The Next Phase
I used to be fun. I used to be driven. I used to be sexy. I used to be...young. What happened?
Dear Millennial moms in your late 30s or 40s -- former forces of nature,
Are you burned out, overwhelmed, and wondering where your energy (and your old self) went? You’re not alone.
The Next Phase is the podcast for overachieving moms navigating perimenopause who are dying to take back their energy, their bodies, and their magic. Here, we will not pummel you with hormone treatment plans or talk about perimenopause as if it's a diagnosis. Instead, we're going to celebrate it. We're going to use it as an excuse to really start taking care of ourselves. As a matter of fact, we're going to find ourselves in our perimenopause era.
Hosted by Stacey Hutson—certified health coach, wellness chef, former co-host of the Mother Plus Podcast, and mom of two—you’ll learn how to: Understand what’s really happening in perimenopause and how to work with your changing body, use nutrition, supplements, and sleep as medicine to restore your energy, get in tune with your cycle and learn practical ways to sync your life with your hormones, and create rituals (with a little woo) that help you slow down, listen inward, and reconnect with yourself.
Each episode blends personal stories, expert insights, and actual doable steps you can take right away.
✨ Subscribe now to The Next Phase and join a community of millennial moms redefining wellness in their 40s. Let’s make perimenopause your most magnetic chapter yet.
The Next Phase
#28: What If You’re Doing Nervous System Work Backwards?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Are you doing nervous system work… and it’s still not working?
In this episode, I’m sharing a realization that completely changed the way I approach anxiety, overwhelm, and “regulation” as an ADHD mom.
For years, I did everything I was supposed to do:
meditation, breathwork, supplements, EFT, energy work…
And yet, I still felt stressed, rushed, and completely out of control in my daily life.
Why?
Because I was trying to calm my nervous system… while living in constant chaos.
Laundry everywhere.
Unpaid bills.
An overpacked schedule.
Always running late.
👉 There’s a disconnect there.
In this episode, I’m breaking down why I believe so many of us are doing nervous system work backwards—and what actually needs to come first.
This is not about abandoning the “woo.”
It’s about putting it in the right order.
The new approach:
Environment → Logistics → THEN nervous system tools
If your life doesn’t feel manageable, no amount of meditation is going to fix that.
Want to take this further?
I created a simple, no-overwhelm guide to help you start:
👉 The Work Before the Woo Reset
This walks you through exactly what I’m focusing on right now to get my life out of chaos and into something that actually feels calm and manageable.
No routines. No pressure. Just real-life steps that make a difference.
You can download it for free here:
🔗 The Work Before the Woo Reset
If this episode resonated, I’d love to hear from you.
email me: stacey@stacey-hutson.com
Welcome to the Next Phase Podcast, the show for millennial moms who are ready to stop fixing themselves and start listening to themselves. I'm your host, Stacey Hudson, and today I have a very important message for you. A lot of us are doing nervous system work backwards. And it's why none of it is working. As soon as I got my ADHD diagnosis, I went all in on nervous system regulation. I was like, okay, I'm dysregulated. I'm gonna figure this out. I'm gonna go above and beyond. I did meditations, I did breath work, I took supplements, I had magnesium and CBD coming out of my ears. I did EFT affirmations. I had a membership to an energy work program with weekly calls and classes and courses, crystals, tarot cards, candles, you name it, I did it. I was trying so damn hard to relax, to ease my anxiety. And it was like the more that I tried, the more that I wanted to try. But I got to a point where I started asking myself, why isn't this working? Meanwhile, I had laundry everywhere, goodwill bags in every room, returns sitting in my trunk for months, unpaid bills, my schedule was completely overpacked. I was always rushing, I was always late, I was always stressed out, and the same things kept happening every week and were somehow still catching me off guard. Like literally every day of my life felt like a surprise. Even though it was the same day over and over again, you wouldn't think it by the way I reacted to it. There is a huge disconnect here. I was asking my body to calm down in an environment of total chaos. Picture me sitting on a meditation cushion surrounded by laundry baskets and a clock that's telling me I'm late and an alarm going off. It just doesn't add up. I think your nervous system isn't dysregulated because you haven't found the right nervous system regulating tool. I think it's possible it's dysregulated because your life feels out of control. Dana White's episode last week is now the most downloaded episode on this podcast. The decluttering mindset that actually works for messy people. And the reason I believe her message hit so hard for a lot of you is because she wasn't afraid to tackle the scariest thing that a lot of us avoid. Basic life management, the boring stuff, the stuff that we hate, but the stuff that is right in front of you. She taught you that it is not scary when you stop approaching all of it like it's this ginormous project. And she shows you that if she can do it, you can do it too. Because she started where we started in total chaos. The most important thing she said in the whole episode was this. She always thought her goal was to have this beautiful house that impressed everybody, right? That's what a lot of us think. Oh, I need to have a beautiful house because that will look good to others. But really, her goal was to not be held back by her house. That, that right there is everything. Yes, creative type B ADHD moms like us can function in the chaos. But imagine what we are capable of without it. You know that I love the Woo and I am not trying to knock on it. I will still keep crystals by my bath and pull tarot cards and do EFT when I'm feeling anxious and meditate whenever I can, because of course there is value in all of these things. But for the first time in my adult life, I am starting to see that before I do all of that, before I focus so much on going inward, I have to stabilize what's around me first. My environment and my time. So for my nervous system regulation, this is the new order of things. Environment, logistics, then nervous system tools. Environment as in my home, my clutter, my laundry, my car, logistics are my calendar, my bills, the structure of my day, of my life, and then nervous system tools like breathing and meditation and rituals. It's the work before the woo. We need both, but we cannot do one without the other. So, what do we do about it? I originally had this whole plan to give you all the steps of where to start in your home, in your car, in your schedule, but honestly, I really feel like that would just overwhelm you. And we are already so overwhelmed. I think what you actually just needed to hear was the message, the thing that nobody is saying, the thing that once I saw it and understood it, I couldn't unsee it. So if you want to know what I'm doing to start working on what's right in front of me, to start with my environment, to start with my time, I have made you a guide. It is called the Work Before the Woo Reset. And it walks you through exactly what I'm focusing on right now to get my life out of chaos and into something that actually feels manageable, that actually makes my body feel safe on a daily basis, like the most powerful meditation. And it's not a routine and it's not a system and it's not overwhelming, it's just little baby steps that over time will start to make a big difference in your life and in your nervous system. You can go get it right now in the show notes for free. I'm excited to hear how it works for you. Alright, go take care of your real life, and I will talk to you next week.