D’Layne Benson appeared to have it all together. She was a post-anesthesia nurse at a rural Idaho hospital, managing multiple responsibilities at work while being the dependable rock for everyone in her personal life. Her colleagues would have described her as competent and calm. Her family saw her as the person they could count on. She saw herself as simply doing what needed to be done.
“I still hadn’t realized it,” Benson said. “I just simply thought, man, a lot of people really depend on me. I feel pretty overextended, but I’m still managing. So it’s fine. Let’s keep going, keep pushing.”
What she didn’t realize was that beneath the calm exterior, her nervous system was screaming. She was operating in what she would later identify as a freeze response, a state that disguises itself as productivity in high-achieving women. When the pandemic arrived with its cascading crises, everything she’d been carrying finally became too heavy. The question became not whether she would break but how she would rebuild.
The Invisible Burden of Looking Capable
The signs were already there before COVID-19 turned the world upside down. Benson had grown increasingly frustrated with the healthcare system, watching the culture at her hospital shift from community support to survival mentality. Nurses were wearing multiple hats without compensation. Patient care was compromised by systemic failures beyond anyone’s control.
“We had once had a very tight, really strong community of support and love and really looking out for one another,” Benson said. “That environment had started to cultivate more of a survival mentality.”
At home, she was the person everyone depended on. Her husband was navigating the aftermath of traumatic brain injuries. Her stepson, whom she’d been close to since he was six, needed her presence. Family members across the country looked to her for support. She had constructed a life where being strong for others was simply what she did.
If someone had asked her how she was doing, she would have acknowledged the work stress but insisted everything else was fine. She would have said she was managing. The truth was more complicated.
When Everything Collapses at Once
The pandemic hit Benson’s rural tourist community with particular force. International travelers flooded into the ski resort town just as COVID-19 began spreading. The hospital shut down everything except the emergency room. Benson found herself in an administrative role after exposure put her in quarantine, making decisions about patient triage while on call for days on end.
Then the dominoes started falling faster. Her stepson’s school closed. Her father received a dual cancer diagnosis in Texas but couldn’t access treatment because of pandemic shutdowns. She was trying to phone into his appointments from across the country, advocating for his care from a distance.
“We know it’s gone poorly,” Benson said of her father’s situation. “And they’re basically telling us he has cancer, but you can’t do anything about it right now because pandemic.”
The final layer arrived without announcement. Benson had started perimenopause, bringing a whole new set of physical, emotional and mental challenges. But the symptoms overlapped so completely with pandemic stress that she didn’t even recognize what was happening.
“I felt so deep in survival mode that I didn’t even know which way to go, which way was up, what was happening,” Benson said.
The Origins of Overfunctioning
The seeds of Benson’s collapse had been planted decades earlier. She grew up in a loving Texas household with hardworking, kind parents who set high standards. Achievement brought attention and praise. Good grades, athletic wins and proper behavior earned recognition. The implicit lesson was clear: perform well and you will be seen, loved and celebrated.
Other patterns reinforced the message. Her grandmother struggled with mental illness, and young Benson learned to suppress her own feelings to keep the peace. A relative made her uncomfortable, but she was told to be nice, to give hugs, to ignore the screaming no in her gut. Self-abandonment became a survival skill.
Religion added another layer. “The religion taught me generosity,” Benson said. “But there were a lot of sub messages that really I kind of took the wrong way. And so I took that being good meant sacrifice.”
She started performing good deeds not just to help others but to be seen helping. She needed the validation, the dopamine hit of recognition. The pattern became ingrained: to get safety, love and belonging, she needed to be perfect, high-achieving and constantly giving of herself while abandoning her own needs and feelings.
Nursing seemed like the perfect expression of these values. She wanted to help people, to save the world. What she didn’t realize was that she was choosing a profession filled with people carrying the same patterns.
“Nurses are almost categorically all of those things,” Benson said. “Perfectionist, people pleasers, overachievers. There’s very few exceptions to that.”
The Freeze Response That Looks Like Success
For years, Benson operated in what she would later recognize as a dysregulated nervous system state. Most people think of nervous system dysregulation as fight or flight, the obvious physical responses to threat. But Benson fell into a different category entirely: freeze.
“My presentation of a dysregulated nervous system is a freeze response,” Benson said. “What I find, especially with high achieving women is we fall more into the category of a freeze response.”
From the outside, freeze looks like competence. The person appears calm and collected. Nothing seems wrong. But inside, the gears are constantly turning. Anxiety masquerades as preparation. Worry presents itself as planning. The person reviews 35 possible outcomes for a single decision, trying to calculate the perfect choice.
“I saw all of this as being prepared,” Benson said. “I don’t have anxiety. I’m just like making sure nothing goes wrong.”
The reality was an overwhelming amount of energy being expended internally while maintaining a cool exterior. Benson functioned this way for so long that she normalized it. Her life was complicated and hard, but she was managing. She was amazing. She had this.
“I have no questions about it,” she said of her state at the time. “And I think another thing too that plays into this too is the ignoring all of your feelings, your emotions that you’ve self abandoned for so long. You don’t even know what your feelings are at this point.”
Even when Amy Stone asked during the interview whether people recognize when they’re frozen, Benson’s answer revealed the insidious nature of the response: “I don’t think that people know they’re frozen when you. Like when you put that. Because freezing can look like research, it can look like planning, it can look like list making, and you can feel very busy.”
The Turning Point Disguised as Self-Help
The journey toward healing began in a characteristically over-functioning way. Benson started learning about nervous system regulation and self-development, but not for herself. She was doing it to help her husband recover from his traumatic brain injuries.
“Being my personality type, I was doing it all to help my husband,” Benson said. “Once again, it was that complete dissociation from, like, what’s happening in me, who I am, who I’m being.”
She attended workshops and classes, building up knowledge and skills. She learned about nervous system regulation and taught it to her husband. She took courses on healing modalities. But she wasn’t applying any of it to her own life until she hit what she calls the bottom of the road during the pandemic’s darkest phase.
That’s when something shifted. She began to see that this work wasn’t just for other people. She started exploring the freeze response, diving into what it meant that she’d been operating in this odd state that made her feel productive while actually being stuck.
“The more you learn, the more you realize, wow, everybody needs to learn about this,” Benson said.
She had been a massage therapist and had practiced energy work for 20 years. But she’d never pulled these interests together into something cohesive. Now, in the depths of her own crisis, she saw a path forward. She enrolled in nurse coaching certification, adding emphasis on nervous system regulation and mental wellness.
The breakthrough came at a conference for nurse coaches. An instructor offered a breathwork session without much explanation. Benson went out of curiosity. What happened during that session changed everything.
The Breathwork Revelation
“It absolutely blew my mind of what is possible,” Benson said of her first transformative breathwork experience. “What’s possible in healing? What’s possible in a sober state to do with your mind.”
The practice she encountered wasn’t simple deep breathing. It was what she now calls transformative journey breathwork, a form of controlled hyperventilation that can lead to altered states of consciousness. Through rapid breathing, she gained what felt like a third-person perspective on her life.
“I was able to all of a sudden have this third person perspective of my life,” Benson said. “And I could see that here’s my rut that I’m in. And it was like I was looking down into it and I could see all of these things that had led to me getting in the rut that were keeping me in the rut. And I could even see pads out.”
The revelation hit her with force: she was a control freak. Every ounce of her energy went into trying to control her external environment to make herself feel safe. She was trying to control her husband, helicopter parenting her stepson, trying to control her in-laws, her parents, every aspect of work and life.
“I could see the control as like a plaque on me,” Benson said. “I was just covered in this plaque that was control. And while I felt the control was giving me safety, it was actually the thing that was keeping me from living a beautiful life and thriving.”
In that breathwork session, she experienced breaking out of the plaque, letting it shatter around her and soak into the earth. The experience was remarkable, something she hadn’t thought possible. It launched a new trajectory: helping women understand freeze responses and using breathwork as a tool to break free.
A Different Kind of Life
Two years after beginning her transformation work, Benson compared her situation with a private coach. The external circumstances looked objectively more stressful. She had left hospital nursing entirely to become self-employed. Her income hadn’t yet replaced her nursing salary. She was dealing with the stress of healthcare benefits and financial uncertainty.
“Essentially everything else is kind of the same,” Benson said. “But that being said, I am completely different and my interpretation of everything is completely different.”
Despite making less money and facing more stressors on paper, she feels abundant. She feels privileged. She’s grateful for what she has, a stark contrast to the woman who used to tell herself every day was stressful and overwhelming.
The biggest shift has been in presence. Before, Benson couldn’t sit comfortably with her family. Everything was achievement-oriented. If they were watching TV together, she needed to be doing a craft or finding a task because sitting still felt wrong. She was checked out during what should have been quality time with her stepson and husband.
“That has completely shifted now,” Benson said. “And when, when I’m with them because I’m so intentional with my time is like work time is work time. It stays in that bubble and then I draw a close to it and then family time is family time and it’s all in. There’s no phone, there’s no distraction, there’s no project, there’s no thing that I need to do. It’s just really deeply connecting with them heart to heart and that all has played out to just be so much more happy in all of my relationships.”
Today, Benson runs a business with two parts. She teaches transformative journey breathwork in classes and workshops, both locally and online, often focused on patterns she sees in women. She also coaches perfectionist, people-pleasing and overachieving women to move out of overwhelm, doing the deep work she had to do herself.
“It’s helping women learn how to feel your feelings, learn how to decide how you feel about whatever it is,” Benson said. “Because so many of the women that come in, they don’t even know what they want. I say, what do you want? I have no idea.”
The work is about helping women feel comfortable and safe in their bodies so they can start to identify what they actually want and need. It’s about recognizing the freeze response when it disguises itself as productivity. It’s about understanding that the calm exterior might be hiding a screaming internal state. And it’s about finding paths out of the rut that don’t require hitting absolute bottom first.
Benson’s story reveals an uncomfortable truth about high achievement: sometimes what looks like strength is actually a maladaptive survival pattern. The challenge for women operating in freeze response is that they often don’t recognize it until crisis forces the recognition. The calm competence that earns praise is the same state that leads to burnout. The ability to manage everything is actually an inability to acknowledge your own needs.
The path out requires recognizing the pattern, acknowledging the cost and finding tools that actually create change rather than more ways to control the uncontrollable. It requires accepting that you can’t keep going, keep pushing, keep managing forever. Eventually, the body will force the conversation that the mind keeps avoiding.
For Benson, that conversation came through breathwork, nervous system education and the willingness to examine patterns planted in childhood. The specific tools matter less than the willingness to look honestly at what’s actually happening beneath the surface of productivity. Because until you recognize you’re frozen, you can’t begin to thaw.
This article was inspired by an interview with D’Layne Benson and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Overfunctioning: Transcript D’Layne Benson with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | January 2026
Amy Stone [00:00:06]:
D’Layne Benson. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat today?
D’Layne Benson [00:00:12]:
I am so excited for this. Yes. Yay.
Amy Stone [00:00:15]:
Me too. All right, my very first question is always, what part of the world do you call home?
D’Layne Benson [00:00:20]:
I am from Haley, Idaho. It’s a beautiful place up in the mountains. Yes.
Amy Stone [00:00:26]:
All right, so in the little state of Idaho, which is not. It’s like, I guess like this. Where in the. I don’t know, geographically, whereabouts is Haley?
D’Layne Benson [00:00:36]:
If you take really like the biggest, like meatiest part of Idaho, then we are right in the middle.
Amy Stone [00:00:42]:
Okay. So like the bottom part, which is the wide part, as opposed to the little finger sticking up, you’re in the middle of the bottom of Idaho. Okay, very good. Very, very good. I have, I have been through, briefly through Idaho. I’ve been to Boise on a trip and then I’ve been through like a corner of it driving through, but I haven’t spent a lot of time. It’s a beautiful state.
D’Layne Benson [00:00:59]:
It is.
Amy Stone [00:01:00]:
It’s a beautiful state. Very, very pretty. All right, next warmup question. This episode is going to release right at the tail end probably of the first full week of January. And so that had me thinking as I was putting these questions together about many of the people who will be at that point, like white knuckling it through their resolution that they declared, you know, a few days before. And my question is for you on that on thread, not, not respective of resolutions, but for you, when you’re in a situation where you feel like you might want to give up and what on a project or anything, it can be really be anything. What is something that you might do to keep your motivation up and keep going?
D’Layne Benson [00:01:42]:
I think that’s a really interesting question. On one level. That is also the point where I dive in and say, is this really serving me? Is this fulfilling and all that? Because as we’ll get into, in my episode, I’m an over functioner. Like that’s my programming. And so I just do everything because. And I don’t necessarily have a reason. It’s just because I’m supposed to. I should. But yeah, in those moments where you have the resistance first, I think it’s so important to evaluate that and then beyond that to if you decide, yes, this is what I really want to do. One thing is really looking for the fun in it. That’s something I’m really working on in my life, is finding more fun, finding ways to enjoy things and so looking for the parts of the project that you’re passionate about and how you can kind of play that out to make the project overall more fulfilling for you. And then my other thing, and again, this is based on my personal tendencies. I love to trend towards overwhelm. And I see this giant list of things to do and I just shut down my nervous system, start screaming and panicking. And even though I look perfectly calm on the outside, inside, I’m just going.
Amy Stone [00:02:52]:
Oh my gosh, how am I going to get this all done?
D’Layne Benson [00:02:55]:
And the thing that I found that helps the most with that is really calming yourself, maybe doing some deep breathing and then writing the list of every single thing that needs to be done. And then just pick one, one thing that feels manageable that you can do at this point in time because of your time, because of your energy, whatever it is, and then just focus on the thing once it’s done, then you find the next thing. And I find that’s a great way to move through tasks because then it’s not that huge, carrying everything on your shoulders.
Amy Stone [00:03:25]:
That is, that was, that was actually a masterclass in like how to get things done, believe it or not. So because you touched on a bunch of things and these things so often, like, you know, in this, in the work that I do, I am sort of in the self help, self development space. And a lot of times this stuff gets very, very reduced into quick little one liners. And so you mention a couple of things that I really thought the way you phrased them were very effective. And you talked about when you’re looking, does this still serve me? Sometimes that’s phrased as what’s your why? Right. You know, but why is a tricky question. It can sometimes be very helpful and it can sometimes not be helpful. It can sometimes be. And so does this still serve me is like a really great thing. So specific to like New Year’s resolutions. When people start there, they’re like, I’m going to go to the gym for three hours every day from four to seven every day, forever and ever. Amen. Right? And then, you know, taking that time, you reach the fifth day of that and you’re like, my body hurts and I’m very, very tired. That is a perfect time to go back and be like, what about this really best serves me? And so, you know, I think that’s a great answer because you can be like, maybe I didn’t need three hours from four to seven since I also worked the night shift. You know, whatever’s going on in your life, right. I think that’s really good. So I thought that was very effective. I appreciate you answering that. I spring these questions for the audience. It’s listening and watching. I spring these questions on them at the very last minute. They have no time to prepare. It’s off the cuff. So there we go. Today you’re here to share with us a story of a time when your life went through a major shift, is how I say it. And it begins with a season or a period of time where you shared with me a lot of things went wrong and collapsed around you in your life. So you did share with me that this started during the pandemic lockdown season of the timetable. I wanna get back and first talk to you about what your life looked like before that. So if you and I go back to 2019. Right. So the pandemic is not on the horizon. Share with us what life looked like at that time and what I mean by what life looked like. I just mean, like, what was the job that you had? What was your family situation? Who were you living with? Just those general kind of things.
D’Layne Benson [00:05:33]:
Yes. So in 2019, I was a nurse in a hospital. I was working in post anesthesia, and I had really kind of gotten to a discontent point in my job at that point already. So we’re setting the stage for how crazy this is going to get. But in that moment, I was already dealing with the challenges of the healthcare system and realizing how broken the healthcare system was and getting extremely frustrated with how nurses were being treated and with how much the conditions of my job had fallen apart because of systems that were completely out of my control. And so, yeah, on the daily basis, I was really frustrated that I didn’t feel like people were getting the care that they actually needed, the things that were going to even move them forward. I would just hear all these stories and think, like, this is what they need, that’s not what they need, or they don’t need surgery. Why are they having surgery now? They should have tried this, this and this. And just seeing things from a holistic perspective, it was really frustrating to just see these, let’s cut them open and fix everything kind of robot mentality. So I already had the discontent I already had. Like, they had taken so many things away from us. Like, I live in a. In a more rural area, even though it actually is right by a ski resort. So there’s a lot of money here, but there’s also. It’s a small hospital, and so we have to do wear a lot of hats, essentially at work. And I had to be a charge nurse. I had to be the unit scheduler. I had to do these different, like, order some of the. The products that we needed that were kind of specialty that someone that wasn’t a nurse couldn’t order. And so it just starts building. There’s all these extra jobs and responsibilities. And there was a time when the hospital compensated for those things, but of course, that had all been taken away in the last few years. So I’m still wearing 12 hats and I’m not being compensated for 11 of the hats.
Amy Stone [00:07:40]:
Okay.
D’Layne Benson [00:07:40]:
And that was really frustrating. And then just all of that was playing into the morale of the nurses. And where we had once had a very tight, really strong community of support and love and, and really looking out for one another, that environment had started to cultivate more of a survival mentality. And I think that everyone, their nervous systems had become so wrecked. We were all overextended, we were all overburdened. And the theme that basically coming down through the system had been like, the more that you do, the more we’re going to ask, the more that you give, the less you’re going to receive. And so all of that played into us just feeling like we just have to survive in our little bubble throughout the day. And we’re trying to still support one another and we all still deeply care about one another, but we just can’t give what we used to give. And so that was kind of my bubble of work and what that looked like. And then at home and socially and basically everywhere else in my life, I had put myself into a place where I was someone very deeply depended upon, where I’m the rock. I am the person that if things are going bad, you know, you can come to me. You know, I will sacrifice my time and whatever it is that I have going on for you. And I didn’t realize the implications of this. I did not realize that being the strong one, being the one everyone can depend on the toll it was taking on me and the degree of self abandonment that I lived in. And this was, of course, all building towards everything that happened in the pandemic. But at that point, I still hadn’t realized it. I just simply thought, man, a lot of people really depend on me. I feel pretty overextended, but I’m still managing. So it’s fine. Let’s keep going, keep pushing.
Amy Stone [00:09:44]:
So. All right, so let’s.
D’Layne Benson [00:09:45]:
We’re gonna.
Amy Stone [00:09:45]:
It’ll probably come up, but tell us. So tell us about your family. Like, structure. Yeah, like, so who you live with and Stuff.
D’Layne Benson [00:09:52]:
I am. I am married to a lovely human. He is very much on the. The self development path with me, fortunately, because of everything he went through, and his story was he went through some traumatic brain injuries. One was a just silly household accident, and then another was a mountain biking accident.
Amy Stone [00:10:14]:
And they were close together, so secondary concussion syndrome. Yeah, correct. Yes.
D’Layne Benson [00:10:19]:
And so he really went into the deep of mental health challenges and just all sorts of other things that rippled out because of that. And he even discovered that he had ptsd. He realized he had adhd. There were all of these different layers that we uncovered once we started to figure out what was going on with him. And then I do have one stepson, and at the time he was in middle school and. And yes, we have a. I’m really lucky on this. I have a wonderful relationship with him and we’re very close. I. I met him when he was 6, and that seemed to be a good time to come into his life and, and build a relationship with him. And there wasn’t too much resentment or you’re not my parent kind of thing. We just hit it off early on, and I think it’s because we’re a lot alike and we have a lot of similarities. So that helped for sure.
Amy Stone [00:11:12]:
Very cool. So you’re in a family. You’ve got a stepchild, you’ve got a spouse, you’ve got. Before this all happens, you’ve got family, you’ve got parents. Are you an only child? Do you have siblings?
D’Layne Benson [00:11:23]:
I have one sibling, one brother.
Amy Stone [00:11:24]:
All right, very cool. So one of the things that. So I have two questions before we talk about the avalanche of collapse. So one of them is if you and I had met for coffee in like, 2019, if we were friends, and I had just asked you, like, hey, how you doing? Are you happy? You know what? At that point, how would you have answered? Not now knowing having done the work you’ve done, but back then, how would you have presented it, do you think?
D’Layne Benson [00:11:52]:
Back then I would have been honest about the work struggles and said that that’s. Work is really starting to get to me. I’m really getting frustrated. But then everything else, I would have said, oh, and everything else is great. It’s all good. It’s all good. Like, sure, there’ £50,000 of pressure on me, but it’s all good. Yeah, we’re great.
Amy Stone [00:12:12]:
All right, that’s. I mean, it’s what I would have guessed if you would have said just based on that. One of the things I want to call out is that you said the way you told this story was really, really interesting, but it shows something that we’ll talk more about that shows that you’ve done a lot of work on this process because you said that you had put yourself in a situation and taking ownership of the situations in our life. It’s a long road to get there because in the middle of it, for most of it feels like this is just happening to me. Like I don’t know how, I don’t know what. So I just wanted to draw that out and say that I heard it, I heard you. And they’re doing the work. All right. It was a super public strain and very newsworthy during lockdown and during the beginning of the pandemic, the overwhelming strain and just of the crisis of the pandemic in hospitals. And so I think that many of us know and so you were a nurse at that time, even though you were in a rural area. I think that’s a thing that we all have a lot of pre built visuals and understanding of what was going on. I will add, which you sort of said that as I was writing down the questions, I don’t think nursing was an easy job before that. And so, you know, so like you were leading to. It’s like you were already tapped out on this system that was. It is very well publicized as fracturing doesn’t work very well for the patients in a lot of conditions, with the obvious exception that we’re all very happy when doctors save and nurses save our lives and the work that they do. Those two things are happening at the same time. Right. You had a lot of other things, though, happen in addition to being an overworked nurse in a global pandemic that made life even tougher. You mentioned that your husband was going through this traumatic brain injury stuff and you guys were learning about that as you went. What are some of the other things that were going on at this time that just piled the weight onto you in your life?
D’Layne Benson [00:14:06]:
Yeah. And are you referring specifically to like once we had slipped into the pandemic?
Amy Stone [00:14:09]:
Yes, I jumped forward into the pandemic. I did.
D’Layne Benson [00:14:13]:
Yes, yes, yes. I just wanted to confirm. Yeah. So the, the pandemic, it did hit me in a different way. As opposed to some of the, I guess your, your typical nurses, especially when I think of like my old friends who worked in cities and things like that, being rural and being where we are. So we’re, we’re a big tourist spot. And when the pandemic hit our state, it was so bad in our community because Everybody travels. I mean, there were literally people flying in from China. Like, I have friends who work at the airport. There were people flying in from China and from all these, like, international places right before everything’s hitting. So when we got hit, we got hit hard because everybody went home, seeing something’s happening, and they came here.
Amy Stone [00:15:01]:
And it would have been the height of ski season.
D’Layne Benson [00:15:03]:
Yeah, exactly. And it was also all these second homeowners were like, we’re getting out of the city. We’re coming here. So the community got so sick so fast, we actually shut our hospital down, except for the er. Wow. And they were just pulling as many nurses as they could into the er. And I got really lucky in that case that I kind of got pulled into more of an administrative position in all of this, because I got exposed. And so I was put on quarantine, but I didn’t actually come down with COVID And so that was kind of the unique twisting of all of it, how it played out. And so when that happened, I got more put into places of, like, helping people figure out where to go, what are we doing? All of that. So it just. It was very stressful in the way that, like, I was responsible for, like, in these meetings, helping people decide, like, are we sending these people to the er? Are we doing this? Are we doing that? And that wasn’t a position that I felt comfortable doing. And, you know, just. I didn’t want to have to be responsible for these kind of things. And my managers were excellent in doing everything that they could.
Amy Stone [00:16:15]:
It was just.
D’Layne Benson [00:16:15]:
We were all trying to figure things out on a daily basis. And so what it ended up being is, like, I was on call for. I don’t even remember how many hours a week. It was days and days on end a week. And that was really the thing that I was having to do is just more sit at home, be on edge of. I’m on call for emergency surgeries, and that’s. That’s where I am. So, yeah, that was. That was challenging. Then the. My stepson’s school also shut down. All the schools shut down here. And so that was kind of layer number two. And then in the chaos of all of this, my father was suddenly diagnosed with two separate types of cancer, which is incredible in itself. But then it was during the pandemic. So he can’t get his biopsies done. He can’t get any of the care that he needs, and we know have gone poorly. And they’re basically telling us he has cancer, but you can’t do anything about it right now, because Pandemic, and I live on the other side of the country from him. I actually grew up in Texas, and so I really wanted to be a part of his care. So I was trying to phone into any appointments that he could get. I would try to be on the phone, on speakerphone so that I could play a part and just make sure that I was advocating well for him and he was getting the care he needed for what we could do at the time. And then the final icing on the cake, which was so huge, and I didn’t even realize it at the time, but I had started perimenopause, too. And so I had a whole extra set of challenges, physically, emotionally, mentally, all of it. And I didn’t even know where it was coming from. And I felt so deep in survival mode that I didn’t even know which way to go, which way was up, what was happening, and that I might even have this phase of life affecting me as well.
Amy Stone [00:18:02]:
That is so. I mean, it’s so surprising, but it’s so not surprising, actually. I mean, I think that paramountopause, menopause sneaks up on people no matter what. But everybody who’s watching and listening in the audience that live through the lockdown, they can put pieces of this in their own life that we experienced. You know, we had people who come home from school, we had jobs that we were trying to figure out. It was chaos because we were trying to do something that nobody else had ever done ever, in the history of ever. And so everybody’s doing their best. None of us are doing a great job because. But it is the best that we can all do. And everything was a surprise. So, you know, there was stress, there was anxiety, there was trouble sleeping. Well, all of those are symptoms of perimenopause, so they overlap. Like, of course you wouldn’t, you know, fatigue, you know, low energy, all of those things. No wonder, you know, you didn’t notice it at first, but, yeah, that’s a lot of. A lot of things. It may. It reminds me, as I was listening to your story, or I was planning this out, reading about your story, the Morton Salt slogan, which is like, when it rains, it pours. It was like you just had, like, thing after thing after thing coming on. So you’re. Let’s go back. And I want to ask you a question about you, your. Your career path and your life path when you were younger. What drew you to nursing as a. As a profession? Because I think it’s interesting that you find Yourself in this situation where you’re working in a medical facility, you’ve got two very important people in your life who are experiencing medical challenges outside of your job. So, like, you know, so in some cases, you know, like, so. So what drew you to nursing?
D’Layne Benson [00:19:34]:
Well, I think that my path to nursing really was essentially a path of, like, the story of my being and of who I am, truly, because it starts all the way back in childhood. And I had a childhood that was filled with love, so much love, but also really high standards. And, and my parents were super hard working. They still are, even at their age. They’re hard working, they’re kind, they’re stoic, they give a lot to their community. And so although there was all the love there, for my generation in particular, I feel that there was so much attention and praise that came from performing well, that came from making good grades, behaving well, winning competitions, being good at athletics. And so there was this, like, implicit lesson of, if you do really well, we see you, we love you, we’re going to celebrate you. And that started this kind of wheel of looking for external validation as my means of self worth. And then I also had a lot of themes of self abandonment that I learned as a child as well. My, my grandmother was very mentally ill, and my mom was the only one of her children that lived close to her. Like, very close to her. We were in the same town. And so a lot of the messaging that I received was, don’t upset her, be nice, keep the peace. Even if she says something really crazy to you, just, just go with it. And that message to me was, okay, suppress what you’re feeling and always try to protect her. And even though it started in that one little isolated event, it started to kind of pull out into others and really make me start to abandon myself. And then it went a little deeper even. I remember another incident that I had a relative that made me extremely uncomfortable. And he always seemed like he had a mask on when he was in front of the adults. And he was very careful with his behavior in front of them. But then when the adults were gone and the children were around, then he kind of showed his true side. And he was pretty nasty and, and would say inappropriate things to us. And, and as that, like in that relationship with him, I was always told, again, be nice to him. Why aren’t you talking to him? Why don’t you go give him a hug? And it wasn’t that anybody was intentionally trying to hurt me or trying to do something wrong. They just didn’t know how I felt and I had already gotten to that place of it’s not safe to say how you feel about it. So just go hug him and ignore whatever’s coming up inside and the fact that your gut is screaming no, no, no. And yeah, just go do that. And so I started to hear all of these themes of like self abandonment, of high achievement. And then the final piece that played into who I became and becoming a nurse was this theme of like through my upbringing. It was very, it was very much based in religion and both within my church and within my community itself, it was a very religious community. And in Texas.
Amy Stone [00:23:01]:
I’m shocked.
D’Layne Benson [00:23:02]:
Right?
Amy Stone [00:23:03]:
Who would have thought? Who knew?
D’Layne Benson [00:23:06]:
But yeah, the religion taught me generosity and that that phase of life taught me to be generous. But there were a lot of sub messages that really I kind of took the wrong way. And so I took that being good meant sacrifice. And then I also learned that, and this is kind of how I interpreted a lot of things is like I felt like I was so often trying to like do good for others that I became a little bit too enmeshed in like performing for that feeling good. Like I wanted to do good things, but I wanted somebody to see me.
Amy Stone [00:23:44]:
Yeah.
D’Layne Benson [00:23:44]:
Because I wanted to feel good about it and get that self worth ping and that, that dopamine, all of that. I wanted all that to come in. And so that was like the final piece of my whole over functioning picture. It was to get safety, love and belonging. I need to be perfect, I need to be high achieving and I need to be giving constantly of myself and just completely abandoning whatever my needs are, whatever my feelings are and just being there for everyone. And so that, that trifecta kind of played into. So I became nurse. I wanted to do good, I wanted to help people, I wanted to save the world. All these idealistic things that I had in my head. And, and yeah, and then that’s what I see so often. Nurses are almost categorically all of those things. Perfectionist, people pleasers, overachievers. There’s very few exceptions to that.
Amy Stone [00:24:40]:
Yeah. And I’ll give it some vocabulary so that the people who are listening know sort of what this is in a bigger context outside of your individual story. Like, so when we talk about this, there’s a concept of a, an unspoken social contract, contract within communities. And a family is a community, a church congregation is a community, a town is a community, country is a community, all of those. So what I hear you saying is that the. And you’re unaware of these Rules because they form when you’re very, very small and everyone around you is operating under these things. So the unspoken social contract that was happening as you were growing up is based that you were rewarded and punished based on your behavior with regards to, you know, your, your grandmother and the other people around, very heavily rewarded high achievement and it penalized certain sites of behavior. And that’s how you drew and created your concept of wor. And that’s how we all draw it, right? Like that’s how we all draw it. And you know, unless somebody looks at you and defines it more clearly and it’s, it’s not, you know, that’s the way it works. That’s the way the human experience comes together. And then what happens in a lot of ways, and you hear about this now, is that in like a societal contact context, if the unspoken rules of the contract we think we agreed to aren’t rewarded or don’t seem like they’re working, that feels very destabilizing. So like the big one that is in the news all the time right now is the hey, I thought I was supposed to be able to work till I was 65 and retire and it was going to be fine. And a lot of people right now in 2025, 20, 26 are right there at that age and they’re like, well, whoops, life got very expensive. If I stop working, I’m going to be broke. So like that’s, that’s an example of it not breaking. So in yours, you came to realize as a part of this process that you, you were, you, your contract was I will work myself to death and just not, not ever pay attention to myself. So when you think back to this time before you became aware of this, when you were in the dark part of this, before you were doing the work and became aware of it, do you remember how it felt like on a day to day basis? Like what was the physical experience that you, as you would describe it now that was like something is wrong?
D’Layne Benson [00:26:50]:
Yeah, I think that, I think it can be very hard for someone who particularly has my tendencies. So my presentation of a dysregulated nervous system is a freeze response. So for people who aren’t familiar, like when we think of a nervous system dysregulation, the common, the language that everyone uses are fight or flight. We hear fight or flight. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. But what I find, especially with high achieving women is we fall more into the category of a freeze response. Often, not always, but that’s true for me. So And I kind of described it right in the very beginning of the call of just this calm exterior that looks all put together. You wouldn’t know anything’s wrong. You wouldn’t have any idea anything’s going on. But there are gears going inside, going and going and going. Worrying anxiety, looking at all the different paths that this could take. And I saw all of this as being prepared. Right. Like anxiety. I don’t have anxiety. I’m just like making sure nothing goes wrong. So I’m repeatedly going over the 35 things that could happen from what this one decision and then trying to decide exactly what the best decision is. I didn’t see that as anxiety, but how I like to describe this state is an overwhelming, insane amount of energy being expended inside and then just looking calm and cool on the exterior. And, and that’s what’s so problematic. And that’s one of my biggest reasons for wanting to be on podcasts. Wanting to spread the word about this is so that other high achieving women can recognize this in themselves. Because for the longest time I was functioning like this. I was in survival mode. But I never would have told you that. I never would have said anything’s wrong. I just, it was just my life is complicated, it’s hard, but I’m kind of amazing. And I got this, like, I got this. And it wasn’t like thinking like, I’m amazing in this. Oh, I have all this ego. It’s just like I’ve been brought up to be amazing and to be able to manage all the things so I can do it and that’s what I do. And it’s cool. And, and yeah, I have no questions about it. And, and I think another thing too that plays into this too is the ignoring all of your feelings, your emotions that you’ve self abandoned for so long. You don’t even know what your feelings are at this point. You don’t even know what you’re feeling.
Amy Stone [00:29:20]:
And you don’t know you’re abandoning the feelings. You don’t know you’re not experiencing them.
D’Layne Benson [00:29:23]:
Yeah, exactly. And until people, until especially women get into a really deep, dark place that they are so depressed and exhausted and just feel like they have no purpose, no joy, no energy until they get to that point, they don’t get help. Yeah, and, and that’s what I wish that we could see this, this phase in us a little earlier. We could see these tendencies because then you wouldn’t have to go all the way to the bottom like I did and then slowly work your Way up.
Amy Stone [00:29:55]:
But, yeah, no, I think. I think that’s an important. Because. Yeah. And I think. Sorry to point out, like, I don’t think that people know they’re frozen when you. Like when you put that. Because freezing can look like research, it can look like planning, it can look like list making, and you can feel very busy, and sometimes you need some. It takes a while for somebody to point out, like, oh, hey, you’re not actually doing anything.
D’Layne Benson [00:30:23]:
Right, Right.
Amy Stone [00:30:25]:
And. And that. And that can also feel mean when. When you realize that when somebody points it or ask another place that shows up in conversation, people say people will be stuck and frozen and they’re in the middle of a stress response, and a friend will not mean to be harsh, but they’ll be like, well, you can just do it, or, why don’t you do it? Or, why haven’t you done this? Or all you have to do is this. And that can feel very confrontational, too, I think. That’s my opinion. Yeah, absolutely agree. And I think that one of the things, like, right now, information is really siloed. And when I say siloed, what I mean is it’s categorized. Right. And so, you know, if stepmothers tend to group with stepmothers, divorcees can group with divorcees, people who are in perimenopause tend to listen to midlife sort of things. Right. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very, very good. But the challenge is, right, that the best time to learn about these things is when you’re, like, 20 or 15. Right. And so then the work becomes to, like, cross these, like, age demographics and pass this information down so that people are ready. One of the things I wonder, because I don’t know if I’m the same as you or not, but I have this impression that people were not talking about menopause when I was younger. But at the same time, I hold this reality in my head that it’s entirely possible that they were. I just was in a different room. And if I, you know, because I was younger and, you know, going to concerts and traveling, and I don’t know whether, you know, like, for example, like, people used to always say, oh, they didn’t teach this to me in high school. And I now look back and I’m like, you know what? It’s possible I wasn’t paying attention. If we’re totally honest, it’s very possible there was a lesson and I just was gossiping in the back of the classroom. Right.
D’Layne Benson [00:32:09]:
So true.
Amy Stone [00:32:10]:
There we go. All right. So in the Moment you were trying to rise to the challenge and you felt like, you felt responsibility and obligation and that it was your job to carry on and work harder. So in the pitch, you share that your shift began to occur during a breathwork session. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that in a second. I have a question, because I think that means that you were already. You had begun this work on yourself. So being in the breathwork session says to me, oh, at some point there was a decision that happened before that. Right. So the question that I have then is when and how did that come about? How did you make the choice to do the work of working on yourself and the self discovery, self reflection and breath work when. When you were under all this stress? Tell us how that came about.
D’Layne Benson [00:33:00]:
Yeah, so it was really interesting because I had started trying to learn about nervous system regulation and learn about self development, but being my personality type, I was doing it all to help my husband.
Amy Stone [00:33:18]:
Okay.
D’Layne Benson [00:33:19]:
To help him get through the traumatic brain injuries. So once again, it was that complete dissociation from, like, what’s happening in me, who I am, who I’m being. It was. I’m not looking at that. It’s just, oh, I need to learn this nervous system regulation stuff because it’s really going to help my husband and I can teach him and. And that’s going to help him move forward. Oh, my gosh. So until that really bottom of the road, dark, dark phase that I went through during the pandemic, I didn’t touch any of that on my own. I just learned it and taught him about it and took classes on it, went to workshops. So I had already built up a decent skill set. It was still very much in the early stages, but I knew quite a bit, but had not done any of the work myself. And so that was when I started to think, ooh, you know what? I think maybe this is for me too. And honestly, it was part of that, that understanding I was in freeze, that kind of broke that open to start that pathway of, oh, I need to understand more about this freeze response. What does that mean? Because I’ve always thought that I’ve been super productive, but it turns out I’m actually in this really odd state that that makes you feel like you’re. You’re doing all the things and really high functioning and doing very well, and you’re not. And so I started to kind of deep dive into that. And then the more you learn, the more you realize, wow, everybody needs to learn about this. And so that started to play into old desires I’d had from decades before. Because I, I had also been a massage therapist. I had also done energy work. Like I’d been doing energy work for like 20 years. So like Reiki, I eventually learned healing touch. But I had looked at all of these beautiful things and I’d never really put it all together into something that I could actually do. I was passionate about them, I enjoyed them. But that’s when I started to feel this call of not only do I need this work and I need it desperately, but also I think this is the path forward. I think this is the path where I actually help people and not just do all the nonsense and check off the boxes in the hospital and don’t really do anything for them and just get a paycheck tech. And so I started to both take classes for my own enjoyment and then also for a new career path. And I got into. It’s a new type of nursing, relatively new. I think it’s about, it’s probably been around for about 12 or 13 years now that it’s actually been a big thing. But it’s nurse coaching. So it’s registered nurses who already have this big solid foundation of, of work and of studying things and then they can go get a certification in coaching. And then for me, I then added the emphasis of I’m really moving into nervous system regulation and all of that and mental wellness. And so that was my path to kind of bounce through all of these trainings and, and, and again, all of them have all of this deep work that you have to do personally to actually get the benefits. So I was doing that, doing that. And then what led to breath work was, was a conference that I went to and it was for just nurse coaches and it was a mentorship program that I was in. And we, we had all these events that we were doing. They were all very deep self development. And the, one of the instructors was offering this breathwork session and they didn’t say that much about it. And I was curious, I thought, okay, well I’ll go to this. And I went into the breathwork session and, and it absolutely blew my mind of what is possible and yeah, what’s possible in healing? What’s possible in a, in a sober state to do with your mind. Because this type of breath work leads to a different state of consciousness. And as a result of the rapid breathing that we were doing in the session, I was able to all of a sudden have this third person perspective of my life. And I could see that here’s my rut that I’m in. And it was like I was looking down into it and I could see all of these things that had led to me getting in the rut that were keeping me in the rut. And I could even see pads out. And the theme of all of it, above and beyond everything else, was that it turned out and I had no idea I was a control freak. And of course, all the work that I’ve done, this makes perfect sense now, but at the time, I didn’t know that and I didn’t realize how much like essentially all of my energy, all of my just everything, everything I did on a daily basis was trying to exert control on my external environment. To make me feel safe.
Amy Stone [00:38:14]:
Yeah, to keep the nervous system calm. Sure.
D’Layne Benson [00:38:17]:
Exactly. And so I was trying to control my husband. I was trying to control my stepson. I was helicopter mommin him. I was trying to control my in laws, I was trying to control my parents. I was trying to control every aspect of life. I mean, work, everything. And I could see the control as like a plaque on me. I was just covered in this plaque that was control. And while I felt the control was giving me safety. Yeah, it was actually the thing that was keeping me from living a beautiful life and thriving. And so the final part of the breathwork session was me breaking out of that plaque and just, finally letting it just shatter around me and even like soak into the earth. And. And it was. It was a remarkable experience and something I didn’t even think was possible. And that started a whole new trajectory of yes, nervous system is my thing. I’m going to help women understand all of these. These freeze responses and all these things that we do. But then breath work as a means to help you break out of it really spoke to me. And so that’s why I started to then pursue breath work and learning everything I possibly could about that.
Amy Stone [00:39:29]:
All right, so we’re going to come back to breath work in a second, Delane, but I want to go deeper, a teeny bit deeper on this story. So at this point, you mentioned you are working on yourself. You’re examining your identity and your role in the larger picture of your family and your community and your. At the time you go to this conference, it sounds like you already had become aware that you were experiencing the freeze response. So is it on your pitch you said, I’m not sure if I have the timing right, so you can correct me. You said, the year became a reckoning. The collapse from my over functioning collided with the hormonal and emotional shifts of midlife forcing me to see that my people pleasing and perfectionism weren’t strength. They were survival patterns that no longer served me. And I realized it was they couldn’t keep living in constant crisis mode. So the question is a little bit more about how you came to understand that you were over functioning and people pleasing and in the freeze mode. Was it something you realized just on your own that was putting pieces together from your research, or was it something that somebody outside that a mentor or a coach or a therapist or a coworker pointed out to you? How did you become aware of that?
D’Layne Benson [00:40:36]:
It was, it was really piecemeal in figuring all of those pieces out. I think that generally speaking, a lot of it came from my trainings. They weren’t necessarily talking about the people pleasing and perfectionism, but they were more talking about patterns that we get put into. And so that’s where I started to see like this, I started to see this theme of over functioning. And then through all of my different studies, it was kind of like, oh, perfectionism. I’m seeing ties from freeze response and overachieving to this and to nervous system. And I just started drawing all of these little lines. And, and that is. I haven’t studied human design or anything like that, but I did get a reading once just because I was curious about it. And it is fascinating. And my reading was that that is my number one gift is, is drawing lines between patterns. And so that’s, that’s. It feels like that was kind of a, a natural progressive thing that I did just because I love patterns. And, and that’s always been my thing. And. Yeah, and it continues to even be like when I think I’ve got this all figured out, then I go and study something else. And then I draw 10 more lines from the pattern. And I think, oh my gosh, there’s another layer to this. And that’s what’s so beautiful, is that you keep discovering the next layer. Every time you get something kind of figured out, which it’s really not, then you get to discover, okay, here’s the next pattern.
Amy Stone [00:42:12]:
So, yeah, and sometimes people say it’s like peeling an onion, which I think is a terrible metaphor because there’s not a prize in the middle of the onion, but it does have layers. And the thing that I, for the folks that are listening, I think that is helpful about this is that this was you on your journey of life, researching things, picking up certificates, and beginning to see pieces of you reflected back in what you were learning and put it together. It wasn’t that you opted in to be coached by some, you know, guru who then said, this is your, this is your diagnosis. And so which is another way to do it. It works both ways, but that’s the way. So I appreciate you giving that reflection. All right, so let’s talk about breath work because show has a broad audience, people have a lot of different perspectives. And I want to take a moment and bring us all to the same page and have you share with us what you mean when you say breath work. Because I think for a lot of people we’re thinking of like, you know, three deep breaths. So.
D’Layne Benson [00:43:11]:
Right. That is the common conception. And, and there’s such benefit in that too. I don’t want to, I’m going to talk about my specialty, which is transformative journey breath work.
Amy Stone [00:43:23]:
Okay.
D’Layne Benson [00:43:24]:
However, I don’t want to minimize the power of simply feeling your body, taking deep breaths and what that can do for your mental state at any given moment. But that’s my little side thing. So, yeah, what I, what I specialize in, as I said, is transformative journey breath work. And it is again, a study of a bunch of different breathwork traditions. And then I kind of made the patterns that I saw that I loved and that I felt were the most beneficial. And also making wanted to make it trauma informed so that it’s not something that’s overwhelming for people to experience. And I kind of put it together into my own thing. And essentially it is in its, like most deep down, what, what really happens in your body is. It’s a form of hyperventilation. It’s perfectly safe to do. But when you do this, it can lead you into a different state of consciousness. And by that, which is extremely hard to explain if you haven’t felt it before, it essentially means that you’re turning off what I like to call your. Your day to day brain. And, and most of us were in this survival mode. We’re in checking off the boxes and we’re just go, go, go, go, go. It’s helping a lot of that kind of take the, the back seat and moving into a beautiful exploration of where are you now? What are you feeling now? It can be feelings, it can be colors, it can be images, it can be all sorts of things that come up when you do this. And a lot of it is also a process of learning as well. Like the first time I did it, I had a really incredible experience. But that’s not the case for everyone because. And this kind of hints into Something that you had been talking about. I’d already been doing work on myself, I’d been doing self development work. And so I had no resistance to opening myself up to this experience, really breathing hard and seeing where it takes me. And I have people from every end of the spectrum. I have some that come in, they’ve done no self development work. They just heard that this is really interesting and they want to explore a different form of consciousness. So they show up and they may have the big wild experience, or they may just see some beautiful colors and feel really relaxed by the end of the session.
Amy Stone [00:46:02]:
Okay.
D’Layne Benson [00:46:03]:
And so that’s what, that’s what’s so challenging about it, is that every session is different, every person is different, and you can’t have any type of expectation on it. It’s simply a way of turning off some of the parts of your brain that can govern safety, can govern your daily life. Letting them just chill out and have a really incredible experience. That the way I frame it is very healing for you. It could be relaxing, it could be showing you a bit of insight. It could be letting go of pent up emotions. That’s a big one with my overachieving women because I tend to draw a lot of them in for that experience. And, and it’s. We’ve stuffed things down and stuffed things down and stuffed things down. And now you can actually let some emotions flow. And through all of it, the process is working toward helping you be able to be present in your body, helping you to see your patterns, your challenges so that you can work on them. And overall, my goal for people is just to get them to a point where through this work they can start to see more joy and more ease in their life and even connecting to their purpose. And so that’s kind of what we shoot for. But my apologies because it is really difficult to explain.
Amy Stone [00:47:30]:
No, I think, I think so. I mean, I think that was good. I think it was all right. How is your life different today? We’re going to talk about what you do today as a career and stuff like that. But before we do that, how is your life different today than it was in 2021? How has the decision to go on this journey and the choices you made, how has that impacted actual change in your life?
D’Layne Benson [00:47:54]:
That’s a great question and it’s really interesting too. I. I recently had a. A session with a coach that I see privately, and I had been working with her for two years and she said she wanted me to compare two years ago to my current situation and the really interesting conclusion that we came to was I am completely out of the hospital now. I’m self employed. So there’s a lot more uncertainty in my life. My income is not quite replacing my nursing income yet. It’s getting there, but still a work in progress. Benefits that’s stressful, especially with everything happening with the healthcare exchange and all of that. Okay, there’s another layer of stress and then like essentially everything else is kind of the same. But that being said, I am completely different and my interpretation of everything is completely different. So even though I’m making less money and I have a lot more stressors, if you just look at it through a financial lens, sure. I feel incredibly abundant. I feel very lucky to have the things, the privilege that I do. And that would not have been what I would have told you all that time ago. I would have said every day is so stressful. I don’t know how I’m going to make all this work. I don’t know how I’m going to balance everything. It seems like it’s just one bad thing after another. And instead my view has completely changed to no, it’s this is beautiful. I am so privileged and of course I have challenges, I acknowledge those. But I feel so lucky to be where I am and so happy to be working toward my purpose and have so much more ease and so much more joy and be present. Oh, there’s a huge one. Being present with my family. That’s another thing I never did. Everything was so achievement oriented that I couldn’t be comfortable sitting with my family. Back then if we were sitting and watching TV together. I was horrified at the fact that like I’m just sitting and not doing anything. So I would need to be finding a task to do or even doing a craft or doing something because I’ve got to be busy and staying busy during this time. And I would be so checked out of spending quality time with my stepson, spending quality time with my husband. And that has completely shifted now. And when, when I’m with them because I’m so intentional with my time is like work time is work time. It stays in that bubble and then I draw a close to it and then family time is family time and it’s all in. There’s no phone, there’s no distraction, there’s no project, there’s no thing that I need to do. It’s just really deeply connecting with them heart to heart and that all has played out to just be so much more happy in all of my relationships.
Amy Stone [00:50:57]:
That is fantastic.
D’Layne Benson [00:50:59]:
Yeah, it’s lovely that.
Amy Stone [00:51:00]:
No, that you very clearly explained. Because sometimes, I mean, you mentioned that describing the work of breath work was difficult to describe, but sometimes transformations be difficult to describe, and I think you did a great job. All right, so in a second, we’re doing the final questions, but I want to give you a chance to tell people, you mentioned that you’re out of the hospital, you’re in business for yourself. I want to give you a chance to tell people specifically what you do these days and how they can connect and follow you online.
D’Layne Benson [00:51:27]:
Great, thank you. Yeah, so I have a. A business now that has essentially two parts. One part is I teach that transformative journey, breathwork. I do classes and workshops both in person, in my local community and online, and I explore a variety of different topics, but often they are focused on self development, on these patterns that we see within women. I do a lot that are very female focus, and I do have ones that are just for people who are curious about breath work. And it’s men and women are invited, all of that. So it’s a little bit of a spectrum of different things. And then on the other side, I do coaching that is very specific to helping the perfectionist people pleasing and overachieving women move out of overwhelm. And it is the deep work that I had to do to get to this point, to see the patterns, become aware of them, and then start to do all the interventions that you need to do to move out of that stage and then be able to feel joy, be able to get your energy under control where you’re not just exerting all your energy on everything but you. And to even learn how to feel your feelings, learn how to learn how to decide how you feel about to whatever it is. Because that’s like so many of the women that come in, they don’t even know what they want. I say, what do you want? I have no idea. Well, we’re going to get you to that point. It’s just going to take time to help you feel comfortable and safe in your body. And then you get to start to feel into those things that you want and need. And so, yeah, that’s my. My other bit of work. And I do that work virtually exclusively.
Amy Stone [00:53:02]:
All right, very good. Shout out your website so that people who are listening will hear it. It will be in the show notes and all of those places, but go ahead and tell us where people can find you.
D’Layne Benson [00:53:12]:
So my website is. I’ll just spell it.
Amy Stone [00:53:15]:
You can just say it because the link will be oh, it’ll be a link there.
D’Layne Benson [00:53:18]:
Yeah. So it’s www.delainebensonwellness.com, and that does have all of my social media links on there too.
Amy Stone [00:53:24]:
Perfect. All right, so you have a special offer for the audience, which is called Breathe youe Way Back to Joy and Balance. It’s a virtual transformative Breathwork class. You can use the code imperfectadulting at checkout to join one live Breathwork class of your choice, completely free, which is a very generous offer. Thank you very much. There’s a link in the show Notes which is to Delaine Benson Wellness. I totally recommend that people look in the show Notes, but also subscribe to the Imperfect Adulting email newsletter, because then the links just come straight into your email box and you can click on them, which is really great, especially with Delaine’s name, because the spelling is maybe not what you think it’ll be. So there you go. That is a very generous offer. I want to say thank you very much for that. Delaine, are you ready for the final three questions?
D’Layne Benson [00:54:08]:
I’m ready. Let’s do it.
Amy Stone [00:54:10]:
All right. Let’s do it. Do you have a favorite streaming network or app for TV and movies, and if so, what’s your first choice?
D’Layne Benson [00:54:21]:
I feel like lately I’ve been on an Apple.
Amy Stone [00:54:24]:
Okay. Apple tv.
D’Layne Benson [00:54:25]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:54:26]:
Yeah, that’s like. There’s a lot. There’s a lot.
D’Layne Benson [00:54:28]:
There’s a lot.
Amy Stone [00:54:28]:
There’s a lot. And it depends. There’s a lot, and they seem to change. Like, it’s like. The worst is when you find one and you go and they’re like, you have to log in or open your account. You’re like, I’m really sure I’m already paying for this. What would the password be? All right, so if you go to the grocery store hungry, which is a thing that they tell us not to do because we over buy. What is one temptation or indulgence that is likely to end up in your shopping cart? Is it going to be chips, candy, wine, cookies? What’s your grocery store Kryptonite? When you end up hungry that they’re.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:02]:
Hungry, it would 100% be chocolate.
Amy Stone [00:55:06]:
Chocolate.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:07]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:55:07]:
Okay. There you go.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:08]:
All right.
Amy Stone [00:55:09]:
Now, have you ever purchased anything off of social media, like off of an app? And if so, what was the product and did you like? It was a good. Was it a good purchase or not? Oh, my gosh.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:21]:
I purchased so many things off of it. It’s like my guilty thing. I feel like they know me.
Amy Stone [00:55:26]:
Like, how did they get in my head.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:28]:
Oh, my gosh. What is the. I’m trying to think of a good one. Of course. I can’t think of anything right now. The only thing I can think of is I did get a It’s a planner that has just beautiful art, and it has lots of. It’s a soulful woman calendar.
Amy Stone [00:55:49]:
Okay.
D’Layne Benson [00:55:49]:
And so it has, like, all this beautiful art, and then it has great quotes and that are inspirational and kind of feeling that soul within you. And so, yeah, that’s the one I can think of.
Amy Stone [00:55:58]:
There you go. And social media fed that to you, and you’re like, yes, please send it to me right away. I love it. All right, that’s it. Delaine Benson, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show.
D’Layne Benson [00:56:11]:
Thank you.