Why You Can’t Logic Your Way Out of Stress - 41

If you’ve been overthinking everything lately… this might be why.

When you’re stressed, your brain tries to solve for safety—so you analyze, replay, and try to control what happens next.

But the problem isn’t your thoughts.

It’s that your body is activated.

In this episode, we’re breaking down why thinking doesn’t resolve stress, what’s actually happening in your nervous system, and how to start shifting out of your head and back into your body.

Transcript

Autumn G Noble (00:00)

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. Today we are continuing our discussion on emotional regulation. And specifically today I'm talking about the difference between cognitive and somatic processing. And as part of that, we're gonna dig into why we can't logic and reason our ways out of stress and why we can't solve stress problems by just coming up with new ideas and new solutions.

and I will provide you with a way to actually process stress and negative emotions that is effective and will allow you to move on without being bogged down by all of that type of garbage.

Most high achieving women and professionals are really, really good at thinking and logic, analyzing, problem solving, and figuring things out. So when something feels off, like stress, anxiety, overwhelm, what do we do? We just think harder and we try to solution more. We try to solve the feeling or the problem or whatever it is that's bogging us down.

But the problem that we're not addressing is that we can't really think our way out of something that's happening within our bodies.

To understand why that is, we have to talk a little bit about the relationship between our thinking, our emotions, and our bodies, and how it all kind of fits together. Our thoughts and our emotions are more connected than a lot of people ever really wanna talk about or recognize. When I work with women in coaching, there's always an element of our discussions that gets into emotions and feelings.

And nobody wants to talk about that stuff. But the fact of the matter is you can't separate our emotions from our thoughts because they are so interrelated. But they're not the same thing. Thoughts happen in our mind and often habitually, unconsciously, or driven by old patterns that no longer really suit us. And we'll talk about that in another context later. But the fact of the matter is our thoughts are always kind of running in our

and whether we're conscious of each specific thought or not is neither here nor there because each of those thoughts is creating some type of an emotion in As I've said before, a lot of us carry around this kind of crappy elevator music that reflects patterns and experiences and habits that we have learned over time.

So for instance, it might sound like, is wrong with you? Why do you always do that? Why are you not good at this? And we think those thoughts so often that our brain's like, okay, this is a pattern, like driving home from work every day. I don't need to think about it. I'm just gonna run it on autopilot. And when our brain does that with those really crappy thoughts, it kind of relegates them to the background, into that automatic part of our brain, and they just run all the time. Anytime something comes up that looks familiar,

to the last time we had those thoughts. So maybe a mistake at work, maybe you forget something, maybe you overlook something at home and your brain's like, oh, I know this one, why do you always do that? You're not good at this and all that negative chatter just kind of jumps in. But it's always there, kind of running in the background, quietly reinforcing those old patterns, habits and norms. And when that is happening,

It's creating emotion in us even without our awareness. And then you add to that our conscious thinking. my gosh, why did they say that? I'm in trouble, I'm gonna get fired, this person's mad at me. I'm so overwhelmed and stressed out. And that thought is going to create likely overwhelming stress in your body. And those thoughts about they're mad at me, this bad thing is going to happen also triggers emotions within your body. So our thoughts, whether we're aware of them or not,

are creating some kind of a vibration in our bodies. Those emotions that we feel throughout the day, they're not like zapped into us by the people and the circumstances around us. We create them through our perception and thinking about those things. So for instance, if you get an email from your boss that says, where is this thing that you promised me yesterday? That email is not making you feel stressed.

or anxious or angry or whatever the emotion is. It's the thought that comes before that. He told me he actually didn't need it yesterday. He told me I could take my time. He told me it was no longer an emergency. Why does he always do that? I can't stand working for you. I'm so overwhelmed. Whatever those thoughts are, they come after you get the email. And so it's those thoughts about the email that are making you feel overwhelmed or frustrated. And that's why a lot of people that do this work

We really struggle when people say things like, you made me feel X, Y, or Z, because logically that's just not how it works. Like people don't walk around with feeling zappers and instill feelings in you. You are thinking thoughts based upon whatever is happening in your world and those thoughts are creating the emotion. So going back to that example with the email, you could think, here we go again. I'm not getting bogged into your drama.

And maybe that emotion is just like resignation. Maybe it's like a mild annoyance or maybe it's like, I'm not even gonna pay attention to this email. Like he's gonna forget about it in an hour. And that creates a different type of emotion. But we have the authority to choose whatever we wanna think about those circumstances. And whatever we choose is going to dictate how we feel, okay? So that's kind of the foundation that we're working from.

So those thoughts generate emotions within us. Those emotions happen in our bodies. I will say a lot of the women that I work with that are very cerebral, like myself, a lot of the women that I work with are lawyers, and historically I only worked with lawyers. And we are a cerebral species. We kind of live up here. And so when I start teaching these concepts to lawyers, sometimes it was really hard for them to connect to the thought. And so,

It's often easier to identify what we're feeling in our body and use that as a signpost to kind of figure out, okay, what's happening in my head that's making my stomach tight, that's making my chest hot, that's generating this emotion in my body? There's that old saying or idea around gut instinct and listening to your gut.

And there is a lot of science that actually shows and proves that there is some knowing that happens in your gut before logically we process the information. so suffice it to say, our body often knows before our logical brain does. And if we can develop a skill of paying attention to what's happening in our body, we can usually back it up to figure out what's happening in our brain that's causing all of this in my body.

That's not what we're talking about today. What I want to focus on today is once those emotions kick in in our bodies, what do we do with it in a healthy way? Because once your nervous system is activated and your body is sort of agitated and on alert, your body drives the experience.

That is why overthinking doesn't resolve it. It's like we're in a relay race and we're passing off the baton. Your brain has a thought, passes the baton to your body, and now your body is gonna run without emotion. In order to solve the emotion and get somewhere healthier or more clear, we have to deal with the body because the mind has sort of walked out the door, right? They gave the thought, they passed the baton, now the emotions are there.

So we've got to attend to the emotion in the body. Part of our work as coaches is also learning how to redirect your patterns and help you shift to healthier patterns and thoughts that generate different emotions. And that's all fine and good, but we also have to attend to what's physically happening in our bodies. Because if we don't let that energy move somewhere, it can remain stuck in our bodies and cause physical ailments. So we have to release it.

I think about emotions in this way as if our bodies were a tea And by the way, our bodies are made up of a significant percentage of water and our brains are 80 % water. So if you think about emotions as energy, it's really not that different than the energy that heats the water in that kettle and causes it to boil.

That energy in your body is creating tension and heat within you. And if we don't do something with it, we kind of turn into that tea kettle and we're just boiling. We've got all that pressure in there from all that energy that's just pent up and stuck. And that is why my work has kind of evolved from just traditional mindset work coaching.

and cognitive behavioral therapy type work into more somatic and body work through yoga, breath work and physical fitness because it is a way to release some of that energy and allow us to sort of clean the slate so we can start thinking more clearly and then utilize some of those new thinking patterns that we also work

Let's play around with this a little bit. Think about the last time that you felt really anxious. You probably tried to figure out why, or maybe you tried to analyze what it was that happened that made you feel that way, or maybe you tried to talk yourself out of it. I shouldn't be so upset about this. This isn't that big of a deal. And sometimes that's successful from a mental perspective, but yet your body still feels that tension.

The more you do this work, the more you might have moments where you sort of notice like, my gosh, my body is really tense right now. I'm gripping my hands, I'm gripping my jaw. What is that about? Where is that coming from? And it's often a residual body.

response to some type of thought that we previously had that maybe we've shifted away from, but we didn't attend to that energy in our bodies. And so even when we're able to kind of rationalize or talk ourselves out of it, the body still feels it. And that's because that stress response, it's not completed, right? Like we've handed off the baton and our body's running with it, but we don't let it do anything with it.

and it doesn't just stop, keeps running and it keeps building until you give it an outlet.

in the same way, if you leave that tea kettle on the stove, it's not just gonna stop boiling. It's either gonna explode, it's gonna completely run out of water and just burn itself up on the stove. It's gonna keep going. And that is the way that our bodies operate when we sort of hand off this emotional and energetic baton.

The key takeaway here is that when your nervous system is activated with stressful thinking or any kind of an emotionally triggering thought, your body starts mobilizing energy and energy is designed to move. But for many of us, instead of doing that, we sit still and we kind of think and that energy just stays trapped.

So today I want to share with you some ideas and suggestions on how to better process that energy so that you can physically relieve yourself and open space to change your thinking and guide yourself in a new direction. Because it's really difficult to change our thinking patterns and to change our thoughts when our body's really activated. It creates this kind of tug of war. So we need to complete that stress cycle that was started when that energetic baton was passed from the brain

to the body.

This is where embodiment comes in. So instead of asking ourselves, what do I think about this? We can instead shift to what is happening in my body right now, and then asking ourselves, what would help me move this?

Some of the exercises in my premium space have guided meditations and somatic work where we're actually engaging, of like shaking our hands and shaking our limbs. There is a reason that that is a part of somatic practice because that is a way of just physically releasing some of the stress. So simply shaking it out can help your body release that tension. Breathing is another really simple exercise, walking, moving your body, stretching.

Any of those are a way of acknowledging what's happening in your body and allowing that energy to go somewhere. And so if you're sitting at your desk, just some simple shaking, stretching, get up and walk around, go outside, get some fresh air. Any of those things will allow your body to move that energy and release it.

For many of you, this may seem a little bit backwards from the way that I do a lot of my coaching because in cognitive behavioral therapy or in mindfulness, we talk a lot about the thinking patterns and shifting those patterns. And that's not that that's not important. It is very important. But for a lot of people, it happens in the body first before they can kind of access and clean up the thoughts. If your body is feeling really tense and tight, it's difficult to engage in some of those

changes in your thought patterns and your thinking because your body is on high alert and we have to solve for that. we're not trying to ignore your thoughts and say we just need to move the energy through your body. It's about understanding the sequence. We have a thought but it moves in your body and that movement creates energy and pressure within your body and the mind often continues to build that pressure or it tries to solve for it.

From there, a lot of us try to use our brain to fix whatever is happening in our body and fix those emotions. But we have to fix the body first and then go to the brain.

We regulate our body first and then we problem solve. We can't fix one without the other

because they are so interrelated.

One of my favorite analogies when thinking about this topic is this idea that trying to ignore the energy in our body is like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Eventually, it just comes up and it explodes. And that's what a lot of us do day in and day out. We have these really powerful emotions moving through us and we try to solve through them logically. But once that energy is there, it wants to go somewhere.

And then sometimes we get frustrated because we can't solve it. We don't know why we feel that way. And the pressure builds and the pressure builds and we keep trying to push it down. Think about how much energy it takes to push all of that energy down. This is one of the main reasons that I think a lot of us are so physically exhausted at the end of the day, even if it's not a very stressful day. If you've been pushing down a lot of emotions,

Not only are you holding a lot of energy in, but you're expending a lot of energy to push it down, and it can be physically exhausting. So today I wanted to offer just some insights here about how we have to attend to that in order to be more balanced and thoughtful people that align with how we actually wanna show up day in and day out. Because when your body feels safe,

Your thinking is going to become clearer, more grounded and more effective. And you're going to have more space energetically to observe those patterns and shift them and start creating a new emotional framework for yourself. But we can't ignore the crappy emotions that we have potentially already created that are sitting in our body. So this work is not about forcing our brain to think differently or forcing negative emotions out.

It's about honoring what's there and allowing it to be and sort of saying, you know, I'm feeling really tense right now. I've got to get this out. I'm feeling really anxious. I need to get this out of my body and noticing how much better you feel once you allow that energy to move through instead of pretending like it's not there in living life as that boiling tea kettle or that person who's just holding the beach ball underwater, hoping that it doesn't blow up in their face because it will. I promise you, I think that's why a lot of us experience burnout.

We're carrying so much, pushing so much down. And if we can get better at paying attention to what's happening in our body, recognizing when something needs to be released, and just giving it a second to shake it out or go for a walk or stretch or breathe, we can be able to much better regulate our emotions going forward because we'll be thinking much more clearly.

So here's the one thing I really want you to take with you from this episode.

We don't need to think our way out of stress or negative emotions. We need to learn how to be with ourselves differently in those emotions.

to notice what's happening in our body, to pause before we spiral and let those powerful emotions drive us in a direction that we really don't wanna go. And to create just enough space to respond to the emotion instead of react from it. And that's not something that we master from just one episode or just one sort of insight here today. It's something that we build moment by moment, practice by practice.

And that's exactly what I'm guiding listeners through this month inside my premium space. Recently rebranded Becoming Her, Ladyish Unfiltered. It's where we go deeper into this work.

I offer daily practices, nervous system tools, and real life integration so that you're not just understanding this. This is not just trivia information. You're actually learning to experience yourself differently.

So if you've been listening and thinking this is really helpful, I really wanna do more of this in my life, that is your next step. And you can find all of the details in the show notes. I so hope that some of you will join us there. Learning how to better regulate our nervous system is the secret weapon to preventing burnout, to showing up authentically, and to taking back your power in your career and the life so that you can create something that is

meaningfully yours and truly aligned with who you want to be. I hope to see some of you there. If you have any questions about this content or the premium space, please email me, autumn at the uncomfortable dream.com.

Next week we're gonna continue on this topic and I'm gonna lay out some real data and support demonstrating why emotional intelligence is not just some soft throwaway skill. It's actually a powerful tool that will help you be more resilient and help you.

create more success, especially in this world that is constantly changing and being impacted by new technologies and AI. If you read any of the data and reports on AI, one of the tools that workers are going to really need over the next 10 years is more resilience. And without better emotional regulation and emotional intelligence, your resiliency is going to suffer. So that's just a little bit of a tidbit of what we're going to talk about next week. I hope you will join us there.