Another Good Enough Episode (#3)

If you’re new here, my "good enough" episodes typically happen as a result of me getting behind on recording podcasts. They happen when I realize on a Monday night that I don’t have anything recorded for tomorrow’s podcast episode and I don’t have the time, energy, or capacity to do the full outlining, researching, or scripting that other podcast get. Instead I just talk more candidly from the heart - today that conversation is about the "A-lot-ness" in my life right now and how I'm navigating in very differently than I would have years ago.

I share 3 things that are really helping me as I fall into my default patterns of urgency and "just get it done" and end chatting through how easy it is to label natural physiological responses as "disorders" when you don't understand the nervous system.

Two spoilers -
 
(1) We'll be opening up a handful of spots for our new labs offering before the end of the year, want first dibs on detail & those spots? CLICK HERE to get on the waitlist

(2) I'm looking to update my branding & redesign my website - do you or someone you know do aMaZiNg modern websites? Email me, please.

My final ask of the podcast is that I'd LOVE to hear from you. If you hit play today, send me an email or DM and let me know what from today's conversation impacted you most!

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Website: https://www.regulatedliving.com/podcast

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Transcript

0:00  
Welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Hey friends, welcome to another good enough episode. I think this is good enough part three, if you are new here, my good enough episodes typically happen as a result of me getting behind on batch recording podcasts, and they happen most often when I find myself realizing on a Monday evening that I don't have a podcast recorded for Tomorrow's Tuesday, which is when my new episodes go live. And it happens when I don't have the time or the energy, the capacity to do the full outlining or research or scripting that all of my other podcasts tend to get. So instead, with these good enough episodes, I talk more candidly from the heart, share a little bit about what I'm moving through in my real life, and hope that it resonates with somebody who is on the other end listening to this. 

So for some context, today was my son's first day of school. It's his last first day of preschool. He made sure that I knew that as we drove today, and he was like, next year I'm in kindergarten. It's like, I know I'm gonna cry about it, so stop reminding me. And our summer was really busy, some back to back trips, some things that came up. If you followed me on Instagram, and I'm I can't remember what I've written a podcast to talk about it in the future, whether I mentioned it on a past one. But when we went to California to visit my family for 10 days, we got the stomach flu, and it like took out every single member of my family, my parents, my brother, my sister, my kids, my husband and I, like, 12 hours apart, so that, needless to say, wasn't a very relaxing trip. And then about we got home from that trip, and 48 hours later, we went to the annual trip with my husband's side of the family, which is to a remote fishing camp in Canada, which is like a 13 hour drive there and 13 hours back. And I have two tiny humans. So to be fair, I catastrophized the driving, and this year the driving went better than last year, and I was really ready and anticipated that what school started, we would settle a little bit. My husband and I have a 10 day trip away for our anniversary, which I was really excited about, mid September, and then my brother in law had the audacity to get engaged and plan his wedding in between the start of school and this trip, which actually were so stoked. I'm so so excited for who he's chosen to marry, I could not ask to add another sister to my roster who is better than her. But what this means is that in about a week, we are getting in the car, another long it's nine hours each way, I think, up to Boston for their wedding, with another two to three day turnaround before my husband and I go to Iceland for 10 days. 

So where I'm at right now is that there is just a lot. And I think so many of you can sit with your life and be like, there's a lot. And also I need to acknowledge that my a lot is really, really a privileged a lot right now, I'm talking about trips that I was able to go on to spend time with our family, this five year anniversary trip that my husband have I've been saving up for to Iceland is going to be amazing. And if you are on Instagram, one of the few things that I've been posting there is that some land that my husband and I invested in about an hour or so away from our home here just outside Washington, DC, we are building a cabin. This cabin will kind of double as like our family cabin slash Airbnb, but it's also going to be a place that I get to host my annual retreat at. I in the past, have done a backpacking mental health retreat. I did kind of a glamping mental health retreat. We didn't do one this year, but next year, and for the years after we get to come to this cabin, but we're mid construction with that, there are about 42 decisions we need to make a day to keep that on track. And so all of this, I'm also prepared. Preparing. I shared a few weeks ago. I think we had a failed IVF transfer a few months ago. So we're preparing to figure out what our next steps look like. There. There's a lot again, there's a lot. All of you have a lot. 

And what I want to share, that I hope is helpful for you, is how I am navigating my a lot different right now than I have in the past, different right now than I have years ago. What I notice is that my nervous system is very, very easily right now, falling into my default patterns of urgency, of Go, go, go, of what ifs and catastrophizing. And the difference for me now versus years ago is that I have the awareness to catch myself in this urgency, to catch myself in the catastrophizing. And beyond just that awareness to catch myself in these patterns, I have the capacity to be with higher levels of stress before it becomes dysregulating, and I have the tools to navigate it, to shift and change. And we talked about this a little bit, I think, seven or eight episodes ago. I think it's titled like, do you always feel like you're in a rush, where we talked about this pattern of urgency that I've noticed in my life, especially in this season right now, where there just is a lot to do. But I think today, maybe for this first part, I just want to talk about how I'm navigating this in real time. 

One of the things and the ways that I'm noticing, other patterns show up. So one of the things that I was talking about, actually, just in therapy a week ago, was this sense of, I have to get this done. I have to do it right now, because then it can be done. And it's almost this idea that, like, I can't rest until I'm on the other side of this thing. But what's always on the other side of that thing is another thing that I need to get on the other side of, and another thing that I need to get on the other side of. And we talked through what it looks like to be more okay, being in the process of getting all the things done instead of looking at is. And I've done this in a lot of ways in my life. I used to do this around food. Well, let me just eat all of the leftovers, or let me just eat all of the ice cream, because then once it's gone, it's gone, and I won't have it to eat anymore. And the funny, funny thing I'm noticing this show up for for me right now is actually reading. So within the last couple months, I have started just reading for the sake of reading for leisure. For the first time in many, many years, I'm an avid reader, but the last handful of years, the majority of my reading has been about trauma and nervous system psychology, research, human performance, physiology, and that's all well and good, but I've loved that I'm picking up books for fun. But in the last couple weeks, I noticed that I was pushing my bedtime. I was reading later than is optimal for me. I would find myself reading in like, these pockets of the day, almost compulsively, and at one point I had the thought of like, I just need to get to the end of this book so that it's done, and when I am at the end of this book, like then it can be one less thing that's on my to do list, again, as if this reading that I'm doing for enjoyment and leisure is just something on my to do list to get done. So I maybe my invitation for you here is to notice if that's a pattern that you have as well. How often are you looking at tasks in your life? Of like, I just have to power through. I just have to push through. I just have to get it done, to so that it's done.

And I think so. And the I would say the banter. I don't know if that's a therapeutically appropriate word, but I feel like the banter my therapist and I were having about this is I can see certain situations in which this kind of like head down, get through so that it's done. Mindset really works for me. I'm more of kind of like a sprint through a task and then rest. But obviously there's a level of dysfunction, if this is showing up in my leisurely reading. And so a way that, if you're like, oh my gosh, I totally do this too. Something small that I've done around noticing this pattern in my reading is that the last few days, when I've opened up my book to read, I have started reading with three deep breaths, and I am almost forcing myself to read slower. I need my brain and my body to experience that this is something that we have choice around. This is something that we are doing because we want to. It's not a thing to get done. I My system is. Defaulted towards this urgency, fast go, get it done. And so I'm having to take extra steps to experientially show my body that we're not in a rush. We're not in a hurry. It's okay. 

Another thing I noticed in the last couple weeks is I found myself one morning telling my son to hurry up. I was like, hurry up. I was like, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Let's finish breakfast so we can get outside on our walk. And after I made those statements and I walked away, I realized I was pushing my inner sense of urgency onto him, because it made absolutely no difference to our daily schedule, whether the walk happened that moment or 20 minutes later. And when I realized this, I could have just let it be. I could have kept telling him to hurry. I could have given in to that internal sense of urgency I was experiencing. But instead, which is what I would have done years ago. Instead, I made a point to pause. I took a breath experientially. Showed my body we have time to breathe. We have time to take a deep breath. And then to reiterate this, I turned to my son, and I said, Hey, actually, take your time. There is no rush. And I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to rush. We totally don't. I'm actually going to sit with you right now. And I What did I do? I think I asked him to, like, count the colors of the food on his plate, like, how many colors are there? And I made eating not a thing to get done so that we could get onto the next thing. But I allowed him, and I allowed myself to be in the experience of that thing. And what I think is really, really cool about that is that today, after his first day of school, my mom is in town visiting, and we wanted to go to this ceramic painting place. It's something she loves to do. Her knees also hurt, so we can't do a lot of like, really active things together. So we decided we'd pick my kid up from school and go do this together with with Grammy as I so we actually picked him up from school. We came home, and in the 1015, minutes we were home, I lost my phone, and I'm trying to find my phone. I was like, I gotta find my phone so we can go, so we can go. And my son looked at me, and he goes, Hey, Mom, take your time. There's no rush. And while I know it is absolutely not his job to regulate me. I felt really proud that he had ex, that I stepped into that moment of not just whatever, I'll let him take his time, but I stepped into that moment of reflecting back to him. We actually aren't in a rush. Let's take time. Let's be in this experience together. His system, his mind and his body internalized it enough that he could even recognize my own urgency and in his little four year old body, be like mom. No No rush. Take your time. You'll find your phone and hearing him say that I did. I did do this full body exhale, because he was right. There was no rush. We had time I didn't need to worry about it, and in even these small moments. 

So you've heard me say this before, that your state determines your story. My state was really activated, and that activation created not only rush to find my phone, but I was also thinking thoughts like, God, You're such an idiot. Why do you lose your own phone so often. How can you misplace things all the time? And the minute my son said that, and I went, Oh, those stories just went away. And this also re kind of reaffirms, to me why so much of this work happens in and through the body I spent so long in talk therapy, talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and seeing little to no improvement in my anxiety and depression. It wasn't until I learned how to settle my body. It wasn't until I changed the things that I was doing in my everyday life, the way that I was living my life. It wasn't until I corrected some major micronutrient deficiencies in my body, some serious adrenal shutdown, that my body settled, and so many of my thoughts just settled. I had spent so long trying to change my mindset to kind of catch challenge and change these thoughts to work on my beliefs, not realizing that so much of the overthinking, the catastrophizing, the manicness in my mind, was actually driven by the manic activation in my body. 

And so if you are somebody who's also listen to every podcast, read every book, maybe been in talk therapy, and you just feel like, I know better, but why can't I do better? There's an embodiment piece, and oftentimes that is tough to do on your own. There's so much research that shows that that is best done led by a practitioner within the context of a safe community. Right? And that's what we do. That's what we do every day at rise as we in our different programs. And what I want to give you Next are the three things that have been absolutely the most helpful for me in these past few weeks to navigate this sense of a lot, not even the sense the reality of a lot, differently than I have previously. 

So number one is intentionally slowing down. We talked about this in that urgency episode a month or two ago, noticing when I'm talking fast, walking fast, eating, fast, reading fast, to take a deep breath, to move slower, eat slower, read slower, to experientially show my body it is safe to slow down. Wrapped into that one is, is noticing that story of you got to get through. You got to just get it done, and then you can rest or relax or feel okay. But what is always on the other end of you just got to get it done. So it's done is another and another and another, and so in this intentionally slowing down, also allowing myself to give myself what it is that I think I'm going to get when that thing is done right now. So what is it that you think you're going to get when you get through that book? Oh, well, it's more focus or sense of satisfaction, or more spaciousness or time. Can you be in the process of these things a little bit more? 

The second thing is a deep breath, or sometimes three, or sometimes five or sometimes 10. There is something really powerful about just taking a few deep breaths. So many of us, because of chronic or traumatic stress. Are mouth breathers or by default, our breath is short and shallow in our chest, a short and shallow chest, breath does not stimulate or activate our vagus nerve. It is only diaphragmatic breaths that do that when we stimulate or activate our vagus nerve, it helps a improve vagal tone over time, improved vagal tone gives you a natural higher threshold for stress. You can reset from stress faster, but it also in the moment, helps to turn on your body's relaxation response just a little bit. And so taking a deep breath not only creates a pause, the psychological pause. How do I actually want to respond right now? But it also shifts your physiology in a way that can be really supportive to push back against your body's stress response, that sense of urgency. 

And the third thing is more of a top down. So those two are more bottom up. I'm getting my body to do or experience or shift in a very real way. The third is to intentionally respond to my thoughts, these stories of this is going to be terrible. The drive is going to be awful. It's too quick of a turnaround. I'm going to be really stressed all of my what if? What if? What if? Stories I am on a daily basis, multiple times, turning towards those thoughts with these two words, quote, even if, even if that eight or nine hour drive with my two tiny humans is deaf, we'll get there and it'll be fine, even if another quick turnaround between trips creates a lot of Stress, we'll figure it out. Even if this trip, one of the things I'm really nervous about is this is the first time I have left both kids for longer than a couple days, and so we're going to be gone for 10 days, and I've had a lot come up around, like, maybe my youngest is too young for me to leave, like, am I a good mom? Am I, and so I am doing a lot of work around that. But even if, even if this is a longer time away for my kids, then they, or I am super sure about they'll be in loving, capable hands, it will be okay, this is still something that you want, and sometimes I can take it even a step further, once I have found a little bit more regulation, to switch back into a different flavor of what if. So I'll take that catastrophizing what if, what if? What if, what if? And it's like even if, even if, I'll be okay, we'll be okay. Everything is figure outable. And then my kind of stretch is a different flavor of what if, so? What if, actually, the long drive goes great. What if it's not a problem at all, or what if this quick turnaround between trips is is actually fun, or it's perfect? What if I get to watch my husband really show up and take on a lot of that? What if this time away with just me and him is actually the best thing that I can do for my kids? They're going to have maybe the best time with their grandparents. It's going to strengthen mine and my husband's relationship, which is the best gift we can give our children. We're going to come back with more capacity. And so I am. Uh, at this point, just like rattling off things that have been going through my real life right now, in hopes that some of it resonates with you listening. 

And the other thing I want to touch on today was something that came up in a coaching call inside the membership, which is this concept that nervous system regulation. It's not about calming down. It's not about being calm all the time. When we think about regulation, it's really, really easy to imagine this state of calm and peace and relaxation, but the truth is, nervous system regulation isn't about achieving this constant state of calm. It's about building resilience and flexibility within our nervous systems so that we can effectively respond to whatever life throws at us. Because again, these past couple months have held a lot. These next couple months are going to hold a lot. My nervous system has been in a more sympathetic activated state in response to that, and I wouldn't say that I've been dysregulated. I have worked really, really hard to have a nervous system that is resilient and flexible enough to be stretched when life asks that of me. And I didn't do this, I didn't build this capacity or regulate my nervous system or get to this point because of one thing. It wasn't like I learned the perfect regulation tools or somatic work. It wasn't that I finally reversed my micronutrient deficiency, or that I finally took things off my schedule so I wasn't running around all day, every day, over time, I did a little bit of all of those things, and this is at the heart of regulated living. This is why there is no one cookie cutter plan that I can give you to regulate your nervous system. This is why that stress bucket assessment exercise I talk about so much and how to a whole series on is so foundational to the work that we do with clients, because it unpacks their unique stress load. What are the daily stressors? What are the triggers, what are the environmental the relational stressors, what are the internal stressors? Because when we can get that all out on paper, then we can create a personal and strategic path towards healing for each and every one of our clients. 

This is also why blood work can be so so essential in this healing journey. Are you activated? Are you anxious because of your childhood trauma, or because your hormones are imbalanced, or because you have an underactive thyroid, or are wildly vitamin D deficient, and those are things that we can measure and very strategically approach. And as you improve your thyroid function balance, your hormones become less vitamin and micronutrient deficient. That also decreases the stress load on your nervous system. It decreases the stress load inside your stress bucket, giving you more capacity before you feel really reactive. 80% of this Mind Body conversation originates in the body, and I am so so excited that the way that we work with clients is getting even considerably more whole human, whole life as we get ready, spoiler alert, spoiler alert. To launch our labs program, we are going to take a handful of new clients very, very soon, before the end of year. 

So if you are somebody who is interested in getting blood work done as part of your approach to healing anxiety or depression, make sure that you're on the wait list. I will link it in the show notes, because this is going to be a game changer, especially for those of you who have been trying to go about this the traditional way. You've gone to your doctor and are immediately prescribed meds, or maybe they run the very basic blood work, and you fall within normal limits, but you don't feel normal. You feel terrible. The practitioner that we have coming on, she has shared every single time that she has worked with a client who, quote, fell within normal limits based on their general practitioner or whoever ran their labs, when she runs their labs and looks at everything taking into consideration how all of those different metrics between thyroid and micronutrients communicate with each other. They are never within normal or optimal limits. And so if you are looking for a practice where we can take into consideration all of those things in a really personalized, strategic, collaborative, functional way. This is this is coming. It's coming. And many of you have been asking what the timeline looks on that program, and I can finally give you one. 

This is what strategic healing is about. It is about knowing the. Pieces that you are working with, understanding your nervous system and what it's going to take to create resilience, adaptability and flexibility, so that when life hands you a lot, you can navigate it with more confidence, with more agency. And these are the skills that we help our clients learn insider coaching programs every day. 

And I think where I want to end today is to read a post from Physiology First, which is an organization I'm on their board. I've learned so so much from David, who's the Founder. I also offer a lot of guidance in their program development and creation. If you're not following physiology first, please do. They're amazing. He puts out, sometimes some spicy content, all of which I love. They're really focused on community and teen, mental, physical health and resilience. And this post that they shared, I think, echoes what I've said 100 times, which is, quote, feeling anxious when you're overstimulated is not a disorder. Feeling depressed when sedentary is not a disorder. Feeling stressed when your stress tolerance is low is not a disorder. Feeling exhausted when not sleeping, is not a disorder. Feeling unfocused or easily distracted when staring at a screen, 24/7 is not a disorder, and the caption reads, we call our organization Physiology First because the most powerful skill of the 21st century is learning how our brain and body function. The name also refers to a 21st century update to a 20th century practice labeling natural responses of the body disorders simply because we don't understand the human body. One in five kids are labeled with "mental health disorders" with no health assessments. Prescription Drug Use and subsequent dependence among adolescents is skyrocketing. You need to understand "order of something" before you can label it "disorder." 83% of teens drink caffeinated beverages regularly. In 2019 33% of teens claimed to be a daily coffee drinker. Because children are smaller in body size, it takes less to impact them. Too much caffeine causes increased anxiety, rapid heart rate, blood pressure and sleep disturbances. A recent review of 97 papers, which involved 1039 trials and 128,119 participants, found 150 minutes each week of various types of physical activity significantly reduces depression, anxiety and psychological stress. Findings suggest exercise is 1.5 times more effective than medication or counseling. The caption goes on to say stress tolerance is a skill that requires training. Stress intolerance leads to us being stressed out because our latte is only lukewarm. We are powerful animals capable of overcoming immense adversity, low tolerance to stress makes everything stressful. 

A few more stats they shared is that 73% of high school students get insufficient sleep. I would say that that is also probably equivalent to most adults. Sleep is the foundation for mental and physical health. Feeling like we're running on empty when we are running on empty is not a disorder. Average screen time for youth is 7.5 hours per day. The ability to focus requires a training, the ability to focus and B breaking away from the digital Carnival in our hands long enough to see things that don't blink, buzz or drain our dopamine. We need to see more sunsets, people and space between our own thoughts. A healthy response to an unhealthy environment isn't a disorder. End quote, end caption. 

And the part of this that ties back to what I was trying to string thoughts together to express is this concept that stress tolerance is a skill that requires training and that your approach to building a stress tolerance might be that we actually need to remove some unneeded stressors, the too much caffeine, too little sleep, these things that impact our physiology, tanking our capacity to handle our everyday life. And this is something that we do every day in a really, really strategic way. And what I love so much is that the same tools that get you from unwell to well can get you from well to optimized, and we work with clients on every level of that spectrum, from I have been shut. Down for years. I'm having panic attacks daily to I'm actually feeling really good right now. How can I improve egone optimize the habits in my life so that I feel even better. 

Until mental health becomes something that we train, we will always have a mental health crisis. And so look at the a lot that you have in your life right now. How well are you handling it? How easily Are you moving up and down that nervous system ladder? What's your capacity for stressors? And if it's not great, I so desperately want you to be in a different place in six months, in a year, in two years, and who cares if it takes you a couple years to get to that different place? You have a lot of future years to be able to say, life is a lot right now, but look at how much better I'm handling it than I used to look at the capacity that I increased. Look at the clarity that I got on what matters most to me. Look at the awareness that I've gained to check in with my nervous system in the moment and the tools that I have to push back against stress in real time. Look at my labs. Look at how deficient I used to be and I just reran blood work in one year, there were over 17 markers that improved on my labs in one year because I took a strategic approach to supplements, to lifestyle changes. That's incredible, and that's contributing to the increased capacity I have for the allotness in my life right now rises we is quickly becoming a leading healthcare practice for those struggling with anxiety and depression, because we take this whole human, whole life, personalized approach. And so what I want to end today with is not three tangible takeaways, because I don't know that I can make the stream of consciousness thoughts I've shared with you in the last half hour cohesive enough to boil down into three tangible takeaways. 

But instead, it's just this offer, this validation, that your symptoms make sense based on your past lived experiences and your current life circumstances, I believe, with every fiber of my being that there is a path towards healing for you. You are not broken. Your nervous system is responding as it should given the context of your life. And if you don't understand it yet, it's because there's part of this whole human, whole life approach that we haven't seen yet. Let's unpack your stress bucket. Let's run labs. So if you are somebody who has felt frustrated being handed meds without comprehensive labs, we promise to do better by you, or maybe they ran those labs but told you that you're fine and you don't feel fine, we do better by you. We get into your healing with you. And when one path towards healing doesn't seem to be right, we pivot and we turn down one of the hundreds of other options we have to help you engage in more regulated living if you have been in talk therapy for years only to still be shut down or having regular panic attacks. We have supported hundreds of people who felt like the thing that was missing in therapy they got from our programs. Our programs offer one on one coaching, blood work, community based support and so so much more. 

And I will, PS here that if you're going to my website to find information about all of these things, my website is wildly outdated, and it doesn't have any information about our lab or our blood work test yet. That's why it's so important to get on the wait list. I'll email out that information. 

I guess my like, PPS is I am looking to redo my whole website ASAP. So if you are someone, or know someone who does updated branding with really modern, amazing websites, shoot me an email, please. 

And that's it. That's what I have for you today. Is just this good enough episode. 

If you got something from today, I would love, love to hear and I will ask you what I ask all of our clients at the end of our calls inside the membership, what impacted you most? What impacted you most from this conversation today? What's your biggest takeaway? What was an aha moment, or just Oh, that was interesting. Send me that in an Instagram DM in an email. I want to know that there are humans somewhere in the world listening to these episodes. I want to hear from you. Yeah, let me know what impacted you most. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai