CONNECT with Sheila Botelho Podcast

How One Mentor’s Words Helped Me Stop Overgiving and Start Expanding | EP 499

• Sheila Botelho

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🔗 Mentioned on this Episode: Show Notes 👈

What happens when your favorite trauma expert ends up casually saying hi to you through a client? In this heartfelt solo episode, I share a full-circle moment that took me by surprise—and reminded me how interconnected our healing journeys truly are.


You’ll hear how an author mentor’s work changed the way I parent, communicate in my marriage, coach my clients, and care for myself. We’ll explore what overfunctioning really means, why softening is not weakness, and how healing can be the most strategic move you make in your business.


This is an episode about remembering who you are underneath the performance—and why your ability to slow down, feel, and receive may just be your greatest business advantage.

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Sheila:

I used to believe my ability to hold a lot was a strength, until I discovered how that belief was quietly burning me out. In today's episode, I'm sharing the exact perspective shift that's helped me show up more powerfully in my parenting, my marriage and my business, without doing more. We'll talk about emotional regulation, over-functioning and a lesson I learned from one of my favorite authors and teachers that has influenced how I live and lead. If you're in a season of transition, drop in with me. Hi, welcome to the Connect with Sheila Botelho podcast. I'm committed to helping you reconnect to your purpose, elevate your well-being and build your version of a happy, successful life. Elevate your wellbeing and build your version of a happy, successful life. On today's solo chat, I want to share some behind the scenes insights and real stories from my journey the beautiful, messy and the meaningful parts that really have been shaping the work that I do and the life that I live. And I want to start today with a story about a moment that felt like the emotional equivalent of receiving a signed poster from your favorite pop star. It wasn't from Beyonce, it wasn't from Oprah, but it was from someone who has had a massive impact on how I live, love and lead.

Sheila:

Now, years ago, when my boys were in middle school, I found myself looking at different types of parenting books and things to really have a deeper connection with my loves and to make sure that I was in line with some new ways of handling relationships and making sure that my choices in parenting were going to positively impact my kids. There comes a time in your life especially if you've been in the personal development space for many years where you do take a look back and say, okay, how much am I doing on autopilot here and what do I need to really shift and what's happening in the world around me? Because we want to do the best we can, and so books were one of the ways that I really tapped into that, and I found the author, gabor Mate. If you don't know him, he's a New York Times bestselling author, a world-renowned expert on trauma, addiction, stress and childhood development, and someone whose work has cracked me open in a way that only truth-tellers can. He speaks to the raw, unfiltered parts of being human the patterns we carry, the pain that we bury and the ways we try to make sense of it all. And at that time in my life I was doing what so many of us do, trying to do it all, be it all as a mother, a wife, a human, a daughter, and yet I could feel how some of the ways I was showing up were being driven more by who I had learned to be rather than who I really really was. So reading Gabor's work gave me language for what I was feeling and so much beautiful permission to shift it. So this has been great. It really has impacted how I've parented my kids and how my husband and I even talk about our decisions as parents. And not only that, it's impacted the way I approach my relationships, the way I approach my clients.

Sheila:

And so fast forward to a few months ago. I was on a call with one of my clients and he casually mentioned that he had been studying with Gabor in the UK and I believe Gabor had also come to where he was in Eastern Europe, so he wasn't just attending a talk. I think he was part of a program at the time, so working through his own unique approach to therapy. I kind of chuckled and of course I was like wow, that is so amazing that you're working with him and I said something off the cuff like well, tell him. I said hi, you know, as if we're old friends, right, and we had a chuckle over it. And then, several days later, this unexpected email pops into my inbox and it's a photo of my client with Gabor in the UK I think they were at Oxford or something and they're both smiling, and underneath the photo there was a note that simply said Gabor says hi. And I sat there and smiled like a little kid. That moment was full circle because while it was playful, it was also so meaningful. This man, whose work helped me grow into a more grounded version of myself, was now woven into the lives of the people that I support. It was really beautiful. It was really humbling as well. Just such a reminder of how this work connects all of us. So today I want to share some of the ways Gabor's work has shaped me, not in theory, but in real daily life, in my parenting. I'm going to start there.

Sheila:

So the book I had initially read was called Parents, hold On To your Kids, and he had written that actually with Gordon Neufeld, who is a PhD also, and so their focus on child development. That's really what the focus of this book was, and it helped me reframe what it meant to discipline, not in the traditional sense, but in the way we connect, attune and lead with presence as parents. And it gave me a new lens on why kids act out and how to respond in a way that nurtures the relationship instead of shutting it down. And it changed everything for me because, even though I had a great connection with my boys, they were already just wonderful, incredible souls and strong-minded as well. It helped me stop trying to be perfect as a parent and instead focus on being present, to trust that being a safe, emotionally available anchor for my kids was far more powerful than any set of rigid rules or expectations. It was literally like a deep sigh of relief as I read through the book and I felt myself like highlighting the whole thing so that my husband could read pieces of it, because you know it's a thick book.

Sheila:

I commit to reading and I read a lot, and so I usually will highlight things for people who I care about, like, oh, you got to read this part, and so that leads me to obviously, in my marriage, it also impacted my marriage, and so that leads me to obviously in my marriage, it also impacted my marriage some of his work. It really helped me pause before reacting, which is it's a growth edge for me. I will admit you talk to my husband oh hello, yes, I need to hit more, I need to pause more often. So it helped me stop assuming I had to manage everything and allowing me to let myself be seen and supported instead of automatically jumping into caretaker mode. Now, like so many women and really humans on this planet, over-functioning is a thing and it was my default for so long, not because I wanted control, but because I thought it was the way I showed my love. Right. If I over-function, what that means is, ooh. If I set the stage for everything, if I make everything nice and easy for people and comfortable, then everybody's good and taken care of right.

Sheila:

Well, number one, Gabor's work helped me name what that was over-functioning and he helped me let it go and there's a softening that's happened since in my relationship because of that, not just in how we speak to one another, but in how we hold each other through the unspoken. I no longer need to be everything, be everywhere all at once, I just need to be real. And, of course, through this work I learned my husband was not expecting me to be everything or be everywhere, he just wanted my presence, the ways this work has impacted my coaching is it's really changed the way that I hold space, not just in what I say, but how I feel when I'm listening. Again, it's less performance and more presence, less solving and more witnessing. I've noticed that the more I honor my own nervous system, the deeper my clients go into theirs. It's like they can feel the steadiness and safety and from there the real transformation unfolds.

Sheila:

Some of my most powerful client moments actually haven't come from all the big strategy shifts that happen together. They've come from quiet moments of recognition, when someone is sharing their heart and I'm witnessing it and just listening and just really sharing my presence. And then they say to me I've never said that out loud before or if I've reflected something back to them like what I'm hearing you say is this and what I'm seeing light up in you is this, or what I'm seeing you let go of is this, and they respond whoa, it just clicked for me. It's so powerful to witness and we realize that so often we're so busy going through our life we don't give ourself the time to actually look inwards and come to these resolutions or understandings about ourself. And so that's why coaching is so powerful because it gives us that space and the mirror of someone who is holding presence with you to reflect back to you what maybe you most need to see.

Sheila:

And, of course, I'm going to share because self-care and self-love and self-trust is such a foundation of all the work I do and it's really all begun with me doing that work myself on myself in myself and it's really all begun with me doing that work myself on myself in myself. So, of course, this work with Gabor and reading his work and being witness to what he's doing in the world, it's really helped in my relationship with myself. His work gave me language for grace as more than a concept, really as a practice. Grace as a practice, grace as a practice. So when I'm moving through personal expansion and there's been a lot over the last number of years I come back to the idea that the nervous system remembers everything, that self-compassion isn't just a luxury. It truly is a strategy and it is a requirement if I want to live, love and lead in a way that is sustainable.

Sheila:

And sometimes I learned this that grace looks like canceling a call, sometimes it's making space to cry before a launch, like let the emotions move through me, and sometimes it's remembering that I'm allowed to want more without even proving that I deserve it first, which is, I think, a new concept for so many people, and I can say that because I see it in my clients every single day. And now there's one more piece I want to share that is especially close to my heart, and it is this want to share that is especially close to my heart, and it is this, this idea that we don't need to abandon our past selves to become our future selves. We can truly honor the survival patterns, the coping strategies and even the over-functioning, while still choosing to evolve beyond them. You know, somewhere along the way we learned to equate our worth with how much we could carry, but we do get to lay some of that down now. I mean, let's lay all of it down, can't we now? And we get to do it without guilt. That's what I want to leave you with today.

Sheila:

It's okay if you're still learning to let go of what is no longer aligned. It's okay if you're doing the work of unlearning while still showing up for everyone in your world. And it's okay to be in the messy middle and still trust that healing is happening. You're allowed to rewrite the rules, to reparent yourself and to stop over-functioning and start receiving. To reparent yourself and to stop over-functioning and start receiving, and to do it not because you may feel broken or because I may feel broken, but because we're finally choosing to be whole.

Sheila:

Gabor Mate often says something to the effect of you can't heal what you don't feel, and I've learned that you also can't grow into the next version of yourself if you don't pause to acknowledge the version of who got you here. So, whether you're in a season of expansion, of letting go or of learning to soften, please just know this You're not behind, you're not broken. You are becoming and you get to build this life your way. Thank you for listening, for being part of this journey with me. I invite you to take a screenshot, share this episode in your stories. If it moved you in some way, tag me I'd love to hear what part spoke to you most and for more ways to connect more deeply with yourself and with me. Go check out the links in the show notes. I hope you have an incredible rest of your week. Big blessings.