Mental Nesting
Mental Nesting is the gentle space for sensitive adults who've outgrown the "hustle through your healing" mentality. Hosted by licensed therapist and writer Barbara Guimaraes, this podcast explores the messy, nonlinear reality of rebuilding your life after trauma, heartbreak, and the kind of personal upheaval that leaves you questioning everything.
If you're someone who's done therapy, read the books, and tried all the self-help strategies but still feel like you're figuring it out as you go—this podcast is for you. Barbara brings both her clinical expertise and lived experience of navigating bipolar disorder, relationship trauma, coming out later in life, and the quiet courage it takes to choose yourself when no one taught you how.
Each episode feels like a conversation with your most emotionally intelligent friend—the one who sees your sensitivity as a superpower, not a flaw. Through vulnerable storytelling, practical frameworks, and her signature "soft but unfiltered" approach, Barbara helps you reconnect with your inner child, build unshakable self-trust, and create a life that feels authentically yours.
This isn't about optimizing or fixing yourself. It's about learning to be human—messily, beautifully, exactly as you are. Because sometimes the most radical thing you can do is slow down, turn inward, and remember that healing doesn't have to hurt to be real.
Perfect for highly sensitive people, therapy graduates, late bloomers, and anyone who's ever felt "too much" in a world that demands you be less. Welcome to your emotional homecoming.
Mental Nesting
The Window Gets Shorter: Learning to Trust Your Filter Over Your Fear
What if that instant gut-punch feeling when someone criticizes you isn't the problem—but what you do with it is?
In this deeply practical episode, Barbara shares her journey from being someone who would change her entire life based on criticism to learning how to filter feedback through self-knowledge instead of fear.
For most of her life, criticism felt like survival. When someone said she was too loud, too curious, or too much, she'd immediately reshape herself to "correct" the mistake. She traced this pattern back to her mom's critical parenting style and realized she'd been recreating that energy everywhere—in friendships, relationships, and even how she saw herself.
But grad school changed everything. For the first time, Barbara was surrounded by people who genuinely wanted her around—not a perfected version of her, but her actual personality, stories, and curiosity. That experience sparked a 3-4 year journey of building self-knowledge through journaling, self-dates, and exploration that became her protection against unhelpful criticism.
You'll discover:
- Why your instant anxiety about criticism is normal (and might never fully disappear)
- The "window" between reactive panic and thoughtful filtering—and how it gets shorter
- How to distinguish between constructive feedback and uninformed opinions
- Four practical steps to build the self-knowledge that protects you
- Why the goal isn't to stop feeling, but to start filtering
This is for anyone who's ever changed themselves to fit someone else's expectations, people-pleasers learning to trust their own judgment, and sensitive souls tired of making everyone else's opinion mean something about their worth.
Because here's the truth: you don't have to wait until criticism doesn't affect you to start trusting yourself. You just have to notice the window between fear and choice—and keep shortening it.
Brief mentions of family dynamics and past relationship patterns
Thank you for being here, beautiful soul.
If this episode resonated with you, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a review—it helps other sensitive souls find this gentle space we're creating together.
Connect with me:
- Instagram: @mentalnesting_
- Substack: mentalnesting.substack.com
- Email: hello@mentalnesting.com
Join The Nest
The Nest is my free community where we have conversations like this and you don’t have to explain yourself as much.
Want to work together?
I offer gentle, nervous-system-informed support for therapy-experienced and sensitive adults. Learn more about coaching and community offerings at homecoming.mentalnesting.com.
Remember: Messy healing is still healing. You don't have to be done to be enough.
Mental Nesting Podcast: For sensitive adults who've outgrown the hustle
