The Securely Attached Business: Which Wound Is Running Yours?

The Securely Attached Business: What Your Business Reveals

What if your business isn't creating your fear, self-doubt, or emotional triggers...

What if it's simply revealing what's already asking to heal?

In this episode of Into The Work, Michelle explores a powerful perspective that every soul-led entrepreneur needs to hear: your business doesn't create your core wounds—it reveals them.

Drawing on nearly 20 years as a psychotherapist, Michelle introduces the idea of the Securely Attached Business and explores how our attachment patterns quietly shape the way we lead, sell, serve, and respond to rejection.

If you've ever found yourself taking a "no" personally, overthinking a launch, struggling to let a client move on, or feeling emotionally attached to how others respond to your work, this conversation will help you understand why—and why it has far less to do with business strategy than you may think.

In this episode, you'll discover:

✨ Why attachment theory doesn't stop at relationships—it follows us into our businesses.

✨ The difference between caring deeply and clinging to outcomes.

✨ How three core wounds influence the way we build our businesses.

✨ Why entrepreneurship can become one of the greatest catalysts for healing.

👉 Take The Quiz!

What's the Core Wound Running Your Business... and What's Your  Soul-Level Gift Hidden Behind It?

You'll discover the core wound that's influencing the way you lead, sell, show up, and grow your business, along with the extraordinary gift waiting on the other side of your healing.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to join the mission.

Subscribe, leave a review, and help another soul-led woman discover this work. Every review helps these conversations reach women who are ready to heal deeply, trust their gifts, and build businesses that reflect who they truly are.

Topics discussed: attachment theory for entrepreneurs, core wounds, women entrepreneurs, business mindset, emotional healing, fear of rejection, people-pleasing, visibility, self-worth, nervous system, leadership, ethical sales, soul-led business, personal growth.

Transcript

0:47

Hi, welcome back to Into the Work. If you're new here, I just wanna give you a really heartfelt welcome. I'm really excited to have you come onto this journey, because I am on a mission to help women remember who they truly are, trust the gifts that they came here to share, And if this is you, to build a business that becomes an expression of your soul instead of your survival system, right? Because a lot of us are running off survival. So before we dive in, if these conversations in this podcast have been meaningful to you, I would love to invite you to join me in this mission. And you can do that simply by hitting subscribe, if you haven't already, and leaving a review. It only takes a few seconds. But it really can help other women, like-minded, soul-led women who really are out there stumbling and really want to heal and do the work and find their way into expansion and creating something really meaningful, and we can do that together. We can create a movement of women who are healing their past, trusting their gifts, and really building the business that they were here and meant to lead. And you know as well as I do, if you're listening to this podcast, that we need more women in leadership roles, more women out there creating this world that we're living in. So now, Let's jump into the show. Can I start by asking you something? Have you ever noticed how one person can hear the word "no" and simply move on like it's no big deal, while another person spends the next three days questioning what happened? W-Was everything okay? Did they do something wrong? And maybe you've lived it, where you've been the person who perseverates on something. Maybe you pour your heart into something, creating something. Or, you know that something that you did or created could really genuinely help someone or make a difference out in the world. You put it out there, and when nobody does anything with it, nobody purchases it, nobody responds positively to it, you're not getting that feedback that it's working. That can be so triggering to some of us, right? It's such a vulnerable place to be. A lot of times, um, people will come to me and talk to me and say, "Michelle, you know, I'm, like, struggling," because they got this rollercoaster ride that they feel that they're riding in this world. They're having conversations with people, and they're expecting there to be this beautiful relationship working together, and then the person just kind of drops off the face of the earth. And that isn't personal, and I'm sure as I say that to you, you're like, "Yeah, I can see that's not personal." But when you're in it and you're on the other side of it, if you've got some wounding that makes you a little bit vulnerable to someone abandoning you or leaving or disliking or judging or whatever your, you know, experience was growing up, we can really make us more vulnerable to these things. Think of that client that you absolutely love working with. Maybe you've worked with them forever, and then suddenly they decide to leave. And, you feel bad, and it's the same thing when somebody, unsubscribes from our emails. By the way, if you ever unsubscribe from my emails, I don't even check the unsubscribe list anymore. It's just, none of my business. I feel like if someone doesn't wanna be there, they don't wanna be there, and that's fine. And it's learning that people have a thousand reasons why. I unsubscribe from stuff all the time that I end up resubscribing to because I'm like, "Hey, wait, I wanna hear about that thing again." When we get so personally entangled in what we're doing and how we're being in our work and being so vulnerable, things can make us feel bad. You know, we wonder, "Did something go wrong? What did I do wrong?" And maybe we're embarrassed, but we're not even sure why we're embarrassed, What's fascinating to me is that another woman can have the exact same experience and simply think, "Eh, I guess that wasn't right for her, no big deal," and move on. And so two people, you know, one has more resiliency, and we talked about this in, in the, two-part series that I did on resiliency. But we're talking about these different emotional experiences where people would tell you, okay, one's more confident, or maybe they're saying, they'd say one person has a stronger mindset, or one person, like I said, is just more resilient. But after almost 20 years or so working as a therapist and now working for a number of years doing more and more work with women who are kind of doing this very thing, they're, they're building businesses and they're putting themself out there and they're being very vulnerable, I don't know that that's the only thing that's happening. I really think that it comes down to attachment, and l- just hear me out on this. I think we are looking at, if you've ever heard of the attachment theory, where you look at how somebody attached when they were a child to their caretakers, right? So did you have a secure attachment? Did you have an a- anxious attachment, a disorganized attachment? But these ideas about the kind of childhood we have, the kind of experience we have growing up and how that impacts us is also how we attach to other people. And I'm not gonna be talking all about that today. A lot of you probably are somewhat familiar with that. You can go ahead and Google it. But what I wanna look at And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, is I don't think we just leave that attachment style at home when we become entrepreneurs, right? So I think we bring it with us. We bring it into every conversation, every launch that we do, or, uh, all the, the nitty-gritties of our businesses, our sales conversations, our money conversations, our client relationships. Every time we hit publish on something or we have to do something that makes us uncomfortable, right? We don't suddenly become business owners who are separate from that little girl who learned what it meant to be accepted, rejected, loved, or maybe even overlooked. So we bring ourselves to our business, right? We bring ourselves out into the world in everything we do. Um, there's that statement by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Well, I think he coined it, actually, as Buddhist, but wherever You know, wherever you go, there you are. And we bring all of it. And so that's why business becomes such an incredible place for healing, and I call my business a lot lately my, my healing playground, right? Not because business creates our wounds, but I think the business reveals our wounds so I've been thinking about this because one of my greatest gifts my therapy career has given me has very little to do with just techniques. It's given me a completely different understanding of what it means to serve somebody. And this is what I think is really meaningful for you here today, and I really want you to stay with me because I think that you're going on... You're gonna catch my jive here. As therapists, we deeply, invest in our clients. You know, we celebrate them, we think about them after sessions. We try to have boundaries and not do too much of that, but we do. We generally want their lives to become better, right? And a lot of coaches I know do, too. But there's some specific things. You know, we're taught something incredibly important. Our job isn't to keep our clients. Our job is to help them heal, right? To actually allow them to be so strong that they walk away from us.. we don't possess them. They're not ours. They don't belong to me. And our job is to, to truly help them heal. Our job is to actually get them to understand how to do that healing on their own. And sometimes those two things go hand-in-hand, and sometimes they don't. But there have been many moments throughout my career where I've referred somebody or said, "Hey, I think you need, you need to go elsewhere because this is not really what I do. We do that not because we can't help them. We can probably. We could have a really meaningful experience. But if I refer somebody out, it's because. It's because I'm standing in integrity because someone else was simply maybe a better fit or whatever, right? Maybe they had a specialty I didn't have. Maybe they work in an area outside of my scope. Maybe they were exactly what the person needed in that season of life. And you know what? It's not a failure. That was service. So sometimes service is keeping them, and sometimes it's letting them go. It basically sends this message that your healing matters more than my need to keep you. And I really think when we're putting ourselves out there in sales and, and bringing in clients, I think that's also something that we need to stay in our integrity on, that, that we're here to be of service. Now, the realization has sort of stayed with me, and somewhere along the way, I found myself asking a different question: What would happen, if I really leaned in and built my business the same way? And so I really have done that. I mean, I've really, from the beginning, sort of asked myself, "What does it mean to get into this online world?" Because before I had an in-person practice for... I do still have an in-person practice for 10 years. But I'm sharing this because I've really had to look at, what does it mean to be out in the world selling to the masses? how do you put yourself out there and be of service and do that work not from fear, not trying to convince, not needing every person to choose me, but genuine service? I've heard a lot of people say, "Just detach from the outcome," and that is something that's true. Like, detach from the outcome, i, I love the saying, actually, that, my investment in you isn't the outcome, it's the process. And so when we get into the process, that's where all the deep healing stuff happens, and if we get too attached to what I think the outshot outcome should be,, then I'm starting to im- implode myself into your work, right? And so really, when it comes down to this, the work of how we put ourselves out there as these entrepreneurs, I think the goal that we wanna learn is how do I care without clinging? And there's a profound difference between those two things, obviously, right? So what does attachment look like in your business? I don't think it always looks the same way we imagined it, you know? I think it isn't always obvious either. Sometimes it simply looks like checking your emails too often after you sent it out because you're just feel- feeling anxious, or thinking about one person who just didn't, buy, never mind the five that did, or getting really caught up in the rejection process, the feelings that happen that come up for you that feel like rejection. And sometimes it's just even replaying a conversation in your head wondering, you know, did you say something wrong? Did you do something? None of those things make you bad or a bad entrepreneur, but they make you human. And what I've come to believe is that we're rarely attached to the outcome itself. I think we're attached to what we've made that outcome mean, and that's a very different conversation. So when someone says no, it's just information, right? Until your nervous system gives it meaning, right? Someone says no, it's black and white, yes or no. But until your nervous system gives it meaning, it really doesn't mean much, and that meaning that you're giving to it is usually much older than your business, okay? It's fascinating, really. As therapists, we're always listening to the story under the story. So someone comes in talking about a disagreement with their spouse, but after a while you realize that the real conversation isn't about the argument they had on Tuesday. It's about something much deeper. It's about the lifelong fear of not being enough or not feeling worthy or wondering if they're truly lovable. These are core wounds. And business works the very same way. So the sale isn't usually the story, right? The story is what the sale awakens. So maybe someone doesn't enroll in your program or, maybe a part of you immediately wonders if your work isn't valuable enough. Maybe someone questions your pricing and suddenly you feel the need to justify yourself, like you need to argue something. Or maybe a client decides it's time to move on and simply, you know, instead of honoring that season, you begin wondering what you could have done differently. And now, do you see how quickly we make those moments about us? And not because you're being dramatic or even fragile, really. I mean, you're just, we're human beings, and your nervous system has been collecting evidence your entire life about what it means to feel safe. So that's why I've become fascinated with I c- what I call our core wounds and how they're operating, and especially in, in the workplace, and particularly with entrepreneurs who really have to put themselves out there day in and day out Because after years of sitting with women in my therapy office, and now with women building incredible businesses, I keep seeing the same three stories. For some women, the story is about not feeling enough. They're constantly trying to prove themselves. Every achievement brings relief, but only a little while, right? Before long, there's another mountain to climb because somewhere inside, they're still hoping that the next accomplishment will finally answer that question: Am I enough, right? Everything from the external world has to tell them whether or not they're enough. For other women, it's the worthiness story. Being chosen becomes deeply personal. A new client, a speaking opportunity, somebody saying yes to an offer, it all feels wonderful, but not simply because it's good for business. It feels like confirmation that you're safe and you matter. And then there are women who carry that lovable wound, and they're often the women who give until they're exhausted. They have enormous hearts. They genuinely wanna help, but somewhere along the way, they learn that love is something you earn by being indispensable, by never disappointing anybody, so by making sure that everyone else is okay before you are. Now, these are three different stories, yet they often create the same behavior. That's why I don't spend much time judging behavior anymore. I'm far more interested in understanding the story that's driving that behavior. Because once you understand the story, something beautiful happens. You start asking, "Oh, wait, is that that old story again?" Right? You wake up and you start asking that kind of question, and that changes everything. It com- it creates just enough space between you and that pattern that you no longer have to become the pattern. You're not on autopilot anymore You can just notice it. You can appreciate that it was once trying to protect you. Um, there's a lot of beautiful work that you can do in there with these things and make a difference and totally become freer, and then you choose something different. To me, That's what actually healing looks like, and it's not becoming someone who never feels disappointed. It's becoming someone who no longer lets disappointment define them and, tap into that core wound and say something's wrong with you So maybe as you're been listening today, you recognize yourself in some of these patterns.. Maybe you've realized that you've been carrying far more than the work itself, right? That there's something happening underneath it that the work is triggering. Maybe you've seen that underneath the stress of, launching or selling or putting yourself out there or wondering what people think, you know, opening up that business and marketing it, there's actually a much older story quietly asking for you to be healed. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from today's conversation, it is this: that I believe your business doesn't create your wounds. It reveals them It reveals the places where you still look for someone else's yes to answer a question only really you can answer. It reveals the moment where one old story takes over and begins making decisions for the woman you're becoming, and so you start stunting your growth, right? You st- you can't really move forward because that wound is coming up and sabotaging you and keeping things smaller. And while that can feel really uncomfortable, I actually think it's one of the greatest gifts that entrepreneurship has to offer. Because once you can s- see the pattern, it's hard to unsee it, but you can also begin to change it. And that's exactly why I've been so excited to share what I've been creating behind the scenes. Over the past several weeks, I've been pouring my heart into developing something that I truly think can be helpful so that so many women can finally understand themselves in a completely new way. So it's really just a short quiz that uncovers two things. First, I've m- kind of manipulated it so that... And I'm telling you, I'm, I, I can say this to you because I think you get it. I have totally channeled the outcomes to every single one of these personalities. I've, I've really tapped in and opened up my heart and my, my field to open up to what it is that you really need to hear about yourself. And so there's a soul-level gift that gets shared for you about what you're here on this planet doing and the extraordinary way that you were naturally designed to lead or serve or make an impact. And the second is it identifies the core wound that's been quietly shaping the way that you show up in your business. I wanna help you to finally give language to patterns that have probably been confusing for you for years. Because once you understand the story underneath the pattern, like I said, you stop fighting yourself. You stop being in resistance to things. You stop creating, struggle, pain. You stop suffering. You stop wondering what's wrong with you, and you begin healing the part of you that's working so hard to protect you all this time So this quiz, this is your next step, and maybe you might even see yourself in a way you haven't before. So as we're closing here, I want point out, I'm gonna say this once more because I think that it's, uh, catchy and actually very important, that your business isn't creating your wounds. It's actually revealing them. Really, really sit with that today, and maybe, just maybe, it's one of the greatest gifts that's ever gonna, it's ever gonna give you. You never mind financial reward, never mind all the things that this thing hopefully becomes a living, breathing, beautiful extension of you, and in that process, in order for this thing to become this beautiful, big extension of you, you have to grow in such a way in order for that to happen. And so I'm really excited about this work. I hope you go check out the quiz. You're gonna see the link in the show notes because I really do believe that's the next step for you to go ahead and see how you feel, see what you get. I'd love to hear about it. Go ahead and reach out to me. I'm on Instagram, @michellepoverman, this will get you on my email list, so you can just hit Reply and let me know what you think, um, and I will get back to you. I'd love to hear from you. All right. So with that, have a beautiful week. Bye for now.