If Your 🧠 Won’t Shut Off At Night, Listen

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Transcript

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What's up you guys? Welcome back to the Dopamine Diaries Podcast. This is Coach Kate. I got a fun episode for you today. Um, I'm actually gonna talk about one of the things that I learned about the brain. This may not be revolutionary to some of you, but for others of you, this will probably be pretty revolutionary and also kind of like, duh, that makes so much sense. Why am I not doing it? So, one of the things that I learned about the brain many, many, many years ago, on how to prevent that like feeling we get towards the end of the day when we've had a really busy work day and we're exhausted and we just want to go to sleep, and we lay down to go to sleep, and it's like our brain won't turn off, right? How do we actually prevent that? Well, a lot of what you'll hear people talk about is that's a state of the nervous system, and that's true, right? There's a little bit of like a freeze or response happening if you're familiar with nervous system language, but not everybody's familiar with nervous system language, and it's not just that, it's also something happening within the brain, and the thing that's happening in within the brain is actually something that we make a decision and decide on at the very beginning of our day. So I want to ask you guys how many of you, especially if you're an online business owner, I feel like this is gonna be most of you, um, how many of you guys start your day and maybe within the first couple minutes or even like you get up, you go to the bathroom, you're brushing your teeth, and you are already looking at your phone. Maybe you're looking at emails, maybe you're looking at messages, maybe you're scrolling, whatever it may be, maybe you're looking at the group chat. But how many of you guys immediately grab your phone within the first five minutes and start consuming stuff? I would probably guess that if you are doing that, you also probably regularly find yourself at the end of the day unable to turn your brain off. So, one of the things I want you to understand about the brain is this the brain is very impressionable first thing in the morning. Very impressionable. It's not so much as impressionable towards the end of the day, and this is where you know what I'm about to say might be a bit of an unpopular hot take, but you'll hear a lot of like mindset coaches or gurus or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves, um, say like, oh, you should like not scroll before bed, or you know, it's really bad habit, or that's why you can't fall asleep, is because you're scrolling. Yes and no. First of all, like for some people, scrolling before bed is actually a form of regulation that is necessary for them. Now, if you're someone that knows you're in a bad habit, don't take this as an easy pass. But there are certain people with certain very unique individualized nervous systems that would actually do very well and probably sleep better if they allowed themselves to scroll and decompress a bit before bed. Now, the challenge is you have anybody that has read a book once or anybody that thinks they know enough about the brain and can offer this advice to people saying to you, Well, you shouldn't scroll before bed because that's the reason why you're laying in bed and your brain is unable to turn off and go to sleep. That's actually not the reason because the reason why your brain is stuck in overdrive genuinely happens within the first five minutes of your day. Your brain is more impressionable in the morning, meaning whatever you do first thing in the morning, if you are getting out of bed and before you've even put the toothpaste on your toothbrush, you're looking at emails or you're doing whatever else it is, that sets the tone. That becomes the baseline. That's what your brain then looks at for the rest of the day. And you'll find, I have clients tell me this all the time, you'll find that it'll be lunchtime and you're just trying to like read a book or you're trying to enjoy your lunch or do something around the house, and you literally can't stay off the phone. I see this come up for myself a lot where especially if my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night, it's 3 a.m. I get her settled, I come back in, and without even thinking, without even realizing it, I'm literally looking at my email at 3 a.m. Like, Kate, chill, nothing is that serious. Like, like you're not solving world hunger, like it can wait. But on the days that that happens, I will say on my lunch break, I'll be doing laundry or something else. I will find myself on my phone while I am trying to do things like laundry, like I can't put it down, and it's the awareness around it. It's like I can tell that I don't want to be on it, but it's like I need it to be on. I don't want to be on it, but I need it to be on. I think somebody's gonna know what I mean by that. So I want you guys to understand that your brain is highly impressionable first thing in the morning, and whatever you give to your brain within the first 15 to 20 minutes of it waking up actually becomes the baseline your brain needs to survive and function the rest of the day, which is the exact reason why you are finding yourself laying in bed at night or even trying to lay down and take a nap when you have a minute and you can't shut your brain off. It's not because of anything that you've done. It has everything to do with what you did the first 15 minutes of your day. 100%. I promise you, if you like experiment with this, you will know what I mean. You will notice a huge difference between the like urgency that you feel around, well, what's everybody doing, or let me check my email, or oh, I don't know, I just like I let me put a podcast on. I can't stand to be in the silence. You will notice a huge difference versus if you give yourself the first 15 minutes of the day, get up, leave your phone on your nightstand, or put it in your pocket, I don't care, but don't start feeding your brain that information first thing when it is highly sensitive and anything that you give it in that 15-minute window becomes highly addictive. Don't do that and then wonder why you're having a hard time shutting down for the evening. So it is one part nervous system. Yes, it is one part, the system inside of your body, what state it's in. If you're stuck in freeze, freeze is very much a my body feels exhausted, aka you want to sleep, but my brain won't shut off. Yes, that's part of it. And there are different like nervous system tools and strategies and work that you can do around that, but you can do a lot of nervous system work on yourself. Hello, talk. I'm talking about myself here. Like this is what I do for a living. I'm a nervous system practitioner, I know how to take care of my nervous system, and I can take care of my nervous system and then still make the mistake of looking at my email for the first 10 minutes of the day, and then suddenly my entire body, nervous system, and brain is sent into a full, full spiral of not being able to turn off. And here's where it gets really nuanced because if we only let it be just a nervous system problem, if we only let it be a well, I'm just like, you know, a lot of again, a lot of the mindset gurus, whatever, whatever they call themselves coaches online that proclaim they know what they're talking about, they're like, oh, you have high cortisol, that's why. No, that's not why, right? And if you fix the cortisol problem, but then still keep giving your brain the wrong input first first couple chunks of the day, you're still gonna have the same problem and you can have perfectly fine cortisol levels. Or, oh, well, you know, you're dysregulated, you have trauma, or you're in a free state. Yeah, true, you can fix all of those things, or you can like create enough buffers and space to move out of those and still give your brain the wrong input in that first chunk of the day, and then you will still be stuck in overdrive. The the the thing that I really want to drive home is it's both. It's both the state of your body and also what you are giving your brain first thing in the morning. And if working on the internal state of your body, if you are someone that's like you hear people talk about nervous system work, you may even look at the things that I've talked about, and maybe the only reason why you are not you are not in HBA or whatever else that I offer is because you actually feel like you've been stuck in fight or flight for your entire life, and it doesn't even quite feel realistic to you that you can come out of it. What I really want to urge you to understand is you can control the inputs that you're giving your brain, and this is one tiny little thing that you can do. I'm telling you to take the first 15 minutes of the day and not give your brain the input that then says, hey, your baseline is constantly, constantly needing dopamine, constantly needing distraction, constantly needing fed. That's what I'm asking you to do. Now, last thing that I want to say as I wrap this up, because obviously, if you're struggling with like being unable to fall asleep at night, this is a really simple hack that you can do. But the whole reason why I made HBA the way that I made it, I send brain zaps. They are called brain zaps Monday through Friday, first thing in the morning. Literally, first thing in the morning. Like, usually when people's alarm clocks are going off, that is when the brain zap is sent. All you have to do is hit play. You don't have to go to the internet for it, you don't have to log in for it, you don't have to like do anything other than hit play. It notifies you on your notification bar, hit play. That's actually all you have to do. And it is usually around eight minutes long, and it is exactly what your brain needs to hear to have a regulated, neutral, and sustainable baseline for the day. Brain zaps, by way of function, are meant to interrupt the pattern that a lot of us find ourselves in of, well, I'm just, I don't know why I can't go to bed at night. I don't know why I can't go to bed at night, my brain won't shut off. And I'm over here, like, well, what are you doing first thing in the morning? Well, I work and I do this and the kids schedule and all that, this and the other. Fair. But that's why you can't shut your brain off at night. Brain zaps literally interrupt that pattern without forcing you to give it the act the input that we're trying to avoid. You literally hit play, you listen to it while you're getting ready, you listen to it while you're on your commute, you listen to it while you're making the kids breakfast, and then you go into your normal, you know, digital function, emails, scrolling, messages, whatever it may be. Brain zaps literally interrupt that pattern. Like when I say I've been saying this for a year on this podcast, every single part of HBA is intentional. I mean it. I mean it. Every single part of HBA is an intent is intentional. It is intentionally created and delivered to you in a way that honors the integrity and the health and the energy of your brain. Because that is what I am a trauma-trained neurohealth and nervous system practitioner. All I do, all I do is preserve the integrity and energy of your brain and the system in your body. That is what I do, and I do it very, very well. Every single part of HBA is intentional. The brain zaps that you get first thing in the morning, they interrupt the pattern that you're probably in of giving your brain the wrong input and then staying stuck in that input for the rest of the day. The lifelines, the HBA lifelines, the on-demand text, the keyword, those interrupt the pattern that we have of when we're spiraling. Those are therapist-backed. A therapist gave me feedback. She said that the most beautiful part of these lifelines is that it interrupts the pattern. There's novelty because you don't actually know what it's going to send you back. The tool is a complete surprise. And then when the tool works, you get rewarded. That's a really great way to interrupt a cycle of, I don't know, always getting overwhelmed with your boss or always, you know, spiraling around 3 p.m. What better way to interrupt a pattern than to interrupt it with curiosity and then back it up with reward? That is actually how you break certain habits and replace them. Every single part of HBA is intentional. On Sundays, you get Sunday reset trainings sent at 2 to 3 p.m., which is right about the time Sunday scary starts to hit for people. I just talked to a client about this yesterday. A lot of her overwhelm within work and during the week is actually coming from the weekend. She starts to feel overwhelmed about Tuesday's work on Sunday. We can fix that. Every single part of HBA is intentional. It is not just something that gets thrown at you in a PDF or some random portal that you have to sit down with your laptop and find time to do. Every single part of HBA is intentional. So the one year anniversary round starts on October 12th. Honestly, you're gonna kind of kick yourself if you don't join us on this round. So hope you guys have a good day. Bye.