More than 25 years ago, when a shot glass was slid across the table into my hand, I thought nothing of it. Certainly not the introduction to something enduring in my life. It was at a UK pub chain (already unremarkable), while I was studying abroad, where Hoegaarden reps were handing out merch. The glass was a tiny version of the full-sized branded pint glass. Likely, I took it out of a weakness for miniature replicas, even though I always thought that wheat beer tasted like warm trash bins.

But I must have liked it enough for it to come home with me instead of getting relegated to the end-of-year pile to be picked through by hallmates.

After returning stateside, it survived multiple moves in New York, a few more in DC, and eventually the cross-country haul to the Pacific Northwest.

Even so, it was forgotten in the back of cupboards for many years, unused. But in recent years, it’s made its way up to the front of the shelf, and I now reach for it every day.

There are other shot glasses I could reach for, but the thin ones always felt like they might crack under hot coffee. This little one is solid enough that I trust it—and it holds just the amount of caffeine I want in the morning.

Reflecting on this shot glass makes me wonder about other throwaway moments in life that become lasting. Frivolous moments that play a larger role than I’d initially given them credit for.

But also, it makes me think about those picture-framing, conceptually important moments when something I thought was monumental turned out to be a negligible blip.

What’s funny, maddening, and bittersweet can be indistinguishable.

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I came across what I thought was a Red-breasted Sapsucker constructing a home.

Turned out it was a pair of them.

Exactly 9 days later, I returned to the same tree and was surprised to hear a chorus of hungry nestlings coming from inside the tree.

But how? Egg-laying and incubation periods aren’t adding up!

Turned out, what I witnessed 9 days ago wasn’t nest-building, but fecal sac removal along with some woodchips.

If you have other theories, please enlighten me!

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Outside of here, I’m a burnout specialist. This is where I play, not work. I refine old ideas, explore new ones, and share what’s top of mind on wisdom and wellbeing, often with photos of wildlife in the PNW.

Maybe you call it change, transformation, healing, or enlightenment.

It’s all the same to different degrees.

There’s always a clear before and after.

It can be the most mundane change, like before and after weight loss. Or life-changing, like before and after therapy or a mindset shift. Or something transcendental, before and after your ego death, becoming one with the universe, meeting God, speaking to Mother Aya.

There’s always a cost that we don’t think about before the change that we have to contend with after.

Your new life will always cost you your old one.

It has a cool ring to it.

But what’s less cool of a tagline is the grief that comes with growing out of an earlier iteration of yourself.

The grief of realizing that the last time you got high off sleeves of Oreos was the last time you were going to experience that.

The grief of never closing down a bar again, and experiencing the “last-call magic” where staff and patrons become friends.

The grief of realizing that the bliss of ignorance isn’t just a cliché, but a comfort you’ll never have again, to not question everything.

The grief of seeing people clearly that the toll of walking away still beats pretending everything’s fine.

The grief of getting rid of closets full of clothes, shoes, and bags that were purchased for “retail therapy” or status signaling, that no longer hold any power or fit your lifestyle.

The grief of trading solid ground for an unconventional path, even while knowing the comfort and safety was always an illusion.

The grief of processing all of the stuff you stuffed away without the crutches that helped you cope.

The grief for the former version of yourself who did the best she could with what she knew.

It doesn’t mean for a second you’d trade the present you for the past version, but it also doesn’t mean there isn’t grief.

I met some babies.

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Outside of here, I’m a burnout specialist. This is where I play, not work. I refine old ideas, explore new ones on wisdom and wellbeing, often with photos of wildlife in the PNW.

Not because I have something against that label.

But the things that birders seem to care about and do—I don’t.

I don’t count birds. I don’t know their Latin names. I don’t track lifers.

I like learning about birds, as I do other creatures. I look for and watch birds, as I do other creatures. I’m often in awe of birds as I am of other creatures.

I appreciate how accessible birds are where I live. It’s an easy portal into the natural world—a reprieve from the chaos that humans tend to create.

I appreciate their ability to change my mood for the better, to make me feel more human, to remind me of who I am—in moments when I need it most.

I appreciate that they always tell the truth.

I appreciate their tenacity in surviving and living amongst us, even as we’re actively making their lives harder each year.

I appreciate their unwavering ability to learn, adapt, and self-care in a world that must look and feel very different from their ancestors.

I appreciate their trust in their own wisdom and instincts to navigate through unending uncertainties—without any understanding of why their food sources and homes have changed so much—and the changes that are still ahead.

Most of all, I appreciate that I can still see them, and with the rapid decline in the bird population, that some are still here with us.

I met a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

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Outside of here, I’m a burnout specialist. This is where I play, not work. I refine old ideas, explore new ones, and share what’s top of mind on wisdom and wellbeing, often with photos of wildlife in the PNW.

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Even as someone who's studied the brain and is intentional about her content consumption, I'm not impervious to this.

I know I’ve hit my threshold when I begin to sense a general unease about the world, my life, and myself.

Damn, they compromised my wellbeing, again.

Reframe: I allowed them to compromise my wellbeing, again.

Anyway, if I let it run its course (because knowing my threshold and doing something about it are different skills), the physical sensations that start as tension, restlessness, agitation, and bracing will recruit my thoughts to amplify the unease. I’ll catastrophize. Worry. Resent. Rage. And so the cycle of doom begins. My husband knows when I’ve hit my screen limit. (I’m using “screen” loosely, since audio alone can also do the same).

At some point, when it all gets too uncomfortable to contain—physically, mentally, emotionally—I become the worst version of myself. And having that be yet another thing to contend with usually snaps me out of the digital trance, like a slap in the face by my ancestors, reminding me my life is different without this screen.

As I come to, I point out to myself that my life and what I just consumed are not the same, which a quick experiment can confirm. I’m a sucker for experiments, so that’s when I usually put my tech away.

Taste

I don’t cook to be mindful. I cook because it’s fun and rewarding. And also, my mind doesn’t spiral about the state of our world when knives and fire are involved.

Somehow, I can’t ruminate and deglaze a pan at the same time.

There’s a moment when garlic hits hot oil that grabs me, wherever my mind is, and yanks it into the present. Ok, I’m here now. Smelling that.

Although hot oil’s not always a requirement for mindfulness.

It can also be the sound of a knife running through green onions, the way raw protein feels in my hands, the smells of ingredients separately, then combined at different stages of cooking, or just watching for signs of boiled water and readiness.

Then, of course, plating and the best part—tasting. Which my hands, nose, eyes, and ears have already had a head start. It’s now time for my mouth and my internal organs to experience my work. By this time, I’m usually worlds away from what I was so worked up about.

Even though I associate cooking with my sense of taste the most, clearly, it’s one that engages all.

Touch

My cats know when I’ve been in front of a screen too long before I do, curiously. They show up head bumpy, cheek rubby, meowy, unapologetically trying to find a comfy spot awkwardly between my outstretched arms connected to the keyboard. It always feels pushy, inconvenient, and if I give it a second to register—perfect timing. Telling me it’s been a while since they’ve had some undivided attention. Animals know when you’re not present with them.

There’s something about a cat kneading me that brings me back to my body instantaneously. The whole thing is just too absurd. A small mammal is pushing on my belly repeatedly and looks to be enjoying it—how can I think about anything else?

A few times a week, I wipe them down with a warm wet cloth, then brush them while they’re still slightly damp. My hands know when to stop—right before the fur gets too dry and the static starts annoying them. That feedback loop, my hands reading the situation and adjusting, is so ordinary and so therapeutic.

The screen always robs me of my sense of touch. Without it, I touch all kinds of things. Skin, soil, ceramic, cotton, leather, wool, water, metal, paper, plastic, wood. None of it is that remarkable. All of it adds interest to my daily life, without my registering. All of it is real.

Smell

My sense of smell is linked to my ability to time-travel—and I have only 47% control over the destination.

Turkey in the oven. Warm pretzel and peanut carts. Cut-grass. Gardenia. Certain lotions and potions. Wet dog, bonfire, rosin, shoe polish, and humidity in an arboretum. Sometimes, I don’t even know where they take me, but I go somewhere.

The non-time-travel smells are quieter. Instead of bringing me somewhere, they remind me I’m right here. One of the most reliable groundings—running my fingers through rosemary, thyme, mint, basil, or lavender from the garden and smelling my hands. It works every time.

Sight

I’m a city kid who discovered nature embarrassingly late and is now insufferable about it.

I now see life that I didn’t even have names for before:

Guessing where pied-billed grebes, ring-necked ducks, and buffleheads will surface after each dive. Recognizing great blue herons individually—their hunting spots, grooming rituals, and favorite tree for meditation. Admiring double-crested cormorants’ quiet presence, keeping ancient secrets, and worshiping the sun. Being among mallards, northern shovelers, and gadwalls, foraging in the wetlands, drifting, and napping. Enjoying songbirds at my feeders—playing, chasing, posturing, splashing, drinking, eating.

I take photos on my walks, which means I get to enjoy it twice—once on the walk and again later when I process my photos. I like trusting my inner algorithm and deciding what’s worth stopping for and what gets my attention.

Hearing

Putting on a record is slow on purpose.

Like the rest, it’s a multi-sensory experience that starts with picking out a record. Pulling the record out of the sleeve carefully, not tearing the delicate paper that’s now gone yellow. Smelling the vinyl, the album jacket—a version of that old book smell—and the warm dust of the record player. Feeling the counterweight of the tonearm makes me feel like I’m handling something important. Finding a spot. Dropping the needle.

Then the crackle before the music.

I sit and wait—committed. There’s no skipping, no 10-second jump forward, no thinking about the next song.

The song gets to be the length it is, and I listen.

All that constraint and non-optimized time, inconvenient by today’s standards, is actually what I end up enjoying.

I met some Harlequin Ducks for the first time (squeal!)…

Among them were also Horned Grebes and Common Goldeneyes.

One of my favorite things to watch and photograph is feeding time.

And of course, there was also a gull.

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Outside of here, I’m a burnout specialist. This is where I play, not work. I refine old ideas, explore new ones, and share what’s top of mind on wisdom and wellbeing, often with photos of wildlife in the PNW.

We were catching up on the latest in our lives, when she started multitasking—updating me in real-time as she moved around her kitchen. She’d just come back from the market with a bag of lemons. Freshly washed, they kept rolling off the chopping board until she finally corralled them onto a dish towel. Telling me how juicy they were as she cut through each one. She was using a new citrus squeezer to juice each half of the lemons into a pitcher, tasting as she mixed in the right water and sugar ratio to make a batch of lemonade.

As I listened, I felt an ache on the side of my jaw—that anticipatory pucker to tasting something sour. Then I swallowed reflexively.

This physiological response happened entirely in my brain—and I was nowhere near an actual lemon.

Our brains treat what we consume as real and prepare our bodies accordingly. What we expose our minds to—ideas, images, sounds, stories, and even just casual words from a friend—impacts our body.

What we consume becomes our reality—even if temporarily.

This is why movies can feel so real. Alongside the characters, fall in love, laugh, cry, clench, gasp, and sigh.

This is also why we can escape into a book.

Why music moves us to dance, to fight, to tears.

Our brains are constantly preparing us for whatever we expose ourselves to—releasing feel-good chemicals when we experience beauty, joy, or connection, flooding us with stress hormones when we experience fear, anger, or distress.

Knowing this—periodically, I still get caught up in content that has my jaw tight, shoulders up, and breath held, preparing my body for a threat that doesn’t exist in my room.

The hardest types are the non-fiction ones. Real suffering, real injustice, real depravity. There’s a difference between caring and carrying it, between staying informed and marinating in it. Sometimes that line gets blurry.

We build our reality with every word we read, every scroll, every time we hit “play,” and every conversation we have. Wish me luck as I walk the fine line and reserve my fight-or-flight response for when I actually need it.

I went on a walk and met some American Wigeons and Barrow’s Goldeneyes, seemingly enjoying each other’s company (maybe?).

Hitting <3, commenting, or sharing are ways to keep this free publication alive!

Outside of here, I’m a burnout specialist. This is where I play, not work. I refine old ideas, explore new ones, and share what’s top of mind on wisdom and wellbeing, often with photos of wildlife in the PNW.

But if you’ve ever looked into it, there are many different types of breathing, and not all will serve the purpose you want.

Here are 10 secular breathing techniques I use regularly for different outcomes. #6 is my go-to for staying regulated. Lately, I’m also reaching for #2 and #5.

If you decide to try any of these, start slow and listen to your body—your experience matters most.

1. Box Breathing

What it’s good for: Staying present and maintaining focus under pressure

Fun fact: Used by Navy SEALs and people in high-pressure situations to stay calm and focused.

How to do it: Inhale through your nose for 4 counts, hold your breath for 4 counts, exhale through your mouth for 4 counts, hold empty for 4 counts. Repeat for 3-4 rounds (about 3-5 minutes).

2. Physiological Sigh (Cyclic Sighing)

What it’s good for: Quick tension relief, real-time calming

Fun fact: The double inhale with the long exhale activates your parasympathetic (rest & relax) nervous system. It’s something our bodies do naturally with sighing throughout the day and after crying, but you can also do it on purpose.

How to do it: Take a deep breath in through your nose, then—without exhaling—take a second short “sip” of air to top off your lungs. Then exhale long and slow. Do this 1-3 times for quick relief, or practice for 5 minutes daily.

3. Coherent Breathing

What it’s good for: Nervous system regulation and increasing heart rate variability (HRV)

Fun fact: The 5-6 breaths per minute breathing rate has appeared in various ancient traditions, in prayers and chants across many cultures.

How to do it: Breathe at a rate of about 5-6 breaths per minute—roughly 5.5 seconds in, 5.5 seconds out. Equal inhale and exhale, no pauses. Breathe through your nose if comfortable. You can find music tracks anywhere you stream music or videos, which pleasantly guides your breath instead of actively counting.

4. 4-7-8 Breathing

What it’s good for: Stress, anxiety, and trouble falling asleep

Fun Fact: The CO2 buildup during breath holding primes the nervous system, making the subsequent long exhale more effective at triggering relaxation.

How to do it: Inhale through your nose for 4 counts, hold for 7 counts, exhale through your mouth for 8 counts. Repeat 3-4 times

5. Alternate Nostril Breathing

What it’s good for: Stress and anxiety, blood pressure, respiratory function

Fun fact: Better respiratory function means you can breathe deeper, hold your breath longer, your airways are more relaxed/open, less shortness of breath, and better oxygen delivery to your body.

How to do it: Use your right hand: close your right nostril with your thumb, inhale through the left nostril. Close the left nostril with your ring finger, release the right nostril, exhale through the right. Inhale through the right, close it, exhale through the left. That’s one round. Start with 3-5 rounds.

6. Longer Exhales

What it’s good for: Calms and relaxes the nervous system

Fun fact: Longer exhales activate the vagus nerve, which signals your body to relax and shift out of fight or flight mode. Studies show this can lower heart rate, reduce anxiety, and improve decision-making.

How to do it: Inhale through your nose for a count (say, 4), then exhale for a longer count (say, 6 or 8). The key is making your exhale noticeably longer than your inhale. Keep it smooth and relaxed.

7. Longer Inhales

What it’s good for: Alertness and readiness

Fun fact: A longer inhale relative to the exhale shifts the autonomic balance toward sympathetic (fight or flight) dominance. This is the classic “take a deep breath” that people instinctively do before gearing up or bracing for a challenge—jumping into cold water, walking into a room full of strangers, lifting something heavy, or serving a tennis ball.

How to do it: Take a deep breath in through your nose (longer than your exhale), then exhale normally. Repeat until you feel energized.

8. Nasal vs Mouth

What it’s good for:

Nasal breathing is generally recommended for everyday breathing as it filters, warms, and humidifies the air, which is better for your lungs. It also naturally slows your breathing rate and encourages belly breathing (see #9).

Mouth exhales can help with releasing tension and are commonly used in techniques like physiological sighing (see #2), or when you need a more complete exhale.

How to do it:

Nasal breathing: Breathe in and out through your nose only. Keep your mouth closed and tongue resting on the roof of your mouth.

Mouth exhales: Breathe in through your nose, exhale through your mouth (you can try with pursed lips, like blowing out candles for a slower exhale or open mouthed, like blowing hot air to fog up a mirror, for a greater release of tension).

9. Belly vs Chest

What it’s good for:

Belly (diaphragmatic) breathing is more efficient and calming. It engages the diaphragm fully, promotes better oxygen exchange, and activates the relaxation response. Most breathing practices benefit from belly breathing as the foundation.

Chest breathing isn’t better at anything except being fast and instinctive when you’re panicking or maxing out. This is our emergency backup system, not what we should aim for.

Fun fact: Singers and endurance athletes are trained to belly breathe for optimal performance. Chest breathing can reinforce stress states that can be changed by retraining your breath.

How to do it:

Belly breathing: Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly. When you inhale through your nose, your belly should expand while your chest stays relatively still. Your diaphragm drops down, pulling air deep into your lungs.

Chest breathing: Your chest rises and falls more than your belly. This is shallower and often happens when stressed or with bad posture.

10. Default (Without Thought)

What it’s good for: Staying alive, mindfulness meditation

Fun fact: Research shows that regular practice of breathing techniques (as little as 5 minutes daily) can change your default breathing pattern to be slower and more efficient throughout the day, not just during practice.

How to do it: Don’t control your breathing at all. Just let it do its thing. In a basic mindfulness meditation, you observe the natural rhythm—where the breath goes, how deep or shallow it is, and the pauses between inhales and exhales.

Final Thoughts

There are other breathing practices tied to specific spiritual or religious traditions (like certain pranayama techniques, holotropic breathwork, or breath of fire) that can have powerful effects and often require proper instruction and supervision. If you’re interested in those, seek out qualified teachers.

What are your experiences with these? Do you have favorites that aren’t listed here?

References:

• Gerritsen, R., & Band, G. P. H. (2018). Breath of Life: The Respiratory Vagal Stimulation Model of Contemplative Activity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 397.

• Balban, M. Y., Neri, E., Kogon, M. M., Weed, L., Nouriani, B., Jo, B., Holl, G., Zeitzer, J. M., Spiegel, D., & Huberman, A. D. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895.

• Sasano, N., Vesely, A. E., Hayano, J., Sasano, H., Somogyi, R., Preiss, D., Miyasaka, K., Katsuya, H., Iscoe, S., & Fisher, J. A. (2002). Direct effect of PaCO2 on respiratory sinus arrhythmia in conscious humans. American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 282(3), H973-H976.

• Tzeng, Y. C., Larsen, P. D., & Galletly, D. C. (2007). Effects of hypercapnia and hypoxemia on respiratory sinus arrhythmia in conscious humans during spontaneous respiration. American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 292(5), H2397-H2407.

• Ghiya, S., & Lee, C. M. (2017). Alternate nostril breathing: a systematic review of clinical trials. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 5(8), 3273-3286.

• Tanaka, T. H., Leisman, G., & Nishijo, K. (1997). The physiological responses induced by superficial acupuncture: A comparative study of acupuncture stimulation during exhalation phase and continuous stimulation. International Journal of Neuroscience, 90(1-2), 45-58.

• Li, P., Janczewski, W. A., Yackle, K., Kam, K., Pagliardini, S., Krasnow, M. A., & Feldman, J. L. (2016). The peptidergic control circuit for sighing. Nature, 530(7590), 293-297.

• Ramirez, J. M. (2014). The integrative role of the sigh in psychology, physiology, pathology, and neurobiology. Progress in Brain Research, 209, 91-129.

• Elliott, S., & Edmonson, D. (2005). The New Science of Breath. Coherence Press.

• Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. (2006). Physiology of long pranayamic breathing: Neural respiratory elements may provide a mechanism that explains how slow deep breathing shifts the autonomic nervous system. Medical Hypotheses, 67(3), 566-571.

On a Walk…

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That’s nine out of ten people who start January 1st with genuine intentions to change will have given up within weeks.

I bring this to your attention because I’m an optimist at heart. Here’s why. But first—

Why we love to make New Year’s resolutions

It’s fun and easy to buy into the lore of holiday magic that there’s something special about January 1st. That crossing from 11:59 PM on December 31st to 12:00 AM on January 1st somehow transforms us into different people capable of change that was impossible just a second ago.

Every year, we cling to the hope that we’ll be different this year—we’ll get fit, eat better, put ourselves out there, be organized, not procrastinate, fulfill our potential, and be a better human.

Researchers call this hope the “Fresh Start Effect,” and it’s because of this that we raise our glass and toast to “New year, new me!”—believing things will really change this time around (often despite contrary evidence from previous years).

What the Research Really Says About Fresh Starts

We’re not wrong to intuitively think January 1st is a more effective date to start something or change something.

Behavioral scientists discovered the “Fresh Start Effect,” where they found that people get increased motivation around New Year’s to diet (82% spike in searches) or go to the gym (attendance increases).

But here’s the finding that matters: New Year’s isn’t special because it’s January 1st. It’s special because it feels like a fresh start.

The same effect also shows up for:

• Mondays

• Birthdays

• First day of a new month

• Moving to a new city

• Starting a new job

• Even just the start of spring

These moments work because they create psychological distance from your past failures. Your brain essentially files away “Old You” and gives “New You” a clean slate. That separation boosts your confidence and makes goals feel possible again, as it frees you from what previously weighed you down.

When to Use Temporal Landmarks (and When Not To)

While using “a fresh start” isn’t a guarantee that you’ll achieve your goals, it can be a strategic tool to increase your odds. We can create the “Fresh Start Effect” when we hitch our goals to what researchers call a temporal landmark, or a meaningful point in time.

Use them strategically when:

• You need a concrete date to track before and after progress better

• You’re making a specific plan tied to a life change (like a new job, an addition to the family, a move)

• You genuinely feel motivated by the symbolism

Watch out for the trap: Don’t let future landmarks become excuses. Research found that when people think “I’ll get serious after the new year,” they slack off now and don’t actually commit later. More like, new year, same you—sorry.

The Good News

You’re not trapped by your January 1st declaration (or lack of one).

If you made a resolution and are keeping it—great! You get to keep experiencing that satisfaction every time you show up.

If you already abandoned it or didn’t make a resolution in time for the countdown, the door to achieving your goal hasn’t closed. It’s open right now.

Because in this moment, you have a choice. Not to carry the weight of an entire year’s resolution. Not to commit to anything monumental or life-changing. But to decide what you’ll do in the next hour.

And unlike 90% of New Year’s resolutions, that decision is actually sustainable.

A Wish for Us

If New Year’s Eve really sprinkled us with goal-achieving magic, then yes—we'd be fools not to shout out our resolutions with the fireworks. If the new year actually granted us special power to change, failing early would be damning—proof we couldn't succeed even with the universe on our side. But the data says otherwise.

So it’s tremendous news to know that January 1st is as special as January 9th, or March 17th, or July 28th when it comes to taking action.

Instead, what might matter more than any resolution is what we do today.

If we really care about our goal, we can take a tiny step today. The tiniest step creates momentum.

Miss a day and break our streak? We don’t need to wait for next Monday, after our birthday, or next year to begin again. The next moment is always available. The next exhale can be our fresh start.

References:

Dai, H., Milkman, K.L., and Riis, J. (2014). “The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior.” Management Science, 60(10), 2563-2582.

Koo, M., Dai, H., Mai, K.M., and Song, C.E. (2020). “Anticipated Temporal Landmarks Undermine Motivation for Continued Goal Pursuit.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 148, 12-29.

CBS News (2024). “New Year’s resolutions often don’t last. Here’s why they fail and how to keep them, according to an expert.” December 31, 2024.

On a Walk

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My original goal was to give it three months, and if I got the ick, I’d leave. Almost twelve months later, I’m still here, reflecting on my learnings and being more explicit about the intention for my publication, a breath —, and the notes I post on A Walk With Ruth.

To take you back, the original experiment was to see if I could make “social media” work for me again.

I cancelled all of my social accounts during the pandemic. I no longer wanted to support businesses led by people who were blatantly indifferent to public wellbeing, the good of society, and the planet. It felt wrong to contribute to platforms that deliberately create and exploit addiction, disregard our privacy and safety, and profit from behaviors that harm us—especially when my work centers on wellbeing. I knew I wasn’t going to single-handedly change anything, but cancelling my accounts brought me peace and a sense of personal agency.

Life went on, as it does.

Then, I heard about Substack—how it’s different. How it’s not really social media, but it can have a social component if you want it. How there are no ads. How it’s reader and content-driven rather than influencer and aesthetic-driven. How it’s business model is more aligned with creators.

I didn’t tell anyone that I was on Substack because it was an experiment. I didn’t know what it was going to be, or if I’d even stay. Starting from a blank slate with zero subscribers and followers was actually really refreshing. But watching that number crawl to single digits was painfully humbling. Shoutout to , who was the first person to say “hi” and subscribe when I waved into the void on Notes. Brave and generous soul, that Nate is.

What this space is

I’ve experimented with different things here—short reflections and deep dives into obscure topics. Sometimes, with the intention of offering a useful perspective. Other times, I wrote what needed to come out, like a bodily function. I’ve shared research-backed pieces, philosophical musings, personal stories, and sometimes a blend of all three. I’ve used my wildlife photos as the cover, as well as stock photos that relate more to the topic of the piece.

Regardless of the style, what I’m drawn to share are my discoveries—be it information, experiences, or encounters. Particularly the stuff that no one taught me at home, in school, or in the workplace. The things I had to learn on my own through lived experience, independent research, or with the teachers, mentors, coaches, and therapists I sought out.

Outside of here, I live in the world of personal healing and transformation. I’m a burnout recovery specialist. Naturally, the topics that I reflect on and write about tend to be on the more serious side. But my intention is always to create space for a breath. A dash of light or lightness into these sometimes dark and heavy topics. I’m not sure if I always accomplish this. Maybe that’s why I decided to move my wildlife photos to the end of each piece—so that if I wasn’t able to convey hope, at least the reader leaves with a palate cleanser from nature.

Right now, this is where I play, not work. I experiment with new ideas and refine old ones about wisdom and wellbeing. I share my encounters on my walks and what I’m learning about wildlife. When I’m not creating and sharing, I’m getting fueled by what others are creating and sharing—art, recipes, sunrises, animals, stories, and lives.

What I’ve learned about myself

I can be earnest to a fault and have an absurdist sense of humor—this combination is already confusing for some, but even more so online.

I’m bad at words, spelling, and grammar. I look up the definition of words too often to refresh my memory. I will continue to edit a week after publishing. I thank my first readers for giving me grace.

My play voice and work voice are different. I’m still finding my play voice, without discrediting my work voice.

What I’ve learned about you

You like short pieces; the shorter the better. This reflection is already too long.

You like my photography more than my writing. That’s ok. I think I do too.

You are kind and generous—based on how you’ve interacted with me and what you’ve shared in the comments.

Thank you

All of this to say: thank you for reading and being a part of my journey this year as I stumbled around with Bambi legs, figuring out what this is, and what I want it to be.

If there’s a topic you’d love to see me explore next year—something that would be useful for you—I’d love to hear it!

It’s soggy season in the PNW, which means walks with my camera are more limited. But I do still see a lot of wildlife, including this Dark-eyed Junco, just outside my window.

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I’ve come to accept that resistance is a part of my life.

For me, it lives in the space between thought and action—that brief pause before I decide to get out of bed, start my workout, or sit down to journal. These daily practices always summon resistance. So do the obvious culprits: cleaning the stove, filing taxes, writing.

I’ve wondered if my brain was just allergic to effort. In the way that brains evolved to conserve energy for real emergencies.

But I don’t think it’s that simple.

Here’s what I discovered by observing my own mind.

The 100-squat experiment

I often test theories I read about on myself.

Earlier this year, I experimented with doing 100 squats a few times a week, not as a fitness goal, but to watch my brain in real time. I wanted to see the nonsense that I would tell myself in the face of discomfort. My hope was to better recognize those thought patterns when I engaged in anything difficult.

The negotiations always started before I even began: “Maybe we take a day off.”

Then at rep 20, like clockwork: “Ruth, there’s NO WAY you can do 100—that’s crazy!“ It was interesting that a part of me still considered that voice even though I’ve witnessed myself complete 100 squats numerous times before. Maybe seeing isn’t always believing?

If I kept going, my mind would rationalize convincingly, lobbying to stop: “Let’s just do 50—50’s good.” “No need to overexert yourself.” “Too much cardio can cannibalize the muscles you’ve trained so hard for.” “What if you get injured?” “If you don’t hit 100, you’ll be demotivated - better make your goal more realistic.”

I had to deal with this shit every time until I neared 100, when it finally quieted down, and I’d get a surge of motivation seeing the finish line.

What didn’t make sense was that I’d never once regretted doing 100 squats during my experiment or even my daily workouts and journaling, for that matter. Not one single time. And always regretted skipping it. Yet paradoxically, my brain continued to perceive these activities that always gave me satisfaction, pride, energy, and clarity as threats.

What got me thinking deeper about resistance

I started noticing nuances about resistance.

Cooking numerous meals? No resistance.

Hours editing photos? Happy to.

Working with clients? No problem.

These things require effort—yet, there’s very little resistance.

If my brain is allergic to effort, why doesn’t all effort trigger resistance?

So I paid even closer attention.

In my regular workouts and journaling, I didn’t get the sustained resistance that I did with 100 squats. Instead, once I began, I typically got into the flow and enjoyed it.

I also noticed the same startup resistance to journaling as I did to exercise—despite journaling requiring no physical effort.

Maybe it was more than effort alone that created resistance?

It’s not all about the effort

When I asked myself what was the actual effort required with journaling, I found that journaling is hard, not because it requires physical strain, but because it requires me to sit with myself. To explore and confront thoughts and emotions that I would otherwise never have to reveal. The demand of journaling is emotional discomfort. It’s inconvenient to excavate what’s below the surface.

Cleaning the oven? Taxes? Writing? Also, plenty of discomfort and inconvenience, in their own ways.

Through this lens, my brain isn’t just managing energy and detecting physical effort. It’s protecting me from physical and emotional discomfort that it perceives as threats.

Cooking, processing photos, and supporting my clients? Minimal discomfort in comparison. However, arguably inconvenient to schedule around. So why no resistance?

Delayed versus instant gratification

When I compare activities that create resistance versus ones that don’t: the faster the tangible reward, the less resistance I feel.

I get to eat something delicious right after I cook. The wildlife photos that I take often in the dim PNW overcast come alive after processing. I get to witness the aha moments and insights that my clients experience in a coaching session. All of this triggers dopamine - the brain chemical that makes us want to do it again.

Journaling and working out are different. The tangible rewards of strength, endurance, and life changes take weeks or months to show up, which explains the resistance.

But here’s what’s interesting: when I focus on the immediate internal rewards, it makes doing them more inviting, even if external rewards are delayed. Both exercising and journaling create a positive state where I feel more content, energetic, and clear. When I consistently notice these benefits, my brain learns to link rewards with these activities. With repetition, my dopamine system learns to anticipate the feel-good states—making it easier to start.

I have found that the amount of resistance depends on how consistently I’ve been doing these activities. When I’ve fallen out of my routine, getting back into it feels like dragging myself through sludge. But when I’m in a regular rhythm with these practices, the startup resistance is lighter.

The delayed versus instant gratification pattern explains part of the resistance. But why did the duration of the resistance feel different, even comparing two physical activities—100 squats versus my regular workout?

“Muscle memory” and habits

In my regular workout, I don’t get the incessant pleading to stop that I did with 100 squats. Once I begin, continuing is easier.

Here’s why: my body knows the movements of my workout—they’re encoded in my basal ganglia, the part of my brain responsible for building habits. The automation kicks in, which frees up mental resources.

The 100 squats? It was still a new practice. My prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) had to manually drive the whole way through—constantly making decisions on the next rep, monitoring effort, and negotiating. That’s why the resistance didn’t let up until close to the end.

Worth noting, I did, out of curiosity, prolong the experiment for another month to see if that relentless pleading to stop ever subsides—it does. Although I never got to the point of genuinely looking forward to doing 100 squats.

Making sense of the paradox

Why do I still experience resistance in activities like working out and journaling when I’ve never regretted once doing it and always regret skipping it?

I won’t ever know for sure, but my guesses are:

• These activities are partially habitual: They are habitual in execution, not yet in initiation. Once I start, my body and mind remember what to do and take over. But starting these activities still isn’t fully automatic, and leaves room for decision (the space where resistance lives).

• The cost-benefit never resolves: If I’m doing my workouts and journaling right, there’s always going to be an element of discomfort (progressive overload or vulnerability), no matter how strong these habits become, because that’s what growth requires.

If I wanted to, I could make initiation more automatic, anchoring them to a fixed time. But I also value the flexibility in my schedule. So that’s a tradeoff that I’m consciously making for now.

And maybe there will always be some resistance, because discomfort is a part of life, no matter how well I stack my habits. My goal isn’t to eliminate discomfort—it’s to make it lighter and more manageable by increasing my capacity through repetition.

So to sum up my observations: No, my brain’s not allergic to effort. That was overly simplistic.

My brain is doing what it evolved to do—protect me. Not just from wasting precious energy, but from anything it perceives as a threat. Physical strain. Emotional pain. Vulnerability. Uncertainty. The unknown outcomes of trying.

More accurately: My brain resists most strongly when the effort isn’t habitual, the reward isn’t immediate or obvious, and there’s discomfort—physical, emotional, or both. Remove any one of these factors, and resistance drops.

Steven Pressfield writes about resistance in The War of Art as a separate force trying to stop you. There’s comfort in framing it as an external enemy. But my experience of resistance is different—it’s my brain doing its job, perhaps too well, protecting me from threats real, perceived, or obsolete.

Why tiny steps actually work

Small steps, bite-sized tasks—it’s not sexy advice (though Atomic Habits’ PR got pretty close). But there’s a reason it works. It shows our brain: “See? Not a threat.”

When we start with one push-up instead of twenty, begin with one journal prompt if free writing is daunting, wipe down one burner not the whole stove, gather one tax document instead of all our paperwork, and write just one new sentence instead of a new chapter, we’re providing evidence that this won’t deplete our resources or expose us to unbearable pain.

Tiny steps reduce friction and make taking action easier. And action over time is what creates the habits that get encoded in our basal ganglia, reducing the effort required. As we stack these tiny habits, we build procedural memory, emotional tolerance, and capacity—which makes the next rep or step less of a risk to our brain, and feel more doable.

This is why forcing ourselves through massive resistance rarely creates lasting change. We’re not updating the threat assessment; we’re just overriding it temporarily. And completing it feels less like mastery, more like survival. But when we consistently take small steps, we’re teaching our brain, through experience, what’s actually safe.

Even resistance is subjective

Effort, discomfort, vulnerability, and inconvenience are all completely subjective. My brain labels threats based on my experiences and threshold. I feel no resistance when cooking because creating in the kitchen feels like play to me—with an immediate reward. But someone who was criticized for their cooking, or who associates it with labor, might feel resistance.

This is why comparing resistance is not productive. The goal isn’t to match someone else’s lack of resistance, but to overcome the resistance we do experience (because our particular brain, shaped by our experiences, is perceiving threat).

Five practices to train your brain to take action

Understanding the purpose of resistance changed my relationship with it. It didn’t make it go away—I still feel it, every time. But I can now recognize it for what it is. It’s not an enemy to defeat. It’s a protector that needs to learn, through small repeated evidence, what’s actually safe.

These practices help me take action when I don’t want to:

1. Switch states - you’re not lazy, you’re experiencing Newton’s law of inertia. This feeling isn’t permanent, even though it feels like it; once you switch your state, from rest to motion with a tiny step, what’s next will feel easier.

2. Take a tiny step - when you’re feeling that resistance, invite yourself to do just one thing. Just read one page. Write one sentence. Do one rep. At worst, you’ve made it slightly more automatic for next time. At best, you would likely read another page, write another sentence, and do another rep.

3. Work your basal ganglia - new actions always feel harder than familiar ones. Do it more often to allow encoding in your basal ganglia, which automates it.

4. Focus on the long-term benefits - if your task doesn’t result in a tangible short-term benefit, say the long-term benefits out loud when you’re deciding to take action. (e.g., I choose to exercise today because I want to keep my muscles and bone density as I age, which prevents future injuries).

5. Don’t take it personally - the resistance you feel doesn’t mean you’re weak. It’s indicative of your state (inertia), your brain’s protective feature, your habit, and your opportunity to grow.

What I find most valuable about moving through resistance is that it keeps me committed to what’s important to me, even on days when I’m not my best, strongest, or most inspired self—which naturally is most days.

I’d love to hear about your experience with resistance. Do you experience it? When does it show up the most? What do you do to move through it?

If you ever try some of these practices, I’d love to hear how it goes for you.

On my walk, I met a Downy Woodpecker…

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Outsourcing is a mentality.

We first start with food.

It makes sense to have farmers who are good at growing food to grow our food.

We then outsourced labor.

It makes sense to have someone else provide a service at a lower cost, with the expertise, who wants the job, for a superior product, with better margins.

It’s a win-win.

But then we outsourced everything—tipping the balance.

Like all things in life, balance is harmony, wholeness, wellbeing.

When co-creation, collaboration, partnership, mentorship, turn into outsourcing our decisions, our beliefs, our opinions, our preferences, our engagement, our style, our feelings, our intimacy, our philosophies, our values…

for ease.

for convenience.

for security.

for safety.

for a sure bet.

for prestige.

for a pat on the head.

We start asking someone else to think for us, do it for us, bring it to us, fix it for us, even feel it for us—tell us what we want, what’s good for us, what we should do, what we need, what’s best.

We give away our agency, our intellect; we give away our privacy, our freedom; we give away our choice, our voice; we give away our intuition, our wisdom; we give away our will, our creativity; we give away our compassion, our humanity, we give away the essence of who we are; we give away our one experience of life—and at that point who do we belong to?

*****

On my walk, I met a juvenile White-crowned Sparrow.

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When people journal regularly, they often describe accessing a “wiser self,” “downloading information,” “channeling wisdom,” or “partnering with the muse”—insights that seem to appear from nowhere. Here's what science suggests might actually be happening.

This phenomenon looks like when someone writes about their frustration with someone and ten minutes later has uncovered a pattern about authority that traces back to childhood, or journals about feeling stuck and emerges with a detailed career change plan they didn't know they wanted.

Maybe you've experienced this mystical force yourself, or maybe it sounds like self-help nonsense.

What we do know is that when researchers study expressive writing—writing about emotions, thoughts, and experiences—they find remarkable changes in brain activity, working memory, and even physical health. The science is real and fascinating. But the science doesn't necessarily negate other explanations for why this feels so profound.

I'm someone who experiences this magic and uses journaling as a tool for clarity, growth, and guidance. Sometimes it's fun to speculate what's actually happening. Ultimately, I don't think it matters how I'm getting the insights or connecting the dots, but what matters is that I am.

When You Write, You Download Wisdom

People who journal describe connecting with something greater than themselves—brilliant ideas and solid advice that appear as they write.

We don't know, for certain, how this happens, but research points to three key mechanisms that might explain why writing feels like tapping into something beyond ordinary thinking.

1. Making the Implicit Explicit

Normally, thoughts fire in chaotic streams without forming conscious insights—work frustration, childhood memories, physical sensations, tomorrow's meeting, that weird thing your friend said.

With writing, you can only write one word at a time.

When you write, you go from parallel processing to serial processing of thoughts. This forces your brain to slow down, prioritize, and make choices: which thought comes first? What thought connects to the next? Which ideas to follow and which to let go?

In making these choices, we bring to the forefront what was running in the background, making patterns more visible, making the unconscious conscious.

This could explain why journaling feels like communing with a wiser being—the mechanism of writing inherently connects you to insights that would otherwise never reach your conscious awareness.

2. Freeing Mental Space to Connect Dots

Writing also frees working memory and reduces cognitive load.

Think about trying to cook dinner when every counter surface is covered with mail, groceries, and dirty dishes. It requires you to use more mental energy to work around all that clutter.

Writing clears that mental counter so you can work better.

When people write about difficult experiences, their working memory measurably improves¹. All that mental energy you were using to suppress or manage difficult emotions becomes available for insight and problem-solving.

3. Shifting From Reactive to Reflective

The act of finding words for emotions physically shifts your brain from reactive to reflective mode.

Brain imaging reveals that putting feelings into words decreases amygdala activity (threat center) by up to 50% while increasing prefrontal cortex activity (higher-order thinking)².

Expressive writing hits the brakes on fear and stress reactivity while accelerating logical, symbolic, and abstract thinking required for insights and wisdom.

The "wiser voice" people describe might simply be what happens when your analytical systems can finally communicate without being drowned out by fear and anxiety.

Your brain enters a different processing mode almost immediately upon writing. Even 2-minute writing sessions can improve mood and psychological wellbeing³. Regular journaling reduces cortisol—the stress hormone—by up to 23%⁴.

This is more than mystical; we're talking about neurological and biochemical changes you can measure in brain imaging and in your blood.

The Real-World Impact

I enjoy journaling because I value the insights, clarity, and wisdom in the moment as I'm writing, but I also love the after effects. Often, I start my entry feeling a bit clouded, conflicted, confused, or even apathetic. I often finish my entry feeling a wash of clarity, confidence, and peace. For me, it’s a useful way to start the day.

But studies show that journaling translates directly to other life outcomes beyond what I experience. They are just remarkable— magical even.

Research finds that after just 15 minutes of expressive writing over 4 days, people have shown improved resilience to stress and immune systems⁵. Depression scores drop by 30% over 8 weeks⁶. Some studies suggest journaling works as well as cognitive-behavioral therapy for certain conditions⁷.

But here's the catch—the emphasis is on expressive writing. What’s required is genuine emotional engagement. Writing grocery lists won’t cut it. The benefits come from honestly exploring thoughts and feelings without censoring yourself and allowing the process to unfold.

The Magic

Here’s where I think science can’t always explain the magic, and the magic can’t always be understood through science.

The saying, ”what’s important isn’t always measurable, and what’s measurable isn’t always important,” comes to mind.

Science shows us the "how"—the measurable brain changes, the cortisol drops, the working memory improvements. But does that explain the "what"? When someone writes about a work problem and suddenly receives a “download” on the solution, is that just freed working memory? Or is the freed working memory simply the mechanism that allows something else to come through?

The research hasn’t been able to answer that yet.

Decades of research show journaling creates measurable changes in working memory, emotional regulation, and immune function. Writing changes how your brain structures and processes information, which could explain why regular journalers describe it as "magical."

But who's to say the science isn't simply describing the mechanism through which we access something larger? Who's to say it's not both brain processing AND something more mysterious happening when we're writing and receptive?

The scientists have their brain scans. The mystics have their muses. Maybe they're looking at the same phenomenon from different angles.

Here’s what people who journal regularly are confident about: something unexplainably beneficial happens when you dedicate a few minutes to describe your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, as a sentient being, onto a page—measurable in both brain activity and life outcomes.

Whether that's neurology or something more mysterious... well, that’s for you to decide.

References

1. Klein, K., & Boals, A. (2001). Expressive writing can increase working memory capacity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

2. Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science.

3. Burton, C. M., & King, L. A. (2008). Effects of (very) brief writing on health: The two-minute miracle. British Journal of Health Psychology.

4. Petrie, K. J., Booth, R. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2004). The immunological effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

5. Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

6. Burton, C. M., & King, L. A. (2004). The health benefits of writing about intensely positive experiences. Journal of Research in Personality.

7. Stice, E., Burton, E., Bearman, S. K., & Rohde, P. (2006). Randomized trial of brief depression prevention program: An elusive search for a psychosocial placebo control condition. Behaviour Research and Therapy.

*****

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I was thinking about the best way to talk about two types of responses that I alluded to in an earlier post about the wisdom of our nervous system.

Then randomly one evening, I watched a docuseries called “Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror” that’s currently on HULU, and thought—this is a prime example of someone’s sophisticated nervous system activating fawning and appeasing as survival responses.

Spoiler alert (although if you’ve watched the trailer, you’d know this), this docuseries tells a harrowing story of Samantha Stites, who was stalked for over a decade by a man, culminating in her kidnapping and torture in a soundproof bunker.

I won’t be commenting in any way on her story or the production of the series, but I’d like to use what she described through the lens of our nervous system response, specifically using the Polyvagal Theory.

Why am I writing about this? Why do I write about anything?

I’m drawn to writing about topics that nobody taught us—the things that actually matter for understanding ourselves and living well, but somehow got skipped in school and at home. Part of my own research and learning now is expanding my understanding, and sharing that perspective I wish I'd had decades ago.

Even with multiple psychology degrees, I learned almost nothing about the nervous system in school—which is wild, because it's basically the control center for everything we do. You don't need to be a doctor to understand your body, and you don't need to be a psychologist to understand your nervous system. We all have one, and knowing how it works explains a lot about why we act the way we do.

And, most of us live amongst other people. Which means, anytime we interact with someone else (even from a distance, even virtually), we’re exchanging information about and through our nervous system.

When we understand how our nervous system works, we start making sense of our own reactions—and other people's too. And once things make sense, it's easier to have compassion for ourselves and everyone else.

The following is just a starting point for learning about your nervous system. I'll share some resources at the end if you want to dig deeper.

The dry bit: What’s the Polyvagal Theory?

I bet you’ve heard of the term “fight or flight.” Some of you even know about “rest and digest.”

Experts used to believe that our autonomic nervous system had two branches: sympathetic and parasympathetic. Under this model, we had two states: either we’re threatened and need to “fight or flight” or we’re safe to “rest and digest.”

However, this model couldn’t quite explain why some people don’t seem to fight or flee during extreme stress, but rather freeze or completely shut down.

Enter Polyvagal Theory—Stephen Porges figured out in the '90s that the vagus nerve (your body's longest parasympathetic nerve) actually has two parts, not one. So instead of just sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest), we actually have three nervous system states, including two parts of the parasympathetic branch.

The two parts of the vagus nerve work differently:

Ventral vagal: This is your “safe and social” state. You feel calm, connected, and like yourself.

Dorsal vagal: This is your “shutdown” state. When you're overwhelmed, you go offline—might look “calm,” from the outside, but disconnected and protective on the inside.

The key insight: parasympathetic doesn't always mean “safe to rest and digest.” Sometimes, it means “so overwhelmed, I need to shut down and disconnect” as the only option.

So we have three states: safe and social (ventral), fight-or-flight (sympathetic), and shutdown (dorsal).

God, I hope you’re still reading.

So, where do fawning and appeasing come in?

First, they are different behaviors, though they might sound similar.

Fawning is compliance and submission. The function is "I'll just agree with whatever you say, just don't hurt me."

Appeasement is actively working to manage the other person’s emotions. The function is “I'll help you feel better and show you I'm on your side so you won't see me as a threat.”

Fawning is an attempt to please the perpetrator through compliance, with the pragmatic expectation that such compliance will diminish aggression and reduce the threat.

Appeasement, on the other hand, can be viewed as an attempt to convince the perpetrator’s nervous system that the victim is actually on their side.

“Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us.” By Stephen W. Porges + Seth Porges

The interesting thing is that both fawning and appeasing are considered mixed states. Fawning is when the nervous system is in both sympathetic (fight, flight) and dorsal (shutdown). Appeasement is when the system is in sympathetic, dorsal, and ventral (social engagement).

We will see how these two nervous system responses, I believe, helped save Samantha’s life.

What does fawning and appeasement look like?

Fawning is passive agreement, going along to get along while internally shut down:

• Agreeing when you actually disagree

• Going small, quiet

• Feeling like you're "not really there" during conflict

• That frozen feeling where you can't speak up

• Automatic "sorry" responses even when you've done nothing wrong

• Letting others make decisions because you can't access what you actually want

• Smiling or laughing when you're actually scared or upset

• Nodding along while your mind goes blank

• Saying "whatever you think is best" when asked for your opinion

Appeasing is actively working to manage the other person's emotions so they feel like you’re on their side:

• Validating their complaints about others ("You're right, they were out of line")

• Offering solutions or help before being asked ("Let me handle that for you")

• Mirroring their emotional state - getting excited or concerned when they are

• Making them feel special or important ("You're the only one who understands")

• Taking their side in conflicts, even when you disagree privately

• Offering reassurance about their decisions or actions ("You did the right thing")

• Becoming their emotional support system during their stress

• Subtly steering conversations away from topics that might upset them

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The brilliance of Samantha Stite’s nervous system

I believe Samantha's sophisticated nervous system response saved her life in that horrific incident.

This part is the real spoiler. If you don’t want to know what happens, STOP READING HERE. Bookmark this and come back - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'm going to break down her nervous system responses, particularly the fawning and appeasement she used with her kidnapper, in the order they happened:

When he first entered her home and attacked her, she struggled and screamed for help. This is sympathetic response - fight or flight.

As he choked her and she thought he was going to kill her, she pretended to go unconscious. He released her neck but continued to bind her limbs. Going frozen, quiet, and small stopped him from strangling her - though it didn't prevent the kidnapping.

She told him, "If you want to rape me, just do it." He replied, "I just want to talk to you." Then she said, "I'm all yours, you have my attention." Complete submission to his needs while disregarding her own - fawning response.

When they arrived at the bunker, he struggled to remove her gag. She asked very practically, "Do you have a knife?" This likely signaled to his nervous system that she could be an ally - she was empathizing with his problem and trying to help. Would someone afraid of him want a knife brought out? No. She was offering solutions, actively helping. She might be a friend.

From this point forward, I see constant appeasement where she's actively regulating his nervous system through social engagement. Although fawning and sympathetic responses are mixed in too, with submission, smiling/laughing when she feels the opposite, going along when she doesn’t want to, and looking for ways out.

Once her gag was removed, she said, "You wanna talk? Let's talk" - again, complete compliance with his wishes.

When he revealed he'd been tracking her and her friends for a year, she didn't respond with horror. She complimented him: "Clever."

She noticed the "cute" bee-themed bedsheets and made casual small talk, asking if he picked them, knowing her middle name was Beatrice. Maybe suggesting he’s somehow “sweet” or “thoughtful.” She was interacting like they were friends having a casual chat, not like he'd kidnapped her and chained her in a soundproof bunker. But this kind of chatting clearly put him at ease. Her ability to access her ventral (social engagement) system helped regulate his nervous system.

Samantha described feeling like she was living in two minds—one unbothered, catching up with an old friend, and another convinced she was going to die. This perfectly illustrates the mixed state required to appease a threat.

When he said he had a gift for her, she acted pleasantly surprised: "Oh - you got me something!" She seemed genuinely impressed. By now, I was impressed by her ability to stay connected to her ventral system while living through this terrifying scenario. She said, "Thank you! This is so thoughtful," and put on the sports jersey he gave her.

She described the moment: "It felt like a time when he could be vulnerable with me and show me his feelings, and that was a way I could show him acceptance and ease his mind." Remove the horrific context, and this sounds like someone describing a genuine social connection. She had to truly access her ventral system to move her eyes, mouth, and face, and vocalize with just the right tone to signal safety and connection - coaxing him into a friendly dynamic instead of whatever he'd originally planned. She was actively regulating his nervous system by "easing his mind," consistently trying to make him feel better and convince him she was on his side.

She even made future plans with him, suggesting they could go to a game together and maybe be friends after this was all over. Her ventral system was in overdrive - she was socializing and connecting like her life literally depended on it. What she was doing was extremely draining because she wasn't just in ventral - she was also in sympathetic (fighting for her life) and dorsal (disconnecting from her fears, true feelings, and needs) simultaneously.

We know her appeasement was working because he apologized to her (like a friend would) for kidnapping her and explained himself. He lowered his guard and confided his fear about going to prison, panicking about what he'd done.

Without missing a beat, she offered another helpful solution: if he released her, she wouldn't go to the police because she was a social worker who was great at keeping secrets, so he wouldn't have to go to prison. Problem solved!

He seriously considered this. But he said what would actually convince him that she’s his friend and trust her not to go to the police was the ultimate act of connection - sleeping with him.

After considering her options, Samantha agreed. But she asked him to shake on the agreement as if they were on equal footing. This agreement, sealed with a symbolic gesture of integrity, consent, and trust, demonstrates the incredible consistency of her social engagement system even under extreme duress.

When it was done, he kept his end of the bargain and drove her back to her car. Even during the drive, she made small talk with him, keeping him regulated despite being completely disgusted and terrified by what had just happened.

The moment before she got back into the safety of her own car, she hugged him. She described this as a victory - "a seal on this whole big lie that I made him believe." She survived when she didn't think she would. I'm glad she survived too.

Our nervous system is just as brilliant

Thankfully, most of us won't directly relate to the nightmare that Samantha endured. But that doesn't mean we haven't experienced what her nervous system went through.

It doesn't take a kidnapping to trigger these same responses. A threatening boss, a volatile parent, an unpredictable partner, an intimidating group—any relational dynamic where someone or a group has power over us and feels unsafe, can send our nervous system into the same survival responses. Unsafe can mean physical danger, but it also includes threats to our reputation, security, relationships, sense of worth, and other core needs.

Maybe you've found yourself agreeing with someone you disagreed with, going quiet when you wanted to speak up, or being unusually helpful or complimentary with someone who made you uncomfortable. Your nervous system was doing exactly what Samantha's did - finding the safest way through.

If you've ever wondered why someone seemed "too calm" during a crisis, or why a trauma survivor's story doesn't sound the way you'd expect - this is why. What looks like compliance, friendliness, or even cooperation isn't true agreement or consent. What looks “unbothered” and “ok” from the outside is often dorsal shutdown from overwhelm. But because survivors don’t always scream, fight back, make a scene, speak up, tell someone, or run, they get labeled weak for “going along” or “allowing it to happen,” “dramatic,” or worse, a liar. When really, it’s their nervous system being brilliant at keeping them alive.

*****

Further Reading on The Polyvagal Theory

The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory by Stephen W. Porges
A practical introduction to understanding your nervous system states and how to work with them in daily life.

Our Polyvagal World by Stephen W. Porges and Seth Porges
Explores how polyvagal theory applies to relationships, communities, and healing from trauma in accessible, everyday language.

Anchored by Deb Dana
Offers concrete tools and exercises for building nervous system resilience and finding your way back to safety and connection.

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If you've been telling yourself you're just having a bad week, bad month, or going through a rough patch—but it never ends—you might be missing something bigger.

Maybe you wake up feeling already exhausted and behind. Maybe you feel like you're constantly giving and never getting anything meaningful back. Maybe small things set you off in ways that surprise even you.

Here's what I've learned through my own burnout and working with others: there are three emotions that show up way before anyone uses the word "burnout."

They're uncomfortable, so we usually try to push them away or rationalize them. But recognizing them early can help you understand what's happening before you're completely fried, and gives you a chance to do something about it.

The thing is, burnout isn't just being tired from a busy week, or month, even. Christina Maslach, pioneer of burnout research, defines the symptoms of burnout as exhaustion, cynicism, and feeling ineffective. But most of us don't think in clinical terms.

We just know something feels wrong.

That edge in your voice lately? It's probably resentment.

You know that feeling when you stay late again while your colleagues leave at 5? When you realize the “urgent matter” you dropped everything for was actually just a nice-to-have? When yet another round of redundant rework lands in your inbox? When you sit through another pointless meeting, smiling like it's fine?

That slow burn building in your chest is resentment. And it's not a character flaw.

Resentment builds with each transaction. Every time you give something precious (your time, energy, peace) and get back something that doesn’t actually matter to you and will never make whole those things you’ve lost, a small deposit goes into your internal resentment account.

We're taught that resentment is bad, that good people don't feel this way. But resentment is your psyche's accounting system. It's tracking the imbalance between what you're putting out and what you're getting back. When the books don't balance over time, resentment is the alarm bell. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about the bell—it exists to serve a function.

The tricky part is that resentment often targets the wrong things. You might resent your coworkers not picking up the slack when the real issue is you haven't set any boundaries. You might resent your boss for piling on work when the problem is you haven't communicated your limits. You might resent your workplace for undelivered promises when you haven't looked at other options that are better for you.

Resentment isn't telling you to become selfish or mean. It's telling you that somewhere, you've stopped advocating for your own basic needs.

When small things make you want to scream? That's rage.

Anger bubbles up and releases. Rage gets stored underground and builds pressure.

Most of us learned early that anger isn't acceptable—especially at work. So we swallow it and rationalize why we shouldn't feel mad. About broken promises and constant interruptions. About decisions made over our heads, our ideas getting ignored, or watching someone else get credit for our work.

But unexpressed anger doesn't disappear—it ferments. What started as justified irritation ages and becomes deep, fiery rage about patterns you've endured for years.

Rage feels scary because it's disproportionate to whatever triggered it. You explode at your partner for leaving dishes in the sink, but really you're furious about years of cleaning up other people's messes.

The intensity doesn't match the moment, which makes you feel crazy. But it's not crazy—it's years of suppressed anger hitting all at once.

Rage is our system saying, “no more.”

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Is it depression… or grief?

This one catches people off guard. We expect burnout to feel angry or tired, but we don't expect it to feel like loss.

But burnout is loss. You're grieving:

The time you'll never get back. Evenings spent answering emails instead of with people and hobbies you love. Weekends consumed by work thoughts. Years of your life traded for someone else's priorities.

The peace that's been replaced with constant adrenaline. You can't remember the last time you got a notification without also your stomach knotting up. You miss the old you who could rest, sleep, eat, or shower in peace without your mind racing.

Your vitality. The person who used to get excited about opportunities is now drained just thinking about taking on something else. The one who took risks and had ideas and energy to voice them now doubts they even matter.

The person you've become. Maybe you're more cynical now, detached, or like I was—drained, bored, and numb. The vibrant version of yourself got worn down by relentless demands to produce and perform for something that feels meaningless.

This grief is complicated because no one sees it. Everyone around you sees your life as successful. From the outside, it looks like there's nothing to mourn. But inside, you know something essential has been lost.

What to do with these emotions?

What won’t help is telling yourself these feelings are wrong, or that you’re a weak or a bad person, or trying to positive-think your way out of them. That will be like holding a pillow over an alarm bell, hoping it will stop. But many of us grab that pillow because we think these emotions are unproductive, and apart from letting them tank our mood, we don't know what else to do with them.

What was useful for me was seeing the purpose of the emotion, just like the purpose of any alarm sounding. They were communicating important information to me. Resentment was telling me about boundary violations. Rage was telling me about accumulated injustices. Grief was telling me about what I’ve lost.

I stopped trying to make these feelings go away and started paying attention to what was causing them. That's when things actually changed.

Sometimes the answer is small adjustments—better boundaries, clearer communication, saying “no” more often. Sometimes it's bigger changes—a different job, a career shift, a fundamental change in how you relate to work.

But first, you have to stop pretending these feelings don't exist or don't matter.

You can change the deal

Random bad moods aren’t random. It can be your system telling you that the deal isn't working for you anymore.

I define burnout as giving everything I have to something that no longer gives me what I need. Most things start as a decent trade. You need experience, money, connections, stability—so you pour yourself into it. Makes sense.

But you change. What mattered when you started might not matter as much when you're more seasoned. Even when you’re established, what matters can continue to evolve with different life stages and circumstances.

Because burnout isn't always about doing too much—sometimes it's about doing things that no longer align with what you actually want or need, or doing something you care about in an environment that doesn’t care about you.

The problem is that we never update the deal. We keep showing up at the same place, with the same intensity for rewards and environments we've outgrown. But here's the thing—you can renegotiate and change the deal. I didn't realize this for way too long.

And this isn't just about work.

These same patterns show up in every relationship in our lives. Our marriage. Our friendships. How we show up for family. While most burnout research started in workplaces, newer studies confirm what many of us experience: you can burn out anywhere you're consistently giving more than getting your needs met. The emotional alarm system works the same way everywhere.

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The "workaholic" versus the "bed-rotter." The "activist" versus the "disengaged." The "grinder" versus the "slacker."

What if these seemingly opposite types aren't that different—just two sides of the same coin? What if the person who never stops and the person who can't get started are both trying to accomplish the same inner state?

Both feel overwhelmed, and both are doing their best to feel safe.

When Safety Means Staying in Motion (Or Shutting Down)

When our nervous systems feel overwhelmed (dysregulation), we seek safety through whatever pathway feels most available (self-regulation).

Our nervous system has three main pathways. When we feel safe, we can connect with others (what Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory calls ventral vagal). When threatened, we go into fight-or-flight mode (sympathetic) or shut down (dorsal vagal).

For some people, moving feels safer than stillness. Likely, their nervous system learned that motion equals survival. The constant doing, the endless task lists, the never enough, the inability to rest. Sometimes we talk about it as achievement-oriented or being “Type-A”. But more often, from a nervous system standpoint, it’s about self-regulation—”Doing makes me feel better.” Even though they know they need balance, stillness feels vulnerable— dangerous even, so they stay in motion to feel safe.

For others, slowing down or stopping feels like the safest option. Likely, their nervous system learned that trying is pointless or leads to pain or more overwhelm, so they protect themselves by going small, conserving energy, or disengaging. What we call “underachieving,” “dissociation,” “avoidance,” “procrastination” might actually be dorsal vagal shutdown—a protective response when demands exceed capacity.

The Nervous System Response Cycle

But how do survival responses become a personality type when no one’s born a chronic “workaholic” or a “procrastinator?

Here's how we can get stuck: Peter Levine talks about how trauma happens when our nervous system can't complete its natural responses to threat. In nature, animals often tremble and shake intensely after escaping danger. This looks alarming, to the untrained eye, but it's nature’s way of finishing the stress response and returning to normal. Once the shaking stops, the animal’s nervous system is reset, and it simply continues with its day.

In Levine’s studies, animals who didn’t shake and tremble after escaping danger continued to behave as if there was still a threat and wandered around shut down, uptight, or confused. In the wild, an animal stuck in survival mode can't function normally—they can't forage, mate, or avoid new predators effectively.

Humans also shake and tremble as part of our nervous system regulation. But we also need social and emotional restoration to reset our nervous system after an overwhelming experience.

For some people, completion might look like crying or getting angry. Others might need alone time or expression to process their feelings. The polyvagal theory suggests that the most effective way to reset our nervous system is through co-regulation, where one person’s regulated nervous system helps another person’s dysregulated nervous system find its way back to safety. This can look like talking to someone who gets it, being held, being validated, or vindicated.

But rather than allowing ourselves to move through the steps that our nervous system needs to come out of survival mode, modern humans often learn to suppress these natural responses and needs, which is how we end up chronically stuck in either overdrive or shutdown mode, unable to find our way back to safety and complete our cycle.

We’re often taught to sit still, hold it together, hold it in, don’t cry, don’t get angry, you’re fine, push through, push it down, don’t talk about it, compartmentalize it, think positive thoughts, get over it, and other “encouragements” to ignore what our body naturally needs to process a difficult experience. It often begins with an adult teaching us to ignore our natural responses as a youngster, then later we’re the ones policing ourselves with similar inner talk.

The irony is that we’re wired to bounce back naturally when we give our nervous system what it needs to safely complete its natural cycle. However, we get stuck when we think we’re more clever than our biology and rush our nervous system, to skip steps, and fast forward to “resilience.” Unfortunately, it happens often, and we see it when we experience ourselves or others chronically stuck in survival mode, not designed to be our baseline without negative consequences.

The workaholic who’s in "fight-or-flight,” and the procrastinator in "shutdown" may both be stuck in an incomplete nervous response cycle. Whether someone develops the strategy to accelerate or shutdown—underneath, it's the same intent: seeking regulation when true safety feels out of reach.

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When does productivity or procrastination become a problem?

The problem isn't having these responses. It’s a sign of wellbeing when we can move flexibly between all three states.

The problem is getting stuck in one mode when the original threat is gone, especially when it interferes with living the life we want, or harms us or others.

So it becomes problematic when someone can't turn off work even as it damages their health and relationships. Or when someone can't pursue their goals because avoidance has become their default strategy.

When our nervous system gets stuck, we hear ourselves saying things like:

• I just can’t slow down or stop working

• I can’t not get involved

• I can’t stop worrying and thinking about it

Or

• I can’t bring myself to start even though I know I should

• I’ll think about it tomorrow, next week, or in the future

• I would rather avoid or disengage from reality

We Unfairly Judge Our Dysregulation

But here's what's interesting: we don't judge these states equally.

We've turned "I'm so busy" into a badge of honor and stillness as something suspicious—are you not pulling your weight? Are you not optimizing your time?

The person who feels anxious without constant accomplishment gets called “dedicated,” “ambitious,” "a high-performer." The person whose nervous system is also fighting for survival in a different way gets called "unmotivated,” “disengaged,” “under-performing.”

Even though activation (fight-or-flight) and immobilization (shutdown) are both nervous system dysregulations, our society largely rewards one type of dysregulation and punishes the other. My guess is that overdoing generally benefits others, while shutdown is less obvious.

We internalize these judgments and end up fighting our own nervous system. The "workaholic" feels shame when they’re not achieving, so they can’t stop. But they also feel shame for not being present with loved ones and not being able to rest. The "procrastinator" feels shame about not being able to start and the shutdown “hangover,” which deepens the shutdown. Both are mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted from being stuck in a survival mode. This self-attack keeps us stuck because shame activates the exact nervous system responses we're trying to regulate.

Who Benefits From Our Dysregulation?

Not only is it unfairly judged, but someone is benefiting from our dysregulation—sometimes accidentally, sometimes deliberately.

As long as people depend on how we show up when we're dysregulated, returning to safety becomes much harder. Our nervous system doesn't operate in isolation; it responds to our environment. When we fall short, it can feel like a personal failing, when sometimes it’s actually a reasonable response to an unreasonable environment.

Look at who benefits when we’re in either survival mode. When we’re over-functioning: employers get extra labor for the same pay, families get their reliable people-pleaser, and communities get someone to carry the load. When we're shutdown: others don't have to compete with our contributions, meet our standards, or address our requests—they can dismiss us as "checked out."

Want to see this dynamic clearly? Stop overfunctioning (if doing more is your default) or start pursuing your goals (if shutdown is your default), and notice who pushes back. Who complains? Who gets uncomfortable? Who tries to encourage, guilt, or threaten you back into your old patterns?

Recognizing this dynamic doesn't offload our responsibility for self-regulation. It helps us consider the bigger picture, including our environment, so we can create a more complete and informed strategy for getting back to safety.

As Gabor Maté points out, our culture rewards the very behaviors that keep us stuck while pathologizing responses that might actually signal our need for something different.

A Different Way to See Productivity and Procrastination

Bessel Van der Kolk's work shows how trauma gets stored in our bodies by changing our nervous system patterns.

What if our relationship with productivity or procrastination is one way that storage shows up—as protective adaptations, not a personality flaw?

Instead of applauding "overachievers" who need constant motion to feel safe, or calling people "lazy" when they're conserving what little is left of their energy just to get through the day, we could view both as different survival modes. Neither is better or worse—they're just different ways our nervous system tries to keep us safe from the original threat that’s never left our body.

Rather than judging these states, we could get curious about the message that our nervous system is sending to us. What’s the threat it’s protecting us from? And what does it need to complete its natural cycle so we can engage with life and rest without constantly scanning for danger?

When I see it this way, the question shifts from "How do I stop being a workaholic?" or "How do I stop procrastinating?" to "What's my nervous system trying to protect me from, and what's one thing I can do right now to signal that I'm listening?"

There’s More to the Story

This covers the two most popular survival states of our nervous system, but most of us actually spend time in hybrid states—where multiple nervous system responses are activated at once. Some of these mixed states signal safety, like play and intimacy. Others signal threat, like fawning and appeasing.

Mixed states are fascinating because they really demonstrate how sophisticated our nervous system is. I can expand on this in future posts.

A Starting Point: Remembering What Safety Feels Like

Most people stuck in survival mode have forgotten what regulation feels like in their body. To self-regulate, we need to recognize when we’re dysregulated and remember what regulation feels like.

Begin somewhere your nervous system already feels safe.

Many of us are drawn to the natural world. I believe it’s because something in us recognizes safety there—to be exactly who we are, as we are. This sense of being held by nature and belonging gives our nervous system what it needs to find its way to safety.

But it doesn’t have to be nature if that’s not your thing. It can be at home with your pets, in your bath or shower, in your kitchen, around the fireplace with loved ones, in your studio, or somewhere else entirely where you feel like yourself the most.

The next time you’re in that place, take 5 minutes to notice what that feels like in your body. How are you breathing? How’s your heart rate? How are you holding your body? Where in your body does it feel pleasant? How is your mental focus? What’s your energy level? How’s your mood? What’s your self-perception? What’s your outlook on life?

Remember all of this. This is what regulation feels like in your body.

As you move throughout your day and week, pay attention to what happens in your body with different situations, in different rooms, with different people. Notice what happens as your nervous system shifts, and what it feels like to return to regulation, if it does.

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I was telling my husband the other day that everything feels like a scam lately. Whether it's an email in my inbox, an ad, a visit to the doctor, grocery shopping, a trending topic, or a news headline—there's this underlying sense that someone's not telling me the whole truth, and my gut tells me it’s going to cost me.

Maybe it’s a touch of paranoia, but maybe it’s because we’ve shifted from an economy of fair value exchange to blatant extraction.

When we talk about scams, we often lump money into the mix as something also dirty. But there's nothing wrong with money—I’m a fan of it if used as a proxy for appreciation and gratitude. Since we no longer live in the same village, where I might cut your hair in exchange for you fixing my door. Money allows me to give you that haircut, no matter where you live in the world, in reciprocity for helping me. Money feels energizing when it facilitates a fair exchange of goods and services. But the scam that I’m experiencing no longer feels reciprocal.

Reciprocity Versus Extraction

In a reciprocal exchange, both you and I benefit roughly equally—we both get our needs met, neither of us feels short-changed.

In extraction, one of us systematically gets more out of the exchange than the other, often by design.

It used to be that to make money, you had to solve a problem or provide something of quality and value. And to make more money, you had to solve greater problems and demonstrate greater quality and value.

But that no longer seems true. More often, the question now isn't "how do we both benefit?" but "how do I get more out of this than you do?"

The Rigged Exchange

Tech is supposed to improve our lives, which it does sometimes. I remember the sense of awe of holding my first metallic blue iPod mini. But in recent years, my experience is that they’ve been delivering marginal improvements while their stock values skyrocket. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple—they each are worth trillions. Are we getting trillions of value back in our lives, our society, our planet?

Companies sell us processed foods disguised as nourishment, but devoid of nourishing ingredients.

Healthcare is supposed to promote health, but designs systems that profit from illness rather than wellness.

Social media is supposed to connect us, yet it makes us feel more isolated than ever.

Instead of creating better products and services, companies either buy back stocks to artificially inflate their value (which was illegal until 1982 since it was considered stock market manipulation) or just buy up the competition and extract more from consumers with fewer alternatives.

And the eggs “shortage” crisis in the US… that's another topic altogether for another day.

For this type of extraction to work, there must be a worldview: that there's a group of people who deserve more than another group. I honestly don’t know what this worldview is called. Sometimes people call it human nature. Some call it sociopathy. Others call it entitlement. Whatever you want to call it, it gets sold to us as meritocracy.

Furthermore, it's not just that the exchanges we agree to are imbalanced. They also quietly extract things which we never consented to:

Natural resources: Taking massive amounts of fresh community water for cooling data centers.

Our health: Engineering products to override satiety signals, cause metabolic damage and inflammation, disrupt endocrine systems, that slowly harm our health.

Personal data: Collecting and selling intimate details about our behavior, relationships, health—far beyond what we knowingly shared.

Our attention and presence: Designing algorithms to capture ours and our children's developing brains and selling that access to advertisers.

Environmental costs: Dumping the true costs of scaling onto the public, polluting air and water, while privatizing profits.

This is what extraction looks like: one party taking more than they give, at the other's expense.

I Wonder If We're Scamming Ourselves

And maybe that's the hardest part to face—I wonder if it’s possible not to internalize this extraction model if we live in it long enough.

In a way, have we learned to scam ourselves, too?

Are we taking more than we’re giving back to ourselves? And if so, who does that benefit in the end?

I wonder what we’re stealing from ourselves under false pretenses?

I wonder if we're stealing:

• Our voice when we don't speak up about something that feels wrong, telling ourselves we're keeping the peace, we’re being diplomatic

• Our rest when we check emails outside of working hours, telling ourselves we're being reliable

• Our nourishment when we work through lunch again, telling ourselves we're being professional

• Our health when we sacrifice it for success, telling ourselves we have grit and resilience

• Our relationships when we focus on networking but never let anyone see our true selves, telling ourselves we're being strategic

• Our presence when we're physically here but mentally planning the next five things, telling ourselves we're being productive

• Our wisdom when we ignore our intuition because we think we're being rational

• Our peace when we say yes to another commitment we don't want, telling ourselves we're being a good person

• Our contentment when we constantly upgrade and acquire, telling ourselves we're improving our lives

• Our joy when we put off things that bring us happiness, telling ourselves we're being responsible

And I wonder if it’s really us that’s stealing from ourselves. If it’s us, shouldn’t we still have it stockpiled somewhere?

Who’s taking our voice, our rest, our nourishment, our health, our relationships, our presence, our wisdom, our peace, contentment, and our joy?

I know I’ve stolen many times from myself and conned myself with lies, with the same extraction logic I learned from the culture around me. While I can’t influence the actions of corporate giants, I can still own my relationship with myself. I can replace extraction with reciprocity by noticing where I’m extracting more than I’m receiving, what needs of mine aren’t being met, and where I’ve short-changed myself. Then tend to those needs and give back to myself to balance the exchange, which sometimes includes noticing exploitation and opting out of the extraction system, where possible.

How Deep Does This Con Go?

This shift from creating value to extracting value doesn't sit well with my soul. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels this discomfort.

We shouldn't ignore it. It's a part of our humanity that's sensing a breach.

Exploitation and extraction disguised as fair exchange is the con.

But also, I recognize the seductive trap of only focusing on the external over which we have little control, while overlooking the improvements within our daily lives that we have full agency over.

Do you see the con? How are you experiencing the extraction externally versus internally? Do you have a different perspective? How are you handling it all?

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I've thought many times, "What if I'm the problem?"

I've pushed my body forward when it ached to be held.

I’ve expected growth during seasons of reflection and integration.

I’ve quietly questioned my value and worth with age as the cycles of productivity slowed.

These moments reveal how deeply I've absorbed a system built on extraction—one that taught me to mine my own body and spirit the way it mines everything else.

Here's what that extraction looks like in a body—when we:

• Feel guilt for saying no when our plate is already overflowing

• Expect our bodies to push through despite not giving them what they need

• Speak to ourselves as a critic, bully, or oppressor would, to push for more

• Contract our bodies tightly from the low-grade anxiety of never being enough

• Feel like rest or slowing down is failure or laziness

But perhaps the most insidious harm of internalized capitalism is how it invades our sacred spaces—the parts of human experience that are priceless and exist for their own sake.

We cheapen or destroy things like spirituality, relationships, pleasure, learning, and self-worth when we:

• Turn every conversation into networking, every relationship into an opportunity

• Turn everything into a competition

• View homes as an investment tool more than a place of sanctuary and peace

• Find thoughts of monetization creep into hobbies we love

• Tie our worth to our title, affiliations, and what we've accumulated

• Meditate for productivity—how can this make us more focused at work?

• Judge creative work by its potential for viral reach rather than personal expression

• Treat our children's activities like resume-building rather than play

• Require every book we read to serve our professional development

• Turn walks into "walking meetings" or podcast consumption time

Here's what late-stage capitalism does to a human body: it convinces us that productivity, optimization, and extraction are the only ways to operate. And as we adopt this belief, we slowly become part of the machine.

But humans aren't machines. Humans, like the natural world, cycle with seasons—times of growth and times of rest, times of giving and times of receiving.

Humans need play without agenda, touch without transaction, beauty without reason.

Humans need to exist without performing our value to justify our existence.

But first, we need to stop punishing ourselves with guilt or shame for being born into late-stage capitalism. Capitalism seeps into every crevice of our lives, even if we're careful. As long as we live in the system, we're a part of the system.

The guilt we carry for participating in a system we didn't create is misplaced energy.

We didn't build this system, nor ever agree to opt-in, so beating ourselves up over it just lets the real architects off the hook.

Instead, what if we didn’t shame the part of ourselves that internalized capitalism? Because we're not the enemy. What if we appreciate that part of us that felt like it had to internalize the rules of the game to adapt, and recognize that part of ourselves for doing the best it can in a distorted world to keep us safe?

I can find compassion and love when I see that there's a part of my humanity that's so intelligent it can even adapt to an inhumane world, not without pain, when it needs to.

Our body in nature remembers what late-stage capitalism wants us to forget: that we belong to earth before we belong to any economy.

That our value was never up for negotiation. That the concept of ownership, hoarding, winner-takes-all, never-ending exponential growth, and profit at all costs might be the metric of ultimate success for a mega corp. But as humans, what we crave is a different model of exchange rooted in what’s always sustained nature: reciprocity, interconnectedness, regeneration, generosity, and gratitude.

Here's what I've learned: I am not the problem.

I am the fish swimming in the waters of my environment, and I've been shaped by it in order to survive. This is called survival adaptation—and it's intelligent.

The guilt and shame we feel when we realize how far we've pushed ourselves—trading our peace and wellbeing, abandoning who we really are to conform—don't belong to us. We can stop blaming ourselves for swimming in poisoned waters. That's just an organism responding intelligently to a system designed to extract rather than nourish. The tension we feel on all levels isn't personal failure—it's the friction between our humanity and a world that profits from treating us as a commodity.

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Going Through Life Without Values

It took me longer than I'd imagined to fully understand what personal values are.

So long that by the time I understood it, I was angry at how I'd been able to graduate various stages of life (including two psychology degrees!) without fully identifying and articulating my personal values.

Who allowed this to happen? Me, probably.

(This might be incomprehensible if you're of a generation that's fluent in self-actualization. The truth is that each generation thinks they're the most self-aware, conscious, and progressive—until they're not. But back to my story.)

The thing is, I considered myself very self-aware. I knew my strengths and weaknesses. I knew what was morally right and wrong (as much as anyone can, raised in a conventional system). I knew what I liked and didn't like. I was even attuned to what I should and shouldn't like, to calibrate my official preferences.

So when I was introduced to the concept of personal values, my response was an automatic inner eye-roll. Great, I thought, let's go through this feel-good exercise where I pretend I don't know myself and have some fake breakthrough at the end.

Learning the Lesson I Was Never Taught

Well, as it turned out, I didn't need to fake a breakthrough.

I learned that I did know myself, but had never allowed myself to fully appreciate and honor parts that I had edited out for various reasons. Going through the exercise was validating - but the real breakthrough was seeing, for the first time, how I was completely ignoring my truth. The things I deeply cared about weren't showing up in how I spent my time, energy, or attention.

Never mind advanced degrees, why isn’t this part of the high school curriculum to prepare young adults to make important life decisions? It's not complicated. It's actually interesting to figure out. And it's useful for pretty much everyone.

It's possible I ran into this concept somewhere and wrote it off. Honestly, as I reflect on this now, I think the word "values" itself was the problem. I likely assumed it meant moral and cultural values—the values passed down from generations, preached from the pulpit, and drilled into you by organizations. I'd been done with organized religion since I was 16, so anything that smelled like dogma or moral finger-wagging was an automatic no.

Well, I was wrong and glad that I was.

Instead, I was happy to learn that personal values aren't abstract concepts imposed from the outside. They're the things that naturally energize us, that we'd choose to prioritize even when no one's watching—not from obligation, but because they genuinely matter to us.

This simple exercise, funny enough, became the breakthrough that eventually got me out of a career that was burning me out.

Values Misalignment In Burnout

What I didn't realize at the time was that there's actual research on this. Dr. Christina Maslach identified six environmental mismatches that create burnout: workload, community, values, control, fairness, and reward.

Here's what I find interesting: values is the only internally driven factor on this list.

Which means it’s easy to hide or ignore the misalignment.

When our workload is crushing us, people notice. When we're getting screwed on pay or treated unfairly, it can be witnessed. But values misalignment is invisible—our boss doesn't know, our friends and family can't tell, and we might even convince ourselves it's fine because everything looks fine from the outside.

But in moments of stillness—and what I call the 3 am haunt when I awake in the middle of the night—I know something's wrong, and I'm the only one who can fix it.

My journey to burnout involved more than just values misalignment. But the values misalignment alone begins to tell the story:

I was building my career in an environment that rewarded selling solutions I didn't fully believe in, withholding inconvenient information, and managing relationships through strategic communication rather than honest dialogue—all when I valued truth.

Meanwhile, my life became this cycle of weekly flights, hotel rooms, and expense account meals. Socializing through happy hours that stretched into late nights, telling myself the drinking and indulgence was how I built relationships and managed stress. I bought into the “work hard, play hard” mantra as if that was personal growth—all when I valued wellbeing.

And I was collecting the standard success tokens—the career trajectory, lifestyle markers, social capital, and validation that comes from doing what's expected. When underneath it all, I valued wisdom, which meant seeing through the very system designed to keep me chasing external validation instead of nurturing what’s meaningful and building real agency and sovereignty.

Advice to My Younger Self

I wish someone had asked me to reflect on these questions earlier:

• What gives you energy versus drains you?

• What inspires you?

• What makes you feel alive?

• What always elevates your mood?

• What connects you to life?

• What are you always looking for?

• What makes you feel most like yourself?

• What makes you become one with time?

These questions reveal your true values, not the ones you've inherited or been told to adopt.

This isn't just a feel-good exercise—there are real consequences when you ignore these answers. A values mismatch will quietly drain you even when your situation looks perfect on paper.

Your values aren't just preferences—they're the sources of your internal energy and what replenishes your inner strength. When you honor them, you feel recharged. When you violate them, you feel depleted physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is whole-person wellbeing.

Remember: no one can tell you what should energize you. Your values are as unique as your fingerprints, and honoring them creates a sustainable path to wellbeing.

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I came across some interviews recently—successful people sharing their origin stories. The skateboarder who fell hundreds of times before landing that signature trick. The award-winning musician who practiced thousands of hours and took naps underneath her piano. The successful entrepreneur who knocked on countless doors, collecting rejections like it was her hobby.

All inspiring stories. All real examples of pushing through discomfort to achieve something meaningful.

But here's where we mess up: we take these stories and turn them into universal life formulas. We strip away all the context—the person's natural wiring, their story, and motivation—and package it into tidy advice like "just push through the pain."

Just because someone turns 80-hour work week into a rewarding lifestyle doesn't mean that schedule would work for the rest of us. Just because a well-known motivational speaker can wear his cartilage down to his bones—and still keep running—doesn't mean that level of physical punishment would serve our goals or our lives.

But something even more crucial gets lost when we generalize the advice to “rise and grind”: in those examples, all of those people wanted what they were working toward. The skateboarder was obsessed with skating. The musician was passionate about her craft. The entrepreneur believed in her vision.

They weren't grinding through something they hated to achieve someone else's definition of success. They were pursuing their own goals, driven by their own desires, and what they valued. When we apply the philosophy of “embrace the suck” to jobs we don't want or goals that were never ours, we set ourselves up for harm. Worse, we start judging ourselves as weak or uncommitted when we can't—or shouldn't—match their intensity for things we don't even care about.

This mentality has become embedded in how we talk about work itself. Corporate speak is full of hustle and sacrifice language with their “always on,” “start-up mentality,” “do whatever it takes,” and “move fast and break things.” Performance reviews assess your willingness to "go above and beyond"—code for sacrificing your boundaries. Is it possible that the system adopted the language of personal transformation journeys to justify systemic exploitation?

We've been sold a lie about work ethic. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that all suffering equals growth. That exhaustion is always a badge of honor. That if we're not grinding ourselves into dust, we're somehow weak or worse, lazy.

I've been there too—confused about whether I was being resilient or just a glutton for punishment, whether I was growing or just slowly wearing myself out. This stuff is hard to navigate in real life. The line between productive discomfort and harmful grinding isn't always clear, especially when everyone around you is praising the grind.

(Let me know in the comments if you'd find it useful to dig into how to tell the difference—I'm considering making that the next post.)

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I used to check my to-do list before I was fully awake. Eyes still closed, I'd run through my mental inventory first. Then I'd blink open my lids, grab my phone, and—still in bed—scroll through to compare my mental list with the tasks on screen that had somehow multiplied overnight. The final step was cross-checking what was already booked on my calendar and running negotiations in my head: how to move time, buy time, or squeeze time (even if that negotiation was sometimes with myself) to get everything done. I dreaded that familiar weight of feeling like I was already behind before the day had even started.

Despite all this, I was excellent—I mean EX-CE-LLENT—at managing my to-do list. So much so that I'd judge people who were disorganized, willy-nilly about their list, or worst of all—didn't even have a list!

Then one uneventful day, after years of diligent list-keeping, I realized that:

1. I didn’t care about most of what was on my list. Like, at all.

2. Some of these items weren’t even mine to own

3. When I crossed things off, it didn't feel good in the way finishing something meaningful should. It was just relief—like I could finally exhale.

I started wondering: why was I living this way? What made me hand over control to a productivity system? That’s a story for another time, but what became abundantly clear was that I wanted to breathe easy, wake up without dread, and feel at peace in my own body without having to earn it first.

The thing about productivity systems is that they start as helpers. You write things down to remember them. You organize priorities. It feels good, even empowering. But somewhere along the way, the relationship flips. Instead of the list serving you, you start serving it.

When the relationship flips

You'll know your list has taken over when:

• You automatically add any request to your list without question

• You've lost the ability to say what belongs on your list

• Tasks remain perpetually overwhelming without being broken down

• Due dates serve others' timelines rather than your capacity

• Completing items brings relief rather than satisfaction

• The list feels more like evidence of inadequacy than progress

If you've been there, you know that low-grade anxiety that settles in before your feet even hit the floor.

The deeper issue

Here's what I've noticed: most list-overwhelm stems from confusing productivity with self-worth. When being busy becomes how we prove our value, saying no feels dangerous. Taking breaks feels weak. Not adding it to the list—we might as well throw in the towel now. The list becomes less about getting things done and more about demonstrating we're worth something.

This is exhausting for obvious reasons, but it's also counterproductive. When everything feels equally urgent (because it's all tied to your identity), nothing actually is. When you can't say no, yes becomes meaningless.

A different approach

The fix isn't throwing out our system or finding a better app. It's changing how we decide what goes on the list in the first place. It’s reclaiming our agency to choose what we prioritize, what we spend our time on, and what we have capacity for.

Before adding anything, pause and ask: "Do I want to do this?"

More specifically:

• Is this actually mine to do?

• Does this align with what I care about?

• What would need to change for this to feel manageable?

• What conversations could I have to reset expectations?

• Am I taking this on because it matters or because I'm afraid to say no?

What changes (and what doesn't)

Will this approach magically eliminate overwhelm? No. Some seasons of life are genuinely overwhelming, and no amount of intentional list-making will change that. Some obligations are non-negotiable, regardless of how we feel about them.

But here's what can shift: the weight of the list itself. When we’re more deliberate about what we take on, individual tasks start feeling less like burdens and more like choices. The same email still needs to be sent, but it feels different when we’re clear about why we’re choosing to send it.

You might find yourself getting more done while feeling less drained, though that's not guaranteed. You might discover that some things you thought were essential really weren't. You'll definitely spend less mental energy on tasks that don't actually serve you.

The point

Our to-do list is supposed to be a tool that serves us, not the other way around. When we remember that distinction, we can start using it like one—selectively, intentionally, and without the weight of our entire identity resting on whether we check everything off.

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Why is it easy for us to intuitively understand the importance of healthy margins in business, but struggle to see the importance of self-care?

A business with thin margins is vulnerable; one unexpected expense can push it into the red. A company with healthy margins has breathing room to manage uncertainty and invest in growth.

Our life operates on the same principle.

The stress equation is simple: When demands exceed resources, stress occurs.

This equation reveals why we feel overwhelmed, stuck, and stressed. When the:

• Demand of a marathon exceeds our physical ability

• Demand of managing conflict exceeds our interpersonal skills

• Demand of processing grief exceeds our emotional capacity

• Demand of a 40-hour project exceeds our deadline of 20 hours

• Demand of investing exceeds our financial market experience

• Demand of our taste exceeds our budget

• Demand of a presentation exceeds our speaking experience

• Demand of unexpected medical bills exceeds our emergency savings

Think of demands as withdrawals: work responsibilities, family obligations, social commitments, and self-expectations. Resources are our deposits: time, energy, skills, experience, support systems, mindsets, and reserves of all kinds.

When demands consistently outpace resources, we’re not just stressed—we’re operating without margin. We become like a business constantly spending more than it earns, drawing down reserves until we’re in the negative.

When we’re in crisis mode, we typically reduce or remove the demand, which helps to stops the bleeding:

• Don’t sign up for the marathon

• Avoid the person

• Suppress the emotion

• Forego the procedure

• Decline the invitation

• Pass on the promotion

However, when we’re not in crisis mode, the challenge isn't always to eliminate demands—they can be a part of a meaningful life. Rather, it's to build sufficient resources to create healthy margins. Margins give us room to breathe, space to recover, and capacity to respond to the unexpected without collapse.

Building margin might look like:

• Developing skills that make tasks less draining

• Cultivating relationships that replenish rather than deplete us

• Prioritizing sleep not as luxury but an investment in resources

• Creating space in our calendar rather than scheduling every minute

• Maintaining physical health as a solid foundation

• Allocating time for play, awe, and wonder in our lives

• Setting boundaries that protect our energy and peace

• Developing a philosophy that helps us make meaning during difficult times

• Spending time in natural settings where our perspective widens beyond everyday worries

Unlike the commercialized "pamper and treat yourself" version of self-care, these self-care activities nurture our deeper wellbeing.

As an experiment, identify one thing that you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed about and ask yourself, “What would it look like to focus solely on reducing the demand?" Then ask yourself, "What would it look like to build more margin?" Because our wellbeing isn’t ultimately about doing less or doing more of anything—it's about the margins we maintain while doing what we do.

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