We Can Do Hard Things

Your Nervous System Needs This

December 23, 2025

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  • Refusing to dissociate and actively claiming agency—whether in family dynamics or societal systems—is crucial to stop self-abandonment. 
  • The intersection of life changes like menopause, empty nesting, and societal upheaval creates a 'landslide' moment that necessitates grieving, working, and celebrating daily to maintain vitality. 
  • Capitalism has conditioned us to equate 'enoughness' and rest with death or end-of-life, making the pursuit of these inherent birthrights feel terrifying and requiring an immediate reordering of life's metrics. 
  • Attempting to use another person to regulate one's own difficult feelings inevitably leads to negative outcomes and subsequent cleanup. 
  • The most effective, though difficult, path to resolution involves sitting with emotional activation, breathing through it until it passes, and then engaging in conversation from a neutral place. 
  • In the context of the live event for "We Can Do Hard Things," the speaker emphasized the importance of community and reaching out to others because many people are currently feeling scared and lonely. 

Segments

Holiday Break Announcement
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(00:00:00)
  • Key Takeaway: The ‘We Can Do Hard Things’ podcast will take a two-week hiatus, returning on the first Tuesday of the new year, January 6th.
  • Summary: The hosts announced a two-week break for the holiday season. They wished the Pod Squad love for peaceful, cozy, and slow days. The final episode of the year aired before the break, with a return scheduled for January 6th.
Fury, Agency, and Dissociation
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(00:02:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Dissociation, often a survival mechanism in childhood when agency is absent, manifests as a way to leave a situation while staying physically present.
  • Summary: Fury can be channeled into truth or creativity by paying attention to it rather than suppressing it. When triggered by family patterns, adults revert to childhood coping mechanisms, like dissociation, because they feel the same lack of agency as a child. The adult’s key difference is possessing agency, which must be actively claimed by refusing to dissociate and choosing actions like speaking up or leaving a toxic dynamic.
Midlife, Menopause, and Family Shifts
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(00:09:31)
  • Key Takeaway: The convergence of menopause, empty nesting, and current political realities creates a ’landslide’ moment where established identities and relationships feel destabilized.
  • Summary: The speaker described the intersection of menopause, fascism, and empty nesting as an upsetting ‘moral injury’ due to a lack of societal support for women in midlife. The emotional impact of a child leaving for college felt like a landslide because the speaker’s identity was heavily built around motherhood, leading to a crisis of what to scaffold life decisions around next. This upheaval is viewed as potentially spiritually important, forcing an inability to tolerate previously endured situations.
Brokenheartedness as Proof of Life
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(00:27:48)
  • Key Takeaway: Brokenheartedness, sadness, and anger are badges of honor that prove an inner vision of something truer exists, contrasting with the deadening effect of societal numbness.
  • Summary: Community is essential for survival, structured around the holy trinity of grieving, working (for collective good), and dancing (to remember life is worth living). The distance between one’s inner vision and the outer world creates the ache of sadness, making those who are openly heartbroken more trustworthy than those who appear unaffected. Showing up messy and brokenhearted is necessary because only those deeply affected can resist the societal slide toward forgetting life’s preciousness.
Capitalism, Enoughness, and Pursuit
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(00:38:56)
  • Key Takeaway: The trick of late-stage capitalism is selling back essential birthrights like rest, food, and community, forcing people to earn what should be freely available.
  • Summary: The speaker believes people are weary because 90% of their obligations serve someone else, not their real needs. The concept of ’enoughness’ sounds like death because capitalism conditions people to believe rest and having enough only occur at the end of life. True agency involves stopping this internal pursuit now, recognizing that everything needed might already be present in the current moment.
Passing Down Anxiety and Judgment
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(00:52:45)
  • Key Takeaway: Guilt over passing down anxiety and depression can be mitigated by identifying and explicitly communicating one’s own learned defense mechanisms, like judgment, to children.
  • Summary: Anxiety and depression may be linked to being awake and paying attention, not just a curse being passed down. The speaker realized their tendency toward judgment when discussing people they feared was a defense mechanism mirroring their disordered relationship with food. By showing their child that judgment is the mother’s ‘bullshit’ rooted in fear, the child gains the ability to trust their own senses and set boundaries without needing the parent to preemptively cut people off.
Leaving Without a Plan
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(01:01:53)
  • Key Takeaway: The desire for freedom or a hunch that life should be more beautiful is a sufficient reason to leave a situation, even without an external eviction notice or a concrete next step.
  • Summary: Numbing behaviors, even small daily ones, risk dulling the very energy needed to propel one toward a freer, truer path. The speaker learned that their body automatically brought up justifications (like infidelity or charity work) to excuse leaving a marriage or to balance perceived success. The desire to leave is enough of a reason to act on discontent.
Self-Regulation vs. External Reliance
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(01:09:14)
  • Key Takeaway: Using other people, substances, or external means to fix or regulate internal feelings is an ineffective strategy that leads to negative consequences.
  • Summary: Past attempts to fix feelings by involving others resulted in a complete mess, including necessary apology tours. Being a grown-up involves learning to regulate oneself internally without relying on external ‘cat scratching things.’ Attempts to use other humans, food, booze, or drugs for regulation ultimately fail and result in awful cleanup.
The Power of Waiting and Breathing
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(01:10:06)
  • Key Takeaway: The simplest yet hardest practice for conflict resolution is sitting with emotional activation, breathing through it until it passes, and then communicating from a neutral emotional state.
  • Summary: When activation occurs, the recommended practice is to sit with the feeling and breathe until the activation subsides. Waiting allows one to reach a neutral place, free from rage or bitterness toward the other person. Conversations initiated from this neutral state have proven to be significantly more effective.
Gratitude and Moderator Praise
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(01:10:42)
  • Key Takeaway: The moderator’s skill in creating a safe environment was acknowledged as highly valuable during the live recording of “We Can Do Hard Things.”
  • Summary: The speaker expressed deep gratitude for the moderator’s generosity and skill in creating a safe space. The moderator was complimented for being a beautiful human who is very good at their role.
Closing Thoughts on Connection
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(01:11:09)
  • Key Takeaway: Despite the focus on self-regulation, genuine community and friendship remain essential, especially when people are feeling scared and lonely.
  • Summary: The speaker concluded by affirming the need for community and friends, noting that the current group felt special. A direct encouragement was given to ask for others’ contact information due to widespread feelings of fear and loneliness. The speaker personally expressed needing the experience shared during this episode of “We Can Do Hard Things.”
Podcast Production Credits
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(01:11:39)
  • Key Takeaway: “We Can Do Hard Things” is an independent production by Treat Media, which creates art for humans wanting to remain human.
  • Summary: The podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” is an independent production brought to listeners by Treat Media. Treat Media’s mission is to make art specifically for humans who desire to stay human. Listeners can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok using the respective handles provided.