Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / Stress & Listening to Your Body

Transcript

Stress & Listening to Your Body · Many Things with Steph Libby

0:00
Hello.
0:00
Hello, it's Steph.
0:03
Welcome to another episode of Solitary Creature.
0:07
It has been a doozy of a week.
0:10
I'm not really quite sure where to start.
0:13
If you've been following the podcast, I normally release new episodes on Thursdays.
0:20
That did not happen this week for a lot of reasons, which I'm about to get into.
0:24
So apologies if there was anyone out there who was just like waiting with bated breath for this episode to come out.
0:31
I was supposed to talk about body this week.
0:33
That was my word of the week.
0:35
And if you're new to the podcast every week, I choose a word of the week, the preceding episode, and then I think about that and.
0:43
I ruminate on it and try to implement it in my week, and then I show up here and talk about it and how I implemented it and how it all went.
0:50
And then I usually have some random recommendations.
0:53
So the word of the week for this episode was supposed to be body.
0:56
I attempted to record the episode.
0:58
It was so low energy.
1:01
I was just not mentally here.
1:03
It's been a long week at work and I've just been trying to go to bed early so I can get up early.
1:09
I don't think I was like in the right space to record it earlier this week.
1:13
I just, I wasn't focused.
1:15
My energy was so low and I was so tired the day I tried to record it.
1:19
And because I was so tired, I wasn't really present with how I was recording.
1:24
So like I'm bad with my microphone anyways because I'm a fidgeter and I talk with my hands and so it's like a whole thing.
1:31
But normally I'm a lot better about how close the mic is and am I hitting the table and am I.
1:40
Breathing too loud into the microphone because I'm a obnoxious mouth breather.
1:44
And I was just like, I wasn't paying attention to the noise.
1:47
I wasn't paying attention to the cat noise.
1:49
The traffic noise.
1:50
It was just like, it was, I was like listening to a trying editor.
1:53
I was like, this is not salvageable.
1:55
If I'm getting annoyed listening to it, you're all gonna get annoyed.
1:58
So I was like, all, we might just need to record this.
2:00
Like I was way too tired to try to record it.
2:03
I had just a really horrible, really stressful week.
2:08
Aside from it just being a long work week, I've been really mentally exhausted.
2:12
Part of that is work.
2:13
Part of that is, frankly, dealing with a lot of stuff with my ex-boyfriend and I.
2:21
Trying to think about how I talk about some of that without putting him on blast, because I don't think that's really fair but it's also a big part of my life and it adds to a lot of stress and it has a lot to do with the stuff that I'm dealing with and a lot of the things that I'm talking about on this podcast and a lot of the things that I have to deal with in my journey itself.
2:38
So I struggle with like where that.
2:41
That line is what's the decent thing to do and what's the comforting thing to do? What's the helping other people in my situation right thing to do.
2:50
So that's one of the things I've been really struggling with, and I've been getting these really bad headaches.
2:57
Some of them are like tension headaches.
2:59
Some of it I think it's just like from not drinking enough water.
3:03
I think some of it is like the tech neck headaches that you get I know I've been like staring at my screen too much.
3:08
I know I've been like doom scrolling way too much because my neck is just like killing me and it's like going up into the base of my skull.
3:15
I haven't been sleeping well.
3:17
And I've also just been like confronting a lot of the, I'm single and I'm doing this on my own kind of stuff this week.
3:24
So I hate going into my basement.
3:26
I had to this full of spiders and it's gross and it's half finished and it's creepy and it's scary.
3:32
And some of parts of my basement don't even have lights.
3:34
It's just very creepy to go in there.
3:36
And I'm stressed about.
3:38
Fixing my snowblower before winter.
3:40
It's just like a lot of these like things where I was just like, if I had lived with someone, someone could probably help take some of these things off my hand, but they could also be like a total fucking nuisance at the same time.
3:49
And I'd probably still have to do all the same things I have to do now except take care of another person.
3:53
So it's just like that's where my, if that gives you any insight into.
3:57
My mental state this week.
3:59
It's a lot of just this would be really great, but I, but that would actually like really fucking suck.
4:03
So there's also just like a lot of swearing this week too, that also is like where my mind is at.
4:07
And I really just hate being confronted with those things, with like tasks where I'm trying to be independent.
4:13
I'm trying to be self-sufficient.
4:15
I'm trying to not have to think about any positives sometimes when it comes to my ex because it's like I other at a really weak critical point and I'm trying to avoid.
4:26
Areas of weakness or weak thoughts, and I'm trying to be very strong and determined and focused and keep my boundaries.
4:34
And so I want to stay away from weak thoughts, and when you're having to confront all the things like to do on your own and the things that you have to do when you already have so much on your plate, and then you still have to do everything, it's just sometimes being single, owning a home.
4:50
Is a lot for me, and I know that there are people out there doing far more, I don't know how single parents do it.
4:56
Like I don't get it.
4:57
I don't even get how coupled up parents do it.
4:59
Like I can barely handle these cats.
5:03
I can barely handle just my own single person mess some days.
5:07
I just I don't understand how people can find the energy Please tell me your secrets because I could barely get through this week and it's Friday evening and I feel like I barely survived the week and I am barely functioning, and I don't really even feel like I had all that much on my plate this week, but I just feel so fragile that even the smallest things just.
5:27
It is one of those weeks when I just feel like I am on the edge of an emotional cliff and you can feel the crash out is within reach and I'm trying so hard not to teeter over the edge, but I feel like I am about to Selma and Louise myself right off that cliff, and there's no turning back.
5:49
It's just.
5:50
It is a lot.
5:51
And I guess what I didn't realize when I started to just vomit my feelings all over the microphone tonight is that this does in the end connect to my word of the week after all body my body has been telling me things all week, and I either haven't been listening or I've been listening, but have been just completely ignoring it, or I've just been hoping it like goes away.
6:23
Oh, like maybe tomorrow will just like magically be better.
6:27
Tomorrow will just be fantastic.
6:29
And I'll look back on how awful today was tomorrow and be like, that was no big deal.
6:34
Like you, that was fine.
6:35
It's really hard sometimes though because we live in a society where I think people who are probably listening to this podcast are probably people who think it's perfectly reasonable to listen to your body and to believe in self care and to take time for yourself and to preserve your mental energy and to preserve your peace and all of that.
6:54
I think we are in the minority and I think we live in a society that doesn't really function that way and people talk.
7:02
The talk, but they don't like walk the walk a lot of the time.
7:05
So no one actually wants you to listen to your body.
7:08
No one actually wants you to rest up.
7:11
No one actually wants you to stop.
7:14
My work talks.
7:15
All the time about work-life balance, right? And it's such bullshit.
7:20
They don't care that someone dropped three humongous projects on my lap.
7:26
So now I'm logging on two hours early every day, just stay on top of my stuff and someone else's work.
7:32
And I can't say anything because the two people that lead our company are workaholics.
7:38
One is logging off at 3:00 AM while the other is starting their day at 3:00 AM and they don't really need to They knew this amount of work was coming.
7:48
There could have been a better contingency plan in place.
7:51
We could have trained up some freelancers.
7:53
We could have simply not overcommitted to all of our clients at the same time.
7:58
Because to me, when you actually care about work-life balance, you have to say no, it's not balance.
8:04
If you're never saying no.
And no has actually been a big theme for me this week, whether it's me having to say no me wishing that past me had said no to something, whether I'm struggling to say no, or knowing that I'm gonna have to say no to something and just dreading that moment to come wishing my work would say no to things because we're only getting busier.
It's strange to me that so many people clutch their pearls at the thought of saying no.
Like I like, I bet there are some people listening right now saying, that's business.
You can't say no.
That's how you make money.
That's how you keep clients happy.
The customer always comes first.
And true and not true.
There has to be a limit in there somewhere.
Or you just have to be a company that is very straightforward with your employees and say, we don't care about your work-life balance.
But you can't go around talking about we care about work-life balance.
We won't be able to take care of themselves.
Take a mental health day if you need it.
When.
You're when the leadership that is saying that is also working crazy hours for really no reason and then bragging about it seems to be like a competition going on about who logged on earlier, who worked longer hours.
It's like for what? If you're logging off of work at 3:00 AM.
I don't know why you would care about this thing that much.
I don't know.
Maybe that's me, but I feel like you are not Basquiat, why are you up at three? Go to sleep.
The problem with the agency that I work for example, not saying no, is that it sets a precedent.
In fact, it's been setting a precedent for a really long time.
We're so afraid to say no or set a boundary with our clients that when they send us emails at 3:00 AM Friday morning and then follow up checking in at 7:00 AM and then try calling us on teams at 8:01 AM upset with us because they forgot to create something for an event they have on Monday.
And because we always say yes, that's become their new normal.
That's the bar, that's the rule now.
So when we finally reach a point that we say no to something that's extraordinary now.
That seems out of the ordinary, the client would get upset and then we get scared that they're not gonna give us business.
And it's like this weird cycle.
We know it's unsustainable.
we know in the end it's really not good for business.
It's not like we're making a ton more money by working around the clock.
We're actually probably moving a lot slower on the projects that really matter because everyone is so burnt out all the time.
And the reality is very few agencies would tolerate That kind of life, day in and day out.
Like agency life yes, is hectic and things are always gonna pop up last minute.
That is part of the life, but.
We've become the agency that will handle every last minute thing for them.
So what do they do? They only send us last minute things now because they know we'll take it and a lot of other places won't, and they don't have to go through the grief of having to negotiate with those other agencies.
So they go, oh, this group will just take it.
We'll just send all of our last minutes up to them.
They know we won't say no.
And then it just kinda like stacks up because like now.
Now we've just trained them to be later and later so that they keep sending us stuff, which only makes them not think about anything ahead of time because they know that there's a safety net there.
Like we'll always be there to catch 'em.
So they don't need to be on time.
They don't need to think ahead, they don't need to be proactive.
And the worst part is that's become our brand.
It's become who we are.
So we've gotten to the habit of being the last minute agency for a lot of our clients, and not only has it been like a brand of ours that part of our brand that like someone else has defined for us.
We also started to lean into it a lot because we we always touted it as like a value add almost.
Like it's something that we like, almost lean into and pitch ourselves as oh like we'll be there for you.
Like no matter what, like we do like last minute stuff for our clients all the time.
So you know how like your life is busy and you forget stuff, like we're there to help you out and it's ugh.
I don't know.
That's the best pitch to be making to someone like that's become the value that we bring to our clients.
Not creativity, not thinking outside the box, not being the best at a certain type of creative.
Just that we're fast and we can, and we enable you to be lazy.
And this is probably not the worst thing if we were just doing things like pull up banners and straight production work.
That's super quick turn and doesn't need a lot of thought, and it's very templatized.
But because we've.
Made miracles happen so often with little things, they've started to send us more and more complicated projects that really can't be completed on those same kind of timelines with those same kind of expectations.
But it's those more complicated projects where the money comes in.
And because we've been cranking stuff out because of long days, long weeks, long months on a really short staff, our clients have started to believe that we have the capacity to crank through at the speed all the time because we never say no.
So they don't know what our limit is.
They just think like when they can't, like our clients think to themselves, and I know this because I've been on that other side I've been the person giving such an agency.
I know that when they reach their limit.
They'll tell us, like they'll say no.
So if they're waiting for a no, and we don't ever give it, so they're gonna keep doing it and doing it.
The point is, over time, by not saying no.
We've undervalued ourselves.
We've let someone else control how we're perceived and completely upended ourselves into a business model that I don't think is sustainable or reliable.
We don't enjoy being the last minute agency.
We don't enjoy people being stressed out.
We don't enjoy feeling burnt out.
We have no boundaries.
So now we're angry, bitter, resentful, and it's really hard to go backwards because of the precedent that's been set.
We've backed ourselves into a corner.
You can't go back.
Once the toothpaste is outta the tube.
You can't put it back in.
Once you've delivered something to a client and you've done that repeatedly, and that's become the standard and the norm, you can't all of a sudden be like.
Hey, biggest client, I know we've done this for you for the last 3, 4, 5, however many plus years, and that's become the way we work, but we actually wanna shift it and do it very differently.
Now, that's not gonna happen, and we wanna blame our clients because, oh, they should know better, but it's our fault because we're not saying no.
And by pushing everyone so far to their limits, we're getting burnt out, but we already know the rest of the month and likely most of November is still gonna move at a breakneck speed.
And obviously this is an example about my job, and work life.
But there is a bigger lesson there because I am guilty of not saying no all the time.
It's how I got resentful in my relationship.
It's how I got.
To be this angry, bitter person that I am now that I never used to be.
I used to be like sarcastic, but I wasn't angry.
I didn't yell at people.
I didn't lose my temper.
I didn't feel frustrated constantly.
Those are all like very new feelings, not like immediately new, but like in the last few years that has developed my personality and that was never there.
I've become distrustful.
Because I feel like people are taking advantage of me, and to some extent they are.
But at the same time, when you set a boundary and then break it, it's not a boundary.
You know what I mean? Unless you're willing to enforce it, it doesn't mean anything.
It's just words, it's just saying.
And so sure, like people that I've been in relationships with should be like these clients and know better.
They should know that they're asking too much.
They should know that they're probably pushing someone over the limit.
They should know that it's reaching an unreasonable level.
And they should know because I, we've tried to say no, or even sometimes with our clients, we'll like skirt around and go that's pretty aggressive.
We'll have to look into that a little bit more for you.
Or, let me check with the team.
I don't know if we'll be able to hit that date, but we're able to figure out something like, could you like, give us like a couple more days? We know that a couple more days doesn't really matter to us.
It's still gonna be a shitty project from start to finish.
The extra two days doesn't really solve anything.
But we bend and I think I'm at the point now where like I'm, I really hate bending in my life.
I've bend so much.
I've broken so many of my boundaries.
I've broken so many promises to myself, and maybe that's why I'm like extra frustrated at work this week.
'cause this week has felt like a collision of.
So many frustrations around boundaries.
I can't control the boundaries that my work won't set with clients, but I can control the boundaries that I set with people in my life.
as uncomfortable as it is and as anxiety filled as it is, which is like a weird conundrum, like why is it so it should not.
If setting boundaries makes you anxious, I think that is probably a sign that boundaries make you uncomfortable, which means you probably need to be setting more boundaries.
And I'm saying that to myself by the way.
That is me speaking to myself.
Because when you're uncomfortable with it, it tells me that you don't do it enough.
It tells me that you're not used, I'm not used to saying no to people.
So it does sound really weird.
It does sound really harsh when I tell someone no, when they ask for something.
And I hate hearing no from people, and I know how that feels.
And I don't wanna make people feel a certain way when they hear no.
I'm not used to, no being a complete sentence as they say, I'm like an over explainer.
I have to really overexplain.
I do it with clients, I do it with people I'm dating.
I do it with my ex.
I do it with my family and my friends.
I'm just like an over explainer.
It's like I feel if I say no, I have to give like a very long-winded apology because it's so awkward to just sit with a, no, I don't wanna do that.
No, I'm not taking that on.
And I think that's just because it goes back to the whole thing about that's just not the society we live in.
everyone is so not used to hearing No.
That when people finally say it, we can't help but get offended or defensive.
And so then I think when I have to say no to somebody, I'm just like.
I know that they're probably gonna get offended or defensive.
And that's just not really the way things should work.
And so there's boundaries, but then there's also going back to my body.
Like I said, I.
Have not been listening to it all week.
Like I'm not eating at the right times.
I'm not drinking enough water, I'm not getting enough protein.
I know I'm like lagging.
I'm starting off my day with a big pot of coffee before I've had any water, anything to drink.
That's not good.
I'm tired, but instead of just like going right to bed, I'm trying to like have a normal wind down and watch TV and have a snack and all this stuff, and it's I do that because getting up, showering, going to work, getting off work, getting up leftover and going right to bed is really depressing.
But it's also like my body needs that right now.
I know that I'm very tired right now but I thought let me listen to myself, like I haven't been listening to myself all week.
Let me really, it's Friday night.
Let me ask myself What would be good for me tonight? What would make me feel better? And I know this seems maybe counterintuitive to everything I just said, but I thought, okay, this podcast has been weighing on my mind.
Let me just sit down and record some thoughts real quick, get it out of the way, and then that way I can edit this weekend and get it up and like get back to a normal schedule next week.
That would make me feel good and also would make me feel good, not just because of the productivity of it and like checking something off my to-do list, but because it would make me feel good.
To just vent a little.
It is hard sometimes being a single person because I know I rely on my friends and family too much to vent, and I.
Really don't like being that person.
I don't want our whole relationship to just be like me venting all the time.
I don't want that and so that is part of the reason why I like doing this podcast because I feel like it's a space to get the words out of my head and feel like it's going farther than just the four walls of my house.
That it's actually getting out into the ether and it helps me.
But the context of a podcast like helps me not just have it be like a vomit event session, even though maybe tonight probably felt like to some people, like a vomiting vent session.
But it helps me to force myself to reframe these, like these events into something that has a little bit more purpose and a little bit more meaning.
Sometimes like a little bit more structure so that it doesn't just get the emotions outta my body and the thoughts outta my head, but it actually helps shift.
My perception around those thoughts and those feelings a little bit.
Like they make it the, something about getting, I have to make it be something that people want to listen to.
So by me talking about it can't just be like me writing down what I would write in a journal.
It has to be a little bit more than that.
And by putting that little extra something on it, it helps to.
It helps the thoughts move a little bit so they're not just like staying stagnant in the same spot in my brain that they've been in all week.
So anyway, so that was, that's been my week.
Long story short, that's why my podcast, that was supposed to be all about body.
Didn't get posted on Thursday like it normally does, and why I am here Friday night, sitting at my desk recording this now.
I'm starting to run out of steam.
In other words, I, yeah, i'm really starting to hit a wall now.
But I did wanna share, as always, some recommendations like what's in my recommendation corner this week.
I can't remember if I talked about any of this, so if I've already talked about some of this I am so sorry, but my brain, it's really becoming mush.
But I.
A show that I love, but that always helps me, fall asleep is Twin Peaks.
I think partially because it's so slow and it's noir and I've seen it so many times that it's like I don't really need to pay attention to it.
I like know it by heart.
So I've been watching a lot of Twin Peaks because it just helps wall me to sleep.
The, everything's like a little quiet and and everything, so it's I don't know, I just find it very soothing to fall asleep to, so i've been watching a lot of Twin Peaks.
I'm a huge.
David Lynch fan.
So it's just, I don't know.
So it's just, it's been nice to revisit.
It's also like spooky enough 'cause it's October and I love watching spooky things.
If you haven't watched it in a while, if you've never watched it, give it a shot.
It's the perfect month for it.
It's October.
Get out there and get a little spooky.
The other thing on the complete opposite end of the spectrum that I've been watching is Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh.
My sister loved.
9 0 2 1 oh when I was a kid and I used to love watching it with her.
And it's just such a palette cleanser because it's so low stakes.
It's such like every episode is like a teen PSA episode of the week kind of thing, and a home after school episode.
And anyway, so I've been watching that Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh.
And why I started watching it again was I bought a jigsaw puzzle, which I'm gonna definitely talk about this fall when I started doing it.
But I bought a jigsaw puzzle and it made me think of when I was younger.
My sister loved Luke Perry, who plays Dylan McKay and for Christmas one year she got a huge.
Huge, like mega poster size, like not the normal poster size, three times the size.
It was like half her wall size jigsaw puzzle that was of Luke Perry from 9 0 2 1 oh.
And our whole family spent time like putting it together.
So when I bought the puzzle, I thought of that and then I was like, man, I really wanna watch now.
It's it was, it's mindless.
It's stupid.
It's light, but it's still like entertaining.
It's funny like in an absurd way because so much time has passed since it first air that it's corny as hell, but it's also.
Really good because there's just something about it that is nostalgic, but you still get pulled into it.
And it's funny 'cause like when I was a kid, I thought of the characters in like very different ways and how I think of them now.
Even just like aesthetically, not even like the deepness of the characters.
And so it was just so funny and it's also hilarious to.
I just thought like Kelly Taylor was a lot cooler.
I guess I just always thought it was like the popular girl at school, but like in the series, she's not necessarily she's like a rich girl.
She's not, unless you're like a popular girl, brenda and Donna are her only friends.
It's not like she's like super cliquey.
If Brenda hadn't moved there, she'd just have Donna.
You know what I mean? I dunno.
Anyways, that's another great show to watch.
I've been trying to break up from just watching at night.
The same stuff I'm always watching.
So I've been trying to watch like either push myself to watch something that's like really new, that is different.
Like last weekend I watched the Lilith Fair documentary.
And then a couple weeks before that, I watched like an old black and white movie that I had never seen.
So like trying to like spice it up a little bit instead of just watching oh, I'm gonna watch the same four shows over and over again.
But anyway.
What got me watching Twin Peaks, not just because it's like spooky season and easy to fall asleep to.
What made me think of watching it was there was an episode of Beverly Hills 9 0 2 1 oh, where they were like making a lot of Twin Peaks references which I thought was interesting.
So that's what I'm watching this week and I recommend it to anyone.
And that's about all the thought I can put into this episode this week.
So I'm sorry if this was like more low energy.
I'm sorry that I went on a event, but I think there is like a bigger lesson in it all, which goes back to listening to yourself.
Like my body was not into talking about my body this week.