Broken to Brave | Guiding you to heal & break free from anxiety

Dr. Stephanie Lopez
  • 5.0 (35)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

On the outside you look like you have it all together. On the inside you feel anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, or stuck in survival mode. Broken to BRAVE is where high-achieving women learn they’re not failing and finally find the calm, confidence, and freedom they’ve been craving. I’m Dr. Steph, a former NASA psychologist turned healing coach. In this podcast, I’ll walk with you through the patterns that keep you over-functioning, people-pleasing, and second-guessing yourself, and I’ll show you how to break free. You’ll hear real stories, simple steps, and the brave questions that change everything. You don’t need another set of coping tools. What you need is a way back to yourself. Week by week, I will help you calm your nervous system, build self-trust, and see yourself in a new way….not as failing, not as too much. Instead, as a woman who is capable of peace, presence, and joy.  Follow on Instagram @drstephanielopez

  1. 1d ago

    The Story You Keep Telling Yourself About Anxiety

    You were doing well. Genuinely well, for weeks or months, maybe longer than that. Then one afternoon undid it, and what came next wasn't just anxiety. It was the story that showed up on top of it: "See, I knew it, this is just how I am." I'm walking through what that phrase actually reveals, the one most of us use without thinking twice, and why the language we reach for around anxiety says more than we realize. I'm sharing what actually has to shift before behavior does, and why doing the same work over and over sometimes still leaves you back where you started. In This Episode, I Cover: The phrase most people use around anxiety without realizing what it's actually telling them.Why identity drives behavior long before you ever notice it happening.What changes when you stop working on the surface and start changing what's underneath it.Register for the Anxiety Relief Experience today! www.brave-method.com/anxiety-relief-experience ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  2. Sep 8

    Why Your Brain Chooses Familiar Over Peaceful

    You finally feel like something clicked. A new tool, a shift in perspective, and for a few days everything feels different, lighter, more possible. Then a trigger hits and you're right back in the old response, the same spiral or shutdown or overthinking, like the last few weeks never happened. And underneath that, the harder part sets in: the wondering why everyone else seems to figure this out and you can't. I'm walking through why that happens, and it has nothing to do with willpower. Your brain isn't built to choose what's peaceful; it's built to choose what's familiar, and those automatic responses, the catastrophizing, the people-pleasing, the shutting down, aren't personality traits. They're survival tracks your system built a long time ago to keep you safe. I break down why fighting them head-on actually makes them stronger, and what it actually takes to lay down a new one. In This Episode, I Cover Why your nervous system chooses familiar patterns over peaceful ones, even when you can see it coming.Why fighting an old pattern in the moment usually makes it stronger, not weaker.What it actually takes to build a new response, starting with the body instead of the mind.Register for the Anxiety Relief Experience today! www.brave-method.com/anxiety-relief-experience ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  3. Sep 1

    You've Been Reading the Manual to a Smoke Alarm

    There's a moment right before a panic attack sets in where your mind starts flipping through pages, trying to think its way out of something that didn't start in the mind at all. I know that moment. Standing under a blaring alarm, manual in hand, waiting for the reading to make it stop. In this episode, I walk through why your nervous system reacts before a single thought ever forms, and what it actually means to turn down its sensitivity setting instead of trying to reason with it mid-alarm. I also share what shifted for two women I worked with once they stopped starting in the mind and started in the body. In This Episode, I Cover: Why trying to think your way out of anxiety never actually works.What your nervous system's sensitivity setting has to do with panic attacks.What changed for two women who thought they'd always feel this way.Register for the Anxiety Relief Experience today! www.brave-method.com/anxiety-relief-experience ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  4. Aug 25

    Suffering Is Resistance, Peace Is Acceptance with Tara Walsh

    There's a kind of peace that doesn't come from things finally being okay. It comes from putting down the fight against what already is. I sit down with Tara Walsh to talk about what got her there. A miscarriage that cracked open years of anxiety she didn't have a name for yet. A marriage stretched thin by her ex-husband's PTSD, and the years she spent over-functioning to hold everything together so he wouldn't have to. A divorce that made her question everything she believed about love and safety. She shares the line from her own coach that changed how she saw all of it, the difference between resisting a hard reality and choosing it. It's not a tidy lesson. It's what actually shifted when she stopped waiting for her life to look different and started building peace from the inside instead. In This Episode, I Cover: The realization that suffering comes from resisting reality, not from the reality itself.How over-functioning became her way of managing someone else's pain instead of her own.Learning to build safety inside herself after years of looking for it outside.Connect with Tara: https://www.instagram.com/unblockyourbs https://www.facebook.com/unblockyourbs https://www.youtube.com/@unblockyourbs https://unblockyourbs.com/podcast ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  5. Aug 18

    The Emotion Hiding Behind Your Anxiety

    What if anxiety isn't actually the emotion you've been struggling with? For years I believed anxiety itself was the problem, something to get rid of so everything else would get better. What I've come to understand is that anxiety is often what you're most aware of, while everything underneath it, the grief, the sadness, the disappointment, the shame, gets pushed further down and interrupted before it ever gets to move through you. I'm walking through what happens when we cut off our own emotional cycle instead of letting it complete, and how that pattern doesn't just shape how you relate to yourself; it shapes how you show up with the people you love too. This isn't about learning new tools to manage your emotions. It's about understanding what's actually been happening underneath the anxiety this whole time. In This Episode, I Cover: Why anxiety is often the emotion you're most aware of, not the one that's actually underneath.What it means to interrupt your own emotional cycle before it completes, and why that keeps you stuck.How becoming skilled at managing your own emotions quietly affects the people closest to you.Register for the Anxiety Relief Experience today: www.brave-method.com/anxiety-relief-experience ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  6. Aug 11

    Your Body Is Keeping the Score on Unprocessed Stress with Katelyn Hamilton

    There's a point where stress stops being something you push through and starts becoming something your body has to deal with instead. It doesn't always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes it's a diagnosis nobody saw coming, arriving right when everything else finally starts to calm down. I sit down with Katelyn Hamilton to talk about the season that pushed her past what she thought she could carry, from a colicky newborn and a terrifying trip to the ER, to an autoimmune diagnosis that forced her to look at what she'd been holding onto. We get into what it actually took for her to release control, ask for help, and rebuild trust in her own body and her own timeline. In This Episode, I Cover: How an incredibly stressful year showed up in her body as an autoimmune diagnosis.What it took to let go of control and let someone else help.The tools she leans on now to regulate her nervous system and protect her capacity.Connect with Kate: https://katelynehamilton.com https://www.instagram.com/katelynehamilton https://www.facebook.com/KatelynEHamilton https://www.tiktok.com/@buildteamsuccess ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  7. Aug 4

    The Real Reason Anxiety Keeps Coming Back

    Before your feet even hit the floor in the morning, there's already a check in happening. Is this going to be a good day or a bad day. That question, and dozens of moments like it, aren't just anxiety showing up. They're a nervous system rehearsing something it's practiced for years. I'm walking through why anxiety often isn't proof that something is wrong, but proof of how well a system has learned to survive. The same repetition that built that pattern can build something different. It's not one breakthrough that changes it. It's showing your system, over and over, that this moment can end differently than the last one. In This Episode, I Cover: Why the moments you barely notice, like checking in with your body or bracing before you even leave the house, are actually rehearsal.The difference between understanding your anxiety and actually changing the pattern.What it takes for your nervous system to start practicing something new instead.Register for the FREE 3-day workshop: www.brave-method.com/anxiety-relief-experience ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

  8. Jul 28

    Choosing Refinement Over Burnout with Kendall Dunn

    There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from doing everything right and still watching the ground shift anyway. I sit down with Kendall Dunn, a military spouse, adoptive mom, and author, about the year everything happened at once. An adoption process she was told would take two years moved in ninety days. Her husband deployed the day after their daughter was born. A pandemic hit weeks later. And in the middle of all of it, her newborn needed emergency surgery for what doctors feared was a brain tumor. Underneath the medical crisis, Kendall was also stepping into a reckoning she hadn't been prepared for, adopting and suddenly seeing her own community through a different lens. Kendall talks about a concept from her book, soul friction, the discomfort of two things rubbing against each other, and the choice that friction creates. It can burn a life down, or it can refine it. She talks about learning to pray for capacity instead of praying for her circumstances to change, something she's had to lean on again now that her husband is deploying a second time. It's a conversation about what a hard season makes out of a person, instead of just waiting for the hard season to end. In This Episode, I Cover: The season that moved faster and harder than anything Kendall was prepared for, from a fast-tracked adoption to a medical scare to a reckoning that changed how she saw her own community.The concept of soul friction from her book, and the choice it forces between burning out and being refined.Why she started praying for capacity instead of praying for her circumstances to change, and what that's looked like through a second deployment cycle.Connect with Kendall: Instagram: www.instagram.com/kendallmariah Website: www.kendallmariah.com Purchase Kendall's book here: https://go.shopmy.us/p-52606503 or on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, etc. ______________________________________ [FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety [FREE CALL] Book a free call to ask me questions directly and see if we are a fit for working together. www.bravemethod.com/book [RESULTS] Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most? www.brave-method.com/testimonials 💗 Dr. Steph @DrStephanieLopez www.brave-method.com

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About

On the outside you look like you have it all together. On the inside you feel anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, or stuck in survival mode. Broken to BRAVE is where high-achieving women learn they’re not failing and finally find the calm, confidence, and freedom they’ve been craving. I’m Dr. Steph, a former NASA psychologist turned healing coach. In this podcast, I’ll walk with you through the patterns that keep you over-functioning, people-pleasing, and second-guessing yourself, and I’ll show you how to break free. You’ll hear real stories, simple steps, and the brave questions that change everything. You don’t need another set of coping tools. What you need is a way back to yourself. Week by week, I will help you calm your nervous system, build self-trust, and see yourself in a new way….not as failing, not as too much. Instead, as a woman who is capable of peace, presence, and joy.  Follow on Instagram @drstephanielopez

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