Queen, let's talk about the elephant in the room: that exhausting dance you're doing in your relationship where you're solving his problems before he even names them, managing his emotions while yours get pushed aside, and wondering why love feels like a second job. If you're tired of performing for love instead of receiving it, this episode is your wake-up call.

It's time to stop auditioning for partnership and start demanding the real thing. Because what society calls "devotion" is actually just patriarchy in a hoodie—and your nervous system is paying the price.

What You'll Learn

• Discover how "overfunctioning" elevates cortisol and creates adrenal fatigue in your body

• Recognize performance partnership vs. true partnership—and why one is just patriarchy in disguise

• Transform your understanding of safety: why regulating his emotions will never regulate yours

• Notice how overfunctioning prevents your partner from developing emotional accountability

• Shift from emotional babysitting to creating space for genuine co-regulation

Why It Matters

High-achieving Black women are conditioned to carry everyone's emotional weight—and it's literally breaking down our bodies. This pattern of self-abandonment doesn't just show up in romantic relationships; it's how we operate with bosses, children, and friends. Breaking free from performance partnership is about reclaiming your worth, your energy, and your right to be fully supported instead of always being the one doing the supporting.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

Queen, let's talk about the mindfuck breakup that's been keeping you stuck—the one with Mr. "Perfect on Paper" who left your soul starved despite checking every box society told you mattered. You know the type: well-dressed, well-traveled, well-paid, and wildly unavailable emotionally. This episode is your permission slip to finally name what you've been feeling and stop gaslighting yourself into believing something was wrong with you.

It's time to get the closure you didn't get and claim the healing you absolutely deserve. Because when perfection masks a project, high-achieving Black women like you end up performing emotional triage instead of experiencing real partnership—and that ends today.

What You'll Learn

• Discover why your nervous system was screaming "something's off" even when everyone else thought you hit the jackpot.

• Reclaim your reality by learning to identify "high presentation, low intimacy" men who look like prizes but function like emotional projects

• Transform the cognitive dissonance that keeps you ruminating by naming the real problem: you weren't dating a high-value man, you were managing an undercover emotional fixer-upper.

• Shift from self-blame to self-empowerment.

• Notice how societal programming taught you to override your instincts and perform "low maintenance" just to keep the peace.

• Repair what got damaged in the process: your trust in yourself, your joy, your hope, and your ability to love without shrinking.

This isn't just about one relationship—it's about breaking the cycle of self-abandonment that keeps high-achieving Black women trapped in situations that look good on paper but leave us emotionally starved. When you've been conditioned to prove your worthiness of love, your nervous system starts mistaking anxiety for attraction.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

Queen, let's talk about the confusion that nobody prepared you for: when your high-value man checks every box society told you mattered, but your nervous system is screaming that something ain't right. You're not crazy, and you're not asking for too much—you're just dealing with an emotional project disguised in designer suits and six-figure success.

In this episode, I'm breaking down why status doesn't equal safety and how to stop carrying the invisible emotional load that's draining your peace. It's time to trust your instincts and reclaim your power.

What You'll Learn

• Discover the five clear signs that your successful man is actually an emotional project in disguise
• Shift your understanding of what "high value" really means beyond bank accounts and status symbols
• Notice how cognitive dissonance shows up when someone looks like a catch but feels like chaos
• Reclaim your self-trust by understanding that asking for your needs wasn't "too much"—it was necessary
• Transform your approach to relationships by recognizing emotional availability as the true flex

Why It Matters

This conversation addresses what so many high-achieving black women experience but rarely discuss—the psychological confusion that leaves you questioning everything about yourself. We've been conditioned to endure instead of express, especially when society celebrates our "good man." Through mindset coaching and understanding neurobiology, I'm here to empower you to stop diminishing yourself and break free from self-abandonment patterns. Your peace isn't negotiable.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

Hey, it’s Brig! In this episode, I’m diving into de-centering men without dismissing them. This isn’t about being anti-men but becoming "pro-you." I unpack the stress women carry when our worth is tied to relationships with men, and how we can reclaim sovereignty.

What You'll Learn:

• Historical Conditioning: How laws and culture, like credit restrictions until 1974, mandated centering men.
• Everyday Conditioning: How childhood, church, media, and dating advice push us to prioritize men.
• Reasons to De-Center: I share five powerful reasons to de-center men: your worth is inherent, not tied to a man; centering men causes health-damaging stress, especially for Black women; prioritizing men isn’t true connection if it erases you; de-centering lets men be whole, fostering healing; and it means choosing love from truth, not panic.

Remember that de-centering isn’t about rejecting love but reclaiming your power to choose it freely. Let’s build a life where love is a choice, not a chain, and step into true sovereignty together.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

In this powerful episode, I sit down with a special guest, CJ, who recently completed the UNKAGED™ six-month coaching program. CJ shares her transformative journey from feeling unsafe and overwhelmed in her high-powered career to reclaiming her sovereignty and creating space for her passions.

What You'll Learn:

• How feeling "unsafe" in professional spaces is a common experience for Black women that drains our capacity
• Why the "strong Black woman" trope and self-sacrifice mindset limits our potential
• The power of validating your own thoughts and feelings with "this makes sense" instead of questioning yourself
• How to create more capacity by reducing stress and emotional labor
• The difference between culturally-rooted coaching and traditional coaching approaches
• Why recovery is essential for high-achieving Black women

I’m so grateful to CJ for sharing her story and insights with us. Her journey is a powerful reminder that we don’t have to settle for survival mode—we can choose recovery, reclaim our capacity, and live life on our own terms.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

Today, I'm talking about a pattern that's silently robbing high-achieving Black women of money, joy, and energy: self-abandonment.

Self-abandonment happens when you leave yourself emotionally, mentally, or physically to secure someone else's comfort, approval, or validation. It's when you side with others over yourself.

We do this because somewhere along the line, we learned being fully ourselves wasn't safe. For Black women, this is compounded by generations of being told our bodies, voices, and desires needed to be managed to avoid backlash.

1. You override your "no" - Agreeing to things that make you dread your calendar
2. You need a "good reason" to rest - Otherwise, you feel guilty
3. You shrink your joy - Speaking less, dimming your shine, or even stopping yourself from laughing
4. You defer your decisions - Letting others decide for you, even on things that deeply impact you
5. You gaslight yourself - Downplaying your needs or telling yourself you're overreacting

Studies show:

• The APA found that suppressing authentic self-expression is linked to higher cortisol and inflammation levels
• Harvard Business Review reports Black women face the steepest emotional tax in professional settings, leading to earlier burnout
• Chronic self-abandonment is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress-related illness

For high earners, this shows up as:

• Emotional: Loss of self-trust, chronic resentment, burnout
• Physical: Sleep disruption, weight fluctuations, immune issues, hypertension
• Relationship: Surface-level connections, resentment in partnerships

Ask yourself: "What would I choose if I didn't need anyone's approval?"

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Join the Next Breakthrough Master Class here
• Register for the Next Melanin Hour here
• Book a Breakthrough Call here
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

In this episode, I’m getting real about internalized wrongness — that quiet, exhausting belief that your identity is a defect to fix instead of something to celebrate. I’ve lived this, and I know how sneaky it is. From code-switching until you don’t recognize your own voice, to chasing every receipt and title just to feel “enough,” it’s a cycle that drains your energy, creativity, and self-trust.

We’ll talk about how this shows up in our daily lives, why overachieving can be a mask for internalized wrongness, and the exact process I use to help Black women reset their nervous systems so authenticity feels safe again. I’ll share a client story, practical steps you can start today, and the one truth that changes everything: you were never the problem — you are the blueprint.

• How to recognize the signs of internalized wrongness

• Why over-preparing and over-performing never bring self-trust

• The “safety scripts” that keep you editing yourself to fit in

• Small, low-risk experiments to prove to your body it’s safe to be you

• How to start stacking evidence for your worth and identity

If you’ve been shrinking, editing, or collecting receipts just to feel worthy, it’s time to reset.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Join the Next Breakthrough Master Class here
• Register for the Next Melanin Hour here
• Book a Breakthrough Call here
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

keywords: internalized wrongness, self-trust for Black women, authenticity and nervous system, identity and self-worth, overcoming self-doubt, black women empowerment, authenticity coaching, nervous system reset, abandoning yourself for approval, self-safety practices, stop code switching, how to be your authentic self, allostatic load and stress, signs of identity suppression, Black women leadership mindset, building self-trust, cultural and historical stress, women’s empowerment podcast, emotional safety and authenticity, breaking free from people-pleasing

Why I Had to Name This

I created this episode because I’ve seen too many high-achieving Black and Brown women—myself included—blame ourselves for the very thoughts that helped us survive. We’ve been told to “think better,” “stay positive,” or “change our mindset,” without anyone asking where those thoughts came from or what they were protecting us from. That’s not healing. That’s cognitive violence—and we need to name it to reclaim our power.

What This Episode is Really About

In this episode, I introduce the term “cognitive violence”—a pattern I’ve witnessed in coaching spaces where mindset work is used to shame rather than support. I break down how thought-shaming can happen subtly, especially in coaching rooted in privileged perspectives that ignore systemic oppression and generational trauma.

We explore:

• Why mindset “reframing” often skips over critical context for Black and Brown women.
• How survival-based thoughts are not mindset blocks—they’re protection mechanisms.
• What it means when your biology operates on rules written by oppression (what I call colonized biology).
• Real-life examples of cognitive violence in action, and how to stop committing it against yourself.
• The difference between changing your thoughts and feeling safe enough to believe them.
• The importance of decoding your survival scripts before trying to rewrite them.

This conversation is a call to stop labeling our trauma responses as flaws—and start seeing them as wisdom. 🔥

Your Call to Action

Pattern break time → Ask yourself or a trusted friend:

1. What’s a thought I’ve been shaming myself for having?
2. When did I first learn it, and who taught me?
3. What was that thought trying to protect me from?

Then write it down. Speak it aloud. Witness it.

And if you’re ready to go deeper—take the free Stress Survival Style Quiz to start decoding your own survival patterns.

Take Action

Take my free quiz to discover how your nervous system and survival patterns may be blocking your clarity:

👉🏾 brigjohnson.com/stress-quiz

RESOURCES

• Join my Newsletter, Unlearn and Unleash
• Join the Next Breakthrough Master Class here
• Register for the Next Melanin Hour here
• Book a Breakthrough Call here
• Share Your Takeaways With Me at brig@brigjohnson.com
• Stress Quiz

KEYWORDS: mindset coaching, trauma-informed coaching, Black women healing, cognitive violence, mindset work, colonized biology, nervous system regulation, emotional safety, survival thoughts, generational trauma, uncoached coaching, thought shaming, inner command center, stress survival style, self-sabotage, coaching for Black women