have you ever opened your laptop to send one email? Just one, and then suddenly you are staring at your screen for an hour, procrastinating distracting yourself, and you walk away and you're like, Ugh, that one important thing that I needed to do, I didn't get it done.

Or maybe you. I just can't. Start, you get that feeling of kind of like a wall in your body or maybe things feel like, ugh, ah, just like tense. And then all of a sudden you are so interested in cleaning your kitchen and that feels incredibly urgent. So afterwards. You tell yourself some stories such as, I'm lazy, there's something wrong with me.

This will never work. Something isn't right. I never follow through on the things that I say that I will do. Um, life is too busy, hazy chaotic. It's my fault, or it's somebody else's fault, but, and you can feel kind of your brain going to dispose of. And maybe if you're very aware of your body, you can feel this like tension coming up through your body.

Maybe it comes up through your solar plexus. Maybe you notice that your shoulders kind of creep up towards your ears today. I wanna interrupt the story in your brain around there is something wrong with me, or there is something wrong with my id, or there is something wrong with the people around me.

We're gonna focus more on what's happening in your body because all of these stories, not saying that there is not something that could be improved in the people around you, over your idea or, um, the way that you're doing things. Maybe there could be an easier way to get things done. But what we notice, I notice a lot of the time, is that when we have a response where we kind of.

Freeze or avoid relatively quote unquote simple tasks. It's a nervous system response that overload, threat or uncertainty are just a little bit too much in that moment and. Some of the ways that we can react to that are by blaming ourself or by blaming everything around ourselves, but usually we know that we're in that space because the thing that we want it to do doesn't get done.

We don't feel good about the fact that it doesn't get done, and we find ourselves, as I said, going into all of those patterns. The good news is we can actually teach the body over time That starting that thing that right now feels. Really difficult or you've noticed you haven't been able to do is not only safe, but could actually be really, really fun.

 Welcome to Sustainable Success. If you are capable, thoughtful, and you care about your 📍 work, but by the end of the day you feel like it's taken too much energy, more than it should have, then you are in the right place. My name is Sheridan. I am a somatic trauma therapist and yoga therapist with a background and a specialization in behavioral psychology and how we relate with work, money and burnout.

My past experience has been working with individuals with Complex PTHD, neurodivergence and OCD, and this podcast explores why work can feel draining, uh, and how our bodies adapt to pressure and responsibility. And then what are the practical things we can do in our day-to-day lives without burning everything into the ground to bring back a bit more energy, a bit more agency, and a bit more joy.

We are not gonna talk about how to change your mindset or how to heal everything until the world is perfect again, or I don't know how to optimize your life to get there and be productive. We're gonna take an experimental approach with curiosity and hopefully a little bit of fun along the way. 

Today we're gonna cover why simple tasks can trigger a freeze response, how to tell the difference between overload, like it's just too much versus a, a threat from your system and a tiny little practice called the two minute start. That will help retrain your system that you can start using today as well as two paths forward depending on what kind of support you need.

As you're listening to this, if you find yourself deeply resonating and thinking, okay, I actually want more, if you scroll down below to the show notes, you'll find a couple of different options. We have the five week course work doesn't have to cost your energy, which is self-paced. You do it at your own.

You know, you can take. It's kind of made to be done within five weeks, but I've noticed people sometimes take a little bit longer. They like to really integrate the practices. We use somatic practices as well as systems thinking and parts work to. Just take some of the energetic leaks that are happening in your life with work.

Um, if you feel like you like, oh, this feels actually quite deep and I, this is helpful, but I feel like there's something else here and you're curious in one-on-one sessions with me, you can find access to that information and you can book a free consultation toll with the information and the link down below if you have any questions or you wanna share.

Anything at all. Um, yeah, you wanna say hello? Definitely reach out. You'll find my contact down below as well. And let's get in so that you can end with this two minute little practice that I really enjoy.

Okay, let's anchor ourselves back in that exact moment. Email comes through or you have to fill out a form or there's a message that you haven't responded to in three days, and you know that you need to do it, but instead of doing it sitting down to do it, you kind of just like stare at it, and then you look at your phone and then you.

You look back at that and you're like, it, you feel blank. Maybe before you sat down to do this, you felt this feeling of kind of dread in your chest or your whole body felt really heavy. Or maybe it was more like you had this kind of buzzing feeling in your body, um, but you weren't able to kind of.

Translate that into like getting the, your limbs and your fingers to move into completing the task, or your brain starts scanning for literally anything else to do. And because you are a capable person and you see yourself that way and you've been able to do many other things in your life, you kind of interpret that as meaning that you've failed your own.

Personality trait in some way. You're like, okay, well this is, um, I don't know, an example of how I'm lazy or I can't get things done or I can't be trusted. But when we look at this from a nervous system lens, what we actually see is more of like a protective shutdown. Basically. That task might look like it is small on paper, but it actually has a really big meaning to you.

Maybe it's connected to. A feeling of maybe, I don't know, maybe you're worried that there might be a little bit of conflict around it, or you might be evaluated in some way. Maybe you are worried that you might disappoint someone. Maybe it's just connected to something that you really care about, you want to do really, really well.

Um, maybe there have been times in your life where you've felt like you've made the wrong decision and so. This time, you're really trying to make sure that you make the right decision. Or maybe you're worried that if you do this, then there's gonna be some type of irreversible um, uh. Scenario that will occur.

Or on the other flip side, maybe you just don't know. Maybe there's just a lot of uncertainty. It's like I don't even, there's not like a clear kind of, I like to think of it as like kind of, um, like a clear kind of formula or a way that I could be marked on this. It's not. There's like, it's too open.

You're like, what should I say? Could say lots of things. Or maybe you don't know how long it will take. Um, maybe it's not clear what happens after you do it. And so there's just like a lot of uncertainty in this. Um, uncertainty is a threat to the body. It, especially if you've had a lot of experiences where uncertainty has led to things like, I don't know, it feels like it's all gonna fall apart or something.

Something bad happened, um, or I don't know if I can trust myself to manage things that are uncertain. It feels like the fall will be ripped out from under me. Therefore, I'd rather just stay in the places where they are certain, or there's lots of things going on in your life, right? Now there's a lot of mental energy, there's a lot of emotional labor that you're doing just logistically things are going on.

And so this adding on this literal one thing, especially if it's uncertain, especially if it means something to you, um, your body is literally just gonna be like, no, absolutely not. And we can times 10, all of these things if you happen to be a little bit perfectionist. So I think the first thing to do is to identify if this is.

Overload. So one of those things of like, it's too much, or is my body recognizing this as a threat? The way that I like to do that is I just do this little checking with my body and I look for how am I feeling? If I feel like I'm tired or I haven't slept very well, or my calendar's been really full, or I just feel kind of like, I suppose at capacity.

I, it's usually safe to assume and start at, okay, I'm at capacity. I need to do less. I need to take something out of my life. In order for me to look at this thing, uh, we have a really great podcast on capacity, nervous system capacity, and I think I had 12 different ways to increase your capacity. And we look at things as far as like economy, social, health, sleep, all of these different things, your relationships.

So if it's capacity. Your curiosity could be taken towards capacity right now when you could even skip the rest of this podcast if you really wanted to. Although the two minute practice at the end will be nice. Um, then we have is a threat. The way that you might figure that out is if doing it, you do a quick scan of your body, notice your sensations.

And if that doesn't feel super, super easy, we can still practice it, um, in other ways. But you can develop that skill. We kind of check in and check in with those sensations, check in with those thoughts in your head, check in with those emotions that you're having. Once again, all skills that we have to develop as adults because we.

Not many of us developed them as children. Something that you can learn inside of the work doesn't have to cost your energy course. And then you can just write down, see if there's an answer to the end of this sentence, which would be, I'm a little bit worried that if I insert a task and then finish the sentence, X will happen.

It might be, I'm worried that they'll reject me. They'll say it's a bad idea. I'm worried that they'll, then people will see me. But just checking in and kind of like testing and feeling, maybe saying things to yourself of like, am I afraid of this? Am I afraid of this? And kind of seeing how your body responds and then when you can see how your body responds, sometimes it.

You'll feel like, ah, like a yes inside. Um, and this distinction is really important because overload needs capacity support, which you can look at. Inside of that podcast, inside of the course, or maybe you already have your tools threat, actually needs safety, reassurance, um, reframing, and it needs like a new lived experience.

So the two minute practice that I use for that is to open the thing, whatever it is, and do something as badly as I possibly could, and I can only spend two minutes on this. It has to be ugly and it only can be two minutes. Hi, I'm writing because here's what I know so far. This is what I'm thinking, blah.

Or just like playing with the spreadsheet or whatever it is. It has to be ugly and it, you have to stop at two minutes. You're not allowed to like ride that into pushing and doing more because you're already in it. 'cause we're not actually training you to push through. We're training you to, um, be able to lean into discomfort.

And then lean back into comfort so that your body begins to learn that that disc thing that you'd thought was uncomfortable before is now uncomfortable. And now this is very, very important. This is the important thing. After that two minutes, go and do something that you like. I don't care what it is. Go and do something that you like.

It doesn't have to be for a long period of time. It could be for another two minutes, just enough for you to kind of forget that that other thing happened, and then return back to it a little bit later. It could be the next day. You're just teaching your body, ah, we can show up, we can do a thing that we don't like.

Nothing bad happens. We stop. We're still in control. Try to be in touch with your body, especially, um, at the end, after you do that two minute practice, like feel your feet on the ground. Go do something fun and like, feel the feelings of doing that thing that is fun. And that's it. Now that's a really practical tool that I like to give sometimes as homework to one-on-one clients.

Um, it's also we have the course five Work Doesn't Have to Cost Your Energy the five Way course. It has all of these practical little fun things that you can play with, and you'll find all those links down below. If you have, I don't know, something on your mind that you want a little bit of help with, send me a message and I'll make a podcast about it and I'll speak with you soon.