Ep. 173: Why Survival Mode Isn't Failure—And How to Make It Strong

What if I told you that survival mode isn't a sign of failure—it's actually proof of your strength?

I know that sounds radical. Maybe even impossible to believe right now. Because everywhere you look, you're getting the message that survival mode is something to escape, something to be ashamed of, something that proves you're not handling life well enough.

But I believe the exact opposite. I believe survival mode is the place where you can grow stronger than ever. Not by escaping it, but by learning to be strong in it.

I'm Jennifer Roskamp, and most of us are taught that if we're in survival mode, we're doing something wrong. That we need to get our act together, try harder, be more organized, wake up earlier—whatever it takes to get out of this messy, overwhelming place.

But what if that's backwards? What if survival mode isn't the problem—what if the problem is how we've been thinking about survival mode?

Today I want to share something with you that might change everything. And I also want to tell you about a free 3-day experience that starts tomorrow—the 3-Day Survival Mode Rescue Sprint—that's designed to help you see survival mode in a completely different way.

Because here's what I've learned after working with hundreds of midlife women: You don't need to escape survival mode. You need to get strong in it.

And I'm going to show you exactly how.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

3- Day Survival Mode Rescue Sprint

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Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Survival Mode
• 10:33 Reframing Survival Mode as Strength
• 15:29 The Three-Day Survival Mode Rescue Sprint

Transcript

Well everywhere I go, feel like my coaching clients, my friends, acquaintances I run into, women are having conversations about being exhausted and overwhelmed and I'm barely getting by. I'm struggling to keep it together. I'm in burnout mode. I'm survival mode. These are in survival mode. These are the conversations that are happening. And nine and a half, at least times out of 10, I see that when women are describing themselves in this way, they are

equating themselves to failure or the fact that they're doing something wrong. And so I'm excited to have a different conversation about survival mode because I don't think any of this conversation that is currently being had is true. So hey there, welcome to the Intentional Midlife Mom podcast. I'm Jennifer Roskamp and most of us are taught that if we're in survival mode, we need to get out as fast as possible.

We need to get our act together. We need to try harder. We need to be more organized. We need to wake up earlier, whatever it takes to get out of this messy, overwhelming place. But again, I say, what if that's backwards? What if survival mode isn't the problem? What if the problem is how you've been thinking about survival mode? So today I'm going to be sharing with you something that might change everything for you. And I also want to tell you about a free three-day experience that starts tomorrow.

the three-day survival mode rescue sprint. And it's designed to help you see survival mode in a completely different way. Because here's what I've learned after working with hundreds of midlife women. You don't need to escape survival mode. You just need to get strong in it. And I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. So first, let me paint you a picture. And I really want you to listen with your whole body, because I'm betting you're going to recognize yourself. So you wake up.

You wake up already feeling behind. Before your feet hit the floor, your mind is racing with everything you need to do, everything you forgot to do yesterday or didn't get to yesterday, everything that's not getting done fast enough. The mental to-do list, it starts scrolling before you're even fully conscious. You push through your days on autopilot, managing, organizing, putting out fires, taking care of everyone's needs. You're the family calendar, the household manager, the emotional thermostat, the problem solver.

You tell yourself you'll rest later, you'll catch up later, you'll take care of yourself later, but later never comes. Because by the time everyone else is settled, you're too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the couch and scroll your phone hoping for five minutes of numbness before you have to start the whole cycle again tomorrow. Your days feel like you're constantly playing catch up. The laundry is never fully done. The kitchen is never completely clean. The to-do list never really gets any shorter. It just gets rearranged.

You feel like you're running a race where the finish line keeps getting moved further away. And in the quiet moments, those are very rare spaces, by the way, your mind fills with self doubt. You wonder what you're doing wrong, why everyone else seems to have it together while you feel like you're drowning. You look around and think, other women, they cook real dinners every night. Other women, they keep cleaner homes. Other women seem to actually enjoy their lives. What's wrong with me?

You compare yourself to the woman at the school pickup line or maybe at work who looks put together while you're still in yesterday's clothes. You scroll social media and you see perfectly curated lives that make your chaos feel even more shameful. You wonder if you missed some sort of instruction manual that everyone else got about how to be a functional adult. You wonder if this is just how life is now. If you've somehow messed up so badly that feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and behind is just your new normal.

If this grinding, exhausting pace is what you signed up for, is this what I signed up for when I became a wife, a mother, an adult woman with responsibilities? And the worst part, on top of all of this, you're ashamed of it. You feel guilty for not being more grateful. You have a roof over your head, people who love you, more blessings than problems. So why do you feel so tired all the time? You feel weak for not being able to handle what feels like basic adult responsibilities. You feel like a failure because

You're just trying to survive when you think you should be thriving. Maybe you've even been told by well-meaning friends, family members, or that voice in your own head that you just need to be more organized. You need to get a better planner. You need to wake up earlier. You need to meal prep on Sundays, exercise more, practice gratitude, try harder. But you've tried all of that. You've bought the planners and downloaded the apps and started the morning routines. And for a few days, maybe even for a few weeks, it feels like this might actually work.

Jennifer Roskamp (04:47.48)
But then life happens. Someone gets sick, work gets crazy, an unexpected crisis hits and everything falls apart again. And now you're back to square one, feeling like you failed at something that should be simple. Does this sound familiar? If you're nodding your head right now, if you're thinking, how did she just describe my exact life? I need you to hear this. What if your exhaustion is actually evidence of your strength? What if your overwhelm is proof of how much you care?

What if survival mode isn't your weakness? What if it's your superpower?

The truth is you are likely overloaded and survival mode, it's not a character flaw. It's your nervous system protecting you when life hands you more than anyone can reasonably carry. Think about it. You wouldn't blame a computer for running slowly when it has too many programs open. You wouldn't shame a phone for losing battery quickly when it's running a dozen apps at once. But somehow we expect ourselves to function perfectly no matter how much we're carrying, no matter

What is going on in the operating system? Survival mode is what happens when you're carrying the mental load for your entire family. When you're managing a household, possibly working outside the home, maybe caring for aging parents, supporting friends through their struggles, keeping track of everyone's schedules, remembering every birthday and appointment and permission slip, making all the phone calls, organizing all the gatherings, and still expecting yourself to do it with a smile. Survival mode is your body and brain saying, hey,

We need to simplify here. need to conserve energy. We need to focus on just getting through the moment right now. And there's nothing wrong with that response. It's actually intelligent. It's protective. It's your system trying to take care of you when everything else feels like too much. But here's where we've been getting it wrong. We've been treating survival mode like a problem to solve instead of a season to navigate well.

So here's my radical reframe. Instead of trying to escape survival mode, what if we learned to make it strong? What if instead of seeing survival as weakness, we saw it as resilience? What if instead of shame, we felt pride? What if instead of trying to do more, we learned to carry differently? That's the heartbeat of everything I teach women about survival mode. That's the foundation of my core program, Survival Mode Strong.

And that's exactly what we're gonna be exploring in the three-day survival mode rescue sprint, because here's the thing. My role isn't to help drag you out of survival mode, it's to show you how strong you can become in it. So let me tell you a story that changed, really kind of changed everything for me. A number of years ago, I was deep in one of those overwhelmed seasons, survival mode seasons. My husband was in nursing school, working full-time, gone constantly.

I was managing our household of nine, trying to start my own business, trying to keep everyone fed and functioning and emotionally okay. I was in classic survival mode, just trying to make it through the day.

One evening, after a particularly chaotic day where nothing went according to plan, I found myself sitting in the car in the driveway. Probably after I'd driven a kid somewhere, dry and I was too tired to go inside. I was looking at the house knowing that once I went inside, there was dinner to figure out. There was schoolwork to check. There was laundry to fold. And I just couldn't. In that moment, I had a choice. I could spiral into shame about how I should be handling this better or

I could see what I knew inside was true. I was carrying an enormous load. And the fact that I was still showing up, still taking care of my family, still doing what needed to be done, still functioning, that didn't signal failure. That actually proved that I was strong. I realized that I wasn't weak because I was in survival mode. I was strong because I was still standing in it.

And so that night I went inside and I served my kids cereal for dinner. And instead of feeling like a failure, I felt proud because my kids had dinner. The urgent things were handled and we were all still breathing. In a season where everything felt impossible, that was actually an incredibly huge success. And that really is when I began to realize survival isn't something to be ashamed of. It isn't something that we need to run from.

It's something to be proud of because it means you haven't given up. It means you're still here and you're still fighting and you're still caring for the people who matter to you. But there's a difference between just surviving and being survival mode strong. And that difference changes everything. Because when you aren't just surviving, you are doing it differently. Here's what it looks like to be surviving. When...

When you're in survival mode and you're just surviving, you're white knuckling through each day and you're waiting, just holding your breath for it to get easier. But when you're survival mode strong, you're carrying your load with intention and dignity. You're not just enduring, you are adapting. You're not just getting through, you're getting stronger. When you're just surviving, you feel guilty about every shortcut, every simplified meal, every time you choose rest over doing something quote, productive.

When you're survival mode strong, you make those choices with confidence because you know they're strategic, not shameful. When you're just surviving, you're constantly comparing yourself to some impossible standard, some impossible standard of what you think you should be doing. When you're in survival, when you are survival mode strong, you're defining success based on your current capacity and season, not on what works for someone else in a completely different situation or what worked for you in a different season.

When you're just surviving, you're reactive, responding to crisis after crisis, putting out fires as they come. When you're survival mode strong, you're strategic. You're making conscious choices about what matters most and what can wait. When you're just surviving, you're isolated in your struggle, convinced that everyone else has figured out something you haven't. But when you're survival mode strong, you understand that every capable woman goes through seasons like this. That's right, I said...

every capable woman goes through seasons like this and there's wisdom in how you navigate these seasons. This isn't about lowering your standards. This isn't about settling for less. This is about carrying your life, carrying your life with strength instead of shame. This is about surviving with dignity instead of desperation. This is about understanding that sometimes the strongest thing you can do is simply keep going.

Think about it this way. When a tree faces a hurricane, the strong trees aren't the ones that refuse to bend. Those are the ones that break. The strong trees, they are the ones that bend with the wind. They adjust their stance and they survive the storm and then grow back even stronger. That's what it means to be survival mode strong. You're not rigid. You're not pretending everything is fine. You're bending in the storm with the storm.

while keeping your roots strong. You're adapting to your season while maintaining your core strength. And that's exactly what we're gonna work on together in this three day sprint. So the three day survival mode rescue sprint, it starts tomorrow and I designed it specifically for the woman who is tired of feeling broken or wrong in some way when she's actually just overloaded. This isn't another program that's going to ask you to wake up earlier or add more to your already full plate.

It's not about giving you more systems to manage or goals to achieve. This is about changing how you think about what you're already doing. In fact, as a coach, I am usually helping my clients take things off their plate, since what they're heaping onto it requires nothing short of enormous strength that's impossible. But again, her view of failing and succeeding is totally out of whack.

So inside the sprint in just three days, you're gonna walk away with three powerful mindset shifts. And these are gonna change how you see yourself and your life during this season. Day number one, the core message that you're gonna hear is that you're not broken. We're gonna name the crash out cycle for what it really is. And this is something you know, it's that pattern where you carry too much, you white knuckle through the chaos and you eventually crash and collapse. You do a tiny reset of sorts.

And then you dive right back in. You're finally gonna see that cycle clearly and realize there's absolutely nothing wrong with you while you're in it. We're gonna do a simple audit of what you're actually carrying, not just the visible stuff, but the invisible mental load and emotional load that nobody sees, but you feel every single day. And when you see it all written down, you're gonna feel this huge wave of relief because you're gonna realize you're not crazy, you're not weak, you're just caring more than anyone can...

can logically carry alone. You're gonna walk away from day one thinking, of course I'm tired. Look at everything I'm managing. Anyone would be overwhelmed by this. On day two, I'm gonna be teaching you how to interrupt that crash out cycle in the moment. How to catch yourself before you get in this downward spiral. How to pause instead of absorb everything that's coming at you. You're gonna learn what I call the pause and park strategy.

which is essentially how to stop taking on every demand, every worry, every urgent thing, the moment, the very moment it hits you. We're going to talk about how to create breathing room when everything feels urgent. And we're going to practice setting micro boundaries that protect your capacity without guilt. How to say not now without feeling selfish. How to add for now to your boundaries so they feel temporary instead of permanent.

And you're gonna walk away from day two thinking, I don't have to absorb everything. I can pause. I can choose. I can handle this.

Well then on day three, we're gonna completely redefine what success looks like in your current season. We're gonna create what I call your bare minimum reset. Daily, weekly, and monthly wins that allow you to feel proud of yourself instead of ashamed. We're gonna talk about how sometimes cereal for dinner, it's not giving up, it's strategic. How sometimes choosing rest over productivity isn't lazy, it's wise. How sometimes doing the bare minimum isn't settling

It's surviving with strength. And you're gonna design your own definition of good enough that actually fits your life instead of some impossible standard that guarantees you'll always feel behind. You're gonna walk away from day three thinking, I'm not failing, I'm carrying this load with strength and that is something I feel so proud of.

Know that these are not just feel-good mindset shifts. These are practical, life-changing reframes that will help you stop fighting against your current season and start navigating it with confidence. Because here's what happens when you stop seeing survival mode as failure. You stop wasting your energy on shame, and you start using it. You start using that energy to actually take care of yourself. You stop comparing yourself to impossible standards, and you start making choices that actually work for your life.

You stop waiting for someday when everything calms down and start building strength right where you are. So if you're tired of carrying shame along with everything else you're carrying, this sprint is for you. If you're ready to stop feeling broken and to start feeling strong, this sprint is for you. If you want to learn how to navigate this season with dignity and strength and clarity instead of desperation, this sprint is for you.

The three day survival mode rescue sprint starts tomorrow and I want to make sure you're there. It's completely free and it's designed for women who are already overwhelmed. So it won't add to your stress and it will give you the first real relief that you've likely felt in a long time and you can join it at survivalmoderescuesprint.com. But here's the thing. You can't just sign up and expect that you'll gain anything. You actually have to show up. You have to take the step.

You have to decide that you're worth three days of your time. And I know you're busy. You've got a million things to do. And I know you might be thinking, I don't have time for another thing right now, no matter how good it is. But that's exactly why you need this sprint, because you've been carrying everything alone for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to have support. You've been pushing through for so long that you've forgotten what it feels like to actually breathe. This isn't going to take hours of your day. It's not going to require homework or complicated assignments.

This is designed to fit into your real life with your real limitations in your real season. And the women who show up, the ones who give themselves permission to take three days to reset their mindset, they walk away different. They're gonna walk away stronger. They're gonna walk away proud. So don't wait, don't think about it. Don't add it to your list of things to consider later. That just becomes heavier in your head. Go right now to...

SurvivalModeRescueSprint.com and sign up there. There's also a link down in the show notes. We start tomorrow and I want to make sure you don't miss it. This really is your chance to stop carrying shame and start carrying your strength. This is your chance to stop feeling broken and start feeling proud. This is your chance to become Survival Mode Strong. And so I want to leave you with this one lasting truth. And I know that you have probably heard me say this, but I want to leave you saying this again.

Survival mode isn't weakness, it's proof of your strength. You don't feel like you're failing at things because you're not failing at things because you're tired. You're tired because you're strong enough to carry what you're carrying. And tomorrow I'm gonna show you how to make that strength even stronger.

The women who have been joining the sprint, they're the ones who are ready to stop seeing survival as something to escape and start seeing it as something to do better. They're the ones who are tired of feeling ashamed of their current season and ready to start feeling proud of how they're handling it. And so if that's you, if you're ready to stop fighting against where you are and start getting strong in where you are, then I'll see you tomorrow at the sprint. So go grab your spot now at survivalmoderescuesprint.com. The link is down there as well.

Survival mode, it's not weakness. And tomorrow I'm gonna show you how to make it even stronger.