Latest / Celeste The Therapist / Episode 508 Overcoming Overwhelm: The Power of Planning and Mindfulness

Transcript

Episode 508 Overcoming Overwhelm: The Power of Planning and Mindfulness · Celeste The Therapist

0:02
Hey, hey, thank you all so much for joining another episode of Celeste,
0:05
a therapist podcast. My name is Celeste. I'm a therapist from Boston. If
0:09
you're new here, I want to say thank you so much for giving me a try. What I
0:13
do on this podcast is I talk about things we go through and
0:17
help you think about ways that you can deal with it. so
0:21
if you have a notebook and a pen I
0:24
Encourage you to take notes is something I try to say at the beginning of each
0:28
episode Try to look at this podcast as a
0:31
modality to help you with getting unstuck one of
0:34
my Things that I quote a lot is shifting the way
0:37
you think it's the name of my Wellness Center Because I've recognized we
0:41
get stuck in so many different ways and my goal is to
0:44
help you understand Learn how to get unstuck it's a passion that
0:47
I have because I felt stuck for so many years in life and
0:50
once I Understood the modality to help myself get unstuck. I
0:54
made it my passion and mission to help you speaking of
0:58
being stuck today, we're talking about planning and
1:01
how easy it is for us to get stuck and
1:05
the importance of creating a plan I Want
1:09
to talk about why? We get stuck like the feelings associated
1:12
with it, and what we can do about it, right?
1:16
So that's important. If you're new here, I have a
1:19
wellness center called Shifting the Way You Think. If you go to stwyt.com, you'll
1:24
find all of the things that we do. We do individual therapy.
1:28
We have wellness classes. We're located in Stoughton, Massachusetts. So
1:33
you can find the different classes that we have. May 3rd
1:37
Saturday doors open at 12 Programming starts
1:40
at 1230. We are having a mental health wellness day
1:44
because me is mental health awareness month And if you know me, you know
1:47
mental health is something that is passionate did near and
1:50
dear to my heart So I wanted to create an event for the community. So
1:55
if you are in the Stilton area, please come by I would love to
1:58
meet you we're going to have four different classes
2:01
and I have a four-room suite. It's not the biggest suite,
2:05
but it's going to make it do what it do, right? So one of the rooms,
2:08
which is Irving's room, I named it after this amazing woman
2:12
who opened her arms up to me when I came on the scene. She passed away
2:16
in 2020. So we have Irving's community room where
2:19
we're going to have four different classes. The first class is sound healing. We're
2:23
going to have a restorative yoga. We're going to have Mindful
2:26
Yin class and we're going to have a rest and
2:30
restore class, four different classes. Another room,
2:33
we're going to have two people giving out chair massages and
2:37
then we're going to have one person giving out quick facials. If you've never had
2:40
a facial, you've never had a chair massage, come through because that's all about
2:44
wellness. Another room, we're going to have a
2:47
creativity room where you're going to be able to make coasters and
2:50
then in another room we're going to have a game room where
2:54
you can play connect for play Jenga the Mindset behind
2:58
this is to introduce you to what wellness is and to
3:01
help you see some of the things that we have at the center Once
3:04
a month we have social gatherings where you just come and show we
3:08
had a movie night We had a crafting night, right and then
3:11
this and may we're gonna have this wellness Day
3:14
where you can kind of see everything. So all you got to do is go to stwit.com
3:20
and you will find that a So planning, right?
3:24
Why did this idea come to me? So I had the
3:27
privilege of So if you know me, I'm like the
3:30
biggest J Cole fan, right? I'm gonna meet
3:34
him one day. I'm gonna speak into existence in real life.
3:37
This is my seventh concert I went to to see him. I
3:40
went to North Carolina. I seen him at Dreamville Dreamville When
3:45
I travel, I try to get
3:49
things done before I go. I opened
3:53
my wellness center officially November 2024. So I
3:56
went from having a private practice where I'm literally just seeing clients and
3:59
doing my podcast, felt like light work to
4:03
opening a wellness center where I'm hosting events, where
4:06
I'm hiring people to be on my team, where I'm hiring
4:10
contractors. Way out of my like
4:14
knowledge or psyche, right? So this is all new to
4:18
me. So there's so many moments where I feel overwhelmed. I feel anxious. But
4:23
during the concert, I told myself, OK, I'm going to try to not
4:26
do any work. And that's hard
4:29
for me. One of the things that helps me
4:33
when I'm overwhelmed is when I write things down. And
4:36
I was in a process of switching systems of how
4:40
I'm doing my organization. I'm using a new platform that
4:43
I'm trying out, but I hadn't had it put up yet, right? So
4:47
my stomach's turning right and I understand there are physical manifestations
4:51
that take place when you get overwhelmed whether you realize it or
4:54
not they're physical manifestations and I
4:58
was able to finally use the
5:01
system put things in place and Immediately I
5:05
see I felt like things were melting off of me like, okay, I could
5:08
breathe right and Now, let me be clear. There are a lot of
5:11
things that still need to be done. If you were to see the things
5:15
that I need to check off, there are a lot, right? There's a
5:18
lot of things I need to check off and even
5:22
though I have things that I still need to check off, The
5:26
thing that my mind is able to do is now it says it has a plan.
5:29
I have it written somewhere The thing is is when you keep things
5:33
so in so much in your head It can be overwhelming.
5:36
Uh, so if you're watching me on uh, if
5:40
you are watching me on youtube, uh, we're going to Look
5:44
at a visual for me personally Visuals
5:48
are so important because it allows me to see
5:53
things. I'm a very visual learner. And when
5:57
I get to see what the teacher's talking about,
6:01
it allows me to process differently. If you don't know how you process, try
6:05
to start understanding what that looks like for you because a lot
6:10
of times people don't realize some of the ways that they're trying to
6:14
they're trying to learn, it's not taking place
6:18
well because of the modality and the way
6:21
that they're trying to learn. So one of the things I
6:25
learned, I learned this in college when
6:28
I tried to take an online class and I realized
6:32
like the online class wasn't for me because I couldn't ask questions,
6:36
you know, I couldn't raise my hand. It was just different and
6:39
I realized like, oh, you're a visual learner, you need to actually
6:43
be there to kind of understand. So
6:47
as I'm trying to, I'm gonna try to pull these
6:51
slides up that I created. I'm
6:55
going to, let's see, try to pull these
6:58
slides up. So
7:03
I just had them up and now I don't see them. I'm gonna
7:07
try to go down and Let's
7:15
try this again. All right,
7:21
share. Okay, here we go. Let's
7:30
start from understanding the feeling so
7:34
when it you know how I said I have physical manifestations that take
7:37
place Um, so feeling overwhelmed and stuck can manifest and
7:41
as a sense of being unable to move forward Um, so and
7:44
i'm sure some people like oh my gosh celestia's like I struggle with
7:48
trying to move forward Um, some emotional things that may come
7:51
up is anxiety worry sadness irritability loss
7:55
of motivation Um, one of the things I say to people because
7:58
people say how do you keep going right? And for me, it's
8:03
easy for me to keep going because I'm
8:06
so in tune with the way my body's responding. I can feel the
8:10
anxiety. I feel like, you know, I'm a spiritual person and
8:13
I feel like God places ideas on my heart. And
8:16
I know, you know, everybody, I feel, I believe this
8:19
is my opinion. I believe we all have a purpose. and that purpose
8:23
is gonna look different. And one of my favorite motivational
8:27
speakers, Les Brown, he said that a lot of people, there's
8:31
a lot of dreams in the graveyard because we never live
8:35
our purpose, right? And so because I
8:38
can feel the angst of not doing the
8:42
things that I know I'm like destined to do, I'll
8:46
find myself, uh, struggling with sleep, like feeling,
8:50
um, kind of like, um, feeling like really stuck feeling
8:54
like I'm supposed to do something and I'm not doing it. Uh,
8:58
so, you know, that's what propels me to start. Now, even when
9:01
I'm starting the anxiety is still there because it's something new, but
9:06
Starts to dismantle because I'm actually moving forward with
9:09
the things I'm supposed to do and this is just something I believe in
9:13
That may not this may not be something that works for you
9:17
or the mindset But I know when I talk to a lot of people they do
9:20
describe this feeling When they're not doing the things they're supposed to
9:23
do they do describe this feeling of feeling kind
9:27
of anxious and overwhelmed and So the cognitive symptoms
9:31
that might come up right if you're feeling stuck difficulty Concentrate
9:35
and forgetfulness race racing thoughts and mental fog if
9:39
you have all these things going on in your head, right? Where there are things you're
9:42
supposed to be doing Let's just say you have these
9:46
bills you have to pay. Let's just say you have phone calls.
9:49
You need to make let's say you have projects that are due right and
9:53
The thing is that it's all in your head So now you're feeling overwhelmed
9:57
by all of the things that are going on and some physical Manifestations
10:01
that could come up for you if you're finding yourself like not
10:05
Getting things done not doing the things you're supposed to do our headaches
10:08
stomach aches muscle tension my back You
10:12
know if you've been listening to this podcast my back I'll
10:15
get sleep disturbances. I'll wake up in the middle of the night my stomach
10:18
turns right and These are some ways in which
10:22
you might find yourself feeling when you are stuck. And
10:25
it's not just about your goals or your vision. It could be just simple
10:29
tasks. It could be cleaning around the house. It could be needing
10:33
to call somebody back. It could be needing to pay a bill. I'm
10:36
gonna say this really quick because I say it a lot for people that's been listening to
10:39
me a lot it for a long time There was a time where I had so many bills
10:44
Debt collectors was calling me. I was getting I was
10:49
getting mail right and every time that
10:52
the call would come I would get overwhelmed every time the Bill
10:56
would come I would get overwhelmed one day. I was like, you know what? Let me just
10:59
call these people so I started calling people, you
11:02
know, I made deals and And my credit score was
11:06
still low. The debt was still there, but there was this amount
11:10
of overwhelming amount of peace that I started to experience because
11:14
now I had a plan. Right. So the thing is,
11:17
it's like it's not like my life changed overnight where I'm like, oh,
11:21
I'm debt free. I didn't win a lottery. but I had a
11:24
plan, right? And that's the thing that we're not doing. We're not
11:27
creating a plan and we're finding ourselves feeling overwhelmed. When
11:31
I just talked about how, uh, I was switching systems. And
11:35
so where I typically would write down the things that I needed to do, wasn't
11:39
happening. It was all in my head. Cause I'm trying to transfer it over. I found
11:43
myself feeling so overwhelmed. And I, anytime I
11:46
feel that when I know where it's coming from, I'm like, I wonder if
11:49
people know like what's going on with them when they find themselves in
11:52
the state of being Right a lot of times. We don't know what's going on.
11:56
So guess we start doing we start doing stroke scrolling, right?
11:59
We said oh, I'm gonna go party We distract ourselves by any means
12:03
possible as if that feeling is just gonna go away in
12:06
that moment as we're distracting ourselves We're not recognizing that
12:09
feeling hasn't gone away. It's still there and And a lot of times they
12:13
start manifesting in crazy ways, anxiety attacks,
12:17
panic attacks, like nothing in front of you is wrong, but guess what?
12:20
Your body feels like something's wrong because you're ignoring all
12:24
of the ways in which your body and your system is trying to tell you, hey,
12:27
let's get this done. So this is some example of some of the feelings. Let's
12:30
move on to the next slide. Now, why people get
12:34
stuck, right? Because we talked about some of the feelings that may come up,
12:37
but let's talk about why you may get stuck. This one right
12:40
here, perfectionism and fear of failure. This is, thank goodness, one
12:44
of the things I don't have struggle with. I will put something out
12:47
and throw it, see where it goes, and then it's okay, and then I
12:50
go back and go back to the drawing board. You know, when
12:53
I went into private practice, I realized the perfectionist piece a
12:57
lot of people struggle with. The fear of failure is something I
13:00
don't really think too deeply about, because my mindset has
13:04
been shifted to like, you know what, if it doesn't work, I'm going to go try again. What's the
13:07
worst thing that can happen? Like, you really got to have that mindset, right?
13:11
So the fear of not doing something perfectly or the potential for failure can
13:14
lead you to procrastinating and avoiding taking the action altogether.
13:19
right and so Part of what can
13:22
help with that is what is asking yourself? Okay, what if it
13:25
feels because it's a part this thing that I've done that I haven't moved forward with
13:29
because it didn't work out So the fear of failure is
13:32
real like it could fail but then what does that mean when
13:35
it feels right? Nobody dies because something failed
13:40
So be mindful that the perfectionism thing Nothing's
13:44
perfect. Nobody's perfect, right and I know creatives
13:48
and people that are very artsy struggle with this perfectionism
13:52
piece so it's something to be mindful as Be mindful of
13:55
another reason why we get stuck burnout, right? So
13:58
if you're in stress is something is such a
14:02
silent killer literally will kill you and
14:05
it will kill your dreams and it will kill your system. It
14:09
will have your system and overload all the time. So
14:12
prolonged periods of stress and lack of self-care can lead to
14:15
burnout a state of emotional physical and mental exhaustion, right?
14:19
So some some of the reasons why you get stuck if you're finding yourself stressed
14:22
and overwhelmed You don't have the capacity to find yourself
14:26
doing the things that you need to do. Oh, I put perfectionism
14:30
on here again. And then focus on short term
14:34
rewards. Right. So human decision makers often
14:37
prioritize short term rewards over long term goals, making it difficult to
14:41
commit to future plans. Right. If if
14:45
my alarm goes off, let's say I know if I get up on time for work, I
14:49
move my body because for me, moving my body helps me
14:52
with not feeling so anxious. If I prioritize doing
14:56
that, what will happen for me is
14:59
that my day starts to look different now. The
15:02
short-term reward is sleeping in. I love to sleep
15:06
in, right? It feels so good in the moment. So
15:09
if I take that short-term reward and find myself sleeping in,
15:13
what will happen is that my day will start late, I
15:16
don't get a chance to move my body, and I'll find myself feeling overwhelmed.
15:21
That's a quick example on how a lot of times we'll take the
15:24
short-term reward over the long-term reward Me
15:28
growing up deciding to go to school Deciding to
15:31
like work full-time part-time. I
15:34
had to put in a lot of labor to Right a lot
15:38
of hours. I worked for a lot of companies and
15:41
now I'm at a place where I work for myself a hundred percent right
15:45
like So if you think about yes
15:49
in the short term, it may feel good to sleep in but in the long term
15:52
Is that gonna help me right? I seen a post that says I
15:56
want what those people that wake up at 6 a.m Have I want what that is.
15:59
It's called discipline, right? It's called like, you know what I'm
16:03
gonna like Prioritize my long-term rewards.
16:06
I'm gonna have my long-term rewards in front of me because if you're not intentional
16:10
about it Your system will choose short-term all day to this
16:14
day and I get up early and I do the things I need to do because I
16:18
have no other choice if I want to be successful and in
16:22
my business in my mental health and my peace if I want
16:25
that I'm gonna have to get up early and get things done, right and
16:29
if you start working on prioritizing the things
16:32
that you need to get done and You'll
16:36
find yourself able to. You'll
16:41
find yourself able to get your
16:46
goals completed in a way that you've never seen before. All right,
16:52
let's go to the next slide. Excuse
16:59
me. Now, what is the solution? First,
17:04
it's important to identify triggers. So
17:16
recognizing the situations, thoughts, or feelings that contribute to
17:19
you feeling overwhelmed, right? When you can start to understand
17:24
why you're feeling overwhelmed, is it because, you
17:28
know what, I'm rushing into work and I need to allow myself
17:31
more time in the morning? Is it because I have too
17:34
much on my plate? A lot of people do a lot of invisible labor,
17:38
especially women. I
17:41
find women will do a lot of tasks and don't even realize
17:45
all the things that they have and they put on their plate. Break
17:49
down the tasks, right? Start dividing your larger tasks into smaller
17:53
ones and more manageable, right? A lot of times you might see this big
17:56
thing, I gotta do this big thing. Okay, I know it's this big thing,
18:00
but what can I do today? Let's just use your house, for example. Let's
18:03
say your house is a mess, right? And every time you think
18:06
about doing it, you feel discouraged because there's so much to do. You
18:11
can find yourself saying, you know what, let me just start with my closet. Or
18:15
better yet, let me make up my bed every day.
18:20
Let me start getting into a routine of making up my bed every day. Now,
18:23
let me put these clothes away, right? Break down the tasks. Don't
18:27
allow the magnitude of what you have to do stop you from starting
18:30
with the little stuff. Start prioritizing, focus on
18:34
the most important tasks and delegate or eliminate less crucial ones.
18:37
Be okay with asking for help if it's available, right?
18:41
Like allow yourself to give yourself what you need. It
18:45
may feel uncomfortable asking for help. But
18:48
if you have people in your life that can help with some of the
18:51
tasks, and I'm talking about anything from
18:55
your house, anything from your goals, right? Join
18:58
a support group, right? You can't do this alone.
19:01
If you are feeling stuck and there are so many ways that you
19:05
find yourself doubting yourself, allow yourself to get
19:09
into other spaces with like-minded people, even
19:12
if it's online, even if it's somebody's blog, even if it's a
19:16
book. When I was starting out, I would read books
19:19
that looked like what I wanted to do. I would start following people that were
19:22
doing the things that I wanted to do. Start practicing mindfulness,
19:26
right? That's something that's important. When you start to like,
19:30
pause, reflect, ask yourself what you need. We're just
19:34
going, going, going. We're not asking ourselves what we need and that's a
19:37
problem. When you don't allow yourself to give yourself what
19:40
you need, you're gonna find yourself just surviving and moving
19:44
through life, right? And the plan is to have
19:47
peace the plan is to work on living the life that you
19:50
can visualize The thing is you got to have jay cole said
19:54
you got to have this delusion about your life Like you got to start believing
19:57
things beyond what your mind what you can physically see,
20:01
right? I had a vision. I wanted to help people heal And
20:05
I didn't know what that looked like before the podcast before my practice. I
20:09
just had this passion and I see myself Speaking to
20:13
people I see myself helping people in different capacities in
20:16
different ways and I get to see that every single day Right, not
20:20
just individually in my practice, but on the largest scale with
20:23
this podcast with this wellness center I had this delusion
20:27
about the fact that like I can do this And
20:30
the more I visualize it, the more my mind start to show me answers.
20:34
Not just visualize it, but putting a plan together, right?
20:38
Being very intentional about it. I
20:41
hope this was helpful. As you can see, I'm very passionate about like
20:45
this and shifting your thought process and helping you see who you
20:48
are, right? A lot of times we're allowing our circumstances to tell us
20:52
who we are and we're not allowing the fact
20:55
that, you know what, just because this happened and just because I went through this,
20:58
just because I chose that type of life in
21:02
the past, I wanna choose different. I would say as long as you're still
21:05
breathing, there's room for change, right? So I need you to
21:09
remember that I need you to believe that um, so we're gonna
21:12
start by Starting small right making
21:16
a plan being consistent and being very patient with yourself patience
21:20
is key, right? So if anything I ever say resonates for you, I
21:23
understand that you have the power to create change But guess
21:27
what? You got to have faith to believe in yourself when you start having faith when
21:30
you believe in yourself no one could take that from you like
21:34
You know, I get validation and accolades now, but
21:38
when I started, I wasn't getting it like that outside of my circle, right?
21:42
Um, but I had faith inside of me and
21:45
no one could take that away from me. Um, that's so powerful. And
21:49
so even if you don't believe it, start speaking it
21:52
into existence, start saying, you know what? I can do this. I
21:56
can get my house organized. I'm going to start with my room right
21:59
now. Like, oh, I can't never do anything. You start talking like that. Your mind's going to
22:02
be like, all right, so let's, I guess we can't do nothing. But if I'm like, you know
22:05
what I'm gonna start doing my room. I'm gonna stop making it my bed
22:08
every day I'm gonna stop putting my clothes away right because
22:12
if your spaces is cluttered your mind's gonna be cluttered Start
22:16
with the small things when you start with the small things you start to allow
22:19
your system to gain confidence That you can do the bigger things
22:24
So make sure you follow me, follow me on all social media platforms. You can follow
22:27
me at Celeste, the therapist. Also, you can follow my wellness
22:31
center at stwyt.com. And all that stands for
22:34
a shift in the way you think again, stwyt.com. I
22:38
would love to hear from you. If this episode resonates for you, uh, find
22:42
me on social media. Let me know, email me, let me know, um,
22:45
how it's resonated for you and what you are doing to start to