How to Nurture Yourself When You’re Outside Your Comfort Zone
December 15, 2025
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In this “Best Lessons of the Year” episode of Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, we look at how to nurture yourself when life feels intense, your nervous system is on high alert, and you’re being nudged (or shoved) outside your comfort zone – all while trying to keep a bright holiday smile on your face. […]
In this “Best Lessons of the Year” episode of Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, we look at how to nurture yourself when life feels intense, your nervous system is on high alert, and you’re being nudged (or shoved) outside your comfort zone – all while trying to keep a bright holiday smile on your face.
This recap weaves together two big threads:
A solo cast clip about what happens when we slip into a win/lose mindset during conflict
A conversation with adventurer Eli Martinez, who literally lives outside the comfort zone in the wild, swimming with sharks, whales, and wild animals most of us only see on screens
Together, these stories show us that learning how to nurture yourself isn’t about perfection, it’s about presence—especially when you’re stretched, scared, or standing at the edge of something new.
Learn how to nurture yourself when life feels intense, conflict flares, and you’re pushed outside your comfort zone. Gentle, practical tools to come home to yourself.
When “Winning” in Conflict Means Everybody Loses
In the solo clip, I unpack what can happen in intimate relationships when our nervous system flips into fight mode. One minute we’re talking to someone we love; the next minute, they feel like the enemy.
Once we decide we have to win, we automatically assign the other person the role of the loser. And when a loved one becomes “the loser,” the relationship becomes a battleground instead of a place of safety.
This is where learning how to nurture yourself really matters.
Instead of:
Proving a point
Building a case
Replaying old hurts
We can begin to:
Notice when we’re flooded
Take space before we say something we can’t take back
Ask, “What do I really need to feel cared for right now?”
A lot of conflict isn’t actually born in the moment of the argument. The line in the sand was usually drawn way earlier—through history, past relationships, and family patterns. When you’re outside your comfort zone emotionally, in a hard conversation, exploring how to nurture yourself might look like:
Naming what’s happening (“I’m really activated right now.”)
Separating this moment from old pain
Remembering this is an exchange, not a courtroom drama
How to Nurture Yourself by Reconnecting with Nature
Then we pivot to the wild with Eli Martinez. On paper, you’d think: what does an adventurer who swims with whale sharks and anacondas have to do with conflict and emotional health?
A lot, actually.
Eli talks about the power of sunsets, of being truly present to the natural world, and how stepping outside comfort zone in nature reconnects us to something ancient, wise, and steady inside ourselves.
Nature is one of the present and consistent teachers of how to nurture ourselves:
Watching a sunset
Sitting by water
Going for a walk outside
Looking up at the sky instead of down at your phone
These are not fancy practices. But they’re incredibly regulating. When we slow down enough to notice the rhythms of the world around us, we remember:
I’m part of something larger.
I don’t have to manage everything.
I can listen instead of forcing an outcome.
That is also what it feels like to live outside your comfort zone in a healthy way—brave, tender, and awake, not reckless or numb.
Letting Reality Be Different Than the Dream
I share my own story of swimming with whale sharks (pictured here) and how different the real experience felt compared to the fantasy I’d been carrying since childhood.
The dream: magical mermaid energy, eye contact with a gentle giant, instant soul connection. 🧜♀️
The reality: murky water, fish eggs, adrenaline, exhaustion, and a body that did not know what to do with that much awe and fear at once.
The truth: a mix of both my dream and the reality of the experience. I made a dream come true and it’s impact will be with me forever.
This is another lesson in how to nurture yourself: letting reality be different than the vision without deciding you’ve failed. When we’re outside comfort zone—whether that’s in the deep ocean or a hard conversation—our job isn’t to control the moment.
Our job is to:
Stay curious
Notice what we’re feeling
Let the experience shape us, instead of forcing it to match the script in our head
The Same Body Carries You Everywhere
One of my favorite insights from this episode is that your internal experience is the same in both arenas:
Sitting across from someone you love in a hard conversation
Standing at the edge of something wild and unknown in nature
In both cases, you:
Have a vision of how you think it will go
Feel a rush of fear + excitement
Step into something you can’t fully control
Learning how to nurture yourself is learning how to be with that internal rush—without abandoning yourself or attacking someone else. It’s what allows you to walk outside your comfort zone and still feel like you’re on your own side.
Closing Encouragement
If you’re noticing patterns in conflict, or you’re craving more adventure and aliveness, you’re not broken. You’re human. And you’re learning.
You are allowed to take up space, to step away when you’re flooded, to sit under a sunset, to whisper, “This isn’t working—and I’m willing to try something new.”
That is what it looks like to practice how to nurture yourself, especially when life takes you outside comfort zone again and again.
Key Takeaways
How to nurture yourself in conflict: Step out of win/lose, get curious, and remember it’s an exchange, not a trial.
How to nurture yourself outside your comfort zone: Use nature, breath, and small pauses to regulate your nervous system.
Lessons from the wild: Watching sunsets, swimming with whale sharks, or simply walking outside show you how to release control and receive wonder.
Bravery in relationships & adventure: The same body, the same heart, and the same nervous system carry you through both. Learning how to nurture yourself is what helps you stay grounded in both worlds.
👉 If this episode resonates, share it with a friend who might also need this reminder. And don’t forget to subscribe so new episodes find you—no chasing required.
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DANIELLE IRELAND, LCSW
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[00:00:08] Hello. Hello, and welcome to Don’t Cut Your Own Bang’s. Best Lessons of the Year. This is a special recap series where I am taking and pulling some of the most poignant, powerful, soul shifting or thought provoking moments from the podcast this year, and bringing them all into one bite-sized little package this December, because honestly, we need life to feel a little easier, a little less stressful, and.
[00:00:32] If you’re anything like me, as is often the case, the best lessons bear repeating. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, God, how did I find myself here again? Or didn’t I already learn that? And the honest truth is you probably did. And yes, you might be repeating it again, but that’s okay. You’re human, you’re not alone.
[00:00:52] And we’re gonna recap together and we’re going to make sure we really got the lessons because dang it, these are good ones. This month I’m bringing curated highlights from some of the episodes that resonated most , either the episodes that I got the most feedback on, the most questions about, or ones where people were like, yes, that that was the thing that I needed and I didn’t know that I needed, or I needed save that and put it on my wall and put post-it stickers everywhere just to make sure it’s always in front of me.
[00:01:19] I’ve got you. I’ve got you covered ’cause it’s here. Every week you’re gonna get a mix of top insights from my solo cast, highlights from my most impactful interviews and threads of wisdom that tie it all together. Consider this a cozy end of your reflection tied in a beautiful podcast bow. This week we’re looking at two powerful themes that on the surface may seem unrelated, but do tie together in a surprising and beautiful way. One is a clip from my solo cast, which is what really happens when we get stuck in a win lose mindset. In conflict, particularly in intimate relationships.
[00:01:51] It could be any relationship, but in this case, I think we’re really talking about our intimate relationships. and two, the deeper wilder, more instinctual wisdom that we reconnect with when we are out in nature. We are starting with a clip from my solo cast when winning means losing, followed by highlights from my conversation with Eli Martinez. together these remind us of how easy it is to lose ourselves in the push to be right and how possible it is to find ourselves by reconnecting with wonder curiosity in the natural world.
[00:02:21] In this solo cast clip, a couple of highlights that I think are really helpful to kind of tease out how quickly a loved one can become an enemy. Once our nervous system floods and we are really activated in our fight response, because once we decide that we have to win, that automatically puts the other person on the losing side and it puts them in a position.
[00:02:42] This may sound a little dramatic, but it makes them an enemy. When you are trying to find a resolution in conflict, which I’m gonna give us all the benefit of the doubt and say we’re all trying to find resolution, but maybe that also gets conflated with wanting to feel heard, wanting to feel validated, wanting to know on some level that we’re understood in our need to be heard and our need to be right with that cuts us off from.
[00:03:06] Is the underlying current, which is this is an exchange. This isn’t a one-way conversation. This is a give and take that both of us are playing a part in, and we can lose that when that wall goes up. another one that really stood out to me in this clip was the momentum that builds with disagreements. It never actually starts the moment the argument is happening, or the challenge has happened. That line in the sand was probably drawn. A while back, and it’s harder to know when you’re actually in the throes of a tense conversation, how much history you’re bringing to it or how present the challenge is, and if you have that opportunity to get some of that clarity to see how much of this is about this moment, how much of this is about. The past, the history, maybe even family of origin, because to really get clarity and to come back to one another, it’s almost better to separate those two conversations in this moment.
[00:04:00] This thing you did affected me this way and it felt that much more intense because of X, Y, and Z in my history. But again, let’s look at the clip. We can always continue this conversation later. Again, the best things in life, bear repeating.
[00:04:16]
[00:11:46]
[00:11:49] Stepping out of our win or lose dynamic isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom. Because in the pursuit of making somebody wrong, it almost always puts us in a defensive position too. When we can layer a little compassionate curiosity into conversations with loved ones, particularly challenging ones, it gives us an opportunity to step out of a win-lose dynamic and into a deeper sense of wisdom. And that idea beautifully sets up this part of my conversation with Eli Martinez, because when you’re in the wild trying to win against nature.
[00:12:21] Ultimately sets us up in a losing position collectively. when you connect with nature versus resisting it, that connection is also when magic happens, when transformation happens, when beautiful things unfold. And we talk about some of that here. So now let’s dive in with Eli Martinez.
[00:12:40]
[00:27:45] I love this conversation with Eli Martinez. So much, and one of the things I love revisiting is this idea that watching a sunset it, it seems so wildly underrated because every day the sun comes up and every day the sun goes down and actually appreciating and admiring that cycle and that rhythm of nature that marks the start and the end of a day It.
[00:28:09] It kind of gets you back in sync with the rhythm of the natural world, which is so much of what Eli’s work is not only highlighting the beauty of it, but allowing and reminding us that we are a part of it, and the sunset is just a great, visual for that.
[00:28:24] The other thing that I love so much about this is being able to remind myself. My experience swimming with whale sharks, there is this, going back to the idea on the solo cast, this momentum that we bring into things that really matter to us.
[00:28:38] Whether it’s how we imagined it to be, or how we hoped it would be, or the plan that we set and locked into place in our minds. But when that plan or when that vision, or when that dream or imagination meets reality. It’s a little different. Not bad, not good. We’re not winning or losing. Right? It’s, it’s different.
[00:28:55] And the more we can allow ourselves to feel that vulnerable, I would say even tender slash brave sense of adventure, the more opportunity we have to allow our dreams to meet reality and then decide what we wanna do with that wisdom when it comes and. when we let ourselves be in awe to explore things that feel familiar, to see parts of the world that we thought were so separate from us, whether it’s a sunset or a great hike, or swimming with a gentle giant, like a whale shark, we can stop fighting for control and start listening more, listening more deeply to ourselves, to our intuition, to the people around us.
[00:29:35] And in that listening. We get a deeper sense of knowing and a deeper sense of who we really are.
[00:29:39] Now I wanna take a quick moment and shout out somebody incredibly special and dear to my heart. If cooking for the holidays feels overwhelming, or you just wanna bring a little bit more joy and intention into your kitchen, my dear friend Sarah Kleinknecht is your new secret ingredient.
[00:29:55] Sarah’s been a private chef for 20 years cooking for celebrities and families, and she shares simple game changing recipes, tips and techniques that make everyday meals feel nourishing and fun. She believes in food as medicine, in quality over quantity.
[00:30:10] And she says, that looks so yummy. This. She truly does that a lot. And honestly, it is so yummy. I cannot get enough of her food when I see her. And just a little side note, I try to cook for her when I see her because I wanna give her a break. But also selfishly, I’m like, can you just cook for me please?
[00:30:27] Like, I know you’re off the clock, but your food is so delicious when you sign up for her annual substack subscription, you’ll get a free 30 minute consultation with Sarah where you can ask her literally anything, meal planning, nutrition, organizing your kitchen, or even a perfect party planning menu.
[00:30:42] She bails me out. Honestly, every Thanksgiving I have to be reminded of cooking time, Bri time, baking time. She just has an organizational mind that I don’t, and I appreciate so much. Make sure to visit the link in the show notes to connect with Sarah to bring more joy into your kitchen this season.
[00:30:58] Both of these clips today dealing with conflict and nature point to the same truth, that learning to trust yourself is an ongoing practice. Listening to your needs isn’t selfish, and it’s ultimately how you find your way back home to your center.
[00:31:12] Sometimes the bravest thing that you can say is, this isn’t working, and I’m willing to try something new.
[00:31:18] Relationships are brave. That’s why I loved talking about conflict and jumping into the great unknown with an adventurer like Eli Martinez. You may, when you look at his Instagram feed or look at his YouTube videos of doing incredible things like swimming with anacondas and alligators and orca whales.
[00:31:35] How does that. Have anything to do with conflict, and I can say as someone who has experienced my own version of both of these environments deeply in the trenches and conflict in my personal life and relationships, and stepping into the wild in my own way, what you feel internally, physiologically like what you feel in your body is the same.
[00:31:56] You have a vision in your mind of how you think it will be. Then you’re confronted with the real moment. You feel the rush of maybe a perceived threat slash excitement of stepping into something new and then you step into an unknown experience. whether that is between you and another person that you love, where you’re trying to find a new way of understanding, a new way of connecting, or whether that’s stepping into.
[00:32:17] some beautiful remote part of our world both require their own type of bravery, but the internal environment in you is what’s carrying you into both of those encounters. So whether you need a little bit more bravery and connection in your relationships, or you’re ready to answer the call of an adventure, you can check out the link in the show notes where both of the full length episodes are saved for you But if not, enjoy this bite-sized nugget. I hope that you have an incredible day and. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and sharing this time with me. It is a treasure every time I get to record an episode and get to continue this conversation and grow this community with you. Please remember, before you hop off to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast.
[00:32:57] It helps it grow, it helps it connect, and I want to hear from you. You can email me at da******@*************nd.com in the subject line. Bangs, put bangs in the subject line so I know what it’s pertaining to and hit me up with questions, comments, feedback. You can always comment on the podcast too, but if you wanna message me directly and say, Hey girl, can you talk more about X, Y, and Z?
[00:33:17] I will say yes and please. So thank you so much for being here, and I hope you continue to have an incredible day.
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