Turn Down The World Noise: How to Calm Your Nervous System When Life Feels Loud

Episode 117.  Turn Down The World Noise: How to Calm Your Nervous System When Life Feels Loud

Your nervous system might be exhausted and it might have nothing to do with “willpower”. We’re recording solo this week (yes, literally under a blanket) to talk about the constant noise of modern life: nonstop news, endless opinions, background radio, social media scrolling, and the pressure to keep up with everything. When there’s no filter, your brain treats it all as urgent, personal, and dangerous and that can leave you wired, tired, and permanently on edge.

We get into why information overload and doomscrolling can keep you stuck in low-level fight or flight, even when you’re safe at home. There’s a simple “lemon” visualisation that proves how quickly thoughts can create a physical response, and it helps explain why headlines can hit your body like real events. We also talk about the knock-on effects many of us notice in midlife: poor sleep, cravings, reaching for wine or sugar earlier, flat energy, workouts feeling harder, and the stress stories we tell ourselves when our body is actually asking for support.

Then we shift into practical nervous system regulation you can do in real life: awareness without restriction, micro switch-offs, leaving your phone in another room, getting outside, and using breathwork with a longer exhale to signal safety. We also explore movement as stress release, including Pilates and strength training with intention, plus a reminder you might need most of all: you are allowed to disengage, protect your peace, and stop processing information that doesn’t serve you.

If this lands with you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave us a review so more women can find the support. What’s one source of “world noise” you’re ready to turn down this week?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Far Too Fabulous Podcast. I've got nobody to giggle away with today because I am all by myself under my blanket. In my office is my makeshift recording studio. If you saw on my stories yesterday,

Under-Blanket Solo Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:42

I uh I showed you a video of me under the blanket recording this week's podcast for you. It's all high tech, you know. Actually, with that said, the very clever Julie has added a link onto our podcast, I think in the show notes. And it gives you an opportunity to support us in a financial way. It's just, I think it's called buy us a cup of coffee or something like that. And the reason that we've added this is because

Support Link For Better Equipment

SPEAKER_00 1:16

there is some other technology that we would love to be able to get hold of to make this podcast even better, quality-wise and an editing-wise, and things like that. So it makes it a bit easier for us to be able to get it out to you a bit quicker, but the quality will be better as well. So if you do enjoy our podcast and you fancy uh I've got my bunny ears up, buying us a cup of coffee, that's what we're putting it towards. We're putting it towards equipment that will make this whole process better quality and easier for us. Anyway, today what I thought I would talk to you about was how super super noisy this world is right now, and I don't mean literally, although it is. God, that's just reminds me. The first time that I ever took my first baby out

Why Life Feels So Noisy

SPEAKER_00 2:16

into the world, which was probably almost 19 years ago to the day, because Anya's just had her 19th birthday, and I remember taking her out. We lived in Wimbledon, we were we were on a quite a busy road, and I'd got my fancy out and about buggy, which I adored, and everything seemed so noisy, and I just wanted to protect this tiny brand new, like brand new ears baby. Everything seemed really noisy, and I was I remember being irritated that the rest of the world didn't know that I had this beautiful brand new baby, and they were just carrying on around me being noisy. Yeah, god, I hadn't thought about that for a long time. Anyway, I don't necessarily mean noisy, I just mean that we get utterly bombarded left, right, and centre, with everything. And and unless you're really careful, there's literally no filter, like everywhere you turn, there's bad news, opinions, advice, things to worry about, things to fix, things to do. And even when you sit down to, and again the bunny ears are out, sit down to relax, you're still taking it all in. Like if we're scrolling, if we're reading, do people read newspapers anymore? I mean, they do, yeah, they do. There's still newspapers around. Still absorbing all of this information. And even when you're like sat down socializing with friends, people are always talking about world affairs, war, politics, global warming, etc. And there is really no getting away from it if you are not mindful about it, and then we wonder why we feel on edge, we are why we feel knackered, while we feel frazzled and burnt out. And so, well, first of all, I just want to tell you you're not alone. I think we we all feel like this to one degree or another, and the fact that we've got the world wide web and social media and all that stuff, we are being exposed to more information than ever before. Think about when it was just newspapers or maybe just the radio, everything was a little bit like information, it was a little bit slower. And also because there is so much information and so many ways that you can devour it. The people that are giving this information to you are really having to battle to get your attention, and so they make it more negative, more urgent, more emotionally charged, all designed to grab your attention. Maybe there's there's sort of sales associated with it, it's just it's all designed to suck up your time, which we know is the most precious commodity that you have, and your brain doesn't know the difference between if it's actually happening to you right there and then, or if you're reading it on the page and you're kind of going through it inside you. Does that make sense? So your your brain doesn't know if it's real or not, it just feels like it's real. And I don't know if you've ever done this, so just to demonstrate that point, I want you to, if you can, like if you're not driving, I guess, just sit quietly and play along with me for a second. And I want you to hold out your hand and imagine that you have got a lemon in your hand, a lovely big,

The Lemon Exercise Proves It

SPEAKER_00 6:03

juicy, squishy, bright yellow, beautifully shiny lemon in your hand. And I want you to don't feel crazy, play with me. I want you to bring it up to your nose and I want you to smell it, and I want you to smell that beautifully tart lemony smell, okay? And then what I want you to do is I want you to take this big juicy, bright, beautiful yellow lemon, and I want you to open your mouth, and I want you to sink your teeth and your lips deeply into this juicy, juicy lemon, and as your teeth and your lips pierce through that skin, you feel and taste that soury squeaky feel and taste of the lemon. Did you imagine that? Could you imagine that? What has it done to you? Are you salivating? Could you imagine when you bit into that sour lemon that your that your glands all at the side of your jaw like kicked off your saliva glands? And so if you can do that with a really simple process of thinking about a lemon, just think what your brain thinks you're going through on a daily basis when you're drinking in all of the stuff on the news about war, about politics, about all the awful things that happen on a day-to-day basis in the world. And then add the real things that are actually happening. The things that happen in family life, the things that happen in work. Maybe you've got aging parents, maybe you've got teenagers, maybe there's challenges, like you know, the kids are running around your own health, and it's not just a little bit of scrolling or a little bit of watching the news, it's a constant drip feed of stress, and your body does not know whether you are actually

Stress Symptoms We Call Normal

SPEAKER_00 8:19

in the middle of this war zone or you're just watching it on the news, and so your nervous system is in this constant low-level fight or flight. It's not like full-out panic, you know, the the bombs are dropping, the uh tidal waves are coming, the tsunamis that, you know, it's not we're not there. It's just this low-level anxiety and alert all the time. It's like you are the mere cat that's out on constant watch and no one is coming to relieve you, no one is swapping with you, and you're just out there looking over the parapet, going, oh my god, all the time. And your brain keeps whirring and it's exhausting. I don't know if you've ever listened to the episode that I've spoken about when I talked about my anxiety journey, and I used to talk about my anxiety as a like a program that ran in the background all of the time, it never ever shut off, and it's just draining your battery all of the time, and then because you're in this weird habitual loop, you then go and like pick your phone up again or block yourself in front of the television and end up watching the news or put the radio on and end up listening to the news, and it's this loop that keeps going on, and you just never get a point that you feel safe and relaxed, and so then the knock-on effect of this in your day-to-day life looks like feeling sleepy because you're not able to really drop into that deep, lovely sleep, or you're restless, that so your energy is flat, so your cravings go up, or you make the wrong food choices or the wrong drink choices, you're knackered, you grab for the wine earlier, you grab for the sweets or the the sugar or the caffeine earlier, your motivation drops down, maybe your workouts feel harder, or they just feel utterly pointless. I mean, actually, depending on how much awfulness you've consumed, everything might feel a bit pointless when you're looking at such terrible stuff. Things like the weight gain or the stubborn weight loss all happen. And I know that lots of our listeners are women in their midlife, and all of these symptoms are associated with midlife, and they're almost made to feel normal, right? This like it's just normal that we will that we feel all of this. However, they are all also a symptom of stress. And Julie and I have talked about stress probably in every single episode, quite frankly, and how how deadly, how dangerous it is. And this is like a drip, drip, drip, it's like water torture of stress. And then what we do is we make meanings out of all of these things because we are meaning-making machines. That's exactly what we are, that's how we kind of help ourselves to understand the world. So we decide because we are not wanting to work out, or we're too tired, or maybe we've gained weight, or maybe we're finding it hard to lose weight, that we've just got no willpower, or that we need to try harder, or that we're lazy, or that we're broken, and that actually is completely the opposite, and again, it then just feeds back into it, and we just feel completely overwhelmed. So, thinking about what to do about it, let's not let's not dwell in the doom and gloom anymore. And I know that I don't need to go into details, I know that you guys see and hear this in you know all of the media channels and and ways that we consume information. I know that you you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Awareness Without Restriction Or Shame

SPEAKER_00 12:20

It's not about cutting yourself off from the modern world because you know we know it has some amazing benefits. Although I do often joke about moving and living in a commune in Costa Rica or somewhere and just totally like ditching the phone, ditching modern life and going and living the good life somewhere. Wouldn't be completely opposed to that, quite frankly, but it is about protecting your energy along with your time, it's one of the most important things. So, practical things that we can do, and again, this is no surprise, it's awareness. This is how you start, it's an awareness of it, and to grow from that awareness point, and again, Julie and I talk about this a lot awareness and not restriction. Okay, so you can't be taking or feel like you are taking things away from you because that's just not how we how it works, that's not how we are wired. So, first of all, start noticing how much you are consuming. Now you know that it is not good for you to open your eyes, pick up your phone, and start scrolling. Please, please, please do not have other people's content in your eyes and in your brain before you have even woken up to your day. You start with that doom and gloom. You know the bad news always sells better, so that's what you get to see. And likewise, just before you go to bed. Don't then doom scroll all sorts of, and maybe I don't just necessarily mean like I'm I'm in my mind, I'm thinking about the horrible stuff about news and you know, and world leaders and and all that sort of stuff. But maybe I just mean some of the absolute garbage that we consume on our social medias, like other people's content that we just don't need to see all of the time. It's quite funny, some of it, sometimes, for entertainment, but again, you've got to be aware that you're not consuming it all of the time, and you know, just just starting to ease back those little dopamine hits. And maybe it's constantly in the background, maybe you've got the radio on in the background, maybe you've got the TV on in the background, and it's just it's there in your subconscious all of the time. And think about the opinions that you expose yourself to or allow yourself to be affected by every single day. You think about if you're on social media and you're looking through Facebook groups or there's a big post on your feed that hundreds or thousands of people have commented on and you end up disappearing all the way down it, looking at everybody else's opinions. And if this sounds like you, if you get really affected by by other people, may not not not people that are on social media, but people that are around you all of the time. If that is something that you think, yeah, that's me, then go back to episode 73 with Sarah Sangster. And she talks about barriers, and she's got a book, and it's very, very good at helping you create those boundaries and moving people a little bit further away from your inner circle if you need to protect your energy and yourself. So those are a few things that you can do, but again, it's it's not judgment, all right? So don't go and then look at all of these things and go, look, yeah, I'm morning scroll, I listen to the news, I listen to the radio, I've got no boundaries around the information that people are giving me and I get upset all the time. Don't then go and make judgments about all of this information and then decide awful things about yourself. Go and just be aware of what is happening because you need the awareness before you can then go and do anything about it. Even if it is just that you realize that you are a meaning-making machine and that you've just made meanings out of all of these things, and that you know, the two dots do not connect, you know. Just because you are exhausted doesn't therefore mean you are lazy. Those two do two things don't mean one from the other. So just be aware that you are a meaning-making machine, and sometimes you you make it up and you get it wrong. I mean, so we do make it up a lot. I'm gonna go into that in a minute. So, thinking about micro switch off, what could we do? So, you don't know well, you don't need to go for a full day spa, but I did do a full day spa last week, and it was absolutely gorgeous. So, you could do that, and it was it was really, really delightful. Simple things like just 10 to 15 minutes of no phone,

Micro Switch Off With Nature

SPEAKER_00 17:20

leave your phone in another room somewhere and go and sit and have a cup of tea, go outside. Uh, just you know, after you've had a workout, just lay on the floor and do nothing. I um I got in from my walk this morning with the dog, and we'd been up into the woods, and I really noticed as I drove back, got onto the drive and just came out of my car how calm and grounded I felt, and actually how resistant I was to then go back into the house, go back indoors, and maybe be surrounded by technology and and things that then start pulling your attention that are artificial. And it was just so beautiful to be out in the woods with all the doggies. We had a lovely, lovely time. It's moments like that that just really they ground you, just bring you back down to back down to earth and without sounding really, really cliche, just make you really feel what's important. And so another super, super simple way to just sort of reset your nervous system is breath work, and you might not understand what that means, you might not think you or you might think that that's complicated. However, try this with me. This is an interactive podcast today, isn't it? So, again, if you're

Breathwork To Signal Safety

SPEAKER_00 18:52

not driving, well, in fact, if you are driving, you could do this as well. Uh, but concentrate more on driving, please. So, all you're gonna need to do is breathe. So, just take a lovely big inhale through your nose for about a count of four. And then let yourself exhale really gently out through your mouth for about a count of six. And then just rinse and repeat breathing in through your nose. And then exhale gently, calmly, I can say longly, I don't think that's a word. Out through your mouth for a count of six. And there's a few other things I'm gonna tell you about this. When you are breathing in, I want it to feel less like an action. I want you to just let go of your tummy and allow the air to just rush into your lungs and kind of fill that space that you've created by letting go of your tummy. And what's really interesting is you probably don't even realise that you're holding on to your tummy. So just let go of it and then for that slow exhale through the mouth, just really super, super gently draw the tummy in just a little bit. And the idea is that like the count of four and the count of six is not necessarily important. You just want to be able to exhale for a little bit longer than your inhale. And you just need to do this for about a minute, but you can do it for longer if you want to. And that exhale is just telling your body that you are safe. How nice is that? How simple is that? So let me know if you did that and how you got on, and just try and remember when you are feeling particularly stressed, that that is a really, really simple way of regaining a little bit of calm and a little bit of control. And so another way that you can release the stress and the pressure within your body and uh just feel a bit more connected to your body is through exercise, and Pilates is a really fabulous way of doing this. So movement is

Pilates And Calming Strength Training

SPEAKER_00 21:33

another great way of just letting that stress move through and out of your body. But unfortunately, as a result of you making the decisions, making the assumptions that because you are tired, because you are lacking in energy, it makes you make the wrong food choices, because maybe you're holding on. Onto more body fat than you would like to. The knee-jerk reaction is to hit the cardio and to eat less, isn't it? I know that that's the knee-jerk reaction. Which then makes us more stressed. The more stressed we are, the less likely your body is to allow anything to leave you. It's not going to allow the body fat to leave you. It's not going to allow the poop to leave you. It's not going to allow the toxins to leave you. Which then makes us try harder, which then makes us n feel like we are failing. Because we've made the meaning of it. So we do more cardio again and we do we eat less food. And we're really restrictive about everything that we're doing. And it's just this horrible, vicious cycle. And so not every workout needs to leave you on the floor. Sometimes your body needs to feel held, not hammered. And the beautiful thing about practices like Pilates and also things like meditation and breath work and tapping and things go with this as well is that they take you out of your head. Your conscious, thinky, meaning-making, negative head, and they bring you back down into your body and leave you feeling grounded. Very similar feeling to what I had from walking in nature earlier on today. And again, the benefit of Pilates is that when you are moving, you are being very purposeful. You know which parts of the body you are moving and which parts of the body you are strengthening, and which parts of the body you are stabilizing. And it really makes you think about being in your body. And it's a brilliant practice for that. And that feeling of coming out of that really heady thought and like literally dropping down into your physical body really helps you remind you that you are you are safe, that you are enough, that you've got an incredible physical body, an incredible physical being, and and that you are home in your body. That said, and that is that's all true, and that said, a super strong session of weight training or boxing the life out of some invisible opponent in a poloxing class is also very therapeutic. And I know you can feel that too. It's the intention behind it. You're not doing the spin class or the cardio class or the whatever to punish yourself, you're doing it because it'll help you get rid of a bit of stress and you know get a bit sweaty, and it's fun, and that can be your like endorphin blast rather than sort of the doom scroll. And also, this is me giving you permission that you are allowed to not engage with everything, you are allowed to disengage, you are allowed to switch off, and I know that that sends the fear of God through many of you, right? Like, what? You know, it feels

Disengage From Opinions Without Guilt

SPEAKER_00 25:23

like you're letting go of control, maybe if you don't know everything that's going on in every minute part of your life, however, it might be harming you. You are allowed to let go, you are allowed to protect your peace without feeling guilty. Sometimes I feel a bit ignorant that I don't know exactly what's going on in the world. I had an incredible conversation with my son about old Donald Trump and and what was going on over in the Arab Emirates and things like that. And he knew far more than I did. And well, one, I was just happy to listen to him because my son was talking to me, and yay, if anyone's got teenage sons, the fact he's just talking to me and I just love it. But yeah, I can't know everything, and that doesn't make me stupid just because I don't know certain things that are going on around the world. And that said, we only know through media and you know, and the internet and things what we're being told. So even what we think we know may or may not in some degree or so be true. We only know what Bob and Brenda tell us on Facebook, you know, and that's just their opinion. Yet often all of these things are presented as fact, and in reality, a very, very small proportion of what we consume daily or in the entire world is pure objective fact. A large proportion of everything is interpretation, is opinion, or is incomplete information, and your brain treats all of it as something to process and again makes meanings of it. So I want you to question yourself. If you start feeling that kind of emotional response, and I know it's really hard not to, but you feel that emotional response to to something, to something on the news, to something you've seen, a post on Facebook, whatever it is, is this information situation post, whatever it is, for me, but does it serve me? Is it going to make my life better? Can I do anything about it? And if the answer is no, then let it go. Be like Elsa and let it go. You could even pair it with doing something physical. Now, actually, when I was planning this podcast, I suggested, I I thought was going to suggest you you can imagine like blowing it away, like you had a dandelion, and you just blew the dandelion and you allowed whatever this information, this post, this news story, whatever it is, you just blew it away. But actually, perhaps we could be more like Elsa and we could send like snowflakes and sparks and stuff up into the air. You know, you know how she does it when she lets it go. So uh perhaps we could do that instead. And this might be really tough at first, okay, and you might be like, I can't, I can't let it go. So, first of all, you can, you're choosing not to. Oof, it hurts, I know. I'm sorry. It might be tough at first. However, the more you do it, as with anything, the better you will get, the quicker you will get, the easier it will get. Is this information for you? Is it serving you, or is it just rotting your insides with stress? Because it's so stress is just so bad for you. It's not worth it. Some of these news stories are just not worth your gut ache. Okay. So if you have been feeling a little bit wired and tired and like, what's wrong with me lately? Maybe you just need to reduce the world noise and bring yourself in just a little bit, just a little bit of a cocoon, just a little bit of protection, just a little bit of boundaries. There is nothing wrong with you. You are a compassionate, fantastic human being. However, I'm sorry to tell you this, but there is a limit to the amount of things that you can do, and and I am guilty about uh trying to influence as much as I possibly can. And I mean, you know, there are the Gressor Thumbburgs of this world who decide that they can do some things about some of the big shit that's going on, and thank you to her, and and I do try and play my part in some of the some of the bigger things, but we can't do it all. And if we are super super stressed and and then we get ill, then we can't look after our small little part of the world. We can't be a shining light for our children, we can't be a shining light for other women around us if we are broken into pieces because we are feeling heavy under the weight of the world that we can't do anything about. So use the tools that are really, really easy for you. A few minutes' breath. Move your body, get out into nature, use amazing techniques like meditation, like breath work, like tapping. If you don't know what any of these are, get in

Simple Tools And Closing Message

SPEAKER_00 31:04

contact and I will point you in the right direction. These are all things that I have within Vitality Rooms as tools for my members to be able to use at any point. And honestly, what I hope is that they use them regularly enough so that one they don't start to feel wired and tired and heavy and stressed, and if they do, that they are good at using these resources when they really, really need them, and that is a hundred percent what I would wish for you too. So I hope that this uh podcast, this episode, has been of use to you today, and you will be pleased to know that Julie and I have scheduled lots of time together over the next couple of weeks to uh to get back together and um and turn into the the crazy Muppet show that we that we normally are. So sending out big love to you all, and uh I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining us today. We love creating this for you. We'll be back next week with another great episode. Until then, we'd be beyond grateful if you'd subscribe to the podcast and leave us a glowing review. If you've already done this, thank you so much. Please do share the podcast with friends and family. You never know which tiny piece of information could be life-changing for someone you care about. We absolutely love hearing from you. So comment on the message. And if you have a ready, come and join us in our free face where we take a conversation and with like minded women. We'd love to love women. Until next time.