Emotional Rollercoasters: When Life Makes It Hard to Think Clearly

Emma Bryant: Hello and welcome back to The Purposeful Shift. This week, after finding myself trying to work whilst my head was very definitely somewhere else, I started wondering why it is that we expect ourselves to function at exactly the same level every single day, regardless of what else is going on in our lives. So in today's episode, I'm exploring what stress does to our thinking. When pushing through might not be the right answer. and how we can work with the capacity that we actually have each day. So this week, I have had one of those weeks where there hasn't necessarily been one huge catastrophic thing that's happened that's knocked me off course. But there have been moments where I have felt like I've been riding a bit of an emotional roller coaster, whilst simultaneously also expecting myself to carry on working and functioning at exactly the same level as I normally would. So we had some guests come and stay with us from Germany on Monday through to Wednesday, which was really lovely, but totally threw me out of my usual routine. I was also poorly again with this recurring gastro issue that I have from last Friday night through to Thursday. So I'd not been able to eat properly or to exercise for days, which was definitely impacting my mood. And we also decided last week or this week to apply to rehome a dog who we had previously fostered for a whole year, as she is unfortunately unable to stay in her current home. And that's meant deciding to commit to a third dog for the rest of her life. She's seven at the moment. and contemplating some of those bigger changes for us as a family and for her and that period of her settling back in and how that's going to impact what we can do and also kind of my feelings that I have about being stuck at home and that's for at least the rest of this year while she adapts to living with us again. So lots of thinking, lots of decisions, lots of emotions going around this week. But Tuesday was probably the best example of my biggest roller coaster. in one day. So I'd started the day not in a great place. I'd had a disrupted night's sleep as our older dog is up in the night multiple times at the moment. So I started the day off feeling tired and then quite early on in the morning, several things happened with my daughter, which were quite stressful for us both and completely outside of our control. Plans kept changing. She was having quite a difficult time managing those changes. and needed me to support her, but I was an hour away from home and from her and I couldn't immediately do anything to help. And my phone kept going off with messages and calls whilst I was still trying to work out what needed to happen next. And at the same time, I was also trying to carry on with the things that I'd already committed to doing on Tuesday, which included a work meeting that I had in my diary. but that I was going to join remotely from Falmouth as I'd driven our guests down there for the day. So technically I could have joined the meeting and I had planned to. I had my laptop with me. I had a good enough internet connection and there wasn't really any practical reason why I couldn't sit down, open Zoom and turn up despite my phone going off and all of these other things happening. But I knew I wouldn't really be there, partly because I was still receiving calls and trying to manage this evolving situation from a distance. But also even when the call stopped, my mind was somewhere else. My emotions were heightened. I was already feeling quite stressed. All those little things that were adding up, like say nothing huge, but just all those little things that were adding up, filling my jar, if you like. And I was trying to process multiple things at once. And I was waiting to find out what was going on and what was going to happen next. And I knew that if I joined that meeting, I would probably spend half of that meeting looking at my phone, struggling to follow the conversation. and probably not really contributing anything useful or particularly helpful or being present in the way that I needed to be. And so I had to send my apologies and it was very last minute. And then I subsequently felt guilty and I kept questioning myself for whether I should have tried harder. I should have gone to the meeting. I should have just somehow made it work. But afterwards, when things had calmed down a little and I'd found somewhere to just sit and be present for a little while and to kind of calm my thoughts and my feelings and my emotions, I started thinking about why it is that I expect myself to produce the same level of work every day when I'm obviously not experiencing the same day emotionally. So there are certain days in my week when things are more challenging for my daughter and subsequently there is a potential knock on impact for me. And so I need to be mindful of how that affects me emotionally and whether I should still be giving myself or having the same expectations of myself on those days. And I think I've probably been guilty of this for many years in different guises. And I'm sure many of us probably are. I can be struggling to concentrate on something that I would normally find relatively easy to complete or do. And perhaps I find myself reading the same email several times or procrastinating or forgetting to do things or sitting at my laptop and actually achieving very little in terms of work production. And my immediate response is usually to be frustrated with myself. So asking myself questions like, why is it that I can't concentrate today? Why am I wasting so much time? I've got so much to do. Why can't I just get on with it? But this week made me wonder whether before we start criticizing ourselves for not being particularly productive, there's another question that's worth asking. And that is, what else is my brain dealing with right now? So I started to wonder what happens to our thinking. when we're stressed and when our emotions are heightened. I wanted to understand a little bit more about this. And one of the things that I've been reading about is what psychologists call our executive function. Executive functions are essentially a collection of mental processes that help us manage our thoughts and our behavior. They include things such as our working memory, which allows us to hold information in our minds while we're using it, and our cognitive flexibility, which helps us adapt and change our thinking and switch between different demands. So although executive function sounds quite clinical, we're relying on these abilities constantly when we're working. So if I'm writing something or planning a project or making a decision or trying to solve a problem or having a conversation where I need to listen properly and formulate a useful response, then I'm using my executive functions. research showing that acute stress can affect some of these abilities, particularly our working memory and our cognitive flexibility. But it's not as simple as saying that stress makes our brain stop working. That would be inaccurate because it doesn't. And researchers have found that the effects depend on all sorts of things, including the person, the type of stress, and the tasks that we're trying to perform. And if you think about elite athletes, for example, then there's arguments around levels of stress actually helping them improve their performance rather than hindering it. But I found the basic principle useful because it helped me look at a number of things, including a recent podcast guest interview and what happened on Tuesday slightly differently. So on Tuesday, I was expecting my brain to process what was happening personally to deal with the uncertainty of what was happening. to make decisions both personally and professionally, to keep monitoring my phone for new information about the situation and to work out what I needed to do next, whilst also expecting it to switch seamlessly into my work mode and to be thoughtful and engaged and useful in the meeting that I was due to attend. And when I look at it like that, that's a lot. It makes much more sense that I couldn't concentrate particularly well, even though I had set aside time for work during my day. And I don't want to use this as an excuse for not doing things, but I do think it's worth noticing Because if we can understand why something feels harder on a particular day than another, perhaps we can make better decisions about what we're actually asking of ourselves every day. So something I think I tend to try and do is to just push through. And I'm sure Many women do this, probably do this a lot, because we push through, we keep going, especially if we're parents, because that's what we feel we have to do. We don't always feel like we have a choice. But pushing through doesn't necessarily mean that we're being effective. And I think we know this, but we might tend to do it anyway. So the work of psychologist James Gross explores emotion regulation. which is sometimes talked about as though it simply means controlling your emotions or calming yourself down. But it's much broader than that. Emotion regulation describes the different ways that we influence the emotions we have, when we have them, how we experience and express them. And I find that interesting to reflect on because my instinct when I'm having a difficult day is often to think that I need to sort myself out. so that I can get back to work. So I keep pushing through and I just keep getting on with the plan, just keep on going. But I'm starting to wonder whether sometimes the more useful thing for me is simply to acknowledge that I'm carrying quite a lot emotionally today and to allow that information to influence what I actually expect from myself. So that sounds easy to do, but of course we know that that's not easy to do. It's easier said than done, right? Obviously we can't cancel everything every time that we feel worried or tired or upset or stressed. And there are responsibilities that we will have that we can't move. There are jobs that we don't have much control over and parts of our days that just have to get done. People who depend on us and things that just simply have to happen. But if I sit and reflect on my whole day, there are probably more moments where I do have a choice. then I might recognize it first. Or once I start to really dig deeper into those, I can see that I do have a choice. So if I'm struggling to think clearly, do I really need to have to make a complicated strategic decision in that moment or in that hour or even in that day? Or could I do something more straightforward like some basic admin and come back to that decision tomorrow? If I've written an email while I'm frustrated, perhaps I don't actually need to send it immediately and I can revisit it just to make sure my tone is okay, because I do tend to get a little bit heated at times. And if my head is somewhere else and I know I'm not going to contribute anything useful to a meeting, could I move the meeting? How important is it that I show up and that I'm fully present? Because if it's really important, is it worth that meeting happening today or could it be postponed? I think I've been mindful of elements of this for a while. So for example, I know that I feel sharper and I think more clearly in the mornings. So if I've got a copywriting task to do, or I've got some strategic thinking to do, then I'll try and make sure that I do that in the morning and move anything that's easier or less intellectual or less challenging for me into the afternoons. But as I explored this topic more in preparation for this podcast episode, it's really helped me focus on something that is really very simple, but important. And that is, can I stop interpreting one unproductive afternoon or hour or day as evidence that I've suddenly become incapable or not as good at doing my job. Because it's really easy for me and possibly for you to to think, okay, I've messed this up or I haven't performed as well today and to start having those negative thoughts about our abilities. But if I fact checked that with myself, and I stop myself from catastrophizing the situation, I can see that actually one unproductive afternoon or one missed meeting or one task that has to be delayed until tomorrow or later in the week, that's not really a big deal. Canceling that meeting on Tuesday was not a big deal. It was probably more effective than attending it would have been. I wasn't capable of giving the conversation my proper attention at that particular moment. So turning up simply to prove that I could be there and I wasn't letting anyone down wouldn't really have benefited anybody. Thinking about this has made me consider something that I want to experiment with more, which is to pay a little bit more attention to my emotional state before I automatically launch into whatever happens to be on my to-do list at that point in time. So I'm not talking about any elaborate rituals or deep reflection or journaling necessarily, but just allowing myself to stop and notice for a couple of minutes what's going on at that point in time and how I'm feeling. So I might consider if I slept properly, if I'm anxious about something, if something is happening that's outside of me but within my family that's taking up a lot of attention, if I'm distracted or frustrated or waiting for something that means that part of my brain or my thinking or my thoughts are somewhere else right now, or my attention is constantly elsewhere at this time. And then I can reflect on what it is that I'm actually asking myself to do. And of course, the challenge here is that we can always think of things that are on our minds. There's always going to be something niggling away in our brains, that's taking up our thoughts and taking up our attention. But being aware of what we can do now, what will be a challenge for us, what will be easier for us to do and what could be postponed. That makes sense in all areas of our lives, but especially when it comes to work and what we're expecting of ourselves on a day-to-day basis. So for me, there's a difference between answering a straightforward email and writing something that's considered like a blog post from scratch. There's a difference between processing invoices and making an important business decision. And there's a difference between doing something that I'm really familiar with and going into a meeting where I need to listen carefully and think strategically and respond to complicated questions. And there are times when I get to choose my workload and I can move things around in relation to how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling tired, maybe I do some social media. If I'm feeling sharp, maybe I write some content. Something I learned last week was that if I'm feeling tired, it's not a good time for me to have podcasts guests and to interview them because my executive functioning is not working so well. And I'm struggling to really hear what they're saying and to think about what the next question should be to take their story to the next stage. And I've learned that the hard way from a difficult interview last week. I won't of course always have the freedom to move things around. I might get better at matching the work that I'm asking myself to do with the capacity that I actually have that day and my energy levels and the way I'm functioning. And when things can't be moved, I could just give myself some space to recognize that maybe something feels harder today because I'm also dealing with something else. And that might actually then stop me being so hard on myself or stop me adding another layer of frustration and self-criticism. on top of whatever is already happening that I'm processing and dealing with. And interestingly, there's a phrase that's come up several times recently women who've used the term, give myself some grace. And it's not a phrase I would say that I hear often, but three different women have all said it in the last couple of weeks, which feels like a sign to me. So I'm going to take their advice as best I can. because of course sometimes life is messy. Often we're dealing with multiple things at once and we're distracted. So maybe you'll join me in noticing if you are feeling like you're on an emotional roller coaster to just take a moment, see what's going on for you, be kind to yourself, determine what is actually needed right now and what can wait and to give yourself grace where you can. So here's something for you to think about this week. If you find yourself facing an emotional day, could you try asking yourself, what else is my brain dealing with right now? And then maybe ask yourself a second question. Given everything that's going on, what would being effective actually look like today? It might still mean doing the difficult things because that genuinely can't wait and it has to happen. It might mean asking somebody to help you. It might be doing something easier first. It might even be just going for a walk before coming back to a task just to get some fresh air, to move your body, to clear your mind. Or it might be moving something that actually doesn't need to happen today and could be postponed. And it might be that you have to accept that today isn't going to be your most productive day. And of course, that doesn't necessarily say anything about what tomorrow will look like and it certainly doesn't say anything about you and your abilities and your capability. For me on Tuesday, it just meant cancelling one meeting because I knew I couldn't be properly present for it. And a few years ago, I probably would have seen that as failing to keep up with everything I was supposed to be doing and letting people down and not being able to fully commit to my role. But this week I was able to see that slightly differently. I had a lot going on and I have a lot going on generally in my life as we all do, we all have different things going on for each of us. And I was able to recognise that I just didn't have the capacity to do that meeting and to do the other things right then. And I made a decision about what could and couldn't give and my daughter couldn't give and the meeting could. So that's my nudge for you this week to notice what else your brain is dealing with to think about what really needs to be done today and where you can give yourself a little bit of grace and a little bit of permission so that you can forgive yourself if you're not functioning at your absolute best. Thank you as always for joining me today for this episode of The Purposeful Shift. if you think of someone who's perhaps riding their own emotional roller coaster at the moment, please do feel free to share this episode with them. And if you would like more opportunities for reflection, please sign up for my weekly newsletter via the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I wish you a lovely week and I will see you soon.