Healing Brain States
Step Two of the Remothering Roadmap
Part of the “how do I remother myself” series
Have you ever felt like there’s a tug-of-war happening inside?
We can be so harsh with ourselves at times. And perhaps a part of you holds an intention of not being so hard on yourself—because you can see, intellectually, that there’s something to that idea. But at the same time, there are internal beliefs that may say things like:
- “It’s selfish to focus on yourself”
- “You’re fine—stop making such a big deal of it”
- “Don’t get too comfortable—something could go wrong.”
So many of us—especially those who grew up in families shaped by emotional immaturity, or where love sometimes felt like it had to be earned (by being ‘good,’ reflecting well on others, or taking care of everyone else’s needs)—carry an inner pressure to do more, be more, fix, help, handle.
And even when we see that inner pressure, it’s not always easy to shift. Because what we’re dealing with isn’t just thoughts—it’s how our mind and body have been shaped over time, and the protective strategies they’ve learned to help us feel okay, or at least more in control, in situations that didn’t always feel secure or predictable.
There’s a neurobiological reason we can’t simply logic our way forward—and when we don’t learn how to work with that, it can get in the way of healing.
Step Two of the Remothering Roadmap: Healing Brain States—is about learning to work with our brain’s natural wiring, rather than against it.
Why Healing Brain States Matter
In conversations about healing, it’s common to focus on mindset—shifting thoughts, reframing perspectives, or trying out new behaviors. And those can all be valuable. But without tending to the brain states and embodied patterns underneath, even the most well-intentioned changes can feel like trying to swim upstream. We may understand something intellectually, but still feel stuck, reactive, or overwhelmed in the moments that matter most.
Our brain states influence how we feel, think, and respond. And when we’ve spent years (or decades) in environments that shaped us to be on high alert, over-responsible, or always prepared to smooth things over or anticipate what others need, those brain states don’t shift overnight. Healing brain states means learning to bring ourselves out of survival mode and into greater internal safety—so we can meet life’s challenges from a place of deeper steadiness.
What Do Healing Brain States Look Like?
Traveling through step two of the remothering roadmap doesn’t mean never getting pinged, nor does it mean always staying calm. Instead, it’s about building a new relationship with our internal world.
It means:
- Learning to recognize when we’ve been pulled into a survival state—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—which can look like fixing, helping, people-pleasing, reflexive caretaking, or over-explaining.
- Offering ourselves “remothering moments” to soothe and re-orient our systems.
- Bringing compassion and understanding to the parts of us that are working so hard to keep us safe.
This is where understanding neuroscience—like the works of Sapolsky, Siegel, and Porges; and the work of Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, whose lived experience brings a powerful, embodied perspective—meets daily, lived practice. The science gives us the “why.” Remothering gives us the “how.”
The science gives us the “why.” Remothering gives us the “how.”
The Role of “Of-Courseness”
One of the most powerful tools we can bring to our healing is the sense of of-courseness—the ability to say to ourselves, “Of course I feel this way. Of course this part of me is showing up. It makes sense.”
For those of us who have an inner taskmaster, or an inner critic (or both!)—this is especially important. Because when we treat ourselves with warmth instead of criticism, we send signals of safety to our system. That helps our mind shift out of protection mode and into a place where healing and growth become possible.
Kindness helps your brain work better.
From a remothering perspective, this is what allows the parts of us that might usually be at odds—like the part that wants to set a boundary and the part that’s uncomfortable disappointing someone—to start working together, rather than against each other.
When we do this, we create internal conditions for healing—what I like to think of as an “internal community” that can collaborate with more ease.
Healing Brain States and the Remothering Journey
You may have noticed that Step Three of the Remothering Roadmap is about recognizing adaptations—seeing the protective patterns we developed to survive and function.
But if we go straight into exploring those adaptive patterns without understanding and honoring what our body and brain have been doing to help us survive, it’s so easy to end up stuck in a spiral of self-blame.
“Why am I still doing this?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
This is why we learn about healing brain states, and the tools we can lean into to experience those states before we start to look at our adaptations. When we can better recognize the pings for what they are (normal human responses to our environments), and know what we can do about them, we can set ourselves up for thriving-forward in self-alignment.
When we lean in a little more (and, to be clear, we don’t have to get this right all of the time, we are going for just 1% more, then perhaps 1% more after that) we can approach even the hard stuff with more steadiness, self-compassion, and care.
We’ll be exploring more about how brain states, nervous system responses, and remothering moments fit together here on the blog—including some of the insights and tools we’ve learned through the reMothering Masterclass series. And in the meantime, you can check out some clips from the series here, here, here, and here. And, of course, those remothering moments.
May this step be a soft landing place when you need it.
And, may the harmony we are learning to cultivate between our own two ears ripple out into the world in positive and meaningful ways.
From my heart to yours,
Your guide, coach, and fellow traveler on the remothering journey,
Simona
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