63. The Surprising Connection Between Your Sleep Mindset and Stress Level | Rebecca Vigelius

In today's episode, we dove deep into the interconnected issues of stress, burnout, and sleep, particularly focusing on midlife women like us. I had the pleasure of speaking with Rebecca Vigelius, a holistic sleep and stress coach, who shared invaluable insights and practical advice on managing these critical aspects of our health and well-being.

We started by discussing how stress can often spiral into sleepless nights, leading to a vicious cycle where lack of sleep increases stress levels, further deteriorating our sleep quality. Rebecca emphasized the importance of understanding the difference between stress and chronic stress, highlighting how chronic stress can lead to significant health issues like cardiovascular problems, diabetes, and mental health struggles.

A significant part of our conversation revolved around practical strategies to manage stress and improve sleep. Rebecca stressed (no pun intended!) the importance of a good "sleep mindset" and not letting stress about sleep contribute to the problem. She shared simple yet effective techniques such as mindful breathing and adjusting our routines to support better sleep hygiene, like avoiding late-night eating and reducing evening screen time.

This episode is packed with actionable advice for anyone looking to manage stress better and improve their sleep, especially during the challenging midlife years. Don't forget to tune in for more episodes where we tackle the big questions and challenges of midlife with practical, empowering solutions.

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Transcript

SPEAKER01: Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. This is the podcast for the midlife woman who's starting to ask herself big life questions like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work? Each week, we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school. And we're figuring out, finally, what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Ever notice that when you're particularly stressed out that it's hard to sleep? Your mind is racing when you go to bed. What's on tomorrow's to-do list? Is there enough time to prep for next week's presentation? Did you remember to pay the bills? Did I lock the back door before I went to bed? I don't know about you, but I can be dead ass tired, struggling to keep my eyes open. But when my head hits that pillow, my mind slips into overdrive. And that's just getting to sleep. Staying asleep is a whole other thing. If I wake up at 2 a.m., then it seems like there's a lot of heavy lifting to do before I fall back to sleep. There's that conversation I had two weeks ago that I have to replay over and over again to make sure I didn't say something wrong. And then I start wondering about the pre-travel vaccination requirements for traveling to Africa. And then how was Velcro invented? And it's I have to figure out a way to cure cancer before I can go back to sleep. And also in midlife, I'm finding that sleep is harder to come by. It's this vicious cycle. I'm so stressed that I don't sleep. And because I'm not sleeping well, I'm even more stressed. In today's episode, I'm talking with Rebecca Vigelius, a certified sleep and stress coach. Rebecca discusses her holistic approach to helping midlife women reduce stress and burnout. Of particular interest is the connection between stress and sleep and why getting a good night's sleep is so important for midlife women. You will love her explanation of what a sleep mindset is and why you need to get you one. This is practical information that we have needed for a while now. Instead of someone else telling us that we just need to be a little less stressed and expecting us to figure out how to do that on our own, Rebecca shares practical tools and information to help us reduce the stress, avoid burnout, and sleep better along the way. 

Rebecca, I am so excited to have you here today to talk all things stress and burnout for midlife women. I feel like as women, we have just kind of replaced that I'm crazy busy badge with the I'm so stressed out badge. So I, for one, really need this information. The topic is super timely for me. So I really appreciate you being here today.
SPEAKER00: Thanks, Laurie. I know it seems weird, but I love talking about stress. So I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01: It's an Amazon proof business, I guess. Right. Will you do me a favor and just please introduce yourself to the School of Midlife audience and tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am Rebecca Vigalius. I'm a holistic sleep and stress coach, also a change psychology specialist and specializing working with women who are going through the perimenopause-menopause transition as well. I help, you know, powerhouse women who have been going through burnout reverse them and then be able to be continue to be successful and thrive without sacrificing all the things that they have built up in their lives. they're proud of, whether it's their businesses or their careers or, you know, whatever the case may be. Because I think there's this belief that we burn out, we get stressed out, we burn out, and then we kind of have to burn it all down. And I, I'm of the belief that you can, yeah, you can have burnout and ambition. You know, you can be ambitious without burning out and have success without having to sacrifice all of those things that we've worked so hard to achieve and, and become in our lives.

SPEAKER_01: Well, then let's let's just dive right into it, because I think everything that you just said resonates with so many of the listeners. Maybe maybe to start out, what are the main causes of stress and burnout among high achieving midlife women?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, we we even just kind of touched on it a little bit. It's that it's this idea that we have to that we have to do it all and that we have to sacrifice ourselves and our own well-being and our health to help everyone around us. And what happens is we end up we go down this path and we. You know, we end up doing all these things and creating these lives that we really want. And in the process, kind of lose ourselves. And that starts to create the chronic stress, which is what we don't want. Some stress is good for us, but chronic stress is 100 percent not good for us. So it's, yeah, it's, I mean, at its core, it's this belief about whether we are, this is what I find with the clients that I work with, is like they come in with these stressful, you know, stressful work, family life may be causing some stress, like all these different stressors in our lives, right? And everybody has stress. Like, if you're not, if you don't have stress in your life, you're probably not on this. And so, so it's just a matter of looking at, okay, how did I get to this point? And what can I do to rewrite that? And most of the time, it's looking at whether we believe that we deserve to not be stressed. that whether we deserve to have those moments of self-care, you know, not the spotties, not the tubs, that kind of thing, but really being able to focus on our own well-being, saying no, that kind of stuff. And we just, we get to a point where, where we haven't done that enough for ourselves. And so we, we start to develop chronic stress.

SPEAKER_01: Why do you think it's so hard for women? I mean, you talked about doing all the things for everyone else around us, which is something we talk about a lot here. And this idea that we lose ourselves along the way, you know, we kind of forget what's important to us or what we want, how we define success, what our best life looks like, because we're so busy taking care of everyone else. I want you to talk a little bit more about this idea of do we deserve it? Because I think You know, there's a lot of you'll see painted pictures at Hobby Lobby or wherever that says, I am worth it or I am enough. And I know that women get tired of hearing that, but it's really deeply rooted in this idea that we're not that for some reason we don't deserve it. How can we flip that script a little bit?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's all, a lot of the chronic stress I know was the case for me in particular, like me specifically, was related to this idea of perfectionism, right? And making sure that, you know, and overthinking and making sure that everything I was doing was leading me somewhere, was creating more success, that type of thing. And so I think we get to a point, and I get it, like the Hobby Lobby signs, those drive me nuts too. I'm like, bleh. Here in Canada, we have HomeSense. I don't know if that's a store in the US, but we have HomeSense. And I always say to my husband, like, I don't want a HomeSense house, like full of the sayings and the, you know, that type of stuff. It just drives me nuts. So I get it. I get it. And I think there is a little bit of truth to it that we also don't want to. I 100 percent agree with that. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So how do we like or was your question like, how do we get to the nut of that? Like, how do we actually start to.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, how if we actually understood it and embraced it for ourselves, then we wouldn't need to put it on a piece of or a piece of wood.

SPEAKER_00: Right.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would just be who we were. Yeah. So maybe how can we, you know, you talked about this perfectionism and overthinking and and always doing something to lead somewhere else. I think so much of that resonates with everyone. But then then you also took that and you tied it to chronic stress. So maybe let's take a step back and talk about the difference between stress and chronic stress.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And I, and I kind of know, I know exactly like from what we were talking about just now, I want to, I want to put a pin in that and go, go back to it because I know where you're going with that. And I, yeah. So chronic stress and stress, stress, we need stress. Like our stress response, super important. If I'm driving down the street and a car starts driving towards me, I need my stress response to kick in and move my butt out of the way. Right. That is your stress response. you know, your kid is has fallen down and is bleeding on the sidewalk, you run towards them, that's your stress response, right? Going into a big work presentation, and you're feeling those hurt palpitations, you're, you know, you're getting on a sales call with a potential client and you're feeling like a little bit of sweaty palms, that's your stress response in action. And our stress response is really important because it allows us to have focus and clarity and quick decisions and action. and all those types of things that are really important to doing the things that we want to do. What happens though is because of modern day stressors, because we're on our phones all day long, because we've got so many things that are activating us throughout the day, whether it's work deadlines or issues at home or whatever the case may be, all of these different things kind of combine and we end up stuck in a stress response. We end up stuck in our stress response and we don't recover from it like we are supposed to. So, you know, for example, good stress response, like I mentioned, like a work presentation, say, so you go in, you've got heart palpitations, maybe beforehand there was a deadline to get there and having that deadline was a good stressor because it actually made you prepare for that presentation. You want that. But if you are in chronic stress mode, what's going to happen is you're going to come out of that presentation, regardless of how it went, even if it went really well, your body kind of stays in this like heightened alert place and you can't come down from it. And that combined with all like what happens is because of all of the modern day stressors that we have, So many of us are stuck in that stress response and it's creating issues for us. It's creating issues like overthinking and ruminating and high functioning anxiety and health issues, you know, cardiovascular issues, higher rates of diabetes, like all these types of things are associated with chronic stress being that we're stuck in that stress response. But that's the difference. So stress is good. We need it. And when we get stuck there, When we've got chronic stress, that's when we start to see those issues.

SPEAKER_01: And you talked on it real briefly. Let's talk about how stress and I think when we're talking about stress, let's just agree that we're going to talk about chronic stress, because it sounds like there is good stress and we need that. But let's talk about the bad stress. So how does chronic stress then impact the body and mind and overall well-being? of women in, during their midlife years?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, it's just, it's kind of the, the combination of everything that we've got going on in our midlife, right? So we're still in the midst of our careers. We might be business owners or maybe we're, you know, executives or whatever the case may be. We still, a lot of us in midlife these days have children at home that we're caring for. Maybe we have parents who are aging and we're still or we're starting to have to care for our own parents. There's all these different things that are happening to create this chronic stress. We're not allowing ourselves to come down out of the stress response or doing the things that we need to do. And so what that does is when we get into that heightened stress response constantly and have this chronic stress, it is those things that I touched on briefly, you know, we start to experience things like high functioning anxiety. We've got, we all of a sudden are procrastinating on things that we know we need to get done. We have find it hard to make decisions, you know, when it's important things that we know we want to do. But we have a hard time making those decisions. We end up making a decision and then constantly overthinking it or ruminating on it. You know, and then there's yeah, there's the health stuff to the physical health stuff. So, you know, for me, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my in my shoulders and lower back, what felt unexplained. Now I know, now I know what a lot of it is. You know, things like, yeah, yeah, pain and you'll have to turn a father. That's what happens to with a little bit of brain fog.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So before you mentioned cardiovascular issues.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah. And higher rates of diabetes. I mean, there's the list goes on and on weight gain, troubled sleeping. Yeah. Just the list goes on and on. I mean, if you Google effects of stress, you're Yeah, it's it's a pretty scary list. I mean, and it's here's the thing, too, is it's kind of part and parcel, like with symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. So we have to really like this is why I talk about for the women I work with is a lot of this is really kind of digging in and figuring out when you're starting to look for solutions, like what works for you. Right. And and not kind of taking everything face value, but really experimenting with things that make you feel better. I mean, there are some kind of core things that we look at and that we focus on. But yeah, because so many of these symptoms are kind of interconnected, it's important to understand that we're all a little different.

SPEAKER_01: Well, since you mentioned weight gain, OK, I know just enough about this hormone called cortisol to be just a little dangerous, so very little. But, you know, I go on the Internet and I read that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, causes belly fat. And I'm sure it's not as simple as just reduce the stress and then you'll eliminate the body fat. I mean, But even just like, well, just reduce the stress seems kind of like a tall order. But can we put this to rest? Is the belly fat, is that only related to stress? Is that not at all related to stress?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.

SPEAKER_01: What's your opinion on that?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, this is the thing. This is kind of like this is my point for what I just said. It's like I wish there was this golden nugget or this, you know, silver bullet where we could be like I could say, Laurie, yes, you want to lose that, you know, extra seven pounds off your belly. Lower your strengths. Done right. Like I wish that was the case that I could say that there are so many actors that come into play. And is cortisol a potential factor for you? Absolutely. But here's the thing I want to make sure I say this out loud is like cortisol is important. We need cortisol. I remember I remember when I was working with a practitioner years ago and they wanted to do my blood work and measure my cortisol. And I went and got my my blood work measured. And then I went to a friend who is a medical professional. And she and I had a conversation. She's a nurse practitioner. She and I had a conversation about cortisol. And she's like, when did you get your blood work done? And I said, well, I got it done. It went first thing in the morning. She rolled her eyes and she's like, well, of course, your cortisol was higher because it was the morning. That's when cortisol is higher in you. So it's like there's so I know it's hard because there's so much, you know, information out there that is, yeah, that basically just conflicts. Right. And so why would it be?

SPEAKER_01: Why is it higher in the morning?

SPEAKER_00: Because we need to be super alert. So we wake up. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: Got it. Which seems kind of reversed to me. I mean, I would think, oh, you're just waking up, you're so relaxed, and then you've got that three o'clock in the afternoon rush when everything needs to be done by the end of the day and you got to pick up the kids and then you got to make sure the dinner is ordered. And I mean, to me, that makes sense that that's when the stress would be high. But it's so interesting to hear you say that it's also in the morning, which which now that we're talking about it does make sense. But man, I would have never expected that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we want we need we need to be alert. Right. It's time to wake up. This is time. And it's not this is the I think where the conversation around like hormones and especially cortisol, it gets it kind of goes all over the place because, yeah, we do. We've got we need to be on alert and and active kind of mid-afternoon when all this stuff is happening. But at the same time, you kind of you want your energy levels to be starting to kind of not energy levels, but like you're we need to be getting towards sleep as we go towards the evening. Right. And so and our bodies need to be winding down. And that's part of the problem is that we've given ourselves we've created these situations where we're on high alert for most of the day, like your mid afternoon and you're freaking out because you've got all this stuff to do. And so, yeah, a big A big part of that thing I work on with my clients is really noticing kind of, you know, taking pauses during the day during that three o'clock time, right? Like where all everything is needing to happen all at once is taking those moments, kind of having the self-awareness to go, OK, it's three o'clock. My heart rate is high. I just noticed that I basically like ran from my last meeting of the day in my home office, ran into my car to go pick up the kids from school, to rush over to hockey practice, to then, oh crap, I need this still for dinner. And like, so taking a moment for yourself a few times a day to just take a breath, come back into your body, and signal to your brain that it's safe, that you're safe. I know we're kind of getting off the cortisol piece here, but I think this is really important is this is what it's about. Like, this is really what it's you know, when you talk about stress management and stress resilience and I talk about building stress capacity so that because our days are, as you described, and then we get to bedtime and then we might fall asleep like within a few minutes of our heads hitting the pillow and at three o'clock in the morning all of a sudden we're wide awake and can't get back to sleep. It's because our cortisol levels, one of the reasons is because our cortisol levels are all over the place and all of a sudden your cortisol is you know, where it shouldn't be at, you know, the time of the day that you don't want it to be. And so, so yeah, it's, it's about, it's about noticing, it's about stopping and pausing and noticing how you're feeling during the day and taking those moments to change that and to get, to get out of that chronic stress response. We are, so many of us are in

SPEAKER_01: There are so many ways that I want to go, so many directions I want to go from here. And we are going to talk about the 3 a.m. wake-ups, but not yet. You talked about stress capacity, and you also talked about taking a breath. You know, once you notice that your stress is running a little bit high, Is it as simple as taking a breath? Are there certain breathing techniques that can help us out? Are there other effective techniques or self-care practices that you would recommend for women to incorporate into their daily routine?

SPEAKER_00: So, yes, yes and yes. It's funny because, you know, a lot of women will joke like I had a girlfriend. We were talking the other day and and she was telling me about a practitioner that she had worked with. And she's like, and she just kept telling me to just breathe. And I was like, I'm so tired of everybody telling me just breathe. And I kind of giggled. And I thought, you know, I know, again, it's annoying. It's annoying that we just keep saying just breathe. But I will tell you once and for all. The breath is the most important, most accessible portal to what is essentially nervous system regulation and reducing chronic stress, full stop. So lots of other things we can do. But if you want the most accessible, critical tool in your tool belt, it is your breath. And so to answer your question, you know, about different breathing techniques. Yeah, there's a ton of different breathing techniques that we can use. I like to keep it simple. I like to keep it simple. I share breathing techniques with my clients. But I say first and foremost, if you are in a moment of stress or even if you just are sitting in your car waiting for your kid to come out of school or your whenever you're driving between appointments, stop and notice your breath. and take a couple of intentional breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth. Let the exhale be longer than the inhale. What you're doing there is you're signaling to your body that it is safe. And or you're signaling, pardon me, you're signaling to your brain through that action that you are safe. And so therefore, you're basically like the science behind it is you're moving yourself from synthetic to parasympathetic nervous system. You're going from state of slight flight, breathe into rest and digest. And so every time you do that, you you build your stress capacity. Every time you signal that safety to your brain, your brain goes, oh, this life I have of mine, this craziness, it's not it's not a threat. No one's got a gun to my head. It's just a challenge. It's just, you know, and there's a big difference between a threat and a challenge. So so, yeah, breath really important. So in through the nose, out through the mouth, make the exhale longer than than the inhale. the basics. There's lots of different breathing techniques you can use. I like box breathing as well. You've probably heard of that. You can also do like, you know, hand breathing. I'm holding on my hand right now. It's kind of going up my finger and then down my finger and breathing in and out each time you go up and down the finger. I mean, Google it. There's a million breathing techniques that you can use in the moment, but I like to keep it simple. And another another one I will share quickly, because this one always people are always like, oh, I didn't even know, like I did not even notice. So what I always say and when I'm starting client calls or even when I'm starting like a workshop with a group of people, I'll say, take it, just take a quick sec for me. Take a breath in through your nose, out through your mouth. I said, now, just notice, Barbie, where are your shoulders? Can you lower them down a teeny tiny bit? Right. Can you lower them just a bit? And then next. I'm talking right now, so it's all over the place. But where's your tongue in your mouth? Is it planted to the roof of your mouth? Maybe it's planted to the backs of your teeth. Just release it. Let it hang out. Soften up. So those those two things, just taking a beat to lower your shoulders, to notice where your tongue is in your mouth and to relax it a bit. Again, just sending signals to your brain that you're safe, you're it's safe. and that is where we can start building that stress capacity. So we can do that in a moment of stress, but when we do it when we're not stressed out, when we're not in a moment of flight, then that's where we build that, what I say, stress capacity, which is basically building your ability to navigate the hard stuff with ease. So that when stuff does come up, you're not super reactive. You can respond. You can take a beat, make a decision that is rational. You're not like, you know, yelling at the dog for barking or snapping at your partner or whatever. So yeah, those are a couple of, couple of things, but breath. Yeah. I hate to say it. Breath is simple, but so, so important.

SPEAKER_01: I love that you that you go to breath because it seems like so often we're looking for another something we have to go buy or a quick fix or is there a pill I can take or, you know, just just help me deal with the symptoms. Well, if if. If instead of that, we actually go to what is the root cause and breath is free. I started meditating, I don't know, maybe a couple of years ago, and I never thought that I could ever do it because, you know, in my mind, I could never turn off all of my thoughts. And I still don't. But it's it's more of a focus on the breath and regulating that. And, you know, like you talked about, where is your tongue, where what's going on with your shoulders, all that sort of stuff. And it's, it's amazing how just being intentional about breathing is so calming and relaxing. Because I think what most of us don't notice is that we actually hold our breath when we're anxious or stressed out, or we kind of, we start taking these really short little staccato kind of breaths, and we're not actually filling our lungs. And it's this very calming state that we can be in if we just focus just for two or three breaths in. It's really incredible. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00: You touched on a couple of really important points there, Laurie. So I just want to go back to it for a sec is like, so two thing you talk about is like how we so often hold our breath or doing like short, you know, staccato type breathing. And what that's doing when, when we're doing that, we're allowing ourselves to stay in that for a long time. You're basically signaling. to your body that you're in, you know, that there's a threat. So you're signaling lack of safety. And so that's what keeps us in this heightened alert. So when we revert to the longer breaths and those more calming breaths, that's why it feels so good is because we had previously been signaling to our brains that, yeah, we need to be on high alert here by the way we were breathing. So when we change that, it's really important. You also touched on this idea that, you know, we think we have to go out and buy the pill, you know, the supplement we have to and supplements are great. Yeah. Like there's stuff that works, but just by way of example, right? Like there's so many things that we apps we try and all this stuff that we spend money on when we have these things that are so accessible to us. I always say stress mastery is an inside job. Everything you need to. feel more like yourself, to feel less stressed, to make better decisions, to be more responsive, to lower that anxiety, to move out of fearing, you know, maybe depressed, that kind of thing. You have the tools. Your body is so, so smart. Everything you need is inside of you. We so often look to the outside of us for help, right? And we need each other. We need to talk these things out. We need to learn the tools and strategies from other people. We do need medical, you know, we need doctors, all those things. At the end of the day, When it comes to stress and how we respond to stress, so many of the tools are just right there waiting for us to tap into them. And I think that's, yeah, it's just an important reminder for people I needed. I needed to be reminded that as I was going through my healing, my chronic stress. And all of these tools are available to us, you know, whether it's the breath or kind of how we're changing, you know, our thinking about stress or sleep or whatever that may be. It's like all this stuff. It's it's right there. Sometimes we need help to pull it out. But yeah, you've got it like it there. We're all super smart and we can tap into it.

SPEAKER_01: I have a question for you. When was the last time you spent a day focused completely on yourself? Away from the daily grind, the constant emails and text messages, the never-ending question of what is for dinner? Well, if a day sounds good to you, what about an entire weekend away? And before you start thinking that sounds a little too indulgent, let me remind you that you can't take care of everyone else in your life if you don't take care of yourself first. I am thrilled to personally invite you to join me at the next Best Life Retreat in world-famous Sun Valley, Idaho. With more than 15 hours of group coaching to figure out what you actually want in life, how you define success, and help you lay the groundwork for you to create a life that not only makes you happy, but also makes you feel personally fulfilled. There will be incredible group activities like happy hour paint and sips, Morning walks, a sunrise hike, your choice of spa appointments at an award-winning spa. All of this wrapped up in luxury accommodations, gourmet meals, premium drinks, and the best gift bag you have ever seen. I'm telling you, this will be one of the very best weekends of your entire life. To keep the retreat intimate, there are only 10 spots available and when they're gone, they're gone. So go right now, click the link in the show notes and get yourself on the priority list so that you'll be the first to know when we open up registration. I cannot wait to see you in Sun Valley.

So we've talked a little bit about sleep. I want to go there next. We did talk a little bit about the 3 a.m. wake ups, which I know all of us understand that very, very well. I feel like this is kind of a chicken egg sort of thing. I don't get enough sleep and then I feel more stressed. And because I'm more stressed, then I get less sleep. So is it just me or is it, am I just imagining things or does stress actually impact the quality of sleep I'm getting? And I guess related to that question, Can you talk about the connection between sleep and managing stress?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. You're absolutely right. They're totally interconnected. So when we're not getting the sleep we need, we we are more prone to feeling stress. And when we are stressed out, we are more prone to poor sleep. So that's just that's just. And so in terms of kind of how that works. I mean, sleep is sleep is the foundation when it comes to our health. Right. And so when we're sleeping, it is basically restoring everything that we need it to. We need restored on a daily basis. And so when our body isn't getting that restored, that restorative time, we're depleted, we're depleted. And all of the different things that that that require sleep are going to be more What's the word I'm looking for? This is this perimenopause where you like forget words. Sometimes does that happen to you ever? I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_01: It does. And we've been moving my elderly in-laws into memory care. And I keep telling my husband, I feel like dementia is going to… I feel like, you know what? It's funny. I'm not laughing at it.

SPEAKER_00: It's not funny. And I feel like if I had been doing this interview even like three years ago, I would have sat here and kept my mouth closed and just like tried to think of something different to say. Say it out loud like this happens. Yes. Yes. You forget words, right? You forget your train of thought. And this is just this is life. And so I think, you know, I know we're talking about sleep and stress, but I just want to say out loud, I think this is really important because we don't often admit or talk about this and just fricking laugh at it like. Yes, this is part of life and it's okay. And this is where like I've released perfection in my life, which has made a huge difference. And so had I not done that, I would not be able to be having this laugh with you right now about the fact that I can't forget a freaking word or can't remember a word, right? Like, there you go again. So anyhow, what were we talking about? No, just kidding. Sleep, yes, sleep and stress. So sleep being, you know, the foundation for everything from kind of our mood and yeah, our impulses, our creativity, like all of this stuff. So when we're not getting that restorative sleep, all of those things can kind of they diminish, the quality of those things diminishes. And as it does, our stress can ramp up and those stress hormones can come into play when we don't want them to. So, yeah, so sleep is sleep is is imperative. And when we talk about things like self-care, right, like this is what I'm talking about is things like you know, practicing self-awareness, mindfulness, really focusing on making sure you are getting a good sleep at night. And, and understanding like part of the thing with sleep too is this is, yeah, going a little bit deeper on the stress sleep connection. But when we are, I talk a lot about sleep and stress mindset because our perception of sleep and our perception of stress actually play a big role in all of this. So, So if you are stressed out about not getting enough sleep, you are actually going to sleep worse. It's just, it's just how it goes. So our minds start to kind of, you know, spiral about getting a good sleep at night. You're probably going to sleep worse if that's the case. And so it's this like vicious cycle. So when we can, so we work a lot on kind of sleep and stress mindset. in my one-to-one program because we want to make sure that when we are having trouble sleeping, we're not allowing the stress about that to affect it even more, which can, which can happen.

SPEAKER_01: It's just, yeah, it's a fit. It's absolutely a thing. I, I, I've got one of these Oro rings. Yes. And it's when I first got it, when I first bought it, I bought it because I wanted to understand my sleep. How am I sleeping? Now I'm looking at it simply as data because you are 100% correct where even if I would have eight hours of sleep and I would look at my app in the morning that said, Oh, you, you know, you didn't have much deep sleep. You like the quality of my sleep was poor. Then all of a sudden I went from Oh, my God. I thought that I you know, I I had all of this great sleep. I feel great. But because my cortisol was spiking because I'm waking up, but I'm feeling good, it's a good stress to well, shit, I didn't sleep well at all. This is going to be a terrible day. I mean, and then how. How am I going to function? So it is interesting that those two can inform one another and an anxiety about, say, stress. And am I getting enough sleep? It is chicken egg, I think they go together. So they're so intertwined.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh no, they absolutely are. And I will often say to my clients if they've got an Oura Ray or even if they're just using their Apple Watch or whatever, exactly what you just described. So if that is causing them more stress, then ditch it. Just do not hate it. Wear it for your workouts, whatever you want to do. But when it comes to sleep, Data can be extremely important and it can cause more stress, which is going to cause more issues. There's actually the I don't know how long ago it was, but not that long ago, actually coined a term called orthosomnia, which is related to being stressed out about sleep. And so it's a thing like it's it's a thing. And it's all it's all kind of how leads you leave you sleep, because look what happened. Like you you're a device told you you felt good when you woke up in the morning and then your device told you, no, Laurie, it's you're not good. It's like, oh, my gosh, this is what we're letting run in our lives. Right. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And that's just another example of how women give our power away to other things. I do want to touch a little bit more on the data, though. I have noticed as I get older, I have lost my ability to sleep in. And I don't know why that is, but I wake up every day at the same time, regardless of what time I go to bed. I have noticed, and here's where the data comes in, like I can barely even have a glass of wine anymore because I can't get my heart rate down before I go to bed. Even if I'm having a glass of wine with a meal, I notice if I eat later in the day, like eight o'clock at night, which is kind of when we used to, I don't sleep as well. So can you talk a little bit about and I have to believe that this is age related because I used to be able to have, you know, two glasses of wine and I was fine and I used to be able to eat dinner at 830 or nine o'clock at night. But I've got to think that there is some impact on the menopausal transition and our sleep patterns and maybe stress is also combined in there. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I mean, it's all, it's all connected. Oh my gosh. It's all connected. I mean, and that it's just as simple as that. And so when you think about things like, like alcohol, like I have, I have friends who, who have quit, quit drinking altogether because the alcohol, just the way it affects them, you know? Yeah. It's not good. They can't stay.

SPEAKER_01: I've never done cocaine, but this is how I would expect. Like now when I have a glass of wine, my heart just like goes off the charts that I feel like that that must be what it feels like.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting. That's really interesting. I hadn't heard that actually anyone with respect to like the heart rate and the glass of wine. So I can't speak to that specifically. But I'm mainlining sugar, though, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's anyway. No, that's fascinating. I mean, and that's the thing, like our, you know, with going through the menopause transition, obviously our hormones are fluctuating. There's all kinds of changes happening in our body. And so we're basically where we are. Yeah. Our tolerance levels change. Our tolerance levels change. So, you know, I have, I, you know, women say, well, I don't want to give up my glass of wine. I don't like, I enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. I enjoy as part of the, the kind of whole process of it. And like, you know, And I'm like, you know, it's enjoyable. Absolutely. Totally. And so I say, like, well, don't give it up then, because that actually will cause you more stress. Now you're freaking out about the fact that you can't have a glass of wine. It's something that you're thinking about constantly, like, oh, I can't go out for dinner with my girlfriends because I can't have a glass of wine. Like the spiral is real. And so I always say, like, have a glass of wine. Just have it at six or seven. Don't don't still be drinking wine at 10 o'clock at night. Right. Like there are little things that we can do. This is where like, you know, an important thing I think we need to remember, too, in this whole process is like it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Doesn't have to be all or nothing. So if you know that wine affects you the way that we were just talking about, then let's make a tweak and see if we can, you know, or if it is something that you need to actually You feel as though you want to remove from cool. We can do that too. Like you can do that to food as well. You know, I'm the same. Like I cannot eat a meal right before bed. I will lay there awake for hours. Our digestion is different. Like everything is being processed differently than it used to be as we go through midlife. And this is just what happens. things change. And so we have to just modify, like, what are the tweaks? What are the kind of, you know, little shifts we can make that will, and there's a big part of it with, with menopause is like, there are things that we need to look at from a medical standpoint, whether it's, you know, doing the menopause hormone therapy, whatever. But a lot of what we can do to help ourselves through the menopause transition is lifestyle related. And I think, you know, when I when I learned that, I was like, OK, well, this I have choice then I have things that I can, you know, I can tweak in my life that don't have to be complete overhauls, but they can actually make, you know, a pretty good, pretty significant difference. And those things are what we're just talking about, the types of foods we're eating, you know, close to bedtime, the types of, you know, whether we're consuming alcohol or not, you know, how well we're sleeping, the type of movement that we're doing. You know, which which is also really important.

SPEAKER_01: And all of those things that you just mentioned, super good for our brain health. Oh, so it's just it's so intertwined, which is it's all fascinating to me. Do you have any practical tips for improving our sleep or maybe the quality of sleep that we're getting?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I would just, well, I have lots. I'll reiterate the stress piece. You know, if you are finding yourself stressed out about sleep, take a look at that. Take a look at your mindset around sleep and kind of what your, you know, how you think about that. You know, you said something earlier, Laurie, like you have a hard time turning off your thoughts when you're meditating, right? And a lot of people will say the same thing about, about sleep. And so I think, you know, just understanding things like it's not like our thoughts don't actually turn off. That's you're actually still thinking when you're sleeping. So it's not about needing to silence our thoughts in a to be able to go to sleep at night, but doing things like if you if you find yourself laying there before bed or, you know, right when you lay down. I know this used to happen at 3 a.m. or 3 a.m. Yeah. Like just write some stuff down like this is what has really helped me over the last few years is I would lay down and then all of a sudden start thinking about all the things I So it'd be like, there's kind of two different things, like to-do list steps, and then there's stuff that you're worried about. And if you can write that out, it is a very helpful process. So I would say, practically speaking, yeah, do, you know, if you can, if you can do that, fantastic. you start looking at getting better quality sleep, one of the really important things is to look at your circadian rhythm health. OK, so this is something where basically like when we have our circadian rhythm health is dialed in, we're able to, you know, we fall asleep when we need to fall asleep. We are awake when we need to be awake. We feel energized throughout the day. One of the main practices that I've incorporated over the last few years is getting natural light in the morning. Super important for your circadian health. So bending anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, getting some natural light. I've made it a habit to take my dog for a walk every morning, regardless of whether it's 10 minutes or sometimes it'll go for an hour. But just getting outside, getting the sunlight, and I say sunlight, but it can be cloudy out, it can be raining, just natural light, not through a window, not through sunglasses, getting that in your eyes. I won't go into the big science around it, but essentially what that does is signal to your body, okay, it's time. It's time to be awake. It's time to be awake. Once we send that signal, then the body will start doing everything that it needs to do to move you towards being ready to go to sleep at night. And so that natural light in the morning, really important if you can incorporate it with a walk, great, getting that additional movement in is always helpful too. And the one last thing I was going to say is just in and around Wake time. So I know a lot of folks will use the opportunity, myself included. I've done this like this. And I do do this every now and again. Still, like you use the weekend to, you know, quote unquote, catch up on sleep. Right. We can't really catch up on sleep. But when we allow ourselves to sleep late, we'll just, yeah, say late, basically, like if your alarm's going off at 6 a.m. every morning, Friday, and then you don't get up until, say, 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, you are basically jet lagging yourself. every week. Say more about that. Yeah. So from a sleep perspective, you want to think about the hours she used, right? Think about it from a jet lag. It's called social jet lag, but it doesn't have to be social related. It can just be you. And so if you're shifting, your body gets used to waking up at a certain time, right? And we can often sleep in on weekends because a lot of us are tired, a lot of us are exhausted. And so being able to get those few extra hours feels good. But then that's why Monday morning can suck so bad when the alarm goes off at six again, because you've essentially jet lagged yourself over the weekend by switching up your body clock. for short periods of time. And so I recommend trying to keep your wake schedule. Some sleep specialists will say, and again, it depends on, you know, the client or the patient and how much they, you know, how much they're suffering from a sleep perspective. But some people will say, like, make sure you go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time. A lot of sleep experts are more along the lines of just if you can keep your wake time consistent, which is what I've seen work with my clients is keep your wake time as consistent as possible to within, you know, an hour or so. Like, oh, my gosh, go ahead and sleep in for an extra hour on the weekend if that feels good. Like, again, I am not an all or nothing kind of person. I say whatever works for you. But that is that can be a factor when it comes to when it comes to how we feel when we wake up. And a lot of people don't don't get that. They think, OK, I'm just it's the weekend. I'm going to sleep until 10 a.m. and get caught up. But that's why you feel like crap on Monday morning and Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning. And then all of a sudden you're like, OK, I'm back on track. It's Thursday, Friday, and then, oh, I'm sleeping in again on Saturday and Sunday. And it screws us up.

SPEAKER_01: That is so interesting. I have never heard it explained that way, but it makes perfect sense. I guess then I've got one more question about sleep and then I want to head in a different direction. But so if we've got this kind of jet lagging ourselves, do we do the same thing with naps or are naps in a different category? I mean, because I feel like You know, we used to take naps when we were young and then then we got old and responsible and there were no times for naps anymore. But gosh, there are some times where it's the mid afternoon. I have not slept well for a series of days. It's I'm coming off a really. big couple of weeks at work or something. And it's like, all I can do is think, I got to go lay down for a little bit. Yeah. Am I sabotaging my sleep at night then? Or what do you think about naps?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, totally depends. So if you are like, first of all, we want to make sure like if you're exhausted all the time during the day, and you feel like you need to nap, this is kind of a daily thing, then I would want to look into that and go, okay, why is she so exhausted during the day consistently? If you've just come off a big period of grinding in and out and working some longer hours, which we do because that's normal, totally cool, nothing wrong with that. And you feel like you want to catch a 20 minute cat nap during the day, one day during the week. No problem. Take your nap. Here's the thing with naps. It's kind of like, you know, if you think about it, almost like hunger, right? It's a similar type thing. So a mistimed nap is almost like a mistimed sleep. So if you eat a snack, a decent-sized snack at, say, 4.30 in the afternoon and dinner is scheduled for 6, you're not necessarily going to be hungry for dinner at 6, depending on how your body works and all different factors. But generally speaking, right? So it's the same kind of thing. Like if you take a nap, during the day, say it's at maybe four o'clock, you're like, I really need to lay down before I start making dinner or go out for dinner, whatever the case may be. That may affect your sleep that night. But if you keep it to, you know, 15 to 20 minutes and you have it, you know, kind of early enough in the day, it shouldn't be an issue. So Bobby is like, I hate it, but there's always different factors to all these questions. There's so many different things that go into talking about naps and that type of thing. There's no straight answer all the time. But essentially, I like to think about them, like I said, like a So if you're going to have a light, see if you're starving and you want to throw out a shrine full of grapes at four o'clock, that's probably not going to affect your dinner. Right. But don't eat a shrine full of grapes, two boiled eggs, some crackers and, you know, M&M's and some M&M's and some popcorn. Like kind of don't have an hour long nap at three or four o'clock if you want to sleep well. have like set your set your timer or alarm for 15 or 20 minutes. And that's all you need. Naps are actually awesome. They can be super restorative. Just make sure that, yeah, you're not you're not laying down and sleeping for an hour and a half, you know. only a few hours before you're going to bed because we need that wake time for the sleep chemicals and all the things that need to happen in our body in that sleep process. We need that to happen on a consistent basis for us to get to bedtime and want to fall asleep. It's really important. So yeah, that's what I have to say about naps. Great. And just be careful.

SPEAKER_01: that we can keep our naps. I love it. OK, so we've talked about stress. We've talked about how that impacts sleep, how they kind of go hand in hand. I want to finish with this idea that we all understand what overwhelm is. We all know what burnout feels like. But when does stress become burnout?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And burnout, it has been more associated with work stress. You'll notice, you know, if you, if you, that's why, you know, I associate it with, or why the clients who I work with typically are kind of, like I say, like powerhouse women who are in these high stakes, high stress positions. I, you know, if we're there's a lot of different ways to describe it, but I think at the end of the day, like chronic stress, burnout, whatever you want to call it, if you're experiencing these symptoms, we need to take a look at it.

SPEAKER_01: Sounds like maybe the chronic stress and burnout can be used interchangeably in certain circumstances.

SPEAKER_00: So there are people who use them interchangeably. There are people who make very distinct, yeah, think that they're distinct. Burnout, like I said, typically associated with work stress.

SPEAKER_01: So then if you've got a midlife woman experiencing chronic stress or now overwhelmed, whatever we want to call it, this just seems like it's one more thing to add to our to-do list. It's like reducing the stress. Maybe let's finish here, but can you talk about why getting our stress in check, getting that dialed in now in midlife may seem impossible or just like an impossible thing to do, but why it might actually be the best time for us to do that?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always think of midlife as an opportunity, right? And so this is an opportunity for us to to really take a look at how we want to feel as we head into the next chapter of our lives. I think that there's an opportunity here to to reassess and realign and really think about, like, Yeah. How do we want to show up for ourselves in the next in the next phase, current phase, in this current phase and as we go through the rest of our days? And I really think like, you know, we say to ourselves, I don't have time. I don't have this. I don't like there's just too many things going on. When when will there be? That's my question. Preach. When will there be? So if we don't do it now, when the hell are we going to do it? We're not. We're not going to do it. So we are strong, powerful. human beings, we are women in midlife. We have been through so much. We have watched women come before us who have been through so much. Let's take a lesson from them, too. You know, like I look at I look at my mom who does suffer from chronic pain. She had, you know, trauma throughout her life. She's suffering now, you know, and I look at her and I feel for her and I want my life to be different. I want to feel different. I want to show my, you know, my daughter that it can be different. I want to set an example. You don't have to have a daughter to to want to do this either. You just yeah. I mean, I could go on and on about this. I think it's just midlife is an opportunity for us to show up for ourselves. And and that's it. Full stop.

SPEAKER_01: Love that. Rebecca, for our listeners who want to learn more about working with you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just hit up my website, rebeccavagelius.com is a great place to start. I also like to hang out on Instagram at RebeccaVagelius, so you can come by there and say hi. Those are two great places. If you pop on my website, you can come hang out with me in my email community. I have a weekly-ish newsletter that goes out called The Rested Edge, and so you can sign up there and that's where I drop nuggets and bits and bytes on sleep and stress and midlife and burnout and overwhelm and kind of moving through these things in a way that is not all or nothing, that it doesn't have to mean totally burning it all down or changing your life and lifestyle, but really just enhancing and sorting it out as we go.

SPEAKER_01: We will make sure that there are clickable links in the show notes for both your website and your Instagram account. We end every episode with the same two questions. Are you ready? I am so ready. Question one is, if you could go back to your 30-year-old self, knowing all of the information you know now, having all the life experience, you've learned all the lessons along the way, what advice would you give to her?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I would go back to the message that I share, which is that, you know, some variation on stress mastery is an inside job. I think we look so much, we so often look outside of us. We think that all the things around us are affecting us and we can't change those so we can't change our situation. But I've come to understand that we can change our situation, we can change how we feel, we can change our behaviors and our actions based on working within ourselves and our inner operating systems. I think if I'd known that sooner, I would have saved a shit ton of money on quick fixes and all that stuff. So I could just, yeah, that would be, that would be the one thing, like everything you need is inside of you. And if it's from a stress perspective, stress mastery really truly is an inside job.

SPEAKER_01: I'm not laughing at you. That is a knowing chuckle. I also would have saved lots of money and time. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. Question number two, what have you loved most about being a midlife woman? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: We should have asked this at the beginning because I have so many things. Take all the time you want. Well, I honestly, it's that it's just a new level of self-awareness and being able to release all of the things that kept me stuck. in my 20s and 30s, I think had I, I'm embracing like this, not having to be perfect in what I'm doing, just kind of going for it, taking risks, like not waiting to do things. You know, I just, I actually just talked about this in a post on my Instagram. you know, why wait? Right. So I'm embracing not waiting. And I've been doing that for the last few years, I think. Yeah. And it's just resulted in so many cool things. Like, honestly, I think I'm laughing more and doing more adventurous stuff and getting a better sleep. I am less feeling less stressed, even though I still have major stressors in my life. And so

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would be it. Love that. It's it's it's pretty good. I mean, I think that we were a lot of us were raised with the idea that you get to midlife and it's pretty much all downhill from there. But I love how this generation is really embracing it and making it something very special. So. Thank you so much for being here. I have loved our conversation. Me too, Laurie. Thank you for having me.

Do you ever wish you had a community of midlife women you could go talk to about those big life questions that seem to pop up in midlife? Like, what do I want? What's my legacy? What's next for me? A community of women to have candid conversations with about all the things that come at us in midlife that no one else seems to be talking about. Changes in our bodies related to menopause, sure, but also changes in our relationships and family life and careers. Well, great news! The School of Midlife has launched a book club called Your Next Chapter. Each month, we'll be reading and discussing books that relate to the unique experiences of midlife women. It's absolutely free to join, and we'd love to have you meet up with us and add your voice to these important discussions. And this isn't like other book clubs, because if you didn't have time to finish the book, but you're still interested in the conversation, absolutely join us anyway because you'll still get so much out of the conversation. The book club is free to join, but you'll need to sign up. Click the sign up link in the show notes and you'll automatically receive your invitation to join us. Get signed up, grab this month's book, and start reading. And we'll look forward to seeing you at the next book club discussion, where together, we're helping each other make midlife our best life.