How to Trust Yourself with Anna Holtzman

Hello, dear listener.
I'm popping in today with a little update about the podcast.
I've decided to take a hiatus from the podcast for the rest of the year to rest, reset, and make some space for what's next.
One of the things I talk about so often on this show is the importance of listening to ourselves, honoring our needs, and giving ourselves permission to do things differently, even when we're used to just keeping going. And as you might imagine, these are things I'm continually practicing in my own life, too.
Over the past several months, I've been feeling a new direction emerging in my work, and with it, a new evolution of this podcast. I'm really excited about where things are heading, and I want to give myself some breathing room to let that next chapter take shape rather than rushing into it.
So I'm going to take a little time away from recording and publishing new episodes, and I'll be back in the new year with fresh conversations and some new things I'm excited to share with you.
In the meantime, there are more than 140 episodes in the archives, so if you're craving a little company or inspiration, I hope you'll revisit some of those conversations.
And I just want to say thank you. Whether you've been listening for years or you've only recently found your way here, I'm so grateful that you're part of this little community.
I hope the rest of your year brings you some opportunities to slow down, reconnect with yourself, and make space for whatever is next in your own life.
Until we meet again, take good care of yourself. And you can always find me at...

www.annaholtzman.com
www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman
https://substack.com/@annaholtzman
www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman

What happens when the life you’ve built no longer feels like the only life available to you?
In this episode, Anna sits down with bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, publisher, bookstore owner, entrepreneur, and mom of four Zibby Owens to talk about reinvention, identity, creativity, and what it means to begin again before you have the whole plan figured out.
Zibby’s new memoir-in-essays, Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot, traces a decade of enormous personal and professional change, including divorce, remarriage, motherhood, friendship, loss, and the creation of a whole new career in the literary world. Press release
In their conversation, Anna and Zibby talk about why meaningful change often begins with something very small, how to follow curiosity without needing certainty, and why loving what you’re doing can matter more than having a perfect strategy.
They also explore what happens when a woman who is used to putting everyone else first finally gives her own needs a seat at the table. Zibby shares candidly about judgment, people-pleasing, big feelings, writing as a way of processing experience, and learning to tolerate the discomfort that can come with becoming more fully yourself.
At the heart of the conversation is a simple but powerful message: it’s never too late. You don’t have to overhaul your entire life today. You just have to take one small step in the direction of what is calling you. That message is also central to Between Chapters, which Zibby hopes will help other women feel less alone and remember that reinvention may still be ahead of them. Press release
In this episode, Anna and Zibby discuss:
• Why you don’t need to know the whole plan before you begin
• Starting small when change feels overwhelming
• The difference between fear that signals danger and fear that may actually be excitement
• What happens when other people are uncomfortable with your growth
• Giving your own needs “a seat at the table”
• People-pleasing, judgment, and the fear of disappointing others
• Why passion can come before strategy
• Writing as a way to process pain, change, and identity
• Reinvention in midlife
• The importance of letting yourself be in the messy middle
• Why it’s never too late to begin again

Connect with Zibby Owens
Website: www.zibbyowens.com
Instagram: @zibbyowens
Podcast: Totally Booked with Zibby
Book: Between Chapters: How I Started Over, Took Some Chances, and Found the Plot

Connect with Anna
www.annaholtzman.com
https://substack.com/@annaholtzman
https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/
anna@annaholtzman.com

What happens when a role, relationship, career, or version of yourself that once defined you no longer fits — but you don’t yet know what comes next?
In this episode, Anna sits down with Functional Medicine Nutritionist, writer, educator, and entrepreneur Andrea Nakayama for a deeply personal conversation about transition, identity, endings, and the uncertain space between who we were and who we’re becoming.
Andrea’s own life has included profound transitions. After losing her husband to brain cancer while raising their young son, she left a career in book publishing and entered the world of functional nutrition. She later founded the Functional Nutrition Alliance, growing it into a global health education company that trained thousands of practitioners before selling the business and, years later, ultimately leaving the company she had created.
That experience brought Andrea face-to-face with a question many of us encounter in different forms throughout our lives: Who am I without the role that has defined me?
Anna and Andrea explore why transitions can feel so destabilizing, why our culture offers so few rituals for endings, and why the in-between period isn’t necessarily something to rush through. Andrea shares the idea of “provisional states” — the seasons when we’re trying on possible versions of what comes next — and how learning to honor that experimentation can bring more compassion to ourselves and others.
They also talk about motherhood, aging, menopause, discernment, narrative medicine, and what happens when we loosen our grip on the life we thought we were supposed to have and become curious about what might be emerging.
In this episode:
• Why identity can become so intertwined with our work and roles
• The three choices Andrea saw when she realized something no longer fit: fight, swallow, or leave
• Why endings deserve ritual and acknowledgment
• What “provisional states” can teach us about uncertainty
• The difference between looking for a new identity and learning to tolerate not knowing
• Why transition can feel especially intense in midlife
• How aging changes our relationship with striving, fixing, and acceptance
• The role of writing and narrative medicine in making sense of our lives
• Why pausing can help us hear our own voice amid everyone else’s messages
• The difference between grasping for what was and opening to what might be
• Andrea’s experience of letting go as her son moved across the world
• Why discernment has become central to Andrea’s current work
• How remembering what other women have survived can help us trust our own capacity to move through change

Connect with Andrea
Website: https://www.andreanakayama.com
Substack: https://andreanakayama.substack.com
Instagram: @andreanakayama

Connect with Anna
Website: https://www.annaholtzmantherapy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaholtzman/

What if the biggest obstacles in your financial life aren’t really about numbers?
In this episode of How to Trust Yourself, Anna talks with trauma-informed financial wellness coach Katy Chen Mazzara about the emotional stories, childhood experiences, and nervous-system patterns that shape our relationships with money.
Before becoming a coach, Katy spent more than 15 years as a freelance television producer and development executive, experiencing firsthand the feast-or-famine cycle that is so common in creative careers. Her own desire to understand how to create financial stability eventually led her to study financial planning at UC Berkeley and become certified in trauma-informed somatic coaching.
Today, Katy brings those worlds together, helping creatives, freelancers, and entrepreneurs understand both the practical and emotional sides of money.
Anna and Katy explore why simply knowing what we “should” do financially often isn’t enough to change our behavior. They talk about the money beliefs we absorb in childhood, the cultural mythology of the “starving artist,” and why shame, fear, and self-punishment can actually make financial change harder.
They also explore what it means to feel safe enough to receive more, advocate for yourself, raise your rates, invest, or pursue opportunities—and why releasing attachment doesn’t mean releasing responsibility or effort.
In this episode, Anna and Katy discuss:
• How childhood experiences shape our unconscious beliefs about money
• Why financial problems aren’t always solved by spreadsheets or better information
• The “starving artist” story and the ways it can keep creatives small
• The connection between self-worth, advocacy, and earning
• Why shame and self-punishment can perpetuate financial struggles
• How trauma-informed and somatic work can help shift entrenched money patterns
• The difference between releasing attachment and giving up effort
• Why play, ease, and nervous-system safety can sometimes help us move forward
• Money as part of an interpersonal and energetic exchange
• How greater emotional freedom can ripple into work, relationships, creativity, and finances
• Why it’s never too late to create a different relationship with money
Katy’s work offers a compassionate alternative to the idea that financial change requires being harder on ourselves. Instead, she invites us to become curious about where our beliefs came from, create enough safety to examine them, and begin making more conscious choices about what we want to carry forward.

Connect with Katy Chen Mazzara
Free Mindful Money Mastery Guide: https://www.subscribepage.com/mindfulmoneymastery
Website: https://www.katychenmazzara.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katychenmazzara/

Connect with Anna Holtzman
Website: www.annaholtzman.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman/

What happens when the signals coming from your body feel real, urgent, and convincing — but may not be telling you what you think they are?
In this episode, I welcome Dr. Howard Schubiner back to How to Trust Yourself for a conversation about chronic pain, neuroplastic symptoms, emotional expression, self-trust, and the complicated process of learning how to interpret what our bodies are telling us.
Howard is an internist, Clinical Professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and a leading voice in the field of mind-body medicine. His work played an important role in my own recovery from chronic migraine, and it has deeply influenced the way I think about the relationship between emotions, the nervous system, and physical symptoms.
Howard joins me to talk about his new book, Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety and Depression, and about how his understanding of chronic symptoms has evolved over more than two decades of working in this field.
We explore what it means to say that pain and other symptoms can be generated by the brain — without suggesting that they are imaginary or “all in your head” — and why understanding neuroplasticity can open up new possibilities for recovery.
But our conversation also goes beyond chronic pain. We talk about the connection between symptoms and authenticity, what can happen when you’ve spent years suppressing anger or avoiding conflict, and why beginning to express yourself more honestly can sometimes initially feel worse rather than better.
We also explore one of the central questions of this podcast: How do you trust yourself when your own brain can sometimes misinterpret danger?
In this conversation, we talk about:
• What neuroplastic or brain-generated symptoms actually are
• Why emotional pain can sometimes show up as physical pain
• How the brain learns and reinforces patterns of pain, fear, anxiety, and other symptoms
• Howard’s evolving understanding of predictive processing and how the brain creates our experience
• The role of Emotion Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET)
• Why suppressing your authentic self can contribute to physical and emotional symptoms
• The difference between privately processing anger and publicly expressing it
• Why asserting yourself may initially trigger guilt, fear, or even physical symptoms
• How people-pleasing and conflict avoidance can become deeply ingrained nervous-system patterns
• Why repetition and practice can help the brain learn that new ways of responding are safe
• Howard’s own experience with symptoms and health anxiety while launching his new book
• How to distinguish between a symptom that needs medical evaluation and one that may be neuroplastic
• The risks of both over-focusing and under-focusing on bodily sensations
• Why “trust your body” isn’t always as simple as it sounds
• How to cultivate discernment rather than blind trust
• Why getting conflicting opinions can sometimes help you realize there may not be one objectively “right” answer
• The importance of becoming your own advocate
• How trusted relationships and co-regulation can support self-trust
• Why certainty, belief, and flexibility all matter when navigating uncertainty
• The role authenticity can play in healing
• Why humor, connection, and community are such important parts of this work

Connect with Dr. Howard Schubiner
Website: https://www.unlearnyourpain.com/
Book: Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety and Depression
Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms: https://www.symptomatic.me/
TMS Wiki: https://www.tmswiki.org/

Connect with Anna Holtzman
Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-holtzman/