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If you're tired of feeling never enough, of constantly being derailed by your own fears or the reactions of others, then you are in the right place. I'm Deb, a licensed psychologist, and this is Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to women who've spent their lives trying to stay within the lines of what's acceptable, who've never felt good enough and who are ready to break free and bloom. Let's talk about how you can build a solid foundation connected with your strength and your wisdom. Before we start, I need to make sure that you know that the information I share with you is just that. It's just information. It's not meant to be a prescription for what you should do or meant to replace the advice of any of your healthcare providers. It also doesn't mean that we have a professional client-therapist relationship.

Hi everyone and welcome back. In this week's episode, I want to talk about why self-care and working on our confidence is so important, even when it might seem as though other issues are of far greater importance.

My suspicion is that if you are listening to this podcast, taking time out for self-care is a struggle. And even more so right now, when so many of us are caught up in fear and feeling propelled to do something. My experience in talking with women is that self-care is viewed as a luxury, something that will happen after everything else is finished. I heard this somewhere and I can't remember where, and that was the statement that self-care is often considered a reward rather than a requirement. Do you relate to that? What position is self-care on your list? And if someone needs something or something else comes up, what happens to its position on the list?

 I'm imagining it often just falls right off the list. the other thing that I've heard over the years is that self-care is selfish. Many women cite their faith as being the source of this belief. If that is you, it might be useful to bring this up with a religious leader in your community. Some of my clients have discovered that self-care and rest are actually modeled and encouraged in their spiritual texts, for instance, in the Bible. I'm certainly not meaning to portray myself as an expert, and that's why I would encourage you to explore it, to find out if that is actually true, that self-care is considered selfish in your faith.

I have a hunch that most of our guilt around self-care stems from our history as women in which survival was pretty much based on our ability to be chosen and to be chosen we needed to please as well as on our socialization as women to be caring to consider the needs of others, to be pleasing and not make waves. It's hard to justify taking time out for self-care when approval of others is so strongly wired with staying safe in the world.

Sometimes I hear from women. that's not me. my self-worth is not linked with approval and Then as women start to go underneath the pole to keep going even when they're exhausted Or to drop everything when someone needs them and they think about not doing that, they start to notice a fear coming up.

This may not be true for you, and of course I can't know that. It's simply been common in my experience talking with women that this underlying fear of not being pleasing, of not being chosen, keeps us working so hard to keep others happy with us. And self-care doesn't really fit into that picture very well.

 What I'd like to do today though is move past the morality of it, the history of it, and think about it from a much more basic practical perspective. And what I mean by that is what happens physiologically when we ignore our needs. How does the functioning of our brain change? And then how does that change impact our ability to function our confidence, and our beliefs about our competence, as well as leading to vicious cycles of guilt and shame, struggles with mood, eating, anxiety, and so on. This is the most important piece that I want you to hear. For most of our struggles today, thank goodness.

We need our whole brain online and working together. When we don't take care of ourselves, our brain is bound to fragment. And with a fragmented brain, unless our lives are in immediate danger, we're really no good to ourselves or anyone else. In fact, usually we do some harm because we feel so desperate to do something and we can't figure out what to do and or we feel pulled to do things that we later regret like overeating or saying things that we'd like to take back so we make things worse for ourselves

I hope in listening to this episode that you'll realize why self-care is not a luxury. And if you want to be a highly functional woman caring for your loved ones and contributing to the world and the problems we face, we've got to take care of ourselves. We can't do that from a tipped or a fragmented brain state which is what I call a tipped state. And one of the surefire ways of tipping is avoiding our self-care. 

So let me back up a bit. When our nervous system, and our nervous system consists of our brain, our spinal cord, and all the nerves that run back and forth out to the body and back, when our nervous system detects any type of threat, the body is mobilized to respond to that threat.

 And the nervous system operates under the principle of it's better to be safe than sorry, or better to assume it's a threat and find out it isn't than the other way around. And threats can be real or imagined. a response from our nervous system can be triggered by our thoughts, our feelings, memories. the brain matching something in our current environment to something that was frightening in the past. And remember, it doesn't have to be exact. If I'm walking in the woods and I hear a twig snap, I'm better off to assume it's a bear and be prepared than to think, ⁓ that's just a deer and run smack dab into a grizzly bear. 

So the nervous system is busy doing its thing, and most of us are unaware of what is happening inside.

Part of the defensive response is the release of the stress hormones, which have many functions, one of which is to inhibit our higher cognitive abilities. I like to think of these as our adult capabilities. They're the abilities like the ability to put things into perspective, to realize that one time something happening doesn't mean it will always happen.

to consider the consequences of our behaviors or what we say, to see more than one side of an issue. All of those qualities that define maturity become unavailable to us during a defensive response. They aren't gone. The stress hormones have just made them less available. the drives from the more primitive parts of the brain are so strong that we usually rarely notice that we are missing those higher cognitive abilities. If you listened to my last episode, I shared my embarrassing experience, although it's not as embarrassing at this point because I've shared it so much.

 of insisting while tipped that what I was saying was the truth and that my friend didn't know what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that and that's what I was thinking. Only to realize when I came back into what I refer to as balance, which I mean when we have all of our abilities back online, that my friend's perspective actually made total sense.

I had no ability to see that while tipped.

This is important.

Think about what this means for when we try to solve problems or when we try to have discussions about the problems we're facing as a nation, for instance, or any problem that you might be having, a problem with your spouse. We are not we're not seeing the whole picture.

I really wondered what could be wrong with my friends' when in fact it was my thinking that was impaired because my brain was fragmented. had tipped. So what does this have to do with self-care? Getting too tired, anxious, overwhelmed, resentful are all triggers for a tip.

While tipped without the resources of my adult capabilities, how can I really make contributions that I want to make to the world when I can't even, thinking back on the conversation with my friend, realize that my perceptive abilities have been limited?

Yes, are larger problems than the problems most of us are facing in our lives, and how can we possibly help find a solution without our higher cognitive abilities? We just aren't capable of that type of reasoning or purposeful action while tipped, and we're driven to get relief. For some that may come, through a continued effort to appease others, For many, it's by running or fighting, creating distance through our words or our actions, or escaping through food, shopping, drinking, et cetera.

Unfortunately, as women, have been trained to focus outward on the needs of others. And so it takes practice to begin checking in on what is happening inside to prevent a possible defensive response by our nervous system. Or if one is already taking place, to realize that that's happening so that we can proceed with caution and be gentle with ourselves. Of course, we're not going to be able to figure out a solution. We can't do that without our whole brain being on board. 

The good news is you are already highly skilled at noticing what's going on in other people. I bet you do it all day without thinking about it, noticing when someone looks tired or frustrated or sad. So you're not starting from scratch.

I hope that what I have shared with you has provided some motivation to turn some of that attention you have been sharing with others back towards yourself. It doesn't have to happen all at once. You don't have to carve out a huge chunk of your day for self-care.

Think about how you do this for others. I mean, it happens so automatically, doesn't it? I mean, you could just be walking through a room and notice what's going on for someone. I often encourage people to start with reflecting on their day. Sometimes it helps to work backward, to notice times when it might have helped to have taken a moment to care for yourself.

You have the skills to know how to do that and what to look for.

 And like I said a minute ago, think about the time that takes from your day. It really doesn't take much time. You're so good at it that it happens automatically. And the same thing will happen for noticing what's going on inside you. The more you do it, the more automatic it will become. Your brain will help with that. It will start to create the structure to make it easier for you to do that.

And if you are a parent, and even if you're not, I'm sure you can imagine this, you know the benefit of regularly monitoring your child's needs. Because if you don't do it, you're likely to get a meltdown. And who wants to deal with that? And being in a tipped state is really our equivalent of a meltdown. Parents usually remember what those meltdowns are like.

And they don't want to go there again. They want to avoid it. So they notice what's going on. How tired is my child? Are they starting to get hungry?

So where I was going with that is I wonder if it would be motivating to think about a time when you were way past your limits and you had your own form of a meltdown and you did something that you regretted, like you don't want to go there again. Maybe it was overeating.

For me, it's usually speaking up when I should have held my tongue and I had this wish that I had like a fishing rod and somehow I could reel my words back in. So really paint a picture of that experience, of how you felt. Like maybe there was guilt and shame and the ramifications. Like for me, there was often damage to a relationship that I then needed to repair. I wonder if painting that picture might help you to remember the importance of self-care, because it really isn't a luxury or a reward if we want to be the person we hope to be in this life or to contribute to the larger issues we're facing as a ⁓ society.

Self-care is really essential for being the person that you want to be, for contributing in the way that you want to contribute.

I hope it's been helpful to think of it that way. I hope it helps you to see self-care in a new light. And that's all I have for this time. If you would like to further explore your beliefs about self-care, check out my free guide for doing so. It is linked in the show notes. And just a reminder that I have two new courses, one on dealing with worries, and the other on letting go of self-blame about motivation and willpower by understanding your brain that are both at an introductory health price for a limited time. You can learn about both of those courses on my website and the links are also in the show notes. Okay, That's it for this episode. I look forward to talking to you next time.

Until then, take good care and bye-bye.

This has been Blooming Outside the Lines, a podcast dedicated to supporting you in blooming into all you are meant and wish to be. If you enjoyed it and gained value, please give it a like and consider leaving a review, as both will help other women to find it. And please share it with anyone who would benefit from it.

if you would like to be notified when new episodes become available, be sure and follow on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, how will you light a candle of self-acceptance? Because you deserve to be you, even if others disagree.