A real conversation with a client who believed she was “pretending” and what was actually happening beneath the surface.

This episode is for the person who feels like they’re “trying to be someone they’re not,” or like stepping into the next version of themselves feels strangely heavy, emotional, or confusing.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing a real conversation from a client session, the kind that stops you in your tracks because you can feel truth move through the room.

She said:

“I feel like I’m pretending. I don’t know if I’m built for this.”

What she was experiencing is something I call The Identity Threshold:

The moment where your old self has loosened its grip… but your new self isn’t fully formed yet.

It doesn’t feel exciting. It feels disorienting.

Not because you’re failing. But because your nervous system is adjusting to new emotional territory.

Your body is still calibrated to:

• Stay small

• Stay agreeable

• Stay unseen

• Stay safe

But your deeper self is ready to:

• Lead

• Be witnessed

• Take up space

• Be expressed

This episode will help you:

• Understand why self-doubt increases right before expansion

• Recognize the emotional texture of identity growth

• Stop mistaking unfamiliarity for “I’m not ready”

• Learn what actually helps you stabilize the version of you you’re becoming

And if this feels uncannily close to where you are, if you feel like you’re in the “in-between” with no clear identity to hold on to, then this is where The Unlearning becomes powerful.

Not another course. Not more mindset talk. Actual, nervous-system-level identity rewiring.

Self-doubt is not a sign you’re wrong. It’s a sign you’re close.

We don’t talk enough about the space between versions of yourself — the part where you’ve outgrown who you were, but haven’t yet stepped into who you’re becoming.

It can feel like:

• nothing makes sense anymore

• your motivation disappears

• the things that used to fit now feel heavy

• your reactions don’t match your reality

This isn’t failure. This is the identity gap — the psychological and nervous system recalibration that happens right before personal expansion.

Your old self was built on survival:

• staying accepted

• avoiding conflict

• being who others needed you to be

When those patterns start to fall away, your mind loses its familiar script. That’s why you may feel flat, restless, detached, or confused.

You’re not breaking down. You’re being rewritten.

And it’s uncomfortable because your system is letting go of the identity that once kept you safe. This episode explores how to move through this “in-between” without retreating back into old habits, relationships, or versions of yourself that no longer fit.

Key Insight: You don’t need to know who you’re becoming yet. Your only job is to stay in the space long enough to hear yourself again.

If you want support while you’re here, The Unlearning is designed for this exact phase: Releasing the identity you built from fear, survival, and expectation and rebuilding one based in truth, clarity, and self-recognition.

You’re not lost. You’re in the becoming of Overflow

Why does personal growth feel so exhausting — like you can see who you want to be, but your body refuses to follow?

In this episode of Overflow, Shana Kad breaks down what she calls The Identity Gap, the invisible space between the self you know and the self you live as.

You’ll learn why your nervous system resists change, how your subconscious equates “familiar” with “safe,” and what’s actually happening in your brain when you keep repeating patterns you’ve already outgrown.

Shana unpacks the real reason motivation and mindset work rarely stick and why sustainable transformation has nothing to do with trying harder. Instead, she explains how safety and identity are the missing ingredients in change, and gives you a clear, science-backed way to start rewiring from the inside out.

What You’ll Learn:

• The neuroscience of identity and behavioural loops
• How your body prioritizes survival over success
• Why your subconscious keeps you stuck in old roles
• The real process of closing the gap between knowing and becoming
• How to start teaching your body that new equals safe

Plus, you’ll experience The Identity Gap Exercise — a short, guided awareness reset designed to reveal what your nervous system is trying to protect, and how to safely update those patterns.

🎧 If this episode resonates: Explore The Unlearning — Shana’s guided audio course on identity reprogramming and subconscious retraining. It’s not motivation, it’s method.

Learn how to stop spiralling, reset your emotional patterns, and finally live as the version of you your nervous system can support.