Women are the glue, the nurturers, the cheerleaders, the ones who make the magic feel effortless (even when it’s anything but). In this episode of Live Your Jam, Ellen names a “superpower” many women carry, attunement, the ability to read the room, anticipate needs, and hold emotional tone in families, communities, and workplaces.

And then she tells the truth, that superpower can work for you, and it can also quietly drain you.

Ellen explores how women are socially conditioned into roles that keep everything running, organizer, emotional anchor, peacekeeper, caregiver, the “operating system” of the household. The pattern is so normalized we don’t even see it until we feel exhausted, disconnected, and asking, “Where did I go?”

Ellen also connects chronic over-responsibility to the body, how stress and emotional suppression can show up physically over time. Most importantly, she offers a path forward that doesn’t require burning your life down. It starts with a simple pivot, take that same attunement you’ve used for everyone else, and turn it inward.

Because responsibility to yourself isn’t selfish, it’s stabilizing. And letting go of the “glue role” doesn’t mean you love less, it means you finally include yourself in the love.

You will learn:

• Why women so often become the emotional anchors at home, work, and in friendships
• What “the glue role” is, and why it’s so hard to step out of socially rewarded expectations
• The difference between emotional labor and mental labor (and why both are exhausting)
• How women learn attunement early, and why “connection equals safety” can become a lifelong pattern
• Why the body eventually speaks when you’re chronically over-functioning
• How to turn attunement inward with one question, “What do I need?”
• How to stop over-functioning without blowing things up, using gentle truth, boundaries, and full-body yeses
• A closing reflection to guide your next chapter, “What do you really want?”

👉 Watch the full conversation and subscribe for more stories about intuition, purpose, and living your jam.

We talk about:

• 00:00 Women’s roles, and the superpower of attunement
• 01:00 Women in caregiving professions, and why the percentages are so high
• 02:00 The “glue role”, organizers, emotional anchors, anticipating needs
• 03:00 Social conditioning, why stepping out of roles feels like swimming upstream
• 04:00 Motherhood and caregiving, when devotion blurs into self-disappearance
• 06:00 Invisible labor Part 1, emotional labor, what it is and where it came from
• 08:00 Invisible labor Part 2, mental labor, becoming the household operating system
• 09:00 Chronic stress and emotional suppression, the body’s warning signs
• 11:00 A personal story about stress, health, and what changed when life got quieter
• 12:00 How attunement is learned early, girls praised for harmony and emotional awareness
• 14:00 The superpower’s cost when it only goes outward
• 15:00 Turning attunement inward, “What do I need?”
• 18:00 Over-functioning, noticing what isn’t yours to carry
• 19:00 Precious energy, how doing everything for others steals time from you
• 20:00 Boundaries without drama, telling the truth gently, full-body yeses
• 22:00 Closing reflection, “What do you really want?”

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