The Guilt of a Good Day

Why does peace feel so uncomfortable sometimes?

In this episode, I’m opening up about something that’s been challenging me lately: even when life is good, my brain still feels like it’s waiting for something to go wrong. I had a genuinely great weekend. Good food, great company, and I even won at ping-pong, but I still couldn’t fully relax. Instead of enjoying the calm, I found myself searching for problems and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In this episode, we talk about:
-Why chaos can start to feel more familiar than peace
“Anxiety debt” and the feeling that we always need something to stress about
-How overthinking can ruin otherwise good moments
-Learning how to trust calm instead of fearing it
-Showing up imperfectly and giving yourself credit anyway

I’m also sharing my three wins for the week, including being honest with my therapist and showing up to record this episode even when everything in my life doesn’t feel perfectly figured out.

If you’ve ever struggled to enjoy a good day without overanalyzing it or preparing for it to fall apart, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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I spent years perfecting the highlight rail, the corporate title, the put together mom act. I was the person that everyone leaned on because I was the girl that could fix everything. I'm Lauren Lizzie, and I am finally done pretending. Welcome to Just Can't Help Myself. A space for the overthinkers, the deep feelers, and everyone in between. Rob, how was your weekend? Uh my weekend was good. I wish the weather was a little better. How about it? I know, I know. It was good. It was pretty good. And um that's actually what I wanted to talk about today. So I had a good weekend, um, and I'm not complaining about it. Um, I know that sounds weird uh thing to even say, but why did I still feel off? Like nothing dramatic happened, nothing crazy. It was good. I felt like myself, like it was easy. Like I had my coffee, I enjoyed being home, watching the rainfall. There was a lot of rain, like you said. Um, I ate good food, I had good company. Um, I kicked ass in ping pong, which I'm not surprised about. I'm like actually super good, Rob. We should get a ping pong table here. Kick your ass. Tell John. Um, yeah, but you know, I didn't feel overwhelmed, um, but something still felt off. It was like I kept waiting for something to happen. Like I couldn't fully relax in that state. I caught myself thinking, why does this feel unfamiliar? Why do I feel like a good weekend is something I can't trust? I don't know if anyone else feels like this, but um, that's what I wanted to talk about today. Um, why is it that I have a good day and I start scanning? Like, did I miss something? Did I forget something? Is something about to happen? I sat in that feeling for a while, like trying to figure it out why I felt that way. Like, is something what's wrong with me? Is what I was thinking. Like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just have a good time and not be just waiting for you know for something to happen? Um why is it that I feel safer when something is wrong? Is it because at least I know what I'm dealing with? I don't know, I realize in that moment that peace feels unfamiliar to me. That sounds like a problem to me. Because I shouldn't feel more comfortable in the chaos than I do in calm moments. Like, where the heck does that come from? Why do I almost feel like I'm in debt to my anxiety? I shouldn't feel that way because I'm not in debt to my anxiety. And that's what I wanted to talk about today because I know I can't be the only one that feels this way. Why is it that we can't just enjoy something good without questioning it? I started thinking, this can't just be a me thing. Like, truthfully, how many times have you had a really good day? And then later that night you start overthinking everything. Like something goes well, and you're already preparing for it to have gone wrong in some way or another. Instead of relaxing, you're like, why is it so quiet? You're just waiting for something, something to interrupt it. Um, but I don't think it's because we're just negative. I think it's because we're just used to being on guard. Our brain is trying to protect us. And for me, sometimes it just doesn't know when to turn off. So even when nothing is going wrong, I feel like, well, something should be. And I started thinking, okay, this has to be a moment that I check myself. Reminder, nothing is wrong right now. I don't need to prepare for something that hasn't happened. And again, reminder to myself is I am not in debt to my anxiety. Okay, so I have a challenge for us. Um, and when I say challenge, I don't say that lightly because it's been challenging the hell out of me lately. This week, I want you to notice if you find yourself in this place that I just shared, um, if things are okay and your brain tries to trick you into thinking you're not, instead of ruminating in that space, instead of following the feeling, just pause and fight it and remind yourself that you are allowed to enjoy something good. You don't have to just wait for it to be taken away. So the major point that I want to hit home is if you catch yourself feeling this way, you are not the only one. If you catch yourself feeling this way, uh, I just want you to know that you are not the only one. Okay, so this as per usual brings me to reality TV. Love it. So, you know how in these shows, when things seem to be going too smoothly, right? It's like the calm before the chaos. Someone's going to start something. Oh, it's coming, it's brewing. It's like the quiet before the storm. And then someone is gonna start something. Someone's questioning someone or something. Now, does it need to be brought up right now? No. But is someone gonna bring it up? Yes. Now you're asking yourself, why am I watching this? Why am I waiting? Also, why am I so excited? Well, because the calm can feel uncomfortable. And it made me think, do I do this in my own life? Oh, I do. I certainly do. I just do it in my own head. Now, I love examples, so let's get into one. Now, maybe I'm the only one that feels this way. I I don't know. But let me set the scene. All the, for example, the housewives, right? All the ladies are at a dinner table and everything's calm. Everyone's like, oh, this is a nice place. Oh, I love the ambiance here. I've never been here. It's so beautiful, right? And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, you can't trick me. I can feel it coming. One lady orders a martini, and I'm like thinking, how can you relax right now? My stomach is in knots. Then someone says, I've been meaning to say something. And I feel relief. Like, see, there it is. I knew it was coming. Come on, how long could we wait in that cool, calm, collected, uncomfortable space before we broke out? Like, come on. How long were we gonna wait in that cool, calm, collected, uncomfortable space before we wanted to break out? Finally, finally, the other shoe has dropped. Now that's when I realized I do the same thing. Maybe it's not at a dinner table with a bunch of other women, um, housewives and crew and production. But in my own head, when life is too calm, I catch myself thinking, okay, when will the next problem arise? Okay, when will the next problem appear? Because this calm, this calm before the storm is such an uncomfortable place to be in. I hope this example may have landed with you. We may not be on a reality TV show. We may not all watch reality TV shows. Um, but I think we all know that feeling. And the challenge here is learning to trust the calm, even though it feels so unfamiliar. All right, so we're doing three wins for the week. Um, well, even though it's early in the week, I can say that I've already had three wins, small wins, and um, I want to recognize them, honor them, and share them. Now, I already shared my struggles over the weekend, and I'm not gonna say that Monday, yesterday, I got my act together and I was like, win, win, win, because that's not real. But but these are still small wins for me. First win. Um, I would say my first small, genuine win was being honest with my therapist about those feelings that I shared with you guys that I had over the weekend. Because being honest with your therapist is not always easy to do. Okay, my second win. Um, I didn't leave my therapist's office with all of the answers, but I left feeling okay with that because I felt like maybe I at least was headed in a better direction. And that felt like progress. My third win. Now I I keep bringing this up, and I'm not sure if or when I'm going to stop. But my third win is I showed up to film the pot this podcast today. And for me, that is a win within itself because everything isn't tied into a pretty neat bow, right? But I do know that wins can come from just showing up. I'm Lauren Lizzie. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Just Can't Help Myself. Uh reminder, episodes drop weekly, so stay tuned. And I'm always looking for guests. Um, please, if you're interested, we don't have to get too deep, right? It can be light. Um, we just want to have some conversations. Like Stasi's a little boring. She really doesn't bring much to the episode. So um, if you're interested, uh please send me uh DM. I am on Instagram at just can't help myselfpod as well as at exclusively.lizzy. Talk soon. Bye.