Five Tips to Help with Exhaustion: Anxiety and Fear of Being Judged can Drain Your Energy.
Freaking exhausted, but you keep going. Holding on to low grade anxiety and worry about what others think will drain your energy and leave you tired!
In the depths of your bones, you know that you are tired and something has to shift, but for some reason, you keep on chugging along at full speed.
When you are done and you have letting left to give!
You might be at the point where this annoying coworker is annoying you so much that you’re thinking of lunging across the bloody table and slap him to keep them quiet. Obviously, you don’t do this; you quietly and politely sit through the meeting. But inside, you’re reeling and ready to punch someone in the face. You might be wanting to grab two pillows, put them over your ears and run away from your kids. You might be at the point where you’d rather gouge your eyes out than listen to anything else your partner has to say at that moment! You might want to tell the sneering moms at school when you drop off your daughter to F off and stop judging! Oh, he might want to go to the next church bake sale and throw all the treats on the floor and have yourself a good tantrum yelling and screaming match and tell everyone you’re done, and you’re taking very much needed vacation. This is not how you want to show up for yourself, for your family, and work. But freaking hell, you are exhausted.
Being exhausted sucks; women are taught to be polite, to be the givers, to be strong, and to suck up we really feel. Being angry been pissed off, being frustrated, being scared, it’s not openly invited these received by our culture.
Many of my clients and the rest of our culture do not get taught how to sit with your feelings and how to work with them, and how to let them flow through us. Instead, we are stuck in a stress response cycle. This means we have the stress of whatever is going on, but the process keeps going. So the stressor might be the idiot at work always says dumb shit, but the stress response cycle is you feeling the burning in your stomach, the uneasiness in your body, and the feeling that you shouldn’t lunge out and punch him in the face. You leave the office feeling relieved that the idiot is now out of your field of attention, and you can move on to other things. But the stress response cycle still feeling pissed off having all the energy inside you is still there. Exercise is a beautiful way to relieve that physical energy and stress. But sometimes, what many of my clients miss is completing the response cycle, meaning allowing your body to feel safe again—having a hug from a loved one, talking to a dear friend about what’s going on, feeling a connection and support. Because as humans, we need connection, that is how we heal, and our nervous system calms down when having a safe relationship with other people.
When you want to put your head in the ground and yell, “Leave me the heck alone”.
Yet in this state, we tend to keep pushing harder.
You are not alone! The majority of women struggle with this ‘giver’mentality. We are just expected to keep on giving and ignoring our feelings and what we are experiencing. This does not have to be the case. There are ways to work through these feelings, have strategies to help calm your body down, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Here are five strategies to help with when you’re feeling exhausted:
Breathe: yeah, this is a simple enough price, but many of us struggle to do this. Taking some nice deep breaths in and out, allowing your belly to expand and retract, sends a signal to your nervous system that you can calm down. It’s not going to fix the significant stress response, but it’s going to help take the edge of what you’re experiencing. 2
Sighing: take a nice deep breath and sigh out. Sigh, like the person that you know that is so upset about everything, they sigh. Sighing is typically shown to help re-engage your social engagement systems. Meaning it’s almost like pushing the reset button on your nervous system. Try it; you’re going to end up laughing afterward.
Tensing and releasing muscles: for this exercise, all you do is imagine that freaking annoying coworker attends all of your muscles as much as you can wherever you all the scoop in the car on the toilet, wave a tensor as much as you can, and release it. Do this a couple of times and notice how your body responds.
Body squeezes: in your car or the bathroom, wherever you feel safe when your office. Take a couple of deep cleansing breathes and maybe see if you need to. That’s OK too but helps with ease the stress. Next, take both of your hands and cross them over at your chest. From there, gently squeeze your shoulders squeeze your biceps, squeeze your forearms go to your torso, feel your belly go down to your hips, feel your hips, go down to your thighs, fill your knee caps, and go down to your feet. As you do this, gently do a nice squeeze on your body. You might be like, OK, what the heck is it going to do for me? But the body speaks a different language. It needs physical touch and sensitivity to understand that it’s calm and safe. When you have a little child, you don’t yell at it. You do not say, "Shut up and calm down". You try to reassure them by saying softly, "you’re fine like it’s everything‘s OK." Does that work? I don’t think so. Our bodies are the same. They need that quiet kind of tenderness to help complete the stress cycle.
Stomping your feet: many of my clients struggle to live in their bodies. That means they live in their heads, and they keep going into the government how it ignores what’s going on for them. Sitting at your desk, on the meeting, when you call, in the bathroom, take your feet and push them into the ground. That sounds weird. I get it. I invite you to try to push your feet and feel the balls of your feet on the bottom of your toes, dig into your shoes and feel the ground in anything. This sends a signal to your body that you know you have a body. If you feel brave that day, I invite you if you’re in a quiet space in your office in your car to stomp your feet a little bit off you’re walking home from the subway just push that foot into the ground a little more see what happens.
Taking some space for yourself and help you feel more centered and grounded!
Soul Glue Resources:
Emily and Amelia Negasi’s book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle an excellent resource to consider. Check out their tedtalk below.
