How to break free from overthinking and people-pleasing

If you're someone who overthinks what you say, replays conversations or feels responsible for how others feel, this isn't a mindset issue – it's a subconscious pattern.

In this session, Aurore Prefumo will explain why awareness alone hasn't been enough to change it, and how to begin rewiring the deeper patterns driving self-doubt, people-pleasing and emotional exhaustion.

This is about moving from overthinking to feeling calm, clear, and confident in how you show up – in your relationships, your work and yourself.

Topics covered in this session

• The root of overthinking and people-pleasing: Why your nervous system keeps you stuck in these patterns – even when you know better

• The subconscious beliefs driving your behaviour:

• The hidden fears around rejection, being "too much" or not being chosen

• How to rewire for confidence and self-trust: A simple, practical shift to help you respond with clarity instead of anxiety

About the speaker

Aurore is a rapid transformational therapy (RTT) hypnotherapist, relationship and fertility coach who specialises in helping high-functioning adults break subconscious patterns that keep them stuck.

Through a blend of psychological insight and practical tools, she supports individuals in becoming calmer, clearer and more effective in business and in life.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Caitriona: Hello, everyone and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona and I'll be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.

I'm pleased to introduce Aurore Prefumo, who is a hypnotherapist and coach. In this session, Aurore will help you move from overthinking to feeling calm, clear and confident in how you show up in your relationships, your work and for yourself.

If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today's webinar will be recorded and we'll send a follow-up email to you with the recording and further resources later today.

Over to you, Aurore.

Aurore: Thank you, Caitriona. Hello, everybody.

Thank you for being with me today at lunch. We're going to talk about a topic that's important to all of us. It's about overthinking and really embodying confidence to lead our businesses and our lives.

This isn't just something for us personally. It's about understanding how we embody confidence and what gets us into overthinking.

Most people think overthinking is just a mental process, but it's more than that. It is often an automatic response to how we react rather than respond. Today, I'm going to show you why this happens and I'm also going to do a small exercise with you so you can experience how you embody confidence. So let's get going.

When we talk about confidence, it's not about lacking capacity. All of us here have the capacity to show up. Many of us are high-performing, very self-aware and able to get a lot of work done.

And yet we tend to overthink certain situations. We analyse, we hold back and we question ourselves. We replay conversations and overprepare to the point that we wonder, is this good enough? Is that presentation good enough? Am I ready to go to that meeting and be myself or is there something I still don't feel good about?

There is often a lot of holding back in meetings, in conversations and in relationships of all kinds. In many situations, we have a tendency to say yes when we actually want to say no.

All of these are reactive mechanisms and they cost us as solopreneurs, as employees and as human beings. They cost us in our family relationships, in love relationships, in friendships, at work and in terms of going for promotions. Overthinking carries a lot of cost.

Procrastination is a big one that I hear about often, not just in business, but in day-to-day relationships too.

With that also comes communication breakdown. Whether you are grounded enough to give clear messages and clear direction to your team or clear direction to yourself about where you want to take your business, you may find yourself hitting a ceiling and not knowing how to overcome it.

There is a lot of second-guessing and second-guessing doesn't help when it comes to showing up confidently for yourself, your business and your life.

Overthinking also takes a lot of energy. It creates a constant internal battle and leaves us emotionally drained. It is unsustainable. That is why so many people, whether employed or self-employed, feel overwhelmed. There is so much to do in such a short period of time.

We stay in constant doing mode without really getting anywhere. Please let me know if this is resonating with you.

When we look at the cost of overthinking, there is also reduced leadership presence. When you are very much in your head and overthinking, people notice it. People are very good at noticing when somebody does not feel confident, does not know where they are going or is not embodying themselves authentically.

If we compare different leadership styles, we can clearly see when someone is grounded and embodied and when someone is not. I'm talking here about leadership, not about whether someone is a good or bad person. A lot of this comes down to our internal programming and how we show up in life.

What we have to understand is that we cannot think our way out of a nervous system pattern. What we often call a survival mechanism has been ingrained from when we were very little. For some clients I've worked with, it was present from before birth.

Especially in first pregnancies or pregnancies that were especially stressful, the nervous system can become very sensitive to feelings and stress. I'm not blaming mothers or anyone else, but it is important to realise what we carry and how it shapes us.

That is what forms part of your survival mechanism and your own nervous system pattern.

You can't think your way out of it because it isn't just a thinking problem. It is a feeling problem.

When it comes to those nervous system patterns, you will notice that if you get triggered a lot, that is a reaction, not a response. It is a reaction to whatever happened before, often when you were very little, that led you to behave this way.

When we talk about conscious and subconscious awareness, we have only about five to 10% conscious awareness during the day. The rest is subconscious.

Conscious awareness is when critical analysis is active, when we are deliberately aware of what we are doing. But subconscious programming forms 90% to 95% of your daily behaviour.

That is how deeply impactful it is when it comes to owning your confidence. If you are carrying anxiety or doubt about how you show up in the world, it all comes down to that 90% to 95% of subconscious programming.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

When we look at that subconscious programming, it is not something we can simply switch off. If we could, we would not see so many people struggling with anxiety and we would not see increasing numbers of people relying on medication for it.

With technology, social media and constant digital stimulation, we are likely to see more and more unsettled nervous systems. That is why it is so important to feel grounded.

When I was talking about triggers, those are deeply embedded in our subconscious programming. The more triggered we are, the more wounded we often are.

It is important to look at those triggers because when we are triggered, we react. We do not respond. We react, regret and then reset. And then we do it again. We repeat the loop over and over again.

We think we have control, but in reality we often do not. Eckhart Tolle always talks about being in conscious awareness, but this is exactly why it is difficult. The subconscious programming is in charge most of the time.

So where does this show up for you? Would you like to show up differently in your business? Would you like not to procrastinate, not to get triggered so easily? Because that is possible.

Would you like to feel grounded, know yourself authentically and be clear about the direction you want to take in your work and your life?

When we understand that loop and recognise that it is a pattern, we can see that it will keep repeating until we break it.

It is very important to realise that this is not a personality trait. It is something we have taken on from many different experiences and influences.

The main purpose of these patterns is often to protect us.

They may protect us from getting into trouble as children or from losing a parent's affection. For those who lack confidence, it is often because they had to bend over backwards to get attention, love or approval.

We may have learned that our needs were not safely met, so our nervous system built strategies to survive. Those strategies become people pleasing, lowering our standards or holding back.

And now we use those same mechanisms in our personal life and at work. It creates a ceiling that we need to break through.

Recognising it is the beginning of change. Whatever internal programming we have had, it can be undone. It takes action and for some people, the more open they are, the faster the shift happens.

I want to share how I experienced this myself.

For me, it was anger. I had a lot of anger issues, really intense anger, to the point that my whole body would hurt and I would need to sleep to feel better the next day. If I was angry in the morning, I would carry that physical tension all day.

I used to be a semi-professional player and when I played, I could release that energy. But even then, because I had a bad temper, I kept myself to myself. I learned not to connect too deeply with others because connecting with others might trigger me.

So I held back. I kept myself to myself. And I was very lonely. In many ways, that meant I grew older emotionally at a much later age.

For me, it was important not to show that part of my personality to the world, because I wasn't proud of it. But when you're younger, you don't always understand what is going on.

Then I had my child and I couldn't play anymore because the ligaments in my wrists were gone and I no longer had that outlet for the anger.

I didn't know how to deal with it. I wasn't very pleasant with people around me, even with my child at times. There was a lot of shame around that and eventually I said to myself, you really need to sort yourself out. And I'm so glad I did.

For me, the anger had a lot to do with my relationship with my mum and dad. Even though they did the best they could, something stayed with me from when I was around seven, eight, nine years old. I felt that I couldn't get what I needed.

So I had to sort myself out. Using hypnotherapy and other tools helped me and hypnotherapy really helped me release the anger.

Now I notice the difference because I have a friend who used to trigger me a lot and now I don't get triggered. I can laugh with him, which for me was a big win.

When you spend decades hiding or not showing who you really are, then being able to laugh and feel at ease with someone who once triggered you is powerful.

That is why awareness alone is not enough. We all have insights, but insight by itself does not create change.

It is important to understand where things are coming from. The beauty of this work and what really allows you to break through the ceiling, is changing things at the root level.

That is when change actually becomes possible. That is when expressing yourself clearly and using your authentic voice becomes possible. I hope that makes sense.

What I want to do now is a very short future-you activation. If you're driving, please don't do this.

I'm going to ask you to make yourself comfortable and, if you can, close your eyes.

I want you to think of a situation from the past where you were not able to express yourself properly or in the way you wanted to.

See yourself in that moment. Notice the feeling inside your body. It might be in your chest, your shoulders, your head, behind your ears. Some people feel it in their feet. It can show up anywhere. Your body is always talking to you.

Notice that particular situation where you did not show up fully as you wanted to.

Notice how resentful you may have felt afterwards, how angry you felt afterwards. You knew you wanted to say certain things, but somehow they did not come out. You felt restricted.

Stay with those feelings and sensations in your body for a few more moments. Look inward. Notice the hesitation, the overthinking, the second-guessing.

And now I want you to think of yourself three months from now or six months from now or even one month from now. See a different version of you in front of you.

Notice that person's posture. Notice their shoulders. Notice the clothes they are wearing.

This is somebody who feels fully confident, who knows what direction they want to take their business and their life.

Hear them speak. How does their voice sound? When they talk to people, how do people respond? Notice the eye contact.

And what feelings do you get from that version of yourself? You can share later in the chat if you want to.

Now ask yourself a very simple question. What would that version of me do right now?

What do I need to do to become that confident version of myself one month from now, three months from now, six months from now? What actions would I need to take?

You will notice that the confident version is not just a different version of who you are now. It is a feeling embodied in how they hold themselves and how they respond to others and to the world.

When we break the automatic pattern and are able to embody confidence, we stop overthinking so much and start taking action. We stop procrastinating.

And that gap is not solved by more knowledge. It is solved by changing things at the root.

In your own time, you can put in the chat what came up for you in that future-you activation. You can open your eyes and come back to the room you're in.

Feel free to make a personal note for yourself about what action you need to take in order to get to where you want to go.

I hope that helped. I hope you found it useful.

That is the kind of deeper work I do with clients. Amazing things happen when we shift patterns. We get faster, clearer decisions. We become more grounded in our communication.

And very beautifully, we start setting boundaries without feeling guilty.

That mental noise becomes something you have control over. When you shift patterns at the root, you gain control over your thinking.

That is vital. My clients begin to have control over their thinking.

So we always have a choice. We can stay and manage the symptoms or we can choose to rewire at the root, embody confidence and see what is actually stopping us from showing ourselves to the world and from feeling fulfilled.

When we are confident, we move forward. We take action. We get what we want in life with much more ease and alignment.

In terms of how I support people with this work, there is an invitation to have a chat with me if you feel called to it.

I work mainly with the subconscious mind, often using RTT hypnotherapy, which is Rapid Transformational Therapy.

Usually, you only need one to three sessions to create meaningful shifts. Because we work with the subconscious, where the deeper answers lie, change can happen very quickly, often in a single session.

This is not coaching. It is not therapy that goes on for years. And it is not advice about what to do differently. The change is embodied internally.

The goal is to gain control over the thinking process.

That is when overthinking stops and you start to lead with clarity. You also get to have much more compassion for yourself as you recognise patterns and change them at the root.

I've included a couple of testimonials to show the kind of work I do.

In these examples, both clients experienced meaningful shifts in their businesses and their personal lives. One client experienced major changes within one week. She had been bullied at the age of two by family members and being able to feel indifferent rather than deeply triggered was a huge shift. Another client experienced meaningful change in her relationship and in how stuck she had felt.

What I offer is a one-month programme with a hypnotherapy session designed to bring change at the root so that you can break through the barriers and beliefs that have been holding you back from fully embodying confidence.

One hypnotherapy session with me is usually two to three hours long, although I have had one that was nearly four hours. There is also a phone call one or two days later, which is worth £100. You get two follow-up sessions to help solidify the change from the hypnotherapy session and that is worth £500.

You also get a personalised audio recording, which is vital in helping create new neural connections and that is worth £350. The transformation itself, of course, is priceless.

The full value of that work is £1,300. But today, you can book a call, not to pay immediately, but so that I can understand your concern and where you feel stuck. The one-month support is £497, which is a saving of £803.

So thank you so much for being with me this afternoon. I've really enjoyed being with you and talking about something I'm deeply passionate about, which is the subconscious mind and the things that block us and stop us moving ahead in life. I don't know if there are any questions.

Caitriona: Thank you, Aurore. If anyone has any questions, please do post them in the chat. In the meantime, I have a question here. If someone could only take one idea from this session, what would you want it to be?

Aurore: Knowing that you have far less control over your reactions than you think and having immense compassion for what you went through, is very important.

Many things happen to us and we often think they are there to bring us down or that they mean something bad about us. There can be a lot of guilt and shame.

So it is very important to have compassion for yourself.

Caitriona: Thank you. Sharon is just asking if you're sending us a video. The session is recorded, just to confirm, Sharon. Another question: how do you handle setbacks when old patterns resurface?

Aurore: That's a very good question. I often talk in my coaching about the lessons that are there in those moments.

Sometimes a setback is showing you whether you're going to stay in the old pattern or choose the new version of yourself that you are creating.

When a setback happens, I know this might sound strange, but I invite people to say thank you.

Say thank you and then choose to stay with the new version of yourself that you are creating instead of falling back into the old negative thinking of "I've had a setback, this isn't working."

So it's really about acknowledging it and moving forward with it rather than collapsing into it.

Caitriona: Thank you. I don't see any other questions coming in, but that feels like a good place to leave it there. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us on today's webinar. We will be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email this afternoon. Thank you.

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