More Time for Mom

4 Things Moms Get WRONG About Stress

• Dr. Amber Curtis • Episode 69

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What if the problem isn't your schedule or to-do list, but what you believe about stress? In this episode, I share an interview where I explain the four biggest misconceptions moms have about stress and why understanding your nervous system is the missing piece other personal development advice overlooks.

You'll learn why stress isn't actually the enemy, how childhood experiences shape your automatic reactions today, how your emotional regulation impacts your entire family, and how to stop waiting for your circumstances to change before you can finally feel calm.

If you're a high-achieving, perfectionist, people-pleasing mom who feels like she's carrying the weight of everyone else's needs, this conversation will completely change how you think about stress—and yourself.

 

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

  • Why stress is a normal, protective function of your brain—not a sign that something is wrong with you
  • Procrastination and overwhelm are an emotional regulation problem, not a time-management problem
  • How to stop making stress mean you're failing
  • You don't need to eliminate stress; you need to understand how your brain and body respond to it
  • Practical first steps to becoming calmer, more resilient, and more emotionally connected

 

AS MENTIONED:

  

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

Join the next round of Moms Made NewTM so stress no longer sabotages you—or your relationships: https://momsmadenew.com 

 

Book a free consult with Dr. Amber 1:1: https://tidycal.com/solutionsforsimplicity/free-consult

 

HOMEWORK:

Take a current stressful situation and brain dump the thoughts you’re having about it. How does it make you feel in your body? How are you naturally inclined to handle this kind of moment? Has that approach helped you in the past, or just made everything worse? Reach out to me via email or on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to share your thoughts. 

 

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next Tuesday at 5am Eastern to keep unpacking the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy.

Did you know your nervous system secretly shapes your thoughts, emotions, choices, relationships, and life? My 1-hour masterclass, "Finally Understanding Yourself, The Missing Manual for Your Brain and Body," gives you foundational wisdom and practical tools to feel calmer, more connected, and more in control no matter how chaotic things are around you: https://solutionsforsimplicity.thrivecart.com/ns101/

Loving this podcast? Please help it get found by more listeners by taking quick minute to leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Take a screenshot of your text review before you submit it, then email that to help@solutionsforsimplicity.com and I'll send you my powerful Happy Mom Protocol™ (a $297 value) FOR FREE!


CONNECT WITH AMBER: Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn 

Ready to finally get to the root of your problems and change your life FOR GOOD? Book your free 60-minute consult to learn more about working 1:1 with Dr. Amber.

Truly, all stress is, at a neurological level, is our brains perceiving some threat to our physical safety or social survival, our connection to the tribe. And from that perspective, we want to honor stress, right? We want to be open to stress so that we can have our proverbial antenna out and be made aware of things where something feels at risk. Stress is entirely normal. It has a really good purpose. It's our brain trying to keep us awake to the things that would make us unhappy or unsafe. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. What if I told you that the biggest thing stressing you out isn't actually your biggest source of stress? Most moms think they're overwhelmed because they have too much to do. But after years of studying neuroscience, psychology, and the nervous system, and after walking through my own journey from severe depression and burnout to healing, I can tell you your to-do list is never the real problem. Today, I'm sharing a recent interview I gave where... A recent interview I gave where Lori Oberbrockling of Secrets of Supermom had me come on and explain four things that moms get terribly wrong about stress. I unpack the four biggest myths about stress that keep you exhausted, reactive, and stuck. Once you understand what is really happening inside your brain and body when you get stressed, you will never look at stress the same way again. Whether you've been feeling overwhelmed by motherhood, work, relationships, or simply the mental load of trying to do it all, I hope this conversation gives you not only practical tools, but also so much more compassion for yourself and everyone around you. Here's the interview. I am Lori Oberbreckling, and with me today is Dr. Amber Curtis, one of our favorites. She is a life coach for Overwhelmed Mom. She's a mom of four, and we're going to talk about stress and what you might be getting wrong when it comes to understanding and managing stress. I love this topic because I think we all can feel that, especially as we're kicking off the summer. Dr. Amber Curtis, welcome. Hi, Laurie, and thank you. Such an honor to speak with you. It's so fun, and I'm so happy to have you back because you're just so brilliant. And we're going to talk about stress. So you say that there are some things that moms are getting wrong about stress, and it might be getting in their way. Tell us what that is. First off, I have been reflecting on this a lot. I never sought out to become a stress expert. I was absolutely, and still have remnants of this within me, but I was your classic high-achieving perfectionist people pleaser who was aghast at the idea of ever admitting to anyone that I was stressed. or I wouldn't have even acknowledged that I was stressed to myself. I just constantly told myself I need to do all the things and they have to be perfect and I've got to figure out a way to handle it and if I can't something is wrong with me. Fast forward many years and my motherhood journey has really challenged all of my prior beliefs of course, reoriented my life in the most wonderful way. But I have spent a lot of years trying to balance motherhood and career and all the things and stress was just going rampant to the point that I got suicidal. And I then needed to really get to the heart of not just what stress is, but why it keeps showing up and why we aren't really effectively dealing with it with the many mindset or productivity, personal development tools that are out there. So over the last couple of years, I have really just gone nuts with what stress is all about, what's really at the root of it, and how to effectively I don't want to say eliminate it because stress is always going to be there, right? That's the first thing we get wrong is thinking and somehow eliminate the stress in our lives. But to equip moms with real tools to handle it, to not make stress mean anything is wrong with them. And as I will go into, right, really help moms model more healthy behavior for their children so that we're not passing on these wounds, these stress wounds that we ourselves have experienced. First of many things that moms get wrong about stress. And again, I'm listing all of these after having fallen prey to them myself. But the first big thing is to… it's the misbelief that stress is somehow bad. We are primed to think that if we are stressed, we need to get out of that stressed state fast, right? That stress is the signal something is wrong. All the alarm bells are ringing. We want to avoid stress at all costs, or so we're told. And then the consumer market makes billions of dollars a year on all these stress relief products. And we're told just, you know, go rest and take your vacations and, of course, take care of yourself, all those things, which are beautiful. We should be doing all of those things. But it's all kind of sold to us with this idea that stress is bad. And truly, all stress is, at a neurological level, is our brains perceiving some threat to our physical safety or social survival, our connection to the tribe. And from that perspective, we want to honor stress, right? We want to be open to stress so that we can have our proverbial antenna out and be made aware of things where something feels at risk. that stress is entirely normal, that it has a really good purpose. It's our brain trying to keep us awake to the things that would make us unhappy or unsafe. So let's jump in there. Yeah, so this makes total sense. And I was thinking, when you were saying before, like, of course we have stress, I was thinking of, you know, this person like living on an island. is saying, I have no stress at all. And then I think, but then would they pay attention to like the centipede crawling on their arm or the potential for a tsunami or, right? Like any of these other things, of course we have to be aware of stress in the real world and aware of what like that means for us, right? So of course we can't just say, I will never be stressed again. I'm going to eliminate it entirely. Yes. Yeah. It's worthwhile to note that many of us choose stress in certain circumstances. For instance, we want to go to the gym and lift weights to be strong and healthy. Or we want to learn a new skill or take a program, go to a summit, challenge our minds. Those are also forms of stress, but it's called eustress, where it's something positive. The brain is willing to go through the effort and exert cognitive or physical energy because the benefit is known ahead of time, or at least, you know, there's an attached reward that we believe we will get through going through the stress. And then we need to differentiate eustress, which is positive stress, from distress, which is when our brain thinks there's a big problem. We're being chased by the saber-toothed tiger, or again, the to-do list is too long. The person in the car next to us was mean and rude on the road. We feel distressed. But even those distressing moments have the same biological response happening under the hood in our body, and we can harness the power of our mind to reframe stress as a good thing, even in distressing situations. Not to go to the toxic positivity side where we're, you know, ignoring the emotion or the pain that may be involved. But again, like, what are we gaining from this? How is this stress making us stronger? So there's stress we choose that is eustress, that is stress that we're saying we are, you know, like those that get in ice baths, right? Like that is intentional stress on purpose, right? And then we have real stress, like real stress that actually, you know, you almost hit a car, right? Like you almost got in a car accident. Actual stress that was because a real threat came. And then distressed is, it sounds like these threats that feel like threats, but our safety maybe isn't truly at risk. And so we're able, that's where we're really saying, this is all this extra stress that we can reframe and use some tools that I think you're going to teach us to actually be able to reframe that. Yes. Yes. I mean, it is a skill that we want to be open to. And it's not just about building resiliency to bounce back from stress, but really building up a desire to face challenges and grow from the stressful things we encounter. Of course, easier to do when we're choosing the stress, but that growth is available to us even in the hardest moments. The second thing that moms get wrong about stress is they think that their reaction to the stressful situation is only affecting them, right? That, oh, if we just keep it bottled up inside or live in our head, We don't want anyone to know that we're struggling. And we also, I think, are led to try and protect our children from stress. We almost willingly take on all the pain and pressure ourselves in an attempt to spare our children stress. And yet, of course, our children often make us very stressed because they are their own independent people and they push back against what we are hoping they will do. And we've got to, oh my goodness, there are so many dimensions there. It's really important for us moms to realize that we are the emotional regulators of our households. And we want to do two things with that power. We want to first and foremost model for our children that it's normal to be stressed. right, that they should not expect to live a perfect life immune to challenges or hardships and difficult emotions, all of those things. But our kids really are watching. And the way that we handle things is sending big messages to them. So if we say that everything is fine, our kids know that it's not. They can sense when we are stressed. So it's important to put words and name what our children are already perceiving and recognize then that we want to be vulnerable. We want to show them that, yeah, we are having a hard time sometimes. That's part of life. It doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong. Sometimes it's just a lot. The second big powerful thing that we want moms to come away with as the emotional regulator of their homes is really being able to restore their own sense of safety, even when life is very stressful, so that we can equip our children with the same kinds of tools for regulation and resiliency And no, not just that stress is normal, but we don't want to suffer unnecessarily. There's the thing that is stressful, but then there's all the meaning we attach to it and the way in which we let ourselves just kind of wallow in self-pity or despair. Or maybe we are actively shutting down because it's too much for us to handle. There is this fine balance of really honoring what we are feeling and acknowledging the default thoughts we have, but also wanting to help ourselves move through the emotion instead of repress it or, again, make it mean something that adds extra suffering to an already stressful situation. suffering. We must be stressful. We don't have to suffer. The stress we can't get over, the suffering, it sounds like we can. We don't have to suffer. Of course, there are very painful, unexpected circumstances where stress becomes suffering. But again, We're talking here about a situation like I was late for work or I'm getting a call from the school that my child needs to be picked up and then I'm going to have to cancel these big plans or, you know, stress over a big bill that arrives in the mail and we got to find some way to pay this. We're not sure how like those kinds of situations that are not real life or death situations, or where, again, our social safety is not at huge risk either. That's where our brains offer us all kinds of unhelpful thoughts that prolong and exacerbate our suffering. Yeah. So definitely not talking about grief, but things that really, like, our mind likes to spin up a really juicy story of why this is so, so terrible, when really it might be something that We can reframe, right? You said reframe before. Yes. The next thing that moms, and really everyone, right? This is not just for moms. These tools are truly for everyone. But I think overwhelmed moms need these tools all the more because we are so gifted at keeping it inside. And what we do is having this impact on our children. The next thing that's so crucial to know is we think stress is just about the present moment. We think our reaction to stress is because of what's happening to us right then and there. All these brain scans underscore that that is actually not the case. Our stress comes from being triggered, but what is being triggered is not our state at that time. It is the past fear of a prior situation we lived through and felt unsafe in resurfacing and being provoked all over in this present moment that seems to resemble the past experience. So what comes up when we're stressed is not a blank slate. We're not responding in the moment as our best, ideal, most prepared, present self. We are inevitably being triggered based on the wounds and protective adaptations that our nervous system took on from a young age in response to everything we went through as children or if we've had big T, little T traumatic events as adults. Like our nervous system is uniquely wired to respond to stress a certain way. And again, we've got to really start to dig deep into why certain things feel like a bigger stressor than they are. In many cases, our response is disproportionate to the present moment for very good reason. It's because something else is being provoked deep inside. And this is why the same exact same or feels like maybe the exact same situation can feel so different to different people because we're not just reacting to that one like Somebody dropped a glass on the floor, right, and it shattered across the kitchen. We're not just reacting to that, but all the past things that have happened. So my reaction might be completely different than your reaction because we are, our body is tapping into all of those things that your body might not even have a history of, right? You might go, oh, bummer. Creep it up and it's fine. And I might, like, go into a panic attack, right? Yes. Of course, there are moderating circumstances that affect how easy we succumb to our default stress responses in the moment. Are we already tired and maxed out on capacity? Are we low blood sugar? Are we experiencing many different stressors at once so that the proverbial straw breaks the camel's back, right? But again, even in the simplest all the way to the most extreme kind of stressful moments, what is underneath all of that? Is our unique nervous system's hypervigilance to a particular kind of stressor? And then it cues within us this default response aimed at protecting and restoring our safety in ways we were not able to do in some past circumstance. This is deep stuff, you know? handle stress differently because I can't change my past, right? I can't change the history. I can't change what my nervous system knows from 10 years ago or from 30 years ago, right? But I know there are some things that we can do differently so that we can feel differently in these situations. We absolutely can. And that is the million-dollar question. What do we do? Sometimes being made aware of the reality of stress and, again, the underlying wounds that are responding in a stressful moment, that can make us feel worse temporarily. But there is so much freedom waiting and available to you when you get to the root of your stress. And when you learn to work with your brain and body to respond differently in stressful moments. But the final thing that moms get wrong about stress then is where we think the fix lies. We think the solution is to change our external circumstances. We think, oh, if I just had a less stressful job, or if I just had more help around the house, if I just had more money, or if I just didn't have such a busy month jam-packed with all these kids activities and things like that. Whatever your circumstance. our brain offers us the solution of a wholly different set of circumstances as the answer. Our brain thinks that before we can be calm, happy, present, emotionally regulated, external things have to fundamentally change. It is, of course, very rare that we can change our circumstances. Yes, we always have the power to remove ourselves from one environment. But a lot of times, the stress is not just in our home, but within our relationships. And we are always stressing ourselves out because it's our brains offering us the thoughts that make us miserable. So the real solution? is knowing your default stress response and then learning about your nervous system, your unique nervous system, because every one of us is so unique. And the more you learn to appreciate where your brain is coming from and how you get triggered and the ways that your brain tries to get you to respond in those moments, the more aware you are of all of that. the more you can slow yourself down and catch yourself in those stressful moments and cultivate your own sense of safety and capacity, even without external circumstances changing at all. seems like a silly example, but I think a lot of women will relate, where maybe you have worked a really long day, you're exhausted, it's maybe Thursday, so it's been a really long week, but you're not done yet, and then you came home and you're getting dinner ready, and you try to get everybody together to sit down for the family meal you know you're supposed to have, because that's so shown to lead to your children's success. You're feeling all this internal pressure to do things a certain way, but you're exhausted and maxed out. And then you get everybody to come to the table, and inevitably, your husband and or the kids start complaining about what's to eat. And you, I, would feel, did feel, so triggered by this. Nobody appreciates me. I, why do I even try? I can't get anything right. I mean, there is a litany of thoughts that surface in those stressful moments. And yet, the solution isn't to throw your plate in the trash and storm off, right? Or run off crying up to your room. I'm so un- or to pick a fight with your husband, or to go back and make everybody something else for dinner, right? Like, we would have any number of ideas, but... I think we're offing ourselves in those examples. It's just one small example of how we are coming at something with the best of intentions and have put a lot of our time and energy into it, but we cannot control other people's thoughts and reactions. And then in those moments, our brain makes it mean something is wrong and offers us all these things that we should do to change the situation. And the reality is we can't, right? We can't change other people. We can't make the kids like brussels sprouts. We can't make our husband appreciate the fact that we just worked and made dinner or whatever it is, right? But what we can control and where the solution really lies is in deep breaths and reminding ourselves that their reaction means nothing about us as a person. We don't have to take on their stress. We don't have to let this challenge our self-worth or swoop in to fix it and rescue them from the discomfort they're facing with the choice of eating this meal they don't like or going hungry. Yeah. We don't have to get into this battle with our husband or think that he doesn't love us because he didn't like what we made. We can really work to feel good inside our own minds. And it sounds so simple. I know it feels quite different in the moment. But this is the skill. This is the muscle we build when we pause in those stressful moments and just remind ourselves, like, wow, All that's happening here, for me and for them, is that we are feeling stressed because something important feels at stake. Something about our physical safety or social worth and well-being feels like it is being threatened. In this situation, right, it's more of the social threat. But even then, the kids are the husband's reaction. They're, again, not conscious of this, but they're making all this meaning of like, well, I don't like what's to eat. And if I don't eat, then what? Or so many things. So we just want to invite all women, and our kids, and our husbands, and everyone, right, to just start to listen to the thoughts we have and counter those thoughts with the truth, which is that we are safe. And it's OK that everybody has their feelings. You're allowed to feel what you feel. But we don't have to take on responsibility for other people's feelings. We don't need to change the situation. We can handle the discomfort of people not liking us or what we made if we know that none of it changes how wonderful and worthy we are. How do we do this practically? We want to really help you get in touch with how your nervous system works. And there are a whole bunch of very practical, we call them neuro tools, that we can do to help the neural connections harness the power of neuroplasticity and just create more communication amongst themselves so that the signals are clearer and they're interpreted with greater accuracy and things that might have felt very threatening in the past, we can then instead in the moment realize, oh yeah, like this is, Uncomfortable. I don't like this, but it's not a problem, right? So. You have. You have a quiz that I know you're going to share as a freebie, but does this tie into how we can, in our own selves, do this? I want to ask you about it now because I feel like you're like, here's the things that you can do. And I want people to be like, wait a second, I can grab this and I can figure these out. Does this tie together, Dr. Amber? Exactly right. Thank you for driving the connection. So after many years of this journey myself and then working with wonderful, wonderful women to help them better understand their nervous systems and increase their sense of safety and capacity so they don't respond to stress the same old default way, I have created a special free quiz that helps you identify your default response to stress. What is your innate protective adaptation that surfaces every time you get triggered? And these are together known as the big five F responses. Many people know fight or flight, also freeze, right? Those three are pretty well known. I'm so glad that more attention has been drawn to the fawn response, which is so common for us perfectionists, people-pleasing women, right? Our high-functioning anxiety selves. But then there is also the fifth response called fix. I break down in this free quiz what all of those are, and then there are a series of questions for you to determine your primary stress response and your secondary stress response, together with then a whole kind of interpretation guide. And what I want to say in closing on that is that all the things that either you or others have labeled as personality traits, like perfectionism, or people-pleasing, or you're cold and distant, or you're quick to anger, or maybe conflict avoidant, any of these labels, these things that we assume are someone's personality, They are not. They are part of your default stress response. They are clues to how your unique nervous system got wired from a young age to respond to stress. And when you know your default stress response, you will see it everywhere. And you will start recognizing that everyone else's behavior is simply an indication of the state of their nervous system as well. So the angry person cutting you off on the road, they're having a fight response. The coworker that, you know, just shuts the door to their office and doesn't want to work on this project with you right before the deadline. They're having a maybe freeze response and not able to perform. The child that runs away screaming to their room and slams the door and doesn't want to talk about their bad day. They're having a flight response. Oh my goodness, this wisdom is something I want every mom to have because it fundamentally changes how you see the world and how you relate to everyone in it. It brings so much peace to know that people are not intentionally hurting your feelings, avoiding you, being belligerent, whatever it is. All their behavior is just data. It is a clue. It's evidence that their nervous system is threatened, and then their default stress response is causing them to react this particular way. We can change it. And that's what I work with women on. That's what I have been working on. So amazing. It's so amazing. And I love this because if you're thinking, some of you might know your stress response already and you're like, OK, I can start changing the story. But I think this is even more powerful if you're not sure. Right. And you can start going, oh, I do do that. And then like you said, oh, I'm seeing that now. I'm watching my husband and I see that in him or I see that in one of my kids. And then some tools around it. Right. To be able to start building that skill set and that tool set and practicing those things. I think you talked about practice early on, like We automatically do things, but obviously learning some new tools and that we can change certain things is so powerful. Dr. Amber, I want to ask you a question. If we took away all your tools, if we take away everything that helps you do all the things, get all the things done, be productive, be the mom you want to be, all the things, we let you bring one thing back into your life, what do you bring back? The one tool that I really love that has helped me so much in recent years is just affirming that nothing changes how wonderful and worthy we are. It's really cultivating our own sense of safety even in the moments where we do feel the worst about ourselves. That our brain on the one hand is telling us, you failed, you Our horrible mom, like your marriage is doomed. Our brain can offer us the most painful thoughts and we are feeling those things in our body. But to have the ability to actually hold your presence and safety in that moment and realize, no, that is not the truth. And even if it is, even if I did fail, even if my marriage does fall apart, like I am still wonderful and worthy. And as a mother, man, do our kids need that belief in themselves. And we are the ones who need to model it for them so they can instill it in themselves. And then they're not looking outside of themselves for their own safety and worth. They can create it themselves. I love that, that knowing is, and if you just always had it, right, that knowing, like, they just would sit and always be knowing, then everything else would be easier. Everything else would be calmer. Everything else would, right, would allow you to be able to walk through the stress more easily because you have that, right? It was just that constant knowing. We get out of the stress so much faster because we can separate the circumstance from what we're making it mean. And we're not piling on more suffering by making it mean something that isn't true. Nothing changes how wonderful and worthy you are. And my great desire is that every mom come to know that. Because I didn't. I really didn't. And I grew up thinking my worth was conditional on making everybody else happy and doing all these amazing things and having all this external validation. And so I've seen the toll that that takes on us. And we don't want to pass that on to our kids. We want our kids to know how amazing they are and have these tools from the get-go to feel every feeling but not spiral out in a stress response. Yeah. I love it. Dr. Amber, you told us about your freebie, but will you, before we wrap, tell us about your VIP gift? For those that are Expedition Leader VIPs, they have a special gift that they already have access to. If you still want to be a VIP, you can. But you have the Happy Mom protocol inside of our VIP package. Tell us about it. This is a signature mini course that I put together that really helps moms become the best, happier version of themselves so they can be the emotional rock for their families. I think so many moms, I saw this myself and in many, many clients, right? Moms neglect their own needs and put their own happiness on the back burner thinking that they are doing everyone a service by prioritizing all these other things, right? And the reality is that if we are no good, we are no good to anyone else. So we actually really do need to pour into ourselves and not in the indulgent self-care way or even the basic self-care way, right? That should be a given. I want moms and research shows. We need to have something in our life that brings us purpose and joy. This mini course walks you through how to find that. Several science-backed habits that are shown to increase your happiness and joy. I go in-depth into what it means to hold space for other people's emotions so that you are not resting your joy and happiness on their reaction or mood. There's so much packed in there. I love it. I love it. Love it. Love it. Dr. Amber, I love talking to you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you, Laurie. Always amazing. To quickly recap, the four major things that moms get wrong about stress are, number one, you think stress is bad, that stress should be avoided or eliminated, but it's actually a normal, protective nervous system response. It's not what is happening outside of you. Stress is what you feel inside when your brain and body are doing their job and trying to keep you safe in the midst of perceived threat. You think your stress only affects you. You try to hide it or bottle it up. You try so hard to shield your kids from it, but the reality is that they know when something is wrong. As the emotional regulator of your home, you, the mother, are really setting the tone for your children's future in terms of what they expect, how they will respond to stress, and the capacity they have to deal with all range of emotion. Number three, you think stress is only about what's happening in the present moment, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Every time you get stressed, It is because something in your nervous system is getting triggered based on a past wound that has led you to be extra sensitive to this specific kind of scenario. It is so crucial that you learn your unique nervous system patterning and the subconscious protective adaptations you took on from a young age that are always showing up now when you get stressed. that will always continue to show up until your nervous system no longer perceives the same kind of threat and has the capacity to respond intentionally, not reactively. You think the solution to your stress is changing your external circumstances. If I just had more help, if I just had more money, if I had a different job or was less busy, if my kids were better behaved, right? If my husband didn't act that way. Any of these variations are wishing that things outside of you would change so you could feel better, so you would be less stressed. But the real solution is, again, understanding how your nervous system patterns are governing all of your thoughts and reactions so that you can then harness the power of neuroplasticity and rewire your brain to change how you relate to stress. I know this sounds so complicated, but it's actually so simple, and I just love guiding my clients through it. Your homework for this episode is to take Take any current situation that is causing you a lot of stress and then really brain dump. What are the thoughts that you are currently having about the situation? What are you making all of that mean? What do you feel in your body in response to the stress? And then what is your default response? How are you naturally inclined to handle this kind of moment? Do you like handling things that way? Do you think that is actually going to result in a resolution? Has that approach helped you in the past? Or has it just made everything worse? And do you feel like the same kinds of stress are just recurring over and over and over? That is a telltale sign that there's really something deeper going on. and it's time we get to the root cause so that you can heal for good. You are so invited to use the link in the show notes to book a free 60-minute consult with me so that we can talk one-on-one about what is going on for you and how to make it better. Join me next week for another episode unpacking more hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day.