Physical Symptoms and Failures

Episode 8: Physical Symptoms & Failures
Just Call Jenna with Jenna Williams

Stress doesn’t just live in your thoughts—it lives in your body. In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna Williams explores the physical side of stress and burnout, explaining how everyday pressures like deadlines, constant notifications, financial stress, and relationship tension quietly alter the body’s chemistry and nervous system .

Jenna walks listeners through how the brain and body respond when stress is activated—from shallow breathing and an overactive amygdala to the exhaustion that comes from staying in survival mode too long. She explains why simple physical practices like slow breathing, longer exhales, gentle movement, hydration, and micro-breaks can help reset the nervous system and activate the body’s natural recovery response . Through practical examples, she shows how small physical actions—placing a hand on your chest, stepping outside for sunlight, or moving your body—can help complete the stress cycle and restore a sense of safety.

Jenna also speaks candidly about burnout, describing it not as personal failure but as the result of chronic stress without recovery. She reflects on her own experience of pushing beyond her limits and the moment her body finally forced her to stop. High performers, she explains, often burn out the hardest because they carry invisible responsibilities and rarely give themselves permission to rest .

The episode closes with a powerful reframing of failure. Jenna introduces the idea that every setback contains its opposite—every challenge holding the potential for growth, clarity, or transformation. By learning to notice negative thought patterns and consciously reframe them, listeners can begin retraining their nervous system through compassion instead of pressure .

Through science, personal reflection, and simple daily practices, Jenna reminds listeners that rebuilding doesn’t happen through force—it happens through awareness, gentleness, and small actions repeated over time.

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Transcript

Welcome back.

Today I want to talk about physical symptoms of stress and reframing failures to not be failures but just lessons.

So stress is not just a feeling. It's chemistry.

Modern stressors. We have them. You know, deadlines, notifications, relationship tension, financial pressure, quotas, goals, traffic. Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. The constant. But that's chemistry.

When stress hits, your breathings become shallow. Slow, deep breaths will activate your vagus nerve. That's the command center of your parasympathetic nerve system. That is your rest and recover network.

I had a friend that told me something before the stroke that I didn't even set in until later. Take a long exhale. You just have to exhale. A longer exhale, it signals safety in your brain. Breath is the quickest way to shift chemistry.

Take a breath right now. Very simple. In for three. Out for five. That's it.

The longer exhale is how you release that stress. It literally sends the signal to your brain, safety has passed. You can relax now.

When I was healing and I was actually took a class on how to breathe properly. One of the things that they explained to me is You just breathe out until you can't breathe out anymore. You will physiologically just breathe back in.

If you don't know how long you should exhale. All the way until you feel like there's no air left, your body will inhale again.

Physical care is an important thing to release stress. You can put your hand on your chest, you can put your hand on your belly, give yourself a little hug. Those things will actually release oxytocin, the love chemical in your body. It will calm down the amygdala in your brain. It will signal that the danger has passed.

Stress is chemistry. Your body is taking all these spikes, your body responds to your mind. So as your mind is getting full, the body is responding to stress chemicals.

Rest is required. You need some minor breaks. Little breaks. It's not laziness, it's recovery.

Movement is another important way to signal to your body that stress is over. Shake your arms, roll your shoulders. Movement. Dance if you can. When you move, your muscles send signals to your brain that the danger has passed. Just like a long exhale.

Move. Breathe and move. That's it. That's how you release stress chemicals. Very simple.

Rest is required. It's not laziness, it's maintenance.

Think about your car. You probably take it in for an oil change, tire rotation, most of us anyway. You are a vehicle. You need to maintain yourself. So that's how you do it.

You need to signal your rest and recovery network. Your parasympathetic nerve system needs to be activated. That is how you rest and recover.

Have you ever felt like you just hit exhaustion that no rest will fix? That's stress. And we live in a society that demands so much of our attention. Rest is required. It's not laziness, it's maintenance.

So finding those places, that's important to understand how to rest and recover.

I like to think about a couple of things in the brain. Glucose and the brain. Let's talk about that.

About 20% of your total energy. Is from your brain. Your brain uses 20% of your body's energy. Think about that.

You need a brain break, as my friend would say. You need a brain break.

Your brain runs primarily on glucose. Have you ever heard of athletes hitting the wall? That's that's kind of what it is.

Have you ever like got deep into a project and your brain was just like, I'm full, I can't take anymore. That's hitting the wall.

Your brain has expended all the energy it has. But you need some mental glucose, right? That's the way I think of it.

Food fuels the body, but purpose fuels the mind. Every time you feed your brain positivity and good energy, you strengthen your nervous system's resilience.

Resilience is the recovery. That's kind of like your cooldown period. Something bad happens. Something bad happens to all of us. That's just kind of life. The universe isn't picking on people. It's just part of life.

Things happen, but your resilience is your recovery time. That is your rest and recover.

So you will become more resilient when you give yourself purpose, when you fuel yourself that.

So how would we do that? Something happens. Okay, have a stroke. That's something that happens. But you can go and say, like, again, I can try again. I can walk again. I can do this again.

You're rewiring your neuroplasticity. You are telling your brain, I can try again. I am becoming someone who's more resilient. I am becoming someone who recovers. I am becoming someone who's calm. I am becoming someone who doesn't accept stress.

So to me, again, if it takes my peace, it's too expensive.

It didn't start there. I'm there now, but in the growing piece of it, it was choosing peace. That was a boundary I refused to give up. That was a place I didn't want to give up.

But before I was a peaceful person, I am becoming someone who chooses peace.

Words are alchemy. What you say trains the filter in your brain to tell you what to do.

But there are still some physical symptoms and stress is going to happen. It happens. Every day. Did you hear me? Stress is going to happen.

Life is going to keep coming. You can do your best, but it will happen. You are at an intersection between the universe and science. And so life just happens, energy happens, things happen, but you can be more resilient.

You can understand that stress is chemically eating up your body. And the way to counteract that is to rest and recover, giving yourself some mental glucose.

What is my purpose? What is my meaning? What is my inspiration?

For example, every morning I get up and I'm like, you've probably heard me say this. Girl, did you hydrate today? Today we hydrate and do not raise our blood pressure.

These are where I focus, but that is my mental glucose. That is what I tell my brain to filter on.

Today I will stay hydrated and I will not raise my blood pressure.

Now, life is gonna keep coming. It gives me tons of reasons to raise my blood pressure. It gives me tons of ways to not stay hydrated. It it does. That's just life.

But you have to ask yourself these things. Have I hydrated? Have I given my mind some inspiration? Have I given myself food for thought? Have I moved my body?

Energy is not just from what you eat. It's just as much from what you think.

So as you're thinking about these things that you've given yourself. That mental glucose or that inspiration and asking yourself, have you given yourself physical fuel and mind fuel?

I need you to think about burnout.

Burnout is chronic stress without recovery. It is your amygdala staying on all the time. Maybe you've heard people say always on. You're constantly in survival mode. You don't get the chance for yourself to rest and recover.

Things like brain fog, emotional numbness.

One of the most amazing physical stories that I ever heard about was David Goggins, if you've ever read his book, Can't Hurt Me. This man put his body through feats that I just find impossible.

But I think it's great that he did, but even he talks about hitting a wall. And he's superhuman, Navy, SEAL, like I think you should all read the book.

But the whole point is you hit the wall. There comes a point when you just can't go any further. That's a physical symptom. That is a physical symptom of hitting the wall.

Now, you can hit the wall just with your thoughts, like your brain can hit cognitive overload and hit a wall. So you need some mental glucose too.

While there's physical fuel, there's also your mind needs to be inspired. Food may fuel the body, but inspiration fuels the mind.

So every time you feed your brain inspiration, good energy, great thoughts. You're giving yourself some mental glucose, saying I can try again when you've hit the wall.

You're rewiring your brain with neuroplasticity. You are teaching your brain, I am someone who recovers. I am someone who tries again.

Asking yourself questions. Have I hydrated? Have I given my mind inspiration? Have I moved my body?

Energy is not just from what you eat, it's also from what you think.

So in physical symptoms, something that happens is burnout. That is chronic stress without recovery. Your amygdala stays on, it stays active.

Have you heard of it? They're always on. I'm always on. You're not resting and recovering. You're not taking a pause.

Symptoms of that might be brain fog, emotional numbness, irritability. You snap at your loved one for no reason, feeling disconnected from everybody. exhaustion that no rest can fix.

These are burnout. It's not a failure. It's a physical symptom of not getting the rest and pause.

You need to pause. You need to stop leaking your energy out everywhere.

I think that's really difficult to do in a modern society.

I was the definition of a hustler before the stroke. A hundred and ten percent all the time. Single mom, achieving. It was constant.

There was never the pause and recover that I have now.

If only I could go back and tell me then what I should have done. I might have avoided a stroke, maybe.

But one day my body just stopped. It said, okay, no more. That was my version of burnout.

I burned my candle at both ends. I just kept filling that container full of more reasons to achieve, more things to do. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

We live in a society that that's where it is. You are rewarded for not taking your sick time. You are rewarded for working weekends. You are even expected to sacrifice yourself to the revenue gods.

I don't care where you work, I call it the revenue gods. But that is society. That is not any one company or boss is wrong. That's just the culture we live in.

Be constantly connected. I need to ping you on Saturday. I need to call you.

I had a banker that I met a couple years ago, and I just told her, I said, stop giving yourself away. Stop.

You gave yourself away piece by piece until you're working on weekends. Just stop. Stop making yourself available.

After Friday, you're not available. It's going to feel very, very hard right away because you've gotten accustomed to being always available. You don't have to be.

You're allowed to give yourself permission to let your weekends be your time. Spend time with your family. Spend time with your dog. Ignore that stuff. Give yourself time to rest and recover. That's how you're avoiding burnout.

This might hurt a little bit, but those overachievers like me, we burn out the fastest. We burn out the hardest.

It's a capacity trap. It's not a failure. You have to reframe that.

The world will take everything that you have. I call it the revenue gods. They always want a piece of me. Time, money, or a resources. They always want something. It is my job to protect myself.

That is the boundary. And yes, it's really uncomfortable.

Before you start taking your life back piece by piece. You have to understand, remember, meaning yourself where you're at. You have given yourself away piece by piece. It seems normal.

The text messages, the phone calls, the constant pings, the deadlines, name it all. It all takes from you. You owe yourself the space to recover. You have to let that piece of you happen. It's not a failure, it's the capacity trap.

How easy is it to go through life on autopilot? It's super easy.

Like I think about my younger daughter learning how to drive. It took her a lot of cognitive function to back out of the driveway. Right? I do it on autopilot. How many of you do?

Driving through life? Text messages? You don't even pay attention to where you're going. You probably got a GPS on telling you where to turn, so that you can be on the phone or texting and driving.

We all do it. This is just the world we live in. We see signs that say don't text and drive, but we don't think, hey, not me, right? So that's how it is.

It's the capacity trap. It is the connection trap. It is be connected so much that it's exhausting. It's the kind of exhaustion that rest doesn't fix. And it can't. Only you can fix that.

So you have to start with what boundaries are. Take yourself back piece by piece. Understand that if you take a peace today and you set a boundary today, future you can have peace, love, and happiness.

And it's not the kind of peace, love, and happiness that's gonna put you as a monk on the mountain meditating for stillness for 50 hours. If that's your dream, please go live it. It is not mine.

Um, I think that you figure out how to take yourself piece by piece, right? How do you take it back?

Like sometimes you can hear people say, take your power back. You gave all that energy away, start taking it back by setting boundaries.

It doesn't have to happen overnight. Meet yourself where you're at. Really important that you do that.

I think that when you think about going through life on autopilot. We do it often, right? There are ways that you can take yourself back.

We think about 60,000 thoughts a day. 90% of them are the same as the day before. And 70% of them are negative.

Let's say that again so you get it. We think on average 60,000 thoughts a day. 90% of that 60,000 are the same as yesterday, and 70% of them are negative.

Do you remember the negativity bias in the brain? It is that you need three to five positive t thoughts to set yourself back to zero to combat a negative one.

Well, if seventy percent of your thoughts are negative, how are you going to do that? You have to start by reframing things because you can reframe those negative thoughts.

Remember, everything has a duality. You just need to reframe it. Shift your perspective.

So here comes another vulnerable story on Jenna.

So the other day I'm at a big ol' meeting. I'm in full cognitive overload. I can't process thoughts. I can't process my emotions. I could feel myself shutting down.

A friend that I knew walked across the room because she knew me, took me out to the side and said, Are you okay?

I started crying. And I'm talking the kind of crying where I needed a tissue. Crying, not sobbing, but crying. The water works were on.

And she just asked me, how can I help you? and I said, I want to go home. And she said, just leave.

And I was like, wait, what? I can just go?

I was in such overload. The idea of my boundary to protect my peace couldn't even process in the moment.

And so I went home. I took an Uber home. On the way there I breathed, I rolled my shoulders. I did all the techniques I know, so that by the time I got home, I was fine. I was back to normal. I could just rest in my house.

But I think this is important for you to understand that no matter how much we train ourselves, those old pathways are there.

And the next morning, the real success to that story is that I did not get up and beat myself up for leaving. I did not beat myself up for feeling overwhelmed. I did not take that on myself.

I reframed it that the success was that I took care of me. The success was that in the worst moment where I was literally in tears, damn near breaking down, that. That was what was important. I took care of me.

So it was not a failure. It was actually a success. That is how you reframe it.

You have to do that and you have to realize that you're human. Cognitive overload is gonna happen.

I gave myself some compassion. I said, Okay, I'm human. I did the best I could in the moment. And the success was I made a choice that even though it was difficult was to go take care of me.

Other ways you can do this to avoid hitting that cognitive overload. Right? That is a compounding. It wasn't one event. It was multiple events that got me there.

But some of the things I forgot along the way. There's what I call the micro doses of joy.

These are things that you can do to help that rest and recover network come back.

Micro doses of joy, little small things in your day. Things like five minutes of sunlight. A small creative activity, listening to music that uplifts you.

One of my favorites. Laughter. Find something to laugh about.

Laughter truly is one of the best medicines. I believe that laughter got me through some of my darkest parts of recovery. The depression, the heaviness that comes with it.

I watched a lot of comedy movies. I enjoyed a whole three weeks where I did nothing but watch the old comedy movies from the 80s, some of my favorites, and I just laughed, because laughter truly is the best medicine.

Find those microdoses of joy. Find them. That is your rest and recover network. You need them.

So in talking about failures, you have to reframe them.

Reframing them. They are lessons. They are not failures.

Universally there's something called the law of polarity. Every experience has an opposite. Every failure has a success. Every sorrow has a joy. Every dark has a light. Without the contrast, we can't expand. Opposites are really just teachers.

So reframing the failure to what's the success in it, that's you reframing the failure. That's you activating your rest and recovery.

So for example, try reframing it. What if I disappoint them? Two, I can't disappoint them. Just think about that.

If I rest, I fall behind. No, change that to if I rest, I can be my best.

Just reframe them. Then they don't have to be failures.

For me, one of the biggest ones that I use was I have to handle everything myself to I let others help me.

People who know me will will tell you, I am not the easiest person who asks for help. I am probably not the person who even asks.

I thought that my worth was tied to productivity. I had to change that to I am worthy because I exist. So I took the pressure off and reframed it.

The stroke was not a failure. It actually made me the best human being that I could be. I would have never thought that I could rise to this occasion. especially not in the temporary place where I couldn't even get up out of bed.

Today sitting here talking on a podcast was not even a dream that I had thought of. That was not even a possibility in my mind.

But you reframe things. My worth is not tied to productivity. It is not. I am okay just as I am. It is amazing how just okay I am. Every day I'm getting better. Every day I'm evolving.

If you really know me and you'll probably hear it come out, I call myself Pre-Stroke Jenna 1.0, after the stroke Jenna 2.0. Really excited to see who Jenna 3.0 becomes. I'm becoming her every day.

But that is it. It is reframing.

There is nothing wrong with the person of me that was tied to my productivity, that was tied to external things. There is absolutely nothing wrong with her. In fact, I thank her because I could not be here without her.

It's kind of like the story I had in a previous episode about the hot air balloon. Had to drop the sandbags. Nothing wrong with them. They were just heavy and holding me back. from who I am supposed to become.

But that's what reframing is. It is using the words like alchemy to tell yourself what you need to hear.

Reframe it. Just flip the script. It's it you just do it. And you keep repeating it until you believe it.

I mean, I actually blamed myself for a stroke. In some ways I was to blame. All the stress, not taking care of myself, not resting and recovering, so busy giving myself away, piece by piece until there was nothing left.

My body shut down. But that's how I learned to embrace a life worth living. That's how I got here.

So as horrible as that lesson was, and it was absolutely awful, it gave me what I needed to be here.

Sometimes I think about it like a butterfly in a cocoon. The caterpillar goes in, the butterfly came out. I would have never expected a stroke to be a cocoon, but that's kind of how it was.

I can now fly. I now live a life worth living.

I'm not saying I don't have bad moments, but 95% of the time, 99% of the time, whatever it is, I'm at joy, I'm at peace, and I see the world differently than I did.

You need experiences for your nervous system to recognize a different reality. Reframing it starts there. You start there. You flip the script. You think about things differently.

One small action today. Notice your thoughts about yourself. How do you feel? Are you telling yourself that nice thing in the morning every day? Are you telling yourself there's something you like about yourself?

It's how you rebuild, not by force, but by compassion for yourself. You have to give yourself some compassion. You have to give yourself some grace.

Those physical symptoms, notice them. Listen to your body. But reframe those things. They're not failures. They're lessons. You can reframe things.

Flipping the script, giving yourself some compassion. Letting it be okay that you're human.

That was really hard for me. Still is, actually, every day.

Some days I just. I can hear the little inner dialogue voice of that little person inside me telling me I'm not good enough and I have to go around pleasing everybody. And if only I could achieve this thing, people would like me.

Well, when I learned how to really like myself and care for myself things changed.

I was able to let other people misunderstand me. I didn't feel the need to explain to people that are committed to misunderstanding me.

Protecting my peace became my productivity. it became the most important thing I do every day.

So I'm not saying that I don't have hard moments. In fact, road rage is still a hard one for me. I do not enjoy people in the Zoom Zoom lane not going Zoom Zoom. They really, they really upset me.

But I learned that protecting my peace, it is not worth it.

Now, that's not to say that I don't have a few choice F-words for them when they're in front of me. But I'm getting better every day at that.

So I think that that's how you do it. You give yourself compassion, you let yourself be where you are, and you reframe the failures.

Instead of beating yourself up and telling yourself all the reasons you're not good enough, the negativity bias in your brain will teach you how to do that.

Don't be another negative voice. The world will give you enough of them. Be a positive voice. Be the three to five positive thoughts you need. to counteract the negative one.

Life will give you lemons. Life will throw things at you. Life will never stop coming. It comes even faster in the digital world we're in.

But you can take care of you. You can protect your peace. You can live a life that you want, and you can let that peace in the mind Really win for you.

You will watch your body respond. Your body is chemically altered by the thoughts you have. Stress gives it cortisol and adrenaline. Peace gives it compassion, joy, and calms down that thing in the brain that says, oh, we can process real thoughts now. We don't have to react to danger.

You are not in danger. You are actually at peace and that is the biggest flip you can give to your life. That is the biggest reframe you can do.

Protect your peace, let it be your new currency, let it be the thing that matters most, and you will notice a you that you didn't even know existed.

But you cannot do that without giving yourself some compassion. Start by being the most compassionate to yourself.

Thanks for joining again.

Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious, and vibes matter.