What Would Life Look Like Without Pressure? Discovering Life Without Work Anxiety

Welcome And Burnout Backstory

0:21 SPEAKER_00: Hi and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety. I'm Cheryl Paris. You know, Stephanie said something in the conversation that really makes a stop. Setting a boundary means nothing. You know, that is why Stephanie and I are exploring it today, along with people pleasing, with ever, and the emotional cost from always being a reliable one. Let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to work stress anxiety. I hope you're all doing well. If you're new here, welcome to the show. These episodes are particularly good.

1:03 SPEAKER_00: Why? Because I have a guest here. It's not just me rattling on. I want to welcome my guest Stephanie. How are you doing? Hi, Cheryl. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I am very excited. Now, I'm I'm just gonna go back in time for a moment to when I burnt out or when I perceived that that's what happened to me. And I was at home for seven months and I eventually got off the sofa, went for some counselling, did did a few other things. Remember taking up running actually. I I used to be quite fit, but I never I never really enjoyed running.

1:39 SPEAKER_00: But I somehow I convinced myself to start to start running. And when I got back to work, it was okay, Cheryl, what we're gonna do, do a return. That's what we're gonna do, do a phase return, and we'll talk every week and see how you're doing. So I'm doing it in a silly voice because it was silly. Okay.

2:05 SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, well, yeah, we'll see how you go for about a month, and then at the end of the month, I basically returned to my normal hours and I thought to myself they want me to be exactly the same as I was before. And I thought to myself, I can't, I can't do it. I can't do it.

People Pleasing And Feeling Selfish

2:29 SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I've noticed, and I I'm just curious, um some people worry that if they stop doing the people pleasing, yeah, that somehow they're being selfish. And have you have you ever come across that feeling of being selfish, what that actually means?

2:51 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that that's such an important one, right? Because there is an element of being selfish when you pull back and try to do things for yourself and aren't people pleasing, but I think it's not black and white, right? There's this this gray area of like, okay, these are the things that I'm willing to compromise on, and these are the things that I'm willing to support X person on, and these are the things that I'm willing to do for others. And then the flip side of that is okay, these are the things that I'm not.

3:21 SPEAKER_01: And I really like that example that you shared because it's true, right? Like you set the stage for what people expect of you. And if people expect that you're always gonna do something, you're always gonna show up in a way, that's their expectation, right? And it doesn't mean that you can't change how you show up, but being aware that it might take people a bit to get used to it. And that's that's okay. It's just okay, where are my lines? Where are my boundaries?

3:50 SPEAKER_00: Now, this may seem like a really strange question, but what is the smallest boundary that you've ever seen that's made the biggest difference in someone's life?

The Smallest Boundary That Works

4:01 SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, what a big question.

4:03 SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna just say one for myself because I can't, I can't think of anything else. And that is showing up no matter what it means. And what I mean by that is if I'm gonna say, like, okay, I'm going to do this for myself, and like for me, it's like making sure that you work out in the morning. And so there are mornings where I sleep in and I'm like, oh, it's so late, like there's no point in even going to the gym. And I've gone for like 10 minutes before, provided it's in my building. So it's a little bit more practical in that regard.

4:32 SPEAKER_01: But I think that doing the thing no matter what, if you're like, oh, like I don't have time to go for, and I see this a lot with clients as like, oh, well, if I don't have time to do like an hour walk or an hour workout, or I don't have time to do this big of a task, I just don't do it all. And I really encourage people to just make it smaller, do a smaller portion of it, do a little bit less, but still show up in a capacity for yourself. That would be that would be my take.

Salsa Joy And Rising Overwhelm

5:03 SPEAKER_00: I know for me, well, because one of the things I'm laughing about it now, but I remember one of the things when I burnt myself out is I'm one of these strange people. I cannot do a class one day a week for a year to learn something. I I can't I can't do that. Um, I have to go, I have to almost go all in. Yeah, and one of the things I did, I learned literally learned to salsa dance in about five weeks, from zero to quite proficient in about five weeks. And uh I absolutely love salsa dancing. My dare I say it, my partner will not take me, but that's okay because there's loads of other guys that will dance with me, and I'm quite happy to, and I get so much joy from doing that.

5:52 SPEAKER_00: I honestly I literally spend the whole evening, I literally am laughing while I'm done because I'm I'm having such a good time, and I know that sometimes, you know, especially when we're having breaks during a sales salsa, I'll be talking to people that I see there regularly, and sometimes they say to me they feel overwhelmed by what's going on in their lives. And I'm just curious, uh, what do you think is one of the things that could stop people carrying that through the week? That feeling of overwhelm where they literally it's almost like Monday and it goes up and up and up and up, and Friday, and then they have the weekend and they kind of depress a little bit, but they never quite go back down to zero at the weekend because it's just not long enough.

6:47 SPEAKER_00: They just keep building that feeling of overwhelm week after week, month after month. What do you think it is one of the biggest ways that they could stop doing that, almost create a physical break in that feeling of overwhelm?

Screen Time As Hidden Stressor

7:04 SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be an interesting one, and probably not what you expect me to say, but I I'm gonna say that being very mindful of your screen time because I even find for myself when I spend too much time on my phone, I'm like, okay, I have so much to get done, I have so much to do. How did I just spend 30 minutes scrolling on my phone? And I just think that we forget that our phones are designed to captivate us, first and foremost. So that I refer to like any form of social media. And then the flip side to that is also everyone has access to us 24-7.

7:40 SPEAKER_01: And that in of itself can feel overwhelming. Like, I think I'm gonna go back in the day here. I'm not that old, but I do remember these days where like people didn't have cell phones. Like you called your friends, you set up a meeting time, you got there, you were in the moment. And I don't think we recognize or realize how much of our time is consumed with being on our phones. And so I really feel, and this kind of weird side to take, but I look at like, and I'm very practical, counselor, like I'm very much so like, what can we do?

8:14 SPEAKER_01: What can we change? And sometimes it's not really an option to stop working because you need money, you need to eat. That's not an option. Taking care of your children if you have kids, not an option. There, and I like to always make the analogy like glass plate, paper plate, what's on my glass plate if I can't, I can't drop that because it's gonna break. And what can I put on my paper plate? And one of the biggest things with overwhelm, I think, is really trying to stay off your phone as a form of decompression or self-care because the algorithms are literally designed to suck you in.

8:45 SPEAKER_01: And so you've been on it for 30 minutes, it feels like five, you don't feel recharged, but you've now used wasted that time, right? And so that would be kind of one one weird one that I would would throw out to people to maybe just be more mindful of.

Spotting Old Habits Before Burnout

9:00 SPEAKER_00: Now, you've built a business while supporting other people's emotional well-being every day. How do you notice when you might be starting to drift back into old habits that you you may have had?

9:15 SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good question. I think for me, an inability to focus when I'm like, I have so many things to get done and I don't care and I just can't focus. And I'm like, okay, well, this is this is a problem. Um, what can I do to kind of help myself? And sometimes I will like take a break, step away, and come back to it, or like set timers for myself of like, this is how long I'm gonna focus on something. But I think that that for me is a good indication. And and sorry, I should clarify, I don't think I've ever hit a point where like I don't care about clients.

9:48 SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes it's like business stuff that I'm like, if this gets done, great. If it doesn't, at this point I don't really care. Um, and I think that's my indication that like, okay, doing a little bit too much here.

The ABGW Method And Tiny Tasks

10:01 SPEAKER_00: Cool. Um, um, I have a program and I want I want your honest opinion here, Stephanie, okay? Um, I call it 31 Days to Balance and Wellbeing. And it's it's one of my I would call it my flagship program. And it's literally, it's based around my method. My method, I call it the ABGW method. I know it's a mouthful, but it stands for it stands for awareness, balance, growth, and win-win well-being. And the reason why I created this the program is I was working with someone who didn't want to be hypnotized.

10:40 SPEAKER_00: They weren't actually sure what their problem was, and I wanted to basically help them, but in a really constructive way. And one of the things I get people to do on the program, and I found this really helped me, um, is I get people to do what uh a daily task, and some of the daily tasks that I get them to do, literally the task literally takes you five minutes or less. So it's not gonna take a lot of your time, but one of the one of some of the tasks I get people to do, I call them random acts of kindness.

11:16 SPEAKER_00: Okay. And so it it could be something as simple as you're in the coffee shop, you're about to order your slim latte, whatever, with soya milk or whatever, yeah. And you literally, as you go to pay, you literally pay for the person's coffee behind you. So and the whole idea is you're doing something not to get an outcome for you. You're doing something to get an outcome for someone else without any thanks. What do you what do you what do you think about that, those sort of things in encouraging people?

11:55 SPEAKER_00: The reason why I suppose I did it is because I wanted to show people that they can they can still have the feelings that are often associated with stress and anxiety, but uh have a positive experience of it. If you know what I mean, because we you know, we all well, maybe people don't realise this, we experience most of our stress and our anxiety, not in our heads, but in our body, somewhere in our body, yeah. And that's what I wanted. It's the same sort of feelings, but I wanted them to have a positive experience.

12:34 SPEAKER_00: What what do you what do you think to that?

12:36 SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good, a good take. And it's funny that you bring that up because I do think that as we it's ironic because as we talk about boundaries and lines and the sand and everything, I also do think that there is this element of people feel good helping others. And the if you're not feeling resentment, more often than not, if you're able to help someone, if you're able to support someone going through a hard time, um, if you're able to be there for someone, we as human beings like that, right?

13:04 SPEAKER_01: And so I do think the whole paying for someone's coffee behind you really gives you this sense of okay, I was able to help somebody. I was able to put a smile on someone's face, I was able to make their day and have a really positive impact by kind of one simple, one simple task. So yeah, I I like that.

13:25 SPEAKER_00: Cool. And it's interesting because the one I sort of had a cohort cohort of three people to try who had different, who had different issues, quote unquote, that they wanted to to tackle. One of the things that and the reason why I I start with a awareness is because I know from my own experiences that's where you have to start. You have to start from a place of almost acceptance of what your reality is. And I f I think a lot of people, not through their own fault, but because we're constantly bombarded on social media, on TV, on radio, that we have to be something that we're often not.

14:13 SPEAKER_00: And I I mean I don't watch TV anymore because of that, because I just think it's it's not strengthening me. These things are not strengthening me. I'm just curious, what are the kind of things that you that maybe you might do in your life, or the kind of things that you encourage people to do to help strengthen them?

Strengthening Yourself Without More Screens

14:35 SPEAKER_01: I love it. So I'm also not a big TV girly, but I think for me, um, getting outside, doing some activities, and then also I'm a huge crafter. I love making things, I love creating things, I love doing that. I love learning patterns, and we can see it in the background there. I love creating things, and so I'm a huge advocate of crafting, and I think it helps like to sound weird to say this, but you're using your hands to do something to create something, you're not engaged in a phone or a distraction that way.

15:09 SPEAKER_01: So that's my like guilty pleasure or self-care recharge. And I I will sometimes sneak that uh suggestion in and even like paint by number or drawing, or um no matter what that looks like, I I really feel as though that's a healthy and a really great outlet for people.

A World Without Stress And Anxiety

15:27 SPEAKER_00: Okay. Now, before we go, I'll ask you a really strange question. So I'm formulating it in my head as I'm speaking. I often ask this question to to clients, so it's not that unusual a question, but it is in this context. So if you were to go to sleep tonight and you were to sleep and dream and wake up in the morning, and there was no such thing as stress and anxiety. They didn't exist anymore. And you walked into the, you know, you you got up, you got dressed, you walked into the street. How would you know there was no such thing as stress and anxiety anymore?

16:10 SPEAKER_00: Who interesting question.

16:12 SPEAKER_01: My immediate thought was like, wow, weird. But I think pressure. I wouldn't feel any pressure. I wouldn't feel any pressure to do something. And and I think maybe that leads into like certain levels of stress and anxiety are good and helpful. But yeah, I think I wouldn't feel pressure.

16:30 SPEAKER_00: And how would you tell that people around you that there was no they weren't experiencing stress and anxiety? Not that I'm trying to do us out of business here, okay, but how would you how would you think it would be manifesting in people?

16:45 SPEAKER_01: Everyone would slow down. And I think that people would cliche term, but I think people would have time to stop and smell the roses. And I think that if we're not so focused, really anxiety is the fear of the future, right? And and stress is paired with that, is kind of like, oh my goodness, how do I handle this? How do I cope with that? And when our mindset is in that direction or that approach, then maybe we're not here authentically ourselves. And so I would, I would say, yeah, I would say that people are much more in their present moment.

17:21 SPEAKER_00: Stephanie, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I want to thank you for um playing along with me and um giving me your insights. I really appreciated it. Now, before you go, okay, I've been I'm gonna I'm gonna include it in this episode.

Playlist Challenge And Closing Review Ask

17:39 SPEAKER_00: So, people listeners, bear with me. I am trying to create a Spotify playlist, 365 songs by the 1st of December. Okay. And um the idea is that it's music, whether it doesn't matter what genre it is, whether it's from the 50s, 40s, noughties, whatever. Two songs that when you hear them, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, you want to boogie. You really want to boogie to. Will you share those two songs with me? Now, I don't expect you to I don't expect you to tell me them now, because that would just be totally unfair, Cheryl.

18:20 SPEAKER_00: Um, but will you share them with me, those two songs that like I said, don't matter where you are, don't matter who you're with, you just, you know, you just wanna ha ha ha.

18:32 SPEAKER_01: I love it. I love this idea. Yes, absolutely. As someone who always forgets the name of songs, I immediately was like, oh no, I need to check my Spotify playlist right now. Um, but yes, I can 100% send you two songs. I can I can hear them in my head, but I will write them out and I will send them to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me, Stephanie. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on your show. It's been an absolute pleasure.

18:58 SPEAKER_00: You know, when I think about the conversation I've just had with Stephanie, it kind of reminds us that work and stress and emotional exhaustion really begin with some enormous events. Often it starts building quietly and slowly. We'll stay with it a little bit and then it takes off something else. But what I would hope that you'll see is that work, stress, anxiety podcast is here to help hide people women, understand what is happening before stress, overwhelm, and emotionally for. So thank you to Stephanie for joining me.

19:37 SPEAKER_00: And if you have found the episode Stephanie good, um please, I would love it if you would do a review and a racing because honestly it helps promote the podcast. And you just need to go to love the podcast.com forward slash work stress anxiety. Bye for now.