Paige Elizabeth

Five things that changed when I healed my relationship with myself
(and regulated my nervous system)
1. I stopped outsourcing validation.
I no longer ask:
Do they like me?
Do they want to invite me back?
Was I good enough?
Now I ask:
Do I like them?
Do I want to participate again?
Was there value in the exchange for me?
That shift alone is a nervous system upgrade. Authority comes back online when you stop handing the steering wheel to other people’s reactions.
2. Confrontation no longer destabilizes me.
When I stay present and in my adult self, confrontation doesn’t feel threatening.
Why? Because I’m not unconsciously protecting an inner child or abandoning her to handle discomfort alone.
I’m there. I’m regulated.
And when the adult is present, truth doesn’t feel dangerous — it feels clean.
3. Rumination and anxiety shut down.
My mind no longer spins stories or camps out in worst-case scenarios.
I still question things — but I don’t dwell.
There’s a difference between:
“I wonder what opposing counsel will do.”
and:
“Oh my god, what if they do something insane?”
One is curiosity.
The other is dysregulation.
That background anxiety, the constant mental looping — it’s gone.
4. Self-improvement stopped being self-rejection.
When I learned to love myself as I am — holistically, not conditionally — discipline changed.
I can now distinguish between:
what I genuinely want to refine or strengthen
and what I was previously rejecting or punishing
I choose goals, structure, and prioritization because I care about myself — not because I’m trying to fix or earn worth.
Growth from love feels very different than growth from shame.
5. I stopped reacting to urgency and started responding to what actually matters.
A regulated nervous system doesn’t confuse intensity with importance.
Not everything that’s loud deserves a response.
Not everything that’s uncomfortable requires immediate action.
I can pause.
I can wait.
I can choose.
That ability — to not be hijacked by pressure, fear, or emotional charge — is one of the clearest signs that your relationship with yourself has healed.

1 week ago | [YT] | 5

Paige Elizabeth

Macros aren’t just about body composition.
They’re about nervous system regulation.
Protein doesn’t build muscle on its own.
It builds muscle when paired with resistance — and it stabilizes blood sugar, mood, and focus.
Carbohydrates aren’t the problem.
They blunt cortisol and signal safety to the nervous system.
Chronic carb restriction in a stressed body keeps you in fight-or-flight.
Fats aren’t optional.
They support the brain, hormones, and nerve tissue that allow regulation in the first place.
When macros are misaligned, the body doesn’t “burn fat.”
It protects itself.
Protein = stability
Carbs = safety
Fats = resilience
Regulation comes before optimization. #macronutrients

1 week ago | [YT] | 4

Paige Elizabeth

“Regulating Your Nervous System Has Nothing to Do With Controlling Your Environment”
Everyone keeps talking about “regulating the nervous system” like it’s a lifestyle aesthetic.
Light a candle.
Take a bath.
Go for a walk.
Cut out difficult people.
Change your environment.
None of that is regulation. Those are comfort strategies.
Regulation is not about controlling the world around you.
It’s about shifting how you relate to the world inside you.
Because here’s the truth:
You can have the perfect environment, and still be dysregulated.
You can have a chaotic environment, and remain fully grounded.
Why?
Because regulation isn’t external.
It’s internal capacity.
A regulated nervous system means:
• You can feel discomfort without abandoning yourself.
• You can hold contradiction without collapsing.
• You can stay present instead of bracing for impact.
• You can meet challenge with clarity instead of panic.
• You respond from awareness, not survival patterns.
Regulation isn’t “I remove anything that triggers me.”
Regulation is “I don’t lose myself when I’m triggered.”
Big difference.
Women burn out because they keep trying to manage their environment instead of repairing the part of themselves that lost safety decades ago.
You don’t need a controlled life.
You need a restored relationship with your inner world.
When your system becomes safe inside, you stop needing everything outside to behave a certain way.
That’s the work.
And it’s not gentle or cute — it’s transformational.
When you shift how you relate internally:
✔ Life stops feeling like something to survive
✔ Your body stops bracing for the rug-pull
✔ Your energy stops leaking into hypervigilance
✔ Your self-worth stops depending on external calm
✔ You stop trying to predict every threat
Regulation isn’t control.
Regulation is capacity.
It’s your ability to stay in yourself, with yourself, no matter what’s happening around you.
That’s the real power.
That’s where women reclaim their lives.

1 week ago | [YT] | 4

Paige Elizabeth

Control is not power.
And power doesn’t need control.
Control is what people reach for when they don’t trust themselves, the process, or other people.
Power is what remains when trust is intact.
Here’s the difference:
Control
– Needs compliance
– Relies on pressure, fear, or leverage
– Tightens when challenged
– Requires monitoring and enforcement
– Breaks the moment it’s resisted
Control is fragile.
It only works while everyone stays in line.
Power
– Doesn’t chase agreement
– Doesn’t need permission
– Holds boundaries without force
– Stays steady under resistance
– Creates movement without coercion
Power is stable.
It doesn’t need to prove itself.
This is why controlling leaders micromanage, overexplain, dominate the room, or demand loyalty — while powerful leaders can be direct, calm, and unbothered.
Control says: “I need you to behave a certain way for me to be okay.”
Power says: “I know who I am regardless of how you behave.”
And here’s the part most people miss:
Control feels active, but it’s reactive.
Power looks quiet, but it’s decisive.
If you’re constantly managing outcomes, people, or perceptions — you’re probably not in power. You’re in defense.
Real power doesn’t clamp down.
It stands its ground and lets reality respond.
You can’t build sustainable leadership, relationships, or businesses from control.
Only from power.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

Paige Elizabeth

Codependency Is the Art of Carrying Someone Else’s Bags
Codependency isn’t love.
It’s the art of carrying someone else’s bags because you’re terrified they’ll leave you behind if you don’t.
You think you’re helping, but what you’re actually doing is abandoning yourself.
You micromanage their emotions, their problems, their needs — and then you wonder why you’re exhausted, resentful, and invisible.
Codependency says:
“Let me carry your load so you won’t notice I’m struggling.”
Healthy interdependence says:
“I can walk beside you, but I’m not picking up what’s yours to carry.”
The real trap?
Codependent people think they’re being supportive.
But what they’re really doing is shielding the other person from their own growth while slowly suffocating their own.
Carrying someone else’s bags doesn’t make you valuable.
It makes you overextended.
It makes you resentful.
It makes you disappear.
Love isn’t self-erasure.
Love is choosing to walk your own path, with someone you don’t have to rescue to keep.
Put the bags down.
If they can’t carry their own, they’re not ready to walk with you.
And if you keep carrying for them, you’re not walking — you’re dragging.
#codependency

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 3

Paige Elizabeth

Stop Calling It Perimenopause.
Most of what women in their late 30s–40s are calling “perimenopause” isn’t aging — and often isn’t hormonal failure at all.
It’s HPA axis dysfunction from decades of chronic stress, self-abandonment, and nutrient depletion.
Hormones are not the cause.
They’re the symptom.
There are two women who end up here — and they look different, but land in the exact same place:
1️⃣ The woman who neglected herself
Overgave. People-pleased. Ran on cortisol and grit. Ignored hunger, exhaustion, intuition.
2️⃣ The woman who “did everything right”
Exercised constantly. Ate clean. Pushed through fatigue. Bulldozed her body and called it discipline.
Different behaviors.
Same nervous-system pattern.
Both ignored their internal signals.
Both lived disconnected from the body.
Both demanded performance from a system quietly being depleted.
And here’s the part no one wants to say out loud:
You cannot be chronically stressed without becoming nutrient depleted —
I don’t care how clean you eat or how often you work out.
Stress burns through minerals and vitamins.
A dysregulated nervous system doesn’t absorb nutrients efficiently.
So the harder you push, the faster your body drains.
What shows up next?
Brain fog. Anxiety. Poor sleep. Weight changes. Low libido. “Hormone imbalance.”
Those aren’t random.
They’re signals.
And no — aging is not supposed to feel like a roller coaster.
Your hormones were far more volatile entering puberty than they ever will be leaving your reproductive years. You weren’t designed to collapse during perimenopause.
What actually changes is the condition of the system the hormones are operating in.
HRT can be helpful — when a woman is truly transitioning into menopause.
But using hormones to patch over stress, depletion, and nervous-system dysregulation often makes things worse, not better.
This isn’t about fighting aging.
It’s about repairing your relationship with your body, restoring nervous-system regulation, and repleting what chronic stress has stripped away.
Your body isn’t betraying you.
It’s asking you to stop overriding it.
And that conversation is long overdue. #perimenopause #hrt #nervoussystem #aging

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 5

Paige Elizabeth

One of the quickest ways to keep cortisol high is living in emotional limbo.
Cortisol doesn’t just rise because of “stress.”
It rises because the mind can’t close a loop.
When we can’t regulate a situation, resolve it, or take a clean action, the brain keeps it “open” as a threat. And when something is open, the system can’t put it down. That’s where the real damage comes in.
At the core of emotional regulation are three things:
1️⃣ Connection to self — knowing what you feel and what you want
2️⃣ Clear boundaries — knowing what is yours to hold and what isn’t
3️⃣ A path for execution — knowing the next step and acting on it
If any one of these is missing, the body shifts into surveillance mode.
You stay stuck in the “maybe,” the “but,” the “what if,” the “I’m not ready yet.” Action gets suspended, decisions get delayed, energy gets trapped.
That suspension is what keeps cortisol elevated.
Not the event.
Not the emotion.
The lack of movement.
Cortisol is meant for resolution.
It spikes so you can confront something and then come back down.
But when you don’t take the step — when you’re caught in chronic limbo — the system can’t complete the cycle. So you feel anxious, insecure, depleted, restless, and unable to move forward even when you want to.
This is why unresolved conversations drain you.
Why unfinished decisions eat at you.
Why indecision feels like a weight on the chest.
And why the nervous system interprets all of it as danger.
If you want cortisol to come down, you don’t need perfection.
You need completion.
A clean boundary. A clear decision. An action that signals to your system: I’m not stuck anymore.
Regulation is the mind knowing it can trust you to follow through.
That’s what frees the system.
That’s what lets energy move.
That’s what lowers cortisol.

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 5

Paige Elizabeth

Outputs Without Inputs Is the Guaranteed Path to Burnout
People like to talk about burnout like it’s emotional.
Or mental.
Or "a busy season."
But burnout isn’t philosophical — it’s physiological.
Your body cannot sustain chronic output without consistent input.
Not because you're weak…
but because you're human.
Here’s what I mean:
If you spend your days:
giving
fixing
producing
supporting
holding space
being “the capable one”
staying emotionally available to everyone but yourself
…while skipping the basics your system requires to regenerate — minerals, calories, carbs, sleep, protein, quiet, connection, pleasure, safety — your body doesn’t just get tired.
It goes into survival mode.
This is when your physiology starts shifting:
cortisol rises
blood sugar destabilizes
progesterone drops
thyroid slows
inflammation increases
serotonin dips
mitochondria down-regulate to conserve energy
That’s not “overwhelm.”
That’s your system pulling the plug because you’re running a deficit.
Burnout is a math equation:
High output + low input = collapse.
High giving + low receiving = depletion.
You can’t heal burnout by "being stronger."
You heal it by finally funding your body with the resources it has been begging for.
The inputs matter more than the output.
Always.
#burnout #nervoussystem

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 5

Paige Elizabeth

Five Myths About Healing That Keep People Stuck
1. “If I heal, I’ll lose my motivation.”
False. You don’t lose motivation — you lose fear-based motivation.
Drive doesn’t disappear; it just stops being fueled by scarcity, inadequacy, and panic. What replaces it is clarity, choice, and integrity. That kind of motivation is far more sustainable.
2. “If I heal, I’ll lose my protection.”
Also false. Defense mechanisms don’t protect you — they freeze you in the injury.
Walls don’t prevent harm; they signal it. When you heal, you don’t become unprotected — you become boundaried, which is far more effective than bracing.
3. “Healing will take too much time.”
This one is almost funny.
Healing gives you time back.
You stop spending hours ruminating, bracing, over-explaining, dissociating, numbing, or managing internal chaos. Integration is efficient. Dysregulation is exhausting.
4. “If I heal, I’ll lose things.”
Yes — but only what was weighing you down.
Healing works like fat loss: you don’t lose muscle, bone, or organs. You lose excess. Emotional, psychological, relational, financial excess that your system was carrying to survive. That’s not loss — that’s relief.
5. “If I heal, I won’t recognize myself.”
What you’re really afraid of is this:
“Who am I without my wounds?”
Healing doesn’t make you less you — it removes the static. You don’t become softer; you become clearer. You don’t lose your edge; you stop cutting yourself with it.
The quiet truth underneath all five:
People don’t fear healing because it’s painful.
They fear it because it removes the identity built around pain.
And that identity — even when it hurts — feels familiar.
#healing

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

Paige Elizabeth

Happy Thanksgiving 🦃🍁

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 4