How to Trust Yourself: The Messy, Human Path to Becoming Who You Are

Why can opening up feel so hard, even when connection is exactly what we want?
In this solo episode, Anna reflects on a recent experience that unexpectedly cracked something open in her: an intimate dinner conversation with a cousin that led to a moment of tenderness, vulnerability, and surprising emotional healing.
Although Anna has done years of therapy and personal growth work around painful experiences from her past, she found herself unexpectedly caught off guard by something deeper: how difficult it still felt to receive empathy.
This episode explores the subtle ways we learn to protect ourselves after heartbreak, rejection, misunderstanding, or emotional pain — and how those protective patterns, while understandable, can quietly keep us from the belonging we most long for.
Drawing from both personal experience and the novel Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Anna explores:
• Why vulnerability can feel emotionally risky
• How painful past experiences shape our nervous system and expectations of others
• The hidden ways self-protection can keep us disconnected
• Why receiving empathy can sometimes feel just as vulnerable as sharing pain
• The difference between overwhelming vulnerability and thoughtful, nervous-system-safe openness
• How to begin taking small risks toward deeper connection and belonging
If you've ever found yourself longing for closeness while also keeping your guard up, this episode is for you.
Reflection Questions from This Episode:
• What am I actually trying to protect myself from?
• Are my present circumstances truly evidence that the past will repeat itself?
• What might it feel like to receive empathy, understanding, or care?
• Who is one thoughtfully chosen person I might take a small risk to open up to?
Want support in building greater self-trust, connection, and emotional safety?
Anna offers private therapy for women in New York and therapeutic coaching outside New York. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/annaholtzman
Interested in practicing vulnerability and visibility in community?
Learn more about Anna’s group, Seen & Safe, at:
www.annaholtzman.com/seen-and-safe

In this episode, Anna sits down with Stephanie Thoma, speaker coach, author of Confident Introvert and Not That Sweet, and founder of Connect With Confidence. Stephanie helps introverts and rising leaders craft keynote talks, strengthen their messaging, build speaking schedules, and — most importantly — connect with people in a way that feels meaningful rather than performative.
Stephanie is not in the business of polishing people into “perfect” speakers. She helps them root into who they already are, speak from truth, and create connection instead of performance.
In this episode, we talk about:
• Why the idea that “public speaking is for extroverts” is completely false
• What makes introverts powerful, resonant speakers — often more compelling than extroverts
• Why Stephanie cares so deeply about helping quieter voices step forward and be heard
• The fears clients come in with:
o fear of judgment
o fear of blanking out
o fear of “taking up space”
o fear of being boring or “too much”
o fear of being seen as an authority
• The nervous-system dynamics behind speaking anxiety
• How Stephanie helps people regulate, reframe, and root into safety before they ever get on stage
• The tools she uses with clients — including confidence mapping, energy calibration, embodied presence, intention-setting, and speaking from connection instead of perfection
• Why being a great speaker is about meaning not performance
• Stories of clients who went from terrified to empowered — including introverts who now lead teams, deliver keynotes, and speak with grounded confidence
• Why visibility is not a personality trait — it’s a practiced skill anyone can grow
This episode is an invitation to unmute yourself, meet your fear with compassion, and step into the kind of speaking that feels like you.

Connect with Stephanie
• Website: https://stephaniethoma.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniemthoma/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniemthoma/
• Join her UnMute Yourself community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14699045/

Connect with Anna
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/
• Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/
• Free workshop — Let Yourself Be Seen: https://www.annaholtzman.com/beseen

What do you do when fear takes over?

How do you trust yourself when your nervous system is fully activated?

And how do you move through moments of fear without swinging to one of two extremes: reacting impulsively in an attempt to regain safety… or overriding your own experience and convincing yourself everything is fine?

In this deeply personal solo episode, Anna explores what happens internally when fear, self-doubt, attachment wounds, and conflicting inner parts all begin speaking at once.

Because often the hardest moments in life aren’t the external events themselves.

It’s the inner grappling that follows.

The part of you that wants reassurance.
The part that wants to protect.
The part that feels ashamed for having needs.
The part that questions your own perception.

Through the lens of a recent emotionally activating experience, Anna shares what it looked like to navigate fear in real time — not perfectly, but honestly — and what emerged about nervous system regulation, self-trust, emotional repair, and staying connected to yourself while messy and uncertain.

This episode is not about getting it “right.”

It’s about what it looks like to stay in relationship with yourself when you feel activated, conflicted, scared, and human.

In this episode, we explore:
• The difference between overreacting from fear and underreacting from fear — and how both can disconnect us from ourselves
• What happens in the nervous system when we feel emotionally threatened or unsafe
• How attachment stories and old fears quietly shape our reactions
• Why conflicting inner parts can make self-trust feel confusing in difficult moments
• Why emotional activation doesn’t mean something is wrong with you
• What emotional repair can actually look like after hard moments
• How to navigate inner conflict without abandoning yourself
• Why “good enough” emotional processing matters more than perfection

If you’ve ever spiraled, second-guessed yourself, struggled to know whether your feelings were valid, or felt caught between fear and self-abandonment, this episode is for you.

Connect with Anna:
📧 anna@annaholtzman.com
🌐 annaholtzman.com
📸 @anna_holtzman

If this episode resonated, Anna would love to hear what landed for you.

In this soulful and expansive episode, Anna speaks with Noga Shefi — musician, healer, and guide for sensitive creatives — about what it means to heal, create, and live from a regulated, intuitive, embodied place.
Noga’s personal story is profound. After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2010 and told she’d be suffering for life, she embarked on a deep healing journey that took her far beyond conventional medicine. From gut-brain healing to meditation retreats, from subtle energy work to dreamwork, from nervous system regulation to spiritual study — Noga followed her sensitivity inward and found a path to healing.
Now she brings that wisdom to other creatives and sensitives who want to grow, create, and serve without burning out.
In this episode, we explore:
• What it’s like to balance being a musician and a healer
• How creativity feeds healing — and how healing expands creativity
• The double-edged sword of being a sensitive creative (and how Noga navigates her own sensitivity)
• Why sensitivity is not a liability, but an intelligence
• How to recognize the early signs of emotional or nervous system overwhelm
• The tools Noga uses daily to regulate, reset, and ground
• The healing modalities that supported her Crohn’s remission — and that she now shares with clients
• What it means to live from intuition rather than fear
• Her favorite practices for supporting sensitive creatives in their path of transformation
This is a grounding, nourishing, deeply validating conversation for anyone who identifies as sensitive, intuitive, creative, or easily overwhelmed — and who wants to learn to work with their sensitivity instead of against it.

Connect with Noga
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noga.shefi/
•. The Reset Ritual (Free resource) - https://noga-s-site.thinkific.com/products/courses/new-course-1
•. Nervous System Sorcery (online course)https://noga-s-site.thinkific.com/products/courses/new-course
•. The Wild Frequency Retreat: a 7-day women's music creation retreat in Mexico https://www.eltriangulo.co/the-wild-frequency-retreat
• Podcast: Your Healing Era

Connect with Anna
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_holtzman/
• Website: https://www.annaholtzman.com/
• Free workshop — Let Yourself Be Seen: https://www.annaholtzman.com/beseen

Have you ever found yourself twisting into a pretzel trying to become the “right” version of yourself?
The more visible we become — in business, relationships, leadership, creativity, or simply stepping into a new chapter — the easier it is to lose trust in ourselves and start overcomplicating everything.
We think we need to be more polished, more impressive, more productive, more “on.”
But what if the thing people most need from us is actually the part of us that already comes naturally?
In this solo episode, Anna shares a story from her Seen & Safe group about a practitioner who got stuck trying to sound smart and professional while creating a presentation — until one simple question unlocked her natural gifts and creativity.
Anna also shares a deeply personal story about becoming a stepmother and the pressure she once put on herself to prove she was “good enough” in the role — until an unexpected conversation with her husband helped her realize something powerful:
Sometimes the most valuable thing we contribute is something we barely notice because it feels so natural to us.
In this episode, we explore:
• Why stepping into visibility often makes us abandon ourselves
• The sneaky ways we overcomplicate things when we care deeply
• How nervous system pressure can disconnect us from creativity and intuition
• Why trying harder often backfires
• The surprising power of simply being yourself
• How community and reflection help us see gifts we can’t always recognize on our own
• A gentle question to help you reconnect with what already flows naturally in your life
If you’ve been feeling stuck, efforting, overthinking, or trying to squeeze yourself into a version of success that doesn’t quite feel like you, this episode is for you.
Want support moving through fear of visibility and reconnecting to your authentic voice?
Anna’s group coaching membership, Seen & Safe, is a nervous-system-informed space for sensitive creatives, coaches, and entrepreneurs who want to stop hiding and start showing up in a way that feels aligned and sustainable.
Learn more:
annaholtzman.com/seenandsafe
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Connect with Anna:
Podcast: How to Trust Yourself
Instagram: @anna_holtzman
Website: annaholtzman.com