Why Relaxation Feels Impossible for Mothers – and How to Finally Feel at Ease

Dec 4, 2025

In a captivating conversation, Nicola Jane Hobbs, a therapist and author focused on women's relaxation, dives into the complexities mothers face when seeking ease. She discusses how societal pressures and guilt intertwine with rest, and offers practical micro-steps to help retrain the nervous system for safety. Nicola shares her personal journey through motherhood, spotlighting the need for community in overcoming overwhelm and the transformative power of redefining rest. Her insights challenge the superwoman ideal and advocate for guilt-free moments of restoration.

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INSIGHT

Relaxation Is A Repressed Archetype

Many women internalise productivity and view relaxation as lazy due to patriarchal and capitalist conditioning.
The "relaxed woman" archetype awakens a desire to untangle worth from productivity and feel free in the body.

ADVICE

Treat Guilt As A Sign You're Growing

Expect guilt when you rest because it signals you've broken internalised rules about constant productivity.
Persist with rest practices and the guilt will soften as you reweave rest with joy.

INSIGHT

Nervous System Hates The Unfamiliar

Slowness can feel threatening because our nervous systems are habituated to constant urgency.
Gentle, repeated signals of safeness help rewire the nervous system to accept stillness.

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A Most-Listened-To 2025 Episode - If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a relaxed woman”, this episode will show you why and how to finally feel more at ease.

To close the year, we’re re-releasing one of our most listened-to episodes of 2025, and it’s no wonder it struck such a chord.

Speaking to many of you in our community, one theme comes up again and again: women feel permanently rushed, tense and overwhelmed. Relaxation doesn’t just feel unlikely, it feels unimaginable. And most of us have no idea how to get from “constantly on edge” to “at ease in our own bodies.”

In this grounding and beautifully honest episode, therapist and author Nicola Jane Hobbs explores what it really means to become a “relaxed woman” not as a luxury, but as a way of living that’s rooted in nervous system safety, self-permission and gentleness.

Nicola shares why relaxation feels so rare, how guilt gets woven into rest, and what begins to change when you start feeling safe in your own skin. She also opens up about her first year of motherhood, the tenderness, the disorientation, the identity shift and how it transformed everything she thought she knew about rest.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

Why your nervous system resists slowing down and how to help it feel safe
How guilt became tied to rest and why guilt can be a sign you’re growing
Tiny, realistic ways to bring rest into your day without more time or childcare
Why can’t we become relaxed women alone, and how to build the support you need

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If you liked this episode, listen to this next: MOMENT | Calm your nervous system in seconds with this technique

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