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Getting Grounded When You Feel Off-Kilter · Love and Science Fertility

• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science podcast.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to be discussing when you feel off kilter, and this might be that you wake up one morning and that day just feels off, like something just doesn't feel right.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Or it could be a season, you know, maybe for a while now, every single day you feel like you have this sense of dread or that something is just not clicking in your life that you know needs to click for things to move forward.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And so most of us, type A driven professional women, do not like feeling off kilter.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Right, we like feeling that we are in the driver's seat.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I think that for many of us, the fertility journey it basically makes us feel like a ping pong ball, whether it's responding to unexpected news or whether it's navigating our emotions.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we just feel all over the place when in reality we just want to feel centered and grounded.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: So today, what I would like to do is talk about how I think about feeling off kilter and suggestions for getting back into your body, connecting with that which is most meaningful to you and really finding a way to get your footing to move on forward.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So let's dive in.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: So let's dive in the first thing I suggest that we do when we wake up feeling off kilter, obviously to settle in.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: For me it's to have a cup of coffee and to do my morning meditation.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: That's really helpful to me, but sometimes even that doesn't make it better.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I just feel like something is off about this day, something is off in my life Like I just, you know, can't shake it, especially if you're on the fertility journey.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I would say the first thing to do is to give yourself some grace.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: If you think about how much energy you are expending as a physician or professional woman, as a person who is navigating the fertility process day in, day out, decisions, appointments, all of that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Think about how much energy you're expending to keep all the balls in the air right and not drop any of them, as I like to say.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And so anybody in your situation would feel off kilter, maybe even much to the time.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I think sometimes we think that we should be on all the time or we should be able to handle all of the things in a certain way.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But I would challenge that to say that this is a lot right, it's a lot on your plate and anybody in your situation would be having a hard time right now.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So it's going to.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Doyle says I have a human having human experience and just breathe, give yourself some grace and really understand that mindful self-compassion is in order here, because anybody in your situation would feel this way.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So that's the first step.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: The second thing that I recommend doing is to ask for help, and it really doesn't matter who you ask, as it turns out right.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's asking your higher power and just saying like listen, I know that I want to be feeling differently about this than I do.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just having a really hard time navigating, being in my body, making these choices, getting out of bed, going to work, whatever it is.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Just ask for help.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't even matter that you ask for a specific thing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes, actually, the more general we can be, the better, but just understanding that we alone cannot handle this particular problem it's just too big and that we need some sort of outside force to lighten the load, to make things a little bit more bearable, to give us that clarity that we need.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's your best friend, maybe you just let them know with a text message and say I'm just having a really hard day, I could really use some extra support today.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it's you know you call your mom and invent to your mom about how hard this all is.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's you tell your boss that you need a mental health day, or a day that you're not feeling well because, hey, feeling off kilter is not feeling well and that you need a day before you can come back to work.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Like all these things are valid, right, but I think that expectation that we have the ultimate responsibility, that we have to be perfect and you know, just on it every single moment of every single day, that is really unreasonable and kind of feeling off kilter sometimes, is really our body telling us that something's not right and we need to slow down and give ourselves what we need so that we can continue to do what we need to do in this world.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's data.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's data that there is something we're not addressing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: There is something that we need to be thinking about and maybe we're just darn tired.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: But pay attention, don't push through it as you might with other things, because there is an important message in it and we need to understand that.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: So we ask for help.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: My third recommendation is to get some grounding.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: For me, anxiety feels like a spinning.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: It feels like I'm off the earth spinning looking down.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I think many people have sort of described it that way as well.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: For me, if I can take root in the earth, if I can connect with some divine entity that is outside of myself and it could be higher power, it could be love, it could be the chosen community that you have.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be anything in the name of religion, but just something that is beyond yourself.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So one day this week I woke up feeling a little bit off kilter and I just got this intuition to read Elizabeth Gilbert's letters from love, and just that inspiration really helped me.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Just connect with other people who are also maybe having a harder day than some, and just ask love, what would you have me know today, and that it was really helpful.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: The answer that came to me was you don't have to have all the answers, and that was just such a beautiful moment because that allowed me to relax into the uncertainty of what I was thinking about and move on forward.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So that helped me to ground, because I looked to love and I asked love, what I should know.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Another thing that helps me is to acknowledge that I am not God and so I think, as doctor patients especially, we think that we are ultimately responsible for making the perfect decisions.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: And reading all the data, and even if you didn't do an REI fellowship, it's like, oh, I should know these things.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: But I think, understanding that, yes, we are participants in our decisions, but it's not all up to us, and just releasing that burden that just feels so heavy at times, I think it's really helpful to understand that, like I say, there is a God and I am not it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Um, and although I do believe and this is my own personal belief that we are all children of God, that we have divinity within us, that we have love within us and that is the thread that connects us to each other.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: For some that's the Holy spirit, for other it's that beautiful universal force of love that binds us and transforms us.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I really do believe in those energetic connections that we have that at our core, we have that as our connection to other people.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But if I think I'm it and I think that everything is up to me, that is just too much personal responsibility, that is too much just.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I can't ground anything in that situation because I'm a solitary being and that's no way to live really, and so for me, when I think about that grounding, it's me plugging into that larger force, rather than me garnering whatever resources.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I have to be that one and only force that is devoid of any help, that is devoid of any outside influence.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So that's helpful Sometimes if you have a loving partner.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of people who lean on their partners in these situations when they need some grounding, because one of the reasons they chose that person as their partner is because they know what to say to kind of bring them back, and so sometimes people can work as a team in that way.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: For some people that's their sister, that's their mother, but we all know those people in our lives who see us and know us and don't judge us, and so when we come to them with a particular situation that is difficult, we know we're going to get what we need.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So for many people, finding grounding in that way is important, and I think also, as I encourage all my clients to do, when we have a rational thought, it's important that we write it down.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So I have like a little list that I keep of rational thoughts that when my monkey mind lets to get away from me.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I come back to what I believe to be true, and maybe that's something along the tune of this process does not define my worth as a person.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: If that's a believable thought for you, that might be helpful, because sometimes this fertility journey just gets so big and so powerful that we forget that there's any of us outside of this identity.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: As a person undergoing the fertility journey, I also think something that sounds so simple but it's so powerful is I'm doing my best, right?
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So when I feel like I'm at 110%, like I'm, you know, reading all the papers and asking all the questions and all the boards and and every single thing, like there's still that little voice sometimes inside that says like not good enough, not good enough, you haven't thought of the thing.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: You just need to keep working a little bit harder and then you'll figure it out, like whatever that elusive carrot is.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: But I am only human.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: My dad has this great expression you can only do what you can do, and sometimes I mean all the things I can do are pretty amazing.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: But I don't see that as amazing.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: If I think that there's still a gap or a lack there, then I'm going to suffer, right, because then I'm going to say, okay, well, what I'm doing is not good enough and it's my lack of effort, it's my lack of doing more that is keeping me in this position of infertility or recurrent loss or whatever it is.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And that is just not a true statement.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: We are all amazing, we're all overachieving, we're all doing all the right things, but it's our thoughts that get us into trouble, that tell us that we're not good enough and we're not doing enough.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: And so sometimes just that mantra like I'm doing my best.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: When I think about it, I really do believe it right, like I really do believe I'm doing my best, but it's those intrusive thoughts that make us doubt that, that create a lot of extra suffering.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So that third suggestion I had is to get some grounding, in whatever way that is.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's going to church, maybe it's meditating, maybe it's going to yoga, maybe it's going for a run, maybe it's calling a loved one.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Just do what you know helps you in these tough moments to come back home to yourself, to get back in your body and to find your plug-in, so to speak, your grounding.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: The fourth suggestion I have is what is one thing that you can do to show yourself that you matter.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I think that so often we put the locus of control outside of ourselves.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Like I said before, it's like a ping pong ball, and so one thing I help my clients a lot with is to get back to where the locus of control is internal, so we actually can control our thoughts, we can control our feelings, we can look at what we're grateful for, we can look at sort of what we have achieved thus far in the journey and where we'd like to go, in a very objective way.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: All these things are important, and so when we think that we are the ones who are responsible for this not working, it can be very disheartening and very discouraging, and that does not necessarily lead to actions that give us the goal that we're hoping for, which is family building.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's that you decide that you're going to go through a field with flowers and you really focus on the natural beauty.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's that you decide to journal and process some feelings, or you call a friend, or that you take a hot bath.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Whatever you do, you know it has to be something where you stay like I'm in alignment, I matter.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I matter independent of this fertility journey, and I'm doing something today that shows myself that I am worthy, I am whole and I matter.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: So just do one thing today to get into your body, to show yourself your value.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Because I think sometimes we devalue ourselves so much and we just say, like gosh, it's my fault, I'm the one, I don't deserve X, y, z.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: But we do deserve.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: We deserve joy.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Joy is our birthright.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: We deserve connection with each other.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: We deserve to feel calm and free, even if we're undergoing this process when there's so much uncertainty.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So part of what I love to do is to help people figure that out and to reclaim that, so that fertility does not have the final word, that each day there can be at least something that is meaningful, that is beautiful, that is true.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: That shows us that we are more than just this journey.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think that this whole session today, this whole podcast today, is talking about how we like find our equilibrium again, how we find our balance again, how we find our wholeness again.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And that can be easier said than done, right?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes having a trusted coach who can help you with that, who can help you shine a light on those thoughts, shine a light on those feelings, help you decide if that's how you want to be thinking and feeling about a certain situation.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: That can be extremely valuable.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: But I think one of the biggest things is that we, especially as female physicians, the biggest things is that we, especially as female physicians, we really have this exaggerated sense of responsibility, and letting somebody else take that burden is so important because we really do need to share the load.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: There's no reason we need to carry it by ourselves, and when we do lighten our load, not only do we feel better, but we also have more brain space to be able to make those important decisions.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: So I hope you found this helpful.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I will add a caveat.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I mean there are times in our life seasons when our brain chemistry is truly altered and we do need to talk with our physicians, with our primary care doctors, about, you know, sort of getting different screenings for depression, anxiety.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I am a hundred percent in favor of those things.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: So I think sometimes a situational phase is such as a few months of infertility which then becomes years sometimes.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I mean that can just be very, very trying on the on the brain chemistry.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: So I do recommend that my patients and many of my clients do get screening for those sort of deeper things which also can help, but even say, medications alone, right?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: If you're somebody who could benefit from a brain chemistry medication, it's always the combination of thoughts and challenging belief systems and brain chemistry in whatever way that comes.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Even a run can help with brain chemistry, right?
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Uh, that dopamine release can be so helpful.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So it's really thinking outside the box of multimodal approach to make sure that you know everything is as balanced as it can be in a study.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: But I do not want you to feel like a ping pong ball, just being, you know, whisked around from from pin to pin.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But I want you to feel that you have your grounding, you have your strength, you have the ability to choose your thoughts, you have the ability to choose your tribe, you have the ability to be a part of love and science If that would be helpful to you and gain encouragement and strength on Friday nights from our beautiful support group, all these things are available to you.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So I love you.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I hope that this helped, even in a small way, to help you find some footing when things get hard, and just know that this too shall pass.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Every day is a different day, it's a new dawn, it's a new day, and I'd love to help you to not just find that grounding and that footing, but sustain it, so that you can get through this fertility journey intact and whole with confidence and compassion.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: With that, I will leave you for this week.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I love you.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I'll talk to you soon.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Bye.