“We are mentally full.” These were the first words Dr. Jen Hartstein said to me when we sat down to talk Spring Cleaning the Mind and more about emotional regulation, burnout, and why this happens.

I know many of you have subscribed for a look inside my life and cute Frankie pictures, and while I’ve struggled with burnout and feeling like I’m moving through mud, my mind can’t help but go to all the people like my mom, especially with Mother’s Day around the corner.

My mom sacrificed so much for us, including taking the couch in the livingroom in a 1 bedroom apartment so that her three kids could have the bedroom and a bed. After she lost her corporate job, she put aside her ego to start a new job to support our family, not necessarily in a role that fulfilled her, it was a grind (and not in a good way). But not once did she compromise our experience as kids because for everything that we could want for, she made up for it with love. As an adult, I understand more of the sacrifices she made for us and I can only imagine the weight she felt. Did burnout even have a name back then? The mother figures take on so much for us in our lives, but to they get the same in return?

Today’s newsletter may feel like validation for some, but for others, it could be a look into what is going on in someone’s mind and what their load is doing to them. It also may have some helpful tools for someone in the thick of it. This might be the email to forward to someone with the note saying, “I see everything you do, thank you. Let me know if I can support you in any of this.”

Dealing with emotional overwhelm is challenging and you’re not going to fix it in one day, because as you know…

If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe and join the Great Things Take Time Community to get content from me (and usually Frankie) every Wednesday.

For the second part of Spring Cleaning, Dr. Jen Hartstein, a nationally recognized child, adolescent, and family psychologist, takes us through how to Spring Clean Your Mind to discuss how boundaries, emotional regulation, burn out, and so much more of those exhausting feelings we just wish we could get rid of. Answering some of the questions you all have been submitting in these newsletters, she addresses things that have clearly been a trend with some big emotions!

If you missed last week’s newsletter, Spring Clean Your Time, including something I’m not ready to do myself, you can check it out here.

As a clinical psychologist, she’s an expert in emotion regulation strategies and effective communication and has been helping people revolutionize the way they feel so they are able to flourish in their relationships and life.

Needless to say, she’s got some great insight into what goes on in our minds.

Below, our interview is edited and condensed a bit for clarity and length, which might make you laugh because this is the longest newsletter to date but is still so chock-full of valuable information. I highly recommend you find time to watch or listen to the full interview (maybe while you’re brushing your teeth, but definitely not while you’re doing anything that deserves your full attention, IYKYK) to get the full breadth of Dr. Jen’s knowledge. 

To connect with Dr. Jen further, you can find her on Instagram, LinkedIn or through her website, DrJen.com

Adrian: A lot of people feel like their brain is constantly ‘on’ right now — what’s actually happening there? Why do we feel so mentally full?

Dr. Jen: We are mentally full. A big part of that is that we are on information overload. We are walking around at all times with major computers in our pockets, and we don't always put them away. We are just inundated with information, and we don't know how to parse it out. We don't know where to put our attention, so the cognitive load we all carry is just heavier. Our day-to-day lives are more complicated because the world we live in is more anxious, because the housing crisis happens, inflation is high, the political climate is charged, and then how does that impact our own lives? Maybe we have a sick kid, maybe we are the sandwich generation, and are parenting and then taking care of our parents. Oof. It's coming at us all the time, and most of us aren’t doing a really good job of exhaling and figuring out where we need to put our attention. We just think we have to do it all at the same time. And that is really overwhelming. 

People pride themselves on being good multitaskers. It was always cool to me when I was a child. I’ve realized at this stage of my life, I’ve found that spending my time on one thing at a time helps me do much better vs. operating at 60%.

Multitasking is a myth. You actually are not multitasking. You're task switching, but you're doing it so quickly that it seems like you're multitasking. 

Brushing your teeth and listening to a podcast is a different kind of multitasking, as neither one of them is very challenging or needs all of your attention. But if I'm talking to you and I'm texting, neither thing is getting my full attention. I'm switching between texting and talking to you. I'm not actually multitasking. In that task switch, you are not giving anything 100%. You make more mistakes, it takes you longer, and you have to hit pause to be like “Wait, did I get all the things right?” Because inevitably, you will miss something.

When you pay attention to the assignment, you will be faster, more efficient, and make fewer errors, and then you can move on to the next thing.

I hope everyone heard everything you just said.

As you get older, multitasking gets harder. I’ve found that I am a horrific multitasker as I’ve gotten older: I’m reading every third word, but if I give you my full attention, we get through what we need to get done, and it’s so much better.

When we talked the first time, I noticed that about you: you were so dialed in when we were having a conversation, very few people do that and have that skill set, so it was nice and inviting.

How do we distinguish between being productive and just being mentally busy?

Productivity is goal accomplishing: I set a goal, I do the things I need to get to the goal, and I accomplish the goal. I want to work out this morning: “What time? How am I going to do it?” Etc. Mental busyness is diffuse, and it becomes almost like toxic productivity because we push through burnout. Mental busyness is, “I don't know where I'm putting my attention, I don't know what to do, everything's kind of juggled in the air, and I'm actually incapable of being super effective,” and it leads to burnout. All of that busyness and diffuseness is part of what contributes to our burnout, which is really hard.

When you get burnt out, sometimes you are so tired from everything that you've been experiencing that you kind of explode. You'll see people react when they get to that point with the people that they love or are closest to.

Very often, burnout appears differently. When some people burn out, their burnout is irritability, frustration, and a lot of internal and external dysregulation. For other people, it's almost like this numbness. I know I'm burnt out when I just don't care. I really get to this weird, numb, detached, whatever kind of space. I work in a job where I have to show up. I have to be present. I have to have emotional connection. So when I notice it’s happening, I have to hit pause and really do some inventory. “Why am I burnt out? What can I let go of? Who can I ask for help from?” Which is probably the hardest thing for most of us, because it’s seen as a weakness to have to ask for help. It can get toxic to try to work through the burnout, which then, people quit their jobs over, or their relationships end over that. So, not so helpful.

How does a person who's in clinical psychology hit pause? How do you take care of yourself?

There's a couple of ways, and really, practical questions we all should be asking ourselves. Did I eat today? Did I hydrate today? Did I move my body? Not everybody can move their body in the same way. But did I sit in my chair and stretch? Did I stand up? Did I shake my arms out? Did I connect with someone in real life and make some eye contact, make some physical contact? Those are kind of basic things that I make sure I do every day. 

If I really am noticing that I'm overwhelmed, am I reaching out to my support systems and maybe friends in the field?

I make sure that I work out. My sacred time is my workout time. Whatever that might look like for me, it's sacred. I do not talk to you then. You cannot have it. It’s mine. With some of the things I do, people will ask, “Is today a pilates day? Can you come in and do this interview?” And they know I'll say “No, that is mine.’ 

I think it’s okay to say I'm “burnt out, that I need a day off.” Most of my patients will be okay, and if I really worry about them, I'll make sure they have someone that can cover for me or show up for me, or their psychiatrist that they can go to. Sometimes I just need a day, and I won’t go to the office, and that’s okay too.

That was hard for me. Boundaries are something I had to start to create because when you work in service, where you're giving to other folks, there's a guilt associated with not showing up. Showing up for yourself is still just as important. It’s a skill set that I’m still trying to hone in on.

Boundaries are hard because they actually have a really bad rap. “What do you mean you're saying no?” We feel guilty because we are letting someone down, and some people feel shame. There's a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is I did something bad, shame is I am bad. If I'm supposed to be the person that you rely on all the time, then I'm clearly bad if I can't show up, and then I feel guilty because I let you down. The truth is that it is way better to disappoint other people than yourself, because that's their problem. I don't have to take on your disappointment. If you're feeling disappointed or let down, you figure that out. It doesn't mean I shouldn't have set a boundary, but guilt forces us to say, “I need to fix it.”

We work in service for a reason, but it's really important to let other people have their guilt: your disappointment is yours, not mine. My other favorite thing to remind everybody is that "No” is a full sentence. You might be like, “Should I say no?” But if you can kind of drop an anchor and be like, “That was the best decision I made”, or “I really needed that”, then there is no question there.

No is my favorite word in my 40s

It’s such an important word! I love it.

What role do unprocessed emotions play in our mental health? When it comes to feeling overwhelmed.

Unprocessed emotions are something every one of us has. Just to take the stigma of it off the table, we all have things we don't process, and some of us may never need to process them. They become part of who we are. I don’t love the word trigger, because I think it's very weaponized, but in the true sense of the word, I would come in and feel a connection with you, and that triggers all sorts of warm memories for me, including those of other people that I felt that way [about]. That is a trigger point. But if someone's a jerk to me, and I'm already feeling overwhelmed because there's so much going on, it's going to bring up times that other people were a jerk to me. If I've never really worked through that, it's like I just opened the floodgate. It's important to be able to stop and be like, “What did this just bring up for me, and is that okay? Because Adrian is not the person that was a jerk to me seven years ago, and we need to keep these things separate.” It does overwhelm us because it's like water.

That’s something I’m trying to do in a personal way. These relationships that we've had, and not associating these with the bad things that happened in the past. It’s an easy thing to gravitate towards when we’re feeling overwhelmed or a certain way.

It's vulnerability. At it at its core, vulnerability is so hard for us to embrace, and yet it's the thing that makes us most human. My vulnerability allows us to connect. You saying “this was really hard for me” is being vulnerable, and I can say “I'm so sorry”, I can offer to help you, or I can just validate it, but we're in it together. We're sharing the load, you're not in it by yourself. Most people are afraid of being vulnerable because they think it's weakness. 

I was just going to ask you that. Most people are afraid of being vulnerable? 

[Emphatically nods yes] But it's not a weakness. I think vulnerability is incredible strength.

Of course, there is a risk, because if I see where you’re vulnerable, I know what your trigger point is that I can poke at and annoy you. We all have those people in our lives who always know where to poke.

Yes, we do. We can go on and on with that one.

You specialize in emotional regulation for someone who feels overwhelmed or reactive. What does it actually look like to regulate your emotions in real time? 

Let's talk about what it looks like to be dysregulated because we need to know what it looks like first to be able to know how to solve it. Imagine that you are on a boat, and you're in the sea, and the waves start to get bigger, and your boat is flailing. You're all over the place, in the water, and you don't have anything that anchors you. Now we're wondering, “Is my boat going to capsize? I'm so overwhelmed, is it going to splinter apart?” The sea of emotion gets us overwhelmed. 

When we are dysregulated, we are the boat; we don't know how to drop an anchor. Emotion regulation strategies are the anchor. It doesn't mean your boat will not rock in the waves, because it will. It just means it’s not going to splinter and fall apart. 

Emotion regulation skills are usually things you usually already do, but you do them when you're calm. If you love to listen to music, your first thought may not be “I should blast that song that I love that makes me just diffuse all of the frustration when I'm feeling dysregulated, and not multitask, but dance around my room.” Exhale. “Now I can go back and do whatever it is I need to do.”

If you ever watch an animal when they are overwhelmed, they shake. That shake resets their nervous system. You can shake your arms out, and that resets things for us. Music, movement, taking the time to drink your water really slowly and really focus on it. Mindfully dropping in, paying attention, five minutes, you don’t need a lot of time. The intensity comes down, and then you can problem-solve. 

When we're overly dysregulated, our frontal lobe (planning, organization,  problem-solving) shuts off because our body goes into survival mode, and we have to figure out how to protect ourselves. Fight or flight: we don't need it anymore in the same way. We are not being chased by tigers, but it might feel like it, but it still serves a function. It's a warning sign. So noticing, tapping in, not ignoring those signs that something feels off. If I am overwhelmed, I'm not paying attention to the warning signs, which prevents me from being productive. 

Would say that most folks don't have these toolsets in their possession? I think a lot of people don’t know what to do and will immediately look to do a hard workout to beat themselves down, which can be another type of stress on them. 

It's twofold. I think a lot of us just forget to use the skills we have. If I'm feeling good and it's a beautiful day out, I walk the 15 blocks home listening to a book or my favorite music. I noticed that I feel calmer, but I started calmer. We don’t bridge them over by thinking, “I don’t feel good, maybe listening to that book will make me feel better.” We want to feel better right away, which is why the hard workout makes us feel better.

You and I are not going to have the same things that work for us. We'll have overlap. But there are definitely days, depending on the thing that I'm dysregulated about, where I am angry and frustrated and pissed off at everybody, that a really hard workout is exactly what I need. Or I like to watch beat them up, shoot them up, blow up the building shows. It’s not my normal, but when I’m really pissed off, that's where I'm going. Some people think, “I'm feeling really sad, I'm gonna watch a weepy movie or listen to weepy songs,” but they should do the exact opposite of that. They should listen to something that's more upbeat because otherwise it pulls them into that vortex of doom. 

When you're not dysregulated, stop and think about the things you enjoy and then figure out how to incorporate them when you are dysregulated. It might mean making a list on your phone so you don’t have to think about it. Music, movement, talking to a friend, getting my favorite non alcoholic beverage, sitting in the sun with my face turned toward it for five minutes, petting my dog, any of those kinds of things will reset us. We do them all the time; it’s just doing them in the moments we really need them.

If someone feels constantly scattered or overstimulated, what’s the first place they should start to clear that?

Put your phone down. It’s ironic because so much of the information we get is through our phones, so it's a catch-22. But what are you consuming? Most of us wake up, and the first thing we do is reach for our phone. Now, automatically, you're on information overload and passively consuming. Putting your phone down or turning it on do not disturb resets us. It allows us to be in conversation without what's happening on the phone or in the news.

There's this new movement of bloomscrolling over doomscrolling. So if I have to be on my phone, can I curate it to be all dogs, cats, kindness videos, Artemis, and space, and other things that are still important, but they make me feel better? Then, I'm on my phone less. When I doomscroll, I'm passively engaged, and everything's being fed to me, and my dopamine goes in the toilet. I'm looking for dopamine, so I'm staying engaged, but if I set it up to have to feel good stuff, things that are making me smile, I don’t need to be on my phone as much because I'm already feeling fulfilled. My first advice is put your phone down.

Do you find a lot of people who immediately wake up and pick up their phones?

Yes, and they go to bed having their phone be the last thing that they were on, so their brains are constantly on. 

Maybe I'm going to take a rest day so that my body can reset or recharge, but we don't do that for our brains. We don't just put our phones down or stay off the screen and read regular books. I went back to reading regular books because I would find I would get myself distracted reading on a device. 

So what am I choosing to do with intention?  Not what is my intention? How am I intentionally engaging? If I have to pick my phone up in the morning, I try really hard not to check emails till eight. No one needs me at six or seven, and if they really need me, they're texting. I don’t have to immediately check my email the second I wake up. Do I work in a life-or-death job? In some ways, absolutely, but if we're in a life-or-death moment, someone texting me, they aren’t sending me an email.

I always say if you really, truly need me, call me! 

Are there simple daily practices people can use to ‘declutter’ their mind the same way they would their physical space?

Yes. Decluttering your physical space, for me, anyway, is like step one. A cluttered space is a cluttered mind. For me, that's the truth, but for my neurodiverse husband, who has pretty bad ADHD, he doesn't see the clutter. That’s hard in my marriage, because I am not a clutter person, I like things in their space. But to him, it's like he knows where everything is in his clutter, and his clutter works for him. Check in with yourself on whether or not that resonates. 

Another really important element is the routine that you create for yourself. Everybody should have a routine. Our bodies and minds thrive on structure. Too much structure is maybe not so great. But can you have structure with some kind of wiggle room. I like to think about it as a bowling alley with the bumpers on it. It keeps you in your lane, but you have movement in the lane. 

What's your routine? What things do you protect within the routine? My workout space is my protected time. People know that, but what's yours? Maybe it's morning coffee. Once your kids get up and everything's chaos, you decide that you're gonna wake up 20 minutes earlier to have quiet time, or journal. 

Who are your safe people? We all have one or two safe people that are your people. My best friend messaged me yesterday, “Hey, can I vent for a second?” And my response to her was, “Was that a rhetorical question?” and the phone rang right away because she just needed to get something out there. 

Who are those people who can be your reality check, that can say, “Hey, you're burnt out” and call you on it, and remind you that taking space and taking time and resting is really okay? Most of us think it's okay for everybody but ourselves.

I think that's really important when dealing with emotional stress, that you have someone who can not just say yes to you about everything. I know a lot of friends of mine just want to talk to you, not with you. Sometimes it's also healthy to hear that maybe the thing that you think or your opinion could potentially be wrong, or seen in a different light.

There are three questions you can ask somebody in that moment: Am I listening? Am I helping? And for parents, am I intervening? You don’t have to intervene in an adult relationship, but if a kid is having a hard time with the teacher, a parent might need to step in. 

There's some real merit in those three questions of asking, “Do you need me? Do you need me just to listen?” My dad used to say to me, “What ears do I need to be paying attention with? Am I just letting you vent?” Because then he can shut off his problem-solving mind, which is his urge. “Do you need me to help you solve this problem?” Then he's listening slightly differently. 

Parents asking kids, do you need me to step in? Do you need me to get involved here? Because so many parents want to jump in, and the kids don't need them to jump in unless it’s an unsafe situation, or an abuse of power.

I asked my friend those questions too, but my friend said, “I just need to vent.” Cool, but then I did have an opinion. “Can I share what I'm thinking with you, or do you just not want that right now?” And she was like, “I don't really want it,” and I can't be offended by that, right? She's entitled to say that. She's entitled to that boundary.

Thank you so much to Dr. Jen for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us! If there is anything I can double down on that she just said, it’s to put down the phone (even if that’s how you’re reading this newsletter). Put away the devices and be intentional with what you’re doing!

Drop the broom, we’ve got better things to clean!

Like Dr. Jen said above, most of us already posses the skillset to help with our emotional regulation, they are practices we incorporate into our daily life. Often, it’s things we do when we’re in a good mood. I’ve mentioned it enough times in the newsletter that you can probably pick up on the fact that one of mine is driving with no music or additional noise. Dr. Jen’s point on creating a note in our phones on what gets us out of a funk isn’t just a good idea, it’s what might keep our ship from sinking.

Your turn! Journal your answer, or if you find yourself sharing the progress of your Great Things on social, tag me at @greatthingswith_adrian so I can join in on cheering you along!