This episode will change how you feel about looking after yourself - with Annalie Howling

0:07Welcome to Motherkind. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition Women Supplements. I am your host Zoe Blaski and this is the show that is going to grab you by the hand and be your guide through the wild ride that is modern motherhood. Every week I bring you world leading experts and thinkers to give us new ideas, new tools, new support, new validation and inspiration for our lives as mothers. We spend everything here from work to relationships to mental health to healing and parenting and I'm very happy that you are here. I am so glad that you're here today because after listening to this episode you are going to feel so much more confident.

0:46You are going to hear some incredible wisdom and truths that will finally give you permission to go for your joy, to start asking for what you need to and to start finally believing in yourself. You know there are certain episodes on this podcast that I just know are landing at the right time with the right message. And this is one of those episodes. So get ready. My guest today is Annalie Howling. Annalie is a globally sought after performance coach, trauma expert, and now author of Unapologetic, Unshackle Your Shame and Reclaim Your Power, a book which I inhaled in one night and I absolutely loved.

1:27What is going to change your life from this conversation is how conditioned we are as women, especially mothers, to keep small, to keep giving to others and to ignore ourselves, to feel full of shame and guilt and how none of that, none of it serves us or our children. Anna-Lea and I talk about the exact moment she knew she had to leave her marriage, the pain she had from wearing a mask of perfection and overgiving and how to know if you're doing the same thing and why caring for yourself is vital for your children. We also talk about how the good girl conditioning runs deep and how it keeps us apologetic and small and resentful.

2:10We talk about what boundaries really are and how learning to say no is the number one skill you need in motherhood. This episode is incredible. I hope you love it. Here it is.

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3:39Just go to wildnutrition.com forward slash motherkind to get started. That's wildnutrition.com forward slash motherkind so you can feel a difference yourselves. Start 2026, rooted in wellness. T's and C's apply. Oh, Annalie, I'm so excited to chat. We've connected for years on Instagram and you sent me your book. I absolutely loved it. And I cannot wait to dive into how we can become more unapologetic mothers, which I think is so, so, so vital. I'm so curious, what drives you to do this work? What's your why? Oh, firstly, thank you for having me. And I'm really glad that we get to do this today as well.

4:22What's my why? I've been in so much pain. I've been in so much pain and didn't feel that there were maybe tools or avenues or I didn't know what to do. And I have figured it out. But if I could do anything to shortcut that for someone, especially as a mother, single mother, because let's be honest, my kids suffered when I was in that place, you know. And so anything that I can do to help people so that they're better able to care for those that they love, especially going through really dark stuff. That's my why. If I can even take off 5%, 10 % of something for somebody and give them some help or the keys to their healing, that's definitely my why.

5:07Tell us about that dark time and how do you think Amber, your daughter, suffered? I mean, I think I'm probably being a bit hard on myself there, you know, classic parent, as in I did obviously the best I could with what I had at the time. But I just also know that I was going through so much and that naturally made parts of me unavailable because what I'm trying to do in those moments is survive and just get through it rather than being, you know, kind of able, energetically even sometimes, just flawed, just burnt out. I mean, the worst time that she would have known was around the breakdown in my marriage.

5:38I did have a very violent childhood as well, but she thankfully wouldn't have. She does know that my parents, we don't see my parents because they weren't very kind. She knows those sorts of things, but I keep it age appropriate. it was a breakdown of my marriage and I had chronic anxiety like crippling crippling anxiety because I was out of control basically I was feeling completely out of control you know you've you're married you're in this situation a lot of people think it's perfect everything seems perfect on the outside I was really good at pretending to be perfect I was so good at pretending to be perfect I'm just going to trigger warning this I'm going to talk about self-harm So I was so good at pretending to be perfect that I then entered into a, it's a form of OCD, but habitual skin picking on my face.

6:24I know you've read about this in the book. I go into it in the book where that was my way of releasing stress. I now understand it from my system. It was me clawing off this mask of perfection that I was putting on. And all of that was a response to this searing anxiety. so she would have seen me doing the stuff I'd say there's a difference between being a human doing and a human being I wasn't really very present at that time I would say because I was just fighting all of these battles like these internal battles and other things you know and again trying to make everything great and we'll go on a nice day out and we'll do this and we'll pack this bag and have I got all of these things I had quite bad anxiety after she was born as well actually just thinking about that, that was postnatal anxiety for a while, particularly around travel and things like that.

7:11And I think that then around the divorce, when she was about three and a half, kind of exacerbated some of those just really big leaps. My anxiety was kind of quite irrational in the catastrophizing. So I don't know if you've suffered with it to that degree, but it was like you'd have a thought and then where there should be a chain of like, then that might happen, then that might happen. My brain would leap to sort of really catastrophic outcomes. And so obviously had to kind of do quite a lot of work to repair that. Yeah. And I think so many people will relate to a certain degree. And I think we all do it to a certain degree of that putting on a mask.

7:47What was it? Because you have transformed from that place to the woman sat in front of me now, but what was the first chink? Were you clawing your face in the shower thinking, I have to change this? Or was it something that your ex-husband said? Or was it something that Amber said? What was that first chink, that one degree that set you on the different path? Or was it many things? So the thing I remember the most, and again, you would have seen it in the book because I have waived my own right to anonymity because my therapist has put her files in the book of her first impression of me at that time.

8:21I wanted to do that because in case that resonated with anyone about anything they felt ashamed of, I didn't want them to not get help because they were afraid of being judged. So I put my therapist's impressions of me at the most vulnerable time. But it was her. She helped me to, this sounds crazy. I didn't know I was doing it to myself. It was such a subconscious behaviour. I would literally go into a bit of a trance-like state, which is also very common for anyone that has any kind of addictive behaviours, OCD. It was a complete numb out, if you like. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't, I don't know, doing other things.

8:52It was just me in the shower. I was absolutely out of my mind because I never felt any pain. And if I was to pick up my hand or my arm in the way that the velocity that I clawed at my face for it to bleed twice a day, it would really hurt. You'd be like, oh, it would really, really sting. I never felt a thing. And my therapist helped. So I thought I had bad skin, basically. I thought I had adult acne. And so then you're putting on acids and you're going for these really evil facials and they're trying to put me back on birth control. And I was like, I don't want that because the hormonal birth control didn't really agree with me.

9:28I didn't enjoy how I felt on that. And obviously all of this was surface symptomatic of what was going on underneath. So really it was being with my therapist, surfacing what was going on, which was being able to honestly say out loud, I think my marriage is over. Because all of that time I was trying perfectly again to find all of these solutions or anything that I might be able to get hold of, a tool, a technique, a book, a course, you name it, to bring back into my marriage to save it. That was my pursuit. And one of my favourite things that I say is, you know, using Carl Jung's words is what you resist persists.

10:04And I think in that space with her, she made me feel safe enough to say the thing out loud that as soon as you do, means there's going to be some changes. And then there's a whole new kind of set of challenges. But for me, I never felt the same anxiety. It was trying to fix something that really was broken and I wasn't quite ready to face it. And then in doing so, she helped me understand about the self-harming. Firstly, in a session, I realised I was doing it to me and I didn't have bad skin. That was complete, as I say, total repression, complete revelation. And then from there, we worked around the fact that I'd never felt it was hard for me to be relaxed.

10:42I was always on and that came from a very violent childhood of being obviously hyper hyperarousal all the time. And then the same kind of sense of this anxiety and things going wrong was trying to be in hyperarousal to control things, you know, just trying to be all over controlling stuff. So that was the kind of two big pieces. And I would say, yeah, the chink came in. I just, you just can't hold things together anymore. I just couldn't pretend any longer. And were you already trained as a coach or therapist at this point yourself? Because I think that is so powerful to people to hear as well.

11:16Yeah, it was. Actually, we can be in these professions and still have these just huge blind spots. And I love it when I hear that personally, because I think it gives me so much compassion for myself. Yeah, well, I'm glad. And yeah, I was. And that's the other reason it's in the book, because I wanted to say, look, you know, I have the privilege of being surrounded by friends that are coaches or therapists, and I'm able to access that help. And still I was suffering and struggling with something that was bigger than me at that time. And, you know, I really do want to lift the lid of shame of anyone feeling they can't control something.

11:50I actually did a reel. It was around this time last year, I remember, because it was warm. I was walking through Battersea Park. I was going for my first facial since what I'd done to myself for years. And it wasn't like a nice one with like candles and dim lighting and like, you know, whale song. It was like the stabby one with the big light on your face. And I knew that Sadaf, who's amazing, who I work with, and she was so generous and shared some stories of herself with things she'd struggled with, was going to have the big light on me to look at effectively the damage I'd done to myself. So I was feeling, although I've healed my insides, which has led to my outsides healing, I was feeling a bit vulnerable about it.

12:23And so, classic me, I decided to do a reel about it just there and then. I was in Battersea Park and I was like, right, I used to do this. It has a name. It's a form of OCD. I am a coach and a therapist. imagine the shame that I was there helping other people but harming myself I just want to tell you that you know this is what was happening for me didn't I came out of there the reel had gone up and the amount of comments I had from other therapists openly I bite my fingers till they bleed I burn my legs in the shower I thought I was crazy I do that too I didn't know there was a name for it I had messages this weekend from people that have disordered eating patterns and they were like, I read what you were talking about in the shower.

13:03It's exactly how I've been feeling. I've been too ashamed to get help. And then that was mainly women that commented on the video kind of publicly, obviously comments can be read. I easily had the same number of DMs from men saying the same thing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's so easy to, you know, that sort of big idea that you're talking about, you know, just not being able to make the invisible stuff going on within us visible. And I think when we're parents and mothers, it makes it so much harder because the weight of any decision that you make, it's not just for us anymore. We know that it's going to impact the people that we love the most in the world, our children.

13:46How did you make peace with that decision and move through it? I would say, thank you for saying that because it's very, very resonant. Yeah. I remember being so triggered by Rightmove. If I looked at Rightmove one more time about like where we live how will it work what will happen you know you're trying to like my god like you just you just try and that's anxiety anxiety for people listening a helpful reframe might be that it's the inability to be in the present moment so you're either raking over the past coulda woulda shoulda or you're catastrophizing and trying to control every potential possible outcome of the future hence me being on right move at one in the morning being like where will i live what will it be like what will we do you know and as it happens i still live in the same house but you know things can change and yeah I really remember that the thing that gave me the peace in the decision was that I had gone on this quest to try and find everything and anything that would come back and save Mary Gabor Marte Esther Perel you name it I did it and the thing that I did that again you would have seen in the book that was the permission I think and also the piece because I realized I just couldn't fit in the container of that marriage anymore it doesn't make my ex-husband wrong we co-parent very well like it just was no one's fault at this point but then it could not continue was I went on a female sexual empowerment course that one of my friends runs yeah I see you being like yes I want to ask you about this okay everyone asks me about this and then this then he's like when are you doing it when are you going to put one on the answer is next year there's going to be three so I went on this female sexual empowerment course It was quite random.

15:19One of my friends, Nikki Armitage Foy, she's amazing. And she had just had her second baby and she's like, I can't run it, babe. Would you mind going along? Kind of as like a friend in the room. Um, you know, and I was like, yeah, cool. And I wasn't really, I didn't really look too much into it. She's a really good friend of mine. I was like, yeah, fine. Lovely. Thanks. That's nice. I'm kind of looking forward to it. Really good timing for me. Keen to try anything and everything right now. I'm in a space. When the packing list came through, like things you had to bring, I was like, oh, hang on a minute.

15:46Okay. What's going on here? that was like, please bring a hand to mirror. I was like, right, I know what that's for. Blindfold, all these, you know, like things that you want to wear as your most sexually empowered self. I was going, right, okay, this is not a sand bath or like a yoga. I hadn't really, like I said, I hadn't looked greatly into the detail. And I went along for this weekend and it was just the most powerful, transformative, connecting, incredible experience I think I'd ever had. And it just, I write in the book, I was reclaimed and ruined in the same moment. And that was how I felt.

16:24I met all of myself, all of those parts of me that I felt I couldn't have, because perhaps in that relationship or perhaps, you know, growing up and good girling and all of these things, you're told that, you know, certain parts of you may be shameful or bad or wrong. And I realised in that room, I was like, this is the, you know, we can call it the goddess, or this is me, this is my whole unapologetic self. And she's quite sensual and, you know, fantastic. And this is a big part of my life force energy. And it needed to be part of my day-to-day life and kind of, you know, be allowed to be part of my day-to-day life.

16:59And as soon as I'd gone through that whole course, I remember sitting there on the last morning and, you know, you do check in in the circle and I am not a big crier, not because I try not to, It's just not really my stress response usually. And I couldn't stop crying because I realised I didn't want to go home. And so that was because I'd felt so at home in this space and this connection, which does happen on retreats. I know you do your courses and beautiful things like that. I do my retreats and the last day I spend transitioning people back to their daily life. Like how are we going to, you know, because everyone starts feeling nervous and anxious about it.

17:33And I remember, again, from first hand how I felt knowing. And the reason I was so upset is that I knew I had to go back and say, this just can't work because I've just learned so much about me or not even learned about me. I met her again. And when I met her, i.e. me again, I couldn't go back. And how long do you think she'd been buried, that essence of you? I mean I would say I think bits of you get chipped away for over life for a long time you know relationships frenemy stuff at school being told to kind of be less or trying to fit in you know trying not to I don't know stand out tall poppy syndrome trying not to stand out too much because then someone might pull you down I would say I would say that part of me had been and also I don't think you're really given permission to express yourself and say actually my sexuality is a really vibrant and big part of my life without people being like, oh, you're weird, or something else, or putting you into kind of a category.

18:31I don't think I'd had the language. I don't think I'd even understood. And one of the universal things on that course was that every woman there, nobody, and I really do mean I came up with these two things. I was like, wow, absolutely no one there knew how to ask for what they wanted. Now, that can be in bed, but that can also be in life. Like, do you know what? I actually just want to have two desserts and a spoonful of each of them. Well, I mustn't do that because I'd look too greedy. Actually, I really want to have a glass of champagne, but I might look like a gold digger, you know, rather than like that bottle of wine.

19:05So I'll just go along with it. I'm giving like examples. I'm giving examples from a book actually, which is called Pussy by Regina Thomas-Helzer, which she talks about that, which is about having, you know, which is about claiming the thing that you want, but we always just don't ask for that because we don't want to be seen as being too much. And I write about this in my book. We have this inherent fear, a bit like Icarus, that we're going to fly too close to the sun somehow if we're too much. But no one ever told us what being too much is. No one ever explained, hey, this is too much, Goldilocks, that's too much.

19:35That's not enough. That sweet spot, just right, perfect. But we have this like invisible push-pull and this repellent between, come on, be a boss, claim your power, do this thing, get out there, live your best life, but don't be too much. Don't take from her. Don't take from them. Don't do that. So I think I probably associated my more sexual side of myself with being too much. And so, yeah, every woman in that room did not know. I mean, a lot of people had never spent the time looking at what we, what our needs were, not feeling empowered enough to actually, you know, really, it's like, I'll make the house perfect, make me perfect, make me look perfect.

20:13Do all the things to make sure that you're okay. And then maybe just maybe if there's three minutes left at the end, I could have something. And then can I even switch off my mind to actually allow myself to receive anything? I'm not just talking about sex. I'm talking about anything like a kindness. I didn't earn an inverted commas. You know, like my house isn't perfect, but I can still enjoy your company or something like that. Or I didn't do all these things today or look a certain way, can I possibly still receive love without me doing all these things for someone else first? Unconditionally and unapologetically being myself and receiving.

20:48So alien. And it was that kind of recognition as well of myself that I didn't know how to ask for what I wanted and needed. And I hadn't been. And also now I knew what it was, that wasn't going to fit in that particular container. And that was okay. And it made no one wrong. And so I am very grateful. And I don't say this to be disparaging towards my husband. It was the right decision for all of us, my daughter included, and it's all very fine now. And I remember I didn't want us to hate one another either. I didn't want it to get to a place where it became very toxic. There were problems, there were issues, there was a lot of distance.

21:27There were so many things under a rug that you couldn't walk across the floor anymore, you know, and I didn't want that to continue and that become bitter so that was kind of the not even permission slip that was an inferno that was there was always the ember burning and then that turned into an inferno and she just couldn't step back out of that fire

21:55I'm so interested what you were saying about you know what I heard was just that particularly as mothers, I think we just give and give and give. And then we take the scraps. And, you know, I live this work every day. I've written a book about it. I still find myself doing it. It's so programmed, isn't it? How have you deprogrammed yourself? And what does it look like for you to be, you know, single mom, you're running a massive business, you've just launched a book. How have you sort of inverted that equation so that you're at the top? What does that look like for you? I mean, I don't always get it right, like you say.

22:27So I don't want to be like, I'm perfect because I'm not. We were chatting off air about the books coming out and how burnt out I was a couple of months ago. And I'm now very much on a bit of a repair mission to kind of get myself back up again. I mean, what that looks like is me saying no. I literally had someone message me who I know and I like, and they were like, can we meet up? And I said, honestly, I know this is going to sound insane, but probably not until September. And I said, I really am pulling right back. I'm not really doing anything social. I'm focusing on Amber right now and some other work things and that's just that's it because I know I'm not quite back to where I need to be so it's real boundaries what would Amber see she would see me um so there's a really nice explanation about the difference between self-care and being selfish because I think a lot of us really feel very selfish for trying to assert our needs because we have these people that we love dearly and you know it's you don't have kids to then moan about you all have to do this because of you it's like I always say to Amber, like being your mum is the best role in my life.

23:25Like you're the biggest joy I've ever had. And it's true, you know, and I don't begrudge her because I've got a door washing or something like that or other things. But I know to do that, I can't do two things at once. So I'm taking her away on holiday at the weekend. There is an out of office going on solid. I am uncontactable. Don't bother. And if you disrespect that as well, it's like, you know, there's a system set up, someone can pick up an email, but please don't. I'm with my daughter and that's it. What doesn't work is when I'm trying to do both at the same time. So when I'm trying to work and look after her, I hate myself saying, just a second, honey, hang on a second, baby, just a minute, honey.

24:01No one's enjoying anything then. I'm not enjoying it. She's not enjoying it. But yeah, the explanation of self-care versus being selfish, which really helped me, was when you are acting in a selfish way, you are putting your needs ahead and they're detrimental mental to someone else. So you're knowingly causing harm effectively to someone else by putting your needs first. If you're focusing on your own self-care, what you're doing is you're nourishing and nurturing yourself as a sense of priority so that you are better able to care for people you love. And you think about like an iPhone battery or something.

24:37If I'm trying to give to her from 2 % because I've gone round bloody, oh yeah, I will meet you for coffee. I will do that. Yeah, let me squeeze that in. Let me say yes to this. Let me do that. Let me do the other. and I haven't, I don't know, I need to exercise for my mind, you know, like to calm my mind down. That is my meditation. An hour in a class of someone else telling me what to do makes me a different person. I try and prioritise that because it just makes me feel good. You know, if I'm not doing those things, she gets absolute ratty, exhausted. You know, there's no joy in me, mummy. Whereas if I can put a few things in that I know fill that tank for me and say, know where I have to.

25:13And that's the muscle that I've built that served me. And I know you say this, and I love how you say this, and you give so much permission to people. That's the difference between self-care and being selfish. And a no is your biggest tool in your kit. And she is the most important thing alongside me, but I'm the adult. I have to take care of her. So it's got, you know, if anything happens, I've got to make sure I'm all right. I can't fall off the cliff because what happens if I'm really sick? It's just me. So I'd really like to give that explanation. And I also went to go and see Gabor Marte speak, who was wonderful, and I know you love his work as well.