Ep. 198: Why Midlife Overload Feels Different (And What to Do About It)

Hey friend, welcome back.

Last episode, we talked about the five types of overload—mental, emotional, physical, identity, and system. And based on the messages I got after that episode dropped? You're feeling seen.

So many of you reached out saying, "That's me. That's exactly what I'm carrying." And then you asked the question I knew was coming: "But why? Why does it feel like everything is falling apart now? Why can't I handle what I used to handle? What's wrong with me?"

Let me answer that last question first: nothing is wrong with you.

But something is different. And that's what we're talking about today.

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Transcript

Well, something is different. mean, if you are not able, what I hear from midlife women all the time is that what they used to be able to handle, they just can't handle. The things that didn't used to bother them, bother them now. What's wrong with me, right? It's this constant, what's wrong with me? I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why I can't handle this. I don't know what is different. I don't know why I can't just manage it, right? These are the conversations that we are having. And the thing is, is that something is different.

But here's what nobody tells you about midlife. It's not just about aging, right? It's not just about days on a calendar turning. It's not just about your body growing older day by day. It's not just about all those menopausal symptoms we hear about, right? Like hot flashes and needing reading glasses and wondering where the time went. Midlife is essentially a collision point. It's where everything that you have been caring for the last 20, 30, 40 years,

crashes into everything that's shifting and changing right now. And the weight of that collision is jarring. It's staggering. It's alarming. And in reality, you're not struggling with these things. And you're not wondering what's wrong with me because you're weak or broken or incapable or because there's anything wrong with you. You're struggling because you're standing kind of at this intersection of massive life transitions. And these are not quick transitions either. Right.

And we're expected to just kind of keep on going like nothing has changed. But in reality, the truth is everything has changed. Your body is changing. Your kids are changing. Your relationships are changing. Your sense of purpose is changing and identity is changing. And meanwhile, you're still trying to run with the same systems and the same trains of thought and the same ways of thinking and seeing and talking to others and yourself. We're doing that the same way that we have in our 20s and our 30s, except for now.

It's glitching, it's crashing, and it's leaving you feeling like you're barely holding on. And so here's what we're really gonna be doing today. I'm gonna be walking you through why each one of those five types of overload shows up specifically in midlife. Not to make you feel hopeless, but to help you understand what's actually happening because like I always say, when you understand the why, you know what to do. You know.

where to go. And here's the biggest thing, when you understand the why, you can stop blaming yourself and start responding differently. And so we're gonna talk about why your brain feels different now than it used to. We're gonna talk about why your emotions hit harder than they used to. We're gonna talk about why the same house that used to feel manageable now feels overwhelming. We're gonna talk about why you feel like you lost yourself and we're gonna talk about why.

the systems that used to work for decades suddenly don't work anymore. And then because I'm not leaving you hanging, we're gonna talk about what to do about it. Know that this is not a quick fix, this is not a band-aid, but this is a real shift in how you approach and live in this season. So that's where we're headed. Now, your brain, as I mentioned, is literally changing. I know we don't...

talk about this enough either. We talk about hot flashes and hormones and bad attitudes and grumpy women, right? But we don't talk about what's actually happening up here. And here's the reality, perimenopause and menopause, they don't just affect your reproductive system. They affect your brain. Estrogen, it plays a huge role in cognitive function. Things like memory and focus and executive function, mental clarity and

When your estrogen starts fluctuating and eventually declining, your brain notices, your brain feels it. And so those times when you walk into a room and you forget why you're there, that's not just getting older, it's actually hormonal. And that feeling where you can't find the word that you're looking for that used to come so easily, again, that's not you losing it, that's your brain adjusting to a major neurological shift. And that decision fatigue,

the decision fatigue that you're feeling, it's compounded by the fact that your cognitive load has been building and building and building for decades. You've been making decisions for yourself. You've been making decisions for other people, your kids, your spouse, your aging parents for years. And now in midlife, those decisions are getting more complex, more emotional and more exhausting. Your teenager isn't just picking out clothes anymore. They're making life.

altering decisions about college and relationships and their future. And maybe, maybe you're caring for parents who aren't aging so gracefully, right? Maybe they need help, they need support, they need medical decisions, they need assistance in that, or maybe they need you to do that for them. And then there's your marriage. Your marriage isn't coasting, it's being negotiated as the kids leave and you're forced to figure out who you are as a couple again. And every single one of these things, in addition to a whole lot more,

They require more mental energy and your brain is already working harder than it used to just to maintain a baseline function. And here's what compounds with all of this and kind of makes it worse. It's that you have been carrying decades of invisible labor that has been okay. But again, you're at this intersection now and so it's different. You've been the family calendar for 20 years. You've been remembering appointments and managing schedules and tracking everybody's needs.

You've been the one who knows where the passports are, when the dog's vet appointment is, and which kid needs new cleats. And that mental load that you're carrying, doesn't just disappear, it accumulates. And in midlife, when your brain is already dealing with hormonal shifts, that accumulated weight becomes to the point where it feels unbearable. And so know that if that's kind of the way that it feels, you're not doing anything wrong, your brain is just maxed out.

And so what this means for you is a few things. First, you need to stop comparing yourself now to who you were 10 years ago. Your brain was different then. Your responsibilities, they were different. Your hormones, they were different. Second, you need to actually create margin. Not just write things down, though that helps, but actively reduce the number of decisions that you're making. Simply...

Whatever it is that you can do to simplify and downsize, maybe automate, these are some tricks that you can do to, again, help take some of that load off your brain. And stop expecting yourself to remember everything. The third thing you need to do is give yourself grace. Memory lapses, mental fog, decision fatigue. Again, these are not character flaws, and they don't necessarily, in most cases, indicate anything alarming. These are...

just biological realities of this season. And really, the sooner that you accept that, the sooner you can stop fighting against your brain and actually start supporting it. Mental overload in midlife, it's not about trying harder. It's about recognizing. It's about recognizing that your brain needs different support now and giving it what it actually needs. So let me ask you something. Have you noticed...

that emotions feel bigger these past few years. That how a sad movie that used to make you a little teary, now you are sobbing about it for days. That comment from your teenager that you would have brushed off five years ago, now it cuts deep and it stays with you for days. You're not being dramatic, you're not losing control, you're in midlife and your emotions are heightened. And part of it is hormonal, estrogen and progesterone, they,

regulate your mood. And when they fluctuate, which they do pretty much constantly during perimenopause and then into menopause, what that means is that your emotional stability fluctuates along with these hormones. And so you can go from fine to furious in a matter of a moment. And then after that, it can quickly turn to devastated. All of these things can happen in the matter of a few minutes. Again, not because something catastrophic happened, but because your brain chemistry is shifting.

But there is more to it than hormones. So there's this layer that happens in midlife that I don't know that many people are talking about. And I'm calling it the grief layer. In reality, midlife is grief central. You're grieving who you used to be, the version of yourself who had endless energy, who could do it all, who didn't need reading glasses or joint supplements or a full night's sleep just to function. You're grieving your kids growing up.

Even if you're excited for them and even if you're excited for that new season, even if you're proud of them, there's still that feeling of loss. The little ones who needed you are now gone and the independent young adults who have replaced them, well, they don't need you in the same way. And there's grief there. You're grieving relationships that have changed or ended, friendships that didn't survive this season, a marriage that feels more like roommates than romance, family dynamics that shifted.

when roles changed, your grieving dreams that you didn't get to pursue, the career you put on hold, the travel you didn't do, the version of your life that you thought you'd be living by now. And all of that grief, it doesn't just sit quietly in the background. It shows up as emotional overload, as exhaustion from just feeling too much, as the sense that you're carrying everyone's pain plus your own.

That's what is happening and you just can't do it anymore. And here's the other thing that happens in midlife. You've been practicing empathy for decades. You've been the one who holds space, who listens, who absorbs everyone's emotions and tries to make it better. You've trained yourself and in reality, you've trained everyone around you to see you as the emotional support system. But in midlife,

when your own emotions are already overwhelming, that role becomes really unsustainable. And so you can't keep being everyone's safe place when you don't have one yourself. You can't keep absorbing crisis after crisis after crisis when you're barely holding yourself together. And the guilt that you feel with all of this, the feeling that you should be able to handle it, that you used to handle it, that something must be wrong with you, that that woman over there, she's handling it.

And if you can't anymore, that's just another layer of that emotional weight. And so what does this mean? Well, first, you need to stop trying to explain your emotions. You need to stop trying to categorize them. You're not being too sensitive. You're not overreacting. Your emotional experiences are valid, and it's compounded by very real biological and psychological shifts.

So stop trying to apologize for your emotions. Second, you need to start setting emotional boundaries, not because you don't care, but because you can't pour from an empty cup. And right now, you're likely running on fumes. And so what this means is that you're gonna need to say no to being the emotional dumping ground. That means stepping back in relationships maybe, or dynamics that drain you. This means,

giving yourself permission to not fix or manage or absorb everyone else's feelings. Third, you need to give yourself permission to grieve, actually grieve, not push it down, not distract yourself, not convince yourself you're being too dramatic or this is too woo-woo. You need to sit with the loss. You need to name it. You need to feel it. You need to let yourself feel sad about what's changed.

Because emotional overload in midlife, it isn't something you can think your way out of. It's something that you need to feel your way through. Let me say that again. Emotional overload in midlife isn't something that you think your way out of. It's something that you feel your way through. So that's what we've got. That's what we've got to start doing now. So what about when it comes to

the physical overload, right? Because we've so far dealt with the mental overload, right? This is where we talked about how our brain is carrying everything, it's been categorizing everything, it's been solving everything, it's been planning everything, it's been doing all the stuff. And we talked about how we need to understand that we need to let go of some of that stuff. And then we talked about the emotional overload because our own emotions are...

of a train wreck, but then we've always absorbed everyone else's, which again we used to be able to do, but now we just can't, at least not in the same way. So now we need to talk about this physical overload. This is the third type of overload that we need to talk about. And so the physical overload, right? Let's talk about the house. The same house that used to feel manageable, maybe even mostly easy, it now feels like a constant source of stress.

You walk into a room and immediately feel overwhelmed. The clutter bothers you more than it used to. The mess feels heavier. The endless cycle of cleaning and organizing and maintaining feels impossible to keep up with. And you're probably again thinking, what's wrong with me? I used to be able to handle this. Or again, this didn't use to bother me like it does now. Well, here's what's happening. Listen in. If you are multitasking, zoom in here for a second.

When you feel physical overload in midlife, here's what's happening. Your tolerance for visual noise has dropped. And again, this is not a random thing. In midlife, your nervous system is already up on high alert most of the time. We've got, again, those hormonal fluctuations and these affect your stress response. You're more easily overstimulated and

that things that used to be kind of more like background noise, things like clutter and mess and unfinished tasks, they now register at higher decibels. Your brain is trying to manage all of the internal chaos that it is going through, right? The mood swings, the anxiety, the mental fog, the grief. And then when you add the external chaos on top of that, is it any wonder that your brain is essentially short-circuiting?

So the physical clutter in your home, it's not just stuff anymore. It's one more thing that your nervous system has to process and carry. It's one more thing competing for your already depleted mental energy. And the more overwhelmed that you feel internally, the harder it is to deal with the anxiety and the chaos externally, which is why physical overload and mental overload

kind of feed each other. They feed off one another in midlife. And here's the other thing. You have less energy than you used to. And it's not because you're lazy, and it's not because you're not trying, but because midlife in and of itself, with all these things that we talked about and plenty more, midlife is exhausting. Your sleep is probably disrupted. Your hormones are fluctuating. Your body is working harder to do the same things that it used to do much more effortlessly. And

All of that means that you have less capacity to manage your physical space. The cleaning routine that worked when you were 30, it probably isn't gonna work at 50. The organizational system that felt sustainable when your kids were little, doesn't fit now that they're teenagers, leaving shoes and backpacks and laundry everywhere. And instead of acknowledging that your capacity has changed, you're over there beating yourself up for not being able to keep up. And then we've got the perfectionism trap. And this is...

Loud and many of us are hearing this loud and clear and falling into this repeatedly in midlife Because there's this desperate need for control. We feel it because everything feels so out of control, right? And so your body your emotions Again your kids your future the house The house Is it needs to become the thing that you can manage? It is should be the obvious thing that you can control. You can't control any of that other stuff and so

Because the house is the one thing I can control and I should be able to do it, you set unrealistic standards. You compare yourself to that Instagram home. You tell yourself that if you could just get organized, everything would feel better. But that's not how it works. Because physical overload in midlife, it's not about being organized enough. It's about your nervous system being maxed out and your environment then being a reflection of that. And so what does this mean for you then?

What does this understanding mean? Well, first, you need to lower your standards. Not forever, and not as a waving the white flag, I have failed gesture, but as a survival strategy for this season. Your house doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be peaceful. And sometimes that means letting go of the color-coded bins and the Pinterest-worthy bedroom and just focusing on clear surfaces and essentially clean enough.

Second, you need to eliminate not organized because the real issue isn't that you probably don't have enough storage, it's that you have too much stuff. And every time, everything that's in your home, it's a decision waiting to happen. I often talk about clutter as a pile of unmade decisions. And again, we're in decision overload, right? So start letting stuff go and be ruthless about it.

Don't allow yourself to have this conversation, maybe someday, or I should keep this just in case. If it is not serving you now, it's time to let it go. So start downsizing. Third, you need to design your space for your current capacity, not the capacity you had even five years ago, not the capacity that you wish you had, the capacity that you actually have right now. That might mean fewer decorative items. That might mean simpler routines.

That might mean lower maintenance, pretty much everything. And that's okay. Physical overload in midlife, it isn't solved or dealt with by doing more. This is what we do. It's about releasing the idea that you have to keep up with a standard that just no longer fits your life. So that's physical overload. Well, let's talk about identity overload in midlife. So you might be saying something like,

I don't even know who I am anymore, or I still don't know who I am. And I hear this so much from women in midlife. And again, it's not just a passing feeling, it's a full blown identity crisis. Because here's what happens. You spend 20, 30, 40 years building your identity around certain roles and how those roles were lived out. Wife, mom, daughter, employee, caretaker, volunteer.

And those roles gave you purpose. They gave you structure. They told you who you were supposed to be and what you were supposed to do. But in midlife, those roles are shifting. And when they do, the identity that you built around them, it starts crumbling. And so your kids don't need you in the same way. Maybe they've left for college. Maybe they're just emotionally pulling away, becoming their own people. Either way, the role of needed mom is fading.

You don't necessarily know who you are without it. Your marriage, that's probably another major relationship in your life. Maybe you're empty nesters now, staring at each other across the dinner table, wondering who this person is. Maybe you're realizing that you built your entire relationship around the kids and that wasn't wrong, that was what life demanded, but here you are now. And now those kids are gone and there's not much left because the biggest piece by far is now gone.

And then if you work, your career probably feels different too. Maybe you're facing ageism. Maybe you're realizing the job that you've been doing for 20 years doesn't fulfill you anymore. Maybe you're asking yourself, is this really all there is? And then we've got other relationships. Maybe you've got aging parents and suddenly you're not the daughter being taken care of anymore. You're the caretaker, the decision maker, the one managing their medical appointments and their finances and their declining health.

Every single one of these shifts, it strips away a piece of who you thought you were. And when enough pieces are collectively gone, you're left standing there and thinking, who am I now? And here's what makes it worse. Everyone tells you that this phase in your life is supposed to be exciting. It's your time now. It's your time to do what you want. You can finally focus on yourself, reinvent yourself, find your passion, live your best life, but you're exhausted.

and you're grieving and you don't have the energy for reinvention. You barely have enough energy to get through the day. And all of that pressure to suddenly become someone new and exciting when you're still mourning the loss of who you were, it just adds more overload. But here's the part that's really important. You're not actually lost despite what I think culture tells us. You're just buried somewhere underneath all of those roles, all of those years of

putting everyone and everything else first, all of that self-sacrifice and all of that service. There's a version of you under there that still exists, the woman who had dreams before the kids existed, who had hobbies before she had responsibilities, who had interests and passions and quirks and desires that had nothing to do with anyone else. She's still there. She didn't disappear. She just got covered up.

layer by layer, year by year, until you couldn't see her anymore. And now, in midlife, when the roles start falling away, well, there's an opportunity not to become someone new, but to reconnect with the person that you've always been. And so what does this mean for you then? First, you need to grieve. You need to let yourself feel the loss of these roles because you can't move forward until you've actually at least accepted what's behind you.

And there's an element of grief and mourning that needs to happen there too. So you need to grieve. You need to accept and grieve. That's the first step. The second step, you need to ask yourself different questions. Not who should I be, but who was I before I became everything to everyone else? What did you love when you were 20? What was it you did before life got loud? What did you dream about doing before you convinced yourself that it was selfish or impractical to do that?

Third, you need to give yourself permission to explore, to explore new things without pressure. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to launch a whole new career or a whole new identity, or you don't have to swap out for a whole new group of friends. You just have to take one small step towards remembering who you were. Maybe it's picking up a book in a genre that you used to love, or maybe a favorite author. Maybe it's signing up for a class that sounds interesting.

Maybe it's just sitting in silence long enough to hear your own thoughts again. Identity overload in midlife, it's not about reinvention. It's about excavation. It's about gently and patiently uncovering the woman who's been waiting for you to come back.

And so the fifth type of overload is system overload. And when we're in midlife, this one hits hard too, because your routines, they just don't work anymore and you can't figure out why. You wake up at the same time, you try to follow the same rhythm, you set the same goals, but nothing sticks. Everything feels chaotic and you're exhausted from constantly starting over time and time again. Well, here's what is happening.

The systems that you built and routines, they were designed for a different version of your life. And that version just doesn't exist anymore. So think about the systems that you created in your 30s. Maybe you had a morning routine that involved getting yourself up and a little bit on the way, a little bit ready before the kids got up. And then you got the kids ready for school. Maybe you made a weekly meal plan. You had a cleaning schedule. You had a rhythm that worked because your life was predictable. But now your kids don't need you to make breakfast anymore or they're gone entirely.

Your work schedule has changed. Your energy levels have changed. Your body has changed. You can't just power through on five hours of sleep anymore. And yet, you're still trying to force those old systems to work because they worked before. Because you should be able to make them work. Because if you just try harder, I know this is gonna click into place. But hear me, it won't. Because those systems were built for that season that's now over. And here's the hard truth.

You don't have the same capacity that you used to have. And it's not because there's anything wrong with you and it doesn't signal weakness and it doesn't mean you're failing, but again, because midlife changes everything. And we've talked about much of that, but it's woven in here too. Your sleep is disrupted by hormones. Your energy crashes in ways that it didn't before. Your focus is harder to maintain. Your body needs more rest, more recovery, more gentleness. And the systems that demanded you to be on all the time,

Well, they're not sustainable anymore. So you keep trying. So you keep pushing. You keep telling yourself you'll get back on track and you keep burning out. And then there's this. Everyone seems to have it all together. Everyone else has this figured out. You see a woman on Instagram with their color-coded planners and their perfect morning routine and their meal prep Sundays. And you think, why can't I do that? What's wrong with me? But here's what you're not seeing. Their life isn't your life.

Their season isn't your season. Their capacity isn't your capacity. Copying someone else's system won't work because it wasn't designed for you. It was designed for them. And trying to force yourself into someone else's structure just sets you up for failure. And so what does this mean for you? Well, first, you need to let go of what used to work. Grieve it if you need to, but stop trying to resurrect a system that doesn't fit your life

here. Second, you need to build your, you need to build for your current reality, not your ideal life, not the one you wish that you had, not even the one that you're working towards, the one that you're actually living right now. You need to build your structures for your current reality. What's your energy level? What's your actual schedule? What's your actual capacity? Know those things and then build from there. Maybe your new morning routine is 10 minutes instead of 30.

Maybe your new meal plan is three dinners on a rotation instead of elaborate weekly menus. Maybe your new cleaning schedule is a good enough sort of one instead of a nearly perfect one. That doesn't signal failure. That actually takes a lot of wisdom to make these adjustments. Third, you need to give yourself permission to rebuild slowly. You don't have to overhaul everything all at once. You just need to start with one thing that actually fits your current season.

System overload in midlife, it isn't about doing more. It's about releasing the pressure to operate the way that you used to and building something that actually supports the woman that you are now. Okay, so we've walked through all five types of overload and why they hit differently in midlife. And here's what I want you to notice. There's a common thread that's running through all of them. And it's not that you're not doing, it's not that you're doing something wrong. It's that you're trying to operate in a season that

demands something different now. While holding yourself to standards from a season that's over. Your brain has changed, your hormones have changed, your roles have changed, your capacity has changed, your life has changed. And until you stop fighting that reality and start building from it, you're going to stay stuck. Because overload in midlife isn't about doing more, it's about doing differently. And that shift, it really starts with one decision.

and it essentially looks like this. I'm gonna stop blaming myself and I'm gonna start honoring who I actually am. So here's what I want you to take with you today. Midlife isn't a crisis, it's a collision point. It's where everything that you've been carrying meets everything that's changing. And yes, it is overwhelming and yes, it is exhausting and yes, it feels like it is too much sometimes. But again, that doesn't signal that there's anything wrong with you or that you're broken or that you're failing. You're just trying to run on this

outdated operating system and it's time for an upgrade. You don't need to hustle harder. You don't need to power through. You don't need to convince yourself that if you would just get more disciplined or more motivated, it'll all click into place. You need to acknowledge that this season and the seasons going forward are different. That your brain, your body, your life, they all need different support now. And you need tools that actually work for midlife, not the version of you that existed 10 years ago.

for the version of you who is here right now. So I want you to leave you with this. You are not too much. You are not doing it wrong. You are not falling apart. You are in the middle of a massive life transformation, a massive life transition, and you're doing the best that you can with what you have. And you might say, well, hey, Jennifer, you don't know. How do you know that I'm doing the best that I can?

Well, if you're not waking up every single day and saying, you know, how can I mess things up today? I think you're trying and I think you're doing the very best that you can. And it's time that you start allowing that to be enough. And so until we talk again, make it a great day.