E41: Before You Blow Up Your Life...Listen to This

Have you ever been absolutely certain you knew what the problem was?

Maybe you thought your marriage was failing.
Maybe you blamed your hormones.
Maybe you convinced yourself you needed a new job, a new life, or a completely fresh start.

But what if you've identified the symptom instead of the root cause?

In this kickoff episode of a special 5-part series, we're exploring one of the most important midlife lessons you'll ever learn:

Just because something feels true doesn't mean you've identified the real problem.

We'll talk about how menopause, sleep deprivation, caregiver stress, burnout, chronic overwhelm, and even weight loss medications can influence how we see our lives—and why making permanent decisions from temporary depletion can be dangerous.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why symptoms are often mistaken for root causes
• How physical and emotional depletion changes perception
• Why burnout can disguise itself as dissatisfaction
• The questions to ask before making major life decisions
• A simple exercise to help you uncover what's really going on

Because sometimes the thing you're trying to escape isn't the problem.

Sometimes it's the symptom.

--------Let's connect on social media---------

Follow me on Instagram or visit my website.
Watch full episodes on YouTube.

--------I help women reclaim their energy and master their midlife-----------

🎯 Start with the $1 Energy Rescue Pack or book an Unmute Session Call to better understand your symptoms and energy patterns.

Most women can restore their energy when they see the patterns that are draining them. If you're ready to see changes, download the Energy Pattern Audit and get your capacity back.

Transcript

The thing you're blaming may not be the thing that's actually wrong

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever been absolutely convinced that you knew what the problem was? Maybe you thought, I just need a divorce, or I hate my job, or I've lost myself, my hormones are broken. Maybe you get down on yourself and start thinking, I'm just lazy, I'm just depressed, I probably need to move. Or you might totally throw your hands up and say, I just need a completely new life. Maybe you're right, but maybe you're not. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see women in midlife make is confusing symptoms with root causes. And I'm not just saying that from what I observe in other people, I'm saying that from what I observed in my own walk of life. Today, I want to talk to you about something that could save you years and years of unnecessary suffering. Just because something feels true doesn't mean you've identified the real problem.

Welcome to the briefing

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome to Unmute Your Midlife. I'm Joyce, a nurse-turned midlife strategist. This is where midlife gets explained and standards get raised. Think of every episode like your strategic briefing. You'll leave knowing exactly what to observe, what to adjust, and what to implement next. Midlife is not a decline. It's a leadership test. So let's

My concern for midlife women

SPEAKER_00 1:18

begin. So, like I said, I really do have a sincere concern for midlife women when it comes to this. As a nurse, I've seen it happen over and over, and it almost happened in my own life. As a wife, as a mother, as a woman who's lived through perimenopause, as someone caring for aging parents, I have watched women make decisions, life-altering decisions from a state of depletion. Depletion is a terrible place from which to make life-altering decisions. Because when you're exhausted and overwhelmed, when your body is inflamed, you're sleep deprived, you're hormonally dysregulated, you're stressed out, you're grieving, or you're just plain old burned out, everything looks like

The house fire analogy

SPEAKER_00 2:01

the problem. So let me paint a picture for you. Imagine you're in your kitchen and you see smoke. You smell something's burning, the smoke detector starts squawking at you. You don't walk over and rip the smoke detector out of the wall. I hope. You look for the fire. The smoke isn't the problem. The smoke is the signal. Yet there's so many women out there who are treating smoke. They're not looking for the fire, they just keep treating the smoke. And what do I mean by smoke? I mean the irritability, the brain fog, the resentment, the lack of motivation, emotional reactivity, that feeling of hopelessness. Those are signals. The question is, what fire are they pointing at?

Menopause gets blamed for everything

SPEAKER_00 2:43

We're in this crazy age where there's all this awareness now about menopause, and that's great. Women have have needed to be included in medical conversations for a long time. A woman enters perimenopause, she starts to gain some weight, she starts feeling tired and disconnected, she gets emotionally flat, and so she thinks, my hormones are ruining my life. Now, hormones absolutely matter, but what if she's also, in addition to the hormone dysregulation, what if she's also only sleeping five hours a night? What if she's working 50 hours a week or more? What if she's taking care of her aging parent or both parents, or her parent and her spouse's parents? What if she's taking care of a parent and some kids? What if she's not eating any real food but just drinking caffeine all the time? What if she's never getting outside in the sunshine and touching grass? The hormones might be part of the story, but they're probably not the whole story.

Sleep deprivation disguised as depression

SPEAKER_00 3:40

I've talked about my red method, and there's a reason why sleep is the first pillar of the red method. It's recover, energize, direct. Recovery is so vital, and I've got tons of blog posts and past episodes of this podcast that talk about what happens during sleep. If you aren't recovering, everything else gets distorted. When women consistently sleep poorly, they're going to experience the brain fog, the low motivation, the anxiety and irritability, low libido, emotional reactivity, um, really poor decision making. And they start thinking, I just don't feel like myself anymore. Well, I can 100% relate. I went through this, I was ready to leave my husband, leave my kids, leave my life, and just go start over somewhere on my own. And when I went to the doctor, he said, do not make any rash decisions. You have reactive depression from sleep deprivation because I was only sleeping about three to four hours at night. And yes, there were some other things going on. There were some boundary issues in my marriage that we needed to work on. My kids were kind of at that point where they didn't need me as much, but when they needed me, it was usually for something really big. And I was, I was feeling a little lost and I was mostly frustrated. I was frustrated and exhausted. And that's what sleep deprivation will do to you. I don't know if I've mentioned this. I have narcolepsy, so I take medication to stay awake during the day. But another side effect or or comorbidity with narcolepsy is insomnia. And so I can't take anything for insomnia because then my narcolepsy meds won't work the next day. But sleep hygiene is something that has to be a priority in my life. And thank goodness for my doctor who said, Look, I want you to go on an antidepressant for one month. I'm gonna put you on the lowest dose they have, and you're gonna sleep, and you need to sleep. You need to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. And do not make any decisions about your life until after that month is over with. If you still want to leave your husband after you finally had some good sleep, go right ahead. Don't make that decision right now where you're sleep deprived. And you know what happened? I started taking the medicine. I only took it for a month. I started to sleep, and suddenly my life didn't look so impossible anymore. I was able to have some true heart-to-heart sit-down conversations with my husband about two weeks after I started taking the medicine. You know what I did the first two weeks? I slept. And my sweet husband, I would be sitting in a chair watching a movie, and I'd fall asleep, and he would like make the boys be quiet. He would turn the TV down, he would be like, Let mom sleep. Mom needs her sleep. He walked on eggshells for that month to try and make sure I got caught up on my wrist so that I could start acting like a rational woman that he knew deep down I still was. So rest and recovery, so highly important.

Caregiver stress masquerading as personal failure

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Okay, another one that I can relate to is midlife women are usually simultaneously caring for their parents or their in-laws, their children, their grandchildren, their spouses. I mean, even though your spouse is an adult, there's things you do for your spouse. There's things your spouse always does for you. That's good. That's that tug and pull that you have in the relationship that's looking out for each other. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. What I'm saying is that it's another source of depletion. But we women, we think we have to take care of everyone. And so it's no wonder that we feel exhausted. Again, the problem isn't that we're weak, the problem is that we get overloaded. You can't continuously pour from yourself without replenishing. You know, empty cup doesn't have anything

Burnout pretending to be a bad marriage

SPEAKER_00 7:10

to pour out. Uh sometimes I see burnout masquerading as a bad marriage. You know, there's a lot of women who think that they have fallen out of love. They think their marriage is the problem. And sometimes it is. There are some bad marriages, there are some abusive marriages. But sometimes what they have is just overwhelm and depletion. When your nervous system is overwhelmed, everything feels irritating. Everything feels demanding and heavy, but you assume that it's the relationship itself that's broken. So before you do that, before you assume that and throw in the towel on someone who has vowed to be your partner, ask yourself have I been recovering? How's my sleep? Have I been nourishing myself? Am I eating real food? Have I had any margin for downtime and relaxation? Am I getting together with my friends to let loose and get my oxytocin flowing? Because burnout 100% changes your perception of your reality.

GLP-1s are not solving what you’re really hungry for

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Okay, the fifth example I want to talk about today, GOP1s. They are amazing, life-changing medications. I'm not against them at all. But some things I've noticed, and I'm gonna do another episode that dives deeper on this, but people, not just women, are losing weight on these GLP1 medications. And there are incredible health benefits as far as you know, the lowered blood pressure, lowered cholesterol, lowered, lowered blood sugar, um, reduced risk of disease. But weight loss alone does not automatically create fulfillment. And I think sometimes people walk into that experience thinking when I lose weight, it's gonna solve everything. It doesn't heal loneliness, it doesn't repair any of your identity loss or identity issues, it doesn't automatically create a sense of purpose in you, it doesn't rebuild uh relationships that have been strained for a long time, it doesn't teach you emotional regulation. So the number on the scale can change, but your underlying struggles will still be there if you're not working through them.

Chronic overwhelm is not a personality trait

SPEAKER_00 9:08

You know, there's so many people that have lived in survival mode for so long that they just think that's who they are. It's not okay. Let me tell you, chronic overwhelm is not a personality trait, it's a pattern, and patterns can be identified and interrupted. You were never designed to operate at maximum capacity every day for decades. So when you start feeling like life is out of control, your body is communicating with you. Your nervous system is communicating with you. The question is, are you going

The real work

SPEAKER_00 9:38

to listen? So before you blow up your life, take a pause. Get curious and ask better questions. Instead of saying, you know, what's wrong with me? Say, what is this trying to tell me? Instead of saying, why am I failing? Um, you're not. Ask yourself, which system in my body needs better support? Instead of thinking your whole life is falling apart, ask yourself, am I really seeing the whole picture? You could even ask um people that are close to you, that know you, that see you day in, day out, the ones that go to church with you or work with you, or you know, the other parents on your kids' ball team. I mean, I wouldn't lay out my whole life to them because that could be a mess. But you know, you could say, Do you see something I'm not seeing? Because I feel a little out of control right now. You you never know what a non-biased observer will pick up on. But the important thing to know is that these symptoms that you're going through, they're messengers. Wise women will learn to investigate before they automatically

Your one lever for this week

SPEAKER_00 10:35

react. So I always give you one thing to implement. This week's challenge is very simple. You're just going to create a symptom inventory. I love these little index cards. Throw them in your pocket or your purse. And as things come up, jot it down. You know, what are you really frustrated about? What and who are you blaming? What feels broken? One of the things that women have the most trouble with is articulating what it is they're really feeling or going through. And so it's hard for other people to understand because they can't communicate it. They can't, they're just like, I just feel wrong. I want to help you find the language to describe what's happening so that your loved ones can help you, so that they can empathize with you better and understand what you're going through. You want to be thinking about as you're doing this inventory over the next week, what else could be contributing to the way you feel? What other things have you not considered, like sleep, stress levels, nutrition, loneliness? Are you getting around other people? Because if it's just you and your four walls, that will drive you up the wall. Are you experiencing caregiver burden from taking care of other people? Are you grieving because you've lost someone recently? Are you experiencing burnout with your job or your responsibilities? How are your hormones? Do you do you feel like they're shifting? Are you taking any HRT? Are you still having periods? Are you moving your body? Because our bodies are made to move. If you're not getting out and walk in, if you're not getting to the gym and exercising, if you're not doing intentional load-bearing activities, you're gonna suffer. And the goal this week is not to solve any of this. The goal is just to observe, to get curious, make observations, and jot them down. You're not fixing anything, the job is just to notice

Get to the root cause

SPEAKER_00 12:18

it. Midlife is not a season for impulsive decisions, it is a season for deeper understanding. Sometimes the thing that you want to escape isn't really the problem. Sometimes it's just the smoke signal. So when you identify with the real root causes, everything changes for the better. Now be sure and come back next week because we are going to continue this conversation by exploring one of the most overlooked root causes affecting midlife women today. You don't want to miss it.

Next step: implement it

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Now, if this episode raised your standard, good. Go implement it. If you're ready for structured implementation, unmute your midlife is where we do this kind of work. You can schedule a free unmute session to identify the best plan for you. And while you're here, click on whichever linked video pops up for the more often. But I'll be back with more new stuff next week. Thanks for listening.