Ever find yourself swept up in the tornado of to-dos, with your stress spiraling sky-high? This was my weekend, jam-packed with family celebrations and the inevitable mountain of chores that followed.
In this episode I get real about hitting pause and grappling with the stress cycle and how capacity is incomparable and dependent on the experiences that have led each of us to this time in our lives.
We're talking nervous system maintenance—like that soothing box breathing you've heard me talk about and how to activate that rest and repair side of your nervous system. These aren't just fluffy suggestions; they're the tools to cultivating resilience and mastering the art of thriving, not just surviving.
Get in there and give it a listen for more !
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
Ever find yourself swept up in the tornado of to-dos, with your stress spiraling sky-high? This was my weekend, jam-packed with family celebrations and the inevitable mountain of chores that followed.
In this episode I get real about hitting pause and grappling with the stress cycle and how capacity is incomparable and dependent on the experiences that have led each of us to this time in our lives.
We're talking nervous system maintenance—like that soothing box breathing you've heard me talk about and how to activate that rest and repair side of your nervous system. These aren't just fluffy suggestions; they're the tools to cultivating resilience and mastering the art of thriving, not just surviving.
Get in there and give it a listen for more !
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
What is up? Hello there. My name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Hello friends and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience podcast. This is episode number 174 and I am your host, jpb. I had something else entirely planned for today, but wanted to talk about interrupting the stress cycle inspired by my day, which I realized is similar to last week's. It has been a theme of me learning to use my tools. It has been a busy weekend.
Speaker 2:I had a baby shower to attend in Seattle and I live in Portland, so that's about a three hour drive, and so we drove up there. We stayed three hours for the shower and drove back for a total of nine hours there and back. The baby shower was for my cousin and his wife, and they are my favorite, so I wanted to celebrate them and their growing family. I was super excited to be able to be there, and if it was almost anyone else, I would not have driven three hours to shower a baby. So, anyway, that took all day yesterday, the day I'm recording on Sunday, so this will come out on Monday, but time and days are all made up anyways. So now here we are in this day with bedding to wash and a bed to make, and my husband and I have Scandinavian style bedding, and if you don't know because I just learned what that was like six months ago.
Speaker 2:it's where you each have twin size comforters, if you go sleep and that way there's no stealing of the covers or disturbing the sleep when one person gets in or out of bed. So all of that to say that there are pillowcases and the hypoallergenic cases over the pillows, before the pillowcases, and the fitted sheet and the two duvets and their covers. So it's a whole thing making the bed. And then there was laundry to wash and put away and there was grocery shopping and meal prepping for the week and the gym and other errands. And I still wanted to post something on Instagram and make some content and do my sound therapy and get this podcast out. And our older car is having problems. So I'll be riding the train to work again tomorrow, which I haven't had to do in a few months because we got a new car and this is the first time in nine years that we have been together that my husband and I have had two cars and have not shared a car, which has been amazing.
Speaker 2:You can just like go places when you need or want to, and it's not a whole production of like how do I order an Uber? Does the max go there? Does the bus go there? You just get to go. It's great. So before that, I always took the train to work, but I've had a nice little break and forgot how much I don't love it. It's about a half a mile walk to the train, which is great when it's dry, get some steps, but it's spring-ish here and lots of rain happening, so then it's about an hour and a half between a train ride and a bus ride to get to work, and then all of that over again on the way home. So I have to leave much earlier, I have to get up much earlier and with all of that I started feeling overwhelmed, like I never have enough time to do all of the things that I need to do.
Speaker 2:And I immediately think as I say this out loud if you've got kids, that's a whole other level of busy. And I'm not trying to compare. I do all the time, and then I realize it doesn't make any sense because we all have the life we have. I heard a thing one time about comparing how busy you are or comparing how much you can handle on your plate next to someone else, more or less, and the reality is that everyone's got a different plate. Some are flimsy paper plates, others might have those weaker supports under the plate I don't even think that they have those anymore. But if you're over a certain age, you probably know what I'm talking about. Or maybe your plate is China, so it's sturdy but also very fragile. Or your plate is one of those plastic kids' plates that can withstand whatever you throw at, or on it.
Speaker 2:And it also might depend on what season of life you're in, or even what day it is, as to the kind of plate that you are working with. And so I like this because I tend to compare how much I can handle or how tired I am, or whatever usually in the way of I should be doing more. I shouldn't be having a hard time because someone else, something else, and that is a little bit ridiculous. I know we all like to do that, but we each have our own capacity, which changes daily, weekly, seasonally, depending on what it is we have going on in life, what our previous experiences are that are informing how we deal with things. Now, everyone is different, everyone's got a different plate, and so, coming back from that tangent, I had a busy day and started feeling overwhelmed, and the idea of having to spend three hours of my day tomorrow commuting made me want to cry. So I was making the bed upset, I was prepping my food upset and I was wondering where I was going to have the time to do the self-care things that I wanted to fit in somewhere, and there was a moment in all of that where I paused and recognized that I was starting to spiral out. And then I was upset and I realized I could take a moment to slow down and breathe and press pause on the stress response inside so I could shift my focus and shift my mood, which then shifts my physiology out of that threat and I'm just perpetuating this stress cycle. And so taking that pause does magical things, because right now is always a great time to check in with your nervous system, especially when you don't feel like you have time, especially in those times. That is when you need it most and you may not actually have time to do a full sit down meditation or a breath session or a nav, or you may not be in a space to get up and take a walk or whatever it is. But you can press pause, you can shift your breath, you can shift your focus, you can shift your mood and you can do that anywhere, at any time, along with whatever else it is you're doing, which is one of the reasons that breath is always my go to anchor, the first nervous system hygiene and stress intervention tool that I reach for, and it's the first one that I teach for people to learn how to regulate as that first step, because it is accessible anywhere, at all times. It is free and it doesn't have to take a long time, and I know what to do. It's that it's the whole thing about.
Speaker 2:Knowledge is only good if you use it. Knowledge is not power, it's potential power. It doesn't do any good if you don't take action, and sometimes we only have a moment, if we're not making our nervous system hygiene a priority and I'm not gonna lie to you, it's not always a priority every day for me. I know it would be useful, I know that it could be, I know that that would make my day better. All of the time. I tell you all about it and I think about it every day in the form of content and conversations and presentations and interviews.
Speaker 2:It is literally always on my mind and yet somehow some days I just don't make time, because I'm a human and that is how I not only have the, the academic understanding and the experience through of learning those things about how our brain and body work. But I know what it is to not feel like you have time. I know what it is to be so stressed out. I know what it is to even at this stage where I have come light years in my ability to self-regulate and understand that. You know my feelings are relevant, need to be felt and created enough capacity to do that and to recognize when I need those tools and built the tools to use all of that.
Speaker 2:And still, sometimes it is the thing that I put off until later, when I have time, and I know it should be the first thing that I'm doing so that I can be more efficient in my day and use my time better and feel better in my day. But I'm a human being. This is what it is. That's part of the reason I'm here talking to you and so, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed, like you have no time for anything, and that thought, even alone, makes you more tense and start sighing, breathing noticeably quick or heavy. I found myself doing that as I was making the bed and I was just sighing all over the place and just feeling, and that's when I noticed my breath change. I was like wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Okay, we need to redirect.
Speaker 2:That is exactly when you need two minutes to shift your breath, to shift your state, to shift your mood, to gain access to your thinking brain so you can plan how you're going to prioritize the things that you need to get done, so you can have better focus and attention to the thing you are doing, so you can be more efficient, so you have more clarity and you are not spiraling out. Pausing breathing and writing this out to talk about here with you is all it took for me to feel less overwhelmed and focus on the steps I can actually take towards getting shit done. Pause, slow your breathing, make your breath even with something like Brock buh buh, something like box breathing, which is just even inhale pause, even exhale pause. I like to do maybe a five by five. Five by five If that's too much, start with three, whatever it is that's accessible for you, but just making those breaths even and slowing them down a little bit.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the box breathing feels intimidating and which then just puts your system into more of kind of a panic. If there's that too much air hunger, feeling like you're not going to be able to breathe is not useful in down regulating your stress response. So sometimes folks do better, instead of the full box with the inhale pause, exhale pause, just an inhale and an exhale, and for that one I would say, make it a little bit longer, breathing in, breathing out. Breathe in for five seconds, breathe out for five seconds, or just lengthen your exhale to communicate a little more of the to the parasympathetic system for a shift, and then pay attention to what you feel in your body Breathing. That exhale is going to send more of that information to your parasympathetic system, more of that request for change. For the rest, digest, calming system to activate. And so if you're going to do that something, I would do one to two ratio. So inhale for three, exhale for six, or inhale for four, exhale for eight, etc. And then again pay attention to what you feel in your body Tense, tight, clenched jaw, shoulders up around your ears hunched forward. That's my go to notice that I'm just like in a standing fetal position. Then I notice that. And why am I standing like this? It's because if that is your state, if you're in a protective state, your body just does whatever it does if you're not paying attention. So shift that and if you have a moment to write that all out like in your journal or in your notes app or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:This is today's recipe for interrupting the stress cycle Pause, breathe, feel and then, if you have time, write it out. It doesn't have to be complicated to work. It doesn't have to be a whole production or look like something specific to work, but you do have to do it for it to work. A reminder to you, if you need it, and certainly to myself today. I am going to leave it there for today, wishing you a beautiful week, and every time I say that, I think about Tabitha Brown, and she says something along the lines of like, have a great day, but even if you, even if you can't, don't you dare go messing up anyone else's.
Speaker 2:And I love that so much because maybe today sucks and I don't want you to like, you know, toxic positivity, you're way out of that. Like only positive vibes. You can only have a good day, whatever. Someday suck Some days. You just need to feel the feels and then try again tomorrow. But don't take that on on anyone else. That is yours to be responsible for. All right, that's it until next time. Thank you so much for stopping by for a visit today. If you enjoy the show. Please do share it and maybe go give it a review if you have a few seconds. Endlessly grateful for every time you all reach out or share something for the reviews that I have Truly, truly honored, and grateful for your time and attention. So until next week we'll do this again, peace.