My Postpartum Crashout (and the Robot That Talked Me Off the Ledge)

Ever feel like you're failing, no matter how hard you try to organize, optimize, or just push through? In this deeply personal and vulnerable episode, Amanda pulls back the curtain on her own postpartum season—navigating life as a new mom of three while running a business. She shares the story of a recent "crash out" spiral and the unlikely tool that gave her the reality check she desperately needed.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the feeling that you’re constantly "failing" is often a sign of an impossible equation, not a personal flaw, and how to spot the signs of a capacity crash out.
• A practical, step-by-step exercise to get an objective look at your true workload vs. your actual capacity (and why a robot might be the mirror you need).
• How to dismantle the cultural myth of "doing it all" and start separating your self-worth from your productivity.
• The two strategic choices you have when the math doesn't add up, and how to start implementing them with self-compassion.

3 Takeaways:

1. Do the Math on Your Life, you might be trying to solve an impossible equation without even realizing it.
2. You have two options: Do less or get more support (usually both)
3. You're not the problem, the expectation is. Sometimes the most regulated, aligned, grounded thing you can do is tell yourself the truth about what’s possible and what’s not.
   
   

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

Email: amanda@regulatedliving.com

Instagram: @amandaontherise

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Transcript

Amanda Armstrong  0:00  
Amanda, 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. 

Amanda Armstrong  0:27  
Today's conversation is going to be a peek behind the curtain of life right now for me, I am going to start by taking a moment to celebrate something really special with you. Then tell you about my most recent crash out and how chat GPT, of all things helped me to catch myself in a spiral of completely unrealistic expectations. So first, I want to share some news that honestly came at a perfect time. I just found out that this podcast is ranking a top point 5% podcast. That's I am. I thought I was a top 5% podcast, and then I was like, well, maybe I'm a top 1% podcast. I am a top point 5% podcast, which is amazing. I also found out that regulate and rewire is number one on all major platforms for the search term depression, and in the top five for anxiety. And I have you to thank for that, for every Listen, every share, every rating, every review that you have left, just a huge thank you for being here, for continuing to tune in, and maybe this is a place for me to put a shameless plug that if you are tuning in, if you are appreciating what you're hearing, and you have not left a review for the show, they matter, the ratings and reviews that you leave on this podcast help to get these tools and these conversations out to even more people who need them.

Amanda Armstrong  2:02  
and as I shared last week, I am still pretty freshly postpartum. My daughter was born just eight or nine weeks ago, and in prepping for this period, I had really high hopes towards the end of my pregnancy to pre record a few months of podcasts ahead of time, and life happened, and it just didn't happen. So maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, but I have missed a couple weeks to put out new episodes in the last couple months. I've also put out some shorter episodes, and I tend to be really hard on myself about not keeping things to a particular standard. So hearing that my podcast is literally beyond the top 1% was the bit of encouragement that I needed. Because the truth is, I love being here with you guys every single week. I love creating these episodes, and it's a labor of love. By the time I have come up with the episode topic, I research them when needed. Not only do I have to organize my thoughts around each one, but I also really value and want to give you something tangible each time to apply to your own healing. You give me your time. You give me your trust when you hit play on these episodes. And I want to make it worth it for you. I want you to walk away from these episodes feeling seen, understood, less alone, less broken, validated. I want you to be able to have tangible tools to apply to your healing. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:37  
And that can feel like a really tall order sometimes, as a mom, running a business, juggling all of the things that I do. And so the share is twofold, I think, one to say thank you, and two to tell you to bear with me in this season of slightly lower capacity, where episodes might be shorter or maybe feel a little bit more scattered, because friends, friends, as you will see in a few minutes, I am just a little bit more scattered right now. But as all seasons in our life, they it won't last forever. It won't last forever. You will get the calm, clear and collected version of me again as soon as I have her back, too. And if you want to do me a solid in this season, I want to hear from you. I always want to hear from you, but especially now, tell me what you want to hear. There is a link in the show notes. There's always this form linked in the show notes where you can write in and share a question or an experience that you would like to hear about on the podcast. And I'm actually planning to pull a number of those submissions from that form for some upcoming episodes. I may also throw in a couple more of those, like micro, shorter episodes a because they're easier for me to get done. And when your capacity is lower, you. You've got to lighten your load and B because I heard from a few of you how much you liked having those shorter, bite sized episodes a couple weeks ago. 

Amanda Armstrong  5:10  
Now this feels like the perfect segue to sharing with you what my most recent crash out was about, and again, giving you a peek into what it is like running my business and being a mom, and I don't often like to talk about how hard it can be to run my own business, because A, many of our current and future clients are listening to this podcast right now. And B, sometimes it can come off, I think, as ungrateful. And I want you to know how lucky I feel and how much I love to do the work that we do. It feels so, so important, and sometimes it's hard because of how many hats I have to wear and how many different tasks I have to keep track of in both my business world and my family world, and more often than not, those worlds collide for me. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:07  
For example, I mentioned to a friend, I don't know, maybe, like, a week or two ago, how I was doing a couple hours of work, and she's like, wait, wait. Like, aren't you on maternity leave? And she works in corporate where, like, when you're on maternity leave, like you check out, like you check out. There's no work to be done, there's no emails to reply to. And I was like, Yeah, I mean, yes, and no, it looks different for me. Yes, I'm on my version of maternity leave, which means that I got ahead on a lot of things. I outsourced a lot of other things to my team. There's just some things that I've put aside that aren't getting done. So I'm on a maternity leave with the context of, like, I have a drastically reduced workload. And when you run your own business, you can only step back so far. Like nobody else runs my payroll. And also, I don't want to be totally checked out. Like having the handful of discovery calls that I've had in the last couple weeks. Like those are the highlight of my week. In a lot of ways, I recently hosted a support call in the membership, which felt like a dream that I get to do this thing that feels like an appendage to me, that feels really important to me, mixed into this season of motherhood like feels right. There are ways that I want to show up in my business, and I am, and I've scaled things back to accommodate prioritizing this new, tiny human that I'm responsible for keeping alive. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:36  
This is all. This is all a backstory, and going to maybe sound counterintuitive to my crash out over not feeling like I have the support for my correct work life, baby balance right now, so we have a nanny part time who is Great with my older boys, but does not have any experience with babies. So I keep saying I have child care, but not baby care, and I don't need much because I am not in a place where I'm, like, still very, very attached to this tiny human not only because I have to be because I'm breastfeeding, but because, like, hello, she's really cute and she's really squishy and she's like, only eight weeks old. But I was explaining to my husband how I really feel like I want two straight hours of predictable time each day where I can do some deeper work and just have some space for things that I need to do and things that I want to do in my business, one of those being to ideate and record a podcast. But the couple times I have tried to give my nanny the baby for like 30 minutes to an hour, either she cried the whole time, which I cannot handle, or my baby was great, but my two year old son found his way to bang on the door of my office or to color on our walls. Yeah. 

Amanda Armstrong  9:07  
Anyways, I spiraled. I spiraled in explaining this. I crashed out, I cried. I was like, What the heck do I do? Where do I find this support? But also, like, What support do I actually want or do I need? Because if my husband suggests adding another day of childcare. One more time, I'm gonna freak out because I don't actually want more childcare. I want more time with my kids, but I also need a nanny who is capable of watching the two year old and the baby for two hours. But I also love our nanny, and finding new childcare sounds like an absolute nightmare, and and, and and, and as the spiraling out tends to go so this leads me to a couple hours later, I decided I needed some strategic help, and I turned to chat GPT, and I fed it all of the details. I was like, Hey. I. I am a business owning mom of three. My kids ages are this, this and this, here's the ecosystem of my team and when my son is in school, and the hours that my nanny is here, she's great, but doesn't know what to do with babies. So I have the baby 24/7 which means that in this seven hour block of child care that she's sometimes here, I'm only lucky to have one to two hours accumulated of work time, and it's unpredictable. And here is my current weekly workload, X, Y or Z, and here's the list of things that I need to do in my life, like grocery shopping and making dinner, etc, by the way, chat, GPT, I'm also breastfeeding full time. How many hours a week? Do you think that is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I finished typing up all of these details, and then I asked the question like, how do I make this work? 

Amanda Armstrong  10:51  
And this is where the reality check came in. 

Amanda Armstrong  10:55  
It fed me back a very detailed breakdown of hours of tasks versus hours of support. Gave me some suggestions. And in case you were wondering, it estimates that I am currently breastfeeding about 28 hours a week. Cool. No wonder I have no time for anything else right now. But the line that stood out to me the most was this, and it read, you you are trying to fit 50 to 60 hours of activity into a 28 hour window of support. That's not sustainable. Without strategic restructuring or extra support, you are trying to fit 56 hours of activity into 28 hours of support that's not sustainable. 

Amanda Armstrong  11:42  
Why? Friend, why was I insane enough to think that it was possible? Why did I need a robot to tell me that my expectations for myself aren't just unrealistic, they're impossible. And why is this what I needed to read to stop feeling like I was the problem here, and I think that that is the deeper lesson that I want to share with you in today's conversation, is that I was running through these logistics for days thinking that I could somehow crack the code, that if I was just clever enough to fit these things together just right, or if I worked harder, then it could be possible. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:23  
Chat GPT basically said in its follow up suggestions that you either need to do less or get more support, and probably you need to do both, which is like, pretty on brand for me, like, hey, ask for more help. Get more support and do less, you crazy lady. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:42  
And so here's what this might mean for you. Here's what I want you to take away from this story, because I know I am not alone in this pattern. We do this thing. Maybe you do this thing where we blame ourselves for not being able to achieve the impossible. We think that if we are just more organized, more efficient, more disciplined, we can somehow bend time and physics to our will. We think that we are the problem when really the math just doesn't math. And sometimes you need something or someone outside of yourself to hold up a mirror and say, like, look, this doesn't add up. And not because you're failing, but because what you are trying to do is literally impossible, and I needed to see it in black and white. 56 hours of activity, 28 hours of support. Like those numbers, they don't work, no amount of hustle or optimization or working smarter, not harder, can make that equation balance. 

Amanda Armstrong  13:46  
And this is chat GPT, also assuming that I am at like my best, most capacity to self, which I'm not, because I'm eight weeks postpartum and I'm tired. Also, if you're listening to this podcast, like, let's just be real honest, you're probably not either because you are struggling with anxiety or depression. And so even if your math mathed In hours, your math is not going to math in energy, in capacity, that you have to give it, because look when what you have to offer is 10% 10% is your 100% so you're gonna have to take everything and be like, what's the 10% version of this? And sometimes we can't get outside our own rigid patterns enough to really figure that out. 

Amanda Armstrong  14:36  
And I mean, and here's the thing that makes me a little bit angry. To be honest, we live in a culture that tells us this, especially as women, especially as mothers, that we should be able to do it all, that if we can't, it's like we're the problem, that other people manage it. So why can't we? But when. Again, you actually run the numbers. When you add up all of the hours of care, work and business, work and life, maintenance and basic human needs, you realize that, like nobody, nobody is actually doing it all. They are either doing less than it appears, or they have more support than they're talking about, or maybe they're running themselves into the ground and calling it success. The problem isn't you. The problem is this expectation, the internal expectations we have for ourselves, but also the external expectations that are often put on us, and sometimes the most regulated, aligned, grounded thing that you can do is to tell yourself the truth about what's possible and what's not 

Amanda Armstrong  15:40  
and so here, here's what I want to invite you to do, whether you use chat, GPT or a notebook or a conversation with a trusted friend. If this conversation has resonated with you, I want you to actually map out your time and your tasks, because I'm willing to bet that your anxiety, your over functioning, your burnout, your exhaustion, is going to make a whole lot of sense when you math the math, write down everything that you're trying to do in a day in a week, and I mean everything I fed this little robot, every single detail, work tasks, household tasks, caregiving tasks, self care, sleep hours, eating. Then write down how many hours you actually have available, and be honest about how much time each task is actually going to take, not how long you wish it took, but how long this is actually going to take. And you've got to include like, how many hours you're trying to sleep, because you're a human being who needs that. And then look at the math. Really look at it. Are you trying to fit 50 hours into 28 like I am. Are you expecting yourself to exist on four hours of sleep indefinitely? Are you counting on zero interruptions, zero unexpected needs, zero time for emotional regulation or rest to make this happen? 

Amanda Armstrong  16:58  
because the truth that chat GPT told me, and that that I'm, I think, trying to reflect back to you right now is that if the math doesn't work, you have two options. That's it do less or get more support, and you usually need both. And I guess the third option would be keep on, keeping on friend, and continue to perpetually feel behind and overwhelmed and spiral out about not being good enough, but I don't really recommend that option. So do less or get more support, and I understand that in each and every one of your lives, in my life, in different seasons, doing less in certain places may or may not be an option. So where is it an option? Getting more support may or may not be available to you. Where could it be available? 

Amanda Armstrong  17:44  
One of the things that we do with all of our clients when they assess their stress bucket is we have them zoom back out, and then we help them edit their stress bucket. We say, Okay, it's the three Ds. What can you delete? What can you delegate? What can you do differently? And almost every single one of our clients who's like, There's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing, there's nothing that I can change about this. I have to do all of this when we really step back and gently and non judgmentally say, what can we delete? What can we delegate? What can we do differently? There is always things that can shift doing less. It doesn't mean that you're lazy. It means you're probably smart. It means that you're being realistic about what's humanly possible. It means that you're prioritizing. You're clear on what matters most in your life. It means letting go of a fantasy that you can do everything perfectly all of the time, because that's crushing you, and getting more support means that you understand that humans are interdependent, that we're not actually designed to do everything alone, that asking for help is actually the mentally healthy thing to do, and finding the places where that help is available and safe for you to ask for, and then sometimes even when you do both of those things, it's still a lot. It's still hard, because we're living in systems that that aren't designed to support human thriving, but at least, at least, what I'm hoping you're taking away from this is that you can stop blaming yourself for not achieving the impossible. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:12  
And I think it's clear, I think it's real clear that I'm still figuring this out, that I don't have all the answers, that I am still in the thick of it and trying to find my way through this season for me, but what I do have is a little more compassion for myself, now that I can more clearly see that what I was expecting was mathematically impossible, and half of the weight that I was feeling from all of that was this belief that it should somehow be possible and it was my fault that it wasn't figured out yet. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:47  
And so my hope is that this conversation today, this kind of more candid share of a little bit of the behind the scenes in my life, is an invitation for you to look at your own. Possibly impossible equations with a little bit more compassion too, and because I know that some of you have been listening to this podcast for a few years with me now, some of you are very intimately familiar with my journey and the bumps in my road to motherhood because of past episodes on grief and sharing about some pregnancy loss and our journey with IVF and everything, kind of my final personal celebratory share is that baby girl's birth was my very first non traumatic, boring birth story. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:39  
It went so well, her and I both so healthy. My recovery has been great. I really genuinely, I know this episode, it's not convincing to this point, but I have felt a sense of calm presence in this postpartum period, way more so than I have. I can take this crash out and very quickly be like, You know what? It'll be fine. She's only this little today, and I want to be in that and be with that. And I think one of the things I often say to clients in their healing journey is that there is going to come a point in your healing where you're just going to need more capacity. And to create that capacity, you're going to have to say no to some things that you really want, for the for the sake of things that you want more, maybe that's more space to heal. And this is a season where I am in all of this, having to do the same thing. I'm having to look at aspects of my business or aspects of my life, and and just to say, hey, there's a lot of things that you want, and those are all really, really good things to want. And right now is not the time that you can have them all. You're literally breastfeeding for 28 hours a week, give or take. And so what is it that you want most right now, and that answer becomes really, really clear. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:04  
What I want most is to be able to show up for the people in my membership have discovery calls and record these podcasts, and so almost everything else in my business is kind of taking a backseat. Those are some of my favorite things. One of my favorite things, my favorite things are connecting with each of you every week, having discovery calls, actually, having some of you resonate enough with what you hear on the podcast to book that call to say, Hey, I think the regulated living approach might be the next step in my healing. To be able to know you by name, hear your stories, that lights me up. It keeps me going, and then to be able to support and so all of the other big projects and exciting things, I'm just having to say nope. And I'm having to look at this and say, Okay, well, what is the minimum support that I need, or what is the maximum support that I can get so that those things that matter most can happen, so that that's what I've hoped. I've hoped to do. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:08  
so kind of ending on the celebratory note of just thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being invested in your own healing enough to be here. Thank you, so many of you who send me just the most kind notes and emails of, Hey, how are you sending you love, hoping that baby can't all of it, all of it is felt and so, so appreciated. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:32  
So coming, coming to our three takeaways or invitations from this episode is 

Amanda Armstrong  23:38  
number one, if you need to do the math on your own life actually map out how many hours of tasks that you have versus the support or the hours available to you. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:51  
Number two is to remember that you have two options when the math doesn't work, do less or get more support. Usually both. Maybe look at that list and say, delete, delegate, do differently those three Ds 

Amanda Armstrong  24:05  
number three, remember, so often you are not the problem the expectation is when you cannot achieve something, it's not always because of a personal failing. Sometimes what you are trying to do is literally impossible, and no amount of hustle or optimization or working smarter can change that. And part of regulated living is being honest, is being honest about that, and being diligent and accountable for finding that right balance to match what actually is possible, but also what meets and matches your current capacity, and that's something that we help clients do every single day. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:48  
All right, friend, thank you for being here again and again and again, and until next week, I'm sending so much hope and healing your way. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:56  
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate. 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