60: 4 Pillars to Feeling Like You Again

Your nervous system is not being dramatic—it’s doing its job, constantly asking, "Are we safe?" And when your missionary leaves, that question can send you into stress overdrive. Whether you're lying awake composing emails to the mission president at 2 a.m. or zoning out on social media, your body is just trying to cope.

But here’s the good news: You can get back to steady, sane, and like yourself again with four science-backed (and surprisingly simple) tools:
✔️ Sleep – Your brain’s reset button. Learn why it’s the first thing to go and how to reclaim it.
✔️ Sunlight – The free mood booster that helps regulate your stress.
✔️ Movement – Shake off stress (literally) and reset your system like nature intended.
✔️ Breath – Your built-in calming tool—if you actually use it!

We’ll talk about how these tools helped me during my son’s home MTC, why tracking my reactions changed everything, and how one small shift can make a big difference in how you show up—for your missionary and yourself.

✨ Take a deep breath, mama. You’ve got this.

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Transcript

0:30

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Let's talk about your nervous system. You know, it's one of my favorite topics. It's not your missionaries, not your neighbors, not your early study presidents, yours, because here's the truth. You cannot show up for your missionary the way you want to. If you're running on fumes, stress, diet Coke. Well, I mean, maybe you can keep the diet Coke. I'm not here to take away anything from you, but I am here to help you regulate, which is just a fancy way of saying, get back to a place where you feel steady, sane, and like yourself again. And we're going to do that with very simple. Science backed pillars, and we'll go through each one of these and I want you to know that I use these myself and This is how I get myself back in regulation. And when my latest son was in home MTC I did not sleep for a few nights because I was so nervous and it really threw my nervous system for a loop So the four pillars that we're going to talk about today are sleep Sunlight movement and breath. Let's start. The first question we want to talk about is why your nervous system needs to be paid attention to. Like, why do you need to pay attention to it? It's. Your nervous system is not a drama queen. It's not extra. It's not, there's nothing wrong with you. It's doing its job. It's constantly scanning your world, asking one question over and over. Are we safe? And if your nervous system gets knocked off a little bit and you're a little bit on high alert because your missionary is leaving, that is normal. There is one of the nervous systems response, especially for moms, is Are we safe? And I mean we as in our offspring. So if we are feeling unsettled, unsure, we don't know about where they're going. We don't know. It is totally natural that your nervous system is on high alert. But when your missionary is out there in the world and he's already, or she's already serving and might be struggling with a companion, maybe emailing you with, you know, that tone that your nervous system starts to pick up on. And then before you know it, you're in team hyper, you're overthinking, you're, you're looking for more information. Maybe you're calling the mission office just to check in, or you're in team hypo, you're in shutdown, you're numbing out on social media. You're staying in bed. You feel like you need a nap forever. Both of these responses are totally normal. Neither one means anything is wrong with you. But if you want to feel like yourself, you want to feel grounded. You want to feel calm. You want to feel clear. You want to feel like you can show up and you can keep showing up. You want to feel inspired about what to do. Some of these tools are going to help you bring you back into that centered whole place. And these are going to help you. The number one thing is sleep. This is a superpower that we ignore all the time. And our brain at 2 a. m. wakes up and wants to solve all the problems of the world. It's the first thing that goes when you're anxious. You're lying in bed. You're composing letters, emails to the missionary's mission president in your head. Or you could even get up and start doom scrolling through like mission Facebook pages. But the deal is sleep is your brain's reset button. Without it, your nervous system stays stuck in team hyper team hypo, some kind of a survival mode. It doesn't feel good. You don't feel right. It feels very dramatic, like you're never going to feel good again. So here's something to try. You want to make a tiny little sleep upgrade. Maybe it's putting your phone across the room. Maybe it's a 10 minute wind down routine. Whatever helps your nervous system. We're safe. We're enough to rest. We're safe enough to rest. We're safe enough to rest. Another thing that you can do is you can experiment because everybody's nervous system is a little bit different. And I noticed when my husband sometimes works out of town that I wasn't sleeping as well, which would be totally normal, right? Because I don't have, you know, the person with me that I feel like is. You know, kind of the protector and, and so I get a little bit nervous. My nervous system is a little bit keyed up. So my sleep started to suffer. So I started to experiment, how am I going to improve my sleep quality when he's out of town or when something happens with one of my missionaries or any of my kids for that matter? Like what are some little things that I can do? So I tried a few different options. I've gone to sleep watching TV. I have a TV in my room. That did not help. It did not help me. But I tried it. I was willing to experiment with it. I also have an aura ring that tracks my sleep and my readiness kind of gives you a readiness score and it tells you about your sleep score and if your sleep was good or not. And I have found what works for me is I go to bed a little bit earlier. So I was normally going to bed between 9 and 10. So I thought, well, I'll just move it. So I try to be in bed by 830. So it's 30 minutes. It's not that big of a deal. Instead of watching TV, I read a book. I'm not reading anything that self help at night because I love those kinds of books. I read something that's very easy, very light, nothing that's going to get my heart, you know, not mysteries or thrillers or anything like that. I just read something that's very easy to digest. It's soft. It's And I take magnesium, magnesium helps with sleep. So I'm not here to push any kind of supplements. I did some research. I met with my doctor. We talked about it. I tested my magnesium level. So just being very thorough and I had a deficit in magnesium. So I got what I felt like was a good brand. I take magnesium and I, that has helped me with my sleep. But even more than the magnesium was just reading a book and just letting my brain wind down. Even when I'm wound up, I can still read a book and it still helps my brain calm down and my nervous system calm down. I was talking to somebody who just read a book about sleep and the importance of sleep. And one of the things that he mentioned was sleep. Gives you better results than anabolic steroids and if you could bottle what happens in In our body while we're sleeping and sell it, you would be a billionaire, but we have sleep available to us. It's free it's just a matter of being able to put it as a priority and To try and figure out how we can do that and and just giving ourselves that little cocoon of safety All right sleep. I love sleep. So that's that's like number one number two sunlight So sunlight is a natural mood booster That we do not use near enough. It's totally free therapy. It helps your body tell you what time it is. It helps produce serotonin. That's the feel good chemical and it literally resets your brain. So if you start your day inside, scrolling through a list of ways that you're. You're, you know, like ways that you need to show up today, things you need to do the way your missionary is struggling or not struggling, it gets your body stuck in a stress mode. So first thing in the morning, and this is hard people, this is hard because right now I'm in the middle of winter and I don't love the cold, but you can, if you step outside for five minutes, no phone. We just want to get a little sunlight on your face. This is one of the easiest nervous system hacks ever. So I have a dog, I and some cats, I go out, I feed, I pet the dog, I let him run around. Of course, he's running all over the place. I feed my cats. I try and take some deep breaths while I'm out there. This helps reset your nervous system and get you back into feeling like yourself again. Movement. So shaking off stress, literally. Have you seen a few years ago they had all those fires? I mean, I know there's fires right now in California, but a few years ago there was a bunch of fires in California and they were evacuating horses out of barns and they were loading them in trailers like as fast as they could. And you could see in the videos, those horses were just shaking. You've seen it also with dogs. They'll, they'll just shake and then they calm down and they're okay. There is something about movement and shaking animals know how to regulate themselves. We're the ones that have learned, have like gotten away from that. So you're just, you're not just a floating head with thoughts. You're a body and your body stores stress. So if you don't move it out, it sits there. And it just spins and it makes you feel anxious and you feel stuck and it can cause health issues and problems. So movement is key. So you don't need a gym membership or a Peloton or anything. You just have to get out and move. So next time you feel overwhelmed, stand up, shake your arms, walk around your house, shake. When you're nervous, try shaking your body, try wringing it out of your body and then stretch and do it for two minutes and see what happens. I learned that if I go on a walk when I'm angry, it, it up levels my my nervous system from, and my emotions from angry to furious. So I was like, okay, that's an interesting data point. I'm not going to go on a walk when I'm angry, but what can I do while I'm angry or what can I do when I'm anxious? So I actually have a spreadsheet and I keep track of like what those emotions feel like, what do they feel like in my body and what I tried. What was effective and what wasn't. And it's just a matter of getting to know yourself and being very aware of yourself. It's like bringing home a new baby where you're trying to get to know them and what they like and what they don't like. But this is you getting to know you. And here I am at 50. Just getting to know myself and things change and certain things work sometimes and don't others, but I was in a yoga class a few years ago and she had us just like shaking our arms out, like kind of like wringing them out and I couldn't believe the difference it made because I was getting ready to go in like the next week for some surgery. And so when I had got there, I was very anxious, had a lot of fear. And she, she said, okay, like energetically, we need to just do a few things to help you calm down a little bit and it's, it's okay. And so we did this shaking thing and I could not believe how well it worked. So I made a note in my spreadsheet and I'm not saying you need to get a spreadsheet. It's just something I do to keep track of myself because I find it very fascinating. So any kind of movement, whatever you like, whatever you want to try, try something and see if it works. And if you don't feel better. One time I was very keyed up. I was definitely in team hyper and I was like, Oh, I think I'll feel better if I try to sit down and meditate. Oh, no, no, no, no. My brain was going all over the place. I felt like I was climbing out of my own skin that did not work in that moment, but it's worked in other moments in other situations. So it's just a matter of trial and error, being curious about what's going on in your body. So movement very important. Okay, the last one breath. This is your belt built in Regulation tool we just forget to use it. You know when people say you just need to take a deep breath There is a reason that people say that breathing helps you regulate your body It helps you tell your body that you're safe. You're alive So when you're stressed your breath is It's very short, it's shallow, it's, it's in the upper chest. When you breathe deeply, your brain gets the message, we're okay, we're safe. So you want to take nice, deep cleansing breaths. So if you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed next time, we want to try a few things. You want to inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds. So just repeat that. three times. That's called box breathing. It feels different. You can even try it now, but not if you're driving. This is your nervous system resetting in real time. Okay, so you don't have to overhaul your life overnight. You don't have to do any of this perfectly. These are just a matter of noticing and choosing one small shift, one small thing that you're going to try and work on. The next time you feel yourself spiraling over anything in your life, your missionary, your job, your younger kids, your older kids, your adult kids, your married kids, your grandkids, whatever. Do I need sunlight? Do I need sleep? Do I need movement or do I need breath? And I usually put my hand over my heart, both hands. I cover my heart and I just ask myself, do I need sleep? Do I need sunlight? Do I need movement? Do I need breath? And you can pick one that feels like that's your body will tell you. What you need so just paying attention and whatever feels like the right thing at that moment Do that. So here's your homework not the stressful kind But the fun kind pick one of those four things today and try one just try one just see how you feel and as I always mention if this episode is helpful We're trying to reach as many missionary moms as possible that need help. Share this with somebody else who may need to hear it. And if they're not struggling in the moment, if something does come up and one of your friends mentions that they're struggling with something, share this episode with them. They don't have to be missionary moms. I've actually had. Some people reach out to me on social media and said, I'm not a member of your church and I definitely don't have a missionary, but I find your podcast so helpful. So I just want to share that with you. Definitely share it with anybody you can so that you can show up stronger, calmer and more present for your missionaries and for yourself. All right, that's what I've got for you today. We will see you next time. Bye bye.