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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 there and welcome. I hope that you all had a nice summer and are enjoying the start of fall. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it's already October. And not only is it October, we're moving toward the middle of it. I had hoped to be back at this much sooner. And well, that's the topic for today inertia.

I've had a bit of a rough summer and early fall. Besides facing some major changes and losses, I've had trouble staying upright and have had several falls. Luckily, nothing too serious and painful enough for life to be more challenging and for my body to certainly be more colorful from all the bruising. At one point I was thinking, who needs tattoos?

I told my physical therapist that I fall so often that my Apple Watch must assume that falls are part of my exercise routine and so it doesn't initiate the fall detection system. She informed me that it doesn't work that way and gave me the assignment to get it set up correctly. In my defense, I live in the woods.

I'm rarely walking on even ground, and there are countless things to get tangled up in or to trip on. And I do now have my watch set up correctly, and I'm praying that I will get it shut off before it sounds an increasingly loud alarm and calls emergency services. Well, one thing at a time.

One would think with as many falls that I have had that getting going wouldn't have been an issue for me. And for the first time in my life, it really has been. I have felt stuck in cement for the past few months. I wonder if you have experienced times like this where getting yourself to do the things you usually enjoy and want to do has been difficult or even impossible. And you've had a hard time changing that. That has certainly been true for me, and it's been incredibly frustrating. 

As I reflect on the past few months, I think that being tipped has become my set point. Between my injuries, and the changes that are happening in my life, and watching the decline that I'm seeing in my beloved pets. I've been tipped so often that be that being tipped has become the place that my nervous system returns to rather than returning to the balance or rest and restore state. 

As I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking that might be a worthwhile topic for a future episode. How our set point can get set to a tipped state. And I'll come back to that. 

My experience of feeling stuck and having a hard time shifting out of that place is how the idea of inertia came to mind. I was thinking that I lacked inertia or the energy to get moving.

And I decided that before talking about it, I better make sure that I was defining it correctly. It turns out that my understanding of the term was more in line with the common or everyday use of the word, which is a lack of energy, laziness, or an unwillingness to make an effort to get going. Inertia, as defined from a physics perspective Is the natural tendency of an object to resist any change in its state of motion or of rest. Or said another way, an object at rest stays at rest, and an object moving at a constant speed in a straight line keeps moving that way.

 Unless acted upon by an outside force. I was glad that I took the time to look it up, as those are two very different meanings, aren't they? One definition, the everyday definition, seems to describe our lack of movement as a personal deficiency, and the other describes it as a law of motion.

If inertia is in fact a law of motion, it seems to me while it sounds like another reason to ease up on ourselves and let go of judging, wouldn't you agree? Maybe a physicist would say that I'm overgeneralizing, and if, like the definition states, we will stay true to whatever course we're on.

Whether we're moving or staying still, unless we're impacted by an outside force, it doesn't really sound like that's something we can blame ourselves for. I feel so curious about how that everyday meaning came about. How is it that we always seem to find a way to be so hard on ourselves?

What I thought about in reading this definition is that for us as humans, I wonder if that outside force can actually be another part of our brain. Certainly things outside of us can shift our state. We're social beings, and so social interactions can calm our nervous system and shift our state. And the same can be true for the influence of our environment. The warmth of the sun on my face can certainly lift my mood, as can the beauty that surrounds me. 

Last night I was feeling particularly stuck and low, and then I happened to look up and out the window from where I was sitting, and the sky was filled with the red and pink clouds of the sunset.

It was gorgeous. I was filled with awe, and it instantly shifted my state. The problem with this is that do we seek out social activities when we are down? I know I don't. Do we stop and notice the beauty that's around us? Rarely, I think.

If I wouldn't have happened to look up at that moment, I would have missed that chance for a shift in my state. I would have gone on believing that I'm always stuck, that I'm always feeling down. I would have totally missed those moments of awe and beauty and inspiration.

 I could keep going on this track, and I'm afraid if I do, I'll be going on a tangent. And I'll start if I start talking about the role our brain plays in keeping our focus on what is painful or the negative. So I'm not gonna go down that track. What I want to talk about is this idea that actually the outside force that's needed to change our direction could actually come from inside of us. Oftentimes we are described as having two brains. 

Now clearly we don't have two brains, and this is simply a descriptive way of talking about the brain. It's an oversimplification that's helpful in understanding our experiences. Especially this experience of being tipped. 

I often refer to the primitive or the emotional brain and the thinking brain. Siegel and Bryson, in their book The Whole Brain Child, refer to an upstairs brain and a downstairs brain, with the upstairs brain being the brain that houses our higher cognitive abilities or our adult capabilities. 

And the downstairs brain housing the more primitive survival-based parts of our brain. Let's just continue with those terms because I think they're an easy way of talking about it. So when we're tipped into the stress response, our upstairs brain, that part of our brain that houses our ability for purposeful action or adult capabilities becomes inhibited by the stress hormones. 

This is necessary when our lives are in danger because it's not very helpful to stand around thinking or analyzing or feeling compassion for others if I'm facing an immediate threat to my life. And in other situations, like everyday stressors it's not all that helpful. 

And it's not all that helpful when we're stuck in a tipped state. It's one of the reasons we get stuck. We need that mature adult part of our brain or the upstairs brain to think or say something like, I understand that you don't feel like it, and that it might be hard to get started. And I also have a hunch that you'll feel better if you call your friend, go out in the sunshine, start a project, look for something that brings you joy, and so on. 

An easy way of thinking of this might be to think about what you might say to a friend who was stuck or down, or what you might imagine you would say to a child who's feeling down or stuck. When I think of the law of motion as it relates to inertia, it seems like those abilities that come from our upstairs brain could be considered an outside force. They're not actually outside of us and they are outside of our awareness when we're tipped. We're just not aware of them.

And so the task becomes recognizing that we are tipped, that our awareness is skewed, that our more primitive brain or our downstairs brain is running the show and that we need to reconnect with those higher cognitive abilities, those adult capabilities that are housed in the upstairs brain, that have been inhibited by the stress hormones.

Now, when we are stuck, I know this from my own experience, we most likely have a hard time getting ourselves back into balance and reconnecting with our upstairs brain. And we often end up feeling guilty and ashamed. So I wonder if during those times it would be helpful to think about the definition of inertia.

That of course I would continue in the direction that I've been going, because it's a law of motion, and that it's going to take an outside force to change my direction. So the very first thing I can do is stop blaming myself. I can let go of guilt and then purposely, even if I don't want to I can seek influence from an outside force because it's an outside force that has the ability to change the direction of my movement. 

So whether that force is actually outside of me, maybe I make a plan to once an hour stop and notice something in my environment that brings me joy. Or make a plan to call someone that I care about. Or even to take time and imagine them and to feel my caring thoughts for them.

Or whether it's purposely reconnecting with my upstairs brain, the wise part of me that knows what's best for me, not just what feels good. The part that can feel compassion for me for how hard it is and can see the gray.

 That it doesn't always feel this way, or that it won't always be this way. The part that can recognize the consequences of my actions and recognize that continuing as I'm going is not going to help me to feel better. And that can help me see the beauty that is around me,  to connect with someone I care about, or in my case, get going on something of value to me in this case, this podcast episode, even though I wasn't sure that I could finish it, or that I can consistently offer one each week, to know that I will feel better having tried.

Even if I have a bunch of false starts, which I did, then I would feel not trying and allowing the law of inertia to keep me on that same stuck path that I was on.

I hope that understanding the definition of inertia helps you to let go of some of the self-blame that you might be feeling the next time you find yourself stuck, and to think about what outside force you might use to change your direction.

I'm not going to go into this today, and I just had the thought that the same might be true for when we have a hard time slowing down for self-care, that inertia or the first law of motion is keeping us going in the direction that we're going, staying busy, doing what we have to do. And because of that, we're not going to automatically stop for self-care.

It's going to take some outside force to do that, to change our direction from movement to rest and self-care. And that we're going to have to figure out what that is and most likely make a plan to do that. I hope you have found this interesting and helpful. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and reactions.

Take good care and I will talk to you next time. 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 consider leaving a review, as it will help other women to find it and please share it with anyone who would benefit from it. And 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.