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So in this episode, you're gonna find out why your brain keeps running threat assessments even after your last client leaves for the week, and we're gonna do something about it right here, right now.
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Empowering brilliant women in healthcare over 50 to transform burnout and compassion fatigue into renewed passion, reigniting your spark to create a life that energizes you every single day.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Jules.
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Let's get to it So let's think about what it's supposed to feel like, okay?
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After we've finished our client, after we're like,"Whoo, we've done the week." Not what people tell you it's supposed to feel like, but what it actually feels like for you in your body, because we've got to get embodied to really understand this.
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So let's imagine this.
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Your last session ends, your notes are filed, you close that laptop, and your body, for just a split second, your body softens.
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Your jaw unclenches half a millimeter.
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Your shoulders maybe drop an inch or so.
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Some part of you deep down goes,"Whoo, okay, we made it." But your brain.
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Girl, that brain is still going, still running the reel.
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Did I say the right thing?
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Did I miss something on that intake?
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What's Monday going to demand?
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Ugh, am I already behind?
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Was I enough this week?
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And here's the part that I need you to hear before I go a single step further today.
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You have probably been living in that split for so long that you've stopped even noticing You're not even aware it's happening Body wanting rest, brain refusing rest.
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You've accepted this as the texture of your Fridays, maybe even the texture of yourself.
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And y'all, that is not who you are.
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That is what your nervous system learned to do, and those things are not the same.
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Today, I'm gonna show you the neuroscience, real, peer-reviewed, named researcher neuroscience for exactly why that happens.
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And then we're gonna do a 10-minute practice that gives your nervous system one thing it's been waiting for someone to hand it, dun, dun, dun, updated data.
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Okay, so we're gonna start with good old Bru- um, Bruce McEwen.
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We've talked about him before, and he's one of the most important researchers of the last century.
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He spent decades documenting what he called the allostatic load, and y'all know that's the cumulative biological cost that builds in the body and brain when the stress systems that were designed to turn off and turn on are kept constantly running.
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Here's what he found that is critically important for every healer in this audience.
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Your stress response system was designed to be episodic.
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It fires, it does its job, it shuts off.
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You survive the lion, right?
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You rest, the cortisol clears, the hippocampus resets.
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That is how the system was built.
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But y'all, in a clinical environment or as a professor, I can honestly say, y'all professors, y'all educators out there, that kind of environment as well, where the crisis are not lions, they're humans in pain.
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They come one after another after another, five days a week, year after year.
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The system never fully turns off in between events.
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The shut-off signal never arrives clearly.
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And over time, McEwen documented that continuous running of the stress system stops being protective and starts being damaging.
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The brain literally begins to rewire around the assumption that the threat is permanent.
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So your spinning brain on a Friday is not a weakness by any means.
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It's a nervous system that has been running a system McEwen called the allostatic overload, and it no longer recognizes the end of clinical hours as a signal to stand down because it stopped trusting that signal a long time ago Now let's pair that with Dr.
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Sonia Lupien at the University of Montreal.
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She spent decades documenting about cortisol and threat detection.
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Her research identifies four factors that the brain reads as threat.
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Listen to this.
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I find this really interesting.
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I can really, uh, relate in my own life, so listen closely.
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I, I, w- I'm curious what y'all think.
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So here's the s- the four things, the four factors she identified: something new, right?
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Something unpredictable, mm.
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A sense of losing control, and an ego threat, a challenge to your sense of who you are.
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Those four factors, she shows, are present in virtually every clinical interaction every single day.
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So when cortisol stays elevated across repeated threat exposures, the brain doesn't just respond faster to a threat.
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Load full transcript
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Y'all, it begins to recruit more of its architecture to be threat detectors.
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Your threat detection architecture grows.
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So more of your neural resources get reassigned to surveillance, and that reassignment doesn't automatically reverse when you close the office door.
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Your brain doesn't get the memo that the shift ended, because the threat it learned to watch for was never a thing you could lock outside.
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So here's where Dr.
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Marcus Raichle at Washington University in St.
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Louis adds the final piece, and I think this is pretty fascinating.
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I love looking at this research.
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He, um, does neuroimaging research, and he identified that the default mode network...
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We've talked about that a lot.
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Y'all remember it's that constellation of brain regions that activates precisely when you're not focused on an external task.
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So when the clinical day ends, your external demands disappear, and the DMN, default mode network, comes fully online.
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And in a brain that has been trained by years of allostatic overload and cortisol mediator- mediated hypervigilance, that network doesn't rest.
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Y'all, it reviews, it audits, it runs threat assessments on everything you just did.
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Make sense?
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See, it's looking for what you missed.
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That loop you fell on Friday, it's not anxiety as a personality trait.
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It's the default mode network doing exactly what your allostatic system trained it to do, using the only rest time available to keep scanning for what's coming.
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So sweet soul, your brain, that beautiful brain of yours, it is not broken.
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It is brilliant.
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It built an entire architecture to keep you functioning under conditions that would have broken a lot of people.
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It just needs updated data, and that is what we're going to give it right now.
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Okay, so I created a practice for you'cause, you know, I'm the creator of practices.
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And, and so this practice I call...
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Well, first, this practice pairs your solar plexus chakra, which y'all know is your center of personal agency and self de- definition, with the brain's threat detection loop, and I call this the sovereign stillness reset.
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But the reason that we need to pair this with that brain, with your brain's threat detection loop is because based on Lupian's research, this has become very clear the threat your brain is scanning for on a Friday, y'all, it's not a clinical emergency.
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It's an identity threat.
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Hear that again.
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Not a clinical emergency, identity threat.
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The question your default mode network is looping on is not, what did I miss?
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It is this: Was I enough?
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And that solar plexus is precisely where we address that.
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So I need you to find a seat, both feet flat on the floor, spine easy and tall.
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Bring one hand to rest just above your navel, right there on your solar plexus, flat palm, warm contact.
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This is step one, the overload acknowledgement.
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And all you have to do is just say this out loud I don't want you to think it.
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It really needs to be said out loud.
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Your nervous system needs to hear you.
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"My brain has been running the threat scan all week.
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Of course it has.
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Look at what I carry." Say it again without rushing past it.
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Feel that.
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And I would even invite you, one hand on your solar plexus, one hand on your heart.
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Maybe your, um...
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I'm right-handed, so whatever hand is your m- main, if you're right-handed or left-handed, put that hand on your heart, the other hand on your solar plexus, and say again,"My brain has been running the threat scan all week.
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Of course it has.
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Look at what I carry." So what you're doing in this moment is something that research makes clear.
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You're introducing a competing signal into the default mode network's self-referential loop.
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The network was auditing without your permission.
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You just stepped in front of it, named what it was doing, and removed the shame that was keeping the loop pressurized.
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When the audit is named and validated, other than thought, the cortisol-driven urgency that was fueling it begins to drop.
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Y'all, this isn't a metaphor.
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This is how the threat detection system recalibrates, and Lord knows we need that.
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Lord knows we need that.
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What you do is you give it a true account of what demanded, what was demanded of it, and you stop treating it like an enemy We make friends with it.
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Isn't that a technique we use with depression or other symptomology our clients are facing?
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We're gonna use that technique on ourself.
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We're gonna, we're gonna animate it and make friends with it.
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Step two is the identity anchor, and you keep that hand on your solar plexus, and I want one on your heart chakra, too.
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I need your body to know you're talking to it, and right there on our sternum, that's a fast direction or fast connection to our vagus nerve.
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Keep your hands where they are.
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Press gently, and girl, not hard, just present, and I want you to feel something very specific: the slight rise and fall of your own abdomen under your palm.
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That movement, and this is exciting, that's your aliveness, not your productivity, not your case outcomes, not your billing hours.
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Your aliveness right here, right now, outside of all of it.
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See, Dr.
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Lupien's framework tells us that one of the four threat factors, the one that keeps the cortisol running longest, is the threat to self, the question of who you are when you're not performing your function.
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The solar plexus practice addresses that threat directly, not with an affirmation, with sensation, with your own warm hand telling your nervous system,"There is a you here that exists outside of work.
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She's here.
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She's real." The threat scan is looking in the wrong direction.
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So stay with that contact for three slow breaths, unhurried exhales.
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Not deep breaths, just unhurried ones.
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Let each exhale be a little longer than the inhale Step three, the off-ramp statement On your third eye, uh, well, yes, we love our third eye, but we're not working there right now.
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We're working with our solar plexus and our, uh, our solar plexus, and I've got your hand on your heart, too.
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Um, but on your third...
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Let's try this.
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Exhale.
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Say these words The week is complete.
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What I carried was real.
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I am real outside of it.
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See, girl, that sentence, that sentence right there is new data.
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Every time you say it, hand on solar plexus, hand on heart, after a week of carrying what you carry, you are making a deposit into a nervous system that McEwen showed us has been running a deficit for years.
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You are not doing positive thinking.
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You are doing neurological accounting.
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You are updating the allostatic ledger in a system that has been spending without a reset for far too long.
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So my friend, that is the sovereign stillness reset, your solar plexus meeting the allostatic brain, your own hand as a signal that the threat scan can finally, finally stand down So, sweet soul, three things I invite you to carry into this weekend.
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Your brain's inability to rest on Fridays is not a character flaw.
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It is allostatic overload, documented, named, researched, and it has a mechanism that can be interrupted.
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The default mode network does not run the threat audit because something is wrong with you.
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It runs because you gave it years of data saying threats don't end.
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You get to give it new data, starting right here.
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And the question s- your spinning brain is really asking is not, what did I miss?
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It is, was I enough?
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And sweet, beautiful soul, the answer to that question lives in your body, not, not in your case notes, your billing hours, your service, your performance.
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It's in your body So I want you to go be soft with yourself this weekend.
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I want you to love on yourself.
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You, my friend, sweet soul, you have more than earned it Sweet soul, give yourself what you actually need.
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Tap the show notes right now to discover your somatic signature because if bubble baths and breathing exercises could fix this, you'd already be back to your radiant self.
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You need the right map.
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Let's find out which of the four somatic signatures your body is using.
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Girl, this isn't homework.
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This is a homecoming