Yes, You're Tired. But TRUST ME, You Don't Have A Sleep Problem!

Ok,. does this sound familiar? You got your eight hours. sleep, you did everything right, AND you woke up this morning feeling absolutely wrecked?!?

Here is what most experts don't tell you, exhaustion is not always a sleep problem. Sometimes (most of the time) it is a nervous system problem, and no amount of melatonin or early nights are going to fix a nervous system that is completely fried.

I lived in this fried state for years without even realising it (until my body gave no choice but to wake up to it!) Wired & exhausted at the same time. Running on adrenaline, cortisol, three coffees and telling myself that was just....life.

It was not life. My body was screaming at me, and I had no idea how to listen.

This episode is the one that changes how you understand your own body.

In this episode:

• Why you can sleep eight hours and still wake up depleted
• What a dysregulated nervous system actually feels like & why so many women don't recognise it in themselves
• The habits and patterns that are keeping your body stuck in survival mode
• What I did to actually fix it, and what finally worked

Your body has been trying to tell you something, It's time to listen.

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Find me on Instagram //www.instagram.com/_nicoleabbott/ 

Ready for more? https://www.nicoleabbott.co/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're getting eight hours of sleep. You go to bed at a reasonable time. You're not staying up till 2 a.m. on paper. Your sleep is fine. Yet you're waking completely exhausted. And not tired because life is busy, exhausted, bone tired. Like you didn't sleep at all. Like no matter how many hours you get, it is never enough. You've probably tried fixing it, more sleep, earlier bedtime, magnesium, a new pillow, no screens after nine, and you wake up and it's exactly the same. Maybe you've wondered if something's wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. But I am going to tell you something I think might change how you see this completely. This is Next Level with Nick. I'm Nicole Abbott, high performance health and identity coach, surfer and mum of three. This podcast is for the woman who wants to feel amazing, sustain her success, and loves the life she's building. We talk all the good stuff. No fluff and no filters. Let's go. The problem is not your sleep. The problem is what's happening to your nervous system while you sleep and all day before you even get there. Sleep is not the cause, it is the symptom. I want to start by reading you something. And I want you to listen to this list and count in your head how many of these sound like you. Be honest because no one is watching. Waking and feeling like you haven't slept even after a full night's sleep. Exhausted during the day, then wired and restless when you try to sleep at night. Waking at 2 or 3 a.m. with your mind racing, unable to get back to sleep. Getting to dinner and realizing you are starving because you've barely eaten all day. Snapping at the kids over the smallest thing and immediately feeling so terrible about it. Flipping out at your husband for making plans without checking with you first, which is actually a normal thing to do and usually wouldn't bother you. Not enjoying your favorite things, the things that you love. Surfing, a good book, dinner with friends, a holiday, feeling flat when you finally get there. Gaining weight even though you're not eating more. Your clothes fitting really weird, but you can't explain it. Reaching for the fourth coffee and feeling like it's not even touching the sides. Taking a stack of supplements every morning and feeling absolutely no different. Skin breaking out, your cycles becoming irregular, or you're becoming more symptomatic. Feeling teary for no reason, finding yourself crying in the car but not knowing why. Working like a machine, high functioning, but completely ignoring your body's signals. How many of those were yours? Those are not separate problems. It's not a sleep problem, weight problem, mood problem, a skin problem, a cycle problem. That is all one problem showing up in every system of your body at once. That is a nervous system stuck in chronic survival mode. Your nervous system is like a car engine, built to do two things. Accelerate and idle. Drive fast when it needs to, slow down and recover when it doesn't. High-achieving women are at full throttle every single day and they never let the engine idle. Not properly anyway, and not long enough to matter. There's always the next thing, the next call, the next deadline, the next task, the next person who needs something from you. Even the things that are supposed to be rest, the holiday, the weekend, you bring the urgency with you because you can't fully switch off. Your nervous system hasn't learned how to. And what happens to a car engine that never idles? It overheats. It starts running erratically, warning lights come on, it doesn't run efficiently anymore, and eventually it breaks down. That is what chronic nervous system dysregulation does to your body. When your nervous system is stuck in chronic stress response, your body never feels safe, even when you're lying in a dark room with your eyes closed. Cortisol, which is your primary stress hormone, is supposed to follow a very specific pattern throughout the day. High in the morning to wake you up and get you going and gradually decreasing throughout the day. Then it's low at night so your body can enter deep restorative sleep. When you're chronically stressed, that pattern inverts. Cortisol is low in the morning, which is why you wake up feeling like you've been hit by a truck. And then it's elevated at night, which is why you lie there wired, mind racing, unable to switch off. That's why you're waking at two or three in the morning when cortisol naturally starts to rise again. You can lie in bed for 10 hours, but if your nervous system is in survival mode, it is not restoring. It is vigilant and it's holding on, waiting for the threat to pass. That threat doesn't pass because the threat is your own internal stress response running on a loop. That is why you can sleep eight hours and wake up exhausted. The quantity is there, the quality of restoration is not. Because restoration requires safety. A dysregulated nervous system cannot feel safe. This is what I did for years, and I see high-achieving women do it constantly. We treat every symptom individually. We buy something for the sleep, try something for the weight, see someone for the skin, take something for the mood. We're addressing every signal the body is sending without ever asking why it's sending them in the first place. I was doing everything right on the surface. The supplements, early bedtime, eight hours of sleep, and I was still waking at 3 a.m. with my heart pounding, crushing every afternoon, still running on fumes that I couldn't explain. The root cause was always my nervous system. Once I started working on that, actually working on my nervous system, not just trying to sleep more, everything shifted. Not overnight, but it shifted. I want to point out this is not a medical diagnosis. If you're concerned about your health, you should absolutely speak to your doctor. But what I can share is what I know from my own experience, my training, and the women that I work with. These are the three things that move the needle. Number one is breath work. This is the most direct line into your nervous system that exists and it doesn't cost anything. Your breath is the only automatic function you have conscious control over. Your heart rate, digestion, hormones, you cannot directly control those with your mind. You can control your breath. Because the breath is connected to the vagus nerve, which runs your entire parasympathetic nervous system, it deliberately changes your physiological state in real time. I spent nine months in a breathwork program with Nicola Lay. It was the most significant thing I have ever done for my health. Not because it was relaxing, but because it was transformative. It rewired patterns that have been running my nervous system for years. You don't need nine months to start, you need five minutes. An exhale-led breath where your exhale is longer than your inhale. Let me explain how. Not from burnout, not from depletion, from a place of genuine clarity after I'd done the work to get regulated. That decision made from that place changed the entire trajectory of my life. You make better decisions when you're regulated. You see more clearly. You lead better and you perform better. Slowing down is not weakness, it is the most strategic thing you can do. Your next level move for this week. Go back through that symptom list I read at the start. Be honest. Write down the ones that you resonate with. Then pick one from that regulation section and start today. Not next week, today. If you're not sure where to start, start with the exhale breath before bed tonight. Do this every night and watch as your nervous system starts to learn that it is safe to slow down. If you can just focus on 1% every day, everything will compound. Don't just listen and move on. Grab a pen, write down your next level move, and actually do it this week. That one thing is your 1% and your 1% compounds. If this resonated or someone in your life needs to hear it, share it. Find me on Instagram at underscore Nicole Abbott or head to NicoleAbbott.co. See you next week.