Connecting with SuperKate: Exhausted, overwhelmed, but still believing change is possible.
You keep telling yourself you’re fine.
You answer the emails, talk to the teacher, get the dog to the vet — all while holding everyone else’s emotions together and promising them it’s going to be okay. No one questions it because you’ve been doing it so long the anxious stomach flutter and tight shoulders have become your baseline.
At the end of the day you collapse and scroll. The animal videos seem to quiet the nagging internal voice, until the news reminds you how bad things are and you go back to thinking you’re not doing enough. So you keep adding things to all the lists you have to feel like you’re being productive. You tell yourself you’ll figure it out next week. And next week comes and goes.
You’re not broken. You’re exhausted on a level you can’t quite explain — and somewhere underneath it all, you know something has to change. It was all supposed to be better than this, right?
I’m SuperKate, your somatic life coach. I’ve been that person, hoping that if I just kept telling myself “it’s fine” then it would eventually come true — even though my body never believed it. Connecting with SuperKate is where working moms, female entrepreneurs, and women caregivers come to feel better — one small shift at a time.
You don’t have to have it figured out. Neither did I. But I’ve got you.
Connecting with SuperKate: Exhausted, overwhelmed, but still believing change is possible.
Introduction
•SuperKate Slepicka - Somatic Life Coach - Nervous System Regulation and Strategy•Season 1•Episode 1
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Every podcast has an origin story. This is mine.
SuperKate shares the threads that led to Connecting with SuperKate — including what burnout actually looks like from the inside, why "just one more problem" never works the way we think it will, and the moment she stopped and started listening to her body instead.
This episode is for anyone who proves their worth by taking care of everyone else and has a quiet voice underneath it all saying — it can be better than this.
Hey everyone. Welcome to my podcast. So excited to be here with you. Welcome to Connecting with Super Kate. This podcast, this story, my story has been a culmination of a variety of threads that are finally pulling together. And yeah, I want to share some of that with you. I want to share that five-year-old version of me who did what she needed to do to be on the swim team. That 16-year-old version who chose her own unique look, despite what it cost her. That 18-year-old version who followed a nudge into arts and entertainment. And that 41-year-old version who started to face all the beliefs and the stories she'd been carrying about herself and the world. And just as an observer, I was like, What are you doing? What is happening? Why is this really what you want your life to be? All of this complaining? And then I began to notice how often when I would write in my journal in the morning, how much I kept writing. I hope things are different. I hope this changes. When I realized, no, there is no guarantee. But I get to explore, I get to be curious, I get to connect to new things, both in myself and out in the world. And what an adventure that's going to be. Now, just taking it back a little bit, a large part of my career was spent organizing and taking care of performers. I was good at it. And I often did it at the cost of my own health. I didn't have boundaries around anything. And I lived by the silent belief I'm Super Kate. And I proved that by doing everything for everybody. And this is another story for another time, but being named Super Kate has its ups and downs. Over the last several years, I noticed that there are many amazing people out there who haven't given themselves a superhero moniker, but they live by that silent belief, too, that I prove my worth by taking care of everybody and everything. And I think part of that belief comes through evolution because we are compelled to take care of the humans that we give birth to. You know, helping our community move forward and evolve. But the belief is also societal. It's a responsibility put on us from a very early age. Your needs aren't important. What is important is making sure everybody else is okay. So we take on all of the things and we put our own needs aside. We haven't met a boundary that we don't have an excuse to ignore one more time. And then we wonder why we feel like shit and no one's helping us. We're also fiercely independent in many ways. We often harbor this little voice inside that keeps hoping someone or something will make it all better with a snap of their fingers. I mean, wouldn't that be nice? That all it would take, and not in a in a, you know, in a superhero villainy kind of snap of fingers kind of a way, but just to have somebody make it all better immediately. The thing is, I would absolutely bet that even if that happened, many of us, most of us, would still struggle. It's because we'd either ignore what just happened, um, because it couldn't possibly be true. Like things can't just be better with the snap of the fingers. Or, you know, we'd relax for a couple hours. Oh my goodness, yeah, take a load off, like just hang out, sit out in the sun, uh, you know, take a nap, whatever, but we get antsy again because we're so attached to the identity and the rhythm that we've been existing in for so long. We wouldn't know how to relax and actually let go. And that's where I found myself one day. I knew I had been burned out in the past. I could keep, you know, I could point to a couple different times where, oh, that was absolutely burnout. Once I understood what burnout was. Um, but I didn't realize it could last. You could actually exist in that burnout, that nervous system dysregulation for years. And it's dysregulation. There's no other way it you are your nervous system, has been kicked into high gear and you're not feeding it anything good. And that meant I could rarely focus on things for longer than 30 minutes without jumping to another tab. And I couldn't enjoy a TV show or a movie without checking my phone. And I truly believed, truly believed if I could just get through one more problem, the one big problem I was dealing with, if I could just get past that, then things would be easier. They would feel easier. I was wrong. And maybe for you it really is one more problem. I hope that's true. I hope that you just have one problem and you're able to navigate it quickly and get past it, and your life is immediately better. That is not the case, or wasn't the case for me, has never been, probably never will be. And it hasn't been the case for my clients. Life is chaotic, things are constantly popping up, there are constantly more problems. And the truth is, many of us have unsustainably built our lives on that chaos. We have not set ourselves up for an opportunity to do it in a healthy way or a healthier way. And so our work and our relationships, and most importantly, our health suffers because of it. So I stopped and I began to reconnect to my body. I listened to it, I paid attention to what my body was trying to tell my mind and what my mind was trying to tell my body, almost forcibly so. I started understanding when I needed to just walk away from the computer because I truly hit a wall of frustration, versus taking a few breaths and then taking a little more action on whatever project I was working on. I recognized the benefits of a regular sleep schedule as much as that 16-year-old self still rebels against that every night. It's nonstop. She doesn't want to go to bed. But the biggest shift came when I started believing that my calm doesn't mean ignoring or overriding my feelings and reactions just to make sure everyone else feels better. And I'll have an episode about my thoughts on calm, so keep an ear out for that. This podcast and my business is built to get us back into a rhythm that feeds us, that inspires us. It's about connecting to our bodies, connecting our bodies to our minds, and connecting the actions that move us in the direction we want to go. I am tired of how many tired and overwhelmed women are out there. I am tired of feeling fine. We have such a short opportunity to experience this lifetime, get to know ourselves, discover all the things that bring us joy, and create a world that celebrates and expands for everyone. Why wouldn't we want to move towards that in a way that supports us and those around us? Deep down, we know it can be better than this. I know it can be better than this. We want it to be better for our loved ones and for future generations, but also for us. And that doesn't mean sacrificing ourselves for everyone else. This podcast is one of the ways I'm helping to create that world through supporting all of the amazing women out there who are also super. I want to thank you for joining me on this first episode. I want to thank you for following and subscribing. There's going to be new episodes each week. I've already dropped a few for this brand new launch. And I just have to say again, I am honored. I am so grateful and honored I get to connect with you through this in life. Thank you so much. And let's connect.
