55: For the Woman Who Manages Everything: Why Trust Feels Like a Risk

In this episode, Dr. Brook explores a pattern that shows up far beyond physical health: the instinct to chase certainty by forcing control over symptoms, schedules, relationships, and even rest.

Building on the symptom chasing conversation from episode 53, she widens the lens to show how this same instinct drives overworking, overscheduling, obsessively checking bank accounts or social media, and rereading texts before sending them.

Underneath every version of this behavior is the same root cause, the discomfort of not knowing, and the belief that forcing an outcome is safer than trusting the process.

Dr. Brook shares her own story of learning to trust her body's pace instead of forcing it into someone else's timeline, along with a client story about a woman whose exhaustion came not from her workload but from the effort of controlling every detail of her life.

The episode brings in Proverbs 3:5-6 to explore how leaning on our own understanding can quietly replace trust in God, even when we don't consciously intend it to.

Dr. Brook offers a practical BodyOS reframe for noticing when you're forcing instead of trusting, walking through how to pause, ask whether the urge is coming from need or fear, identify which pillar physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental is driving the urge to control, and adjust only where it's truly needed.

She closes with a challenge to pick one area of chasing and practice leaving it alone for twenty four hours to see what comes up. Listeners are invited to take the Body Signal Decoder assessment to start identifying where they are forcing instead of trusting.

✨ Your body has been trying to tell you something.

Find out what it's saying with the free 30-second Body Signal Decoder Assessment. Pick your signal, get your personalized guide straight to your inbox, and finally start making sense of what's going on inside.

Get it here: os.drbrooksheehan.com/decoder

🎧 And if you caught the mention of the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck during the episode, here's where to grab yours. 63 scripture-anchored cards to help you trust the body God designed for you.

Get yours here: drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body/

📱 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐ If this episode spoke to you, would you take a second to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify? It helps more women find this show. And more women learning to listen to their bodies is exactly why I do this.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Are you overworking? Staying busy so there's no space left to feel uncertain? If your calendar is full, you honestly don't have to sit with the question of whether you're doing enough or whether these things are actually okay. Because busy becomes a form of numbing. Even rest gets scheduled, timed, and optimized until it stops being restful and starts becoming one more task to complete correctly. 

Are you doing everything right for your health but you still feel off? Does the wellness world have you overwhelmed, second-guessing your body, or chasing yet another fix? You’re not alone. I’m Dr. Brook Sheehan, and welcome to Beyond Wellness Culture, a space where we step out of the noise and rebuild trust with our body. This is where we stop overoptimizing, find clarity instead of confusion, and approach our health in a calmer, more grounded way. Take a deep breath, and let’s dive in. 

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Hi, friend, welcome back to another episode of Beyond Wellness Culture. As always, I am your host, Dr. Brook, and we are talking about something that a lot of us do today. And we're going to be going outside of just the physical, and we are going to be talking about how we wrap ourselves and tangle ourselves up emotionally as well as mentally. And so I want to ask you a question as I get started.

Are you chasing a symptom until it's solved? What about chasing a to-do list until it's empty? Or chasing your schedule until every single hour is full? I'm gonna raise my hand. That instinct is the same thing wearing different clothes. All three of those examples. And if you listen to episode 53, you already know that I don't want you panicking over every ache and every symptom.

So today we're gonna take that idea somewhere much bigger because the habit of chasing a symptom until it's solved isn't really about your body at all. It shows up everywhere in your life. And once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it. Okay, so quick recap for anyone that's new here. Symptom chasing means hitting every ache, pain, or shift in your body with an immediate fix.

Like a headache means reaching for a medication before asking a single question. Or a weird stomach feeling means Googling or AI-ing symptoms for 45 minutes. But underneath it, it isn't really the symptom. It's the discomfort of not knowing. This isn't really about health. It's actually about control.

And once you see that, you start noticing that this exact instinct doesn't stay contained to your body. It leaks into every corner of your life. Hence, me mentioning in the beginning that we are going to be talking about the emotional and the mental tangles that we get ourselves in. So I want us to walk through where else this shows up because I guarantee that at least one of these things is going to land uncomfortably close to home for you.

Are you overworking? I can raise my hand to that. Staying busy so there's no space left to feel uncertain. If your calendar is full, you honestly don't have to sit with the question of whether you're doing enough or whether these things are actually okay. Because busy becomes a form of numbing. Ouch. What about overscheduling? Are you filling in every single hour so nothing is left unplanned or unmanaged?

Even rest gets scheduled, timed, and optimized until it stops being restful and starts becoming one more task to complete correctly. Are you overmanaging relationships, parenting, even rest itself, turning things meant to be lived into things to be optimized? My goodness, I've talked to so many moms who have turned their family dinner into a project to be managed, rather than a moment to be present for.

I am speaking to myself. I just want you to know that. I am so guilty of doing these very things. And that is why I want to speak to you about this, because I don't believe that I am the only one. I believe that there is a lot of us out there that do this. And there's also a money version of this.

If we check a bank account 17 times in one day, not because there's new information each time, but because the checking itself feels like doing something. Maybe it's not the bank account, maybe it's checking social media. We do this habitually without even thinking about it. What about rereading a text five times, drafting three different replies, trying to control how someone else receives what you are about to send?

Maybe adding more emojis than necessary because you don't want the tonality to come out incorrectly. Notice the thread running through every single one of these examples. Forcing shows up where uncertainty feels unsafe. It doesn't matter if the uncertainty is about your gut health, your schedule, your bank account, whether your kids are going to be okay, or how people are doing on social media. This instinct is identical.

Do something immediately, so the discomfort of not knowing goes away. But this is what happens. Forcing actually gives you the illusion of progress. Trusting feels like doing nothing. Let's be honest about the discomfort here. Trust can feel like a risk when control has kept you safe before. If you grew up in a house where things felt unpredictable, or you've been through a season where letting go of control actually costs you something, this isn't a character flaw.

It's a strategy that worked once, but never got updated. See, this is where my own story fits in. For years, I managed everything. My health, my schedule, my work, my relationships, everything. And the moment I stopped gripping tightly, it felt like it was all going to fall apart.

But the shift for me came so slowly, learning to trust my body's pace instead of forcing it on someone else's timeline. How many episodes have you heard me speaking about this? And what I found on the other side wasn't chaos. It was actually more capacity because I wasn't spending all my energy managing things that were already okay.

Now I want to share a story with you about a client who came to me completely exhausted. But it wasn't from her actual workload, but from the sheer effort of managing and controlling every single detail of her life to prevent anything from going wrong. Her calendar was color-coded, totally relate. Her kid schedules were mapped out to the minute, and her body had started sending her every single signal it could.

Migraines, gut issues, trouble sleeping, all while she kept insisting that she just needed to do something different. But the turning point wasn't a new system or a new thing to add into it. It was one afternoon where she left a two-hour block on her calendar completely open, with no plan, no task, and nothing to manage. And she told me it was one of the most uncomfortable afternoons she had in years.

But also strangely, one of the most peaceful. That one afternoon became the crack that let her start questioning this entire pattern of control. So I want to talk about certainty. And as a person with a deep rooted faith, I want to bring this into faith directly because I think that this is where the real root of habit lies for a lot of us.

Proverbs 3:5-6, a lot of you know this scripture, says, to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight. Notice what that verse doesn't say. It doesn't say figure it all out yourself first, and then trust Him with what is left over.

It says, lean not on your own understanding. And that's directly at odds with the chasing instinct. That chasing instinct, which insists on gathering enough information, enough control, enough certainty before it will ever feel safe to rest. Symptom chasing, over scheduling, overmanaging, all of it can be a quiet way of leaning on our own understanding instead of God's.

Not because we don't believe in Him, but because trusting our own management feels more immediate within reach than trusting something we cannot see or control. This isn't about doing less because God will just handle it. It's about noticing when the constant managing has become a substitute for actual trust.

So what does trust look like in practice? Because one thing we know is trust is not passive. It's a decision to stop overriding what's already working. I want to give you a few examples of what trusting looks like. It's letting a plan shift without forcing it back on track. It's letting a body symptom or signal pass without immediate intervention. It's letting a day go unscheduled without guilt, something I'm still working on today.

This is not the same as giving up, though. It's choosing to stop managing everything as if it will fall apart without you. See, there's a big difference between showing up for what's actually yours to carry and gripping everything so tightly that nothing is allowed to move naturally.

What I want you to do, and the bodyOS reframe in all of this, is pausing before jumping into fix it mode in your body and in your schedule. That pause is where you get to choose your response instead of defaulting to your habit. I want you to connect to what is driving the urge to force. Is it need or is it fear? And I want you to be honest with yourself here because most of the time, it's fear wearing the costume of responsibility.

And then I want you to ask across all four pillars, is it physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental? What are you trying to control? Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable, and that is exactly why it's worth asking. And then I want you to adjust, but I want you to adjust only where it is truly needed.

Let the rest move at its own pace. Not everything on your plate requires your grip. Some of it just needs your trust. And I'd also invite you to try something practical this week. I want you to pick one place, just one, where you notice yourself chasing, whether that's a symptom, an inbox, or a schedule, and practice leaving it alone for 24 hours. 24 hours, not forever, okay? Just 24 hours.

And then I want you to notice what comes up in that space. That discomfort is information and it's not danger. Forcing shows up everywhere. Can you see how it spirals our mind and our emotions and our spiritual capacity?

Because it disguises itself as responsibility. And because control feels safer than trust. But that same body wisdom that knows how to heal a headache without your help also knows how to carry you through an uncertain day. And trust doesn't mean doing nothing, it means doing only what actually is yours to do.

So I want you to head over to the Body Signal Decoder assessment as a starting point for noticing where you are forcing instead of trusting when it comes to body signals.

And while this was a short and sweet episode, I hope that there was a lot of gold nuggets dropped where you recognize you can give yourself a little space to breathe, a little space to move, and a little space to take that time to pause and to connect with yourself and to know that all is going to be okay. Have a very blessed week, friend, and I will see you next week.

Friend, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your body is grateful that you listened to this episode as well. If this conversation supported you in any way, please share it with someone who feels overwhelmed by their health, or quite possibly stuck in that wellness spiral. And leave a review on Apple Podcast as it means a lot to know this space is supporting you, and helps this message reach the people who need it most. Alrighty, let’s close those tabs, exit the apps, and let your body do what it already knows how to do. I’ll meet you back here every single week. Bye for now.