← Don't Cut Your Own Bangs
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What if your exhaustion isn't the problem? What if it's the messenger? What if the anxiety, the resentment, the overwhelm, the brain fog or irritability isn't evidence that you're failing? What if it's all information? I think a lot of us have spent years treating our emotions and our bodies like obstacles. Something to push through, something to override or optimize around. But what if the thing that you have been trying so hard to silence has actually been trying to help you this entire time? What if your body is not betraying you? What if it's been speaking to you, maybe even for years, and you simply haven't been taught or know how to trust what it's saying? Welcome back to don't cut your own bangs, the podcast for high functioning humans with big feelings who are trying to their very best to make sense of what's happening inside them without needing to become a completely different person to do it. Hi, I'm Danielle Ireland, therapist, speaker, storyteller, and someone who believes that there are a whole lot of deeply capable people quietly carrying more than anybody realizes, potentially even the people closest to them. This is actually part three of a miniseries. You were never meant to live like a machine. Okay, back to the important stuff. I want to make a special note too, that the hiatus from episodes one and two of this miniseries to today has taken me longer than I expected. And I hope in the meantime you've enjoyed all of the great like revamped, re, edited, re more polished repost episodes that have been coming out since episodes one and two of the miniseries started. And today, and by the end of this episode, you will know a little bit more of what practicing what I have been talking about in teaching, what that's looked like for me, what's led to this, and how it's so much easier said than done. The concepts themselves are not the most challenging. And yet when we are faced with a mountain of expectation, life throwing us curveballs, a whole history of conditioning behind us, and a desire to move into the world in a kinder, more gentler way. Easier said than done. In part one, we talked about how it was easy to mistake exhaustion for a personal failure. And then in part two or episode two, we explored the possibility that staying busy can sometimes become a way of protecting ourselves and hiding from what we might discover if we slow down. And today, today in part three, I want to talk about trust. Because I don't think burnout is always asking us for a better system. I don't think it's always Asking us for another planner or another productivity hack or another morning routine. Sometimes I think it's asking us to listen. And I think one of the hardest things for so many deeply capable people is that somewhere along the way we've learned to trust our calendars more than our bodies or our capacity. We've learned to trust deadlines over our emotions. And we've learned to put performance above our own intuition. And then eventually we stopped treating ourselves like a whole person and we started treating ourselves like a machine. I very recently just came off of a three day weekend where I took my five year old daughter Logan, who's going to be starting kindergarten this year, took her and my mom on a girls trip to Chicago. And it's one of those elements of summertime and wanting to maximize time, wanting to make quality time, wanting to make memories. It was all fueled with the best intentions. And I will say that by and large the trip was a success. We did what we set out to do. We gave Logan some really big first experiences in a big city. She got to walk around, she got to see all the cars and the hustle and bustling. She also got to experience what it's like to not have access to public restrooms when you need them or maybe when you're arms deep waiting in a changing line at Zara. But the trip itself, it accomplished everything that I hoped it would. And it is another one of those life events where the planning, the imagination and the fantasizing about a moment when it meets reality, where gravity exists and people need sleep and children maybe aren't as adventurous eaters yet, it presented some challenges. And so coming off of that weekend, which was, I'm going to use air quotes, time off, but also still time on as a mom, just momming one, not two, and trying to juggle this new environment, this new place, this different routine. And then also it was uniquely like from the bowels of the equator and the rainforest. It was like heat beyond heat and 100 million thousand percent humidity. Now I'm no meteorologist, but I swear by, I live by my statement it was 1000% humidity. And so coming back to life and work and home and my other child on like Sunday night and having to jump back into Monday morning, girl, I was done. But yet life had to keep lifing, things kept going. And so I, as much as I was able within the things that really had to get done Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I created as much space, as much grace and capacity as I possibly could, moved things. I didn't go to A birthday party that I had said yes to instead of a date night with my husband. We actually had a therapy session because we needed to work through some communication stuff because otherwise I think the date would have turned into a fight, which nobody wants to do that in public. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to get persnickety in a booth when you're trying to have a romantic time. And all the while it. We got on the other side and it was great. We are so much better for it. The relationship is better for it. We've been more snuggly, cuddly, lovey. But all that to say life was life and hard. So I am coming to you with this episode not from a place on high where everything is sunshine and rainbows. And I am not also working on this. I am 1000% in here with you. And it makes this work all the more meaningful and necessary because I know I'm not alone in it. So the other thing that I believe happened around the time I wrapped episode two of this miniseries. You were never meant to live like a machine. It either happened right as I was wrapping up or it happened immediately after. Which is part of what led to a little bit longer break than I was anticipating. My son, my sweet two and a half year old son, he broke his leg. He broke his leg. He was jumping off his bed with his sister and they were taking turns. And the thing, he is a climber and a jumper in a way that I never experienced with my daughter when she was this age. And he always lands on his feet and he'll even kind of. He has like a funny sound he makes. Oh, that a big one. Like if it's like a big jump, he just sort of like, he just. Yeah, he's a tank and he loves to jump. Well, he slipped. He landed wrong, leg is broken and it has been. We're now so close to being done. He's wearing a boot for additional support. But navigating the summer with a toddler when we were going to start potty training and. And then my daughter's who's deeply feeling deeply sensitive. Her response to the routine, shifting, you know, Luke being visibly uncomfortable. Mom and dad are, you know, having their own feelings about it. And of course she's absorbing it all it just what it required was for me to say to myself, hey girl, we gotta take a beat. We gotta kick the can down the road a little bit to get some of the other have to's of life done. And to be present for our little guy while he Needed just extra. He just needed extra. Extra everything. Extra cuddles, extra support, extra time, patience. It's been a journey. And for those listening who have kiddos, who have broken bones and managed, you know, injuries. God, there's no good time. I know there's no good time. And I. Obviously, there's never a good time. I'm not gonna do comparative suffering, but that has been the reality that I've been in for the last 6, 8ish weeks. What I will say from the experience I've had with my son Luke, managing that with my husband, and coming out of this Chicago trip with my daughter and my mom, I really understand in a way that I knew conceptually, and I know I believed, but I feel it in a deeper way, and I want us all to carry this with us for the rest of this episode and just. It needs to be on a banner or in skywriting that gratitude and overwhelm, they can exist together. I can be deeply grateful. I can be deeply, deeply grateful for the opportunity to take this trip and make these memories with my daughter. And I can feel overwhelmed. They don't cancel each other out. And similarly with my son, I can be so, so grateful that he's healing well, that, you know, we're all managing his needs in a really great way. There can also be moments where he's screaming and he doesn't want. He doesn't want to have lotion put on and he's kicking. And his cast, his old cast was made out of fiberglass, and it was really heavy. And when it would hit your foot because he was flailing and having a toddler tantrum, it's like having a toddler tantrum with, like, a baseball bat. And it hurts. But so both can be true. I can be so grateful he's healing. I'm so grateful he's getting the care he needs. And sometimes it's a lot. And so that brings me back to this thought that maybe, maybe burnout isn't asking for another productivity system. Maybe, maybe burnout on a deeper level is our internal guidance system way of saying, hey, can you listen? Can you listen to what's happening? Because somewhere along the way, I think that somewhere along the way, we've stopped treating ourselves like a person, and we have been treating ourselves like a machine. I, in my early years, particularly when I taught ballroom dance, when I would lose my enthusiasm, hit snooze three to four, sometimes five times, wouldn't show up early, maybe on time, and if I'm super honest, maybe a couple minutes past on time. When I started slipping into those, I'm not going to call them self destructive, but I'll say when I started showing up for things in my life that on one hand, on the one hand mattered to me and that were important but didn't align with my values, my work ethic, I for years internalized that lack of enthusiasm as somehow a character flaw. If I wasn't showing up with, with a smile and feeling bright eyed and bushy tail, I mean I could force and fake it. I would just over caffeinate, slap that smile on and just try to push through and hope that the momentum of the day would kind of help me get out of my own way. But little by little by little of feeling these feelings somewhat underperforming or performing below what I knew that I was truly capable of, especially when I cared about something, I took that lack of enthusiasm as reflection that I just wasn't good. I could probably use a lot more descriptive words, but that it meant something was wrong with me and I needed to keep that stuff down and buried and tucked in nice cozy and never reveal it. So what Brene Brown talks about in her shame resilience work is that we fill in gaps of understanding with the worst thoughts we have about ourselves. So before I started understanding how to interpret my feelings, my emotions, my experiences, before I knew how to treat them like information, get curious about them, like huh, I, I normally love my work, I love doing my work well, but I'm showing up sort of dragging my feet internally. I have this lump of dread like I don't really want to be here. And so rather than get curious about my own feeling and sit with it, I judged it and then tucked it away and pretended like it didn't exist. And that works for so long until it doesn't. And this also presented in grad school and in so many, even in relationships, romantic relationships where I would internalize, even if I didn't say it or could admit it out loud, I would internalize someone else's treatment of me, like a reflection of me. And so if I wasn't being treated well, then on some level I was like, well let me just clean that up and do more. And something I notice is that I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is confusing vulnerability with dysfunction. That what we're standing on the edge of something meaningful. Our nervous system often sounds like an alarm. Not because we're doing something wrong, not because there's like a fire alarm, but because we're actually doing something brave. Thinking back to Where I was at that time in my life, when I was roughly 25 years old, teaching ballroom. What I can see now so clearly is that I wasn't stuck. I was vulnerable. I was in such a major life transition. I was facing new feelings. I was living on my own terms for the first time ever. And I was discovering, really, who I wanted to be in the world, how I wanted to show up in the world, and what mark did I want to make. And when I started to realize that ballroom dance wasn't gonna be the thing, because I didn't know what that was informing for me or where to direct that information, I just internalized it and stuffed it down and then continued dancing for about seven or eight years. I think once we stop seeing ourselves as broken, something else starts to come into focus. Because burnout doesn't just change how we feel. It changes the perspective. It changes what we see. Burnout actually, I think, can shrink our world and shrink our view. And one of the first things that burnout steals isn't your energy. It's perspective. Because when we're overwhelmed, the world comes about one thing. Survival. Getting through the next task, the next responsibility, the next deadline, the next thing to carry. And when that's all you can see, you slowly lose sight of all of the life that those tasks were actually supposed to serve. So a question that I love to ask that can really help reframe when I'm feeling bogged down in the weeds, whether it's on a trip with my daughter, or wanting to kind of revisit connection and communication with my husband, or even deciding that I'm going to hire an executive assistant, which I did. One of the things that I will ask myself is, what is this in service of? And thinking about when I'm feeling overwhelmed or overextended, it's generally because I am putting too much pressure or expecting too much of my ability to show up here and here and here and here. And so pulling back and actually kind of broadening my view somewhat, that becomes more possible with questions like, what is this in service of? What is this trip with my daughter in service of? Okay, it's really about spending time with her. It's not about the trip. It's not in service of being perfect or proving to every stranger that I see that I'm a perfect parent. It's about creating time and space and quality time with my daughter and my mom. Similarly, with shifting my date with my husband to a session together, it really turned like, what. What was this blocked time that we had Marked together. We blocked the time to connect. But if, if it's really about being in service of connection, we are not in a good place to do that in the way we had intended. So let's shift how we're doing it to actually be in service of that which is ultimately what happened. But whether it's work related, home, personal life, letting yourself ask not only how what is this in service of, but maybe even how is this in service of me? Because if it's not in service of you, that also is worth kind of reevaluating and potentially restructuring what you're doing. So again, burnout doesn't usually make our lives smaller, but what it does is it makes our perspective smaller. And when we're overwhelmed, we stop asking things like how do I want to live what matters to me? It starts turning more into how do I survive this week? And those are very different questions. So the thing to remember that burnout doesn't make life smaller or demand smaller, but it will shrink your perspective and what you're able to see. So for example, the way you see your marriage or friendships, creativity, pleasure, delight, or the person you beneath all of that productivity. And I think that's why listening to ourselves can become so difficult. Because somewhere along the way we stopped believing in our internal experience that it deserves as much attention as everything else we measure, from bank accounts to tasks to our to do lists, that we matter too. One of the reasons I created the Treasure Journal is because I think so many of us have gotten really good at hearing everyone else's voice while potentially losing touch with our own. And the journal was never meant to become another thing on your to do list. What it is, it's meant to become a place where you can hear yourself again. And that's also really the heartbeat behind Wrestling a Walrus. It's a children's book I wrote for little people with big feelings. So Whether you are 4 years old or 44, learning how to stay with your big feelings instead of fighting yourself for having them changes everything for the better. And you'll find both of those resources linked in the show notes. I think one of the biggest lies Burnout teaches us is that our feelings matter less than our output. We measure everything, especially when we feel out of control or overwhelmed. It becomes all about calendars, deadlines, finances, productivity goals, our weight, our macros, downloads, followers. But when was the last time you actually checked in with your joy, your connection, your peace, your curiosity, or your delight? One fabulous place, especially when it is hot outside in summertime, to Practice reconnecting with the light is to go get some ice cream and let yourself sample the flavors. Because we, we know when something lights up our taste buds and when something is like blush. Not that it's just, it's fun to give yourself simple little ways to practice and actually reconnect with your body and how your body experiences delight. And of course, if it's not ice cream for you, pick another treat, but something where you get to experience the practice. You can even consider this a mindfulness practice. I'm going to show up, I'm going to look at the options before me and then I'm going to let my delight and my pleasure guide what I say yes to and then guide what I invest in. And that sounds like maybe some heavy handed stuff, heavy handed talk for ice cream. But I'm telling you, I've actually given this to clients as homework and I, I have also done it. Now I have to shrink my, my flavor profile down to the dairy free options, which does limit the options somewhat. But the practice of showing up for yourself, showing up for your pleasure, looking at your choices and letting pleasure guide you, that is an example, like a 1 degree shift of how you could actually let your body and your delight inform choices you're making in other areas of your life. Now it may seem like, okay, sure, no duh, I could try that with some ice cream. But I don't know how in the world I'm going to do that in my marriage. If that is you or if you had any thought like that. I hear you and I get it. But similar to, you know, building muscle mass, right? It's one rep at a time. So think of the ice cream. That's one emotional rep of unlearning and untangling some of what leads us to burnout and shifting into a kinder, more gentler headspace to be in. And sometimes what I also often forget with this perspective narrowing is that we spend so much time wanting to build a beautiful life that we may stop noticing that we're actually living it. And something else I notice within this perspective shrinking that can happen with burnout is that we sometimes spend so much time being the good little soldiers trying to forge on and build a beautiful life that we, we don't always have the presence to notice that we might actually be living it or something very close. Remember that delight leaves clues. Delight. Your body can't help but respond to it. So when you feel that thing that lights you up, whether it's something silly like ice cream or, or maybe a new craft you want to explore or a recipe you were excited about trying. You don't have to psycho it, but notice it. Honor the experience by noticing it. My friend Lachelle Wooten, who's also been my coach and a guest on the podcast, she that was actually homework. She had given me once before that whenever I experienced a spark of delight. To honor that feeling by calling it out and noticing it, like, oh, there it is, there it is. There's that feeling. And there's something about that that helps. That practice helps reorient yourself to also shift from what's not working and remember that the worst part of your day is not your entire day. It can feel that way when we recycle and replay it, but allowing the highlighter of your mind to really brighten up what delights you, that will absolutely shift how you see yourself in your world. The reason I care so deeply about bringing these conversations into workplaces or conferences, doing keynotes or trainings, is because what I know is burnout rarely lives inside one person, that it grows inside cultures. And I think that we deserve better conversations about what it means to be a whole functioning person at work. But the thing that excites me so much about it and why I care so deeply about bringing these types of conversations into workspaces or conferences, drum circles, women's groups, is because what I know is that burnout isn't created in a vacuum and it doesn't live in one person. It grows within cultures and it cultivates within systems. And I think that we, we all deserve better conversations around being able to interpret and understand our emotions, to live lives that actually feel more cozy, to be in and to build lives where our emotions are actually in service of and informing us on kinder, more gentler ways to be. How can we communicate more confidently? Those are all things that I love talking about and I absolutely love doing it here. And if you want to have me come to you, your company, or your workspace, let's do that too. Before we go, I want you to notice something this week. Pay attention to what you are constantly talking yourself into and what you're constantly talking yourself out of. Notice the negotiations, the internal convincing or explaining, because those conversations reveal something important. They reveal the stories that you're living inside, the permission you might be waiting for, or the fears that you're carrying, the places where you've stopped trusting yourself and have maybe put more trust in your calendar. You don't have to fix it all today, but just notice. Because awareness comes before change every time. And sometimes the first act of self trust isn't about making a different decision. It's becoming more curious about the one you're already making. If this series has taught me or us anything, I really hope it's this. Your exhaustion is not proof of failure. Your emotions, they are not obstacles. And your body is not betraying you. It is revealing the truth to you. And it's been trying to get your attention, maybe for days, months, years. The goal was never to become someone who could carry more. The goal has always been to become someone who trusted themselves enough to listen and honor that truth. One honest question. One moment of awareness. One tiny taste of delight. One act of self trust at a time. If this series has encouraged you, I would love for you to share it with somebody who's also been carrying a lot lately. It might be exactly what they need to hear. Thank you for spending this time with me. I am so glad you're here. Until next time, have a great day. And in the meantime, whatever you do, don't cut your own things.