Headless Chicken Syndrome: What It Is and What You Can Do About It

If you've ever felt like you're running on autopilot, overwhelmed with an endless to-do list and struggling to be present, you're not alone. In today's episode, I’m sharing all about Headless Chicken Syndrome: what it is, the root causes, and what you can do about it.

I’ll explain how the 5 Unspoken Rules (control enthusiasm, perfectionism, people-pleasing, hustle, and hyper-rationality) make it particularly difficult to set ourselves free from Headless Chicken Syndrome. 

Then, I’ll reveal the missing piece of the puzzle: the essential skill of allowing your emotions. And I mean all of them - both good AND bad. 

Most of us have never been taught this incredibly powerful skill. But once you learn it, you’ll be able to create your own CALM amidst the chaos and cure Headless Chicken Syndrome once and for all. 

And don't miss out on the upcoming webinar where we'll explore these concepts further.  Let's dive in and reclaim a calmer, more connected life together.

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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

Kevin: 0:09

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

Jenny: 0:24

Hey, there it's Jenny. Welcome back to another episode of Rethink your Rules. Today, I want to share with you a little bit about Headless Chicken Syndrome, which, if you have been listening to some of my recent podcasts and seen my posts, you might have seen come up a couple of times and you're probably wondering what the heck I'm talking about. So I am going to dive into that a bit today, and hopefully by the end you'll have a really good picture of what that is and you can think about whether or not some of these ideas might apply to you or someone you know. Before I do that, though, I just want to throw out that I am doing a webinar and it's less than a week away about the time you listen to this podcast, so I want to be sure that you hear about it and you have the chance to register. The link will be in the show notes, but it's actually about Headless Chicken Syndrome and also about the calm method that I've been talking about. So I'm going to be sharing how the calm method that I've developed to help people go from overwhelmed to creating a calmer, more connected life for themselves and their families. I'm going to be sharing how that method works and I'm going to be tying it to Headless Chicken Syndrome and kind of how you can actually cure your Headless Chicken Syndrome with the calm method. So if you have interest in either of these topics or you've been thinking about working with me and you want to hear more about some of the topics that I work on with my clients, this is a great opportunity to listen in. You'll be able to walk away with really excellent strategies you can use immediately just after this call. I know you're busy, but in one hour you will come away with some strategies that my clients tell me can be effective for them. In minutes, actually, it can really turn around their mindset. So it will be really valuable for you to get that information in that one hour. And, of course, you'll have time to hear about what it's like to work with me and you can ask questions and you can be in there anonymously in the chat asking questions and things like that. So it's a really nice opportunity.

Jenny: 2:12

If you do register, you will get the replay. So I know we're all busy. If you miss it, it's no problem. It will be in your inbox, but be sure to go over and register. The website is getcoachedjennyhobbsmdcom. Backslash at this chicken. All one word, but again, that'll be in the show notes and it's going to be February 8th Thursday, february 8th at 1pm Pacific, which is 4pm Eastern, so be sure to sign up before then. If you can think of anyone else who's been interested in thinking about working with a coach, or a working mom who's really overwhelmed and you think maybe she would benefit, please pass the link along. Okay, so let's get into headless chicken syndrome.

Jenny: 2:53

The reason I started using this phrase was actually because it's something I noticed my clients were saying. So one of the things I love about being a coach is I can just sit and really listen to the words that my clients are saying and the way they phrase things, and I learned so much about them and really so much about even myself and coaching and how to teach and explain these concepts when I hear the words that they use. So I have noticed a few of my clients talking about how they feel like they're running around like a chicken with its head cut off a lot of the time, and more than one person said it. So I started noticing that and I think it's such a great way to describe a lot of the things that I hear from my clients, and so when my clients talk about this, they talk about you know. I feel like I'm just running around going through the motions. I'm always in a hurry. I have this endless to-do list. I have more to do than I have hours in the day. I never have time to myself. The thought of even asking myself what I would do for 10 minutes of free time is just laughable, right? I'm in a constant state of overwhelm and no matter how much I do or how many things I check out the list or how perfect they try to be, like there's always more coming. There's always more overwhelm.

Jenny: 4:01

These people really frequently tell me that many of them are in really great relationships and love their partners. At the same time, they'll say you know, my partner just wants me to relax, and yet you know that person's not getting the work done. So they want me to sit and relax with them and like how's she bet who's going to get the work done? They don't really understand, right. Or they think they're helping, but really they're just, you know, asking me what to do, or I'm still the default person. I heard this a lot. I'm still the default person for everything and they think I should just relax, like them. But they don't understand that, like they're not in the position of having to hold everything together for everyone every minute of the day.

Jenny: 4:38

And so it's a different mentality and, by the way, these are very legitimate concerns, which I can relate to as well and so there becomes this state of almost resentment where you're running around like this headless chicken, you're feeling very disconnected and like you can't just sit down and relax and enjoy your family. You can't get home on time. You're always like trying to keep up with the things you said you would do because you don't want to let anyone down. And then your partner or you know other family members you know are sitting around doing you know kind of looks like they're doing nothing. Or they're like, okay, I'm going to the gym, see you later in the middle of family time, and you're like, wait, how come you get to go to the gym? Like, did you just assume that I will be here to keep it all together? You know, and you can build up a lot of resentment because you know really you're not having that time and space for yourself and then other people are taking that time and space for themselves and that can be a really, really hard place to be.

Jenny: 5:34

Another big thing you'll see when you're in this headless chicken syndrome is that even when you try to relax, you aren't able to. So you can see that this is an opportunity to sit and enjoy time with your kids, but you keep feeling the need to jump up. Or you're remembering things you need to do, or you're taking notes and you just can't allow your body to relax. Or while you're doing something with your family, you're also kind of multitasking on the side, so you're listening to something in your air pod, or maybe you're supposed to be having quality time, but you're also like doing laundry or filling out forms at the same time. Or you can never just take it off from work and also not do anything with your kids and just do whatever you want for the day. Or you know you do that because you reach a point where you just need to do nothing and you zone out with Netflix or wine or whatever, and you're feeling stressed and maybe guilty about the stuff piling up. So you're not fully relaxed, but you don't do it because you're just staring at the screen. And then you get up the next day and then you feel super guilty because you took a break and now there's even more stuff piled up to do and you didn't even fully enjoy your break. So you're regretting it and there's just more to do. And then meanwhile, you know, your partner and your friends or whatever are like just relax, don't do it, and like, well, easy for you to say, because who is going to actually do all these things that are piling up?

Jenny: 6:50

Another big piece of this headless chicken syndrome is just feeling like you're constantly busy and committed and over committed really, and not knowing how to extricate yourself from that. And this happens for a lot of reasons, you know. One is that when you have headless chicken syndrome, you feel like once you commit to something or you say you're part of something, you do it 100%. You know, it's like when my family said we would do soccer with my son and part of the season it was raining and people stopped showing up and Charlie hated it and it was just the most miserable thing and I was having to help coach because there was no one else that knew anything about soccer. And I'm not even good at soccer, but I did play in high school, you know, and but we, you know, the Hobbes family does not just not show up to the game because it's raining or, you know, because Charlie doesn't like it there or whatever we make it happen, we go and suck it up and we go there Right.

Jenny: 7:41

And other people I have learned seem to be kind of okay with being like, hey, this is a work for us, we're not doing it Right. Or likewise, you're at the PTA meeting or the meeting at work and they're like, oh, we need someone to work on this project or we need some help with this. And you're like, oh, I should help with that. Like, you know, no one's, no one's jumping in, or that would be a really good thing to do. And there's this part of you that has a hard time just sitting there and letting it be uncomfortable while people don't help, because you're like, well, I could do it, I could do it and, yeah, you could. And I'm like I'm going to help those people that can get all the things done.

Jenny: 8:12

Another big place I see this issue with overcommitment and time management coming up when you have the headless chicken syndrome is this inability to say no or to disappoint other people. There's this sense that what other people want is more important than what I might want. So if I maybe have planned out my week and I know that I need this hour to finish a work project before my kids get home from school so we can have a good weekend together, then my boss asks for something, or a friend really needs to talk to me about a problem or, you know, whatever, if I need to pick up some extra shift at work or whatever the case may be, it can be really hard to say no to that request and let that person down, and particularly if you don't have a hard commitment with somebody else on the other end of it, right? So it's one thing. If I've booked a massage, right, that's very easy to go. I have an appointment.

Jenny: 9:09

Sorry, but what you might notice if you have headless chicken syndrome is you are like, oh, it'd be nice if I could have this time to myself, and then someone needs something, and so you always cancel on yourself because it's not a hard and fast appointment.

Jenny: 9:24

It's easy enough for you to just still think I'll just do it later, I'll reschedule it later, and what ends up happening is the one who gets hurt is us, and sometimes our own families, right? Because often it's kind of like everyone outside of our family gets all these things because we feel like we need to please our boss and we don't want to let our friends down and we want to be helping everyone. And then for other people or at other times it might be your own family maybe your kids really want you to spend all this time with them because they miss you, which is wonderful. So you say yes to that, when really you needed that time to get stuff ready for work or finish a project. Or maybe you, okay, the kids want you to pick them up from school Great. And the kids want to go get a snack great.

Jenny: 10:04

And then also, after you get the kids to bed, then your husband wants to hang out, and then the day is over and you realize I've put off that deadline that I needed to work on and now it's really late and I'm exhausted and I still have to catch up on this work deadline. I should have said no to my kids and my husband earlier, but I felt guilty, I felt bad about doing that, and now here I am kind of burning the candle at both ends to fit it all in. The last thing I want to point out about this over scheduling is that sometimes we're doing it to ourselves. So, because we are a perfectionist and we're a high achiever, maybe we're overdoing it with wrapping all the gifts perfectly. Or maybe we are overdoing it with worrying about the kids clothes and how great they look, or how our clothes look or how our makeup looks. Or maybe we are worrying too much about writing the perfect note this would be my issue, right, and spending too much time writing our notes so that they would be perfect and so we don't miss anything and another person would be finishing it more quickly and getting home more quickly. But we are sort of stuck in this position where we can't let it go and I find this cuts up a lot with high achieving women and their partners, especially if they're with a male partner, because I think men are a little bit less like this than us, especially about kids. So we sometimes are putting this on ourselves because our husband could throw some clothes on the kids, have them brush their teeth, get out the door with whatever food he hands them. But we might not want that because we have an expectation about how their clothes will look, how their hair will look, how their teeth will be brushed, what kind of food they're going to eat. So you can enter your own thing, because we're all different, right, but sometimes we can't delegate things to other people because we have such a specific idea of how it has to be done and we're overdoing it ourselves because we can only trust ourselves to do it in this idealized way that we have. And I just want to point out that, while those are signs and symptoms of a headless chicken syndrome and I'm sure you can probably relate to some of them the key is how you feel about them. So it's not necessarily a problem to do any one of those things if that's working for you. You can either for a friend or pick up shifts at work, and that makes you genuinely happy. That's great.

Jenny: 12:07

What I'm talking about and what I hear from my clients is this sense of I feel constantly overwhelmed. I feel like I cannot be fully present and, in the moment, connected at home with my partner, with my kids, can't relax. I feel like I'm not fully intentional and focused at work. I feel like, no matter what I do, I'm letting someone down right. I feel like I'm in burnout. I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I feel like I don't have any hobbies or time to myself and that is all weighing on you and making you feel stuck and hopeless.

Jenny: 12:42

I hear from women that I am really good at solving all these problems and I have gone to all the Facebook groups and asked for all the advice and I've got the nanny and I've got the time management thing and I've got cut down my hours at work and I've tried to talk to my partner or my spouse or whatever that you know, have my mom here to help me, whatever. I'm doing all that stuff and I'm still just finding like there's never this mental, emotional break for me and I'm starting to believe that, even though I'm a great problem solver, I cannot solve this. I'm going to fix it, but I'm not able to fix this and I just I'm giving up hope. And that point is really where you're in this headless chicken syndrome, and a big part of this is how you want to feel. So my clients will tell me I just want to feel present with my kids. I want to feel a bit of calm, a glimmer of inner peace. They'll tell me I worked so hard, I've done everything right, I'm go, go, go, go, go go. Everyone depends on me. I built all the success, so why don't I feel better? Why am I someone happy? What did I work so hard for? Is this really what I work so hard for? Right? And it starts to really create a lot of anger and resentment and problems in the relationships and they're just not showing up the way that they want to. So that's what it feels like and what it looks like.

Jenny: 14:03

And now for the fun part. Let's talk about what we can do about our Headless Chicken Syndrome, because it absolutely is something that you can treat, and this is what I do in my coaching. The way that I like to think about treating Headless Chicken Syndrome is to go back to what causes it. Like any good doctor, if I'm going to try to treat something for good. I want to figure out the etiology or the cause and address that. So there's lots of things we can do as band-aids for Headless Chicken Syndrome and it's probably a lot of what you've been trying.

Jenny: 14:30

But if we really want to get to the root cause, we have to understand why we're doing this. So why are we running around doing all these things, overwhelming ourselves? At the end of the day, we are doing it because we are trying to feel better. We want to feel good. So I talked about this quite a bit in the last two episodes, so I won't go into a lot of detail here, but just suffice to say that feelings are incredibly powerful and they determine our actions and behaviors and why we do what we do on multiple levels. So on the most basic level, humans are always seeking more positive feelings and trying to avoid negative feelings.

Jenny: 15:13

People with Headless Chicken Syndrome, like everyone else, are just trying to feel good. But what's unique to people with Headless Chicken Syndrome is that they have a certain set of beliefs about how they will feel good, and you might sound familiar, because this goes back to my five unspoken rules that I've talked about many times. Remember all of those five unspoken rules that drive us as high-achieving moms, running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Those five unspoken rules are all things we do to try to feel better. So, for example, in order to feel better, I need them to change, or the situation to change. That's control, enthusiasm or emotional maturity. In order to feel better, I need to get it right. It's perfectionism. In order to feel better, I need to get their approval or have them like me. That's people pleasing. In order to feel better, I need to get more done. That's the hustle. Or check this off the list. In order to feel better, I need people to be rational, and you think it needs to be done right on a logical, rational way.

Jenny: 16:15

Notice how all five of those rules that drive us are all ways that we are saying, okay, if I do this, then I will feel good. That is how we are seeking the positive emotions and trying to avoid the negative ones. I'm guessing people that are different than the ones I coach have a different set of rules that are motivating them and they probably have different types of behaviors. But when you are believing these five unspoken rules, which my clients usually follow most, if not all of them to some degree, then you end up with actions that look like the headless chicken syndrome that I described. Why do we have headless chicken syndrome? We're trying to feel better, seek pleasure, avoid pain. Then we have our five unspoken rules which tell us okay, the way that you feel better is by being perfect, pleasing everyone, controlling everything to be perfect around you, hustling, being right and smart and logical as much as possible and expecting other people to also agree with that same logic and recognize it. So we do all those things. We think that is going to be the way that we are going to feel better.

Jenny: 17:19

But here's the problem with those rules. Actually, there's a couple problems. The first one is that those rules in and of themselves, if you listen to them, those are not things that are going to create a call, present intentional life. If you're living in the state of trying to be perfect and hustle and get everything done and please everyone around you, you're not seeking that, you're not finding that inner calling piece that you say you want.

Jenny: 17:40

The second issue is that the type of rules that we follow tend to keep us really focused on external validation. Whether it's well and just dependent, I would say, is a better way to say it dependent on external factors. So controlling, control. Enthusiasm depends on controlling other people or other situations outside of us. Perfectionism depends on meeting some external standard that we've all agreed on that's perfect or right. People pleasing, of course, depends on other people approving of you, etc. So they keep you very focused externally for your validation and feeling good and it keeps you very disconnected from your own self and your own voice of what's right.

Jenny: 18:17

And actually this is one reason I really like this idea of the headless chicken, because if you think about it, the headless chicken that's the problem. Right there, head has been removed from their body and so they don't have that higher level of control. And in a weird way, that's kind of what we actually are experiencing. We are busy following all these rules with our head, trying to follow all these rules, and it's completely disconnected from our heart and our body and what our body's telling us that it needs, and that's the source of the problem. Maybe taking the analogy a little too far, but I don't know when I kind of have that picture in my head, it makes sense to me and while we're so busy trying to follow all these rules and being disconnected from ourself and trying to achieve success that is dependent on external factors and external validation.

Jenny: 19:04

We are completely distracted from spending time noticing how our bodies feel, how our emotions are affecting us, even talking about our emotions or naming them or recognizing them, and we're not realizing that the entire premise of all these rules is entirely flawed, because the premise is that the goal is to feel good. Right, in order to feel good, in order to feel better, I need this. The entire system of rules that we're believing is based on trying to feel good all of the time and almost this innate belief that that's even possible. And so we're so busy doing all that, and with good reason, because we've been motivated by society and our parents and our jobs and whatever else, to focus on these rules, and these rules have served us in many great ways. So I'm not saying the rules are all bad, but as long as we are overly focused on those rules, we are distracted from spending time thinking about the truth of our emotions and the fact of the matter that our emotions and our feelings are running the show that they are incredibly powerful, and we are not spending time learning the skills that we need to recognize those emotions, to name them, to understand that they're going to be negative emotions we can't always fix and get rid of. And that is where the problem lies, because we are such badasses.

Jenny: 20:23

We took those five rules that we were given and we follow them, and we follow them so well, and we haven't been able to use those rules to, for the most part, avoid feeling bad. Right, we've been able to use those rules to achieve success, and so our brains are like those rules work, they make me feel great. But at some point along the way you begin to realize that the rules have these flaws and you begin to realize that, no matter how well you follow those rules, the premise is flawed because you're not going to be able to feel good all the time. And you have neglected the skill I shouldn't say neglected You've just not been aware that you needed to also be cultivating the skill of understanding the emotions, good and bad, that come with life, understanding the truth of the negative side of life that you can't always avoid.

Jenny: 21:07

And I think it is because we are so good at avoiding it, with just being such amazing perfectionists and people pleasers and all this stuff, that it's always been easier to just try to get better and better and better at all those skills of following those unspoken rules, and we are really encouraged not to think about the emotional side of things. And I'm saying to tell you that the missing piece of getting out of headless chicken syndrome is learning that skill of managing your emotions. That's it. Becoming as good at emotional regulation as you are at all those other rules that you've learned to follow will change everything. That's the piece you're missing. Now, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of work that I do with my clients, that's, on the cognitive side and working on unpacking those rules and changing the way we think.

Jenny: 21:55

But the number one skill that we are lacking and that we're scared to learn and we're resistant to learning, that we are pretending we don't need to learn is how to sit with, allow, name, regulate our emotions. We were not taught this in school. No one's taught it. I know I've been rambling about this for three podcasts now, but it's because it matters and I will tell you that the reason that you feel like you are trying everything you possibly can and you're not able to solve this like you can solve everything else is because you cannot solve, for a feeling, with those rules the rules that we know, the systems that we know. Everything we've been taught does not solve for a feeling.

Jenny: 22:28

If you want to feel calm and peace and connected, you have to back up, let go of the rules and learn about emotions and walk straight into managing your emotions and allowing them to be there, and that's the key. That's how you learn to actually create your own calm amidst the chaos. That's how you actually cure Headless Chicken Syndrome. You have to reconnect the head and the heart, and that's the piece that no one's talking to you about. It's the piece that no one taught you.

Jenny: 22:59

It's okay, it's not your fault, but that's what I want to teach you and that's where you should come to the webinar, even if you're like Jenny, I don't know what you're talking about here, you're talking too fast, it's okay, I'm going to go through this all again with slides, questions. We're going to have a great time. We're going to be really thinking about your specific example in your life and where learning the skill of creating your own calm can benefit you, and I promise you you will leave that one hour with things that will save you so much time and energy and emotional exhaustion down the road. So please join me, even if you think I don't know if I fully fit this Headless Chicken Syndrome thing. I guarantee you we all can stand to get better at learning to regulate our emotions and it's going to be fun. I want to hang out with you for an hour.

Jenny: 23:43

So next week, february 8th, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern replay available. Be sure to go to the link in my show notes and sign up, and we are going to have a really good time connecting with our emotions. I promise it's not as scary as it sounds. See you there.

Kevin: 24:05

Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at JennyHobbsMDcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a 5 star rating so we can reach even more women like you.