggle with isn’t random…it organizes around fear.

Not always in obvious ways, not always as “I feel scared.” But as the quieter, more embedded forms fear takes when it’s been lived with for a long time. When your nervous system, and even your personality, has adapted around not feeling it directly.

Fear of losing someone.
Fear of losing yourself.
Fear of not being okay.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of what you can’t control.
Fear of what other people will think.

When you start to look closely, so many patterns begin to make more sense.

Common Experiences Through the Lens of Fear

Anxious attachment often isn’t just “needing reassurance.” It’s a system organized around the fear of loss or abandonment. Of disconnection. Of being left.

Avoidance isn’t just disinterest or emotional distance.
It’s often a fear of being engulfed. Losing autonomy. Losing access to self.

Anxiety is, at its core, an ongoing anticipation of something going wrong.
A future-oriented fear that doesn’t get to resolve.

Depression can carry fear too.
Fear that nothing will change. Fear of being stuck. Fear that effort won’t matter. Often intertwined with grief.

OCD is frequently an attempt to manage the unbearable feeling/fear of uncertainty. A way of trying to create certainty where there isn’t any.

Scarcity patterns are rooted in fear of loss.
Of not having enough. Of something being taken away.

Future tripping is the mind trying to get ahead of fear.
If I can anticipate it, maybe I can prevent it.

Control is often what fear looks like when it’s trying to protect you.

Even chronic pain can sometimes be understood this way. A nervous system that doesn’t feel safe enough to process fear directly will often find other ways to express it.

It’s why we settle in love, why we people please, why we don’t speak up, why we say yes when we want to say no, why we stay small, why we struggle to set boundaries, why we stay stuck in frustrating patterns and relational dynamics. Fear shapes so much more than we realize.

Why This Matters

When you don’t recognize fear as the underlying driver, you end up working on the surface. You try to fix the behavior: stop overthinking. Stop needing reassurance. Stop shutting down.

But the behavior isn’t random. It’s protective.

It’s your system’s best attempt at managing something that once felt overwhelming. And if you only focus on changing the behavior, you’ll either stay stuck or turn against yourself in the process.

The Subtlety of Fear

A lot of people don’t feel afraid.

They feel anxious.
Controlling.
Overwhelmed.
Numb.
Certain.

Fear is often disguised.

Especially if, at some point, it didn’t feel safe to experience it directly. Most often, this begins early. When fear was too big, too much, or had nowhere to go as a young person.

But as an adult, your system is actually capable of feeling and processing what once felt overwhelming.

Until then, fear gets rerouted into thoughts, into patterns, into limiting beliefs, into relational dynamics that feel more manageable, or more familiar.

What Actually Shifts Things

The work isn’t to eliminate fear. It’s to understand the many ways it’s shaping your life, your relationships, and your sense of self, and to change your relationship to it.

To be able to recognize, even quietly, something in me is afraid right now.

Without immediately trying to fix it, override it, or act from it. To stay with the sensation of fear in your body, even briefly, without needing to resolve it right away. To bring curiosity to the pattern instead of urgency.

Because when fear is named and felt, it begins to organize differently.

You start to build the nervous system capacity to actually feel and metabolize fear, without being completely and often unconsciously run by it. And this is a huge part of the work I do with clients.

So much of my work is about rewiring your system to recognize that it’s safe to be with fear. Especially when you’re shifting out of old patterns. Old ways of relating. And expanding into new ways of being.

That process will inevitably bring you into contact with fear. Because there’s a reason you’ve moved through life the way you have, at some point, it felt safer…even if it came at the expense of you.

So when you start to do things differently, to speak up, to stay present, to not abandon yourself or keep settling, your system will often register that as unfamiliar. And unfamiliar almost always registers as unsafe to your nervous system.

But over time, you start to literally rewire your system to recognize that you can feel fear without needing to organize your life around avoiding it.

It becomes less of something running you, and more of something you can relate to. When you start looking for fear underneath your patterns, a lot of things become clearer. Not easier, but simpler.

And from that place, there’s more room to respond differently. With more awareness, more choice, and less reactivity ✨

If this resonates and you’re wanting support understanding how fear is shaping your patterns and relationships, this is the heart of the work I do with both individuals and couples.

Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together

You can also follow along on Instagram, subscribe to my Substack, and listen to my new podcast Relational Alchemy for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

P.S. If this resonated, feel free to respond to this email and share! I’d love to hear from you.

P.S. If this resonated, feel free to leave a comment and share! I’d love to hear from you.

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

🌊 Recently on the Relational Alchemy Podcast 🌊

This week, I sat down with astrologer and dear friend Isa Nakazawa for a conversation on astrology as a relational language — and how it can help us understand the patterns we move through in love, connection, and self-protection.

Rather than using astrology as personality or prediction, we explore it as a map of the psyche…one that reveals the different parts of us, the contradictions we carry, and the patterns we often can’t see until they’re reflected back to us in relationship.

We talk about how astrology and psychology overlap, and how both can be used to bring awareness to the unconscious dynamics shaping how we love, who we’re drawn to, and what we’re here to transform.

You can listen to the episode, The Astrology of Relationship Patterns, on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We dive into things like:

• Why you can feel pulled in opposite directions in love — and how your chart maps those inner contradictions

• What your moon placement can reveal about your emotional needs and maternal lineage

• How astrology can contextualize who you’re drawn to (and why it’s not random)

• The difference between using astrology to understand your patterns vs. staying stuck in them

• How bringing awareness to unconscious patterns creates the conditions for real transformation

It’s a conversation about moving out of shame or powerlessness and into awareness and self responsibility…and using both astrology and psychology as tools for deeper self-understanding and more intentional relationships.

I hope you enjoy ✨

Recently on 🌀 RELATIONAL ALCHEMY 🌀

3.25.26 How to make the unconscious conscious

3.11.26 The quiet belief shaping your relationships

2.24.26 This belief might be running your entire life

2.10.26 How to actually heal your anxious attachment

1.28.26 The part that everyone misses in relationships

1.14.26 Why you don’t trust yourself (yet)

1.7.26 The U-Turn: a practice that radically shifts relationships

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

BOOK A FREE CONSULTATION

In this episode, I’m joined by astrologer and one of my closest friends, Isa Nakazawa, to explore astrology as a deeply relational language. Together, we unpack how your birth chart can reveal the patterns, defenses, and inner dynamics that shape your relationships.

We talk about the overlap between astrology and psychology, how both systems map the human psyche, and how they can help us transform the parts of ourselves that feel stuck, reactive, or hard to love.

This conversation is about moving out of shame and into curiosity… and using both astrology and psychology as tools for real relational change.

In this episode, we explore:

• Astrology as a map of the psyche, not a personality label

• How your birth chart reveals relationship patterns and contradictions

• The role of the moon in understanding emotional needs and attachment

• Why we attract certain partners and repeat familiar dynamics

• How to work with patterns without falling into victimhood or fate-based thinking

• The difference between using astrology for awareness vs. enabling patterns

• Shadow and gifts across the modalities: cardinal, fixed, and mutable signs

• How relationships act as mirrors for growth and integration

• How the things that remain unconscious in us get externalized as fate (C. Jung)

Key takeaways:

• Your birth chart doesn’t define you, it reveals the different energies within you

• Every pattern has both a protective function and a deeper intelligence

• The parts of ourselves we struggle with often hold our greatest potential

• The people we’re drawn to aren’t random, they often reflect what wants integration in us

• Transformation happens through awareness, not shame

• You don’t need to become everything on your own, relationships are part of the process

If you’re new to astrology, Isa suggests starting with:

• Your rising sign (ascendant) — how you meet the world

• Your moon sign — your emotional needs and inner world

• Your descendant (opposite sign of your rising) — the archetype of what you’re drawn to in relationships/your ideal partner

🎧 About Isa Nakazawa

Isa Nakazawa is an astrologer and host of Stars and Stars with Isa, a podcast where she reads the birth charts of artists and thinkers to explore their purpose, patterns, and path.

Her work blends astrology with cultural, political, and psychological insight, offering a deeply relational and nuanced approach to understanding the self.

🔗 Connect with Isa

Stars and Stars with Isa Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/show/72DgOIcC23maJ3rZL9rRQy?si=a11cda227e174a07
https://isanaka.com/
https://www.instagram.com/isanaka/

https://www.tiktok.com/@starsandstarswithisa?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWwXrCZWB_g12cCiyjAqI5JpE1knfSVc3

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

• What the shame triangle is and how it shapes the way people experience themselves and their relationships

•  The difference between the inner critic, the shame part, and the protective escape strategies that follow

•  Why shame is often one of the biggest obstacles to healing, accountability, and repair

•  How perfectionism, people-pleasing, shutdown, projection, and conflict avoidance can all be protective responses

•  The connection between shame, anger, attachment wounds, and nervous system dysregulation

•  What self-energy is and why it is so essential in healing relational patterns

•  How the shame triangle can begin to transform into self-love, inner coaching, and deeper internal safety

We talk about how shame quietly drives so many of the patterns people struggle with in relationships, from defensiveness and reactivity to collapse, avoidance, and disconnection, and how learning to relate to these patterns with more awareness, compassion, and curiosity can create real transformation.

This conversation is an invitation to understand the parts of you that formed in response to pain, reconnect with the deeper wisdom of your system, and begin creating more presence, repair, and authentic connection in your relationships.

About Jessica Fern: Jessica Fern is a certified clinical trauma professional, trained Internal Family Systems practitioner, and the internationally recognized author of Polysecure, Polywise, and Transforming the Shame Triangle, which she co-wrote with David Cooley. Her work helps individuals, couples, and multi-partner relationships break free from reactive patterns, insecure attachment, cultural conditioning, and past trauma so they can embody new possibilities in life and love.

About David Cooley: David Cooley is a professional restorative justice facilitator, diversity and privilege awareness trainer, bilingual cultural broker, and the creator of the Restorative Relationship Conversations model. In his private practice, he specializes in working with non-monogamous and LGBTQ partnerships, integrating trauma-informed care, attachment theory, somatic practices, narrative therapy, and mindfulness-based techniques to support deeper connection, intimacy, and repair.

Connect with Jessica
https://jessicafern.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jessicafern411/

Connect with David
https://restorativerelationship.com/

https://www.instagram.com/rrconversations/

Learn more about The Azurite Way
https://www.instagram.com/azuriteway/

https://www.theazuriteway.com/

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

• The difference between regulating your nervous system and actually healing it

•  How attachment wounds drive anxiety, control, and conflict in relationships

•  Why triggers are invitations to tend to your own body instead of reacting outward

•  The hidden ways control shows up in dating, communication, and expectations

•  How the “not enough” wound shapes rejection, abandonment fears, and self-worth

•  What it takes to feel safe with uncertainty in love and intimacy

We talk about how fear, control, and old relational patterns quietly run your relationships, and how learning to create internal safety changes the way you experience dating, conflict, connection, and so much more.

This conversation is an invitation to stop seeking safety outside of yourself and start allowing your relationships to transform you from the inside out.

About Yarrow Kae: Yarrow is spiritual and leadership mentor, clinically trained therapist, nervous system genius, and master of energtics. She specializes in 

Connect with Yarrow

https://www.instagram.com/yarrowkae/

https://www.youtube.com/@yarrowkaeway

The Yarrow Kae Way podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4mtglXAacOs0BnZ4YFl0J7?si=5e8e7fdda3034afb

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

Hi friends,

I’m going to switch things up a bit this week. So far, this newsletter has mostly been me teaching on topics that are alive in my life or my clients’ lives. But this week I want to share a more personal part of my own journey I’m navigating right now, in hopes that it might support you or make you feel a little more seen.

When I first started working as a therapist, I noticed almost every single client I worked with was navigating some version of a “not good enough” wound.

That was my first lesson in understanding just how spiritual this work really is. The clients who find you almost always represent past versions of you. Or they’re wrestling with something you’ve wrestled with before. They’re just magnetized to you! It’s wild and precise and nuanced and beautiful once you start noticing it (and also, tbh, confronting at times). But it means I often get to guide someone who’s just a few steps behind me on the journey, and that always feels so special.

So when I told my supervisor that so many of my clients carried this wound, she asked me, “Where in your life do you not feel good enough?”

I paused to think about it. “I actually don’t really relate to that,” I said. “I feel pretty solid in this area.”

She wasn’t really convinced, but we moved on. A few days later, I brought it up in group supervision and my colleague said, “Doesn’t everyone have a not good enough wound?”

Again, I thought…nope, not me (🙃)

Fast forward to this past week. I was laid out sick. It was dark and rainy and stormy in Oakland. I had been feeling low…unmotivated…questioning my work…questioning myself.

And as I was processing this with my own coach, she gently asked, “I wonder if this is your not good enough wound talking?”

And when she said that, this time something really different happened. I felt a welling up of grief and sadness in my body. I put my hand on my chest and just breathed with it. And there it was. My “not good enough” wound!!

It was so deeply buried in my subconscious that prior to this moment, I genuinely couldn’t feel it or come into contact with it. It didn’t register in my body. But this time, it was right at the surface ready to be tended to.

I don’t know about y’all, but since November (and really, this whole past year), I’ve felt like I’ve been in a portal of deep psychic excavation and shedding. Old patterns. Old dynamics. Old identities surfacing. But once I got to this place, I realized it was all leading me here. To this root layer.

The craziest part of limiting beliefs like this is you can consciously feel good enough, and still carry an energetic imprint that says otherwise. And that energetic imprint is often much stronger in shaping your life than your conscious thoughts.

And that’s because limiting beliefs aren’t just thoughts. They’re energy stored in your nervous system.

So even if your conscious mind believes you’re worthy, capable, solid… if there’s an energetic imprint underneath that says “not enough,” it becomes the lens through which you interpret everything in your life and the lens through which you attract people, experiences, and opportunities into your life.

If you want to know how this might be showing up in your own life, start getting curious about where you might be feeling down, and how you might be interpreting neutral moments as confirmation that you’re not good enough or not worthy of what you desire.

The external event is neutral, but this wound/limiting belief supplies the meaning.

I believe that every person has some version of this wound they’re working with in this lifetime whether it shows up as not successful enough, not wealthy enough, not attractive enough, not lovable enough, or not worthy enough. All rooted in some form of not enough.

And it doesn’t just impact how you feel about yourself, it shapes how you experience your relationships, your work, your friendships, and your life as a whole.

Once it becomes the lens, you start moving through everything from:

“I’m not enough.”
“I’m not doing enough.”
“I need to prove myself.”

You might notice it in how you interpret your partner’s tone.
How you read a friend’s silence.
How you make meaning out of a slow season in life or business.
How quickly you turn neutral moments into something personal.

How you make rejection mean something about you. How you make your boss asking something of you mean something about you. How you make being single mean something about you. The list goes on!

It’s exhausting, and without awareness, it operates in the background just out of sight while deeply impacting your emotional wellbeing and sense of self.

So how to shift it? What I’m practicing right now is simple, but really powerful (thanks to the guidance of my coach).

Instead of relating to what’s happening in my life as proof that I’m lacking, I’m experimenting with relating to everything in my external environment as enough.

When I relate to my external world as enough, something inside me softens. Because the way you relate to your life is how you experience life.

When the lens shifts, everything shifts.

I share this because I know how many high-functioning, self-aware, capable people quietly carry this imprint. It can be so subtle that you don’t even know it’s there, yet it shapes so much of how you feel and how you connect.

If you’ve been feeling drained, overextended, stuck in performance, or constantly trying to prove something, it might be worth asking:

What meaning am I attaching to what’s happening right now?
And whose voice does that meaning belong to?

Because when you shift the lens, you don’t just change your thoughts.

You change how you experience love.
You change how you experience work.
You change how you experience yourself.

And that has the power to change everything :)

If this resonates and you want support working at this root layer, I’d love to connect. This is the heart of the work I do with both individuals and couples.

Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together

You can also follow along on Instagram, subscribe to my Substack, and listen to my new podcast Relational Alchemy for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

P.S. If this resonated, feel free to leave a comment and share! I’d love to hear from you.

P.P.S. I’ll have to do a whole part two on how this specifically impacts romantic relationships! <3

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

Book a Free Call

🌹 Client Testimonial 🌹

“I have tried so many traditional therapy options and never felt like I received personalized treatment for my unique struggles. Therapists often used the same playbook on me as the patient they saw an hour earlier.

With Lindsey, our sessions are tailored to my goals, using an approach that gets to the root of my challenges, rather than one that just shares tips and tricks to use when things get difficult. It’s a true healing approach, not bandaids for various symptoms like I’ve experienced in the past.

I was once hesitant to do this kind of work on myself, but Lindsey’s approach has surprisingly made me enjoy peeling back the layers. I now see them as opportunities to grow and better understand, support, and love myself!

I also love her ability to listen. She is fully engaged and attentive during our sessions, and her calming presence puts me at ease and creates a safe space to share without judgment. As someone who is working on showing up as myself and caring less about what people think, this means the world.”

—Jennifer C.

🌊 Recently on the Relational Alchemy Podcast 🌊

Last week, I sat down with leadership mentor Ally Erickson for a powerful conversation about how the patterns we carry in our relationships don’t just disappear when we walk into work, they simply show up in new ways.

We explored how triggers, self-doubt, people pleasing, perfectionism, and nervous system responses in the workplace are often rooted in the same attachment wounds and survival strategies that play out in our romantic lives.

You can listen to the episode, From Performance to Presence: How Relationship Patterns Show Up in the Workplace, on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We dive into things like:

• Why your relationship patterns follow you into your career and leadership roles
• The difference between internal authority and constantly seeking validation
• How work triggers mirror childhood wounds and attachment dynamics
• Why the nervous system recreates familiar stress, rejection, and over-functioning
• The link between self-image, success, money, and romantic relationships
• How to shift from performing and reacting into grounded presence and self-trust

It’s a conversation that helps you see your work life, your relationships, and your inner world through a new interconnected lens, and gives you practical ways to start shifting patterns instead of staying stuck in them.

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• Why your relationship patterns don’t disappear when you walk into work
 • The difference between internal authority and outsourcing validation
 • How triggers at work mirror childhood and attachment wounds
 • The hidden cost of perfectionism, people pleasing, and over-functioning
 • Why your nervous system recreates familiar stress and rejection
 • The link between self-image, success, money, and romantic relationships
 • How to use activation as a portal back to self instead of reacting
 • A practical framework to shift from performance to presence

Ally shares practical ways to work with triggers in real time, rewire subconscious beliefs, and shift from external validation to internal authority, both in leadership and in life.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that healing your patterns in one area transforms every area.

About Ally Erickson: Ally is a leadership mentor who helps high-performing leaders move from performance to presence. Her work focuses on identity, intuition, and self-trust as the foundation of real authority.

Connect with Ally

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allyerickson/

Podcast "Who Does She Think She Is?"

https://open.spotify.com/show/0teRgNJRNe7z1KqNV7EADg?si=42107f4b24a543dd

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

Hi friends,

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day this week, I wanted to focus on something most of us experience in dating and relationships: feeling anxious when connection feels uncertain 💘

Relationships are so vulnerable. They bring up our deepest fears and longings, and so much of them lives outside of our control. (Is this talked about enough??)

Anxious attachment often shows up as making someone else our anchor of safety, believing that if they did something or changed something, we’d finally feel okay.

It can sound like:

• If they would just stop pulling away when things get hard, I’d relax.
• If they would check in with me more, I’d feel secure.
• If they would reassure me without me having to ask, I’d finally feel safe.
• If they would initiate affection more, I wouldn’t feel so anxious.
• If they would open up emotionally, I’d stop worrying.
• If they would prioritize me the way I prioritize them, I’d feel chosen.
• If they would stop shutting down during conflict, I’d feel close again.

In each of these instances, our sense of safety becomes dependent on someone else’s behavior. And when that safety feels uncertain, the nervous system naturally reaches for control.

This is where rumination, obsessing, overanalyzing, replaying conversations, checking your phone, seeking reassurance, over-texting, shutting down, or numbing out often show up. These behaviors become addictive, not to mention auto pilot, and they are a way in which we actually avoid feeling the feeling driving them.

Some of these may feel like they bring short-term relief, but the irony is that most of them just increase anxiety over time.

This pattern is deeply human. It’s rooted in how we learned to seek connection and security early in life. And it also keeps us stuck, because ultimately, we can’t control another person.

What actually begins to shift anxious attachment isn’t more reassurance or getting your partner/person you’re dating to do something different. It’s learning to turn your attention back inward and tend to the activation inside of you.

So the next time anxiety arises, see if you can interrupt the cycle of reaching for an addictive behavior (we all do it!), try this instead:

• Notice where you feel it in your body
• Place a hand there
• Breathe slowly into that space
• Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now?

What is the story I’m telling myself right now?

Underneath the spiral is usually fear. Fear of losing connection, being abandoned, not being chosen, or being alone.

Letting yourself feel the fear (by staying with your body), without attaching meaning to it or needing to act from it, is what softens anxious attachment over time.

Being with the anxiety while breathing into it is actually what metabolizes it from your body and reduces the intensity of it over time.

Feeling fear doesn’t mean something is wrong or that action is required. Dating and intimacy are vulnerable, and nervous systems react to uncertainty.

Returning to your body helps create safety internally instead of through someone else’s responses, and from there, relationships begin to feel calmer, clearer, and more secure. Because you’re not relying on someone else as your anchor of safety.

If you know someone who would benefit from hearing this today, please pass it along. And if that person is you, I’d love to connect! There is so much freedom on the other side of anxious attachment.

Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together. I work with both couples and individuals.

You can also follow along on Instagram and listen to my new podcast Relational Alchemy for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

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🌹 Client Testimonial 🌹

“My partner has noticed a big shift in how I respond to less-than-ideal situations too. Before, when we had moments of slight tension, I would let my emotions take over and often say hurtful things to protect myself. Now, I know how to show up in an unactivated state and be present while we both share our experiences.

I’m also finally starting to see patterns in my responses to certain situations in my daily life. It’s super interesting and kind of rewarding to connect the dots between reactions and emotions and things that happened earlier in life. It all starts to make sense and lifts the heaviness.”

—Jenna B.

🌊 Recently on the Relational Alchemy Podcast 🌊

For the very first episode, I sat down with my colleague and mentor Rachel Kelly for a conversation that feels especially aligned with what I’ve been talking about how we grow in relationships.

You can listen to the first episode, Common Patterns in Relationships & How to Alchemize Them for Your Highest Growth, on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

We dive into things like:

• How relationships and dating connections become powerful vehicles for healing and personal growth
• Why the people you’re drawn to often mirror old attachment wounds and what that reveals about what’s ready to shift
• How triggers, projections, and emotional reactions can be used as catalysts for transformation instead of staying stuck
• The difference between intuition and survival-mode reactions
• What it looks like to move out of old patterns and begin attracting healthier, more aligned relationships

It’s one of those conversations that can genuinely change the way you see relationships (and yourself in them). And there’s something in this episode for everyone whether you’re partnered, dating, or single.

• Why surface conflicts are never the real issue
• The shared wound underneath couples fights
• How survival mode shapes attraction patterns
• Projection and inner child triggers in relationships
• A practical way to spot and shift your relational cycles

About Rachel Kelly: Rachel helps people to rewire their nervous systems out of survival mode and build secure attachment. She is obsessed with helping you feel your feelings, build internal safety and create a life beyond your wildest dreams!

Connect with Rachel
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachel_kelly_coaching/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rachelkellycoaching?_r=1&_t=ZT-939h1jQNgDu

Website: https://rachel-kelly.mykajabi.com/

Powerfully Single Program: https://welcome.rachel-kelly-coaching.com/powerfully-single

Connect with Lindsey
www.lindseybournecoaching.com

Free consultation (for couples & individuals): https://calendly.com/lbourne2/discovery-call?back=1&month=2025-07

Free guide, Breaking the Pattern: https://www.lindseybournecoaching.com/breaking-the-cycle

If this episode resonated, subscribe, and/or leave a review to help the podcast reach more listeners! <3

Hi friends,

I just recorded a really beautiful podcast conversation on couples work with a colleague and mentor of mine and it inspired me to focus this week’s newsletter on what I see as one of the most important concepts for shifting unhealthy relationship dynamics: locating the shared wound beneath the fight.

What’s meaningful to me about this idea is that I didn’t learn it first through training or theory (it was never mentioned in any of my graduate classes or trainings). I learned it through couples therapy with my own partner. It was one of those rare, real “aha” moments that hit me right in the gut and actually changed something…not just how I understood relationships, but how I showed up inside of mine.

Seeing the shared wound underneath our patterns shifted our dynamic in a deep way. It supported my own healing around anxious attachment, softened the way I related to conflict, and ultimately became the foundation of how I now work with couples.

Why your conflict might not be as one-sided as it feels

When I work with couples, there’s often a moment, sometimes early on, sometimes weeks into the work, when something deeper begins to come into focus.

At first, the conflict looks familiar. One partner feels criticized, the other feels shut out. One is too much, the other is never enough. One raises their voice, the other goes quiet or walks away. The classic anxious/avoidant dance.

In those moments, the differences feel obvious. Your reactions seem opposite. Your needs feel incompatible. Your ways of communicating can feel miles apart.

But underneath all of that, there’s often something surprisingly similar at play.

A shared experience.
A shared emotional wound.

Maybe both of you feel like you don’t really matter.
Maybe both of you feel alone, even while sitting next to each other.

Maybe both of you carry a quiet fear abandonment, of loss.

The paths that brought you here are different. The ways you express that pain are different. But the felt experience itself, the ache in the body when connection feels uncertain, can look strikingly familiar.

Two histories, one emotional blueprint

This doesn’t mean you and your partner have the same story. Your wounds may come from very different family dynamics, relational experiences, identities, or roles you had to inhabit growing up.

But the emotional imprint can still rhyme.

That shared imprint often fuels the cycle. One partner pushes to avoid feeling invisible or powerless. The other pulls back to avoid feeling rejected or overwhelmed. Both responses make sense. Both are protective. And both are trying to keep something tender from being touched.

What most couples don’t realize is that while the behaviors look different on the surface, they are often organized around the same core pain.

So much energy gets spent tracking the details of the fight. Who said what. Who didn’t listen. Who escalated. Who shut down.

Meanwhile, the deeper emotional mirroring goes unseen.

Why this matters

When you’re in the middle of conflict, it’s easy to believe the problem lives entirely in your partner. Or entirely in you.

But what happens when you begin to see that you might both be hurting in a similar way?

That the reassurance, closeness, or understanding you’re longing for may be the very thing your partner is quietly reaching for too.

When couples start to recognize the shared pain beneath their patterns, something softens. When you realize your partner is feeling a similar kind of hurt, even if it shows up differently, the story shifts.

You begin to see that the ways you’re each trying to get that pain met are often what keep you disconnected. In that moment, a new way of relating becomes possible. That shift is everything.

How to start noticing it

You don’t need to solve anything right away. Just begin by paying attention.

Pause and ask yourself: what am I actually feeling underneath my reaction right now? What might my partner be feeling underneath theirs?

Get curious about the common thread. Even if your behaviors look opposite, is there a shared emotional experience underneath them?

If it feels safe, name it gently. You might say something like, “I wonder if we’re both feeling pretty alone in this, even though it shows up so differently.”

This isn’t always easy to see from the inside. That’s where outside support can be really helpful.

Together, we slow the dynamic down. We map what’s happening beneath the surface. We create space to tend to the protective responses while staying connected to the more vulnerable places they’re guarding.

Because so often, the fight isn’t the problem, it’s the signal. A signal that something tender is asking to be seen. And with the right support, cared for.

If you feel stuck in a relational dynamic with your partner that keeps pushing each other away or keeping you stuck in cycles of conflict or disconnection, there is another way forward! Reply to this email or book a free consultation to explore working together. I work with both couples and individuals.

You can also follow along on Instagram for more ongoing reflections.

With warmth,
Lindsey

P.S. If you are enjoying these newsletters, please like or comment on them below! It really helps me reach more people and grow my audience :)

LINDSEY BOURNE COACHING

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