239.5 Essential Practices to Build Resilience Through Life's Transitions

What if the most painful life transitions are actually your greatest opportunities to build unshakeable resilience?

Fresh from dropping her son off at college cross-country, Dr. Adrienne Youdim shares the real-time tools she used to navigate heartbreak, uncertainty, and the empty nest transition without falling into reactive patterns.

In this vulnerable and practical Part 2 of our burnout series, discover how the same regulation techniques that prevent workplace burnout become your lifeline during major life changes.

What You'll Learn:

• Why transitions trigger the same stress response as chronic work burnout—and what to do about it
• The 5 real-time tools Dr. Adrienne used during her son's college drop-off to stay regulated instead of reactive
• How to reframe loss as growth opportunity (without toxic positivity)
• Why naming emotions immediately reduces their power over you
• The science behind self-touch for nervous system regulation
• How to identify what you're truly "hungry for" during difficult transitions instead of numbing with food, alcohol, or overwork

"Loss, change, transition, uncertainty about what's to come—that triggers that very same sympathetic response. If we can just acknowledge, just be aware of what's going on, then we're already taking a big step towards preventing the reactivity that can derail us." - Dr. Adrienne Youdim

The 5 Regulation Tools in Action:

• Before: Overwhelming sadness, uncertainty, potential for reactive behaviors (overeating, overworking, people-pleasing)
• After: Intentional processing, deeper parent-child relationship, space for personal renewal and growth

The Process: Real-time application of nervous system regulation during a major life transition—proof these tools work when you need them most

Remember: Transitions are always met with loss because we have to close the door on something old before we can experience something new. But every difficult emotion is an opportunity to build resilience rather than fall into reactive patterns.

The Complete Burnout Prevention System:

• Regulate (Part 1): Nervous system tools for real-time stress management
• Restore (Part 2): Navigate transitions without reactive behaviors
• Reframe (Part 3): Transform limiting beliefs into empowering choices

Ready to build this resilience systematically? Life transitions will keep coming—career changes, family shifts, health challenges. The question isn't whether you'll face them, but whether you'll have the tools to navigate them with intention instead of reactivity.

Our next Re

3 Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

• Join Resilient Minds: If this sounds familiar, you're exactly who Resilient Minds is designed for. Next cohort starts September 30th - Limited to 12 high-achieving professionals ready to move from success to significance.
  Ready to stop asking "Is this it?" and start living like you know it isn't?
  Application details here: https://www.dradrienneyoudim.com/resilient-minds
• Subscribe to Dr. Adrienne's weekly newsletter https://www.dradrienneyoudim.com/newsletter.
• Connect on Instagram : Follow @dradrienneyoudim for tips and inspiration on well-being and peak performance.

Transcript

Hi friends. So I'm shifting gears again to talk about something a little bit close to my heart, because I have just come back from dropping off my son at college cross-country. I shared with you my chaos before my travels last week, and we're still on track to talk about burnout and to complete the mini-series on chronic stress, reactivity, and how we regulate and reframe.

But you know, this is kind of along the same lines because as I think about this, there are so many lessons that we can take away from this very normal and usual transition that so many of us experience as professionals who happen to also be parents and caretakers.

Transitions Always Involve Loss

Transitions are a normal part of our lives. Transition is always met with loss because we have to close the door on something old before we can experience something new. And of course, loss brings about stress, distress, and if we're not careful, it can bring on reactivity as well.

So in this episode of HealthBite, we are going to shift a little bit to talk about how we can learn from this very normal growing pain—this transition of children leaving the home, some of us who are empty-nesting—and learning how we can use these very same skills, these same skills that build resilience, so that we don't allow this difficult time to get us off course or cause reactivity that, without awareness, we then go on to soothe with self-sabotaging behaviors like overeating, over-drinking, overworking, people-pleasing, and all the rest.

So welcome back to HealthBite, the podcast where I help high-achieving professionals address their reactivity so that they can stop chasing success from a place of depletion and start creating it from a place of deep understanding, intention, and nourishment.

I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a physician, author, and expert in medical weight loss and mind-body medicine. And each week, we will decode together our hidden hungers and offer practical evidence-based tools like nutrition, movement, mindset, and contemplative practices that'll help you break the cycle of stress and reactivity so you can live a life of joy, vitality, and good health—mind, body, and soul.

My College Drop-Off Experience

So I just got home literally an hour ago from dropping off my son in Washington, DC—a four to five-hour flight from where I live in Los Angeles. And I spent the week between DC and New York where I had some business. And so it was a long and protracted goodbye and very, very emotional and deeply painful.

Even though this is not my first rodeo—this is my second child who's left home for college—but this one landed a little bit differently. And I realized that this is something that really parallels a lot of the concepts that we're talking about on this podcast.

First of all, it is a normal growing pain that so many of us experience as professionals who happen to also be parents. But also, it is a transition, and transitions are hard regardless of what they are, whether they are normal or not, whether they are mundane or not. They are still transitions, and transitions means losing or closing the door on something old so that we can make room for something new. And that, by definition, means loss.

The Stress Response of Transitions

And loss—and perhaps even the uncertainty of transitions and change—can elicit reactivity. Reactivity that if we don't address, that if we're not mindful about, can make us react instead of act with intention.

Because let's think about it: Loss, change, transition, uncertainty about what's to come—that triggers that very same sympathetic response. We may experience difficult emotions like sadness, worry, tension. This also will elicit that sympathetic, that fight-or-flight response.

And so first of all, if we can just acknowledge, just be aware of what's going on, then we're already taking a big step towards preventing the reactivity that can derail us.

Tool #1: Name the Emotion

One of the ways in which we can regulate is by just naming—naming the emotions. This is sadness. This is fear, maybe. This is uncertainty. Naming those reactions, labeling those emotions helps take the sting away, helps take the bite of them away so that they don't feel so charged, so that they don't have so much power over us. And so that we can, again, move through this transition with intention, not reactivity.

So the first tool that I utilized myself when I was feeling really emotional is to just name the emotion.

Tool #2: Self-Touch for Regulation

The second thing I did for myself was put my hand over my heart. That is a way that I really experienced self-regulation and grounding. When I'm feeling difficult emotions, I have found that for me, placing my hand on my chest is a way to ground myself, is a way to be more intentional.

And this is a science-based way to self-regulate, whether you put your hands on your chest or put your arms around yourself, place your hands on your face or your cheek, or maybe cup one hand inside of the other. These are ways of physically offering ourselves reassurance, physically offering ourselves self-compassion, and physically grounding ourselves in the present moment by taking ourselves out of our heads and literally, with touch, bringing ourselves to the body.

Tool #3: Reframing

Another thing I found myself doing is reassuring myself, reminding myself that this is normal growing pains. This is love. This is change. This is growth for my son and for myself. In essence, what I was doing was a practice of reframing, right?

A lot of times when we feel distressed or sad about something, we stay in the sadness, we stay in the distress. And it's really important to remind ourselves that this is not tragedy. It's sad, it's loss, but it's not tragic. And again, it requires being really intentional about reframing the emotions so that we are also dictating how those emotions are making us feel.

Remember that emotions guide our thoughts, our feelings, and also our behaviors and our actions. And so if we are able to reframe those thoughts, reframe those emotions—this is really love, this is really care, this is really growth—then it takes us out of that negative space into a place of agency, into a place in which we are not being dictated by our thoughts and emotions, but rather we are dictating them.

Or if you want a softer touch, we are using them to guide ourselves to live this experience in a way that is worthwhile and valuable to us. And I want to live this experience from a place of growth. I want to role model that for my son, who is also feeling homesick, who is also feeling challenged by being away from his comfortable bed and his friends back home.

I want to be able to role model this not only so that I can feel better, but so that my son can see how to do this work for himself. So we can regulate also by reframing the feelings, the thoughts, the emotions, and the experience.

Tool #4: Allowing Space for Growth and Renewal

I also like the idea of allowing space for growth and for renewal. Again, I said this already on this podcast and I say it often: we cannot grow without shedding something old, without closing the door on something old. So a past way of life is going away, but that creates space for renewal, for something new.

Transitions are an opportunity to stretch our capacity—our emotional capacity, but also a tangible capacity—for something new to come and fill in the space. I like to use journaling in times like this to think about the ways in which I can intentionally bring in something new. What do I want to do with this space that has been created? How do I want to perhaps intentionally change my relationship with my son in a different way?

And I'm, by the way, already experiencing this. I'm already experiencing within a couple days how our relationship is maturing, how I am recognizing that he is growing into adulthood. I need to set different boundaries and space so that he can grow, so that he can go through his process. I am having conversations with him on a different level—a more... look, I'm still a parent, right? But a more adult-to-adult, a more mature level. And this is actually something really profound and beautiful. I'm making space for that evolving relationship. I'm making space for that renewal.

This is also the second of three children of mine who are stepping out on their own. And again, I will always be their parent. They will always need me as a mother. But invariably, there is space now for something more for me. The time that I'm not spending with them in the home, I can be spending on doing something else, doing something differently. How do I want to use that space? Maybe I want more time for personal rituals and self-care. Maybe I want to pour into a professional activity. Maybe I want to spend some time focusing on an area of health and wellness and well-being that I haven't focused on or I haven't developed more fully. How can I create this space and allow for something new to unfold?

Tool #5: Understanding Reactivity as Signal of Hunger

And then finally, I want to touch on reactivity as a signal of hunger, as a signal of an unmet need, or perhaps a new need that is developing. I genuinely believe that our hungers are always changing, always evolving, and we are never without a hunger. We are never devoid of a longing, of a desire, of a need that is left unmet.

We are human, and by human nature, there's always this capacity, there's always this need, and this longing for something. A longing, a hunger that if, again, we are not intentional about—if we are not reframing in terms of growth and only seeing in terms of discomfort—then invariably we're going to go to distraction. How can I not feel this? How can I soothe this discomfort? How can I distract over this discomfort?

Maybe it's with food. Maybe it's with drinking. Maybe it's with overworking. Maybe it's with scrolling. All of these are distractions taking me away from a feeling that is uncomfortable.

What if I reframe that hunger? Perhaps what I'm hungry for in this moment is for connection. I feel the loss of a relationship in the form that it always existed. I feel the loss of a busy body, my little tornado of a child who always makes his presence known in this home. Maybe what I really need right now, maybe what I'm really hungry for right now is connection.

So I put out a call to my friend. I actually reached out to this woman who's in her late seventies, who gives me a lot of wisdom and comfort. I sent her an email while I was on the plane. What am I hungry for? Where can I transform this hunger into meeting my need—my need for connection, my need for relationship, my need for a wise guide or wisdom in my life?

I turned to a book. I turned to a religious teaching. It happens to be the beginning of a time in Jewish mysticism and the Jewish calendar that is a time of spirituality, reframing, growth, weeding out what doesn't serve us, making space for what is new, and paving that way with gratitude. How appropriate and timely is that, right? I love that concept. So maybe the hunger is for some spiritual practice that will lift me up, that will reinvigorate me, that will help me through this transition.

Every Discomfort is an Opportunity

Whenever we are in a place of discomfort—a difficult emotion, a nagging, annoying, an itch, a hunger, as I like to call it—it is always an opportunity. So don't distract. Don't soothe. Don't suppress. When you do so, you prevent yourself from the opportunity that it presents. You prevent yourself from the richness that this moment in time is presenting.

It's an opportunity to slow down, to pause, to put our hands on our chests and our hearts, to ask ourselves what it is that we are hungry for, what is that need, and then to lean in and to acknowledge and to meet that need.

I want to ask you: How often do you go outside of yourself to have a need met? Whether it's an external substance or a guru or a podcast or someone's advice? And again, all of that with the exception of the soothing is okay. I love wise sayings and poems and books and spiritual teachings.

But what if what we need in the end comes from us? What if in the end we are the ones that can best understand and meet our own personal needs? And how beautiful is it when we can do that for ourselves, when we can build our own internal, inherent resilience, when we can build our confidence and certainty in ourselves, when we can know that we have the tools, the skills, the bandwidth—we have everything we need inside of us in this moment in order to get through this difficult time?

Building Resilience Through Life Transitions

And so that is how I am choosing to reframe this transition in my life. From talking to a lot of friends, from looking at a lot of the posts on Instagram, I know so many of you are in the same season in life. So many of you are experiencing the heartache of this very same transition.

And what I want to share with you is that yes, it is heartache. Yes, it is loss. Yes, it is change, uncertainty. Maybe it's worry. Yes, it is all those things, but it is also a beautiful opportunity to build resilience—the very same resilience that will support us in our life transitions, in our personal transitions, will also support us in our health and well-being, will also support us in our relationships, and will also support us in our professional health and in our professional lives.

Join Resilient Minds

And on that note, if you are interested in going deeper in this work, we are currently enrolling for Resilient Minds, the eight-week program that I have created that builds on these very skills. They are evidence-based skills that are grounded in ancient wisdom, backed by modern science, and based on normal life experiences.

I bring in my experiences. I bring in your experiences. I bring in normal life into the Resilient Minds program to help offer you the skills in which you can cultivate your own inherent resilience so that you are less prone to reactivity, so that you can operate from a place of intention and action and not reaction.

Our next cohort for women begins September 30th. For men, October 1st. You can learn more about it at www.dradrienneyoudim.com/resilient-minds. I will also link that here in the show notes. There's also an application that you can fill out so that we can ensure that this is the best fit for you before you engage in this big investment of time and money and resource.

I promise you though that if you are in it and you are willing, that you will gain tools and experiences that are transformative.

Wishing you a happy and healthy week, mind, body, and soul. And I look forward to seeing you here again next week on HealthBite.