Why "Just Show Up" Is Business Advice Your Nervous System Can't Follow, and What Actually Works Instead | Anna Holtzman

There's a loneliness in being the person who's holding it together on the outside while your body is screaming on the inside.

You show up, you deliver, you smile through the zoom calls and the, you know, lives and Instagram stories and the reels.

And then later, hours later, maybe even days later, the body hits something comes up, a migraine hits you, the flare ups start and your nervous system is finally loud enough for your perception to be like something is not going, going right.

You didn't do anything necessarily wrong.

Your body isn't broken.

It's actually probably just trying to protect you and help you to recalibrate.

And when you're spending energy every single day trying to mask who you actually are or what's actually happening so we can appear professional or perfect or doing it right or having it all together, it can seriously create a part of our bodies that have to pay the bill.

Our guest today is Anna Holtzman knows this firsthand.

Her very first day working as a reality TV editor was the first time that her body experienced a migraine.

And she experienced this.

That you'll learn in this episode from what she feels like came from this performance.

Ana is now a licensed therapist and coach who specializes in helping people step into what she calls authentic visibility.

Showing up as herself, messy and human and real without masking, so it doesn't cost her capacity.

Most business advice around visibility treats this like a marketing tactic.

Post more, go on video, be consistent, be on all the platforms, do all the things, but nobody really talks about what happens to your nervous system when being seen feels physiologically risky.

When the act of being watched, literally watched, like Anna was in the editing room with producer standing over her shoulder, triggering her body's alarm.

Standard advice doesn't really account for that kind of stuff.

And we're going to talk about how visibility without safety is often a flare up waiting to happen.

So in this episode, Anna walks us through the moment her body went into deer in headlights mode under pressure.

Why AI is actually giving us permission to be imperfect on camera, even more so.

And how being seen as you actually are is less exhausting than performing professionalism.

You'll hear why your chronic symptoms may be your nervous system's way of saying, I can't keep holding this.

What it looks like to let people see your messy human realness and why that shift is not just kinder, it's actually protective.

If you've been wondering whether showing up authentically is safe, this conversation will help you to find your answer.

Especially when it comes to showing up and doing things as far as marketing your business.

And if you want to go deeper on this topic on conversation, please join us in the show Notes to join us in our community where we dive deeper into topics like this, so stay tuned.

Are you tired of hearing business advice that completely ignores what real life looks like when you're navigating chronic illness?

Autoimmune disorders flare ups, medical appointments, and just life.

Lifing Business with Chronic Illness is for entrepreneurs who know they're capable of building something meaningful but need a way to do it that actually works with their body, not against it.

This podcast brings you honest conversations with founders, CEOs and other bosses, sharing their strategies, adaptations and lessons they've learned while building businesses alongside chronic illness, including what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they had done differently before burnout forced the lesson.

I'm your host Nikita Williams, a globally ranked podcast host and entrepreneur who's built my business while navigating chronic illness and helping others do the same without sacrificing themselves.

I created this show to open up the conversations most business spaces avoid.

The promise of Business with Chronic Illness is simple to show you that you can build a thriving business with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit.

You're not behind, you're building differently and you're in the right place.

I'm so excited to have Anna on the show.

We, full disclosure, had an amazing conversation a few weeks ago and then the Internet, Internet and the weather did not get along.

However, if you stay tuned, if you're on my email list or hers, you'll get some of those juicy bits.

It's really good and I can't wait for you guys to listen to it.

But this conversation has been great too.

Anna, please introduce yourself.

Tell everybody where you are, how you would describe the work that you do.

Thanks Nikita.

It's.

Well, you know what?

I'm glad that we have an excuse to hang out again because that is always a pleasure.

My name is Anna Holtzman.

I am a licensed therapist and a coach.

I live in New York City in the borough of Queens and I do a variety of things.

I work with folks on nervous system stuff.

But I think what we're going to talk a lot about here today is how I support clients to really step into authentic visibility.

And you know, I was saying before I like, I wish I could find another word for authentic because it is quite overused.

But it does convey what I want it to convey, which is that some of the Folks that I work with, they're wanting to become more visible.

Maybe they are creatives or they're business owners, and they want to get their work out there and be seen.

And there's a lot of fear that comes up around getting visible.

And so we're working with the nervous system.

I also work with folks who are in highly visible roles.

They're in leadership roles.

Maybe they're performers.

As I mentioned, I work with creatives as well, but they are doing a lot of masking when they're out there being visible.

But they're not really letting themselves be seen because that can feel very scary.

Again, to our nervous systems, it's not always to our conscious mind, but to our nervous system, it can feel very risky to let ourselves be seen as we actually are in all of our human beautiful, gorgeous, unique messiness.

And when we're masking or kind of like holding our true selves in, it can feel safe but very exhausting.

And it can take a toll on our bodies and our nervous systems.

It can trigger symptom flares in my own personal experience.

So that is something that I help people navigate, too.

Yeah, I love having this conversation with people in the space of, like, the science behind it, the medical aspect of, like, how it affects your body physically, your physiologic physiology.

Physiology.

Is that physiology.

There you go.

I was like, it's gonna come to me.

There you go.

Perfect example.

And of, like, being imperfect, though, you're being out here visibly talking to people.

Like, I have done a lot of research myself on mind, body, you know, the connection of that.

And then you throw yourself in, having a business, but also living with chronic illness.

There is a huge leak.

There's a lot of research and a lot of data out there that shows that the aspects of how we suppress our emotions and our feelings actually turn into or affect or create some of our chronic symptoms that we have.

I used to interpret that as like, oh, I did something bad, or I'm wrong.

But it was to me, I, over time, interpreted it as like, my body was just trying to protect me.

And it manifested this outward experience of this to give me alarms of, like, you really do need to protect this in this way, but you have to actually let it out.

And we were talking in the green screen, like, right before we started chatting about as entrepreneurs.

It is a fine line that I feel like we are all kind of on as performers in a way.

We, you know, are constantly being told that you have to show up and do the thing and tell who you Are.

And what it is that you're doing.

And.

And I think before 2026, and I'm saying this, I think the era before this, which I really do think we're at a time where we're going to look back like we did in 2020 during the pandemic, and be like, this is the year that something shifted.

Everything changed.

That AI is huge.

AI is a huge part of this conversation now around being authentic, being seen.

Are you talking to the right.

Like, I just got.

Oh, side tangent.

But it's relatable, I promise you.

It's interesting because this happened before in our last conversation.

Oh, we were very tangenty in our last conversation.

So tangeny.

I actually had just got off a call right before this call with my OB GYN again.

This is so funny.

And this time, though, they must have changed their system.

I got on the phone, I'm calling to find out about test results, and a bot is answering the phone.

Oh, my gosh.

And, you know, I was telling my husband, I was like, I think I would have been fine if this was like my dentist, the chiropractor.

Something a little less emotionally fraught, perhaps.

Right, Exactly.

A little more emotionally neutral.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

It was a bot.

And I thought to myself, I don't want to tell you anything.

Like, there's nothing.

There's nothing here that feels sacred anymore.

So I'm sharing that.

To say there's a lot of us trying to decide or define, like, we have to, like, recalibrate our nervous system in an environment that now is adding other things to our nervous systems that we're afraid of.

For example, I don't think I would have ever picked up the phone thinking, you already feel weird calling the doctor about anything to talk to humans, specifically as a woman.

So you're thinking you're going to talk to a person.

And now you calling and you get a bot on the phone.

There is another nervous system situation happening within your body that is like alarms.

What is happening?

This is weird.

There's a lot of things happening.

And I think as business owners now, I've seen more recently, people are like, I'm afraid to show up because I'm afraid that my essence of who I am is now going to be stolen.

But by a bot, it's going to be stolen by these things.

And I don't know if I want to put myself out there.

And I'm like, well, you've already been out there.

It's already.

It's already.

It's already available out of the bag.

Exactly.

And so to protect, or just kind of inform ourselves in general about the importance of being authentically you, even in the space where there is uncertainty, even when there's a space of unfortunately, like, you just don't know, how is that a protective tool in itself of you being, you know, showing up and being connected with you?

I'm just gonna take this where I'm being led and you can, like, guide me back if this isn't addressing the question you were asking.

But I have noticed as a solopreneur who puts myself out there in order to let people know about my business.

Right.

And one of the ways that I do that is social media.

Prior to the kind of explosion of AI, I felt like there was a movement of putting information out there.

And I actually felt some pressure around, like, well, if I'm going to be of service to people, I need to provide them with helpful information, and I need to prove that I have expertise and I'm very knowledgeable by providing information in a way that looks professional.

And there's a way in which you can kind of hide behind that too.

Like, it can feel like pressure to perform and be, quote, professional, but that professionalness can also feel like a mask that provides some type of safety where you're not letting your vulnerable, messy, weird, unique.

Like, I'm different than other people.

Are people gonna like who I am?

Ness doesn't have to show.

On the flip side, now that AI is so prevalent, I think, you know, as you're saying, what people really value is the uniqueness, the messiness, the fact that, I don't know, I don't blow dry my hair and it's like sticking up in weird places.

And I don't speak in a completely fluid way.

I have these, like, pauses and the ums and.

Right.

All that stuff.

And there can be two sides to it as I see it.

Like, on the one hand, there's more pressure to go on video, because that's something that, I mean, they're AI videos.

But I think people really can tell people really want to see you on video because they know that that's not chatgpt.

So it can feel like pressure to expose yourself.

On the other hand, it can feel like permission to be yourself because it's like, no, like, we want the realness.

We don't want the perfect looking lab coat.

Like, I know all the information and I'm, you know, that's not what's so attractive to people at this moment.

I agree with you.

I think we're in A different time and age now that.

Believe it or not, I used to tell people starting a podcast, don't put in your podcast description real conversations.

That's so like, duh, it's a real conversation.

And it's like.

But no, really, now it is like you almost have to say that these are real people actually talking and having a conversation.

And yes, leave the ums and the likes and the, you know, the weirdness.

Because that is the thing that helps people to know this is actually human beings having this connection, this having this real thing.

And I think in a lot of ways it does feel easier.

You can feel like it's easier, but for some people, they can feel the opposite where they feel like, you know, this is still too much.

This is still too much.

It's exposing.

Exposing.

Exactly.

I'm curious for you, Anna.

You have a background in TV and experiences like that, and you have a story that has been like, we've talked about this before.

And I'm always fascinated with kind of what we're talking about.

The manifestation of when you aren't being true to who you are and how it.

Your body will tell you.

Right.

What is that story for you?

So I'll tell the story that I think I probably told the last time we.

We recorded.

It's all good.

You could just tell the story you're going to tell because, you know, it's the same.

It's the same.

So, yeah, before I became a therapist and a coach, I worked in Media for 15 years.

I started out in publishing, and then I worked in television for 10 years as a video editor working on reality TV shows.

And that's a whole.

We can go into that if you want.

My.

The joke, joke, not joke is that like working in reality TV drove me into therapy.

And then that's kind of how I became a therapist.

But, well, you know, maybe I won't tell the story I told before.

The joke that I just said is not really how I became a therapist.

Like, it wasn't that reality TV drove me, you know, to therapy.

I went to therapy cause I was having trouble with relationships.

A reason why a lot of people do get into therapy.

But working in TV was what initiated my chronic health experience.

My very first day working on a reality TV show was the very first day that I ever experienced a migraine attack.

And so how does this connect to visibility?

Well, as a video editor, you're working in a room.

In this case, anyway.

I mean, every job's different, but my first job I was in like a bullpen.

Of not only five different editors, and I was the least experienced of all of them because it was my first job, but all of these producers who are kind of circulating and, like, looking over your shoulder and watching you work, watching you make creative decisions in real time, and oftentimes butting in and saying, you know, why'd you do this?

It's like, so exposing in that way.

For funny enough, even though you're not on camera, the editor is behind the scenes.

But as a creative doing your work, like, you feel so exposed.

And that combined with the newness of it, and that job happened to be on an editing platform that I was not very familiar.

Like, I was more familiar with the other top editing platform.

So it just, like, the stakes were so high, and my nervous system got so activated, not just by the pressure to perform, but specifically by being witnessed as I'm like, navigating this.

And I remember I didn't have nervous system language in those days.

Who of us does at that time?

Who of us did?

I mean, no, my therapist didn't either back then.

But just the heart palpitations, the sweating, the primarily for me, like, starting to go blank, like going into deer in headlights mode.

And then this sharp pain out of nowhere that I was not accustomed to in those days.

And that did not make me think, oh, now I should become a therapist.

But as I continued to work in that field, and there's a lot of, like, having to hold it together to perform and to be professional and to be fast and not to be falling apart and being human in the middle of the workday, I continued to get sporadic and ever increasing in frequency migraine headaches throughout that career.

When I eventually left that career, not because of the migraines, but because I was like, I never planned to be in reality TV my whole life.

And I decided I had been in therapy for several years at that point, I found it really interesting, very transformative, and I thought, maybe this is something I could do instead.

And when I went to grad school, those migraines became chronic, started to take over my life.

That's what motivated me, really, to dive into learning about the nervous system.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a very different angle for that story from the last time I recall, which is.

It's interesting how we come to so many different decisions in our lives, But I like to call them little breadcrumbs that connect in some way, shape or form.

It sounds like when you were in that space of creativity, did you enjoy that work and you just did not enjoy the environment yes.

And there were certain things about the environment that I did enjoy.

I made a lot of really great friends working in that industry.

What I did not.

There were a lot of things I did not enjoy, and one of them was being, like, having someone watch me over my shoulder.

I would say that was one of the biggest.

I mean, that was just so stressful was also the hours were really brutal.

There was no control over my schedule.

You know, if you had to stay late, you had to stay late.

If you had to stay past midnight, you had to stay past midnight.

And yeah, just a lot of coercion and manipulation, both behind the scenes and then also of the people in front of the camera, which I didn't feel great about either.

So that's interesting.

Like, I feel like I grew up during the age of reality tv, like MTV and all.

Like the.

That when it became, like, when I was a teenager, ish.

Where all the, like, the reality TV became like a thing.

Obviously completely different person at this point in my life.

But I remember, I think you're like, this is crazy.

People following you around for your, like, like, this is crazy.

And then yet we also watch it, and yet we're all still doing that.

And realiz that's happening in real quote, unquote time.

But also, now that you're saying this, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, there's got to be an editor doing this in real time too.

Right.

Like, it's not something like a movie where it's, like, set and then you have time to, like, figure that out and, like, find your creative flow with how that's going to, like, it seems it's a lot faster pace is what I'm also hearing, which is probably not also helpful for the nervous system, and that's in that type of environment as well.

Oh, yeah.

Super overstimulating the speed of it all.

Yeah.

Do you think now that you moved into therapy and learning about that, how do you make sense of that world now for you?

Like, when you look at that experience, what do you think and be like, you know what?

I take this for the good and I take this for the lesson.

Yeah.

Well, first off, there were a lot of positive experiences that I had socially, but also, like a lot of people, when I tell them I switched from reality TV editor to therapist, they're like, what?

Like, huh?

What could one possibly have to do with another?

But the thing is, looking back, I'm like, as an editor, you are watching human behavior under a microscope, and then you're rewinding it and watching it again.

And you're sifting through like the chaos of just like, you know, what human life looks like.

It's, you know, non sequiturs and tangents and all of that.

And you're looking through it to search out like, what is the actual through thread here?

What is this person's actual story?

And that very much translates to therapy and coaching.

So much so.

Right, because that's what we're doing.

I know when I'm in therapy, I'll have moments where I'm like, dang, I did not see that come.

Like, I did not see that connection or wow, that makes so much sense.

And you realize so many of your decisions came from that one point of time and how they just kind of, you know, I call it, brave themselves into the fabric of what, how you're living today.

And you have to almost unravel it to figure it out, you know, and.

Speaking of that through thread, maybe I'll, I'll bring in another, or I'll bring in a little bit of that, that other story I told last time, which to say that.

So when I was in grad school, the migraines flared and started taking over my life.

I was desperate for some way to manage them.

And I came across this whole world of mind body medicine influenced by someone named Dr. John Sarno.

Basically just I dove into this world of learning what is the nervous system, how does it work, how does the nervous system respond to stress and how that can show up in symptoms and, and I was able to find my way out of that chronic migraine.

I still get headaches here and there, but they're no longer chronic.

So I made that into the focus of my work once I launched my therapy practice.

Cause it had been so life changing for me.

And as I was building that practice, I was having to get visible.

Right?

You have to market yourself when you're in business for yourself.

And I started to notice that every time I would step into some form of visibility, whether it was initially even just like posting on social media or later on getting on a podcast, you know, recording myself for an online course, in the lead up to those activities, I would notice some of these, like pre migraine attacks, symptoms like a surge of anxiety, shallowness of breath, feeling spacey in my head, or oftentimes like getting caught in a very negative self talk spiral.

And because I now had this deep nervous system knowledge, I was able to make the connection of like, oh, being visible, putting myself in front of people and allowing myself to be witnessed.

It might seem fine to me on paper, but my nervous system perceives this as something that is threatening.

And so it's kind of.

It's like bracing itself and trying to throw up these alarm signals.

Yeah, Just that alone is a validation.

Right.

I feel like so many of us are, like, beating ourselves up.

Also, social media doesn't help this because there are people telling you that you should just shut up and show up.

And, like, there's a lot of messages in the world in general that is trying to tell you that your hesitation or the experience that you just described is just you being afraid and you need to just butter up, you know, I can't think of the word I'm trying to think of, but, like, just get over it and show up.

And I think a lot of us need to understand that because those symptoms show up up.

You can now decide and choose what you need to give yourself.

The safety that you need to show up in that visibility if you choose to continue to do so, versus no, you're just this, you know, I don't even know what the words are because I'm so, like, out of talking and thinking like that.

It's so interesting because when I have clients talk to me, and I'm like, I would never say that.

Like, what.

What are you, like, a kid?

You're just being, like, a pussy.

Like, just a very harsh way of talking to.

And the thing is, like, in my perspective anyway, there's a partial truth to it, but it's like a very misinterpreted truth because there is fear there, but it's not the type of fear where it's like, you're being illogical about something.

You're like, well, you know, that's so illogical for you to be afraid of that.

And it's like, no, that's not what it is.

It's more along the lines of, like, a PTSD response.

It's like, you know, if a dog who's been through very stressful experiences starts barking and freaking out when they hear fireworks go off, that's not because the dog is being a whatever.

Right.

It's like their body is responding to something because there's a neural pathway there that connects this type of stimulus with danger.

And the body is very intelligently designed to protect us from that.

So true.

So, Anna, how have you.

With your awareness with that?

Because now you.

You support people in this space, right?

How have you created the safety you needed with your nervous system with visibility and, like, knowing the migraine is coming or it's not coming, like, how have you worked with that for yourself?

Yeah, well, the cool thing was that when I recognized that my nervous system was responding to visibility with a danger association, I was like, well, this is great because I know how to work with this because this is how I recovered from chronic.

I'm just going to use the same tools I used to recover from chronic migraine.

And the first, and for me, the really like the pivotal one of those is how do I respond to my fear?

And this really goes to what we were just talking about because the unconscious way that I, and I would venture to say most people respond to their fear is not in a very kind way.

You know, it's either to ignore the fear, suppress it, override it, try to push through it, to yell at ourselves and say, like, why are you being such a ussy?

You know, like, get over it and just think about like what I learned.

What really like blew my mind and what I learned when I was in recovery from the chronic migraine was that my own emotions behave as if each one of them is an actual full fledged human being.

So if my fear emotion is coming up, it's going to behave just like a person, its own person that's afraid.

So what would happen if a friend of mine came and like knocked on my door urgently and said, I'm really, really afraid.

And then if I said, get the hell out of here, you're so lame, why are you bugging me?

Like, ugh, can't you just get over it?

Or if I just ignored her, that way of interacting with her fear, it's actually going to inflame the fear.

And so now she's going to go either into full on shutdown or she's going to have a tantrum and, and the situation is going to become much more difficult to work with.

Whereas if I treat my own fear the way I would actually treat a friend who's afraid, which is to say, you know what, I'm really busy.

I do have a lot going on right now, but I always have time for you.

I've got five minutes for you.

Come into my room, let's sit on the sofa.

Let me put a hand on your back and tell me what's going on.

I care, I'm curious.

I'd hear them out and then I would respond with words of normalizing what they're feeling, words of empathy and then words of encouragement like, I know this is really hard and I also really believe in you.

So I have learned that I need to talk to my own fear that same way If I have any hopes of bringing the fear down so that I can move forward to do the brave thing.

And it's not my knee jerk reaction.

So I, like, I need practices to pull me into that way of responding.

Yeah, I hear a lot of pause.

Like, my therapist says, it's the power of the pause, like an actual pause, not the.

I call it nothing to keep, which is like, I thought about it.

I'm next.

Like, like, like I naturally just like, yeah, I thought about it and now we're moving.

No, no, think about it.

Like, I have had to give myself to your point.

Like, I have to block off.

I have to say, no, give yourself two minutes, five minutes, sit with this.

Like, I have to give it a time because my pause, my nervous system thinks she's pausing and she just keeps going.

Right?

She's never actually paused.

She may have acknowledged it, yeah, that's fear.

But she will push way past it and, and not actually sit with it.

And I think what you're sharing with you, and I love that illustration of, like, you would tell your friend to come in, sit down, and like, honor her, and listen to her, and then physically touch her.

And those are things literally we need to do in the spaces of what I'm hearing you say when it comes to visibility in your business.

And visibility isn't just showing up, right?

It's not just showing up on, on video.

It could be showing up for a sales call, could be showing up for a podcast interview.

It could be showing up for yourself.

You know, just allowing yourself to say, I want something.

Yeah.

And you know, what you just shared, like, to me, it makes so clear that most of us, myself included, and like, I always have to bring myself back into the work because where my, like, reflex wants to go is to treat the fear cognitively.

You know, wants to be a lawyer.

Like, this isn't scary, to, like, convince myself out of it.

Like, okay, acknowledged it, let's go.

But that's not how I would soothe fear in a friend and a puppy.

Because when it's someone else, we sort of instinctively understand.

You're not talking to the cognitive mind.

You're not trying to convince them out of the fear.

You're communicating with their nervous system.

And that's through pace, through resonance, through, like, kind expression in your eyes.

It's through feeling.

Part of what you're saying.

The thing I'm thinking about is a lot of the women I talk to are eldest daughters and, or live with chronic illness.

And we know how to fix things.

We know how to, like, do it.

And it is, in a way, we are pausing cognitively to think about how to solve these problems.

We're probably often in our head figuring out all of the things, but we are not acknowledging the feelings that come behind why you are having to do the thing.

So, for example, myself included, I'm really good at solving problems.

I'm really good at sitting in something and seeing, like, all the variables, but I'm not.

It's really difficult for me at times to identify the feeling that I'm experiencing while I'm solving these problems, while I'm, like, anticipating all of these things.

And so as a business owner, one of the things I've had to learn is that I can always solve a problem.

I know this is a mindset I can solve.

I can figure out a solution to a problem.

That's my training.

I can do it.

What I have to leave space for and actively do is how do I feel in the problem and solving the problem.

So I have to, like, literally sit with my emotions and sit with, like, I feel fear, I feel sadness.

Like, I have to first start cognitively, even to get into my emotional feelings.

And to me, that has been a really huge tool for me to kind of do the pausing and to physically self soothe self, you know, like, all the things you need to do to kind of, like, honor physically how your body is experiencing something.

And that is one of the hardest things I'm working on in my life in general, with relationships, with people, with everything.

And it is a powerful thing, because what I have found, Anna, is that that changes what I cognitively thought of a plan.

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

Completely changes it.

I'm like, oh, snap.

A thousand percent.

That was not.

I mean, yeah, it could have worked that way, but if I had not slowed down, I came with a better solution.

Now that I'm in my body versus in my head, they're working together.

It's more like they're working together better than just my head going 30,000 miles down the street.

So I'm going off on this tangent because in business, we are taught that we're taught so many bad things, but we're taught that success loves speed.

We are taught that, like, you know, jump off the plane or build the plane.

While you're, like, building the plane, some weird framing around things around speed.

Just go, just go, just do, just do.

And it's all that framing that we have made into visibility and marketing and sales, and reality is we actually need to do less of that and more of that.

Integrative work in order to create the long term sustainable support.

And I don't know if you've seen that with your clients or in your own business and experience of being like, I thought I was doing this thing and then I had it and then it's like, well, I was not connected actually to the thing.

And so it.

No matter.

No, you know, how, how has that looked for you?

Oh my God.

I'm.

I'm just really, I'm like,.

I can't.

Wait to like just, I'm just resonating with everything.

I mean, first of all, it's so funny that you mentioned the eldest daughter thing because I was co hosting a little dinner for a few other women coaches just last week and it came out that every single person at the table was either an eldest daughter or an only child, which I am so ergo, still eldest daughter.

So that was just fascinating.

But another thing that came to my mind is I was recently having a conversation with a woman who is a financial planner who helps women do, you know, financial planning?

And when we started the conversation, I thought, okay, you know, I don't really know anything about her world.

She doesn't know much about my world.

But by the end of the conversation we both agreed.

We were like, this is fascinating.

We pretty much do the same thing.

It's just with different subject matter.

There is like 20 or maybe even it's 10% of our work that is educating clients on a topic or helping them better understand a topic.

But it's 80 to 90% of it is allowing the client really co regulating with the client, allowing the client to borrow our own feeling of safety around the topic of visibility.

In your case the topic of business, in her case the topic of personal finance.

You know, she's so familiar with personal finance that that topic does not activate her.

I'm so familiar with how the nervous system works and how that integrates with visibility that that topic does not activate me.

Same thing for you with the work that you do, right.

So when the client comes in, whatever it is that they're working through, they have so much fear around it and our nervous system to really just, you know, talk about things simplistically.

You could say your nervous system has two settings, the fear brain and the safety brain.

In the fear brain, we see everything as black and white.

Everything is an emergency, everything is urgent.

We have tunnel vision.

We can't think expansively.

Right.

When our nervous system is relatively settled, we get creative ideas, we see possibility, we make like connections that we wouldn't have made before.

And we discovered that even if whatever we're the project we're embarking on is new for us, we have this wealth of lifetime experience and just inherent brilliance that will just figure out solutions when our nervous system is in a resourced place.

So true.

Anna, what ways have you seen that show up for you, like in your work?

You know, we were talking about.

I don't know if it was in this conversation or the other one, but basically as experts in the space of what we do, and I put air quotes if anybody's not watching or see a video or I have air quotes around expert.

And the reason why I have expert air quotes is because I feel like we have put experts in a box either in our head or societally around the idea that somehow an expert expert is not still learning and still discovering, but we're like in a fixed state.

It's kind of like the same thing I have with people who are like, I need to increase my capacity.

I'm like, isn't that something that comes and goes?

Like, like I'm always just like, that's.

A thing that grows and ebbs and flows.

I don't know.

Okay, so expert, same thing for you.

And what areas have you found for yourself being the expert in your field or in your space that you have?

One struggled with the idea of being an expert and then two showed up in that space of being like, man, I'm an expert, but everyone in here doesn't know that.

I literally shut off my computer yesterday because I didn't want to be seen.

Like, you know, that kind of vibe.

Yeah.

Okay.

The first thing that comes to my mind is like, podcasting, funny enough, or just like speaking on video or being recorded.

When I was a bit earlier in my practice, again, like, if you have a business, you gotta market yourself somehow.

Right?

And I was like on Instagram making posts and I was hearing everyone say, you have to make videos, but I was literally terrified.

I would turn the camera on and I would just go into a full on fugue state.

And what I thought was happening was I thought that I didn't have enough expertise to speak on a topic, right?

Like, maybe I have to like, learn more and get smarter first before I can go on video.

But what I discovered is, you know, being on video was new to me.

It felt exposing, whether consciously or unconsciously.

And I was having a nervous system response to it.

And so I have made some really amazing friendships with colleagues through Instagram.

And one of those people that I connected with, like, in the DMs, we just, like, were, like, connecting and getting along, and she was making a lot of video content.

And she reached out to me and she said, would you want to do an Instagram live together?

And I was like, hell, no.

But also, hell yes.

Like, hell no.

Because I was terrified of video.

But I thought, well, this is something I want to become comfortable with, and I am comfortable with her.

So if we get on video together, I might be scared of the video, but I'm comfortable with her.

So my comfort with her can help me acclimate to this thing that I'm not yet comfortable with.

And my theory proved itself completely right, because when I got on this live with her, there was a moment when I thought, oh, I'm on video.

People can see me.

And, you know, that kind of deer in headlights fugue state started to rise.

But then I looked into her eyes and I really like her.

And I saw the warmth and the friendliness, and I listened to her tone of voice.

And my nervous system started to calm down.

And before I knew it, we had had, like a half hour conversation.

I had fricking plenty to say.

You know, it was just about helping my nervous system feel safe enough to get into that flow.

Oh, I love that example so much.

There's a couple things in there that you shared.

Basically, it's like you can do the uncomfortable thing, but you can do it in a safe way.

And I don't think we hear that enough.

I think we hear a lot of people saying, oh, you.

You know, to grow, you have to just be.

You gotta push yourself and just throw yourself in it.

And it sounds like you found a way to do both.

You can bring your blankie with you, and in fact, you should, because it'll help your nervous system anchor itself.

I love that.

So I have a question for you, which is really interesting.

Around this idea around personal growth, when it comes to visibility or growing your business.

I have a theory.

I'm not a scientific kind of person.

Like, I like to read books and like to hear, you know, positive psychology is one of my favorite things.

But one of the things that I believe that when it comes to business and it comes to anything honestly, is that we spend a lot of time focusing on our weaknesses.

And to your point, your experience you just shared, which was, you know, I thought I needed more expertise and that's why I couldn't show up on video, is that really I believe that we all have these beautiful gifts and all these beautiful strengths, and we spend so much time beating ourselves up over the things that we're not good at, that we try to work on those things more.

We try to work on.

I can't be on the video or I can't talk to the.

And I can't do this.

And I have to.

Like, for me, it's writing.

I'm not.

Not a great writer.

It's not my thing.

I think it's too slow.

Like, there's a lot of thoughts I have about writing, right.

And I could spin my thoughts around how I need to become a better writer in every sense of the term, But I've chosen to have that be an angle where I'm working on.

But it's not my focus.

My focus actually is more working on where are my strengths and how do I leverage those strengths to better my weaknesses.

And so I think it helps my nervous system at least to be like, well, I'm not a great writer, but I can use my voice to voice, text everything I need.

And then I can use my.

My brain to help me write this better, to make it clearer and make it work.

And I think so many of us are spending so much time on our weaknesses because we're trying to grow, but I think the other thing works even better when you focus on your strengths and bring.

Because your strengths doesn't mean that they're perfect, right?

Like.

Like, you might have a talent, but it doesn't mean it's, like, perfect.

You have to grow in that talent.

And I think we spend so much time in the other space, and I think as entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time in the other space.

How have you seen that to be like, is this theory that I'm theorying and making sense?

Yeah.

Well, I agree with you.

I agree.

I don't think there's anyone who is the be all and end all opinion, and I certainly am not that.

But I happen to feel similarly.

And I'll just, like, use an analogy from my personal life that speaks, I think, exactly what you're talking about.

So I'm a stepmom.

My stepdaughter is 16 now, amazingly, but when I first met her, she was five.

So it's been a journey.

And in the beginning, I put so much pressure on myself thinking that, like, in order to be, like, good in this role of a stepmom, I had to do things that are not.

Don't come naturally to me and are not comfortable to me.

You know, things like, I don't know, let's say, like, doing a lot of cooking.

That's just like.

It's not my comfort zone.

And years later, like, not too long ago, actually, I was having a conversation with my husband, and he's like, kind of out of the blue, he was like, thank you for being such an impactful presence in Leah's life.

And I was like, am I really?

What do you mean?

And he's just.

Basically, I started crying.

Because what I got to internalize a little bit more in that conversation is that just being myself, being the person who is not her mom and not her dad, who's not putting pressure on her about anything because I'm not in that position or role.

But it's also just my personality.

It's like, I'm just curious with her.

I think I'm just kind of like a calm presence around her, honestly, when I'm interacting with her.

And it's like, oh, that's something that I don't have to think about or work on it, just who I am.

And it turns out that it makes a huge difference in her life because there are a lot of different stresses going on, and just having that person who's kind of not the taskmaster makes a huge difference.

Whereas I was like, oh, you know, I'm terrible because I'm not cooking more and I should, like, push myself to do it.

And then that's stressing me out.

And then I'm not actually the calm presence that makes such an impact because I'm, like, freaking out about my imposter syndrome about cooking, you know?

Yeah.

A really great other analogy is that to your point, like, what I think you're sharing is while you were worrying about being this type of mother stepmom, they're appreciating the type of stepmom they have, like, who you are.

And it's like, I'm bringing something unique to the table, like the type of energy that I bring and the way that I interact with her.

I don't even think of it as a thing because it's just me, but it is a thing, and it is.

Yeah, it makes an impact.

And I see this in my business, in the work that I do.

Earlier on, I would arrive to each client session thinking, like, I need to have, like, a strategy mapped out beforehand.

But, you know, my own personal genius is very intuitive, and it's really in being present in the session with the client and, like, tuning into where they are in that moment.

You know, I'm sure there are other types of coaches, service providers, et cetera, who, like, their work is about, like, I'm going to teach you a system.

And that can be incredibly valuable.

But that doesn't mean that that's what I should be doing, because it kind of gets in the way of me providing the thing that.

That is my sweet spot.

Yeah.

How does that tie into your visibility?

How does that tie into being able to show up in your authentic, unmasked self in this space?

What I'm thinking of is, so I work with clients one on one, but I also have a group, and it's called Seen and Safe.

Oh, I love that.

Very pleased with that.

With that title.

And.

And it's a group where folks are working on visibility in lots and lots of different ways.

Like, it could be, like, they want to get on camera and they're working specifically on that, but it really could be just, like, I want to show up in my business and even in my personal life in a more unmasked way because I'm feeling, like, hemmed in by, let's say, you know, I've been Dr.

So and so for my career, but, like, I want to be my full self in my business and working with my clients.

And when I first started the group similarly, I thought, like, well, I need to teach a curriculum, you know, in order to make the group worthwhile for people.

But I didn't really want to do that.

I was like, I just want to show up.

I want to lead folks in a journaling practice that's gonna be for me as well as for them, because that's how I help myself, like, switch my nervous system gears from the fight flight state into that, like, resourced, creative, open, like, generative state.

And so I'm just going to bring folks along with me on that journey, and then we're going to explore what's coming up in the moment.

And, you know, it's a little like my own version of hot seating, but just, like, have it be very organic.

And in the early days of it, there was fear that came up.

It's like, is me just, like, showing up and being present?

Is that going to be enough without having, like, a predetermined curriculum?

But I'm so glad that I worked through the fear of that, because now I have this group that is, like, the opposite of exhausting for me.

It's like, it's a landing place for me as well as for the members.

And it's like I feel rejuvenated and regenerated by it because I'm operating in my sweet spot.

I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to show up today.

We'll see what happens.

Kind of like this podcast conversation.

Right.

Like, we did not have a script.

I'm sure we've totally gone absolutely track of wherever we thought we were gonna go.

And to me, that's energizing versus, like, trying to fit myself into a box of what, how I think I should be showing up.

Yeah.

And you know what's beautiful about that in it is that that's going to attract the people that it's meant to attract.

Right.

Like, I think when we start trying to do what you think other people think you should do, you end up attracting the wrong people.

Like you.

You.

Right.

First of all, you're stealing people from someone else because that's someone else's vibe.

But.

But more to the point and more seriously, it winds up creating tension because you're having a mask, they're sensing something is off.

It's not the right match.

Yeah.

And I think the more, even more so this is becoming a lot of the things that are coming up in the conversation around authentic showing up AI business are things that I've been preaching since, like, 2007, like, my whole life.

And so I find it fascinating because so many of these topics we're talking about that AI can't duplicate.

For example, can't duplicate your story.

I mean, technically, they can duplicate everything, but it's still not you.

It cannot have your lived experiences, your lived nuance, your lived nervous system, your lived discernment.

It's just not possible for it to be you.

And as humans continue to human, we're going to need humans.

Like, that's just not never going to go away.

Whether that's in business and your health, your relationship, that's always going to be a need.

And so the more we are in tune with ourselves, in tune with what I think you're sharing, like your.

Your nervous system.

If you're not aware of what your nervous system does and why it does what it does, maybe that's something to work on, because that is a business asset, whether you want to believe it or not.

Right.

Like, it is an aspect of your business that is incorporated.

And I know you've heard that business is business, and business, you know, keep your business, your personal life out of your business.

But if you are the person running your business, you need to be in control.

And I don't even say control.

You just need to be in rhythm with what's going on with your nervous system in flow.

Right.

Because, I mean, I think especially the folks who listen to this podcast know if we're not in flow.

We crash, we burn out.

And then it's like we may have been doing what we were doing because it's like the fastest way to get to point A, to point B, or it's what we were told we should do.

But if you wind up crashing into a wall, doing that, now you're like set back.

It's actually the slowest route to get to where you're going.

The slowest.

That part.

That part we're so afraid of slowing down.

But the slowing down is the thing that helps you actually do the thing that you're trying to do.

And too many of us are trying to play the speed game, and you're just making your journey more complicated.

And it takes, I think, a lot of trial and error and faith to really, like, believe that.

Because I used to have a therapist who would say to me, slow is fast.

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

It took me a long time to really understand, and I had to understand it in an embodied way by, you know, by trying to like push through and then bumping into the wall and then.

Oh, now I understand why fast is actually the slowest.

Yeah, so true.

Oh, my gosh, that is so true.

I think about this.

My husband is in engineering, so he does cybersecurity and things like that.

And the issues that they have are all because of this.

Go fast and not slow it down.

Like every huge corporation that has any issues technically most often, or have scaled too fast is because.

And it costs them millions and billions of dollars is because they are operating on this.

Fast is better.

And I find it interesting when you talk to some women founders who are not running with that idea that they might be moving slower according to the, like the rest of the world's idea, which is very masculine in that aspect of things, but they're the ones making more profit over time because they are doing it the right way from the get go.

Right.

They're taking the time that is required to set a solid foundation.

That's what I do with my clients, is help them reclaim their foundation around.

Okay, what does this look like for you?

So that it can withstand pressure.

Because it's gonna come.

And what I hear you saying too, in your visibility is like, you have to create a nervous system that can alert you and you can work in tangent with it and flow with it so that whatever it is that you're trying to do or you want to do or want to be able to do, you're not causing more harm than good Here.

You Know, for the long term.

Right.

Because the nervous system, from what I've learned, it won't let you go to where you want to go unless you acknowledge it and work with it.

It will not let you do it.

And take care of it and treat it right.

It's like you're in a partnership with your nervous system.

And if you are a.

An abusive partner to your nervous system, it will not cooperate with you.

That right there.

Oh, that gave me gooseies, you saying that.

And, you know, I think we learned this the hard way.

We do.

Oh, Anna, that just hit me so hard.

Oh, my gosh.

That just hit me so hard.

I don't think you know what it is.

We don't always bring certain ways of describing something doesn't.

You don't hit it like you don't feel it.

But I know the feeling because I've had friends, unfortunately, and people I know in my life who have been in literal those type of relationships, and I'm just looking at them like, oh, my God, you know, I want to help you so much, but we can be doing that to our own nervous system.

My gosh.

It just makes me feel.

I think it's more common than not.

I think it's more the norm than having a loving, supportive, in dialogue relationship with our nervous system.

Because why?

No one ever taught us that.

Yeah.

No.

The world is completely the opposite of that.

The conditioning we receive is the complete.

Okay.

All right.

So one question I like to ask at the end of these episodes is, what is one thing that you thought was true when you started your business that you no longer believe is true?

Ooh.

Oh, Okay.

I didn't realize I thought was true, but I absolutely thought that business is linear, which is really hilarious, you know, that it's like you.

It goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up in a straight line.

Which is really hilarious because where I started my business was in chronic pain therapy and coaching.

And one of the most salient things that I would teach is that healing is not linear.

And the longer I've been in business, the more I realize that, like, journeys are not linear.

Healing is a journey.

Business is a journey, and they are definitely not linear.

Oh, so true.

Yeah.

Again, I think it's the marketing of what businesses.

That when we became a business owner, the marketing messages have been kind of like the idea that it is linear.

Like, you're supposed to have consistent months and they should look exactly the same.

I don't know how many times I hear that in a Sales call.

I'm like, you guys do know that that's not a real thing.

Even Target has down months, right?

I have seen that in, like, chronic pain world, too.

Like, so many clients would come to me, and.

And I knew exactly what they were feeling because I had been there, too.

Feeling shame about the fact that their journey was not linear because they had, you know, heard a podcast where you started a point A, and you get to point B, and in two days, and it's exponential and, you know, and that's just not real.

I want to say maybe that's true for some people, but it's certainly not the norm, and it's not my experience.

Yeah.

And I. I have found, just talking to business owners, too, that even if they have had, they're looking at the sum of the parts versus all of the parts when they're talking about that, right?

Yeah, they're zooming way, way out.

They're way, way out, like, consistently.

But there were definitely months where they made no money, or if they made money, it was the same money or they lost money.

Like, there's tons of those things.

There was crying.

Yeah, I guarantee it.

There was crying.

There was crying and throwing things and deciding.

Trying to decide if you want to keep doing this.

Lots of that, I'm sure.

Yes.

There was wanting to throw in the towel multiple times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So true.

Well, how can everyone find you, Anna, if they want to connect with you and, like, learn from you?

Is it really that time?

I just want to keep talking you all day.

I know.

Thank you so much, Nikita.

Folks can find me at my website, annaholtzman.com on Instagram.

Naholtzman, you can write me an email, and please do.

It's Anna Holtzman dot com.

And I have a free workshop called Let Yourself be Seen that is at my website, Be Seen.

And I also have a podcast where you can hear Nikita and I chat and have a whole nother conversation.

Yeah.

And that podcast is called how to Trust Yourself.

Yes.

I love that.

Love it, love it, love it.

Thank you so much for being here.

I appreciate you.

I appreciate you so much.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness.

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