You tick every box, you show up, you stay calmunder pressure, you hold the meeting together,
you are the one everyone else leans on.
So why do you feel like you are quietly running on empty?
Why do calm people still burn out?
This is sometimes called high functioning anxiety, when the outside performs perfectly, what
the inside quietly runs out of fuel.
If that is you today, this 10 minutes is for you.
Welcome to calming anxiety.
I'm Martin, clinical hypnotherapist and former frontline paramedic, and every single day
I bring you 10 free minutes to help you with your nervous system regulation.
To offer you genuine relief from anxiety, burn out and overwhelm.
If this is for you, if you are new, please do subscribe, and I'll be here for you again
tomorrow.
Now find your quiet place, somewhere you won't be disturbed for 10 minutes.
You can sit or lie down whichever feels right, and if it's safe, let your eyes close.
Before we go further, I want to name something honestly.
Burn out very rarely arrives as a crash.
Most of the time it arrives as a slowly, a nervous system running in a low quiet safe
of sympathetic activation for months.
Never quite tipping into panic, never quite finding its way back to rest either.
You've been so good at managing the feeling that you've stopped noticing the cost of managing
it.
So today, we're not chasing calm, we are restoring something much more specific, your vagal turn.
Your access to what's called the ventral vagal state, the part of your nervous system responsible
for genuine safety and rest, not simply the absence of panic.
We'll do this with the breath.
And for four, hold for two, out for six.
The longer out breath signals to your body, to your mind, the emergency is over.
Let's begin.
Follow with me, ready?
Breathe in, two, three, four, hold, two, and out.
Two, three, four, five, six.
Relax, feel your shoulders drop.
The muscles soften around your face as you breathe out.
Let's do that again.
Breathe in, two, three, four, pause, two.
Relax, two, three, four, five, six.
And once more, in, two, three, four.
Hold, two, exhale, two, three, four, five, six.
Did you notice any small softening anywhere, your chest, your jaw?
That is not nothing.
That is your body beginning to believe it is allowed to stand down.
Just feel your breathing with your mind now.
And I'd like you to picture a house, not a ruin, just a beautifully built house, strong
walls, solid roof, the kind of house that has weathered real storms and come through every
one of them, looking exactly the same on the outside.
This house is you.
Now, gently, go down into the foundation.
Not because anything is wrong, simply to look with curiosity rather than fear.
Burn out is really one storm.
It is the accumulated weight of a thousand ordinary days, each one slightly heavier than
the body fully recovered from.
There is a clinical term for this cost.
The aesthetic load, the wear that chronic stress leaves behind, even when nothing dramatic
ever happened.
In your mind's eye, take a torch and walk the foundations slowly.
You may notice a hairline crack here, a little settling there.
This is not collapse, this is not failure.
A house that carries real weight every single day, will always show somewhere where the weight
has been held.
Cracks are not evidence that you are broken.
They are evidence that you have been holding more than was ever visible from the outside.
Now, very gently, begin to reinforce.
Imagine warm light pouring into each crack like resin, filling the gaps, settling, pardoning
into something stronger than before.
You are not papering over the problem.
You are redistributing the load, taking the weight of the walls that are carried too much
for too long, and letting other stronger parts of the structure share it.
Now look at the house.
See you it.
Strong, eternal.
A house that never lets the air through eventually rot from the inside, no matter how strong
the walls look from the street.
The goal was never to stop feeling the weight.
The goal is a structure that can hold weight and still breathe.
As the image settles, let these words settle with it, repeating them silently.
I do not have to collapse to prove that I am struggling.
My calm is not evidence that I am coping.
Accapacity is something I protect, not something I have to keep proving.
I am allowed to rest before I break, not only after.
My foundation deserves the same care I give to everyone else.
With every out breath, truly, breath out stress, feel yourself sinking into the surface
below, you are supported, you have the foundations.
And it carries this with you.
Here are today's three daily caring tips which protect your capacity and strengthen your foundations.
One, the preemptive pause.
Weight until you are depleted to rest.
Schedule one small pause today, five minutes, no phone, no task before you feel like you need
it.
Recovery, scheduled in advance, is regulation.
Recovery taken only after collapse is repair.
Two, the two minute boundary.
Where today, practice one small no before the next big yes asks something of you.
It doesn't need to be dramatic.
Let me check and get back to you is a complete sentence.
And three, name the invisible load.
Say one thing you have been quietly carrying out loud to one person today.
Just to be praised for it, simply so that the weight is witnessed.
Witnessed weight is always a lighter load to carry.
Now gently bring your awareness back into the room around you.
Wiggle your things and toes.
Take a deep breath in, hold, and then as you breathe out, stretch the muscles in your arms
and legs.
And then open your eye.
And keep my friend.
If today's session helped you understand why you might be running on empty despite holding
everything together, please do share it with someone else who looks fine but might not
be.
That is how we help the world.
One show at a time.
No matter where you are, what you're going through, never give up.
Recent emails from the GoFundMe have really touched the soul.
I've seen so many people find benefit, true benefit, and I hope you do too.
Smile often when you can, positivity when you see your reflection and then mind, body
and soul.
Be kind.