How I Coach Myself Through Holiday Exhaustion (And How You Can, Too!)

Ever found yourself feeling overwhelmed and fatigued as the holiday season approaches? Trust me, you're not alone. 

In this episode, I'm sharing a personal experience with managing my holiday exhaustion using the CALM method. I'll take you through the steps of Connect, Assess, Loosen Your Grip, and Make a Decision. Discover how I applied this simple, practical method just last week to address my fatigue, apathy, and perfectionism when faced with Christmas decorating. 

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed now or preparing for potential stress in the future, these simple yet effective techniques can make a significant difference. 
Your version of "Christmas Crazy" may not look quite like mine, but you can also adapt these steps to your own unique brain and your personal holiday challenges.

So, please join me in this heartfelt conversation on finding calm amidst the holiday chaos. And let's remember that while it's OK to feel overwhelmed, we can also empower ourselves with the right techniques to find peace and enjoyment in these beautiful moments. 

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Need help applying this to your life? Ready for more strategies like this, but personalized to YOU? Set up your free consult and let’s talk about your unique situation and how coaching can help:
https://getcoached.jennyhobbsmd.com/consult
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Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high achieving moms.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hey, there it's Jenny. Welcome back to another episode of Rethink your Rules. We are going to continue on our holiday themed episodes here, because it is the first week of December. I am really excited to talk with you about how I manage my own mind this past week when it came to some holiday decorating and some fatigue that I had. It's going to be very practical and very much based on my own personal experiences, but I know that you will be able to relate to this because this is something that my clients and friends and I talk about all the time.

Speaker 2: 0:54

I am going to be using again as a guide this calm method that I've talked about before. You don't have to go back and listen to the previous episodes. I'll talk about it here as I go through. But, just continuing along this really simple framework that any of us can use in the moment to feel better, I'm going to go through the calm method. It's an acronym C-A-L-M. I'm going to talk about how I used it for myself when it came to Christmas decorating. I'll run through that as I'm doing that. I want you to maybe think of something that's in the back of your mind that's stressing you out about the holidays, if nothing comes to mind right away, that's no problem. Of course you're probably listening to this because at some point you've been overwhelmed or you think that might happen in the future. So you can keep this in mind for that. Or maybe, after you hear me go through this, some things will pop into your mind as well. With that, let's jump into what happened with me this past week.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Last week I got home from working a stretch of nights at my new job. I actually have about 12 days off. Normally I only have 10, but our schedules are kind of mixed up, so I had 12 days off. At home. I had all these plans to get all these things done. My family had started the Christmas decorating, but I was going to help them continue that. Of course, with December starting, we were going to be getting out our advent calendar. I also had a lot of things I wanted to do with my business and my clients and all the things. I was home for a couple of days and I was kind of tired, which was understandable. I was switching from my night shifts back to my day life and everything. At the same time, I had a couple meetings. I met with my coach. I had this whole plan outlined to get all this stuff done. I had everything ready Then about halfway through the week. Last week I just was not feeling it.

Speaker 2: 2:33

I was so tired. I felt physically tired, I felt emotionally tired, I felt unmotivated. I felt like I knew in my head that I had been excited about holidays and all these things and about my business. I just all I wanted to do was sleep. What ended up happening was I would think oh, I'll get out of this soon. This will probably pass by tomorrow after I sleep a bit, or maybe my schedule just needs to get readjusted a little bit more. By the time the weekend rolled around, I realized you know what. I just am really, really tired.

Speaker 2: 3:07

I decided to use my calm method that I've been talking about I've mentioned it here on the podcast and I've worked on it with my clients. I decided to use it for myself. If you'll remember, the first step of the calm method is to connect with yourself and with your body. As I did that, I have a kind of a key question with all of these steps in the call method. So the key question here for me was like what's going on? And I really just sat there for a second. I was like what's going on? What am I feeling here emotionally and physically? And, like I said, I was like okay, I'm definitely feeling tired. Is it physical fatigue? I just need more sleep. Is it emotional fatigue? I don't want to do this stuff. I'm not really sure. And I also noticed in there there's a bit of like overwhelms. Another thing I was feeling emotionally and dread, and I think when I filled out my Emotions app the free app I've talked about, I think I finally selected apathy. I felt apathetic, not just tired, but apathetic. I was like I just don't care about any of this, and I want to point out that in the past, what I probably would have done is honestly skip this step completely, like before I've done all this coachy work. I would have just been like I feel tired, but I don't have time to be tired of too much to do, and I would have burned the candle at both ends and had the caffeine and just try to kind of get as much done as I could. But I've learned that that's not really the result that I like to have in my life and it doesn't really get me where I want to go. So I have to remind myself in those moments okay, let's connect for a minute, let's check in and see what's going on, because, to be honest, there are times where I do feel tired, but it's maybe not that I need sleep. It's maybe something else is going on. Maybe I feel tired but I have an important deadline and it's worth it to me to power through that feeling of being tired to meet the deadline. So it's not always the right decision for me to just drop everything and go sleep when I'm tired, but I also know that often I tend to not pick that when it is the right option, right. So the first step is just that really important step you can do for yourself connecting with yourself and your body and see, like, what's really going on, what's the matter, and being honest with yourself. And when I was honest with myself I was like the number one thing that's the matter here is I'm physically tired and there are a lot of other things going on that are making me feel apathetic and emotionally exhausted. But I also know that I kind of need to solve for the sleep part first and then might be easier to sort out why I just don't feel motivated about decorating the tree and all this stuff. So that's kind of the first step and the second step after connect.

Speaker 2: 5:35

In our call method, the A is to. In the past episodes I said ask. But another way to look at this is assess. So you need to assess your brain and your thoughts and what's really going on and why this is a problem. And so, as I did that, I really noticed.

Speaker 2: 5:49

Okay, the question I was saying is like why is this a problem for me? Well, why is it a problem for me to be tired? Really, well, I feel kind of guilty because I have these ideas that I should have Christmas decorations up early, and I have these ideas that I should help my kids, and I have these ideas that the tree should look a certain way. And when I think about doing the tree, another thing that is a problem for me is I feel like gosh, it's going to be a lot of work because I have to do the ribbon a certain way and I'm the only one in the family can really do it, and that has to be done before the kids can put on ornaments. And so now I'm also noticing why is that a problem for me? Well, the kids really want to do it, and now it's a problem for me because I'm holding everyone up, because I need to sleep, and it also feels like it's a problem for me because it's like my fault that I'm such a perfectionist that it has to take me so long. So notice how, as I really dig into why this is a problem for me and this is why I say to ask that question numerous times there's a lot of reasons that this is becoming like a bigger problem than simply like a very straightforward. I'm tired, I'm going to sleep and not worry about the tree and the decorations.

Speaker 2: 6:50

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm spending all my time like spinning on this. But when you stop and connect with your body and then assess your thoughts in your brain like this, you will find that there are these unconscious thoughts back there that maybe are in the forefront, but they are actually affecting you a little bit. So I just kind of noticed for myself and again, I didn't like sit down and write this all out in the moment, I just kind of like evaluated it a little bit. Okay, like look at all these thoughts that I'm having that are making me feel even more emotionally exhausted and apathetic about this. I mean, even if you think about it, it's like well, I'm just in the habit because I've been doing the ribbon this way for 10 years and it feels like how I always do it and it's a part of my identity. And what's interesting is, when I really thought about it some more, as kind of the days went on and I was thinking about why this was kind of disappointing to me to be in this position.

Speaker 2: 7:42

I realized that I also have this identity where I really love Christmas and it's one of my biggest, most joyful times of the year. And I'm noticing I don't feel the way that I used to feel about it right now, and I also felt that way last year. Last year I was going through a really difficult time with my job and various reasons, and I honestly felt very blah about Christmas. It was the first year we did a Christmas card in many years. And then, a couple of months ago, as this holiday season was coming up, I noticed I was getting excited about it and I remember thinking, oh, I'm so glad I joked with my friends, I'm so glad I'm not really dead inside. Last year was just a fluke. This year I'm excited again. That feeling of apathy is gone. And so now this past week I was like wait, I thought that I was done with this apathetic feeling. I thought this year was going to be different. Why is this feeling coming back? And so, if you notice, even there my brain is making it a problem, a bigger problem than it needs to be, like maybe it's OK that life changes and kids get older and maybe after 15 years of doing the tree and the ribbon this way. Maybe it's OK, it's time for something different and maybe that's not a problem. But so just notice that I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit on these steps as we do. This is how we overwhelm ourselves. So I connected with myself what's the matter? What's wrong? Kind of noticed that, ok, I'm tired, I don't want to do this, I'm apathetic, and I assessed why, which was all those thoughts that I just described to you, and I may have even breezed over this. Part of your assessing step, too, is like OK, let's be realistic here. Have I gotten enough sleep? So, if I had been averaging eight plus hours of sleep and I was feeling that way, that's a totally different conversation than what was really going on which, when I looked at my sleep app that tracks this, I think my average sleep was like at five hours, five and a half hours. So part of my assessment was like OK, well, it may just be that I haven't had enough sleep, and there's also all these other thoughts on here, right? So now I have multiple things I found in my assessed step and again, this was not something I spent a lot of time on.

Speaker 2: 9:41

I literally was like in this fog of being tired, I connected, kind of noticed that I was really tired, notice that there was probably some other stuff going on, right, I assessed and one of the first things I did was, like, ok, I didn't get enough sleep, I need to prioritize that. I'm learning that. And at the same time I kind of noticed in the back of my mind there's a lot of other stuff right, which I just listed off to you. But then I pretty quickly went to the next step, which is to loosen your grip on things. Right, and so for me in that moment, that was kind of where I said, ok, I'm going to loosen my grip here. Why, like, first of all, why can't I just go to sleep and let this go for a day or two or a week? Right, like, it was easy enough to loosen my grip in that moment to needing to get it done right away, needing there's a bunch of stuff on my list that I kind of wanted to do, that didn't have a deadline, right, so I loosened my grip on what I could right away. That was easy, low hanging fruit for me, right, stuff. That was just the reality.

Speaker 2: 10:36

And part of loosening your grip is stopping arguing with reality, which I've talked about a lot and the reality is that I'm a working mom, I work nights, I've got a lot of things I want to do, both professionally and personally, with my kids and at the holidays, and like. So part of loosening my grip was to say I'm going to stop arguing with the reality that, like, I don't have time for everything I want to do, and I'm just going to accept it. Ok, I don't have time for everything I want to do this week, I don't have the energy to do everything I want to do this week, and I'm going to let that be OK, I'm not going to resist it, I'm not going to beat myself up, I'm not going to ask myself you know, bring in all this drama that my brain wants to offer. I'm going to keep this super simple. I'm going to accept the reality that I need more sleep. Right, this may sound super obvious to you, but I got to tell you.

Speaker 2: 11:17

I have some clients that I think, with our ADHD, we can all relate to this. Like it's hard for me to realize I'm not super human and I'm not a robot and I just need more sleep and there's not enough hours in the day to do all the things I'd love to do and that's actually OK, like, let's just not fight that so much, let's accept our brain and our body. So I loosened up on those expectations and judgments of myself a little bit and just allowed myself to accept the reality of starting a new job and having the life I have. I also decided OK, next step, make a decision. That's our M. So after I've done all those steps, I've connected with my body, I've assessed what's going on with my brain, I have loosened my grip. Now I'm at make a decision.

Speaker 2: 11:58

My decision at that point was I'm going to sleep first, make sure that I get enough sleep, tank myself up and then reevaluate. And so I did. I tanked my sleep up over the next several days, and then one of the things about the call method is then you go back and repeat it. So then I decided, after I had tanked up my sleep, I reevaluated, I connect to it with myself, what's going on again? And so I came back to some of those same thing. Okay, I'm still feeling a little bit tired and apathetic. I'm still feeling like I don't really care that much about decorating the tree the way I normally do. I've solved the physical tired problem. At least to some degree it's a little better, and that's still there. And so then, okay, now I'm going to assess again.

Speaker 2: 12:40

So I mentioned to you earlier all those other thoughts that were behind there in the back, the behind the scenes. Now that I had my sleep, I was like, do I still think some of these things, or were some of those just my tired brain? I was like no, I think I have actually uncovered a bunch of beliefs I had about how the tree has to look and who has to do it and how long it has to take. And I noticed, gosh, this is coming back to one of my common unspoken rules that I have for myself, which is this perfectionism where I can't just do the tree quickly because when I start doing it I'll have to do it this way. That, I think, is quote, unquote, right, which means that when I think about doing it it sounds longer and more overwhelming and more difficult. But I'm making it that way because of my unspoken rule about how it has to be done.

Speaker 2: 13:19

So I noticed all that was there in my assessed step and then I went to loosen in my grip and so here I was like, okay, I'm going to loosen my grip, I'm going to try on some new beliefs, like maybe it doesn't matter what my tree looks like, right? Maybe no one is coming to visit our house besides my kids and a couple of friends from across the street. Like, who cares if it looks the same way? And maybe it's okay if the family's needs and my needs and expectations about Christmas have changed in the last you know 15 years. What's the worst that will happen? This is another great question to ask yourself when you're in this listening your grip. What am I even so, worried about happening?

Speaker 2: 13:53

I was worried about, like, the decorations on the tree not matching. And again I was like, okay, do I have to stare at them the whole time? If it really bothers me, could I just adjust a few things later? Sure, could I just let the ribbon not be on the tree and it would still be beautiful. Yes, right. Then I even started thinking what else might be true. Maybe my daughter would actually enjoy decorating the tree. Maybe my kids have ideas they want to share. Maybe they'd enjoy being able to have their own ornaments on their instead of my stuffy old way, right?

Speaker 2: 14:18

And so I really thought through, like, where can I loosen up on this and look at it differently, right, and even with my thoughts about like, oh, am I dead inside? Notice how, like my whole identity was really getting into that, I could loosen my grip on that. Right, like sure, jenny, maybe you're dead inside and your identity has changed and it's really sad and tragic, or what else might be true, right, this is a really powerful question to ask. It also might be true that it's totally normal, after you've gone through so many life changes and so many years, that, like the stuff that you focus on in the holidays may change. Like, maybe that's just a normal part of life and doesn't mean I'm dead inside. Right, maybe I've grown and changed and evolved and maybe that's part of life. Right, maybe we don't always have to have every tradition look the same. So, you know, I'm adopting those beliefs.

Speaker 2: 15:02

I wouldn't say I'm like they're 100%, but I was able to then go on to the M of, make a decision, and I was like you know what? As I've thought through all this, I think the right thing to decide for me right now that feels really good to me is I'm going to let the kids decorate how they want and I'm going to sit there. I'm going to be with them, I'm going to get the connection, I'm going to be reading my book and whatever happens happens. And you know what? It was great, they decorated, they had a great time. They actually, part way through, asked me to do the ribbon because they really wanted it. And they wanted to do blue ribbon and I wanted. I thought it doesn't really match with the red and gold ornaments, but I was like whatever, I decided I didn't care and I decided it doesn't have to be perfect and I did feel like I wanted to help out my daughter with this thing that she wanted, which was the ribbon. So I helped her and I did it. It was super great and fun and the tree looks different than usual, but it also looks great and I also got a lot of joy from that and I felt much more motivated than to tackle a few other things on my list and a lot less exhausted.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Okay, I hope that I know this was. I hope I didn't jump around too much on my little calm method. These things are not always entirely linear. There's some back and forth here, especially when you've been doing this work as long as I have, but I do hope that that was a really nice practical example for you. And listen, you may be listening to this and you're like, oh my gosh, jenny, what are you talking about? You are a crazy person and, yeah, that's one of my versions of Christmas crazy that I like to call it. Everyone has their own version of Christmas crazy or holiday crazy. Yours might look different. You might give two craps about what your tree looks like, but maybe you're worried about getting a perfect gift for your family or hosting an event somewhere, or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 2: 16:42

What I want you to do, as I close this episode up, is really take this system and this example and apply it to whatever is causing you a degree of discomfort, craziness, overwhelm, exhaustion, apathy, whatever it is. Whatever's going on for you this holiday season. Just use the same method and apply it. It doesn't have to be literally the same thing. I'm worried about the whole thing is that we each have our own unique brains that have unique thought patterns and expectations that are often silent and unconscious and we don't notice them until we ask the question. So I'd love for you, if you have something in front of mind, go through. You know, pause this right now. Go through the method for yourself. If you don't have something in mind, that's totally fine. Keep it in mind for future.

Speaker 2: 17:28

And the last thing I'll say is that this connecting with yourself, this first step, you can use it even when you're not in a dire straits or a terrible thing, like it's not like it was the end of the world that I was tired the other day right, it's not like I was freaking out, but what I found is that the connect step allows me to just kind of like scan and assess myself for how I'm feeling. And because I'm in tune with doing that, I noticed this pretty early and I was able to solve for it, rather than letting like, trying to avoid it and ignore it and then letting a couple more weeks go by and then feeling really guilty and frustrated about it and not understanding why I had put it off so long, cause I would have been like avoiding this feeling of apathy and fatigue because I was scared to kind of face all those things I just brought up to you. So, even if things feel okay to you, if you're not in the habit of connecting with your feelings, your emotions, your body, I want to encourage you to just try this first step at various times and connect and say what am I feeling physically and emotionally, what's going on right? And begin to notice those things where you even feel a little bit off, a little uneasy, a little bit stressed, a little bit anxious. It doesn't have to be so severe, but when you begin to notice it earlier and have the time to assess and understand what's going on and then begin to loosen your grip and then begin to make decisions, you'll get in the habit and then you'll be ready to use it when things do get worse, potentially in the future. So I hope that all makes sense and I have some really great stuff for you next week as well. So be sure to come back and listen and, as I've mentioned, this is a great time to get started working with me.

Speaker 2: 18:57

If you're hearing all this and you're like, okay, jenny, but you moved really quickly here and I don't even know how to name all my emotions or I'm trying to loosen my grip, but I just like how can you loosen your grip? Everything matters and everything feels equally important. I got you. That's what I'm here for. I actually have very specific questions and techniques within each of these steps, and so if there's a step where you're struggling, what I do as your one-on-one coaches. I actually help. I pick out from all these tools and techniques that I've used for myself and many, many other people and I say why don't we try this one for you?

Speaker 2: 19:28

This happened with a client just this past week. She had heard my recordings about this call method and she didn't really feel like the things I'd offered on the previous two podcasts really spoke to her. She's like all these other things you said really worked for me. But what you said on your podcast about that didn't really fit. And what was so interesting was, after she talked to me about her situation I was able to say, hey, let's ask this question for you here and we really personalized the method to her situation and her brain from what I had heard, and I was able to give her a tool right away. That was very helpful. So that's the beauty of the one-on-one. That's why it works more quickly than just hearing it on this podcast, because when there's something that doesn't quite fit or doesn't feel right or gets you stuck, I'm able to bring in other ideas and techniques and really work with you and we can go back and forth on that till we get the right thing to get you the fastest results.

Speaker 2: 20:21

So reach out, set up a console, call. I am here, I would love to talk to you and get you started. And remember there are still a few of those discount codes left so you can save $500 on your package before the end of the year. So if you've been thinking about it, why not do it before the end of the year so that you can save a little bit? All right, I hope you have an amazing week and holiday season. I believe tomorrow Hanukkah starts for those of you that are Jewish. So happy celebrating and I'll be back soon. Thank you, thank you.