Whispers, Shouts, or Full Punch in the Face. Which One Are You Ignoring? (Vault)

Your body speaks in whispers, shouts, and sometimes punches to the face when you ignore its needs. Women are particularly susceptible to burnout due to perfectionism, people-pleasing, and putting everyone else first.

• The whispers of burnout include trouble sleeping, brain fog, headaches, and constant tension
• Shouts escalate to anxiety, adrenaline surges, digestive problems, and emotional fragility
• Punches in the face are serious health crises like cancer, autoimmune conditions, or complete collapse
• High-achieving women are vulnerable due to perfectionism and an inability to rest
• Changing your environment without changing your mindset means burnout will follow you
• The missing ingredient is addressing emotional and mental patterns, not just physical symptoms
• Your body needs more than temporary relief—it needs a fundamental shift in how you treat yourself

Take a moment right now. Close your eyes and ask your body what it needs from you today.

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

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Transcript

Introduction to Body Signals

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. Is your body trying to tell you something? As women who are juggling all the things, looking after everybody else, we have a terrible habit of neglecting our bodies. What happens is your head says I've got too much to do, I don't have time to rest, I've got to get this and this done, I don't have time to make it to the doctor. And yet, because we are so capable, we sometimes think that we can continue to get away with it. Your body is starting to give you a few little messages, whether they're whispers or shouts or punches in the face. It's giving you some kind of signal that it cannot keep going. So let me share with you.

The Shouts: Escalating Symptoms

Speaker 1 1:05

First, what I typically see are the whispers. We start to have trouble sleeping Now. This can come in two ways. Some people really struggle to fall asleep and are lying awake staring at the ceiling. Or other people are so flat out exhausted that they're asleep in 10 seconds, but then they're lying there at three in the morning thinking about all the stuff that they need to get done the next day. We typically see brain fog, headaches, migraines start increasing tension particularly, you know, jaw clenching, tight shoulders, tight necks, everything just hard and tight and tired all the time. Now, as we've got these sort of some of these whispers and things start happening, if we ignore those, they tend to escalate. The shouts are a bit like oh, I might have to now do something about this.

Speaker 1 1:52

So some of the shouts that I typically see is when people start having a lot more significant challenges, like feeling the adrenaline pulsing through their body. We start talking about more now, levels of anxiety. I'm not talking about worrying, which is more of, say, a whisper. I'm talking about anxiety. Sunday night sitting on the couch going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I have to go to work, oh my God, oh my God. And then that races, the adrenaline, that feeling of dread. On a Monday morning it was like, oh my God, I can't do this.

Speaker 1 2:25

All those symptoms can sometimes manifest then into nausea, digestive problems and almost this feeling starts to creep in of helplessness and hopelessness. We then typically see women start to become exceptionally emotional. I'm talking about somebody passes a comment on your presentation, you have to run to the bathroom because you're going to burst into tears. These are some of the shouts of your body saying I'm not happy. This life that you're leading is not allowing me to heal and to function at my best. And then we ignore these.

The Punches: Serious Health Crises

Speaker 1 2:58

We start getting to punches in the face and the reason other people might call these boulders that get thrown at you Punches in the face or boulders basically render you incapable of leading your current life. They are that big of a wake up call. It's like you didn't listen to the pebbles, you didn't listen to the rocks. Now I'm going to completely floor you and make you stand up and pay attention. This might be things like cancer diagnosis or pre-diagnosis, significant heart palpitations where suddenly you're being rushed to emergency diagnosis or suspected diagnosis of irreversible autoimmune conditions, whether it's things like diabetes or lupus or MS or a whole range of things that start coming in.

Speaker 1 3:41

I've had people literally collapse and being unable to get out of bed. I've had people call me from the emergency room. Their body literally completely and utterly shuts down and by the time you get to the punch in the face you have to do something different. So they are typically what I see as the three levels of burnout, and what makes women more susceptible to this is because we are high achievers, because we can push our bodies, because we are perfectionists and we have a very, very strong inner critic. We also pride ourselves very often on putting everybody else first. Well, I can't look after me. I'll rest Once I've emptied the dishwasher, got the kids dinner cleaned out, my inbox, got prepped for tomorrow, done the lunch boxes, and then I'll go to bed early.

Mindset: The Missing Ingredient

Speaker 1 4:29

Well, no, that doesn't work. You may need health treatments for some of these, and I'm not suggesting that you don't go and see a doctor. If you have some of these symptoms, my goodness, you need to take care of your physical body. However, the missing ingredient that I have seen that makes the biggest difference in people reversing these physical symptoms is to also deal with the emotional and mental support to stop these things happening in the first place. Because quitting your job or taking three months off because you've burnt out and trying to recover, that's only temporary relief. That's like sticking a giant bandaid on the thing that caused your challenges in the first place. Because, yeah, anyone can get healthy living on an island, drinking cocktails, living in paradise, having everything catered for them Awesome.

Speaker 1 5:24

However, if you then plonk yourself back in your life and don't make any changes to how your brain is functioning, you don't make any changes to your mindset, you don't make any changes to how you understand your emotional world, well then, nothing is ever, ever going to change. And this is why I have people who come to me and say yeah, jo, I'm about to burn out, but I've been here before. Like, what do you mean? Oh, every couple of years, I hit burnout and I realized that it's the industry. So I change industries, or it's the job, it's the toxic work environment, it's the workload. That's completely irresponsible and there's no way that I could possibly do that. So I quit my job and I start again. Okay, so we've got three jobs, three different industries, and the same thing has happened.

Speaker 1 6:17

Oh, you mean, you don't know how to say no, you take on more than you should, you beat yourself up, you get very attached to other people, you're quite empathic, you put everybody else first, you're a perfectionist and you're a high. Hmm, do you think perhaps that some of those behavioral patterns, which are caused by mindset, could be the things that are actually driving you to burnout. However, if you don't change you, if you don't change your mindset, then, oh my gosh, nothing is ever going to change, because the missing ingredient if you hadn't guessed it by now is that, for anything in life, it is never just the physical. Everything manifests on an emotional level first. Well, that's what I had to shift thirst. Well, that's what I had to shift.

Speaker 1 7:19

That it's not just about what I can get done. It's about how I honor my body. It's about how I honor my physicality. What I do is with my mind. That is my genius, that is my income, that is my security.

Listening to Your Body's Needs

Speaker 1 7:32

And yet my brain, my mind, is rattling around in this physical thing called a body. So if my body is not its best self, if my body is full of cortisol, if my body is hormonally imbalanced, if my body is not rested, then my mind is not going to be at my best. Well then, my mind is not going to be at my best. And I want to be at my best because I know that I have to take care of my body. If I don't, I will miss the signs and, like you, I spent a lot of my life living in my head, thinking about all the things I could be doing and then I'd push my body to do it, but I was terrible at listening to my body. My brain would always override it.

Speaker 1 8:15

But in reality, when you start listening to your body and I mean paying attention to these whispers, I mean catching the rocks or the shouts at you before they turn in to punches in the face or before they turn in to boulders.

Speaker 1 8:32

So that is my request of you today is to have a tap into what is your body trying to tell you. You probably already know which of these symptoms you fall into right now. Are you constantly sick and can't get better? Are you full of cortisol and adrenaline? Are you feeling anxious? Are you emotional? Are you you know? Have you got brain fog? Are you procrastinating? Is your jaw always clenched? Are you tight and someone touches your shoulders and you're like a rock? And not because of muscles, what? Where are you on this scale and what needs to shift in you right now to stop whatever you are doing? As you're listening to this, even just shut your eyes and go. Okay, body, what do you need from me right now? Shut your brain off and let your body tell you. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.