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Hello, hello, this is Danielle Ireland and you are catching a solo cast of don't cut your own. The remedy to comparison and feeling like everyone has life figured out but you. And I'm sitting in my comfy chair. I've got my notes ready, my lavender tea in hand, and we are gonna have a really, really good talk for the next five solo casts. You and I are going to dive into a miniseries that I'm devoted to helping reduce stress called Put down the Panic A guide to stress. Because I believe that you and I, we all, but you specifically you deserve call without having to earn it. There is a theme that is becoming ever present in sessions that I've been having lately and I thought about building out just one really big robust episode. And once I started sitting with the material and sitting with the patterns that were emerging, I I realized that we just need more time. So I want to give this topic the time that it deserves. Because I'm facing this. Clients I'm working with are facing the very same thing. And I think that this could be a really meaningful way for us to go deep, but also make things tangible, digestible, and hopefully light. Right? We want to make big feelings feel less scary and more approachable. And stress is a big one. And even talking about stress can sometimes activate stress. When I set out to write a book, I only knew two things. One was I wanted to make big feelings feel less scary and more approachable, and I wanted to bring some lightness to the feelings themselves. What I know to be true as a therapist is that emotions are energy in motion. They have information to tell you to inform the next right step to take, and self doubt, fear, anxiety, live in that space between knowing and not knowing. The second thing I knew was that I wanted to have fun in the process of making this thing. The result is this. Wrestling a walrus for little people with big feelings. Beautifully illustrated children's book that has a glossary at the end for some of the bigger feeling words. What this story does in a light and loving way is create context for those relationships you can't change, those people that you wish would treat you different. The things in life that we cannot control and yet we face that are hard. This book. It's a conversation starter for any Littles in your life who want to create more safety and love and patience for some of those experiences. So hop on over to the Show Notes. You can pick it up@Amazon.com barnesnopel.com or my website. I hope that you do because I believe in this little book. I freaking love this little book and I cannot wait to hear your experience with it. Thanks so much for listening and back to the episode Today we're diving into a kind of exhaustion that most of us carry but rarely name. It's the invisible mental load. It's this constant background buzz and noise of remembering and planning and checking and worrying and ruminating and all the places our mind goes, even when it feels as though nothing big is happening. And if you've ever wondered, why am I so tired at the end of the day when I don't even really know what I've done? Like, I've done a couple of things, but somehow the day came and went and I'm utterly exhausted. This episode is for you. So we're going to shine a light on the hidden weight that you are likely carrying and talk about how to spot what's draining you. Explore small, doable shifts that can also help you feel lighter, hopefully right away, but certainly in time. These are things that I've used or things that I've recommended firsthand to mental health therapy clients that I work with. I'm so glad you're here joining me on your walk or your errand running or in your car or wherever you like to catch your podcast. I am choosing to join you today with my cup of tea and my water in hand. So grab your beverage, grab your notes, grab your AirPods. Let's do this. If you've ever felt exhausted without doing something big, this is probably why the invisible mental load we move through our day and so many aspects of that day are automatic and responsive. There is a sense, I think, a lot of mothers and parents of Littles feel when you wake up and you are reacting and responding to your day. You're waking up to an alarm, or a child waking you up, or you're waking up and jumping into email and responding to the needs or requests. Or I Just need to pick your brain for a moment. Dishes to be done, laundry to be done, a to do list to be checked off, errands, et cetera, et cetera. We it's so easy. By easy I don't mean desirable, but it is so easy to wake up and show up with who needs me? What fire needs to be put out, what problem needs to be solved. And before you know it, there is a momentum that is now carrying you throughout the day where you are constantly responding and showing up and responding and showing up and responding. And I can't tell you how many times I will start my day, I'll get the kids dropped off and then I blink and it's three o'. Clock. And I feel these dual feelings can come up at the same time. One is the countdown of oh my gosh, this is how much time I have left before the kids are home and I have to put what I'm doing for myself aside and show up fully for them. It's either that like the crunch of my freedom window closing or it is this sense of like blurriness, like how, how did I get here? How is this? It's like a time warp. And so the theme of reactivity and just responding and then the mental load when you're not in your body or in the present moment of what's happening, you're either 10 steps ahead, two steps ahead, you're constantly ticking things off the list or ticking the to do list. It is so easy to essentially have your brain and body detached. Like your brain is a helium filled balloon and it just has a string attached and now it's just floating off in the ether and your body is just that like lump of plastic that's holding it down and keeping it from flying away. And what is often needed to either ground or recenter or connect the brain and the body or bring you back down. And something that I have been trying to do a lot lately is really look for little things, little rituals, I don't mean a long complicated thing, but little rituals to bring me back to exactly where I am. One of the ways that I do that is I will set a 1 minute timer on my, on my Apple, watch my phone, or even just sitting and looking at a clock that actually have a second hand that you can watch. And for that one singular minute, there's nothing else I'm doing, nothing else I'm thinking about, there's nowhere to go and nothing to be done for that one minute. And I challenge myself with a minute because it sounds it Sounds comically simple, a minute. But a minute is just short enough for my anxious, productive mind to know, we can spare a minute. Everybody can spare a minute. There is no project, no task so urgent, apart from maybe putting on a fire, that I can't take a minute. And what I know, having guided so many clients through mindfulness exercises, is that an intentional present minute, when you actually sit with, expands. It's like time slows down and expands. A minute can feel like a long time when that's all you're doing versus how quickly 30 minutes of scrolling on your phone can feel like 30 seconds. So the presence of mind, bringing myself back in, creating a limit, just helps center me a little more and bring me back into my body. Of course there is the momentum throughout the day, but we want to be able to spot when the mental load is draining you because they're all of the things that I mentioned at the top about responding to emails or responding to your children or responding to the needs at work or home. Those are all facts of life. We can't negotiate all of those away. That wouldn't be the a realistic world to live in. The thing to note is recognizing that the root of the exhaustion isn't doing more. It isn't chasing, getting more done so that I can rest. It's noticing when the chasing is draining you. There is this pursuit of more and this sense of I have to keep moving so that when I get to the other side, then I can rest. But the rest that happens on the other side of exhaustion or burnout or fatigue is essentially collapsing. It's not resting, it's not replenishing. It's putting enough gas in the tank that you don't have to keel over on the side of the road, creating these little buffers, these little, sometimes I call them brain breaks for a minute. And I can, and I've done that every hour before for one minute, which can feel like a lot. I've also done it every four hours. I'll stop for one minute, but no matter what I'm doing, I'll pause for a minute just to make sure that I'm in my body. I'm not. So in my phone, so in my to do list, so in the tasks or the needs of other people that I forget myself. There's a big difference between being productive, getting a lot done, crushing your to do list, feeling like you're on top of your goals, and getting a big project done at home, or getting a big project done at work, or being completely present with your kids. When they're having a hard time or maybe getting up in the middle of the night. There are absolutely times and moments in life where doing that very thing is exactly where you need to be. That's exactly where your energy should be focused. And it can feel really good or very right, very aligned to show up for those people or those spaces or those tasks. In that way. The big distinction for what we're talking about is the exhaustion and the fatigue that comes from not paying attention to when those things are draining you. That's a radical difference because what we're talking about is an internal recognition. It may not look different from the outside. Meaning when I'm chasing my to do list, running from task to task, getting things done, then running to my kids school, then maybe running to a meeting from the outside, if we were just like looking at if this were an episode of television. The activities that Danielle is doing look essentially the same when she's either burnt out or thriving and feeling really energized. But the experience that I'm having as someone who is either in my integrity, in my body, and feeling energized and good versus not is, am I not replenishing? Am I not present? Am I chasing my to do list, hoping that I can find freedom on the other side? Or am I able to find that in the moment? One of the quickest ways, through the practice of adding more mindfulness into my day, taking deeper breaths, slowing down, reaching for maybe some tea and some water instead of my third and fourth cup of coffee. The practice of doing that consistently over time has helped me start to trust the responses of my body. My emotions are information and I look at my emotions like information and I let that information inform how I interact with others, how I ask for what I need or how I take the space that I need. For example, a recent example, our kids went from summer camp to my daughter going to preschool and my son going to daycare. And at the end of that first week, every day they came home with a list of some new supply or item or thing that they needed to have fulfilled, filled out, put in a bag and brought back. I remember seeing my son's list for his daycare and it was bulleted and it was a full 8 by 10 piece of paper. I mean it was large mop, but there were just so many bullets. And when I saw this list, I saw what the thinking through, okay, what do we have? What do we need to buy? What needs to be labeled, needs to be put in the car. All of those are decisions and every decision requires energy. And at the point in time where I saw that list, I did not have the fuel in the tank to think through, to execute or even delegate. Like making all the decisions and then just delegating the action. I needed the thinking, the feeling, the executing and the delivering to be in someone else's hands. And here's how I knew that. Here's how I knew that I saw the list. And what I immediately felt when I saw the list was this weight and compression on my chest, this twisting, tightening, almost like a wave of nausea, but not nausea like I'm actually going to get sick, but this wave of heat that turned into just an ache in my gut. I felt both of those feelings almost instantly when I saw that list. And through enough time and attention and focus in this way, I knew I'm not in the place to execute this list. So I called an audible and I asked my husband, hey, do you have the capacity to handle this? I actually did explain, and by handling, I mean you handle all of it. Do you have the capacity to take this piece on for Luke? And he said, yes. And it was as simple as that. Now is it that simple every time? No, but it can be. And more often, asking for help or asking for someone to show up for me, I can think of so many times where the ruminating, the storytelling, the stressing, the imagining, the role playing in my mind of how it would go, almost never, I'm going to venture to say, actually never matched what actually happened. That doesn't mean that every time I ask for help, someone says a hundred percent yes, in the, in the way that I need it. But more often than not, met with someone, I can't do all of that. But I can do this version of this, or I can take this off, or this is an element that I can own, trusting that my body is telling me important information about where I'm at mentally, physically, emotionally with regard to taking another task. On looking at that information, running it through my filter, and then believing myself gave me the opportunity to ask for the help I really needed and then receive it. Small changes add up over time. Martha Beck has this great example in her book the Way of Integrity about how if an airplane is flying from New York to California and decides every 30 minutes to make a 1 degree shift in the direction that it's headed, by the time it lands, it's going to be in a completely different destination. These one degree shifts, like taking a one minute refocus, integration, reset, taking a one minute break, taking some deep Breaths, grabbing a light caffeine free cup of tea instead of something sugary or caffeinated. They feel so small that they may seem insignificant, but that's also how virtually everything is done. My hunch is telling me if you're listening to this podcast because you're experiencing the low level draining fatigue of carrying a mental load. What you want is something gentle. You want something soft, you want something approachable and you want something kind and a little tiny shift, looking inward, feeling what you're experiencing in that moment, believing yourself and validating that, carrying that information forward. That is a radical shift, but it can start in small places. What I want to leave you with is three tiny shifts that you can begin to implement today to help you become more aware of the invisible mental load, to help you articulate and communicate your needs when you need to speak up for them, and also how to be really generous with yourself. So the first is to take that one minute break. And what I would also invite you to do in that one minute break is imagine a younger version of yourself. Just we're going to take this a step further. Imagine like a four or five year old version of yourself. When kids are tired, they let you know. They either let you know because they bleed out and collapse or they want to snubble or be hell, or they become sometimes overtired, can be turned into feeling overstimulated and they almost become hyperactive. And so imagining the younger version of yourself in this minute and just checking in and asking, because we, we talk more sweetly to kids than we do other adults, we certainly talk more sweetly to children than we do ourselves, or internal self talk can be a pretty harsh critic. So imagining a younger version of yourself and saying hey you, how are you? And just let whatever comes come. The second step would be then how do I articulate and communicate this to people? And I would say the simplest way, the simplest way to approach trying to find the right words. Because that is almost always what happens in a session once a client finds some new sense of clarity or insight to themselves. It's like, oh, what do I do with this information? How, how do I let people know? Or how do I say it to them beyond any script you could memorize? One, Trust your own words, trust yourself, and trust that you'll have the words when you need them. But the gauge and the barometer that I like to use that I have found to be so helpful a hundred times over is the truth. This is the truth of what I'm experiencing, the truth of what I'm thinking and feeling the truth of what I'm afraid of. Whatever that truth is, the truth in its highest expression is always kind. If you find that the thing you're wanting to say maybe comes out critical or sounds harsh, or maybe you're explaining it more than you want to, like, the words feel jumbled, just pause, reset, maybe even let yourself get a bad draft out. Write it down, speak it in a voice memo, say it wrong first, that's totally okay. But allow your truth to exist. And then what is the kindest expression of your truth? So an example of that might sound something like. I'll use my example. Hey, babe. I am hitting a major wall and this list is making my stomach twist in knots and making my chest feel tight. Do you have the capacity to take this on? Boom. I acknowledged what I'm experiencing, how I'm struggling, and I let the question exist. There was nothing antagonistic. There was nothing judgmental or critical. I also didn't need to build a case about all the things that I've done and why I shouldn't have to take this on too. The truth. I go back to this, and for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, if you could see my hands. I'm bringing the points of my fingers together and I'm making almost like a pyramid. There is an intersection where the truth meets kindness. And that is always the truthiest, truthiest truth. I have delivered and received some really hard truths in a therapy room. And it's maybe hard because it's heavy, but it's not hard because it's cruel. The truth sets you free. The truth is like warm vanilla pudding. It's like a sweet vanilla dessert with some cinnamon sprinkled on top. The truth is warm and kind. And if what's coming out is not kind, then I would invite you to just re examine what else might be coming up for you. So, creating your break, allowing your truth to exist. When you try to think about how to communicate your needs, what to say, find the intersection where your truth, it's kindness, and it doesn't guarantee an outcome, but it does certainly set you up for success. And then last, do something kind for yourself. You've sat with it, you've written it down, maybe, hopefully you've spoken it aloud. And then do something kind for yourself, something restorative, something replenishing. And it can be so small, so simple. But doing something for you is taking that outward focus of taking score and making sure no balls drop, making sure everything gets done, making sure nobody's disappointed. All the things that keep you chasing that are likely draining you, shifting that focus inward and asking yourself, what do I need in this moment? What's something I could do? It could be I need to rest, I need to replenish, I need to move my body, whatever it is. But giving yourself just a little something can absolutely lighten the load. And those little shifts. Again, this sounds so small and the scheme and the scope of what probably feels like a really big problem or this really big looming cloud of stress. But these little shifts over time will lead to big change. If you have been carrying this invisible mental load, I hope this conversation helps you see that it's not your fault. You're not alone in it. It isn't all in your head. And a small reset, delegating a task, writing something down, being kind and compassionate to yourself, giving yourself permission to pause. It can feel like dropping a 50 pound weight. Remember, you don't have to do more to deserve a break. You don't have to earn your calm or peace of mind. You are worthy of rest right now and I hope today's episode with you share it with a friend who may also need this reminder too. Thank you for listening to this mini series of don't cut your own bangs. Put the panic down. Calm us on something you have to earn. It's not something you have to work for, and it's something that you can invite into your life one tiny shift at a time. As always, your time, your care, your attention here to this podcast mean the world to me. Before you hop off, there's some fun things for you in the show. Notes and rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps me grow. It helps the podcast reach more people. It's a great way for us to stay connected. It's one less thing for you have to think about because the podcast just popped into and you're like oh great, there, it's ready for me. I don't have to go looking for it. Thank you for being here and I hope that you continue to have a wonderful day.