Editing Your Stress Bucket (Part 4)

In part four of this stress series, Amanda moves from filtering into action — introducing the 3 D's framework for actually editing your stress bucket. She opens by distinguishing between poking holes (reactive regulation) and real editing, then walks through Delete, Delegate, and Do Differently with honest personal examples from her own life. She also introduces Add as the fourth move on the supporter side of the see-saw, and closes with an important reminder that editing isn't just a thinking exercise — letting things go has a felt sense, and that response is normal.

3 Takeaways:

• Poking holes — reactive regulation tools — matters, but it's not the same as editing. Editing is about changing what goes in your bucket, not just managing the overflow. That's a fundamentally different kind of work.
• The 3 D's — delete, delegate, do differently — plus add on the supporter side give you a concrete framework for acting on what your filter revealed. They apply most directly to your daily stressors. Editing baseline stressors often requires deeper, more sustained support.
• Move slow. Editing is a continuous pruning, not a one-time overhaul. Choose one thing, do it until it's your new normal, then choose one more. And when grief, guilt, or discomfort shows up in the process — that's not a sign you're doing it wrong. It means you're doing something real.

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Transcript

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, welcome back. This is part four of our now five part stress management series. And today's where things get really practical. This is the episode I know a lot of people are waiting for. Quick recap though. Part one, we talked about understanding stress. So I introduced you to the bucket, the seesaw, acute versus chronic stressors. Part two was the assessment. So this is where you took a really honest look at both sides of your seesaw. the baseline and daily stressors in your bucket, your supporters. 

And the thing I heard back from most of you was the conversation about overflows versus triggers. Felt very, very helpful for a lot of you. 

Then we had part three where we talked about filters. So your core values, using those as your editing lens for the work we're going to do today, rubber versus glass balls, the filter of says who. So getting really clear on what actually belongs in your bucket before we start to edit it. So if you did the work from the last episode, if you sat with your values, if you held them up against your bucket, you're very ready for what we're going to do today. If you haven't at least listened to the previous parts in this series, I recommend hit pause, go back, listen to those episodes, and then come back here today to part four, because this is the editing episode. 

And what editing your stress bucket is all about is it's about actually changing the conditions of your life. We are here to figure out what's got to give, what's got to go. what needs to be done differently to change the conditions of your life so that you aren't just managing your symptoms. So you're not just chronically managing a life that's way too full, a stress bucket that's way too full. 

So when I talk about kind of reactively managing your stress bucket, I sometimes refer to this as poking holes in your bucket. These are the things that you do through reactive regulation. So before we talk about the framework for editing your stress bucket, I do want to name that it's important that you learn how to poke holes in your stress bucket in the moments you need it most. And you might do this with things like breath work when your anxiety spikes, maybe a walk outside a somatic practice. We talk a lot here on the podcast. We do a lot of work in my memberships and in our one-on-one coaching containers around helping people create their personalized reactive toolkit. These things work. They provide real relief. They are an important skill. But even if you get really, really good at reactively regulating, if the tap on your daily stressors is still running at full blast, you are always going to feel like you are one breath away from a crash out. 

So that is where this process really comes in. Editing your stress is about turning down the tap. It is about resolving some of those baseline stressors, creating more of a buffer zone so that the inevitable, unpredictable, hard parts of life don't completely disrupt us, don't completely dysregulate us every single time. It's also about very intentionally building up the other side of your seesaw, your supporter, so that there's some balance. 

So before we get into the framework, I do want to make one. distinction that I think is going to be really important for a lot of you, especially for those of you who did your assessment and found that your baseline stressors are what actually takes up the most room in your stress bucket. 

So the primary editing framework that I'm going to walk you through today, something that I call the three D's, this applies most directly to your daily stressors. So the things coming, so again, if you imagined a tap or a spigot above your bucket, it's that water. on a daily basis, just coming into your bucket, the variable day-to-day inputs that you oftentimes have a little bit more real leverage over. So things on your schedule, your commitments, your habits, your environments, your technology use, those are your daily stressors. 

Now, when it comes to editing your baseline stressors, so that Remember, those are the chronic ongoing things like unresolved trauma, deep seated beliefs, significant health conditions, longstanding relational patterns. Addressing your baseline stressors requires a different kind of work. Today's a little bit more logistical. It's a little bit more strategic. Baseline stressors take deeper work. They take therapeutic work. Sometimes it takes blood work or health protocols. These are all things that we support people with one-on-one at Regulated Living. But this is the kind of healing that happens in a supported, sustained container over time. 

And I just want to nod towards that here because I don't want anybody listening today to walk away thinking that if the 3Ds doesn't fix their life, doesn't help them to feel a lot less stressed, that they're doing it wrong. If your baseline... is what's the heaviest. I do still think that the 3Ds are worth doing because reducing your daily load absolutely helps. We want to get leverage wherever we can, but that might not be your whole answer. And knowing that is going to be really important for many of you to remember because that's going to help inform what kinds of support you might want to seek out. Next. 

All right. Now let's talk through the framework, the three D's. So you have your stress bucket. There's everything in your stress bucket. Then you've applied your filters and you've identified what feels the most important, what you want to stay, what needs to shift or what you maybe want to shift. When we're looking at the things that we want or need to shift, even some of the things that we want to stay in our bucket that we're choosing to keep in our bucket, we can still apply some of the three D's. So these are delete, delegate, or do it differently. And because we also don't want to forget the supporter side of the equation, there is a fourth here and it is add. 

So typically when we're doing this work with clients, We are going to look at that full seesaw and we're going to go to the stress bucket and we're going to say, Hey, what can you delete? What can you delegate? What can you do differently? Then look at the supporter side. What do you want to, or can you add to that? And there are a variety of different ways that you can do this. Sometimes you can go through and say, okay, what's the easiest thing to delete? The easiest thing to delegate the easiest thing to do differently. What does that look like? Where do I start? And maybe that's it. Maybe that's the full edit that you do. Other times it might be, okay, let's go through what is everything that you can delete, the easy stuff and the hard stuff. What's everything that could be delegated, the easy and the hard stuff. So I am going to talk through just a couple of different ways that we have run through this, that we orient, that I explain these three D's and just know, again, there's not always a right or wrong way to apply this to the exercise. 

Personally, when I do this process with clients, I love to start with delete. I'm like, what can we get out of the bucket first? What are the things that you can or you want to remove entirely? And for most people who are assessing through their filters. There's at least one or two obvious things that they know can go. And then there are always the things that you want to delete, but maybe you can't yet. So we go through and we ask of all the daily stressors, what can or will I stop doing? What will I say no to? What am I going to remove from my life or at a minimum from my mental load, at least for now? And we all, all of us, myself included, every client we've ever... done this exercise with we all have stories come up when it comes to deleting things from our stress bucket about why we can't delete certain things why that would make us a bad parent a bad partner a bad friend a bad person if we did and while sometimes there are very real things that we can't take away from our stress bucket because there are real constraints. There's real responsibilities, things that genuinely just don't disappear from our lives. But in this process, a lot of times, if we're honest, things are in our bucket, not because they have to be, but because we've never stopped to question them because we don't know how to manage our guilt. or other people's disappointment if we get rid of them. 

And so this process is really just an invitation to question, to ask of everything in your bucket. When I have time to do this with clients, we will go through and we'll be like, could you delete that? Could you delete that? Could you delete that? And even if the answer ends up being no, and as silly as it sounds for me. When I say everything, I mean everything. I go through my bucket. I'm like, can I delete getting my kids ready for school in the morning? Can I delete feeding them? Can I delete filing my taxes? Can I delete showering in my life? And specifically for me, most of those I've decided the answer is no, but putting them up against the option of deleting them in some maybe kind of silly way, but it gives me a sense of autonomy and choice over certain things that maybe If I could, I mean, if I could realistically never file taxes again, please, if I could feeding my children, the fact that I am going to have to feed my children for like the next 15 to 20 years of their life, there's probably nothing that depresses me more than like putting lunch on the table and realizing that I have 1 million more lunches to put on the table. It just doesn't bring me joy. It doesn't bring me joy. But realistically, that's not something. that I can delete. 

But when I at least give myself the opportunity to entertain that, maybe it could be an option. What it often does is it just gives me a sense of autonomy and choice over these things where previously there might have been a sense of duty-based obligation. And so when you are putting the delete lens on these things, and the answer is no, but maybe you'd like it to be yes. That then points you very clearly towards, do I want to get creative about delegating or doing this differently? 

So from the example that I've shared from my own editing process, some of my deletes, right? Quitting PTO, stopping swim lessons, stepping down from a church responsibility, deleted six bags of clothing from our home, deleted the mental load of the husband breakfast story. Some of these things. felt immediately freeing to just let them go get rid of them. But sometimes there was a grief or an apprehension or a guilt that came from deleting these things. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't delete it. So let's, that's delete. Delete's pretty self-explanatory. 

Then we have delegate. So this means that something in our stress bucket, it still happens. It still happens, but not by you or not entirely by you. This requires some infrastructure. This requires people, resources, systems, which are going to vary greatly person to person, but it also requires a willingness. This is the hardest part for me. It requires a willingness to let something be done by someone else, possibly imperfectly, probably not exactly as you'd prefer and to let them do it without taking the task back. A lot of high functioning, high achieving people of whom I know many of you listening are, we are carrying things in our bucket that could be delegated. But we haven't delegated them because delegating feels harder than just doing it ourselves. I have lived this. I live this still in a lot of ways. But the reality is the cost of not delegating is your nervous system. And that is a cost that compounds quietly until it crushes you, until it breeds resentment, until it breeds burnout. 

One of the things that my husband and I did, recently was that we sat down and we looked at our domestic and parental load really honestly and there was such an obvious mismatch and so we had a conversation about redistribution about delegating what are some things that he was going to take on what are some things that we have the resources to collectively outsource And where we've landed currently, it didn't happen all at once, but through series of conversations over years, small decisions over time, and it'll likely continue to shift. 

First of all, because I have a propensity towards over-functioning and I often take on and take on and take on until I'm burnt out or resentful. So these are my patterns, my patterns to work on, but also... of our life are going to change and individual capacity is going to change. And so delegation is going to change in a lot of different ways between myself and my partner, the resources that we have available to us. But ultimately, this has been a big exercise for me in letting things be done differently, managing my discomfort around some of the tasks that are done differently, rather than the discomfort of reclaiming that task. 

Oftentimes, one of the things I want to name here is, number one, delegation requires getting creative sometimes, especially when financial surplus or support is lacking. And I think in all of the three Ds, this is the one that takes the most vulnerability and courage. Delegation is the one that often requires... really honest conversations, sometimes really confronting conversations. It takes releasing the belief that you're the only one who can or has to do it. And so delegation is the one that I have needed the most support with, that I have needed to sit with in coaching sessions and in therapy and say, hey, what could this look like? 

The other one I've gotten a lot of external support on is the next one. The next D is do differently. And this one, while I think you've got to get creative with delegate. This is perhaps where there is the most room for creativity or shifting. So when we do differently, it means this thing stays in our life. It stays in our stress bucket, but we change how we do it. Maybe we simplify, we swap. You find a version of that thing that asks less of your nervous system without abandoning the thing itself. what this has looked like for me, I really struggle with decision fatigue. So running a business, multiple businesses means that I am making decisions all day long. Having three tiny humans that depend on me means I'm making decisions all day long. And so a lot of times by the time I get to the personal decisions, like what do I wear? What do I eat? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. So I will skip breakfast. I will literally be wearing an outfit. I will shower and I will put on the same outfit. I probably should put on clean clothes after I shower, but it's like, I just like they're there, they're there and it's fine. So I have learned how to do differently. I've simplified a lot of this for myself. When it comes to breakfast, I have about three breakfasts. that I choose from almost every single morning and I have rotated through them. I basically eat one until I'm sick of it. I eat the other one until I'm sick of it. And then I just rotate through. So I have one of three things for breakfast and I've been doing that for years. I have very similar sets of snacks most days. I meal prep on weekends so I don't have to do like a full dinner every single night. I have simplified my closet drastically. For me, I have had to put intense limits around social media. So I would love to delete all social media, to delete Instagram with reckless abandon. That's not something because of my business and actually because of the community that I've built there and I genuinely love those connections, I'm not choosing to delete that right now. But especially in the last year, I've chosen to do that differently. So I got a brick. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's this little device that can lock you out of your apps. And I lock myself out of my social media apps. My phone has almost no notifications. Even when I have volume on, the only notification that comes through is calls. I got so sick of my phone calling out to me. I now can go when I think, hmm, I wonder who sent me texts today or I wonder what emails I have. I don't fold my kids' laundry anymore. Like there's so many things that I filtered specifically through the like says who, says who that I have to do this or says who that I have to do this this way. 

And so while a lot of these things, none of these things are dramatic overhauls that I just mentioned, but choosing to do them differently over time has cumulatively changed my daily stress load significantly. 

And so this is where you go through your bucket. You're like, what things can go or what things do I wish could go? Is there a way that things can be delegated? And with whatever is left, what can I do and how can I do it differently? 

There's also a deeper version of doing differently that I want to spend a couple minutes talking about because sometimes our stressors aren't going anywhere. right? We've nodded to this already. Some stressors in our bucket, they cannot be deleted. They cannot be delegated. And some can't even really be simplified. But what you can do differently, if you can't do the actual task tangibly in a different way, how can you change your internal relationship to that stressor, to that task, to that ask on your nervous system? Because that is something you can almost always impact is how you orient to that task or the meaning that you make of it. 

So for example, I had a client inside the membership who was the primary caregiver of her mom who had early onset dementia. And we had exhausted all of the practical options. She'd already delegated what she could, simplified what she could, and what she was left with still felt really, really heavy. And so the work that we did was in helping her orient to that remaining role and its responsibilities differently by adding new context, a new sense of choice and connection to that experience. So context, choice, and connection. These are three things that our nervous system looks for to determine safety, to determine capacity and capability. 

So the doing different in this case for her. It wasn't external at that point. It was internal and it made such a big difference for her. So this is also where a lot of the baseline stressor work lives, not in necessarily changing the circumstances, but in changing your nervous system's relationship to them. 

So we've talked about delete. We've talked about delegate. We've talked about do differently. Then there's the add. So editing isn't always, stress management isn't just about removing stressors. It is also about what you are intentionally doing to build up your supporter side. So looking at that side of your seesaw and asking yourself questions like, what would help me to feel more regulated, to feel more resource, to feel more supported? What practices, what connections, routines, habits, relationships? What additions would make the load that you're carrying feel more manageable? What are things that give more than they take for you? And so adding to the supporter side is still part of this editing process. Do not, do not, do not, do not, do not skip it. 

And now I want to offer just a few practical notes on how to actually move through this. Again, I usually start by scanning my daily stressors and asking what can most obviously and easily be deleted or delegated. Not what's hardest, not what's the most impactful. I love to go for the low hanging fruit. What is the easiest? What can get me just my first couple inches of capacity with as little effort as possible? So looking at your stress bucket and asking yourself, what can easily be deleted? And what is the concrete next step to make that happen? What can easily be delegated or at least partially be delegated? And what is the concrete next step to make that happen? And so if you are doing this entirely on your own, that's where I recommend you start. These are really simple questions. What can be deleted? One thing, what can easily be delegated? And what is the next step? And then go do that. Go do that. And then come back to the bucket. This is not meant to be. a one-time overhaul, but a slow chipping away process of editing your life until it becomes something that feels like a more sustainable fit for you. That feels like a life you actually want to live in. You want to be in one that sustains and supports nervous system regulation. 

And one of the things that I have found over and over and over again with our clients is that they actually get stuck here. They can assess, they can even apply their filters, but the editing. is the most challenging thing because it forces us again to see outside of our own boxes and seeing our members and our clients get stuck here over and over and over again is exactly why I started offering what I call strategy sessions inside the membership. This is actually the only way I'm currently working one-on-one with people. And honestly, it's One of my favorite things that I do, because in these sessions, I really get to get into the weeds of your specific life, your nervous system, your value system. When I'm in sessions with folks, we look at what is actually going on with. their unique nervous system. We look at their stress bucket. We look at what habit change is realistic or meaningful given their current circumstances. And every single one of my clients who does a strategy session leaves with a personalized roadmap, clear priorities, a written protocol for kind of their next phase of regulated living. 

So these, I always add the caveat of like these sessions are not the deep inner work. The other practitioners on my team hold that more extended over time criteria and they do a phenomenal job of holding that safe trauma trained container for the deeper linear parts work, belief work, the trauma where it shows up. But what these strategy sessions are is an opportunity to really zoom out. It is a high level look at your full. picture so that you can get clear on what to work on and how to work on it. So if you are feeling like you want somebody, if the puzzle piece analogy that I share oftentimes resonates with you and you're like, I just need somebody to like look at my stress bucket and tell me what to do. Tell me where to start. Let's talk about habits. What do I do? How do I? These are. These are the sessions for you. So if you aren't inside the membership, you would need to be. These sessions are only offered to members. But this is what helps people take really clear next steps into figuring out what regulated living looks like for them. 

So one more thing, though. I want to say one more thing before we move on. And it is a reminder that whether you are doing this on your own, whether you jump into the membership and you want to step into this work with one of our practitioners or myself in a strategy session, maybe you're doing it with your own therapist or coach, move, move so slow. There is often a temptation when you do this exercise to see everything that needs to change and to try to change it all at once. positive change is stressful for your nervous system. Changing too much, too fast, even in a healthy direction can shock your nervous system and actually reinforce the need to stay in survival mode. So choose one thing, the easiest thing, the most obvious thing, something small, let it go, delegate it. Do it differently and keep doing it differently. Keep it deleted or delegated until that becomes your new normal. Till that becomes the new baseline. Then choose one more. 

So again, think about it as this continuous pruning versus a one-time overnight overhaul. A slow, ongoing, intentional shaping of your life towards something that actually fits you. I want to revisit one more time that this pruning can sometimes feel like immediate relief, but sometimes it feels like grief because some of the things that we need to let go are things that we wanted to be able to do commitments that we made in a different season roles that became part of how we understood or understand ourselves saying no to something can feel like losing something. even when it's the right choice. And sometimes this pruning process, it brings up guilt, especially for those of us who have learned often early that our value is tied to our productivity, our availability, our ability to hold everything together. Editing your life can feel like letting people down and it might actually let people down. I have let people down in editing my life many, many times, but sometimes those unspoken contracts need to break and the dynamics need to shift. And there will be some relationships that will survive that and others that won't. But this is your one chance at these 100 years and stepping your life closer to what you want that to look like is really important. It matters. 

And I want you to know that all of these responses can be normal. They do not mean that you are necessarily doing anything wrong. In fact, it usually just means you're doing something real and tangible. And sometimes our nervous system has to catch up to the decisions that we've logically made. Your head can decide something before your body agrees or has the experience to know that it's safe. So that gap. between the knowing something is the right edit and actually feeling okay about it. Just know that it can take time. It takes support. It takes sitting with the discomfort of change. And as cliche as it sounds, sometimes just getting comfortable with being uncomfortable in this process. 

So here, if you choose to take it on, is your invitation from part four, is to go back to your assessment from part two. Then to hold your values filter up that we worked on together in part three, starting with those daily stressors, asking of each one, can it be deleted? Can it be delegated? Can it be done differently? Maybe you take a different color marker to each. You've got, okay, these are yellows or things I want to delete. These are things that can be realistically delegated in green. Maybe blue is done differently. And then looking at the supporter side, what is even just one thing that you can add or might want to add to balance out the seesaw a little more? And then choose one. One thing, the easiest, most obvious place to start. Do it. Do it and see how it goes. See if you survive. Do it until that becomes your new normal and then choose one more. And if you need or want support in this work, this is exactly what we do. We help people edit their lives to step into more regulated living inside our one-on-one coaching program, Restore, or inside the regulated living community membership. 

So our three takeaways from today's conversation is 

number one, our three Ds, delete, delegate, do differently. This can give you a concrete framework for editing your stress bucket for changing the conditions of your life versus spending the rest of your life just poking holes in your stress bucket and white knuckling it. 

Takeaway number two, that adding is kind of the fourth move of this editing process. What can you add to the supporter side of your seesaw to offset some of the inevitable stressors that come with life? 

And takeaway number three is to move slow. Move slow. Think about this as a continuous pruning, not a one-time overhaul. And this is why the protocols that I send out after every strategy session, they have a clear timeline or hierarchy for our members to work through. It's very obvious. Hey, start here. And when it feels... way, then here, then here. It's almost like creating their personal roadmap or blueprint towards healing. 

And I will add just the final caveat here, just a reminder that beyond this strategic editing, there are these pieces in your bucket that are going to require the deeper work, the more tender holding and the supported processing to reorient to the things that have happened to us. the unchangeable chronic circumstances of our life, you can decrease your baseline stressors. You can't change what happened to you, but you can absolutely integrate that experience, reorient to it in a way that it no longer claims as much room on your system. 

All right, friend, that is it for today. Please send your questions, your thoughts. I love reading your DMs and your emails as you move through this series. And until next week, I'm sending hope and healing your way. 

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.