49: How to Reset Your Nervous System When Stress Is Taking Over

It is that time of year again. The one where the calendar says "vacation" but your nervous system says otherwise. New schedules, new routines, and a hundred tiny things pulling at your attention all at once. In this episode, Daffney breaks down the exact four step system she uses with clients to get out of survival mode and back into their bodies. Awareness, identification, skill building, and freedom. No fluff, and no perfect morning routine required. Just a real way to notice what your body has been trying to tell you and actually do something about it.

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In This Episode:

• (01:20) Why noticing your own stress response is step one
• (03:00) The difference between suppressing a symptom and identifying it
• (05:40) Why chronic fatigue, skin issues, digestive trouble, and short tempers are often nervous system signals
• (11:30) How choosing the right exercise support is closer to choosing a surgeon than picking a gym
• (15:00) What freedom means once you stop borrowing someone else's definition of it

Connect with Daffney:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yeah, this is that time of the year where we convince ourselves that this is our break, this is our vacation, this is our chance to step back and really enjoy and engage with the things around us. But if you're like me or any of my clients, this is the time of the year they can actually feel like the most. There is an ever-changing schedule with holidays and anticipating new school routines. And part of that means that we need to stop and step back. And today I have the perfect four-step system to get you up, over, and actually ready in time for this next incoming chapter. Welcome to Don't F and Shrink, the podcast, where we stop playing small and start showing up big. I'm your host, Daphne Allwine, and I'm here to cut through the noise, ditch the self-doubt, and get honest about what it takes to live and lead with unapologetic confidence. Each week you'll hear unfiltered conversations, powerful stories, and in real life strategies to help you take up space in your life, your work, and your world. So buckle up because shrinking is not an option here. Let's dive in. When we start to think about our day, when we start the day in that zone of chaos, there's a lot of people asking for attention, vying for what energy we have and what we're available to do. Step one in all of this is awareness. So congratulations. The fact that you have noticed that your own nervous system is at its limit and is hitting its edge is the very first step in all of this. Sometimes we keep telling ourselves if we keep trying, if we wake up one more day, if we find a perfect routine to move forward, that this will be somehow easier. But just acknowledging what's going on in your own body, physical symptoms, anxiety, stress, not being able to sleep, and always reaching for a little more caffeine or a little bit more sugar to keep the day going are all symptoms that you may be noticing. And if you have already noticed the uptake of those things and the inability to actually calm and connect and sit still, you have already conquered number one. You are noticing that awareness in your body, which is key. And number two is where we actually talk about identification. So once we have the awareness that our body is just at its max, we are at our edge, you know, we're feeling increased emotions, we have heightened sensitivity. In my case, you know, I'm working and focusing, and I have someone wanting to like sit on me or put their physical weight on me. And what that's really doing is distracting me from the thing that I'm focused on or that I'm working on. And when we're at the office, a lot of times it's a phone call coming in or an email popping into our box, even though we are in our most creative state and feeling most productive with the work we're doing. So once you've identified it, now you can say, ooh, I'm feeling. And this is where guilt-free, you give yourself the ability to say the emotion that is coming up for you, the physical symptom that's coming up for you. So in step two, you will actually feel into your own body because we are conditioned, especially as women, especially as women in business, to ignore, suppress, push down, push through, not acknowledged. And I think that's one of the fatal flaws because when we continue to suppress these symptoms we're having, the way we're feeling, our energy levels and symptoms that are coming up, we are actually making it harder on ourselves to move on and build any skills or build energy in that field. So in this second step, that awareness. So you are sitting. And I love to sit with clients in this moment, especially if they happen to come into a session, into a meeting, feeling at their edge, already coming into their edge. That is my favorite day. Because when you can sit and embody and recognize what's going on, it could be back pain. It could be feeling just absolute fatigue, even though you had a good night's sleep. It can feel like you're chronically hungry. You're always looking for a snack. It could be showing up on your skin. It could show up in the way that you don't have patience in a meeting or with your family when you get home at the end of the day. Please pay attention to these symptoms. These symptoms are so important and the absolute necessity of your health, the history of your health, the longevity of your health is teetering on your ability to stop and notice what's going on in your body. This is where when we get into physical movement, when we start acknowledging that this anxiety, this tightness in our chest, this digestive issue that we're chronically having day in, day out for months at a time, is not just as simple as a dietary issue with dairy or things like that. So I, those things are obviously very specific and cause inflammation in our body. But I think a lot of times people don't recognize that behavior, mindset, stress are all incredibly important factors in how we're moving forward and how our body is responding to the outside. We talk about the central nervous system as the security system of the body. So anything that you're noticing that feels like stress, feels like anxiety is causing more cortisol in your body is your body's alarm system, your security system, letting you know that something's not right and that something needs your attention. So we are no longer in this phase, in this chapter, in number two here, going to just suppress, pretend it's not there, push through any longer. One of my favorite stories in this category is when we, I will give a pseudonym here because that's a lot easier. When Jane and I are working together, one of the things that I often notice is we are doing physical movements, having a very deliberate conversation about what's happening in the body, what we feel, what we notice, what just happened before you walked into this space. Jane actually, her balance was completely off. She is so good at balance exercises and coordination. A former athlete herself, she let me know that one of the most difficult things that was happening that moment was this successive line of emails that continuously kept coming in on a problem that she thought had already been solved for her company. So when these things happen, when you're embodying, when you're feeling the stress of things outside of you, it physically changes the way you move, feel, and interact with yourself. What we were able to do through movement pattern skills is actually have her talk openly about what she was feeling in her body about those emails while she was physically moving into exercise. And it's incredible in a short series of time, we went from toppling over top of our feet, which is not normal, to within 10 minutes of very succinct movements and different planes of motion, letting her body release the stress that was sitting between her ears and that was causing her entire balance to be off. The body doesn't lie. The body doesn't know how to lie. So when we carry these stresses, when we carry these issues in our nervous system throughout the day, we show up differently. We have different health patterns. And it's not so much the stresses of one day or the next, it is the consistent stream of unresolved stress that continues. So that leads us to number three. Once you've identified what's going on in your body during your nervous system and this reboot we're talking about, the third thing is building in skill. Now, it's got to be an awareness that I am having tightness in my chest. I have had pain in my shoulder, I have digestive issues. So once we have that awareness of what's going on in our body, we need to start moving differently. So this is where exercise is such a fast track, fast track to getting back to a normal stress level. I know sometimes the biggest challenge with most people is not having the time to put exercise into their routine. But what I am here to echo and say and bring awareness to is if you want to perform, if you want to be at the top of your game, if you want to show up in a room fully, completely as yourself, and that is at work, that is in your community, that is in your home when you go home. Exercise, movement, that awareness and reconnecting with your body and your brain and your central nervous system is imperative. Because if you're always operating from a deficit, if you're always just breaking even, always just walking at your edge, you cannot be at your best. You need to be at your best, and you deserve to be at your best. I don't know where this conditioning came from that has led women to believe that the only way to be viable, the only way to be useful is to constantly be at an edge, at a stress edge. And I often find with male and female clients, it is a pattern. It's almost as if it's a persona that they bring into the room every time they do. It's a defense mechanism. When we walk into a boardroom and we are stressed and we are an aggressive sort of body posture, it does. It deters other people from engaging with you. So not only are you affecting yourself and your ability to listen and engage with others, but you are now affecting an entire boardroom or practice group of people who no longer want to engage and work with you openly. So you're not just limiting your potential, you are limiting the potential of every single person around you, your children, your family, your work. So when I say build skill, this is where you start building that skill to put body movement. And this is where I where I talk with clients, why exercise physiology is very important with the right support. Because if you are not working with someone who understands your body and is creating a library of work around exercises, movement around your body, your body's history and what's going on, you're really flushing money down the drain. If you are working with somebody because you think you should, this is a serious investment. You should choose your trainer, choose your exercise physiologist, choose your physical therapist in a way that you would choose your dentist or your surgeon. You need to be working with someone who sees you for you, understands you for you, and is working you in a direction, not just about what's popular or what's a style that they are most comfortable with. So exercise can be fun. Exercise can be engaging. And I think right up to the age of 40, that's a great way to think about exercise. It's a community, it's fun, it's engaging. But if you are serious about building a career, serious about building your own performance and longevity and legacy, then you need to be working with someone who can actually work with you, build a library of longevity with you to see you through not just six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, you know, a five-pound weight drop goal. I mean, actually partnering with somebody who can build that level of legacy fitness that you need to be at the peak of your performance. And I have been so lucky over the years to work with people for five, 10, 15 years, building that legacy library with them through so many chapters of their life. So, this is the skill building. This is understanding your body, understanding the mechanics of your history and your health and having the support to do that properly. If you are just getting started, this is a great opportunity. If you are less than 40, hey, you get the opportunity to kind of work in and try a lot of new things. Your body is way under warranty. As you start moving over that 40-year mark, you need to be very intentional about the exercises you're choosing for the legacy you want to create. So this skill building piece is not just about a one size fits all. It is about connecting with someone who will support you into those next phases. And the fourth thing that I love to focus on or that we need to focus on is freedom. So we have congratulations, build awareness into noticing that there's not something going right in our body. And then we went ahead and identified exactly what was going on, what we were feeling, what was the catalyst in a lot of cases. And the third piece is we started building that catalog. We started building those skills, building a different schedule, building a different mindset about longevity over quick gains. And that leads to freedom. And when I say freedom, I mean the ability to choose for yourself. I think when people think about freedom, they think about freedom in the context of not having to work anymore or being off or having more vacation time and that sort of thing. Freedom is whatever you make it. And freedom can be financial, it can be physical. In my world, it's a lot about making people so strong, so tenacious and so resilient in their own bodies, that they enjoy the freedoms of good health, which is something that can't easily be replaced with time or money. So if you want the most of your time, if you are actually serious about performing at your highest level, showing up fully, being the version of yourself that we all deserve to see, this is your opportunity to actually engage with what you want. I love this conversation with clients. And I will talk about Jane again because I just loved the session we had this morning. And I think it's so imperative to talk about it, is that freedom looks and feels different. And some people call it clarity, some people call it confidence, some people call it time. Freedom is the thing that you value most. It could be value related to time with your family, ending your career early, having had made enough money to do the things that you want to do and live the life you want to without having to check in with anyone else to be affected directly in that way. So when you think of freedom, when you think of what is most important to you, what resonates? What's the desired outcome? What is that next five, 10 years look like for you? For many of my clients, they can't see past five minutes. Sometimes they can't see an hour into the session or even being able to finish our session together. But when they walk out after a session, we don't just walk out for that hour. We walk out for that day, we walk out for that week. And more importantly, sometimes we walk out for that year. Because when you stop and ground yourself in physical movement and dynamic conversation about getting to those fundamentals, to getting to that mindset, to releasing that nervous system and letting you reboot, this is something you deserve. This is normal. It's not normal to be under stress every hour of the day, no matter what the internet tells us, no matter what conditioning we received before this, being at your edge, being stressed every hour of the day, trying to validate everything that you're doing, showing up in every room that's not connected to what you really want to present or accomplish is wasted energy. And it's causing your nervous system to work harder and self-sabotage. So today, I want you to sit. If you are at your desk, if you are home today working like I am, and you may have a lot of extra energies around you that don't belong to you. Like I said, it could be emails popping in every hour, distracting you from what you're working on. It could be a kiddo at home who wants to be part of the day. But just being honest about what's physically going on in your body and being willing to walk through those steps every day. Like I said, the first step is awareness. You know, you are working very hard. If you can even just stop today, acknowledge the awareness that there is a need for your nervous system to feel calmed or grounded, you're already winning. Because the greatest part of the population is just reserving themselves to live at that edge all the time. And that's where chronic fatigue, disease, and injury live. So, if nothing else today, stop with awareness, plug into that awareness of what's going on in your body. And four bonus points, start identifying what's going on. Building these blocks, building this new mindset into your body that you are a functional machine that has many layers and levels and is not distant or separate from what's going on in your life is such an imperative conversation. As women, we we somehow get into the trap that we not only need to perform and show up and serve everyone else, but we also feel like we need to manage the emotions and regulate the nervous system of everyone else around us. This is your promotion slip to understand that that is not your responsibility. Whether you're at work, whether you're at home, whether you're out of the grocery store today, your responsibility to your nervous system is always greater to your body, to your health than anyone else around you. And once you are willing to harness that fact, you show up greater for everyone else. Thanks for diving in here with me today. I loved hearing you guys this week and I love getting all the feedback from the show. We want to support you every way possible, physically, nervous system, mindset. So if you have a specific question or even just a comment about what you're hearing today and want to dive deeper, reach out to us. You can always find us on Instagram at Don't Fucking Shrink Podcast. And our website where we do all our work and connect with our clients is lift L I F T pro Wellness.com.