WhozYourMama

How to Stop Carrying Too Much and Start Caring Well

• Michelle Kreft

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Your mind doesn’t just need more motivation; it needs maintenance. We dive into energy hygiene with Anabel Salimian of ROOTS, exploring how to keep your mental state clear and resilient when life crowds your calendar. From the holiday rush to everyday stressors, we unpack simple ways to care deeply without carrying more than your share, and how to reset before burnout takes the wheel.

We start by distinguishing caring from carrying—why values-led commitments feel light while people-pleasing feels heavy—and how that difference shows up in your body as tension, brain fog, and fatigue. Annabelle breaks down early burnout signals you can actually track, then walks us through micro-practices that work in real life: 4-6 breath cycles to calm the nervous system, quick body scans to release stress, and short walks to steady your heart and head. No hour-long rituals required; two focused minutes can change the day.

Reflection ties it together. We share simple journaling prompts—What drained me? What fed me? What boundary protects tomorrow?—along with gratitude lines written in your own words to train attention toward what stabilizes you. You’ll learn how to set clean boundaries before resentment builds, protect your sleep with a calm wind-down, and treat reset time as part of responsibility rather than a luxury. If you’ve been trying to do it all and feel your energy slipping, this conversation offers a humane, repeatable plan to recover your focus and joy.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find these tools. Your support helps us grow this community of parents, educators, and caregivers who are building healthier brains and brighter days.

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Who's Your Mama, a podcast focusing on tomorrow's future, which are our kids, educators, teachers, parents, all encompassing with the goal of understanding that our brain is a muscle that we can exercise to control the speed in the direction that we want. Let's go, y'all. The time is now. Annabelle Solomon of Roots, welcome back to Who's Your Mama? Thanks so much for having me back, Michelle. I I love our discussions and I've gotten a lot of great feedback from the ones that we've had previously, and I look forward to them continuing. So let with all that being said, let's let's let's go where we were before and and continue the journey together. So when we were discussing last time, we were talking about energy hygiene. And for some people, they may not know what that means, but um expand maybe quickly on what that is, and then we'll we'll discuss a few other topics that are related.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And I loved this idea that kind of sparked into our mind last time of the energy hygiene, right? We touched a little bit upon how sleep hygiene has been something that is more popular in the media now in terms of health and wellness. And, you know, we thought about how does this apply to our mental health and our well-being and our energy as well. And we thought about this, you know, component, this notion of health or sorry, of like wellness, energy, hygiene, right? And how do we keep our energy clean, pure, kind of positive? And we talked about some ways in which we could do that and happy to kind of further on those brainstorms and thinking and creating as we go. It's so exciting.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, it's overall is brain health is life health, and so many areas we give attention to, and we forget some of the other areas, especially when life becomes busy. And as you know, we talk about and you do with roots with with your wellness planners, taking things. I think about this like minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day sometimes, and putting practice practice into play. So especially coming towards you know the holiday season and and all of that, what are some um helpful tips that you would suggest as far as understanding the differences between taking on too much? So the caring versus caring. So what I mean is like caring too much, like I've said this, and like sometimes I care too much in this area of my life, and then I'm carrying burdens that is not on somebody else or other things, but extra loads that I take on and how to differentiate between the two, but still being true to yourself.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, this is a great topic, and I love that distinction between like caring too much or caring too much. And I think, like you mentioned, it's intertwined, right? Because there are some things that really matter to us, things that we care about that really make us who we are, our passions. And at the same time, you don't want to feel like you're overburdened or overwhelmed or like you're carrying too much. And I think that this comes into play, especially with the holiday season upcoming, where those things could really clash, right? Like you may care about certain components of the holiday season, family members, activities, X, Y, Z, but you need to at the same time make sure that you don't overwhelm yourself and don't carry too much on your, you know, like a weight on your shoulders to make sure that you can keep your energy hygiene clean in that sense, right? So it's kind of finding those like areas, there's little boundaries, spaces where you can make sure that your physical and mental health stays important to you, even when you're undergoing different activities, whether that's holiday activities or family activities, life stressors, how can you kind of budget little time here and there to make sure that you can keep your energy clean and maintain that mental health and well-being?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So, and sometimes we're all better at doing that, you know, saying that and knowing it and then putting practice into play. So, what would you say are some of the signs that someone could look for that whether they're triggers or not, just to then spark them to go, okay, this is an area where I recognize that I need to make a shift and and where to go about it. Like, what are what are some things that you would say that could help somebody spark their mind to know that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a great question. And what comes to mind for me is the the phrase, the word burnout, right? We hear a lot about like burnout in the workplace. We hear a lot about how you get job fatigue or burnout in academics or in the workplace. But I think this concept is really powerful and holds very true to like your personal well-being and mental health as well, right? You could come across, you know, moments of overwhelm or stress when you feel like you're mentally burnt out. And that's kind of what I think we're touching upon here of being able to kind of be more aware of those moments or if it's building up over the days, you know, how to parse out when I'm leading to a mental burnout per se. Um, because that is real and it does not just apply to the workplace or the academic settings. A lot of those signs and kind of symptoms, quote unquote, might look the same. Um, and it kind of encompasses things of like we talked about, like this overwhelm, this stress, this lack of interest, lack of pleasure in certain activities, kind of feeling more fatigued, having some of that brain fog. These are some of the things that come to mind to me when personally I've experienced this phase of like a mental health burnout, right? Of feeling like I'm kind of tired. I've been pushing myself, overwhelming myself, and haven't made proper space for a break. Um, and really just in those moments trying to understand, okay, I see where I am at now. Let's try to incorporate some positive activities, some gratitude exercises, just some breaks, some mindfulness to be able to reset myself so I don't continue feeling this way. And like that, like you said, it's it's easier said than done. But the first step, like you mentioned, is really being able to understand yourself and see, okay, why am I feeling this way? Is it because of this, because of this? Take some time to write some stuff down. You know, me, I love like intentional reflection and journaling. So I think that's so powerful here too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, well, one of the things I actually did uh a real not trying to give myself a plug on this, but it was about gratitude and and using my own words. Because in previous episodes, you and I have talked about, you know, if we said what we're saying to ourselves internally, we if a loved one um said that back to us, how would we feel? And if the answer is not good, then why are we saying those things to ourselves? So I think that's really important what you talk about, the journaling and and reflecting and writing things down. One of the things that I have, because I am juggling a lot of new things right now in many areas of my life. And right before you and I started filming, I was like, you know, like breathing. So breath work has really helped me and has been a newer thing for me, even being a former athlete. I learned through boxing and and other meditative things, it really has helped me, especially before going to sleep. And so, what would you say is an amount and within your experience and in all the work that you do in your work life and personally is a period of time where I think some people, and and myself included, giving myself the grace to take the space to recalibrate. What would you say is a period of time that people can give themselves the grace to not feel guilty? You know, a 10-minute reset, a 15-minute set to get kind of the heart rate and those sort of things to re-rebalance and reframe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that, Michelle. And thanks for sharing about your experiences as well. And my answer off the bat is any time. And I think that's the hard truth. And maybe sometimes what people don't want to hear is that that intentional time and that space that you allow for yourself can be any time. I understand there's work meetings, classes, perhaps maybe not the best time. But at the end of the day, if that's what your body is really needing, you can step out for a glass of water, do some of those breathing exercises. Somatic therapy is very, very powerful and very, very important. Um, so whatever that looks like, whatever shape that that is for you, whether that's a couple minutes of mindfulness, a breathing exercise, like you mentioned, a walk, it really is easier said than done. But one of the most important practices to give to yourself is to take that time when you need it. And that's whenever you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, you know, having that burnout is when you need to intentionally set that time aside and say, okay, I'm I'm feeling this way right now. Let me do something to fix it.

SPEAKER_01:

And I mean, that's one of the many reasons I love our conversations. It's like, oh, turn burnouts into blessings because listening to different perspectives and which is also reframing. And and that really is what the core is is that we bless ourselves and water the grass where we're standing and spread the fertilizer and and grow, and that is the growth in it. So um on that note, thank you for helping me grow today with our conversation and and the roots of which you stand behind, literally and figuratively speaking. And I look forward to our next conversation. So, as you know, the way I sign off is let's go, y'all. The time is now. Love it, Michelle. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into Who's Your Mama. And I look forward to collaborating from a community standpoint for the next episodes.

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Michelle Kreft

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