Can you imagine a world where feeling overwhelmed and stressed is not a prerequisite for the holiday season? Where these common struggles are understood to be just that - common, but not normal? In today's episode, I invite you to challenge these 'normalities' and join me on a journey of healing and self-discovery where I also offer some insights on how to combat the flurry of holiday overwhelm.
Together, we'll explore tools and techniques that have proven effective across diverse cultures, helping people overcome a wide range of challenges. So, if you're ready to reclaim control over your life and emotions and undergo a transformative experience, this episode is for you. It's time to break the cycle and embrace the brave.
In this episode, I talk about the following: 1. Struggles a lot of people face that are common, but not normal. 2. Recognizing if you're actively choosing to feel overwhelmed. 3. The importance of activating choice and doing inner work.
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[FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety
Can you imagine a world where feeling overwhelmed and stressed is not a prerequisite for the holiday season? Where these common struggles are understood to be just that - common, but not normal? In today's episode, I invite you to challenge these 'normalities' and join me on a journey of healing and self-discovery where I also offer some insights on how to combat the flurry of holiday overwhelm.
Together, we'll explore tools and techniques that have proven effective across diverse cultures, helping people overcome a wide range of challenges. So, if you're ready to reclaim control over your life and emotions and undergo a transformative experience, this episode is for you. It's time to break the cycle and embrace the brave.
In this episode, I talk about the following: 1. Struggles a lot of people face that are common, but not normal. 2. Recognizing if you're actively choosing to feel overwhelmed. 3. The importance of activating choice and doing inner work.
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[FREE TRAINING] How high-achieving women can DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day www.brave-method.com/anxiety
Hi, I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are in fact not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I hope your week is off to a great start. Oh, my goodness, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with coffee. So let's do a quick coffee update for those of you that are following my journey. Hey, you know, maybe nobody's interested, but maybe you are going to feel inspired by it, so I'm sharing just in case that's the case. So at the time of this recording, I haven't had coffee in three weeks and I'm thinking about it less. I feel kind of funny saying that, but that was a true addiction. I am feeling good about making it through the day without so much caffeine, and sometimes without any caffeine at all, maybe more than sometimes, actually, now that I say that out loud, yeah, so it feels amazing. If you've ever thought about ditching coffee, try it. Just give it a shot for 30 days and see where it takes you. Okay, anyway, that is enough about coffee, let's dive in. I am so curious if you are experiencing any holiday overwhelm right now.
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I received a message this morning from somebody saying that she is, and I imagine that she is one of many and you might be listening to this thinking doesn't everyone feel overwhelmed around the holiday stuff? No, and it isn't a requirement either. It can feel like everyone does. A lot of people talk about it and while it may seem quote unquote normal, it's actually common, not normal. That phrase, actually I want to do a side tangent here. Another thing that is common but not normal for women is urinary incontinence Prior to having the girls. I would hear so many women moms specifically saying that when they sneezed or they coughed or they laugh, they would pee, and I would always hear like that's just the way it is. That's what happens and that's not true. If that's, you go see a pelvic floor physical therapist and just know that, while it is common, it's not normal and it isn't something that you have to struggle with. So many things in your life you do not have to struggle with. That's one of them. Overwhelm is another one. Okay, so let's get back to talking about overwhelm Now.
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Just because it's common to feel overwhelmed regularly, and perhaps rather constantly during the holidays, doesn't mean, like I said, that it has to be your experience. If it is right now, your mind might be Making up some excuses. But stuff we're tight on money. But stuff you don't know what I'm dealing with. But stuff my mom. But stuff my in-laws, but stuff I'm trying to anticipate the pushback, and all I have to say is no, the tools that I use with my clients in overcoming challenges just like this are used across cultures, across challenge, not challenges a country's in different environments, whether it's at work, at home, across socioeconomic status, across a wide variety of people who have minimal trauma and who have lots of trauma. I could go on and on. So all that to say let's listen to this episode with an open mind and Set aside. You can always go back to the excuses you know whenever you want. So let's just set them aside right now and come with an open mind.
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I am in love with what I'm about to share you Share with you. I'm in love with this approach. I'm in love with healing and inner work. Why? Because it freaking works and it's amazing, and I think that every person on the planet who's open-minded Should be exposed to this.
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Back to you in many ways, you were conditioned to feel overwhelmed. If you're like me, if you're not, or like others in this community, then you know, just take that with a grain of salt, but I'm assuming, if you're listening, you resonate with all of this. So you would probably have some commonalities, but perhaps Not in a way that you've ever thought about before. Yes, experiencing overwhelmed during the holidays, or any other time for that matter, was likely modeled to you when growing up. That's common and it doesn't have to be your current Destiny. It doesn't have to be the way that you always operate.
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So what I invite you to explore today is something radical that you may have never considered before. Okay, are you ready to hear it? The most important lens that you show today Listening to this is with curiosity and an open mind. So if you're sitting there and you're like I'm just really not in a curious space, I really cannot open my mind to thinking differently. You can just close out of this. Those are two Requirements to hear what I'm about to say. I'm really building this up. You're like, oh my god, on the edge of my seat. What is she gonna say? Okay, well, hopefully I didn't build up too much. Here we go. What if you are actually choosing to feel overwhelmed actively choosing to feel overwhelmed and Inigate of in moment, every single day, and if your initial reaction is like why the F? What? I choose to feel overwhelmed? That doesn't make any sense. I get it and I'll answer that question. And here's what I want you to know.
Speaker 1:
If the way that our minds and our emotions worked were logical and were straightforward, me and every other therapist and healing coach would be out of a job. You would know exactly what to do right. If it was straightforward and logical, you would know how to handle the struggles that are coming up for you. You would know how to create the life that you want and the results that you want. But it's not logical and it's not straightforward. Our minds and our emotions can be tricky and almost no one learns how they work. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a shift in that. I can't wait to see the next generation as adults and then the generation after that as adults. I already feel proud like just envisioning them. But anyways, okay, would you here question would you ever drive a car if you had no idea how all the controls and levers and the pedals worked?
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Never, but most people go throughout life, move through this world, move through their lives with no idea how the mind works. You must get into the driver's seat of the mind and discover how it works if you want to feel at ease, capable, free, calm, happy, confident, no matter what is going on around you. And do you know how to do that? Embody the three pillars of the brave method analyzing data, activating choice and absolute acceptance. So let's talk about that second pillar a little bit more here Activating choice. There's a quote by Sam Brown that beautifully illustrates this idea, so I'm going to share it about how we may choose and why we may choose to feel overwhelmed, and this is specifically in the context of perfectionists and overwhelmed. I'm assuming that much of the audience, like you, is a perfectionist. If that doesn't resonate with you, this quote still might. Here we go Subconsciously creating feelings of overwhelm is one way that perfectionists create a feeling of control.
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It quiets the feeling that the other shoe will drop. It distracts us from discomfort that we might be experiencing in other areas of our lives, and it's a way that we connect with ourselves and get our own attention. Knowing your brain secretly loves overwhelm is the first step toward eliminating it. Are you sitting there right now with like that mind blown emoji? I know it can take a lot or be a lot to take in all at once. I'm just going to say it a second time. Okay, here we go. Subconsciously creating feelings of overwhelm is one way that perfectionists create a feeling of control. It quiets the feeling that the other shoe will drop. It distracts us from discomfort we might be experiencing in other areas of our lives, and it's a way that we connect with ourselves to get our own attention. Knowing your brain secretly loves overwhelm is the first step toward eliminating it. All right, have you ever considered that you might be choosing to feel overwhelmed? If you're like most people in this community, that's a hell. No, like, never considered it.
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Okay, inside Brave Academy, you get the exact tools to identify all of the unwanted experiences that you are unintentionally, subconsciously creating for yourself, plus the exact tools to shift out of those patterns. Because I mean, let's be honest, how many times have you said I don't want to feel a certain way? A lot at least weekly, sometimes daily? Right, I mean, you have to evaluate your own life, but right before I was getting on to do this podcast, to record it for you, I got a message about someone who was feeling so overwhelmed and didn't want to feel that way Right before. It's happening all the time and it's not just overwhelm, it's a whole bunch of patterns. If this sounds vague at all, I'm talking about breaking cycles related to not only overwhelm, but stress, anxiety, overthinking, imposter syndrome, guilt, yelling. The list goes on and on and on.
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Imagine I want you to really sit with this today and imagine what's possible for you. If you are choosing to feel overwhelmed and you had no idea that was the case until this moment what else are you choosing to feel that you verbally say you do not want to feel? Imagine being able to, with relative ease, break free of that. That is possible for you. I have seen it in myself. I have seen it over and over and over again for my clients. I don't see other people talking about this. To be completely honest, I very rarely hear any practitioners. I don't think I've ever heard a therapist say anything like this that you are actually choosing to feel a certain thing that you don't want to feel, and that you can break free of that. You are not stuck.
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That message was just on my heart to share with you. I hope that you feel inspired. I hope that the realm of what's possible for you in your life feels larger suddenly. That's my hope for you. Thank you so much for being here and for listening. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week. Feel free to message me on Instagram anytime. I love hearing from you in the DMs. If you leave a review, put a question in the review and I will answer it for you. Talk to you later. See you soon. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead.