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In today's episode, you'll discover the real reason you feel so darn overloaded and the simple changes that help you feel more steady and clear. Welcome to Takeout Therapy, the podcast for empathic high achievers who are done with overworking, overthinking and overwhelmed. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety expert and a therapist helping busy, big hearted people like you learn practical skills to quiet your racing mind, overcome self doubt, and actually be in your life. If that sounds good to you, you're in the right place. Visit me@takeouttherapy.com thanks for listening. Let's get to work. Well, hello there, friend. I'm so glad you stopped in for today's episode because today I want to talk about why emotional balance seems so complicated all the time. The hidden forces that add up throughout your day to sabotage your emotional balance. And of course, I'll help you identify what makes you feel clearer and more grounded so you can get a little bit more balance. You know, I know you're listening to this podcast because you care about growing as a person. And probably part of that is that you're working hard on dealing with your emotions, like knowing how you feel and expressing them accordingly. But typically what I find in my work with people is that they're trying to do this work on top of a daily life that is completely setting them up to fail. Emotional balance can't start with throwing techniques on an already overstuffed life. It starts with the conditions that you're living in and being willing to just kind of look at things and figure out what might work better. So today I want to talk about two things that really shape how steady or how overwhelmed you feel in life. Typically, people feel overwhelmed not because they're bad at coping, but because they have to deal with too much input every single day. They wake up already carrying the stress from yesterday. And then as the day goes on, more and more and more things keep getting added on. Right when we're so overwhelmed and frankly, we have so much input coming at us, we can't handle it. And I think it's interesting because people always say, I'm so bad at coping, or I just can't do it, or I need to figure out a different way to do things. When life keeps rolling along as it does and we don't process things, our brain starts going bananas. Our, our thoughts become very rapid and very thick, don't they? And also what happens when we take in a lot, but we're not like getting rid of some of it, is that we become a Little less patient, kind of frustrated. Sometimes there's more emotion showing up than is really relevant to the situation. Everything feels bigger, kind of harder, and frankly a lot more personal, which I always think is a good red flag. That's when I always like turned myself and I'm like, okay, friend, if you're taking other people's crap personally, you have some work to do. Because when we're overloaded like this, we end up reacting to things that we usually handle absolutely fine because the load is too heavy. And when I do consultations with people, which I do on a regular basis, people want to feel level. They don't like these huge up and down swings. And I agree, I don't like them either. I want to think clearly in my life about what's going on. I don't want to be so overwhelmed with everything. Right, yeah. Can we just get some breathing room? When we wake up in the morning, everyone wants the day to feel manageable instead of a stressful jaunt through a crazy amusement park. You, you know, it's interesting because research has been done about what the brain takes in on a daily basis versus what it naturally is able to like release and heal from on a daily basis. And we just know that the brain takes in more than it can naturally release. Our life, the way we live it, our systems just aren't made for it. So today I just wanted to help you think about this in a very simple way. What you take in matters and the way you let go of it is everything. And I'll call these things inputs and the outputs. Because when we look at it this way, it's very easy to see how we can create balance and also how we can get emotionally and physically imbalanced. So let's talk about what the heck I mean by inputs. I mean, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you start interacting with life, you're basically taking in a lot of stuff. Well, firstly, I hope you're taking in some food, my friend, perhaps a multivitamin or some supplements. And yes, drink your water. That will keep the human meat sack sustained. Right. But as you could probably agree, there's a lot of nuance to what we take in in terms of food, beverage and supplements. We need to get educated about those things and we need to understand how what we're putting in impacts how we feel and how much control we have over what we do with how we feel. Right. Other inputs are just as important. When you get up in the morning, do you pick up your cell phone because you're inputting. You are now absorbing in some way whatever is in front of you. Whether it's the news or the stock market or God forbid, it's politics or social media, you're inputting it. Welcome to your life. Now you probably have to have some conversations, check some emails, deal with some stressful situations. Maybe other people need you for things. You have to conduct yourself in relationships. There's so much noise, isn't there? So much stimulation in life. We're constantly doing things and never mind the voice in the back of our head always ticking along telling us things about how we're doing and what we ought to do to do those things better. Fascinating, isn't it, when we really start to think about input. I mean, I've hardly mentioned anything. Welcome to being a human being. It's a lot to take in, wouldn't you agree? Inputs stack up very quickly. Frankly, way too quickly for most people. Which brings me to my second point, which is what you let out in the form of expression, release or processing matters. Outputs, right? Outputs are the things that you do that help you offload all that stress and the emotion that comes with life or the buildup of like, energy. I guess I would say it as we encounter people all day long. Have you ever worked in an office with somebody who's in just like a perpetual bad mood? Are you silly enough to think some of that crap didn't get on you? So how do we get rid of those things? There are so many ideas for things that you can do to help you clear space for yourself, both physically, mentally and emotionally. A couple examples are like, of things that we know help us to process, let go and release what we've input during the day. The physical ones are pretty obvious, right? We know that we get rid of what we don't need and we keep what we do need. And unfortunately, if we eat a bunch of crap, some stuff hangs around that we don't need, right? Outputs. Another way to output physical or emotional or mental stuff. A lot of people talking about going talk about running or walking or going to the gym, perhaps stretching for some people is a beautiful example of like, how you get rid of some crap. I really like to dance. I just do. I like to put some good music on and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle afterwards. It just feels really, really good to me. And so does talking things out. Sometimes the way we output what we've taken in during the day is just to say, man, I had a really bad day, or I had a really good day. And here's all the cool things I learned about, we're not just getting rid of terrible things. We're basically trying to create a balance between input and output. Right? Creativity is a wonderful way to do this. Whole books have been written about it, journaling. I could go on and on and on. One important thing about emotion, one of the ways that we have to output emotion is to just let ourself feel some of the emotion and then be able to let it go a little bit. And I do think this is sort of advanced humaning because it's hard to let ourselves feel emotion, especially if it's difficult. And for some people, it's actually just hard to feel emotion, Period. Game over. What's important to remember is that most people have a really high input rate and a really low output rate, which frankly leaves us a little emotionally backed up. So what you want to do is give some thought to what your imbalance might be, what you might be looking at, and try to get more of what you need. Try to do less of what's not working. Most people aren't doing anything wrong per se. They're just taking in about 10 times more than they're releasing. The way we say it in our house is you're putting ten pounds in a five pound bag. That's why emotional management feels like a losing battle. It's why you accidentally pop off at people. It's why when you get in your car, you're filled with rage. And then you're like, what the hell is wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you. Just try to find a little bit more balance and see if that works for you. What I see as a barrier that a lot of my clients go through is like they don't want to let go of what they're carrying. And I mean, it's totally your choice. It's just a suggestion about feeling balanced. In order to bring on something new in your life, a different way of being, you gotta let go of the old way of being. It's not a big wellness plan. It's just an idea for a couple of little things that can help you. Look at what you're putting in. For one thing, look at what's coming at you, my friend. Protect yourself. The world is cray cray, you know, and then also like give yourself a little bit of nurturance to deal with all of it. Maybe some physical expressive or connection, whatever feels easiest and most aligned for where you're at every single day. Just be in relationship with yourself and check on in emotional steadiness. Emotional management, or regulation as we would call it in my job, becomes way more possible when you're able to release what you're taking on. If you ever want more support in making sustainable changes in your emotional life, book a consultation with me. We'll schedule a session and we'll get to work mapping out what you can do to make that change. Yes, it's totally possible. Hopefully in this episode you learned that your emotional balance begins with what you encounter all throughout the day. You need simple ways to some of what you pick up all day long, so hopefully thinking about it in terms of your inputs and your outputs will help you make some small shifts on each side to help you feel more clear and more steady as you try to navigate this silly, silly life of ours. Thanks so much for spending your time with me today. I really appreciate you being here. If you haven't taken my free class on stopping overthinking, get it. It's free. It takes 30 minutes. You can get it at takeouttherapy. Com. I am absolutely here to help you. While Takeout Therapy is an awesome educational resource, always get the level of support you need for your situation. Head to takeouttherapy.com to learn how to work with and stay in the loop. Until next time. Take really good care of yourself friend.