Episode 14: The Connection Between Disordered Eating and Nervous System Dysregulation with Ashlyn Burnett
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This episode of Redefining Us features Ashlyn Burnett, a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, discussing the deep connection between the nervous system and struggles with food. She explains how polyvagal theory helps us understand how different nervous system states influence eating behaviors, from restriction and obsession to binge eating and disconnection.
Ashlyn highlights how trauma, perfectionism, and control affect eating habits and offers practical tools for nervous system regulation, inner healing, and somatic work. By addressing the root causes of food struggles, she teaches how to develop a healthier, more intuitive relationship with food—free from anxiety, guilt, and shame.
If you've ever felt trapped in cycles of restriction or bingeing, this episode provides insight and strategies for healing. Ashlyn shares resources, including her podcast Heart Led Wellness, a free root cause quiz, and a 12-week coaching program to support listeners in their journey toward food freedom.
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Connect with Ashlyn:
Podcast: Heart Led Wellness
Free Root Cause Quiz: http://heartledwellness.com/quiz
Instagram: @heartledwellness
12-Week Coaching Program: https://www.heartledwellness.com/hle
About Ashlyn: As a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and BS in Integrative Healthcare, I specialize in guiding women to find peace in their relationship with food, body, and life as a whole. I work with my clients to address the deeper roots of WHY they feel out of balance in their physical and mental health, through healing the nervous system and doing the deep inner work.
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I wrote a book! Becoming Mommy: Aligning with yourself and finding your voice during pregnancy and motherhood, available at all major retailers . View on Amazon
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A lot of times clients struggle with a really small capacity where things send you into overwhelm very easily. Like you have a stressful day, I need to go eat food to cope with the stress. And the place we want to get to is not avoiding our stress or using all these stress management strategies to calm ourselves down, but to actually feel safe and okay sitting in the middle of the messiness of life without it dysregulating us too much. So I can have a stressful day. I can feel angry. I can feel upset. I can feel scared. because I don't know what's happening in my life. And I still have access to the part of me that feels safe and trusts that this is all unfolding for me and that I'm okay. And the ability to do that and have access to safety in the middle of dysregulation has a lot to do with being in the body and learning how to actually drop out of the head into the body. So we're not spending so much time mentally obsessing over food and we're more present to the actual sensations that are moving in our body at this moment.
Speaker 01
00:60
This is Redefining Us, and I'm your host, Stephanie Contrera, licensed professional counselor. And I'm so glad that you joined us today so we can dive into what it means to be a woman in today's society, figuring out how we balance everything, how we grow, how we be more authentically us, and figuring out who we are through the transitions of life, whether that be motherhood, success, relationships, and all things that have happened in women's lives. because it's definitely not a linear journey and I think by talking about it and normalizing it and validating, we can all rise together and be the women that we were meant to be. So keep tuning in and I am so excited about joining the conversation and being in your ears each week. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Redefining Us. Today I have with me Ashley Burnett, and she is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and has a Bachelor's in Science in Integrative Healthcare. Ashley specializes in guiding women to find peace in the relationship with food, body, and life as a whole. Ashley works with her clients to address the deeper roots of why they feel out of balance in their physical and mental health through healing the nervous system and doing deeper inner work. Ashlyn is experienced in working with debilitating gut issues that doctors couldn't fix, severe acne and eating disorder, anxiety, depression, and more. After years of struggling with these physical and mental issues, health issues, she has finally found the healing that she has craved all along. It didn't come from a pill bottle or a therapist's office. It came from deeper inner healing that addressed why she felt unworthy, obsessive, and perfectionistic in the first place. Now her life's mission is to help others find that same freedom. Ashton's determined to show women that you don't have to choose between your passion for health and desire for food peace, but you can have health without it becoming obsessive or orthorexic. So thank you so much for being here today, Ashlyn.
Speaker 00
03:11
Of course, Stephanie. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 01
03:13
Yes. So yeah, I don't know if you want to share anything else with the listener. I know I just shared a lot, but before we dive into the questions, if you have anything else you'd like to share.
Speaker 00
03:25
Yeah, I'm super grateful and honored to be here. And it's always a little bit wild to hear somebody read back your story because it's such like a short little synopsis of everything that really unfolded for me to be where I'm at today. But I'm really just so passionate about helping women heal their relationship with food. And I myself went through a a very tumultuous journey with food and my body starting from a young age as many women have and I feel like I spent the whole first you know 20 years of my life feeling really unsafe in my body and wishing I could constantly change my body or like teleport myself into somebody else's body and that also manifested as disordered eating and feeling super obsessed with food and All of those patterns and behaviors that can often come along with wanting to change your body and not feeling safe in your body. And I tried a lot of traditional therapy and traditional ways of recovering from disordered eating. And some of them, of course, did bring me some relief and brought me out of a deep, you know, dark, really intense place. But there was always this like lingering thing with food where I always felt a little bit obsessive about it, a little bit like the health freak, a little bit too controlling. with it still dealing with like overeating or binging or feeling out of control at night when I was eating food and all of those lingering patterns that I had with food didn't fully release or heal until I understood the connection between food and the nervous system and started to deep dive into polyvagal theory and all the things around nervous system regulation and healing and when I realized this connection between food and the nervous system I had so much inner transformation in my own life and now this is what I Awesome. It sounds like you
Speaker 01
05:19
really have a reason why this is so important to you, which I imagine really translates with the clients that you work with.
Speaker 00
05:27
Yeah, for sure. I feel like having a connection to the person who's sitting in front of you and knowing that you've been in their shoes before, and it's not something that you've just like read in a textbook, but something that you've lived and breathed brings a different level of comfort to my clients for sure.
Speaker 01
05:43
Yeah. So you spoke of this already, but what is the connection between disordered eating and menorrhagic syndrome?
Speaker 00
05:51
Yeah, so basically food has nothing to do with food. I say this all the time on like social media and my podcast and with my clients. It's not about food. And what I mean when I say that is that our relationship with food, our eating patterns, our eating behaviors is actually just a reflection of what's going on in our nervous system. And I look at the nervous system from the lens of polyvagal theory, which essentially refers to the three different states of the nervous system. And in those three different states, we feel differently towards food. And so to kind of sum it up for the listeners, in that first state of ventral vagal, which is a state of regulation, it's a state of safety. People might have referred to this as rest and digest. It's where you feel calm, you feel connected, you feel creative, and you feel maybe more like yourself in that state. That's where we want to spend the majority of our time when we're talking about food. Like we want to eat from that place. We want to be able to hear our hunger and fullness cues and hear our intuition around food and be able to make loving choices that include foods that make our body feel really good. But oftentimes what I see with my clients, and this is the case for my past self too, is that we are not really having very much access to that state of safety. And we're spending a lot of our time in and out of these other two states of the nervous system, which are fight or flight, also known as sympathetic activation, and dorsal vagal shutdown, which is a disassociation. It's a very primal survival state of the nervous system. And it sounds extreme when we think of it from these fancy words like dorsal vagal and sympathetic, but it's really something that we're experiencing on a daily basis. And even if you have had times where you feel stressed or anxious or overwhelmed and other times where you feel depressed or disconnected or numb, that's an example of your nervous system going in and out of those two states of activation. And so with food, this manifests as potentially restricting our food or depriving ourselves or trying not to eat even though we're hungry or obsessively researching new diets. Like if you've ever had that feeling of, I need to lose weight right now and you're like on the internet, how do I lose 20 pounds in three weeks kind of thing? That's a good example of that fight or flight energy showing up as a behavior around food. It's like, I need to get out of this situation right now. I need to get out of my body as fast as I can. And I'm going to do that by researching or obsessively counting my calories or micromanaging my food Yeah, absolutely. And so when I say food is a reflection of your nervous system, what I work with my clients around is actually addressing the nervous system. So yes, we talk about food and we talk about practical things around food, but I find when we start to support the nervous system first and bring some regulation to the system and flexibility to the system so we don't get stuck in these states for long periods of time and we can dip into them, but then go back to safety and have more of that resilience, then food gets to just be food again and we get to listen to our bodies because we all have this built-in mechanism around eating like it's something that we were born with just like peeing we don't have to like obsessively track how many times a day we pee or worry that we're going to pee too much or not enough we just know we listen to our body we pee when we have to pee we don't when we don't and it's very easy same thing with food we should be able to eat when we're hungry stop when we're full easily eat foods that make us feel good eat foods that we enjoy without all of this mental obsession around it And the quickest path to reconnecting with that true built-in normal eater, as I call it, is through your nervous system and having more access to that state of safety. So you can live in that place versus the more dysregulated eating. I hope that makes sense.
Speaker 01
10:11
Yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense to me. I think there's a lot of connection between the way that our nervous system is responding in the environment to potentially a lot of things that people become aware Totally. Quote, unquote, obsessive around or have disordered relationship with. And, you know, food is just, I think, a great example because I think it's not just women that struggle with it, but people of all ages and genders. But I think there's, you know, statistics show that it's more commonly impacts women, unfortunately, based on age. variety of factors that we won't dive into today but people are somewhat aware of the different factors that make it more leaning towards women suffering from this relationship with food so
Speaker 00
10:59
yeah and the crazy thing about food is like we can't abstain from it with a lot of these other addictions or things that people use as coping mechanisms like alcohol or drugs it's like okay I'm sober. Like I'm just going to avoid the trigger. And then I don't have to ever, you know, deal with that versus food. We have to eat at least three times a day. Like it's something that we're going to have to change our relationship to. We can't just eliminate it from our life. And so I find that healing our relationship with food is a very brave journey that many women choose to go through because it requires a lot of inner work for that to happen.
Speaker 01
11:34
For sure. Definitely. What, Do you see are the root causes that are underneath a lot of people's food struggles?
Speaker 00
11:42
Yeah, so then we can talk about what's actually causing the nervous system dysregulation in the first place, because our nervous system has its own built in mechanisms as well. And it doesn't just go dysregulated, quote unquote. Easily, like there's usually things that trigger that. And so I'll talk about it through the lens of food, because of course, this topic could be expanded to so many other areas of life. But when it comes to food, I usually see these eight root causes over and over and over again with my clients who have dysregulation in their nervous system. And the two most common ones that I see often are perfectionism and control. And we often have these perfectionistic tendencies or this like controlling part of us that really wants to feel in control. Or we feel out of control when we're not micromanaging food. And that in of itself is going to create some dysregulation in the nervous system. Like we're walking through life thinking that everything needs to be perfect, that my body needs to be perfect, that food needs to be perfect, I need the perfect calories or the perfect macros or all of this. pressure that we're putting on ourselves. And that's exhausting at a nervous system level. That's creating dysregulation at a nervous system level. Another big one is past trauma. And I'm not a therapist. I'm just a coach. But I do have trauma awareness around how this can impact our relationship with food. And I Every single client I've ever worked with could trace their relationship with food back to a pivotal moment in their developing years around something that their friend said to them about their body or bullying or witnessing their mom and her relationship to food in her body or sexual abuse or just any sort of big T or little t trauma that disconnects us from our body creates a ripple of unsafety in the system and if we don't have the proper supports in place or tools in place in that moment or in the years to follow to process and heal that trauma it creates chronic dysregulation in the nervous system and we're existing at a surface level feeling like everything is fine and underneath the surface there's unsafety in the system our nervous system is like What is going on? Like there's this thing that we haven't addressed. We haven't healed it. I don't feel safe here. And of course that can manifest as our relationship with food that is disordered or unhealthy because we're using food to try and create some regulation or some safety. So when we actually heal those root causes and we address your inner perfectionist and your inner control freak or people pleasing is another one or not feeling safe in your body, low self-esteem, scarcity mindset with food, when we actually heal those root causes, it's it's so much easier to access that state of rest and digest in the nervous system and have more resilience in our nervous system.
Speaker 01
14:28
Yeah, I'm curious what sort of barriers do you think women have in addressing these root causes?
Speaker 00
14:36
Yeah, I would say like support is the biggest one. This is something even in my own journey, I don't think I would be able to be where I am without having other coaches and therapists and family and friends who could help me heal these things. Because it's really hard to be your own healer 24-7. I often see that as another root cause of like, I'm just going to figure it all out myself. I can't rely on anybody else. I can't trust anyone else. This very overdeveloped me type energy. And I think having support from somebody else is key to that. But also it does have to come with your own willingness and bravery to open your heart, look at these things and a willingness to change. I know for a lot of my clients, they spend a lot of years in denial almost like I don't need to heal my relationship with food or I don't want to heal my body image issues because that means that I'll gain weight or that means that I have to let go of my desire to be healthy. And we kind of live in this denial box. of I don't want to change. I don't want to heal. And so the first step is always that willingness to try something new or to explore these inner wounds gently and slowly and safely. So that way we can actually heal them for good.
Speaker 01
15:50
Yeah. You know, and the theme of redefining us is also this idea of figuring out who you are. And I think that's probably very true in the journey of recovering from an eating disorder. Yeah. Yeah. person that you are with your eating disorder, the person you are while trying to figure out and recover from your eating disorder, and then like the person that you are in recovery, like all of those people and maybe other people along the way are different versions of you. And I would assume that you'd agree the most authentic version of you is the recovered version of you where you could truly tap into what you care about and what you value rather than being fixated on food or perfectionism or people pleasing or all the things that you've mentioned.
Speaker 00
16:45
Yeah, yeah, that's huge. I love how you phrased that. Because I think we often identify with the disorder, like I am anxious, or I am depressed, or I am struggling with food, or I have an eating disorder. And it's like, we become our problem, and we lose track of who we actually are underneath that. And I use a lot of parts work type words. paradigms to help see this it's like you have a perfectionist part of you you have a controlled part of you you have a disordered eating part of you but it's not actually you those parts are there because there's been something that's happened in your past and they felt like they needed to come in to save the day and help you feel safe again and when we see that we actually get to know the thing underneath the thing like who we actually are underneath the perfectionism and underneath the control and underneath the disordered eating and just like you said so beautifully, Stephanie. It's like we want to tap more into her. We want to connect with our higher self or the true self in us, the version of us that is free around food and feels confident in our body and feels at ease and at peace in life because that part or that true Yeah.
Speaker 01
18:21
Yeah, I like the metaphor of the layers almost like, you know, reminding me of the onion, right? Like, you have all of these things that are making your true self bogged down or less vibrant, like the food, food noise, I think a lot of people Yes, reference like this voice or this food chatter. that just exists. Okay, how do we peel back those layers so we can hear your true voice, not food voice or whatever voice you're hearing, not in the psychotic sort of way. You know, the influence that food has over your life and how can you remove that slowly so your voice is the strongest.
Speaker 00
19:05
Yes, exactly. Because there is that inner voice that knows exactly when, what, and how much to eat. We just disconnect from her. Mm-hmm, yeah.
Speaker 01
19:13
So how do you heal these root causes so clients can find food freedom?
Speaker 00
19:19
Yeah, I use a lot of parts work like we talked about and inner child healing, like going back to these memories and moments and sending our younger version the love that she needed and didn't receive. And it's crazy how much that impacts things. Like it feels so woo-woo sometimes because I'm like guiding a client through an inner meditation or a healing. And then they have a week where they're like, I haven't binged all week, or I feel so at ease around food. And truthfully, I believe that when we reprogram a lot of those subconscious traumas or memories, we can have so much lasting healing But also we're going to do a lot of mindset work and reprogram our thoughts and get really into our daily habits with food and learning how to see food in a different way. But the biggest thing is nervous system regulation work and learning how to actually grow our capacity, our nervous system capacity, which essentially just refers to how much sensation we feel safe holding in our body. And a lot of times my clients struggle with a really small capacity where things send you into overwhelm very easily. Like You have a stressful day. I need to go eat food to cope with the stress. And the place we want to get to is not avoiding our stress or using all these stress management strategies to calm ourselves down, but to actually just feel safe and okay sitting in the middle of the messiness of life without it dysregulating us too much. So I can have a stressful day. I can feel angry. I can feel upset. I can feel scared because I don't know what's happening in my life. And I still have access to the part of me that feels safe. And trust that this is all unfolding for me and that I'm okay and that it's going to be okay. And the ability to do that and have access to safety in the middle of dysregulation has a lot to do with being in the body and learning how to actually drop out of the head into the body so we're not spending so much time mentally obsessing over food and life and we're more just present to the actual sensations that are moving in our body at this moment. So I use somatics work a lot too of just getting into the body and moving energy through the body. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 01
21:29
my question is like, what would be a typical homework assignment maybe for you would send them home with to practice because obviously they could do great work in the office, but this work much like a lot of the work that other providers do probably requires some at home assignment or intention towards working towards their overall goal.
Speaker 00
21:51
Yeah, I love that question. So I'll give an example of A recent client that I was working with, she had a perfectionist and a control part of her come up where she felt like when she was eating with her partner, like if her partner was going to make a meal for her or cook for her, she felt out of control. She wanted to be the one knowing the ingredients, knowing the portions and controlling the outcome of it. And it felt really unsafe for her system to receive a meal made by somebody else, which is such a common thing that I hear from my clients. And what we worked on in our session was, of course, that root cause of healing that control part of her and going into childhood and when that all started and you know addressing the reason why she felt out of control in the first place but for a practical takeaway homework is when you're in that moment and you're feeling that control come up into your body the first part is to actually acknowledge that this is a part of you so instead of just getting swept up into the situation consciously in your mind saying oh that part of me that loves to control my food is present right now and just acknowledging that there's this part create some separation between you, your true self, like we were just talking about, and the part. And right then and there, that brings some regulation to your system. Like you have more access to you and the part in that moment. And then the step two, that's the most powerful, is actually focusing on your body in that moment. So there is dysregulation going on in your nervous system, which means there is sensation happening in your body. And most of the time, we feel these sensations like in our chest, in our belly, in our shoulders. They're kind of torso centered is where we feel most of our emotions. And so I asked this client to actually focus on her body, like shine a light on her body in the moment when her partner creates a meal for her and feel what she feels. And she felt like a contraction in her chest. Her shoulders felt really tight. She felt a buzzy feeling, like a fast vibration. And we want to learn to just let that be there and not try and get rid of it, not try and avoid it. Just notice that vibration in our body, hold it in our body and not run from it. and let it just last as long as it needs to because oftentimes we're using food to avoid these sensations so We feel out of control and we feel that physical feeling of out of control maybe in our chest. And the way that we cope with that uncomfortable feeling is by controlling our food and knowing what we're eating. Like it eliminates that uncomfortable feeling when we enter in our calories or we ask our partner exactly what they use to make the food. We're just avoiding the sensation. So if we get really good at just feeling the sensation in the body and knowing that the sensation isn't a problem, we don't need to get rid of it. It will lessen over time and we're not going to feel that way forever. And it teaches our nervous system that we are safe even in the middle of uncomfortable feelings or sensations that don't feel super pleasant.
Speaker 01
24:40
I guess what's coming up for me is I imagine sometimes in these dynamics, the person might be really drawn to having more heightened emotions than others. a thoughtful exercise. And I love that exercise, but I guess, yes, let's say the person was like, I tried that, didn't work. I found myself wanting to nitpick and overanalyze every single ingredient that he, you know, put in there or that she put in there. Yeah, I guess that to me feels like something that I would hear in my office of, okay, this is this beautiful exercise you do and I hope you can do it. Yeah, I guess it's, First thing that I would think is like, all right, let's just keep trying. But my other thought is how do you hold space for that anger too that comes up? Because I imagine that could come up in a lot of the clients that you serve that have controlling or perfectionistic sort of tendencies.
Speaker 00
25:38
Yeah, I love that. And This is like an example of where every person is different. And so somebody's quote unquote homework or a task that I would suggest would be different depending on where they're at in their journey. So for somebody who's maybe experiencing more dysregulation, more heightened emotions, or just even more disconnected from their body, and like that exercise that I just shared doesn't even feel accessible, we start way smaller, baby, baby, baby steps. And something that I teach a lot is called anchors. And these are practices of anchoring us into our and just creating a little micro moment of safety. We're not trying to do all this inner work and inner healing. We're just creating safety in the body. And these are very basic nervous system regulation techniques like orienting looking around your space and noticing what's going on in your space or feeling the soles of your feet on the ground or feeling your sit bones in your chair as you're eating and we're not trying to necessarily have this massive inner therapy session in our head we're just trying to create a little bit of regulation in our body so we can show our nervous system that we are safe right now and that we are okay because i do hear from a lot of people they say i know all these things like i've listened to all these podcasts i've heard all the strategies but But then when it comes to the moment and it's nine o'clock and everyone's gone to bed and I want to eat everything in the pantry... I don't even care. All of the knowledge goes out of my head. I don't want to do that inner work in my head. I just want to say, screw it and eat everything. And that's a really great example of how we can't think our way out of dysregulation. We are saying, screw it, I'm going to eat all the food because there's nervous system dysregulation going on. And so if we try to combat that with inner mental games and thinking it, it's not going to work. It's going to feel impossible versus if we focus on actually tending to our nervous system in that moment and dropping into the body and out of the head, I find that that works so much better for my clients and for myself. It was like I needed to get out of my head. I didn't need to think my way or change my thoughts when I had an urge to eat. I needed to actually feel what I was feeling in my body and use those anchoring strategies to create a little bit of safety first.
Speaker 01
27:49
Yeah, I think it's important to the listener to realize that you could be at many different stages at different times, not a linear journey. And so, you know, if you find yourself one day being able to really separate yourself and be like, that's my people pleasing part that's coming up and being able to sit with that. And then other days, you're like, fuck everything. I'm so angry. I can't even think about what parts getting activated. I just need to ground myself. I just wanted to normalize that. And it sounds like you tried your best to work with clients to remind them of that too, because I think that's so crucial for so many people's journeys.
Unknown
Yeah.
Speaker 00
28:30
Yeah. And knowing your own system, like knowing when it's time for you to pull out all the inner work and do that mental reprogramming. And there's times when that's really powerful. Usually it's when you have more access to regulation, like you can do that stuff versus when you know your system is deep in dysregulation and those strategies are not going to be helpful. And in that moment, we need to like maybe punch some pillows or shake our body or move. And we're not going to just sit there and journal about our feelings.
Speaker 01
28:60
Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of the information that you've shared. Where can people find you or how can people come work with you?
Speaker 00
29:07
Yeah, I have a couple free resources. I have my own podcast where I share episodes every week. deep into food and the nervous system and all that. So it's called Heart Led Wellness. You can search that on any listening platform. I also made a free root cause quiz. So it's a short little quiz that asks people questions, yes or no questions around their habits and behaviors around food. And it will identify out of all those eight root causes, what are the primary ones that are driving your own food dysregulation. So that can be found at heartledwellness.com forward slash quiz. And then my website, of is another place that I share things every single day, support and tips on healing your relationship with food. And then I have a 12 week group coaching and course called Heart Led Eating that walks you through exactly how to heal your relationship with food at a root cause level, nervous system informed, all the things. It's my favorite thing I have ever created in my entire life. I wish I had it when I was struggling with food, but that's my favorite place to support clients through healing.
Speaker 01
30:12
Awesome. And all that information will also be linked in the show notes on our website. So if people weren't able to write that all down, you can find that on the website. But thank you so much for being on today, Ashlyn, and hopefully people reach out to you because I think it's a great resource to really work on healing your relationship with food and your body and being able to be free from the noise that I feel like food and body issues can create in someone's life.
Speaker 00
30:38
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. And likewise, super proud of you for all the work that you're doing in this world too. Well, thank you. Of course.
Speaker 01
30:47
Thank you for tuning in to Redefining Us once again and share with other people so other people can continue to listen to Redefining Us and we can get into more listeners' ears. If you follow us or subscribe or leave a comment or review, that would be greatly helpful for other people to find us and also just for me to get some feedback. What do you guys want to hear me say? What do you women care about hearing? I'm totally open to bringing on guests and talking about topics that are unique and inspiring to everyone. So please let me know. And this year, hopefully we'll be full of a lot of community building, a lot of public speaking, a lot of resource sharing. So I really encourage you to follow us on social media at well-minded counseling on Instagram as our handle, as well as going directly to our website, well-mindedcounseling.com backslash redefining hyphen us to So you can be in the know with all the things that are happening in the Redefining Us community. Once again, thank you so much for listening and keep being awesome.
Unknown
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 00
26:24
And a second half of that that I've found too is the only reason that you're reading and seeing the middle of somebody's story is because they kept writing. And so... the permission to just try something and see what happens or experiment. And again, move through those different phases of growth and change, even if it's a failure at the end, right? Even if you try to work out three days a week and it doesn't ultimately happen, but then you come back and you start with one. You know, you take one small step, one little thing. Like I say rest is important, but that can look very different for everybody. And so giving them the time and space in a coaching session to tune out the rest of the world and say, okay, it's just me right now. Taking a few breaths, like what do I need? What's important to me? Actually, I really like reading a book or listening to an audio book. I don't care about baths, right? And so why am I trying to think that I need a bath when I don't want that anyways? And so letting all of the crap fall away of what you think you should do and tapping into, what you love and what supports you and what fills your cup is rest to me. Yeah, it's making me think about, I recently had a therapy session and she asked me, you know, do you have mom guilt? And I was like, I think the only thing I feel any sort of guilt around is missing bedtime. And she's like, girl, if that's the thing that you're worried about, you have all the mom guilts to have. Like, you know, you're doing pretty good. But I do think everyone has something that they find themselves feeling like I need to do this. So I'm going to negate resting. I need to be available for every single pickup. I need to be available for every single bedtime. I need to be about like there's this feeling or desire maybe to always be available for others. when you're a mom, or even just in general, women, I feel like have this mindset that they just need to be available for everyone all the time. And what does it look like to say to yourself, I can't be available for everyone all the time. I need to rest. So I need it for myself. Yes, I relate to what you're saying. I have experienced high expectations of myself, as I assume, again, most moms and women do. And for the most part, my partner and I, my husband, we have a pretty equal relationship to take care of our kids. We also, my mother-in-law is with us in the same home, which is amazing. And I could nerd out about an inter or multi-generational living, but that's a story for another time. But anyways, I'm saying that because we split things, right? And so in the mornings, And I was like, okay. I had to say out loud to him just last week, okay? So like, I'm here to just, to be a human and to be honest about how this stuff can go. I looked at him last week and I was like, I am putting all of this pressure on myself to do all of the things in the afternoon in the same way that I'm doing them in the morning. And I'm realizing that that's really unfair to me. And that's unfair to you because he's the one that is doing those things. Like he's already doing them, but I was putting pressure on myself to do them too. And for what?
Unknown
Right?
Speaker 00
30:03
As soon as I said that out loud, he looked at me and he was like, well, but why? Why are you doing that? I was like, I have no idea. I have no idea, but I'm acknowledging it. I've noticed it in this moment. I am releasing myself of this guilt and shame to be there because I'm already there in the morning. You are a parent. You love them. They can also be taken care of by you. And I'm going to go in the office and work. And he was like, okay, babe, see ya. Really proud of you. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. I mean, I'm sure we all do it to some extent. My husband has my daughter all day on Wednesdays because that's him and her time. And my time with her is all day on Sundays because he works on Sundays. I work on Wednesdays. And I was putting this pressure on myself to still be available on Wednesdays just in case they needed me. And I'm like, what do they possibly need me for? He is a perfectly capable human. He loves him to death. Why do I also need to make myself available? Like, All right, maybe need to tone that down, Stephanie. You can do what you need to do in order to provide for the family and to enjoy your work and feel fulfilled by working with your clients. Don't have to be always available. Yes, and I think that's so important. What you're sharing is to see the other side, right? The mom guilt is only the negative or the void of how we're not there, what we're not doing. But what we do on the flip side is, It's super, super important. You're doing work that fulfills you, that makes you feel happy and present when you get home. And making money is another way that you are caring for her, even if you're not physically there, right? And so all of those different pieces that take care of you and fill your cup so that it impacts how you're showing up when you are there and when you're home with them. We don't celebrate all of the things that we're doing enough. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, we all need to have mini celebrations for ourselves probably every week. We made it through another week. Let's do happy dance. Let's turn the music up and just sing along. Whatever a celebration means to you, I think we all need to be doing that more. Yes, and that's a part of rest in Rerooted is reflection. As a culture, I think there's so much that is so fast-paced, harder, better, faster, stronger, do better, work faster, go, go, go, go, go. There's not, and we're not used to pausing. After you are, for example, working out three days a week, if that's what you want to do, like taking stock after a few weeks to say, holy cannoli, I've done this thing, right? I wanted to do this thing. I said I was going to do this thing. I've done it. What's working for me? How is this making me feel? And how am I going to celebrate the fact that I am choosing me, the fact that I am taking care of myself? And when we build in more of that rest and pause and reflection and celebration, it also allows for more growth and for that sustainable change to keep going and continuing in whatever way, shape or form that needs to take. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to encourage you to share where can people find to work with you, socials and whatnot, so people can connect. Yeah, thank you. I'm on Instagram at underscore with Caitlin and that's Caitlin the Irish way. C-A-I-T-L-I-N. And my website is coachingwithcaitlin.com. I have lots of blog posts up. I have lots of different things on Instagram. Everyone can book a free call with me on the website if they're interested in, I call it a possibility call, learning more about coaching and what it can do for them. And I have a free weekly newsletter as well. So lots of different ways that I am here and I would love to support your listeners. Awesome. Yes. And all that will be in the show notes too. So don't feel like you have to write it all down. So thank you so much for being on with us today and hopefully everyone learned something and we'll connect with you. I hope so too. Thank you so much, Stephanie. I really appreciate the time to be with you. Thank you for tuning in to Redefining Us once again and share with other people so other people can continue to listen to Redefining Us and we can get into more listeners ears. If you follow us or subscribe or leave a comment or review, that'd be greatly helpful for other people to find us and also just for me to get some feedback. What do you guys want to hear me say? What do you women care about hearing? I'm totally open to Thank you so much for joining us. So you can be in the know with all the things that are happening in the Redefining Us community. Once again, thank you so much for listening and keep being awesome.