Episode #230 Why you feel off (even when your life looks fine)

In this episode of the Berman Method Podcast, Jenni Berman is joined again by licensed clinical social worker and somatic therapist Jessica Frederick to continue their conversation on the mind-body connection. Together, they explore how emotional stress, overwhelm, and dysregulation directly impact physical health, including blood sugar, metabolism, sleep, inflammation, and hormonal balance. 

They share simple, practical ways to begin regulating the nervous system throughout the day, including deep breathing, grounding exercises, short walks, sunlight exposure, and taking intentional pauses. The focus is on creating small daily practices that help reconnect the mind and body instead of waiting until stress reaches a crisis point. 

If you constantly feel overwhelmed, stuck in fight-or-flight mode, or like you never have time for yourself, this episode offers a realistic approach to slowing down and prioritizing your mental and physical health. It’s a powerful reminder that healing requires more than just treating symptoms—it starts with learning how to regulate and care for yourself consistently. 

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Transcript

Welcome Back And Guest Context

Speaker 2 0:01

Welcome back to the Berman Method Podcast. I'm Jenni Berman, physician assistant. The Berman Method Podcast is all about Berman Health Club and treating problems and not just symptoms. We are going against the corporate medical system, really helping clients and individuals to understand there is another way that we should be questioning our providers and really understand better what our body is going through. Can we figure out the problem? Not can we, how do we figure out the problem and treat the problem and not just the symptoms? I am back today with our super special guest on the podcast from last week. If you did not listen to last week, please go back and listen to it. It was just absolutely incredible. And the foundation to our conversation today with Jessica Frederick, who is a licensed clinical social worker, but also a yoga teacher and really focused on somatic therapy, meaning connecting the body to the brain, which we explained all about last episode. So please go back. And we will revisit this at the end of the podcast. But she is a she owns and runs Lotus Living Florida. And you can find her at lotuslivingfloridafl.com. So lotuslivingfl.com. But we will link that in the show notes. So welcome back today, Jessica. Hello. She is back. We're so excited. And um we really got into last week talking about how we can recognize our emotions as especially as women who are very busy, moms, entrepreneurs, but just in the daily life, like all moms are are chaotic at some point, right? We all kind of go through it, especially um even in even just having one, like is a life-changing experience. And so, plus, if you're working or run a business, or maybe your husband's working, run a business, and you have to keep up with everything else that's going on in life. Um, but this also applies to people who don't no longer have kids at home. Sure. Um, and men too. Absolutely. So we are just here to help the help each individual understand the connection between what I do on the functional medicine side. So really understanding your stress axis and your blood sugar and your gut health, but how we have to also um target the emotional connection to that and how we connect the body to the mind, which is where you come in and we refer to you regularly to help our clients make that full circle connection.

Speaker 2:23

Yes. And we have we have Jenni to help my clients out of the therapy session as well.

Micro-Practices For Daily Regulation

Speaker 2 2:28

Yes. So welcome back. Thank you for coming back. And we're just gonna jump right into so last week we talked a lot about being able to recognize when we're in this quote unquote downward spiral or we're spiral or we're getting emotional or dysregulated, irrational, feeling like we're gonna react. And you talked about just taking a really big deep breath. Yeah, like just try, even if it's a shallow breath to start with, keep doing them as many times as you need to until you're actually able to take that deep breath and pause your brain and really listening to the questions that your brain is telling you when you're in that emotional state. Yes. And today I want to go even further to that and say, okay, now we talked so much last week about practicing and that we have to practice five, six, seven days a week to become better at something and to make it more of a part of normalcy for you. Um, so I want to get into what are some things that we can practice on a regular basis to help that mind-body connection, which is gonna help my side of regulating the hormonal imbalance, regulating the stress response, regulating the internal inflammation that is caused from this dysregulation of the stress response.

Speaker 3:43

Yeah, let's do an initial disclaimer that we're not adding more things to your to-do list, right? We know you're overwhelmed, we know you're busy. It's simply a matter of putting you on your schedule for five minutes. Like I am not trying to add more, you know, fuel to your fire, but I want you to start prioritizing yourself. And so if you give yourself, you know, kind of like the Apple Watch tells you to stand every hour. It I want those kind of similar practices. So, like a deep breath. If you can take one deep breath every hour, if we can do um the five senses, grounding technique is very common. So you stop what you're doing, you look around, and you name five things that you can see. Then you do four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things that you can hear, maybe, and one thing that you can taste, like what's you know, the last taste on your mouth. Because now your brain is so focused on the senses and doing that actual, you know, activity that now you're present, you're out of your headspace, you're no longer spiraling, and hopefully it also passed, you know, and we don't even have to revisit it.

Speaker 2 4:46

But and it doesn't take much time.

Speaker 4:48

Exactly. I I tell people, even if you just stop and do the five look around the name five things you see, like you're going to have a positive effect from that. Right. Um, and it's the same with when I tell people to meditate, and people will say, Well, I can't, I can't turn off my brain. I know, like that's not the point. You know, the point is the practice again of meditation is we're learning to detach from the thoughts. And so even if you took a, you know, three-minute pause every hour, you're taking the pause, you're tuning into your breath, and therefore you're getting out of your head. Every time you get distracted, right, you're gonna get pulled away into your thoughts. And so you just go back. Oh, right, I'm breathing. Oh, I can count my breaths, you know, I can pay attention to my stomach expanding while I'm inhaling and then exhaling. And then we practice that in real life. When we're in the midst of a stressful conversation or when our toddler is melting down, like you can do these things. There's little bite-sized things that are going to keep you more regulated the more that we have these things. This isn't the emergency button. You know, I'm I'm not saying in a time where you're activated and then reacting and then spiraling, you know, no, five minutes is not gonna help that. We're kind of over over the edge there. This is giving you these practices to have day to day all the time.

Grounding And Meditation Without Perfection

Speaker 2 6:08

Right. When you're yeah, not in a red cross situation. Yeah, not in a total crisis, yeah. But just being able to implement them regularly to make it a normal part of practice, which is going to help with that dysregulated stress response. It's going to help with resetting that stress access, what we call the HPA access on the medical side, helping with resetting that access, which by the way, I'm just gonna put a little tidbit of functional medicine in here. When that HPA access is getting more regulated and more quote unquote normal, that's gonna drive your blood sugar down. That's gonna speed up your metabolism, that's gonna improve your sleep. It's gonna prevent these afternoon crashes that you have in the afternoon. Um, these afternoon crashes you have in the afternoon. It's kind of repetitive there. But it is going to have such a connection between the actual metabolic dysfunction that's going on in addition to the emotional connection or positive reaction that it will have just by being able to think a little bit clearer. So, yes, all right. So we have these little five-minute practices that we can do, or the five senses, which probably takes less than five minutes, really, to be honest. Um, how about some other like I will be the first to tell you me doing even a 20-minute yoga session? I signed up for this like online platform that has yoga and you're supposed to do yoga and Pilates, and you're supposed to do like a 20-minute session before or after your workout. And 10 minutes in, I'm like, okay, I'm good. Yeah. Like I just getting my body to slow down is really like I have to practice it. Yeah. And I'm working on it, which is why I signed up for this accountability coach to be like, are you doing your Platy sessions and are you making them through? And I'll be first one, I made it through five minutes. No joke. Second one, I was like, okay, seven minutes, I'm gonna do it. And now I'm up to 12. So it's an improvement, but I have to put it on my schedule. I have to say, okay, yes, I'm everybody knows if you watch social media, I work out every day, right? And that is a non-negotiable for me. It is on my schedule. Even if I wake up at 3 a.m. and work until 4 30, I am in the gym working out somewhere between 4 45 and 6, right? And that is a non-negotiable for me. What I've had to do in that workout span is say, okay, at the end of your workout, you are doing a hard stop at this time so that you have your 20-minute potential of doing your Pilates. I haven't made it to 20 minutes yet, but it's you need a coach, you need to practice it. You're gonna have baby steps on being able to improve this. So going back to, you know, people be like, oh, okay, you should meditate or you should do yoga or Pilates for an hour. And for some people, it's just not there yet. Yeah. So what are some other things that we can incorporate in our day to get our mind to that position to be able to slow down, to get that fight or flight response to be okay with slowing down.

Speaker 9:07

Yeah. Think about everything as a pause in the merry-go-round of your day. So if you pay attention to Jenni on social media, you know that she is often going out for walks. I am constantly telling people, please just go stand outside. Go stand outside for five minutes. I guarantee you that you have five minutes where you can walk outside, ideally put your feet in the grass and just be. Right. You're going to get the benefits of that. And again, we're not reinventing the wheel. I'm not asking you to learn a foreign language. It might feel that way. Yeah. But I am just asking you to do these simple pauses that are for you. Again, did you drink your water? Have you eaten your protein? Are you eating, have you eaten your meals at all today? Like, what is what have you put in your body? Like, let's check in. It's just those kind of check-ins where it seems so simplistic, but we're not doing them. And then we don't understand how we get to the end of the day. And A, think, what the heck did I do today? And B, just feel that stress.

Yoga, Walks, Sunlight, And Starting Small

Speaker 2 10:08

And it definitely has to come down to an accountability measure. Yeah. Do you have someone helping to hold you accountable? Do you have a coach? Do you have a therapist that's saying, okay, like let's, I want you to send me a portal message every time you do your five-minute breathing or your five minutes outside, or write it down on a piece of paper. Just like we track our food, we should be tracking our stress response too. And I tell clients that all the time. I'm like, I need you to write down when you feel anxious, when you feel stressed out, when you have a bowel movement, when you spend your five minutes doing your breathing or your yoga or your walking or your exercise. Like, I need everything written down as objective data so we can actually quantify it and see, are you actually doing it and how often are you doing it?

Speaker 10:52

Exactly. Because this is typically what happens in therapy is people come and they talk about their concerns and they have little aha moments in the session of like that makes sense, absolutely, didn't consider that perspective, love it, and then they leave, and then it's like that never happened. Sure. They are just right back to the autopiloty that they were on. And so we have to have these breaks. You have to start teaching yourself to do something different. So I tell people, roll out your yoga mat or lay on the floor, right? You don't need a yoga mat. Like sit in child's pose. Yeah. Just sit in child's pose. Now now you're someone who does yoga. Sit on your mat and breathe. You're doing yoga. Like, don't overcomplicate it. You know, just start doing different things. Like, I am now someone who takes a pause. You know, I am now someone who drinks eight, you know, ounces of water every hour. Like these small things are for you to tune more into you so you can actually figure out what, like, what experience am I actually having? And not what is my head telling me? And not what is just constantly going on in my head, you know, these just all these, all this external noise. I always just call it noise. Like, what is the noise that is consuming your day that's keeping you from being able to recognize that your jaw has been tight all day?

Speaker 2 12:04

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 12:05

You know, or your hips are out of alignment when you're standing.

Speaker 2 12:07

Sure, sure. And that's, you know, with we talked about it very briefly on the last podcast, is we all have homework, right? Whether it's your job or your exercise or your therapy or your nutrition or the food logging, people see that as like such a negative sometimes. It is your homework to be able to improve. And we correlated this to our kids, is when they're learning to do an activity, they take longer to figure it out when they're doing it once a week. Right. But when we're practicing that activity on a daily basis, you know, doing a handstand. The kids are constantly upside down right now. But I encourage, I'm like, put your feet on the wall, do a handstand, figure it out. Because if you're not trying with some support of the wall or doing it every five minutes, or using the couch, uh the back of the couch as your wall, you know, like some people would be like, no, don't do that. And I'm like, they're practicing, they're figuring it out, and we have to practice the same way. We have to dabble in things, do it a couple of minutes a day, be playful about it, be curious about it, you know.

Speaker 13:10

Like, sorry to interrupt you. But it it it especially for the moms, use your experience of being a mom and seeing life through their eyes and and being in tune with, yeah, I want them to practice. Yeah, I I understand that I also need to teach my toddler emotional regulation. Like, then you just teach yourself the same stuff. Like, why not you start practicing it along with them? Now you're going to teach them probably faster because you're also modeling it instead of just telling them what to do and you're not doing it yourself.

Speaker 2 13:40

Absolutely. You know, that makes such a good point is with the toddlers when they're in a situation where they are, and we talked about this last episode too. So please go back and listen to it. But when they're in this situation of having a fit or, you know, mad at their sibling, and we tell them, take a minute, walk away, go sit down and breathe. And once you get regulated, come back. I can't tell you how many times I I walk through those with Stella and Vera, my my two older ones. Just walk away, go sit on the stairs, breathe. When you're ready to think and to communicate without yelling, come back to me and we can talk about it. Why aren't we doing that ourselves? Exactly. Right? When we're getting a stressful situation, why aren't we just going outside in the sunlight and taking five minutes to breathe?

Accountability And Tracking Stress Like Data

Speaker 14:24

Taking that deep breath, you know? And I make it, I make it maybe funny. Like, this is how I breathe when I'm really about to lose it. And again, my toddler's learning that because she thinks that's hilarious, but it honestly helps me way more than just a normal deep breath. And so, like, okay, everyone, everyone who's listening, inhale through your nose. And I want a big dramatic exhale. Like, I guarantee you, if you could just do that for yourself, you you would feel better.

Speaker 2 14:54

And your blood sugar would be lower.

Speaker 14:56

And your stress level is gonna go lower and your and your thoughts are gonna stop tormenting you. Burn more fat. And your kids will like you.

Speaker 2 15:05

You know, just gonna but it's so true. We just have to incorporate these practices on a daily basis. I mean, I yes, I am one, and again, if you watch any of the social medias, I will go on 10-minute walks, often be after meals, right? There is a metabolic reason to doing it after a meal, to the fact that it does help to regulate the glucose and the blood sugar um and stimulate our brain. However, these walks can be any time of day, they don't have to be after you eat. And I'm one, you know, I haven't got to the point yet where I can go outside and just listen to my thoughts. I will take my phone and I will make sure I'm being productive. Um, however, that's not always we'll work on that, Jenni. You should be with your thoughts at that point, but at least you're moving.

Speaker 15:47

Exactly. Start somewhere. Exactly. I mean, I say that to people too. Like, how like are you sitting all day? Like, do you get up? Do you move around, you know? And to just go back to the importance of scheduling it, especially if you're a mom or anyone who's busy, right? There is always other things to do. And so if you're not already scheduled and you're just kind of like loosely on a to-do list if I get to it, you're never going to get to it. Right. And so, sure, this is where therapy becomes a little deeper, where I basically ask, like, what's your beef with yourself? Yeah. Like, why are we not prioritizing ourselves? And that has a lot of, you know, emotional boxes that we need to open and and thought boxes that we need to reframe. But ultimately, if we're starting to just put one foot in front of the other and we just start the practice of all of these things, all that other stuff that we have to work through in therapy is gonna be a whole lot easier.

Speaker 1 16:40

Right, right.

Speaker 16:41

And you're already seeing the in real time benefits of what you're doing.

Speaker 2 16:46

Exactly. We put everything on our schedules. Most of us live by our schedules. And I know our clients do, because they're like, oh, I can't schedule right now. I don't have my schedule in front of you. I don't have my calendar in front of me. So we live by our calendar. We have to put ourselves on the calendar. We have to block out that time for ourselves to say, okay, this is my family time, this is my need time, this is my five-minute mental health break. And my staff has a very busy schedule, and I ask them in their blocks to put what they're doing in their blocks, right? So we can make sure that we're being time efficient and we're responding to the people we need to. And I hope that they're putting in their day a couple times a day, meant five-minute mental break. Yeah. Like, fine. Thank you. You need that to be able to help our people and to help yourself, right? Help yourself first, and then our people but the mental health breaks are just so important as if you're doing them efficiently. The breathing, the getting outside, the sitting down in child's pose, even just lay down on the ground. Exactly. Oftentimes I walk in Jake's office and his head's down on his desk, and I'm like, what are you doing? Are you working? Okay, wait, you're breathing? Yeah, okay. Yeah, fine, whatever. But can we do five minutes? Not 35 minutes.

Speaker 17:54

The call out. The call out.

Busy Excuses, Self-Priority, And Closing Reset

Speaker 2 17:57

Just kidding. But do what your your body needs, really. That that's so important. And as we've communicated, the the regulating this emotional stress response is a piece of the puzzle. Regulating your blood sugar is a piece. Regulating your vitamin levels is a piece of the puzzle. Um, regulating your hormones. But guess what? If we can regulate the emotional response and your blood sugar and the vitamin levels, the hormones fall into place. Right. So we are tying all this in together that we are very, and by the way, we were gonna mention this, but like what does busy even mean? Okay. Like if you're busy, yes, I get it. We all have a hundred things that we need to be doing. Yeah. But busy is just a term.

Speaker 18:40

And it's also often another excuse for not doing probably what you want to do. Like, I see clients, and it honestly like breaks my heart sometimes, where they want to do something for themselves, and there's this is where the the thought patterns are really like crazy in there where they make us really believe that we can't take care of ourselves. We have to be doing all these other things. That's why I don't like the shoulds. Like, stop shoulding on yourself. No one wrote a book on your life of all the choices that you are supposed to make, right? Like, just do what you want to do when it can benefit you, especially.

Speaker 2 19:15

Right.

Speaker 19:15

Like, don't tell me I don't have five minutes to breathe. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 19:18

Right, yeah, yeah. No, well, you have to live.

Speaker 19:20

Thank you.

Speaker 2 19:21

And by the way, if you're not living and emotionally regulated, you're not gonna be a good caregiver or business owner or whatever else is on your to-do busy list.

Speaker 19:30

And to all my high functioning over pleasers, people pleasers out there, those people aren't pleased with you.

Speaker 2 19:35

Right.

Speaker 19:36

They're not always pleased with you. And guess what? You're not pleased. So stop.

Speaker 2 19:40

We have to start with you. And I mentioned on the last podcast too is we we can't listen to people saying, I'm proud of you or you're doing a great job. We have to say it to ourselves, or we have to hear someone say you should be proud of yourself. And we we have to be proud of ourselves first. We have to put ourselves first to making these emotional, physical, and metabolic changes for sure.

Speaker 20:03

And you will be proud of yourself if you keep that appointment with yourself. Yes, I guarantee that.

Speaker 2 20:09

Absolutely, a hundred percent. So, Jessica Frederick, licensed licensed clinical social worker. I'm gonna trip over that continuously. Um, therapist, though, she is our our go-to therapist for our clients and really just has a different way of seeing it. It's not just let's talk about your feelings, it's how can we get into these feelings, how can we connect this to the functional medicine world and really make it a full-body experience. So she does um virtual work with her clients in Florida, Ohio, and Utah. You can find her at Lotus L O T U S Living L-I-V-I-N-G-F-L dot com. Yes. And her email is Jessica at lotusliving f l dot com. Yes. Um, so you can reach out to her with any of those two um forms of communication. We will also put it in our show notes as well. I feel like we just need to do more. I was thinking that. Yeah, we'll do we have more things to say. Maybe we should just start another podcast. We can have a series. I like that. Um but thank you so much, Jessica, for coming in today. Thank you so much for having me. She is our go-to person for the emotional connection to what we're doing in the functional medicine world and is 100% vital. So please reach out to her and you guys go take a deep breath.

Speaker 21:24

Yes, go get some sunlight. A million deep breaths. Yeah. And when I say deep breath, inhale for at least four seconds and exhale for at least six seconds, and you automatically activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Speaker 2 21:36

Which is gonna calm you. Thank you. In the other terms.

Speaker 21:42

Exactly.

Speaker 2 21:42

Um, and make noises out of it if you have to. Have fun, be playful. All right, ciao for now.