Ever feel like no matter what you do, you end up back in the same place?

Same doubts. Same fears. Same patterns that leave you questioning yourself.

In this episode, we get into the real reason it happens and why it’s not about willpower or working harder.

We’ll talk about survival strategies that once protected you but are now keeping you stuck in cycles you’re ready to break.

If you’re tired of feeling like you're living on repeat with patterns that aren't helping you in your life or your relationships anymore, this is where something different can finally start for you.

Come and join us in the worlds premier hub for therapeutic content and personal growth for LGBTQ+ women

www.braverwomen.com

Connect with me on YouTube

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Connect with me on Instagram

Connect with me on Facebook

Most lesbian and queer women aren’t walking around saying, “I feel shame.”
They’re saying, “I don’t feel good enough.”
“I overthink everything.”
“I’m scared to be fully myself - even now.”

In this powerful and personal episode, I take you deep into the hidden layers of internalised shame - what I call the master emotion. It’s not loud. It doesn’t announce itself. But it silently shapes everything from your self talk to your style choices, your anxiety, and even your attachment patterns.

I break down how shame gets encoded in your nervous system as a child, how it fuses with your queer identity, and how it’s been running the show without you realising it. This episode includes my own story - growing up queer in a strict religious home, the emotional fragmentation that followed, and what I’ve learned through years of therapeutic work with LGBTQ+ women around the world.

We’ll unpack:

• Why anxiety is often shame in disguise

• The difference between guilt and shame (and how most of us get it wrong)

• How people-pleasing, perfectionism, and fear of rejection are survival strategies

• The concept of double internalisation and how your nervous system stacks risk

• How to begin softening shame’s grip and reconnect with your real self

If you’ve ever struggled with not feeling enough, hiding parts of yourself, or feeling emotionally off even after coming out, this might be the episode that finally gives you the language and clarity you’ve been searching for.

It’s not a quick fix.
But it might just be the beginning of something real for you

🔗 Join us in the Braver Women Facebook group if you’re ready to learn to start showing up as the real you, not the you you've been thinking you need to be.

www.braverwomen.com

"Inauthenticity is like choosing to breathe through a straw, rather than breathing freely..."

Those words stopped me in my tracks and they came from a hugely inspirational client I’ve had the honour of working with.

In this episode, I’m joined by a courageous, thoughtful, and deeply honest gay woman from North America who’s completed her Braver Women journey with me. And today, she’s here to share her story with you.

Amanda opens up about how she broke free from the grip of 20 years of stress, anxiety, and people pleasing... how she unpicked the storylines that once kept her boxed in by other people’s expectations... and how she stopped chasing her worth through overworking, perfectionism, and trying to ‘earn’ acceptance.

Like so many LGBTQ+ women, Amanda was existing not living. But that’s not where her story ends.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the past, responding to scripts you never wrote... if you’ve ever silenced yourself just to feel safe... if you’ve ever wondered whether life could feel different - it can. And Amanda is living proof of that.

These stories aren’t just inspiring. They’re necessary. They remind us that transformation is possible and that there is life beyond the coping strategies and scripts we’ve long outgrown.

So join me in this episode as I talk with Amanda and celebrate her phenomenal journey.

Her bravery is a powerful reminder of what’s possible and my hope is that by listening, you feel ready to take some braver steps of your own.

If you want to break your patterns and learn to be braver, then you know where to find me:

https://braverwomen.com/

If you want to be part of the worlds premier hub for therapeutic content and personal growth for LGBTQ+ women - Then join me here

Connect with me:

YouTube

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

Love the podcast? Then I'd love to hear about it! Would you be kind enough to rate and leave a review? It helps other LGBTQ+ women around the world, find it too!

Thanks for being here.

Sending much love,

Leanne ;-)

If you want to feel deeply moved to change your life, to experience what it feels like to live a life of genuine authenticity and emotional freedom - from the inside out - Then you're not going to want to miss a moment of this story.
Today I’m going to introduce you to a very courageous client of mine who is using some of the insights from breakthroughs she’s experienced since working with me privately.

In this episode, Gemma is sharing the deeply personal story of how she changed her relationship with herself from the inside out. She’ll take you through the monumental shifts she made since working with me - breaking free from old survival patterns, facing fear head on, and untangling the years ofconditioning that told her she wasn’t enough.

She’s no longer paralysed by self-doubt. She trusts herself. She’s living with confidence, making bold decisions, and no longer sacrificing her own needs to make other people comfortable. And she’s sharing this with you because she knows what it’s like to feel trapped in your own head, questioning if change is even possible.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in self-sabotaging cycles as a lesbian or queer woman, if you’ve struggled with anxiety, if you’ve ever feared being truly seen - this conversation is for you. Because here’s the truth: You don’t just wake up one day and become confident. You have to unlearn everything that told you, you weren’t enough in the first place.

And when you're ready to break your patterns and become braver, then you know where to find me.
www.braverwomen.com

If you want to be part of the worlds premier hub for therapeutic content and personal growth for LGBTQ+ Women - Then join me here

Connect with me:

LinkedIn YouTube

Facebook

Amazon

TikTok

Instagram

If you love the podcast - Then I'd love to hear about it! Would you be kind enough to rate it and leave a review? It helps other women around the world find it too!

Thanks for being here.

Sending much love,

Leanne :)

In this episode, Leanne talks about her own experience with heartache anxiety. She provides a popular and relatable talk that gained so much gratitude in the Braver Women community for her raw honesty and relatability when she first shared it five years ago. She's sharing it outside of her community for the first time - Breaking the mould on what traditional therapists do!

If you're a lesbian or queer woman who's going through hell right now following on from a breakup - this is going to help you.

Leanne provides some actionable insights that helped her move past the hurdle of hurt to finally recover - With one golden nugget concept that has brought relief to so many women who listened to this when she first published it.

If you're not a part of the incredible Braver Women Facebook Community - then you're missing out on the deeper conversations, group only videos, peer support and resources that Leanne has put together to help you stop cycling around in insecure anxious patterns - that you won't find anywhere else.

Like this episode? Share it - You'll be supporting other lesbian and queer women to access something that could make a difference to their life right now.

Link to come and join us here

www.braverwomen.com

Follow Leanne on YouTube

Follow Leanne on LinkedIn

Follow Leanne on Facebook

Book a Consultation with Leanne

For lesbians and queer women, relationships aren’t just about dating—they’re about identity, belonging, and the search for real connection in a world that hasn’t always made space for us. But if you find yourself caught in cycles of attachment anxiety, fear of abandonment, or stuck in emotional dependency, it’s not about what’s wrong with you—it’s about what’s missing inside, I'm going to reveal to you what's going on deep underneath the emotional pain you're experiencing, but more importantly, what you can begin to do about it from a self-help perspective. In this episode, I’ll challenge how you think about abandonment, love, and self-trust to move you from feeling helpless and lost to being more in control. We’re going beyond labels and theories and getting into what’s happening beneath the surface. If you’ve ever found yourself gripping onto relationships, fearing rejection, or losing yourself in love, this conversation is one you won’t want to miss.

🎧 Hit play now and let’s dive in.

🌎 The Braver Women Website: www.braverwomen.com

📖 The Braver Women Journal for LGBTQ+ Women: Available on Amazon

📅 Book a Consultation with Me:➡️ Schedule your consultation here

💬 The world’s premier hub for therapeutic content and personal growth for lesbians and queer women."➡️ Join Here

📲 Let’s Stay Connected:

Instagram

TikTok

YouTube

LinkedIn

📩 DM me your biggest takeaway from this episode—I love hearing what lands with you!

💜 Love the show? Please LIKE and leave a review. Share this episode with someone who needs it. The more we talk about these struggles, the more you move out of the shadows and into taking up your space - without shame or hiding.

🚀 Ready to start your braver journey?

Visit www.braverwomen.com to learn more.

From Braver Women to Britain's Got Talent

What does it take to step onto the Britain’s Got Talent stage and perform in front of millions? Confidence. But not just any confidence—the kind built from the inside out.

In this exclusive episode of The Braver Women Show, I sit down with Al Start, a much loved gay singer-songwriter, composer, musician and published author, who used the Braver Women Journal for LGBTQ+ women to silence her limiting beliefs, step onto the Apollo Theatre stage in London, and perform with Ravi’s Dream Team Choir on Britain's Got Talent—winning the Golden Buzzer from Alesha Dixon! 🌟🎶

With Simon Cowell watching, Al took that stage, surrounded by powerful voices, but fully stepping into her own. What you didn’t see on TV was the deep self-work that made it possible. In this episode, we talk about:

🔹 How the Braver Women Journal helped her silence limiting beliefs and take the stage
🔹 The emotional road to self-belief and stepping up braver as a gay woman
🔹 What it felt like to perform on a televised stage, hear the crowd roar, and watch that golden confetti fall

If fear has ever whispered, You’re not good enough—this episode is for you. Al’s journey is a powerful reminder that bravery isn’t about being fearless but showing up despite the fear.

🎧 Tune in now and be inspired to take your own bold leap!

📌 Mentioned in this episode:

• Britain’s Got Talent, Ravi’s Dream Team Choir, the Apollo Theatre, Simon Cowell, and the BGT Golden Buzzer moment
• How journaling can help LGBTQ+ women overcome fear and self-doubt
• The power of visibility, self-belief, being yourself and showing up as yourself fully in the LGBTQ+ community

💡 Love this episode? Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Braver Women Show!

www.braverwomen.com

Contact Al Start at Go Kid Music

Al Start on Apple Music

Grab your copy of the Braver Women Journal

Want to connect with Leanne and Braver Women - Click here

Leanne C Jones | YouTube

Connect with me on LinkedIn

In this episode, I’m breaking down:

🔹 Why self-help can’t fully reach the deeper layers of healing for LGBTQ+ women or minority groups
🔹 The difference between coping strategies and actual transformation
🔹 10 key signs to help you recognise that it’s time to move beyond self-help and into real, lasting change. The unique patterns that are common, from growing up in a heteronormative world
🔹 How therapy can help you process the unprocessed—and why that really matters

This is the follow-up to Episode 5, where we talked about tools for self-change. But today, we’re taking it a step further—getting real about when self-help falls short and how to know when it’s time to reach out for professional support.

If you’ve ever thought, I get it, but I still don’t know how to actually change, this episode is for you.

🎧 Tune in now to learn when self-help isn’t enough—and what to do next.

www.braverwomen.com

Click here to request and book an Initial Consultation

🔗 Links & Resources:
📌 Join the Braver Women Facebook Group for deeper discussions and support.

📌 If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who needs to hear it!

📌 Follow me on LinkedIn

📌 Follow me on Instagram

📌 ⁠Follow me on YouTube