Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

Why You Drop Self-Care When Life Gets Good

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 135

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Today's conversation is for the Type A, high achieving, often overwhelmed and anxious nervous system folk. Amanda talk about the pattern we often see where we stop our self-care habits when we feel good, but stopping them often puts us back into a spiral of anxiety and the story of, "why do I do this? I'm just not disciplined or motivated enough, etc..." But what if that’s not the problem at all?

In this episode, we reframe what it means to “stay consistent,” explore why many of us use overwhelm as our barometer, and talk about how true discipline might actually look like doing less, not more.

3 Takeaways:

1. Maybe you're not falling back into "bad habits" - you're overcommitting until self-care becomes impossible. When life gets good, we reflexively add more to our plates instead of maintaining what's working. The problem isn't lack of discipline; it's trying to fit 60 hours of life into 24 hours of human capacity.

2. Not all regulation tools are meant to be forever - and that's okay. Healing requires adjusting your “protocol.” Just like you don't need an ankle brace after your sprain heals, some nervous system supports are temporary medicine for acute times. The key is knowing which practices are your anchors (the ones you need even when you're well) versus which ones can naturally fade as you heal.

3. Redefine discipline: Maybe it's not the choice to do more, it's the courage to do less. True discipline means saying no to opportunities even though you could squeeze them in, maintaining white space in your calendar even though it makes you anxious, and remembering that feeling good isn't permission to overwhelm yourself again. Ask yourself: "At what cost?" before saying yes.

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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. Today.

Unknown Speaker  0:28  
I'm going to start by describing a pattern I think we all find ourselves in at one point or another, in our healing journeys, or even just general health journeys. I want you to take yourself to a place for just a moment where you are going through a bit of a rough patch. Maybe your anxiety is higher. You're in a little bit of a slump, more of a depressive season, and in order to kind of work your way out of that place, you find some practices or habits, you turn to whatever helps. Maybe it's a daily walk or breath work or journaling. Maybe it's setting certain boundaries in settings or relationships. It could be taking some things off your plate, just saying no, like something's got to give. And as you do these things, it works. It works. And you start to feel better. Life gets brighter. You feel more capable, more like yourself again, and then you stop doing those things, or maybe you start to take on more into your schedule, more projects, whatever. Maybe your walks become sporadic. You've skipped your morning breath work for the 37th day in a row. You take on an extra project at work. Stay up late on your phone more often, and then, before you know it, you are sliding back into that familiar feeling of overwhelm or activation, all the while beating yourself up for you know, quote, falling back into bad habits or lacking discipline, the internal monolog of like, why do I do this? Why do I do this? I have found the things that work, I know that they work, and then I start to do well and I stop doing them. Why am I surprised? Why am I surprised when my anxiety comes back like I did this to myself? 

Unknown Speaker  2:11  
I don't know about you, but I have been on that cycle, that loop, that spiral more times that I can probably count in my healing journey, and this is the exact thing that one of our members in the membership brought to a recent support call. He said something like, in this journey, in this healing journey, when I start to feel more like myself, I fall back into bad habits. I quit doing my regulation practices. I forget I don't do self care. And then he implied maybe I need more discipline or organization, and could discipline and organization be part of it? Sure, sure, maybe. But in this particular instance, I happen to know that this individual, he's already pretty organized and disciplined, so we had a little bit of a different conversation to help reframe this pattern for him, and that's what I want to share with you today, because what if it has absolutely nothing to do with discipline? What if falling out of certain regulation habits is sometimes a good sign, or when this happens, another thing that might be happening, especially for kind of the type, a go getter type, sometimes, what's happening here is that we are letting go of our new patterns of wellness for old patterns of over functioning. 

Unknown Speaker  3:36  
Because here's the thing, when it comes to your regulation practices we do not in every season of our life. Need to be doing all of the things, and for most of us, there will be certain things that are our anchors, habits that we know when we do them regularly in all seasons of our life, both in active healing and in seasons of wellness, they support us in continuing to be well, think about this from a physical perspective for a moment. And I use this analogy in that support call, because the person I was talking to is a soccer and strength and conditioning coach, so I knew that he would really resonate with this analogy. 

Unknown Speaker  4:18  
So think about it like this, you sprain your ankle. What is the protocol? Right? Rest, Ice, elevation. Maybe you're wearing a brace. You do all of these things pretty religiously, because you are injured and you need, you need these things to heal. But then when your ankle heals, or heals enough, you stop elevating it, you stop icing it, you don't wear the brace to the grocery store, and nobody would call you negligent or lacking in discipline or organization for letting some of those things go. You simply don't need those supports anymore. So when your anxiety is really high in. Constant. What is your protocol? Assess your stressors, prioritize sleep, go to therapy. Weekly, do your breath work daily, walks, vagal toning practices. Take things off your plate, whatever it looks like for you. You do all of these things religiously in a season where anxiety has been really, really high, because you need them to help you be regulated, to re pattern your nervous system towards healing, but then hopefully you start to heal enough. Maybe you quit over committing. You're more rested and nourished. Your breath is more functional naturally, all day, every day. You're not white knuckling your days anymore. You're not negligent or lacking in discipline for adjusting how you engage in regulation tools or your daily habits. You are just in a season where your support that's needed looks differently. 

Unknown Speaker  5:53  
Now, do some people have chronic ankle instability? Sure they have had so many injuries that wearing a brace for every game for the rest of their career is needed and makes sense, and when they don't wear that brace, it's potentially negligent, because they know that their ankle needs that brace that support all the time. You may have certain nervous system patterns or tendencies that require a certain level of support or care constantly. Okay, cool, great. This is something that each of us has to learn and experiment with ourselves over time, because I do think that there are certain levels of trauma or experiences, be it mental, emotional or physical, that do often require ongoing support. But for most of us, there is a natural ebb and flow in what our self care will look like, in what engaging in, you know, quote, regulation practices will look like. 

Unknown Speaker  6:53  
So in this support call with this individual, this person specifically shared that when he was going through tough times, the most supportive practices for him were taking walks outside. He called them his forest walks, morning breath work and staying off his phone before bed. Those were the ice Elevate, and brace for his anxiety. That got him back to a place where he was feeling good most days, where he stopped having panic attacks, and he found himself saying, like, okay, all right, we're good. Let's keep going. Let's coach more. Let's take that course. Let's go. Let's do, do, do. And he did. He signed up for some extra courses, an educational seminar to improve his coaching. Those things took up time, and slowly he noticed that the daily walks stopped happening daily. He was skipping his morning breath work. He was on his computer or his phone until later in the evening, sacrificing sleep quality. And then gradually, he noticed his anxiety levels creeping back up, then shaming himself for falling back into these old habits, which he assumed was because of his lack of discipline and organization. 

Unknown Speaker  8:03  
And so again, in this call, I challenged that for him. I said, what if it has nothing to do with discipline and organization? And instead, it was about over committing until self care became impossible. And somewhere in that conversation, I shared something that one of my therapists, once upon a time, told me that has really stuck with me. In a session, they explained to me quote, you seem to use overwhelm as your barometer. Overwhelm is your ceiling. You do not know how to stop yourself before you reach that breaking point. End, quote, I felt so seen and so called out in that moment. And I see this pattern everywhere. Now we have created this cycle. Feel good, take on more, take on more, take on more. Crash, implement emergency self care regulation practices feel a little bit better. Then take on more, which pushes out the self care. Repeat, repeat, repeat, again. This member showcased this perfectly. When he's feeling good, his inner dialog is like, okay, I'm fine. Let's keep going. Let's take on more things. And slowly, the forest walks disappear. The breathing exercises fade away, not because he is lazy or undisciplined, but because he has filled every available moment with other commitment. 

Unknown Speaker  9:26  
So I want to invite you right now to think about your own life when you are feeling good and stable and energized. What's your first instinct? And if you are like most high achieving type a folk people pleasers, your first instinct is probably great. Now I can catch up on everything that I've been behind on, but what if, and stay with me here. What if, when you feel good, the answer isn't, let's do more. What if it is instead, let's just maintain this. Let's notice our urge to do. More to over function and just let ourselves settle into this less adrenaline fueled daily experience. It doesn't mean that you never do more, but I want you to remember that your nervous system will always default to a familiar dysfunctional pattern before an unfamiliar, healthy pattern. I'm going to say that again, your nervous system will always default to a familiar dysfunctional pattern before an unfamiliar, healthy pattern. If you have been living a go, go, go, go, life for a long time, you are going to feel bored with a more settled pace, and that more settled pace is likely exactly what your nervous system needs. 

Unknown Speaker  10:43  
So can you stay with a more settled pace until doing more feels like a grounded choice rather than a default urge, like, oh, okay, now we go, go, go, go, go. What if you could notice that urge to go, go, go and say, You know what? Maybe we don't. What if, when you feel like you can take on more, you pause and just keep on, keeping on for a while, let taking those extra classes or that project wait and just see if the waiting and not doing more, see if it kills you because it won't, even though your nervous system is convinced that it might. And when it doesn't, this is how and when your nervous system will learn that the constant urgency and that pull to do more isn't what keeps you alive, isn't needed. At one point, in some way, you learned that doing more was what kept you safe or more accepted or more worthy. And what if that's not true anymore? What if daily life doesn't have to be this constant adrenaline and cortisol cocktail? 

Unknown Speaker  11:47  
And I've self admitted on this podcast many times, I am queen of trying to overdo and overbook, and I think so many of us are doing this exact same thing. And so this reframe, I think can bring in a little bit of perspective and self compassion that we're not dropping our self care practices because we are weak or undisciplined. We are dropping them for one of two reasons. Number one, because they're not needed anymore. In light of that earlier analogy, your nervous system isn't as sprained as it once was, and so the protocol can change cool, let it change. But in letting it change, can you also identify what your anchors need to be for you to stay well, life will get busier sometimes. Are you clear? 

Unknown Speaker  12:34  
So this is my question for you. Are you clear on what habits or practices to prioritize when life gets busy or when anxiety or depression show up again. What is the most important for you? Because you don't want to have to make that decision in the moment. If you don't know what matters most, it's all going to go is it your daily walk? Okay, when my daily walk happens that has the greatest ripple effect? Is it prioritizing sleep? Is it making sure that you eat breakfast? Do you know what what I call anchors, or what your number one self care habits are that you really do need to hold on to, regardless the season of sprain or wellness. 

Unknown Speaker  13:09  
So again, we're dropping regulation habits or practices because number one, either they're not needed in the same way anymore, or number two, because you have, again, created a life with no room for them. The problem for so many of us isn't that we can't maintain our habits. The problem is that we are trying to maintain an UN Sustainable life. We are trying to fit 60 hours into 24 hours. 

Unknown Speaker  13:34  
Now before I bring this all together, I want to entertain another reframe that I am currently playing with, what if every single thing that you do is either self care or self protection, right? What if there isn't this self sabotage, lack of discipline, yada yada yada narrative. What if we looked at all of our behaviors, all the things we do, it's either self care or self protection. So this is us thinking about what we would label as bad habits differently, as instead, strategies our nervous system is using to protect us in some way. So when this person takes his forest walks, that's self care, when he skips his forest walks to handle an over committed schedule, that's self protection, he's protecting his energy for what feels most urgent when you turn on Netflix instead of doing your breath work, or, I don't know, just cleaning your house, whatever it is, you're not being lazy. Maybe you're protecting yourself from something, maybe from feeling your feelings, maybe from an overwhelming task list, maybe from the pressure of having to be on for one more thing. So the question isn't, how do I stop my bad habits? The question can now shift to, what am I protecting myself from with this behavior? What am I protecting myself from? And is there a gentler way to feel safe or to get a need met? It. 

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
And so here's what I want to add for you to try this week. Maybe, if you choose, instead of thinking like I'm good, let's add more. If this is a conversation that's resonated with you at all, instead, can you experiment with I'm good? Let's keep it exactly here. And I know your nervous system is going to rebel against this idea. But like, what about this opportunity? What about this commitment? What if people think that I'm lazy? What if I fall behind or I'm not getting caught up on the things that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, those fears, that anxiety that comes up when you think about doing less that is not a sign that you should do more. Again, that is your nervous systems learned response pattern to a culture that taught you that your worth equals your output. 

Unknown Speaker  15:52  
Again, someone probably with the best intentions, taught you that you are more valuable when you accomplish more. Maybe it was a parent who only seemed proud of you when you brought home straight A's. Maybe it was a coach who only gave you attention when you made the goal, and not for how just how hard you were working. Maybe it was just swimming again in a culture that celebrates burnout as dedication, but the truth is, you are not more valuable when you do more, you are just more exhausted and to help this really hit home personally for the person I was supporting, I asked him this question. I said, What do you think is in better service of the kids that you serve? Again, remember, he's a strength and conditioning and a soccer coach. What do you think is in better service of those kids? An overwhelmed coach with more information from the courses that he signed up for, or a present and grounded coach who only has the information that you currently have right now? And without hesitation, he immediately replied, Oh, 100% the second one for sure, a more present and grounded coach. This is an individual who shared that it's really important to him to constantly be excelling and learning more and becoming better at his craft. But maybe, maybe the seed that I, that we planted here, was it being better at your craft doesn't always mean learning more, more and more and more. Maybe it just means learning how to be present and grounded. 

Unknown Speaker  17:28  
And maybe for you, this question is more parent centric, what's in better service of your kids? One more activity during the weekend that you're rushing to or simply more time to be present and parent with less on your plate, or maybe your question sounds like what's in better service of you and your healing, taking that phone call with a family member who's kind of a lot, or just letting it go to voicemail, taking on another project at work, or just being more capacity for the current work that You have. We've been trained to constantly chase down promotions and gold stars and all of it. So what if we completely redefine what discipline means, to use the words of the original person I was supporting with this conversation. What if discipline, in this context, is not forcing yourself to do more, what if discipline is having the courage to do less? What if discipline means saying no to the extra project even though you could probably squeeze it in? What if it is leaving white space in your calendar even though that that open space kind of makes you anxious or maintaining your daily forest walks even when you feel like you're fine. What if discipline means protecting your energy like the finite resource that it is, 

Unknown Speaker  18:50  
and for this person, for me, maybe for you, true discipline wouldn't be forcing himself to maintain forest walks while coaching three teams and taking multiple training courses pushing himself to exhaustion, true discipline and dedication and devotion to his healing would be asking what amount of coaching and learning allows me to still have energy for my daily walks, to still have time for my breath work, to still contribute and participate in my wellness. And for some of us, this requires a complete identity shift. We have built our sense of self on being reliable and high achieving and able to handle it. 

Unknown Speaker  19:33  
And I have this question that has become a good filter for my default to over commit that I want to share with you. And that question is, quote, at what cost? End quote, so I could put my kid in soccer, at what cost I could take on a few more clients, at what cost I could become the person who cleans my house every single night before I go to bed, at what cost? And that question doesn't mean that I automatically say no to those things. It simply helps me. A pause before my reflexive answer, which is always yes to more, yeah, let's put them in soccer too and climbing and swimming. Yeah, the more clients the merrier. I for sure want to be the person who has a perfectly clean house when I wake up in the morning. The at what cost, allows me to be more intentional, to understand that there is a cost to taking on more. There's also a benefit to taking on more of certain things I personally and maybe you just need the extra filter sometimes to decide if that's worth the cost of my time or energy in this particular stage of my life or my healing, and is it in service of the new identity that I am striving to create, one who models sustainable, regulated living, this new identity of someone who shows others that success doesn't have to require suffering or look a particular way, one where I feel just as worthy sitting on my porch with a messy house behind me, as I do when I am walking across big stages to give speeches in front of huge tech companies. 

Unknown Speaker  21:09  
So here's what I want to leave with you today, maybe your bad habits or the letting go of what you have labeled as good habits, are just the natural consequence of an over committed life. Maybe your lack of discipline isn't the issue, but your belief that you should be able to do all of it all the time. Maybe your inability to maintain self care isn't disorganization, but a sign that you've created an unsustainable reality that doesn't have room for all of the things you've said yes to 

Unknown Speaker  21:42  
and to counterbalance this conversation, maybe for some of you, there actually is a place for a little bit more self discipline or organization, or you're not the person who struggles with saying yes to too many things. Maybe you are more stuck in a state of shutdown or freeze, and you're like, I wish I had the problem that I was over committing. I can't even get out of bed in the morning. I am going to talk to you next week, 

Unknown Speaker  22:08  
but for this week, especially for the over functioners like me, I want you to try again. Just one thing. Catch yourself when you're thinking, I feel good. Let's take on more. And instead, pause and ask yourself, What if I am feeling good because of my decreased load, what if adding more is exactly what will tip me back into overwhelm. And maybe you liked the filter I just gave you when it comes to taking on one more thing, or saying yes, at what cost, at what cost, and just acknowledging that there is a trade off. When you say yes to something you have a little bit less energy, time resource for something else, and is this the season of your life where that feels like an appropriate trade off? 

Unknown Speaker  22:55  
All right? Our three takeaways today. 

Unknown Speaker  22:57  
Number one, maybe you're not falling back into bad habits, but you are over committing until self care becomes impossible. When life gets good, we reflexively add more to our plates instead of maintaining what's working. And the problem is not a lack of discipline. A lot of times, it's just trying to fit too much, 60 hours of life into 24 hours of the day. 

Unknown Speaker  23:20  
Number two, not all regulation tools are meant to be forever, and that's okay. A sign of mature healing is that you can adjust your protocols, just like you don't need an ankle brace after your sprained ankle heals, some nervous system supports are temporary medicine for that acute time of dysregulation. 

Unknown Speaker  23:42  
And number three, redefine discipline as a high achiever. Maybe it's not the choice to do more, but instead the choice or the courage, maybe even just for now, the experiment in doing less. 

Unknown Speaker  23:42  
All right, friend, that's it for today. Thank you for being here, for doing this work, for being willing to question the stories, the patterns, the habits that you have in your life, and as always, I am sending so much hope and healing your way.

Amanda Armstrong  24:14  
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