The Liz Show: Executive Psychology & Performance Under Pressure

Hosted by Liz Louis (Elizabeth Louis)

Business Entrepreneurship Education

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Episodes

141

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

Welcome to The Liz Show: Executive Psychology & Performance Under Pressure. Hosted by Elizabeth Louis, an executive psychology advisor specializing in identity architecture, thinking traps, and performance under pressure, this podcast explores how high-performing individuals think, decide, and operate when the stakes are real. Episodes break down the psychological patterns that shape decision-making, confidence, composure, and leadership capacity. Topics range from cognitive distortions and identity structure to behavioral economics, high-performance psychology, and the internal constraints that limit expansion. Elizabeth also integrates biblical wisdom throughout many conversations, reflecting her own Christian worldview and the role faith can play in shaping identity, responsibility, and resilience. Some episodes focus deeply on psychological frameworks and performance science, while others explore the intersection of psychology, faith, and personal responsibility. If you're interested in understanding how internal architecture affects performance in business, leadership, and life, The Liz Show examines the patterns underneath how people think, act, and grow under pressure.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 29, 202642 min

Do You Believe You’re Worthy? Separating Self-Worth from Value

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Liz Show, Liz challenges listeners—especially high performers and executives—to examine the question “ Do you believe you’re worthy? ” with curiosity and somatic awareness, noticing emotions, bodily sensations, and assumptions about worth. She argues many high performers were conditioned by conditional or performative love to become “human doings,” tying worth to performance and constantly re-earning love and belonging. Liz emphasizes a critical distinction: worth is inherent and separate from value, usefulness, morality, or productivity, and she offers a hospital-bed illustration to expose inconsistencies in self-judgment. She encourages revisiting childhood-based beliefs, reframing experiences with compassion, and intentionally practicing a new “worthy” script, while noting intellectual insight often fails without emotional and spiritual integration. Liz shares her view that spiritual grounding—particularly her relationship with Jesus—helped heal “unlovingness” and the orphan-like sense of not belonging. 00:00 Am I Worthy 00:37 Go To Altitude 02:50 Define Worth 05:52 Human Doing Trap 09:41 Worth Versus Value 13:31 Hospital Bed Test 17:45 Childhood Belief Wounds 24:00 Relearn Your Self Talk 32:39 Unconditional Love Boundaries 37:22 Beyond Psychology Alone 40:14 Faith And Healing 44:42 24 Hour Worthy Challenge Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

October 22, 202627 min

The Hidden Assumptions Creating Friction in Your Relationships

Send us Fan Mail What happens when your good intentions create unintended consequences? A date with my husband turned into an unexpected conflict—and an even more unexpected psychological discovery. Using the same investigative approach I bring to my executive advisory work, I examined the emotions, assumptions, and invisible patterns influencing what happened. What I uncovered challenged a belief I'd been operating from for years without realizing it. In this episode of The Liz Show , I take you behind the scenes of that discovery and share a five-minute executive challenge to help you identify the hidden assumptions influencing your own leadership, decisions, and relationships. Because you can't change what you don't know is driving you. Listen now and discover what you might not be seeing. Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

October 15, 202621 min

The Power of Agreement: Align Your Identity to Lead Without Self-Sabotage

Send us Fan Mail What if the greatest resistance to your success isn't external—but an internal disagreement you haven't recognized? You can be highly accomplished, disciplined, and intelligent while unconsciously working against the very outcomes you want. In this episode of The Liz Show , Executive Advisor Elizabeth Louis explores The Power of Agreement : how internal conflicts between your beliefs, emotions, values, intentions, and behaviors can quietly undermine your decisions, leadership, relationships, and momentum. You'll discover why managing your behavior isn't the same as resolving the psychological patterns producing it, how past conditioning shapes your interpretation of reality, and what becomes possible when your internal world begins working in alignment. Your 5-Minute Executive Challenge: Identify a recurring contradiction between what you want and what you do, investigate the underlying belief, and design a behavioral experiment to test whether that belief is actually true. Awareness identifies the disagreement. Integration works to resolve it. Alignment enables more unified action. Ready to uncover the unknown patterns shaping your leadership? Explore Elizabeth Louis's Executive Root Analysis. Complimentary Session Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

July 15, 202629 min

Why a Scarcity Mindset Limits You in Negotiations

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains how a scarcity mindset—not a lack of negotiation tactics—often drives executives to undersell themselves, concede early, or lose leverage in high-stakes conversations. Drawing from her executive advising and performance psychology work, she argues that negotiations break down when unconscious belief systems and a dysregulated nervous system hijack performance, especially when scarcity shifts from “there’s never enough” externally to “I’m not enough” internally. She connects Type A patterns to two roots: fear of poverty and the belief that love is earned, which can create rejection dynamics, fear of others’ judgment, and toxic shame. Liz offers markers to spot scarcity-driven behavior (relief after conceding, post-hoc rationalization, and holding firm feeling unsafe) and concludes that real change requires healing identity-level beliefs, belonging, and trust in God—not more technique. 00:00 Scarcity And Negotiations 01:29 Why Skills Aren't Enough 04:04 Unconscious Beliefs Take Over 06:29 Defining Scarcity Mindset 11:26 Type A Roots And Fear 13:15 Rejection And Toxic Shame 18:23 How Scarcity Sabotages Deals 23:39 Three Warning Markers 26:11 Healing Worth And Abundance 27:12 Key Takeaways And Next Steps Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

July 8, 202611 min

Overgeneralization: The Thinking Trap Driving Toxic Shame (and How to Fix It)

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains overgeneralization as a shame-induced cognitive distortion that hurts performance and identity by turning a single incident into a sweeping conclusion, often marked by absolute words like “always,” “never,” “all,” and “everybody,” or by nominalization (making a process into a fixed “thing,” e.g., “my marriage is sick”). She describes thinking traps as typically showing up as self put-downs, catastrophic future beliefs, or critical regret-based thoughts, and notes that clients begin with a root analysis using five assessments to understand thought patterns and identity incongruence. Liz links overgeneralization to pessimism, reactive assumptions, perfectionism, critical self-talk, double mindedness, and toxic shame spirals that restrict life through rigid, grandiose “rules” about happiness. The antidote she offers is a three-column technique: evidence for, evidence against, and alternative conclusions to build mindfulness and reduce absolutist judgments. 00:00 Thinking Traps Intro 00:51 Three Shame Categories 01:56 Defining Overgeneralization 03:12 Nominalization Explained 05:00 Common Examples 05:55 Pessimism And Perfectionism 06:59 Toxic Shame Spirals 09:49 Three Column Antidote 10:30 Mindfulness In Real Life 11:21 Practice And Wrap Up Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

July 1, 202610 min

How All-or-Nothing Thinking Fuels Perfectionism, Fear of Failure, and Toxic Shame

Send us Fan Mail Liz breaks down the cognitive trap of all-or-nothing (either/or) thinking—seeing life as black-or-white—and explains how it increases suffering by driving rigid self-judgment and critical self-talk. Drawing on psychometrics work and her root-analysis approach, she frames thinking traps as symptoms that reveal deeper “weeds,” most often perfectionism, pride/need to be right, fear of failure, and difficulty giving grace, which ultimately trace back to toxic shame. Liz illustrates the trap with everyday examples and shows how it manifests as extreme self-evaluations with no room for mistakes. As an antidote, she recommends catching absolutizing language, repeating “there are no absolutes,” and shifting to spectrum-based thinking using percentages to stay in the gray. She also connects all-or-nothing thinking to grandiosity through both inflation and deflation patterns and urges listeners to track the linguistic cues that signal toxic shame at work. https://form.jotform.com/Elizabeth_Louis/what-thinking-trap-is-limiting-your Take the assessment: 00:00 All or Nothing Trap 00:38 Thinking Traps and Shame 01:53 Defining Black and White 02:34 Root Weeds Behind It 05:02 How It Shows Up 06:18 Antidote Stay in Gray 07:51 Think in Percentages 08:24 Grandiosity Two Modes 09:36 Spot the Root Signals 10:14 Closing Follow the Thread Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

June 5, 202611 min

Why You Feel Unsafe When Nothing Is Wrong

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains how trauma can leave you feeling anxious and unsafe even in objectively safe environments because the nervous system stays conditioned to detect threat based on what it has learned to expect. She describes how post-trauma bias toward threat involves the amygdala becoming more sensitive, the hippocampus mislabeling present situations as past danger (often called being “triggered”), and the prefrontal cortex becoming less effective under stress, alongside neuroception—automatic scanning for safety or threat. Liz outlines common real-time signs (tension, overanalyzing, assuming something is wrong, difficulty relaxing, waiting for the “other shoe to drop”) and how mislabeling these sensations can lead to control, self-doubt, and reinforced hypervigilance. She recommends regulating the body first, anchoring in the present, doing a reality check, staying when the instinct is to leave (when truly safe), and building new evidence through repetition, connecting this process to biblical themes and her course, “Healing Trauma: The Jesus Way.” Grab the Course Here: https://elizabethlouis.io/products/healing-trauma Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

June 3, 202629 min

Dissociation: The Invisible Trauma Response (How to Spot It and Come Back to Presence)

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains dissociation as an often-invisible trauma response that can persist from childhood into adulthood, allowing people to appear high-functioning while feeling absent from their own lives. She distinguishes dissociation from simple “zoning out,” describing it as a nervous system state shift triggered by perceived threat: trigger, sympathetic spike, inescapability judgment, prefrontal downshift, and time/sensation distortion. Liz outlines common signs (emotional and bodily disconnection, going blank in conflict, memory gaps, depersonalization, derealization) and emphasizes how intellectualizing can be a “brainy” form of dissociation. She discusses the costs—blocked connection, joy, clarity, and memory—and offers ways to catch early “pre-drop” cues and shift states through naming, orienting to surroundings, bodily anchoring, structured breathing, partial presence, and repetition. She also contrasts normal everyday dissociation with dangerous patterns and mentions her course, Healing Trauma the Jesus Way. Grab the course: https://elizabethlouis.io/products/healing-trauma Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

May 31, 202625 min

How Trauma Creates Micro-Avoidance (and Quietly Sabotages Your Potential)

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains how people often underperform not from lack of capability or discipline, but because trauma (including childhood trauma or more recent events) trains the nervous system for survival rather than expansion, creating subtle “micro-avoidance” that shows up as hesitation, overthinking, delaying decisions, and avoiding discomfort. She outlines three trauma-related shifts: a more sensitive amygdala that reads neutral cues as threats, a prefrontal cortex that becomes less effective under stress, and a nervous system that prioritizes certainty and control over growth—making pressure, visibility, and uncertainty feel unsafe even when they’re opportunities. Liz argues this creates an internal split between growth and safety, shaping identity and lowering standards over time. She recommends retraining in micro-moments by redefining discomfort, shortening the gap between awareness and action, regulating the body while acting, and building evidence through repeated follow-through, and she offers her course “Healing Trauma the Jesus Way” and one-on-one sessions. Book Your Needs Analysis Diagnostic Here: https://calendly.com/elizabethlouis/workwithme Grab the Course Here: https://elizabethlouis.io/products/healing-trauma 00:00 Why Potential Gets Blocked 01:29 Trauma Creates Hidden Patterns 03:26 Survival Brain vs Growth 05:25 Three Brain Shifts After Trauma 09:36 Uncertainty Triggers Avoidance 11:50 Micro Avoidance Explained 14:29 Avoidance Becomes A Habit 18:22 Identity Gets Rewritten 19:20 Four Steps To Retrain 23:01 Faith And Consistency 23:42 Final Challenge And Next Steps Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

May 29, 202617 min

Healing from S*xual Abuse Without Letting It Define You

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains how sexual trauma impacts the body, identity, and ability to feel safe and connected, living not only in memory but in the nervous system and conditioning beliefs like “intimacy equals danger.” It discusses how incest can create intense confusion and toxic shame because the violator is someone expected to be trusted, leading to adaptations such as avoidance, numbness, disconnection, or forcing intimacy while being internally absent. She outlines trauma neuroscience (amygdala activation, reduced prefrontal cortex activity, freeze/shutdown) and emphasizes that time alone doesn’t rewire the nervous system—repetition and retraining do. Healing includes separating identity from adaptations, catching early body cues, communicating with a safe partner, regulating in real time, building tolerance and boundaries, and reducing avoidance. She closes with faith-based encouragement and promotes the “Healing Trauma the Jesus Way” course as a mostly science-based, holistic approach. Grab the course: https://elizabethlouis.io/products/healing-trauma #sexualabuse #healing #sexualtrauma #trauma Support the show Please leave me a review on Apple Podcast! ***LET'S CONNECT:*** Checkout My Courses: Sign up for my Newsletter Website: Facebook: Tik-Tok - Instagram: Youtube: LinkedIn personal profile:

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