The truth is, we can’t live and work in a lighter way when our body is under sustained stress.
But stress can be sneaky! It can often show up in ways that we don’t necessarily attribute to stress.
These more subtle signs (like procrastination, people pleasing or busyness) are actually attempts by your body to seek a feeling of safety, because it’s feeling threatened or unsafe in some way.
Once we understand this, we can learn to meet that need in a more supportive way.
This is what magically shifts these patterns and moves you into a feeling of flow in your life.
This is how we can start living and working in a much lighter way.
This episode discusses:
> How our nervous system responds to stress through "fight, flight, freeze or fawn" responses. Understanding which response you relate to can provide insight into how your body is communicating feelings of stress.
> What the patterns of people pleasing, procrastination and busyness are trying to communicate to you
> Listeners are invited to identify their most common stress response and contact Annabelle for a personalised voice note with tailored tips to support that response and help the body find safety (and therefore a lighter feeling).
Work With Me:
Visit my website: annabellematson.com
Social Media
Find me on: Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin
The truth is, we can’t live and work in a lighter way when our body is under sustained stress.
But stress can be sneaky! It can often show up in ways that we don’t necessarily attribute to stress.
These more subtle signs (like procrastination, people pleasing or busyness) are actually attempts by your body to seek a feeling of safety, because it’s feeling threatened or unsafe in some way.
Once we understand this, we can learn to meet that need in a more supportive way.
This is what magically shifts these patterns and moves you into a feeling of flow in your life.
This is how we can start living and working in a much lighter way.
This episode discusses:
> How our nervous system responds to stress through "fight, flight, freeze or fawn" responses. Understanding which response you relate to can provide insight into how your body is communicating feelings of stress.
> What the patterns of people pleasing, procrastination and busyness are trying to communicate to you
> Listeners are invited to identify their most common stress response and contact Annabelle for a personalised voice note with tailored tips to support that response and help the body find safety (and therefore a lighter feeling).
Work With Me:
Visit my website: annabellematson.com
Social Media
Find me on: Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin
Hi, welcome back to the podcast and this new mini series called working and living lighter. It's Annabelle Mattson here. And I'm so thrilled that you're here. If you haven't listened to the first episode of this mini series, which is the one that just sits below this one, then. I recommend checking that one out, perhaps before you listen to this one. Inside that first episode of this mini series, I was talking about some techniques that we can use to decompress at the end of the day and why this is so important. Because what happens for a lot of us as women is that we experience a lot of demands in our day. And. A lot of that creates emotional stress in our body. It creates a lot of open loops for us in our mind, and what that does is we can armor up as a result of that and we come home and we, we are wearing this armor and it makes it really difficult to soften and relax into the evening. It's hard to create that distinction between work life and home life. It means we don't actually find a sense of. Recalibration or restoration after the day and also when we're wearing this armor after a busy day, it's really hard to connect with people that we love to come home to be present enough in our bodies to connect with our children. Relationship stuff becomes really hard when we're wearing this armor. So these decompressing techniques that I shared with you in the previous episode can help you with all of that. It's so important that we're intentional about the time. After we finish work, our commute home, what we're doing, the moments we come home from work, because all of that can play if we're intentional with that time, and we can use some of these techniques that I shared in that episode can make all the difference to how you experience your evenings. And not only that. It's going to give you so much more brain space. It's going to give you more energy. It's going to make you feel like you can do more things outside of work. It's going to allow your body to feel so much lighter and more relaxed. So head over to that episode and. Have a listen to that and learn some of those decompressing techniques. I'm really looking forward to hearing how those go for you and it can be a fun thing to do alongside with a friend or colleague as well. So in this mini series we're talking about working and living lighter and what that really means is it's being able to live life from a more calm, peaceful and grounded state. Even if we're dealing with challenges and even if there are challenging people or Situations that we might have to encounter in our work day or in our life. It's about being able to hold life a lot more loosely, a lot more lightly, which means we can come home at night and feel more relaxed, feel as though our bodies feel more relaxed, feel lighter. And as I talked about with those decompressing techniques, when we do this stuff, when we live and work from a lighter place, We have more brain space. We're not always thinking about work all the time and all of the things that need to be done in our lives, we can hold what needs to be done much more lightly, which means we have more space in our life. There's more spaciousness to be able to do things that really fill us up, that really fill up our cup. So in this series, I'm going to be. Sharing some stuff with you. That's going to help make that possible. And it's a three part series. So there's the previous episode. There's this one and what's going to be really cool is that there's going to be a short exercise at the end of this episode where I'm going to invite you to share with me. Your response to a question that I give you and there's going to be an invitation here for you to receive some personalized coaching, a personalized voice note from me either on Facebook or Instagram, where you'll reach out to me and tell me your response to this question. And I'm going to send you a personalized voice note and share with you some practices, some techniques that can really help you for your specific thing that's showing up in your life. So. Keep an eye out for that. I'm going to be talking more about that the end of this episode and there's a time limit on this. So you keep, keep an eye on that as well. We've got until next Tuesday, the 27th of February to be able to do that. So let's get into this episode before we do that. Actually, though, I just want to remind you about elevate the mastermind. This is my intimate group coaching program for professional women. Women in business leaders and aspiring leaders, and it's open for enrollment. We start on the 29th of February. So really soon, and we have a beautiful group that's gathering together. This is a life changing six month program, and we're going to go. Deep into this concept of working and living lighter and you're going to learn how to create a much more sustainable and healthy relationship with work that leaves space for more living and more enjoying of your life. You're going to learn how to advance your career in a whole new way, a way that feels much lighter and easier on your body and mind. So things that used to feel triggering or challenging at work that caused you to overthink a lot. You're going to experience those in a completely different way. They're going to impact you much less or not even at all. So Elevate, their mastermind is here to help you step into your next level of success with a deeper sense of self belief and certainty and Also with a lighter body and mind we're here to carve out your pathway to come sustainable success So check out the link in the description of this episode if you'd like to To learn more about that There's also another episode on the podcast where I'm walking you through the mastermind how it can help you who it's for So if this is kind of connecting with you, you might like to check that out as well And we start on the 29th of February. So not long to go. If you've been thinking about joining, now is the time. Okay. So let's jump into this episode. Please do share this with a friend. If you know a friend or a colleague who would really benefit from this. And if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, wherever you're tuning in from, and if you really feel like it, I would so appreciate if you rated the podcast too. So if you're on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're tuning in from, if you could give the podcast a rating that really supports the work that I do for the podcast and helps it reach more people. So, let me ask you, do you experience any of the following? Do you experience procrastination? So you know what needs to be done, you know the actions you need to take. But you feel like it's really hard to take them and it's really hard to follow through and make things happen. Do you actually say yes to things when you really mean no? Do you find yourself scrolling a lot at the end of the day? Do you spend a lot of time up in your mind thinking about the future and trying to plan things? Do you find it hard to relax, hard to be in your body? Do you sometimes find at the end of the day you're having arguments in your mind? That you come home at night and you replay conversations with people? Kind of thinking of a better response if you do this would make you very human and normal But it's so important to understand that these are actually nervous system responses And they're an indication of a nervous system That's activated and under some kind of stress and it's almost impossible for us to be able to access a lighter way of living and working and When our nervous system is in an ongoing state of activation and that is the reality for a lot of us Whether we realize it or not Our nervous system is often in an ongoing state of activation and it's never returning to this healthy, restorative baseline where we actually can restore, where our bodies can feel replenished. We might physically leave the office or physically leave the stressful thing, but we still carry that activation with us, that stress response with us, so it's never feeling like, We're actually accessing any rest. So if any of these things, like you relate to any of these things, then this episode is going to be great for you. The first thing that I want to say is it's so important to understand that this is a nervous system response, that it is an indication that your body is under stress and that it is a way that your body is trying to communicate to you. I often find that people will say like, You know, oh, I'm just busy. I'm, I'm not stressed. There's something about like, it's more acceptable to say that we're busy than it is to say that we're actually stressed. Maybe admitting that we're stressed kind of makes us feel like we're admitting that we're not coping. And I know I can relate to this so much. If I think back to The early stages not the early stages of my business, but the before I started my business, maybe like 11, 12 years ago, I was suffering from a lot of digestive issues. So I didn't realize that at the time, but I internalized a lot of my stress and how that manifested was in a lot of gut issues. And so. What was interesting was actually this is how what got me on the path to doing what I'm doing now, but I was experiencing a lot of these digestive issues and so I bounced around a bunch of doctors. He ended up in this office with a specialist and he asked me this question, well are you stressed? And I remember responding and saying, Oh, no, no, I'm not stressed. I'm just busy. And I think there's such a fine line between stress and busyness. And maybe there's actually not even a line at all. I think they're most often one in the same. But it feels easier to accept that we're busy than it is to accept that we're stressed. And I think for anything to change, for us to be able to live and work in a lighter way, we actually have to start to get honest with ourselves about the ways that our body is communicating to us. We have to start to get honest about Actually, how stress is impacting us and, and the way that that's showing up for us. Because as I said, to live and work in a lighter way, to experience all of this, the amazingness that comes from that style of living and working, where we feel that sense of peace, where we feel like we can hold things more lightly. We don't get as triggered by stuff. We can, we just feel more grounded. Things flow so much more easily in our lives. To experience all of that good stuff, we actually have to start to get honest with what's occurring now and the way our body is actually communicating to us and is responding to stress. And so that's what I want to talk to you about today to really dial up this level of awareness of some things that might be going on in your life that you might not have actually attributed to being something about stress. And when we can actually do that and actually see underneath. Oh, okay. I'm actually feeling stressed. My body is trying to communicate to me. We can then implement some really practical things to be able to support that. So let's talk a little bit about that. So our nervous system is like an alarm system in the body. When we feel we're in danger, the nervous system gets activated to help us leave the threat to help us essentially create safety from the threat. And this is how we've evolved and why we're still here. You might have heard of the phrases like fight or flight. That's a couple of the ways our nervous system responds. I'm going to share more on that shortly. But if you think about it in your current day to day life, when you perceive or experience something stressful, it might be you get an email. Someone makes an unwanted comment towards you. Maybe you feel like you receive some criticism or some negative feedback about your work. Perhaps you think someone's disappointed in you. Or some kind of unexpected problem or issue has just arisen. Whatever it might be, if we perceive something stressful in our environment, our nervous system is going to respond to that. And we move into a state of nervous system activation. In an attempt to find safety and we'll shift into one of these four states, which I'm going to share with you in a second. And when we're in the state of activation, our body is starting to prepare to deal with a stress or threat. And ideally what we want to see happen is that our body returns back. It responds, it goes into one of these states and it comes back to this peaceful grounded baseline where our nervous system is no longer activated. And returning to this baseline is so important for the health of our bodies, but also how well we can tolerate future stresses. So if we're in an ongoing state of nervous system activation, whether we realize it or not, we're actually going to find it really difficult to have resilience to stress. So we'll experience one thing, we often stay in that nervous system activation, and then Something else stressful happens and it just feels like it feels like things are crumbling down on top of us. Our ability to respond to future stresses is really inhibited when we're not returning to this baseline. So we cannot experience life and work in a lighter way when our nervous system is constantly activated. And many people don't understand that this is actually what's happening to them. This is actually what they're experiencing. We get so used to feeling Overwhelmed, anxious we get so used to kind of like zoning out, withdrawing, people pleasing, whatever it might be. We get so used to living this way that we don't actually understand that this is our bodies communicating to us, that this is what's actually happening as your nervous system is activated. So we just label it as like I did, no, I'm just busy or I just procrastinate, I need to be better at time management, or I just can't focus. Right. There's that fine line between business and stress. It's not about needing to be better at time management. It's much more about being able to respond to your body and create that sense of safety. So let's talk about the various nervous system states. So you can start to identify how this might be showing up for you. And when you do this, everything changes. So if your nervous system is feeling unsafe, if your nervous system is responding to a stress, you're going to see it show up in one of these four ways. And you might even find that you play out like all of these. This is quite normal too. So the first is fight. So you experience a stress and then, You start, like, you have arguments either internally or externally. So you might pick fights or pick arguments with people when you come under stress. Or you might find that this actually happens, like, in your mind. Like, you have that back and forth conversation with someone in your head. That's a fight response. It feels like a lot of tension in the body. And it can be very stressful in the body when we're feeling that way. So that's fight. Flight is the second way our nervous system is, is indicating, hey, there's something going on here. Flight is like raciness, busyness, anxiousness, overwhelm. A client of mine talks about this as like tornado mode. It looks like ripping around the house. Huge to do list. Gotta do all these things. Tick them all off. So it looks like jumping from task to task can often be like future tripping. So spending a lot of time up in your mind, thinking about the future, planning the future, that's flight. The third way our nervous system responds to stress and is therefore communicating that there's a stress is freeze. So this is the procrastination one that I want to talk to you about. And it's been really interesting in my conversations recently, just over the last week, they have been A number of people that have been talking to me about how they struggle with procrastination and it's not about needing to be better at time management. It's not about the fact that you need to plan things out better and it's so much more an indication of a nervous system response and your body needing to be guided to safety when your body is guided to safety. You know, I'm going to need to protect yourself with this freeze response. So the freeze response is like, it literally feels like being frozen in place. Sometimes it can feel like having like bricks around your feet. Knowing what needs to be done, but not being able to do it. It looks like kind of shutting down or withdrawing. It can be. Like intense procrastination and often a lot of perfectionism. So that can, that is often sitting underneath procrastination. So like really wanting to get something done so perfectly that it's paralyzing and we can't even take the step that needs to be taken. Could often look like scrolling, like too much scrolling on our phone. That can be a freeze response. So think about how these might be showing up for you. The fight response, that's the one where we're having arguments either in our mind or with other people. The flight, the tornado mode, the raciness, the busyness, the, the to do lists, jumping from task to task, the freeze, procrastination, scrolling a lot, shutting down. Being in perfectionism, not being able to take action, and then fawn is the fourth one, and this is like the people pleasing response. So you come under stress, and then it's kind of like your boundaries slip. So you start taking on too much. You say yes when you really need to say no. You take on more than you need to, and it's kind of all about trying to keep other people happy. So think about which one of these responses show up for you. And the point I'm really trying to drive home to you inside this episode is that it's an indication that your body is under stress. Sometimes we don't want to admit that that's what it is, that we are stressed, that we are being impacted by what is happening, what is happening in our lives or in our work days. But we are, if we're displaying these. These responses, then we are being impacted by it. And it's so important to get honest with ourselves to start to be aware of this so that we can do something about it so that we can start to guide ourselves back to this healthy baseline. And that's important because it's really difficult to move through life when our nervous system is constantly activated like this. I mean, like who wants to move through life constantly feeling overwhelmed. Constantly racing around and feeling so busy all the time. I know it doesn't feel nice when I'm in a freeze response and I'm zoning out. That doesn't feel great. You know, we're not connected to the good stuff that's around us when we're doing that. It's hard to move through life when you feel like you're picking arguments with people in your head all the time, all your people pleasing. And then there's no energy or time left for you, right? It's, it's, it's doesn't feel nice to move through life with a nervous system that's constantly activated. It's not that it's a problem that your nervous system activates, like that's a normal part of being a human. But where the issue arises is that often we just live in this activated state, we don't come back to the baseline. And when that's happening it's hard to access. Higher levels of thinking, it's hard to make clear decisions it's hard to take action, it's hard to move things forward, it's really hard to be present in, in life, it's hard to connect in our relationships it's hard to, to feel at ease, we don't feel at ease. When these things are going on. So the goal is to be able to guide your body back to this healthy baseline. And really what these responses are communicating to you is your body saying, please make me feel safe. I'm trying to find safety. So I'm trying to find safety by people pleasing. I'm trying to find safety by zoning out and like withdrawing from this threat. I'm trying to find safety by having all these to do lists and being really busy. That's like an attempt for our bodies and minds to try and find safety, but it's sort of trying to find safety in the wrong places. So what our job is, is to be able to help. ourselves, find a sense of safety, emotional safety in a way that serves us so much better. So it's being able to feel safe in your body without needing to play out any of those patterns, doing things that serve us a lot better. And there's some really practical, amazing techniques that we can employ. Often specific to each one of these responses that can do that job, that can meet that need for safety. And when our body feels safe, that's when we can let things go. That's when we move through life in a lighter way. That's when stresses and challenges kind of wash off us. That we're way less impacted by things. That's when we can leave work at the door and be able to come home and be present. Be with the people that are in front of us. That's when we can really feel like we can rest and relax. So really understand when these nervous system responses are showing up. Understand that it is a stress and really what your body is asking for is please help me feel safe. Please guide me to a sense of safety. And through meeting that need for safety through doing practical things to support our bodies to feel safe, that's how we access the lighter way. That's how we can live and work in a lighter way. So what I want to invite you to do now, I'm really looking forward to this part, is I want to, you to think about which nervous system response is most familiar to you. You probably will play out. A mix of all of them, but think about which one is most familiar to you. And then what I'm going to get you to do is I'm going to invite you to reach out to me and my direct messages. On Instagram or Facebook, and I want you to share with me which nervous system is most familiar to you. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to send you a personalized voice note back to you with some clear steps, some clear practices, some things that you can do to support that nervous system response. And in other words, to help your body find that sense of safety. And in turn, what that's going to create is allow you to access this lighter way of living and working. So there's a time limit on this. I can't kind of keep it open forever and ever. So this is open through till Tuesday, the 27th of February. So have a listen to this episode, find the links to my, either my Instagram or my Facebook messages, my private messages and reach out to me there, let me know which response is most familiar and then I'll come back to you with a personalized voice note and share some things that I know could help. You uniquely with what's showing up for you. So I'm really looking forward to connecting in this way. Make sure that you reach out to me before Tuesday, the 27th, so that we can can do this together. If you know a colleague or a friend where maybe they're struggling with some of these things that I've been talking about tonight, share this episode with them. There's likely to be something here for them that can help them and serve them in some way. And also if this stuff is like familiar to you, if this sort of resonates with you, then I really want to invite you to check out Elevate the Mastermind. This is how I can help you in a much deeper, more profound way. This is my intimate group coaching program for professional women, women in business leaders and aspiring leaders. And we flow for six beautiful months together and we go really deep into this whole concept of working light. It's going to help you. Create a much healthier, more sustainable relationship with work and help you advance your career in a whole new way. You know, it doesn't mean to, to be able to experience work and in a lighter way, it doesn't mean that we have to give up our goals or ambitions. Like we absolutely can still achieve more and create more success for ourselves, but it's about knowing how to do that differently. And that's what I'm here to guide you to, to calm sustainable success. So we meet. Each week over six months with our intimate group and there's something really special about being able to. Meet together as a group with women who are working through really similar things and who are committed to making really similar changes to you. There's always so many similarities that exist between us and there's really something quite magical that comes. When we come together in a safe and supportive place and we do this work together. So we start next week on the 29th of February, we flow for six amazing months together. We meet each week sessions are a mix of me teaching you core concepts and also open Q and A sessions where you can come on and get personalized guidance and advice coaching from me. Whatever you need to be able to move through the stuff that's showing up for you in your work and in your life So I'd love to support you if it's feeling like something you're interested in This would be a great fit for you If you are a professional woman someone who identifies as quite high achieving high functioning But you're feeling burnt out and quite disillusioned by the pace of work. Maybe you're seeking career clarity You're wondering hmm What's next for me? What, where am I heading to next? Mastermind can be a great support for you in clarifying those next steps. Maybe you're feeling clear and certain about your career goals and your direction, but you want to learn how to approach that in a more balanced way. Maybe you're a leader or an aspiring leader, and you want to learn how to confidently lead your team from your feminine energy. This is the mastermind is really infused with so many feminine energy principles. Perhaps you've stepped into a new level of responsibility and there's a lot of sticky self doubt coming up for you. A lot of what we do in the mastermind is about helping you to deepen into a sense of belief and certainty about yourself and your skills, which helps us move through work in a much lighter way. Maybe you're in business and you want to expand your impact, expand your reach grow your business and you know that the change has to start with you and how you're seeing yourself and what you believe is possible for you. And really, if you're, if you're ready to advance your career, but you want to do this in a way that honors your well being, the Mastermind would be an amazing fit for you. So I'll leave a link to an episode below. Couple of episodes back where I'm actually talking through the program in a bit more detail about how it works How it can help you you might like to go and check that out. We start next week So if you've been thinking about joining now is the time I'm here If you have any questions You're welcome to reach out to me if you want to book in for a time to have a chat About whether it's right for you But go and head along to that invitation page and have a wee look at the details and everything that's going on there so Check out the mastermind, come over to Facebook or Instagram using the links below. Send me that, that DM, let me know which nervous system response is most familiar to you. And I'm going to shoot you back some coaching, some techniques, some tips that can really help you in this space. Subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already share this episode with a friend or colleague who might need it. And I look forward to connecting with you in the next one.