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Blooming With Marina – When Sensitive People Stand Up For Themselves: How to Set Boundaries and Stay In Your Power

Have you ever left a conversation or a conflict situation wishing you’d said or did something differently?

Maybe a comment landed sideways, a request felt off, or someone crossed a definite line, and instead of standing up for what you wanted or needed in the moment – you just smiled, nodded, and moved on to keep the peace and avoid the conflict?

Realizing later, that… you didn’t actually let it go?

You feel it in your tight jaw, the tension in your shoulders, an emotional heaviness in your stomach, and thoughts on an endless loop about how you should have asserted yourself better…

Resolving Conflict Can Be…Complicated.

For many sensitive people, conflict doesn’t arrive cleanly. Often, it shows up as freezing, fawning, over-explaining, or taking on more responsibility than is actually yours to hold.

Maybe you experience both empathy and discomfort because you understand the other person deeply, and care about their point-of-view. You might also want to give them the benefit of the doubt, cause they're a fellow human, but at the same time you know something in your contract was violated, and you don’t want to excuse it.

It might even be hard for you to express anger. Like it feels like a forbidden feeling. Or perhaps, you just need more time and space to process, and you’re not sure how to advocate for yourself without seeming dramatic, unkind, or difficult.

When you’re sensitive, it’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed by the intensity of your nervous system reaction to injustice, or feel unsure about how to set a boundary in the moment. Especially when you’re not very practiced at it.

Navigating conflict can be messy and complicated, but in this conversation, we’re going to simplify it.

Anger, Boundaries, and the Work of Staying in Your Power

In this episode of the Blooming With Conversation series, Marina and Leah move through this landscape together.

We talk about people-pleasing as a way of self-soothing in the absence of self-advocacy and anger processing skills, and why standing up for yourself can feel like a full-body meltdown experience, as well as how to navigate that gracefully.

We explore how to feel and process anger not as something explosive or dangerous, but as an early, often subtle signal that something you value needs protecting. Talking about the difference between feeling anger and acting from it.

We spend time in discernment around self-advocacy:

• how to tell the difference between a real boundary crossing and an old wound being stirred,

• how fear-based reactions can soften when you sit with them long enough,

• and how learning to respond thoughtfully—rather than react aggressively—can help you stay grounded and in your dignity, honor, and power as a sensitive human.

As the conversation unfolds, we close out with a more humane, sensitive-friendly understanding of self-advocacy; one that allows for uncertainty, practice, and repair. And that doesn’t require you to harden or override your sensitivity, but instead stay connected to yourself and your values while you learn to name your needs, make requests, and protect your power.

If you’re ready, this conversation is an opportunity to learn how to stop shrinking, and stand up for yourself no matter what life throws at your nervous system.

And we’re not speaking from a pedestal here.

Marina and I have each had our own work to do around this, and have learned a lot. We just hope listening feels easy for you and that you learn something as you sit with two friends willing to slow down and make sense of it all together.

Warmly,

Leah & Marina

When Sensitive People Stand Up For Themselves: How to Set Boundaries and Stay In Your Power

In this conversation, Marina and Leah walk us through the core inner skills sensitive people often have to learn the hard way:

• Understanding why self-advocacy is so dysregulating — how standing up for yourself activates the nervous system, especially when people-pleasing once kept you safe

• Recognizing anger as an early boundary signal — learning to notice anger in its softer, subtler forms and use it for protection rather than suppression or explosion

• Discerning real boundary crossings from old threat responses — sitting with fear and anxiety long enough to tell the difference between past wounds and present-day dynamics

• Advocating for yourself without hardening — practicing responses that honor your values, dignity, and needs without becoming reactive or self-punishing

…and reflect on why learning these things in conversation and community—rather than in isolation—can help sensitive people feel safer, clearer, and more empowered as they grow.

🌱 Seeds of a Conversation

Choose a Chapter to Listen

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Sensitive Self-Advocacy
Why standing up for ourselves is uniquely challenging for sensitive people.

02:48 – Boundaries, Anger, and the Nervous System
How boundaries, anger, and nervous system responses are deeply connected.

08:49 – The Complexity of Emotions
Emotional layering, empathy, and needing time to process.

11:42 – Real-Life Boundary Crossings
Personal stories of conflict and self-advocacy in action.

15:04 – Growth Through Conflict
How boundary challenges become moments of transformation.

17:54 – Anger as a Tool for Self-Advocacy
Reframing anger as information, not aggression.

24:06 – Communication That Protects Dignity
Clear requests, honesty, and nonviolent communication.

34:55 – Values as the Foundation of Boundaries
Letting what matters most guide your response.

40:26 – When Anger Is About Old Wounds
Distinguishing present-moment boundaries from past triggers.

48:11 – Releasing Anger & Integrating Support
Creative practices, visualization, and the power of community.

We’d Love to Hear From You

After you listen, Marina and I would love to know:

• What part of this conversation moved something inside you?

• Where in my life have I stayed quiet to keep the peace, even when something in me felt unsettled or crossed?

• How do I typically respond when anger or discomfort arises—do I turn it inward, smooth it over, or avoid it altogether?

Comments, reflections, and shares are always welcome.

Leave a comment

Join Us in Circle: Self Alchemy for Sensitive Self-Healers

This circle is a gentle, structured-but-spacious gathering designed for sensitive and neurodivergent souls who want dedicated time to tend to their inner world.

What We Work On:

• Guided grounding practices to ease into your body

• Journaling or workbook time (bring your own or use the prompts Marina offers)

• Emotional processing support in a compassionate group setting

• Energetic boundary and intuitive exercises drawn from Marina’s own toolkit

• Self-compassion practices inspired by leaders like Kristin Neff and Tara Brach

• Gentle community sharing where you can speak, listen, or simply be present

If You’re Searching For…

• dedicated time to tend your inner world

• a consistent spiritual practice

• to explore spirituality and intuition

• a sacred space where sensitivity is honored

• gentle accountability and support

• companionship on the healing path

…this bimonthly circle is for you.

Join Us in Circle

Meet Marina Biggio, Founder of Cosmic Marina, LLC.

Marina is a spiritual practitioner and the founder of Cosmic Marina, LLC, where she supports sensitive, intuitive, and deep-feeling souls through spiritual healing, intuitive guidance, tarot, energy work, soul retrieval, past-life regression, and group facilitation.

Marina’s Journey into Her Purpose

Originally trained as an engineer at Smith College, Marina spent years balancing scientific rigor with a deep inner exploration of spirituality and consciousness. After entering a successful on-paper career in biomedical technology, Marina experienced a profound spiritual awakening after navigating several years of depersonalization and derealization disorder (DPDR).

Through lived experience, spiritual inquiry, and hosting her podcast Out of the Mud, Marina eventually emerged from DPDR with clarity and a renewed sense of calling. In 2022, she left engineering to devote herself fully to spiritual and healing work.

Marina brings a rare blend of grounded practicality and soulful insight to her work—bridging intellect and intuition to help others reconnect with clarity, wholeness, and inner truth.

Learn more about Marina and her work at www.cosmicmarina.com.

When I was an undergraduate nutrition student at The University of New Hampshire somewhere between 2011 and 2015, I became absolutely obsessed with TEDx Talks.

I just loved the way an idea or a story—offered with clarity and conviction—could profoundly shift my perspective, and transform the cultural conversation.

Some of my early favorites back then were Angela Lee Duckworth’s “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” and Susan Cain’s “The Power of Introverts”.

I can remember watching these while sitting on the bed in my dorm room, in between studying for my exams, as background noise. I’d often came back to one of them when I had an experience related to its lesson.

This habit continued throughout my twenties, after I moved to Seattle to start my career. At that time, Simon Sinek’s “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” and Brené Brown’s “The Power of Vulnerability” were the Ted talks that had my attention.

These conversations shaped my earliest understanding of leadership. How I think, how I teach, how I facilitate, and eventually how I would step into my own thought leadership and educator voice as founder of The Nourished Sensitive.

Then, about three months ago during a design session, while visually mapping out the kinds of gatherings I wanted to create and host inside The Nourished Sensitive Collective, I circled back to my obsession with Ted talks. In that moment, a younger version of myself came forward and she had an idea.

WAIT. What if…what if we created our own TEDx-inspired, coffee-chat-style conversational series with contemporary sensitive leaders, to inspire the next generation of sensitive leaders!?

I’ll admit, I was pretty impressed by my own idea, so I sat there and thought about it.

A media platform for a tender kind of thought leadership started to materialize.

Empowering conversations infused with softness and strength. Offering the same clarity, messages of empowerment, and resonance of a traditional TEDx Talk, but wrapped inside the gentle, relational, heart-forward cyclical, and feminine kind of energy that the Nourished Sensitive community is starting to become known for.

I was seeing the vision more clearly now.

This could be a space where sensitive leaders, healers, creatives, and community members come together as friends to share their lived philosophies, their inner tools, their clever ideas, and the inspiring growth stories that have shaped them. Eventually, shaping a new generation of sensitive leaders, visionaries, and healers.

What started ten years ago as an undergraduate obsession, slowly evolved into a vision, grew deep inside my heart for years, and now has finally landed in your inbox as an actually real-thing you can see with your own eyes and hear with your ears.

I am delighted and deeply honored to welcome you into our very first 🌸 Blooming With Conversation featuring Marina Biggio, Founder of Cosmic Marina, LLC.

We hope you will enjoy our conversation, and may it nourish the sensitive though leader, healer, and visionary still emerging from deep within you. 🌱

Warmly,

Leah

Founder of The Nourished Sensitive

🌸 A Conversation in Bloom: Self-Alchemy for Sensitive Self-Healers

In this conversation, Leah and Marina explore the concept and practice of self-alchemy: the deeply human work of transforming what feels heavy, messy, or painful inside us into something softer, kinder, and more aligned.

In this conversation, Marina and Leah walk us through the four essential self-healing skills every sensitive person should learn (but no one teaches us):

1. Emotional processing

2. Energetic boundaries

3. Nervous system grounding

4. Self-compassionate inquiry

…and talk about why doing this kind of deeply personal work in community is a better alternative to the “fix yourself” self-help version of healing.

This conversation introduces Marina’s new bi-monthly circle inside the TNSC Garden:
Self Alchemy: A Bimonthly Co-working Circle for Sensitive Self-Healers, where members can actually practice these skills together in grounded community.

Join Circle as TNSC Guest ($22)

Join Circle as TNSC Member ($0)

🌱 Seeds of a Conversation

During this part of the conversation, Leah prompts Marina to explain how she sees self-alchemy work differently than the conventional “fix yourself” self-improvement path to healing.

Marina’s answer may surprise you…

Choose a Chapter to Listen

00:00 – Blooming With Conversations comes to life
02:00 – Meeting Marina: the engineer-turned-mystic
04:40 – The pull toward facilitation and service
06:50 – What self-alchemy really asks of us
10:20 – Moving beyond fixing: the truth about healing
12:40 – Growth as a seasonal, spiraling journey
14:45 – The four essential skills of self-healing
16:00 – Learning to feel: the art of emotional processing
20:45 – Energetic boundaries and reclaiming your own field
28:50 – Grounding the sensitive nervous system
35:10 – Self-compassion as the anchor of all inner work
41:00 – Why sensitives heal best in relationship
47:30 – A sanctuary designed for sensitive and neurodivergent souls
50:10 – Inside the Self Alchemy Circle
55:05 – A closing blessing and an invitation to deepen

Watch on Youtube to See Chapters

We’d Love to Hear From You

As you listen, Marina and I would love to know:

• What part of this conversation moved something inside you?

• Which of the four self-healing skills feels most alive for you right now?

• What season of self-alchemy do you feel yourself in?

Comments, reflections, and shares are always welcome in the Garden.

Leave a comment

Join Us in Circle: Self Alchemy for Sensitive Self-Healers

This Blooming With Conversation opens the doorway into Marina’s new bi-monthly co-working circle for sensitive self-healers, which begins tonight—Monday, December 1st, 2025, from 6:30–7:45 PM EST, and meets every other week.

This circle is a gentle, structured-but-spacious gathering designed for sensitive and neurodivergent souls who want dedicated time to tend to their inner world.
It’s part co-working session, part healing circle, part soft landing place for anyone who struggles to consistently make time for their own emotional or spiritual care.

Inside the Self Alchemy Circle, you can expect:

• Guided grounding practices to ease into your body

• Journaling or workbook time (bring your own or use the prompts Marina offers)

• Emotional processing support in a compassionate group setting

• Energetic boundary and intuitive exercises drawn from Marina’s own toolkit

• Self-compassion practices inspired by leaders like Kristin Neff and Tara Brach

• Gentle community sharing where you can speak, listen, or simply be present

This is a space for all the work we mean to do on our own but rarely make time for—shadow work, self-inquiry, reflective writing, grounding, tending, and the slow, seasonal work of spiritual growth.

If you’ve been longing for:

• dedicated time to tend your inner world

• a consistent spiritual practice

• a sacred space where sensitivity is honored

• gentle accountability and support

• companionship on the healing path

…this bimonthly circle is for you.

Join Circle as TNSC Guest ($22)

Join Circle as TNSC Member ($0)

Paid TNSC members receive full access; TNSC Guests are warmly welcome with a drop-in ticket of $22. Replays are always available within 48 hours of the circle. Email Leah at leah@nourishedsensitive.com with any questions.

Read the Full Sanctuary Circle Participation Agreement.

Meet Marina Biggio, Founder of Cosmic Marina, LLC.

In this inaugural Blooming With Conversation, I sit down with one of my dearest friends and one of the original founding members of The Nourished Sensitive Collective: Marina Biggio of Cosmic Marina LLC.

Here’s Marina sharing about her work as a healing guide for sensitive humans.

Marina’s Story to Becoming a Founder

Marina’s path is a beautiful blend of the practical and the mystical.

She began her career as an engineering major at Smith College—solving thermodynamics problems by day while quietly exploring the meaning of life, the origins of the Universe, and a wide range of spiritual traditions in the spaces between.

After graduation, Marina stepped into a financially rewarding career in biomedical technology, but soon found herself in the messy middle of a profound spiritual awakening that led to many years of experiencing a depersonalization and derealization disorder (DPDR).

After surviving and enduring through many years of this untreatable disorder–even starting a podcast to talk about her experience she called Out of the Mud–Marina eventually came out of her DPDR experience, but only after she had fully explored and deepened into the spiritual questions her soul had encountered along the way.

From there, Marina found she could no longer ignore the call toward a different kind of work. In 2022, she left her engineering job and founded Cosmic Marina, LLC., where she now offers spiritual healing, soul retrievals, psychic readings, past life regression, intuitive guidance, tarot readings, energy work, and group spiritual healing and self-discovery facilitation for sensitive, intuitive, deep-feeling souls like herself.

Marina brings a rare combination of grounded practicality, spiritual know-how, and deeply soulful insight to her work—as equal parts engineer, mystic, and compassionate guide. She shine brightly with an authentic presence that naturally invites others into clarity, wholeness, and deep inner truth.

Work With Cosmic Marina, LLC

Follow Marina on Instagram

🎗️ PS. If you’d like to become a Nourished Sensitive Collective Member to get invites to all of our events, be featured in the Nourished Sensitive Magazine, and host a circle for our community, subscribe to the TNS Substack to be part of supporting this inspiring mission, vision and heart and soul-led community. 🌱 🌸

For questions, contact Leah at www.nourishedsensitive.com/contact.

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