BBR #193: It doesn't have to be like this, you have a choice

Welcome back to another episode of the Brain Body Resilience Podcast! I'm your host, JPB, and today we're revisiting a topic that continues to resonate deeply. After recently speaking with an organization whose staff deals with community mental health, I was reminded of how critical it is to take care of ourselves, especially when we're overwhelmed and understaffed.

In this throwback episode, we dive into the reality that many of us face—knowing what we should be doing to care for ourselves but feeling unable to do so due to time, energy, and resource constraints. We explore the importance of having a skill set to help you break free from a constant state of stress, worry, and overwhelm, and the necessity of choosing something different if you want different results.

We'll discuss the responsibility we have to care for ourselves, even when the world around us seems like a dumpster fire, and how small, consistent actions can lead to significant change. I'll also share a recent experience that reinforced my mission—to help you realize that you don't have to keep living in stress and anxiety. There are simple tools and changes you can implement to make a difference in your life.

Key Takeaways:

• Recognizing the importance of self-care, even in the midst of overwhelming circumstances.
• Understanding that knowing what to do isn’t enough; action is required to create change.
• The power of perspective in managing stress and how it affects your physiological response.
• Small, consistent steps are more effective than big leaps in making lasting change.
• You don’t have to live a life dominated by stress and anxiety—there is a choice.

Call to Action: If you found this episode helpful, please share it with your friends, give it a like, and leave a review. Share it on social media, tag me so I can see it, and let’s continue to spread this message. Join me next week for another episode as we continue to explore how to create a life that feels good.

Get in there and give it a listen!

Chapters

• 0:00 Self-Care and Resilience for Well-Being
• 14:39 Embracing Stress for Growth and Resilience
• 17:43 Spreading Message of Hope and Gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends, welcome back to another episode of the Brain Body Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and today we have another throwback episode. We are revisiting this episode after a talk I gave to an organization whose staff deals with community mental health care, and they are seeing folks in distress while understaffed and overwhelmed. So many of us know this feeling, who find ourselves stuck in this space, and most of us know we should be doing things to take care of ourselves in order to be able to show up for ourselves and for those around us. We know that eating healthy and exercising and moving our bodies gives us energy and keeps our brain and body healthy, and even doing something that we enjoy now and again will make a difference. But time, energy and resources are very real things that most of us are lacking. That's why having a skill set to help you get out of the constant state of stress, worry and overwhelm is critical. So much of the time we know what to do and we just don't do it because there are very real reasons and if we don't do something different, nothing will be different. It is that simple. We are living within a time and structure that does not easily allow for us to have time and energy to care. Forhumanizing I don't know if that's a word, but as long as we're not caring about people and caring about productivity and just kind of treating people like robots, working until there's nothing left and just like extracting from the humans that live in this world, it is going to be like that and it is our responsibility to give ourselves the best care possible. It is our responsibility to offer our systems the attention and care we deserve within this situation we find ourselves in. No, it should not be left up to us to fix the world around us, but it is. It is our responsibility to show up for ourselves, even when there is only five minutes to do that. Showing up for yourself impacts yourself and how you are able to show up for the world around you, and it is an example and it changes how you show up, giving others the opportunity to do so. Taking care of yourself is for you and it also is a ripple effect out into your family, your community, the places that you find yourself in the world. And that was all kind of you know, a tangent.

Speaker 1: 3:04

But what led me to choose this episode and revisit? Because we have to be responsible for ourselves, even when we should not have to be responsible for cleaning up the dumpster fire around us, within this very real context of our lives. What can we do? How can we make this better for ourselves so that we can show up in our lives the way that we want to? The answer is choosing something different than what we're doing now. Is it your fault? The world's on fire? No, is it your responsibility to change what you don't like that you have the ability to control, which is how you show up, things you do for yourself, how you spend your time and energy and attention. Yes, you are your own responsibility, and knowing what to do isn't useful if there isn't action to follow. That, again, most of us know what to do in a lot of cases. Just the basics Get your sleep, get your movement, get your nutrition. That is a huge factor in managing stress and just allowing your brain and body to work optimally, and those are a lot of the things that we tend to brush aside because we are exhausted, we're overwhelmed and it seems like too much effort. It is simple. It's not necessarily easy, so it doesn't have to be like this.

Speaker 1: 4:33

I am going to let you listen to this throwback episode and I hope that it gives you the reminder that it gave me. I hope that you enjoy what is up. Hello there, my name is Jessica Patchenbunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more Well. Hello friends, welcome to today's episode.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Today I am doing a little reflection on what it is that I am doing here and why I choose to do so, and this beautiful reflection comes thanks to a friend that I was able to see over the weekend, who told me that they were able to navigate an anxiety attack in a new way and come out of it feeling better, using some of the information that they learned from me, and I am just like beyond grateful to have had a small part in helping this person learn a different set of actions to respond to these feelings and help them, like navigate their life differently. I am just so, so happy that that was the outcome for them. So, after they told me this, what they said next summed up why I've chosen to do what I do in such a beautiful way, and it really stuck with me. They said and this is not verbatim because I don't remember, but something along the lines of um, you know, I stopped and I thought, wait, I don't have to keep living this way. And I, just like that, I felt that in in my core because that was the realization that I had at one point that really prompted me to start this journey to the place that I'm in now, trying to help other people realize that that same thing. And so my heart just exploded with, you know, joy in learning that. It just made me so happy to know that that was a realization that was now passed on to someone else, and I just love that so so much. It just gave me, you know, all the feels when I heard that, just because that's exactly it, that's exactly exactly what it is, we don't have to keep living this way if it is not a way that we are enjoying. And so it made me think about just a lot of things here.

Speaker 1: 7:37

The majority of our visits to primary care doctors in this country are due to stress-related issues. It is a major problem, and we're just now starting to figure out that there is a great need to address this issue, and I've told this story over and over again, so you may have heard it before, but it continues to be relevant and so I will continue to, you know, revisit this. There was a period in my twenties where I visited the doctor several times. Um, within you know, a short period of time a couple of years, I don't know uh, for things that I just were I was, and I kept being told the same kind of thing like, oh, you just need to have less stress, this is just stress related. And um, so just try to have less stress, this is just stress related. And so just try to lower your stress levels.

Speaker 1: 8:25

And I thought, like, what the fuck does that even mean?

Speaker 1: 8:27

I have no idea. And I was so frustrated because I just hadn't. I had no idea that I had other options to feel a different way. I was so used to just being overwhelmed by stress that I really didn't know there was another option and I also didn't know that it was dependent on myself. I remember very vividly thinking okay, I work two jobs and I go to school, I'm trying to figure out how to pay my bills, I I don't know. I'm sure that somebody has a stress-free life out there somewhere and it's because they don't have any problems and that's really great. And so it was just really frustrating that there was nothing attached to that idea that I needed to just like have less stress to, you know, make myself, help my wellness. There was nothing attached in the way of finding more information or what the potential risks were of not like magically finding this life without stress.

Speaker 1: 9:35

And now, after about 10 years, and now after about 10 years, increasing burnout in that time, which led to a mental breakdown or, you know, acute period of intense distress in my life, and then a lot of learning and growth, my formal education being a huge part of that, and then my independent interest in research on this specific topic, a lot of trial and error, and you know, like all of us, I am absolutely still a very, very rough work in progress. But I now understand that there is a serious gap that we have in the education we receive around how we function as human beings on a fundamental level and how we can take active steps to participate in our well-being. We don't have to live feeling overwhelmed by stress and anxiety and counting down each day, just trying to get through it, trying to drink smoke or fuck our stress away. Counting down each day just trying to get through it, trying to drink smoke or fuck our stress away. And spoiler alert you know these things don't work. I've done the research. We don't have to keep living this way.

Speaker 1: 10:47

There are simple things we can do to add to our lives, to feel better, to have more energy, to generally just enjoy life like for real. The thing is, you have to be ready to change in order to make these changes, until you are sick of where you're at enough to really change some shit. Well, nothing will change. And I want to add here that just because something is simple does not mean that it's easy. Change isn't generally easy for us because we have to learn new ways of thinking and behaving and adjusting our environment accordingly. And all of that leads to a lot of uncertainty and requires new literally new neural pathways to be built and constructed inside your head for new patterns of thought and action to take place. And all of this requires a ton of mental energy and challenges the brain and nervous system's current way of being and action to take place. And all of this requires a ton of mental energy and challenges the brain and nervous system's current way of being and functioning that like we've been practicing for God knows how long our whole life, at least a few years 10, 20, I don't know a long, long time and it is going to fight to keep whatever patterns it already has and poo poo all over anything new new because it wants to survive, it wants to be sure of what's going on, even if this place isn't the best place to be.

Speaker 1: 12:06

It thinks. Your brain thinks that you can, you know better, predict what's going on, cause you've been in this space, you know, you know what's going on and you're saving energy because you're not trying to, um, literally reconstruct the way that you are functioning and the way that your brain is set up, is wired. And so you're going to come up with all kinds of excuses and reasons why you just can't seem to do the thing that needs to get done in order to steer you in a different direction get done in order to steer you in a different direction about why you don't have the time or the space or the right equipment or whatever that thing is. Your brain is a tricky and brilliant thing, and so all of that just to say it will take some work, but you can do it. You just have to keep trying and keep showing up to do the thing in whatever amount you need to in that moment, just because something simple does not mean that it's easy.

Speaker 1: 13:06

And we think that these huge overhaul, makeover, transformations are the goal, because that's what we're used to seeing in, you know, especially in like fitness. You know, especially in like fitness nutrition, whatever wellness means in that type of space, because we see these advertisements for these like before and after and all of those things. But those overnight or 30 day transformations, those took years and if they didn't, they, I assure you, will not last. Change takes time and consistency and it can't be for the point of, like reaching some kind of specific outer goal. It has to be about making those changes a part of your life, otherwise they will never stick and a lot of the times, if we view these things to be like intrusions on our life, which is another thing that your brain's going to be like I don't have time for these things. I have to get going, I have all these things to do on my to-do list or whatever it is. I don't have time, I don't have energy. Those are all just fuckery that your brain is coming up with because it doesn't want to make changes, it doesn't want to expend the energy, it doesn't want to go into an uncertain place. It is more, you know, safe, seeming to continue doing what you've been doing, because that can be predicted. So change takes time and it takes consistency. Tiny, consistent steps will get you there so much faster than a huge leap once in a while.

Speaker 1: 14:39

And I want to circle back around to young, young JPB thinking that there was some stress-free life somewhere and I just wasn't fortunate enough to have, like, been born into that. Stress-free lives don't exist, nor should they. We need stress to accomplish things. We need stress to motivate us. It serves a wonderful function for us. It's when we have too much and we don't know how to handle it. We need stress to motivate us. It serves a wonderful function for us. It's when we have too much and we don't know how to handle it. We don't know how to manage it. In our days it builds up. We become overwhelmed by it. It also has a lot to do with how we think about it. I remember so many times saying like oh, this fucking stress is killing me, I'm going to die.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Research shows that the way that you actually think about stress, if you believe that it is harmful to your health. It produces a different physiological response than if you think that it is helping you to meet a challenge or if you kind of have a neutral feeling on it. The way that you think about things is so much more of the equation than we have ever been taught. Your perspective is literally everything about how you live your life. You shape that and you get to choose that.

Speaker 1: 15:43

And so I have learned in this time that I don't want to stress free life, because overcoming the stresses and obstacles has made me a stronger, more resilient person and has given meaning to a lot of those spaces where I needed to come up with the way to overcome those obstacles. And it had nothing to do with anything outside of me. Working two jobs, going to school, it was how I felt about all of those things. Ultimately, that changed. I'm not gonna say it had nothing to do, because working two jobs and going to school like is super stressful. Working full time and being a parent full like is super stressful. Working full-time and being a parent full-time is super stressful. Working to school, working in school at the same time is stressful. All of these things can, yes, add to the levels of stress. But what is going on outside of us is not the issue. It is how we respond to these things that produces the stress that can build up and lead to burnout and lead to these health issues and these problems. So again, tiny, consistent steps, changes, using tools, learning about how we function and how we can manage ourselves. That's how we're going to get there.

Speaker 1: 16:53

You've got this and I want to say a huge thank you to this friend for stating so clearly for me that we don't have to keep living like this. That is the whole point here. Like that. That is. That is my. My mission is to let people know that you have a choice. You don't have to just be stuck thinking like, well, my life is stressful, that's it. Like this is, this is where I live. There are things that you can do in your day, simple tools that will make space for you to choose your reaction to the way that you're living, to change the way that you're thinking about things in your perspective. That will literally change the physiological response you have. So we don't have to keep living like this. If this space is one of stress and anxiety and overwhelm and burnout, you can make the change.

Speaker 1: 17:43

I want to let everybody know. That's the thing. It doesn't have to be like this. All right, that's it. That's my message for this week. Let's do this again next week. As always. Incredibly grateful. If you found this helpful, share it with your people, give it a like, give it a star, share it on social media, tag me and that way I can see it and share it, and then we'll meet back here next week and we'll do this all over again. I love it. Thank you so much. Until next week, peace out.