REPLAY: A Woman Who Has Her Own Back
Have you ever felt like something in your life, career, or relationships isn’t working, and instead of questioning the system, you immediately assume you must be the problem? That there’s something wrong with you, that you’re not trying hard enough, that if you were just different, everything would fall into place?
This episode of The Modern Phoenix is a wake-up call. Gervase shares a raw and powerful riff from the vault - straight from a live coaching session. She dives into the deep-rooted conditioning that convinces women to gaslight themselves, unpacks how the systems we exist in, like patriarchy, capitalism, and generational conditioning, keep us in a cycle of self-doubt and self-abandonment. Most importantly, she offers a different perspective: what if your emotions, your overwhelm, your desire for change aren’t personal failures, but signals that the ecosystem around you needs to shift? If you’re ready to reframe your inner dialogue, reclaim your discernment, and trust yourself enough to create the ripple effect that leads to real, systemic change, listen in now.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Why so many high-achieving women believe they are the problem (and why that’s a lie)
How to recognize when burnout and dissatisfaction are signals and not personal failings
The power of the shift; trusting your emotions instead of suppressing them
How to have your own back through the inevitable cycles of transformation
What it really means to be a culture-changer in your own ecosystem
Are you ready to stop gaslighting yourself? To stop thinking that you’re ALWAYS the problem, and start accessing your inner wisdom? Be a woman that has her own back. Start with a Soul Shift:
The Soul Shift Intensive was created for the woman who is ready to leave behind the stories society has conditioned her to believe, and instead embrace the calm and clarity that comes with being connected to soul wisdom.
Check it out here: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive
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Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos
Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com
REPLAY: A Woman Who Has Her Own Back
Episode Full Transcript
Welcome back, my loves, to the Modern Phoenix podcast, where I teach you how to know who you are and what you want on the inside so that you can transform your beliefs and thoughts into choices on the outside that actually work for you. In that spirit, I want to welcome you to another replay. This is an older episode from 2023 that I really wanted to pull out of the vault for you, especially since we’ve rebranded with The Modern Phoenix as the brand and the name. I’m so inspired by this brand name, and what you’re going to hear in this replay really aligns with where this brand is putting down roots.
We talk about trusting yourself. We talk about feeling your feelings fully without a story attached. We talk about the difference between victim and martyr and how there is a wide opportunity—a wide range of possibilities—in the middle for you to step into, own, try on, and embody as a Modern Phoenix. I’m excited for you to hear this episode today. If you heard it already, listen again, because I listened to it three times just to make sure this is something I feel proud of and that it’s a strong piece of content to reshare. I heard something new every single time, honestly. I hope it serves you. I hope it offers you an inner transformation that creates outer transformation in your life. It’s called “When a Woman Has Her Own Back,” so you can imagine what we’re going to talk about inside.
Let me know if it resonates with you. Message me on Instagram at @gervasekolmos and let me know other topics you want me to cover—things coming up in your modern life that I can help you transform your relationship to, your beliefs about, and your choices around. The themes I talk about in this podcast are some of the ones that are so common and so powerful to shift within my private coaching containers and my alumni coaching containers. I hope you take something from it. I love you so much. Without further ado, here we go.
When I began my healing journey—when I walked myself into a therapist’s office at the age of 18—there were a couple of repetitive, common themes I noticed and worked through over time that I now see often when I start to go deep with a one-on-one client. One theme: if something isn’t working, there’s something wrong with me. “My relationship with this member of my family isn’t working. It’s my fault. I must not be doing something right. I’ve let someone down. I am a disappointment. I’m not trying hard enough.” That’s one way it presented for me.
Fast forward: I’m in my corporate job, crying all the time, miserable after having a baby and going back to work, and I’m thinking, there must be something wrong with me, because all the women around me I see have children, go back to work, and seem to be fine. This is so interesting to me because it is the first sign of self-abandonment in a modern woman. It is deeply programmed into our psyches as women that if we have emotions—if we feel depressed, sad, angry, anxious, panicked—there’s something wrong with us, instead of there’s something wrong with the situation. There’s something wrong with the system we’re a part of. There’s something wrong with the company we work for, the marriage we feel trapped in, the family of origin we came from.
This is a trap—obviously, it’s a trap. What happens when you feel so brainwashed to believe that anytime you feel pain, discomfort, or emotion there’s something wrong with you is that you’re endlessly feeling guilty about who you are. You’re endlessly feeling guilty about the way you are and believing if you were made some other way, this wouldn’t be happening. There would be no problems. Your marriage would work. You could work at that company. You could have the perfect family. All these things would just right themselves if you were inherently different.
I’m hoping, if you’re listening to this, that you can hear how toxic this is and that you can have deep compassion if you resonate. It is not your fault that you believe this because we are part of a culture that has taught this. A lot of us were raised by parents who believed this for themselves, and grandparents who taught it to our parents. It’s important not just to see clearly the root, but also the ecosystem—the system—where something comes from.
I was working with a new client this month. She was expressing not just frustrations about her work environment, but deep dissatisfaction. She’s in constant pain and suffering because her work situation is so intense and stressful. She’s not seen and recognized, not compensated appropriately. She is expected to do too much—to overgive, overdeliver, overwork—and to do so without feedback, without complaint, without rest or pauses, without discernment about whether things need to change or pivot, what’s working and what’s not. She kept expressing, “I’m not happy; I feel like this is killing me,” but then she’d say, “maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe if I just work a little harder, a little faster. Maybe if I were a better manager.”
The women I have the privilege of working with these last few years are boss-ass bitches who’ve been brainwashed to believe the problem in their company is not the workload, the job description, the good-old-boy culture, the internalized patriarchy, or the paycheck. No—the problem is the woman, her bandwidth, her emotion, her stress. After she shared how her job is killing her and how maybe it’s her fault—that if she could be different, she could do the job better and not experience what she’s experiencing—we started talking about the culture. We started talking about this subconscious belief that if it’s not working, there’s something wrong with me. Where does that come from? Why does a woman have that feeling? Why are all these high-achieving professionals having the same conversation with me?
Could it be that it’s not that there’s something wrong with them, but there’s something wrong with the culture? I am a wealth of knowledge about the culture, and I got curious about why this was happening. I have read and mentored under and learned that it is the culture. It’s called patriarchy. It’s called capitalism. It succeeds when everyone falls into line under this one premise: keep going, don’t ask questions, the man at the top is always right, there is no room here for your feedback, your emotions make you weak and are a problem, and if you could just be “normal,” if you could just get on board with the agenda, this would all go smoothly.
It’s important for women—particularly career women—to really hear this: if something isn’t working in your workplace, very likely this is a symptom that there’s something wrong with your workplace. Very likely you, like most women, have the capacity to feel as deeply as the ocean. This is part of your feminine design that allows you to be almost like the canary in the coal mine—to be the barometer for what is best for the ecosystem and what is not. There is a reason why working women are suffering and struggling and feeling “there’s something wrong with me”: because the culture is broken. The culture has brainwashed women to distrust their internal barometer, to distrust their feelings of overwhelm and their discernment when they feel tired or like maybe it’s time for a change, a break, a pivot. “No, no, that means you’re not a real professional. You’re not as ambitious as you said you were. You’re not getting that job because there’s something wrong with you. You’re not enjoying that job because there’s something wrong with you.”
I’m not here to take down corporate culture. I would love to infuse a healthier ecosystem into corporate cultures—some of them. Some are doing great; some are not. What I care about is that women start to hear a message other than “if it’s not working, there’s something wrong with me.” I want women to get curious about why they think that, where they heard that, who it serves, and what would change in their lives if they were part of a circle, ecosystem, or mentorship where they were reprogrammed to believe: if something’s not working, there’s something wrong with the ecosystem, and I am sensing it because I have the power to change it.
If I feel guilty about the way I am, that is the result of my programming—that is the result of my brainwashing. The truth is: the way I am is how I was designed. It is not a design flaw. This is not like an iPhone. You are not an iPhone. You are designed exactly with what you need for your earth curriculum. The more you can trust yourself and believe that if something’s not working or if you are in pain, that is your red flag to look at the ecosystem and shift something for the greater good, the more we can create good in the world. The world gets better—and companies and workplaces get better—when smart, career-minded women feel empowered to trust their gut, trust their instincts, and know that emotion is not weakness. Emotion is a symptom of a flaw in the system so that they can make the system better for everyone.
If you work in a workplace where one woman is feeling so much angst and so much dissatisfaction, I guarantee you there are a hundred more feeling just like her. I have clients—especially in the last few years—who shared this with me. One woman would start doing this work, get into different circles, work on her conditioning and subconscious and her trust in herself—practicing having her own back—and suddenly she’d make different choices in the workplace. Suddenly, behind the scenes, women would come up to her and say, “What are you doing differently? What company are you moving to? How did you have the bravery to do that thing?” We are a metric for what’s going well in the ecosystem. The more we learn and feel safe to trust ourselves and feel our feelings—without making ourselves the problem, bad, or wrong, but actually the guides and leaders that all systems need, the balance to the masculine of feminine—the more we can make cultures, ecosystems, families, workplaces, schools, politics, and government better for everyone.
You go first, but there are so many behind you just waiting for someone to show them the way, give them permission, remind them of who they are, and tell them the truth. That resonance—when I’m working with somebody, especially at the beginning, and I tell her the truth, “If it’s not working, there’s not something wrong with you; there’s something wrong with the system”—she always says, “Oh, I know that. That feels true. I feel that resonance in my soul.” So much of my conversation with women is returning them to that center, that soul wisdom, that knowing we’re born with that tells us which way to go and how to be true leaders for the collective, for our families, for our companies, for everything.
The more women have this universal truth reflected back, the more they feel, “Yes. That feels true. I don’t feel crazy. I knew I wasn’t crazy, but I thought I was.” You’re not crazy. You are deeply wise and knowing in a system that does not acknowledge and respect your wisdom and knowing. Your only choice isn’t to go into a boardroom and say, “Hey, my intuition told me…”—hello, this is everyday life. However, you can start to practice having your own back. What does it look like to have your own back when you feel discernment, emotion, pain, struggle? It means not gaslighting yourself.
For this client, for example: “I’m feeling total burnout and like I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown.” Okay. “I need to express how I’m feeling. I need to give myself permission to feel my feelings fully without the story attached and know there’s nothing wrong with this feeling. This is just a feeling. It will pass.” As quickly as you can boil water and then simmer water—that’s what it’s like to be a woman. You are the ocean. If that’s the case, you can feel those feelings differently without shame and a story attached. When you feel your feelings without shame and a story attached, they work themselves through you and then they’re done. In that space, you have the quiet intuitive whisper of creative solutions and possibilities—ways you could pivot your life, conversations you could have differently in the workplace. You’re now solving problems from an empowered place, not from the place the patriarchy thinks they want women—which is not working—but from a place of a woman who has her own back.
You can see, “I’m not better than anyone here; however, this isn’t working for me.” I had another client who shared a family living situation with a relative that wasn’t working. It was frustrating. It was a lot. It became too much. That’s okay. Because of our work, she had her own back as she went through the cycle of feeling those feelings—frustration, anger, resentment—without attaching a story or making herself bad or wrong. Suddenly she could talk it out calmly. She was not a victim, nor a martyr. We don’t want to be victims, and we don’t want to be martyrs. The “It’s All Me” mantra and mindset puts us squarely in the center of our circumstances in a place that says, “I’ve got my own back. Nothing about me is bad or wrong. Here’s what I see as my next step. Here’s what I see as our family’s next step.” For her family, she came up with a creative solution she’d never thought of, and honored what her inner knowing was showing her: it’s time for this family living situation to change. That gets to be okay, too.
Solving problems without shame and gaslighting ourselves feels different. It creates a lot less inner drama, turmoil, and friction. Any friction that was there is released with the emotion—with the permission to feel the feelings and talk about them—without feeling like, “These will make me weak. I’m going to disappoint someone. I’m a bad person for having this feeling about this family living situation.” A woman who has her own back has space for nuance, intentionality, and the ability to both love her family—maybe be a caretaker and love the person in her house—and also discern, “Something here is not working. My resentment is showing me something.” Sometimes resentment is different—there are many ways this can show up—but in this scenario, resentment is showing something. “Let me feel it, express it to an appropriate person, and see what comes next without feeling small for how I’m feeling and then playing small in the creative solutions I can come up with.”
I can’t even imagine what this could do for workplaces if women felt safe—and of course this is an issue of safety. We also need to talk about privilege. I’m having this conversation as a white woman who works from home for herself. My risk now is very low. It used to be much higher when I worked at a company. I made hard choices to get here, and I have so much privilege. I want to invite those of you who have privilege in companies, in families of origin, in government, in politics, on the school board—whatever units you’re part of—to use it to pave the way so those who have less can live in an ecosystem that’s safer.
To do that, the women with privilege must feel safe. They must feel safe to feel their feelings fully without a story attached. They must feel safe in their own bodies to feel emotions. Why do you think women—even wealthy, white women of privilege—don’t feel safe to feel their feelings? That’s a problem with the ecosystem. I’m not saying “smash the patriarchy” (though that would be cool too). I’m saying: work on your own ecosystem within yourself first. “It’s all me.” I go first with my own lie I’ve been believing—the one that’s been in the water I’m drinking—which is, “If it’s not working, there’s something wrong with me. If I feel emotional, there’s something wrong with me. Who I am is the problem.”
If you are a white woman with privilege and that’s how you’re feeling, and you don’t feel safe to slowly use your discernment, power, and leadership to come up with creative solutions from a stance of “I’ve got my own back, and here’s what I see, here’s what I’m feeling, here’s what I’m discerning—this isn’t working; here are some ideas,” then the first step is to work on safety within your own experience. Of course you’re not going to march into a boardroom and propose new creative ideas for your company’s ecosystem if you don’t first feel safe within your own experience—if you haven’t worked through your own inner world. That’s why I do this work: to return you to empowerment, safety, knowing, alignment, and calm discernment. “It’s all me. I’m the ocean. I’m feeling all the things, and I know what to do with this. I know how to feel safe in this ocean that is my discernment,” which sometimes is resentment, sometimes anger, sometimes grief, sometimes suffering and struggle. “I can work through this because I can feel safe within my own body and experience. I can hold myself through this. I can walk through this fire for me first.” Then you go out into the world and make it better for everyone below you and above you. This doesn’t discriminate.
It isn’t “men at the top are bad and women are the…”—honestly, it doesn’t matter. We can clearly see patriarchy is a thing. We can clearly see capitalism tells us never to stop, rest, pause, or reassess. We can clearly see both men and women are suffering in their own ways. If I can reach you—man or woman—and you can hear the message to feel safe within the “It’s All Me” framework, safe in your own experience, safe to be all that you are without judgment and a story attached, and know that if you do have judgment and shame and a story attached, it’s not your fault—it’s because the culture has brainwashed you for a long time, for generations—then you can be one ripple, one drop in the ocean that creates more ripples. That can create slow, organic change for all systems—change that is sustainable and safe for the collective—solutions we can’t see from a limited perspective of fear and “I better just step in line.”
I can see how that way of being got us to where we are in some ways, and I can see how now it limits us—the separation, the judgment, the hierarchy. My invitation to you is to notice: where are you feeling guilty about who you are, how you are, the emotions you have, the stress responses you have, your trauma, what’s happening in your body? What would it be like if you had your own back through these cycles of tiny deaths and rebirths I’m always talking about? Because if you see something in me, that’s all it is. When I am in the dark night of the soul, I’ve got my own back. I’m no different than you. It feels really hard. It hurts a lot. But I trust myself that this is who I’m here to be. I trust that I’m okay, I’m going to be okay. I don’t need to go out there and change. I need to have my own back and believe, on the deepest level, that I am exactly who I need to be to graduate from this earth assignment.
If something isn’t working, there’s not something wrong with me. If I’m feeling emotion, there’s not something wrong with me. As a feminine being, I’m here to feel it all and then alchemize it—work through it. Another rebirth cycle—boom. On the other side: peace, clarity, deciding, making choices from a place of “I’ve got my own back. I already know that I’m a good person, good daughter, good CEO, good manager”—speaking for you—and “here’s what I see. Here are some ideas. Here are some shifts and pivots I see for this culture, community, ecosystem.” That is powerful. Do not underestimate your power in being a culture changer. But it starts with you.
If this resonated with you and you feel this is your moment to take this work deeper and explore the transformation and healing available to you in your life, your first step is to book a Soul Shift Intensive. The link is in the show notes. That’s a 90-minute one-on-one with me, where we will go deep into whatever area of life you feel most stuck and shift your experience of that theme. We’ll shift it in your mind, your body, and your spirit. You will leave feeling different—lighter, clearer—with a deep sense of inner trust and inner knowing. After that session, if you want to continue this work together, you’ll be invited into a three-, six-, or twelve-month package with me for one-on-one. I have three one-on-one spaces available right now, and the cost of your intensive will be applied toward one of those packages.
Additionally, we’ll be releasing a new group coaching program very soon, and my one-on-one clients get access to everything I have ever made totally free—hypnosis tracks, paid courses, alumni group coaching circles, PDFs, resources—literally everything. You get it for free. So it’s a good time if you’ve been thinking about jumping in. If that feels like a step too far, get on my email list. You’ll get exclusive access and early-bird pricing to new offerings and group coaching programs I’m releasing. Those are lower-priced offerings, and I always share them first with my email list. I also send out Phoenix Diary emails every other week that are straight from my heart—raw, vulnerable, diary-like entries from the life of a fellow Modern Phoenix, which is me. I’d love to have you join us on my email list.
I have a free masterclass you’ll get right away if you sign up—it’ll be emailed to you. It’s the Season of Pleasure Masterclass, which will talk you through some embodiment concepts for attuning to pleasure, joy, and peace instead of chaos, overwhelm, dysregulation, and overdoing—something all of us could use, especially this season. I hope that served you. Please share this with another woman you want to free from the cage of her conditioned mind and see rise like the Phoenix she is. I love you so much. Thank you for spending time here with me every two weeks, and I’ll see you soon.