Why a good night's sleep or a holiday may not always reset you properly, introducing the concept of allostatic load—the invisible wear and tear from chronic stress. We explain the body's traffic light system with green, yellow, red, and blue states to illustrate different levels of nervous system activation and how they affect your ability to recover. Learn the importance of distinguishing between challenges and threats to manage burnout and maintain clarity at work. Special attention is given to sensitive, neurodivergent, or trauma-aware nervous systems. 

The episode provides steps to:

- Map your personal nervous system states and eliminate energy leaks. 

- Know your safety cues and redesign daily transitions. 

- Effectively pace your ambition and end your day on a green note. 

00:00 Introduction to Allostatic Load

00:28 Understanding the Nervous System Traffic Light

00:52 Exploring the Four Nervous System States

02:11 The Concept of Allostatic Load

03:20 Impact of Allostatic Load on Daily Life

05:27 Managing Stress and Achieving Balance

08:17 Practical Steps for Nervous System Regulation

12:32 Conclusion and Additional Resources

Recommended episodes

235: Fertility over 35. What your nervous system wants you to know

41: How The Freeze (and Fawn) Response Sabotages Financial Freedom

39: How The Sympathetic Nervous System (Flight) Response Sabotages Financial Freedom 

40: How The Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight) Response Sabotages Financial Freedom

Further Reading

McEwen, B. S., & Stellar, E. (1993). Stress and the individual. Archives of Internal Medicine.

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. NEJM.

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  Today we're gonna talk about why good night's sleep doesn't always reset you nor will a holiday, not because you're doing sleep wrong, but of something called allo allostatic load. The quiet wear and tear is staying on. Plus the difference between challenge and threat in your nervous system. Why this matters more than hacks motivational mindset when it comes to burnout and clarity at work, we're using the body's traffic like technique and the science of challenge and threat.

📍 So I want you to think of your nervous system. As kind of like a traffic light and it has four basic states. You've got green where you are, and also if you have done this nervous system traffic light thing with me before, skip forward like four minutes, we'll do some other things. We're gonna talk about aesthetic load, but if you're new here.

This is the practice that we use. We've got green regulated, calm, connected, creative. Your body is digesting, repairing, refueling, feeling like yourself yellow. We are in a little bit of a challenge. There's some stress. Um, you've got that narrowed focus like I'm focusing on something. I'm moving forward.

You might be kind of productive here, but you. It's like healthy ambition, moving forward energy. Then we've got red, which is like now we're in a threat. Now we are either in fight or flight. Um, it's really hard to think. You feel really distracted. You feel really dysregulated. It's just like you're either frustrated at yourself or you're frustrated at someone else, or you're like feeling really scattered.

Then we've got blue, which is this shutdown. We were in red too long and now we've run outta energy and our body thinks that we need to basically pretend and play dead to. Live, um, or like to get through this challenge. This is when you're dissociating, it's you're frozen, you're collapsing, you feel emotionally numb, emotionally flat.

You are in energy conservation mode. If you would like to go deeper into these four different practice, four different states, I will link numerous different podcasts down below. They're back from when I began the podcast. They are really, really good, comprehensive. Um. Podcasts on these different nervous system states.

Um, a hundred percent. Like highly recommend you go back and listen to them, but we're gonna move on to allostatic load for the rest of us here. So a lot of the people kind of miss, oh, I don't know. It's just, I feel like it's not spoken about enough. They're like, oh, I need to take a holiday, or I just need to have a good night's sleep.

And I Sleep is a foundation of health. A hundred percent yes. But sometimes we end up sleeping or taking a holiday, but. And we're like quote unquote resting, but your body isn't in green. It's in. A yeller. So it's like still perceiving a little bit of challenge. It hasn't fully down regulated to that green state, meaning your body can't actually refuel.

It's like you're, you're sleeping, you are having time off. You're dis, you're like disconnected, quote unquote, like disconnected. But you're not actually, your body is hypervigilant. It's scanning. It hasn't actually softened and downregulated. It didn't feel like it could. You were horizontal. You were logged off, but your system was still hovering in yellow and for some of you guys actually red, the light was never green.

It never said, oh, now's your time to recover the, that is why. The, the phrase that we use around this is something called allostatic Load. This man called Bruce McEwen, he named this when he said the wear and tear from chronic activation of the stress response. I'll share the resource and the sources for you to have further reading on that one below.

But it's like this, like invisible kind of wear and tear and this weight. And if you go back even to the fertility episode that I. That I shared, we look at how that is actually one of the most important and kind of like, oh gosh, um, like that alloy load or that like invisible wear and tear is what's gonna weigh you down over time, more so than so many other things because.

It's like this, like residue that like sticks to your yellow state. I like to think of it, you're like kind of like sticking and staying in that yellow state. The more like rust we can think of it almost like of oxidative stress of like rust. The more there is, the more of this like stickiness to that yellow state, like you're, you're feeling inclined to stay that in that slight activation of like scanning for threat or looking for challenge, then.

Challenges that are just kind of like simple challenges actually become threats. Threats and really activating. 'cause you never went fully back down to green. That's why you might find yourself almost like overreacting or becoming really sensitive. So then we can imagine that your stress cup, the cup that you have that's available for stress is like halfway full from yesterday's residue.

You're starting the day, not completely. Rested, you're depleted a little bit. So of course the email, the meeting, the deadline, the change puts you over the edge into red. That's why all of these small things feel like really important and why waking up rested is increasingly harder as the week goes on.

It's 'cause we're not reaching down into green at the end of the day. And this is really important because what helps you reach down into green is going to depend on what you perceive as a challenge and what you perceive as a threat. We want challenges in our life 'cause they make us feel fulfilled. And that's when you're doing your problem solving.

You're flexible, you feel really competent. It's really important that we feel competent and then. Especially with work, like we wanna feel like we know what we're doing then, but if you are experiencing something as a threat, so let's just say it's the same email, you're like, oh, okay. Interesting email. Or like I was speaking with a client this morning, he was like A 30 page PDF.

I normally like nail that. And I'm like, yeah, you do. Unless your body is experiencing something makes that now feel like a threat because it doesn't think that it has enough resources. 'cause it didn't rest enough. Or something else is going on, right? So when it tips over and it perceives that thing as a threat, you're thinking narrows.

You can't think of different options. You can't think of different possibilities. Your creativity declines. Everything feels really important. More important than it is. It's like your body is having this experience that like overtakes your, your rational thinking. Your body is having this, like, it's almost like sometimes you almost feel like a victim of.

Of what is happening. You're not actually a victim. You have a lot of control, but it can feel like you are, and this is so important for sensitive or neurodivergent or trauma aware nervous systems because one, we may have more residue, so we may be more inclined to be in that yellow state, and it's more difficult to get to green because of our past experiences, and also that residue builds faster because you're registering a lot of data all at once, and so you're like.

Able to go from yellow, which is like, wow, I'm, that's a lot to like red. It's like, wow, okay. Now I have a threat that I need to do. And you'll know this is happening in your day. If you have a lot of decision fatigue, it's not helpful if you then call yourself lazy or indecisive or procrastination, or if you kind of feel like you're overwhelmed, then you're shutting down and you can't, you're not, you're struggling to be motivated or you're just really irritable.

These are nervous system states. They're not. Like character flaws. And if you try to mindset your way or like pull yourself out of it and be like, oh, just stop being so lazy. Or like just stop being so, um, selfish or just like, just stop prioritizing. It's procrastinating. It's not going to be helpful unless your body actually feels like one.

It's safe to be in this present moment. Two, it's safe to go back to green to release some of the allostatic load and the oxidative. Stress and then now we can take on a new challenge. And the way that we do this is highly unique to your nervous system, but I'm gonna share kind of the key steps that I would work.

That I would recommend that you work through this could be by yourself, this could be hopefully with a professional, um, whether that be a somatic therapist that you have or a coach that you have, or just like, I don't know, your support practice. Somebody who is, um, kind of versed in this language. Um, and it might be me if you feel.

Like you would like to, you'll see links for that down below to with me, we can have a little bit of a feel if it feels like a good fit for us to work together. But number one is to understand your traffic light. So we have a map that we can go through where we understand your personal green, yellow, blue, red, um, cues.

So we, what are the sensations? What are the thoughts, what are the behaviors that are coming across in a normal week? And you kind of can map your system and you can use that at work and at home. To understand what your body needs to move into green in that regulated state, then we need to like decrease all of the, we can call them like energy leaks or like leaky, I think of them as like leaky taps where you have like energy like coming out.

So like, I don't know. For me it's like constantly being on, so many people know me. My phone is like always on do not disturb because it's like I will receive notifications for an hour a day. I don't pings just. Leak me so much, or like lack of clarity in your role, uh, or the job that you're doing. And this goes for solopreneurs as well.

Like, there's so much, like, so much uncertainty you have to build in your clarity. Um, I have an article on that as well, uh, that I will link down below. It's a, it's a really good one. Um. I shared that on LinkedIn and it's about really important as well because like as females we can take on a lot of emotional labor, but really making sure that we build clarity into our roles, whether we're founders or entrepreneurs or we're working inside of a system, means that we don't have to deal with so much.

Ambiguity means less emotional labor means more energy for ourselves. Really, really important, um, especially as we kind of prioritize. Females being nourished, but that's a different, that's a different conversation. Um, then we've got like coming, knowing your safety cues. So we usually try to find like a map back to like what.

Safety feels like in your body and how to make sure that you feel confident that you can always access that so that you don't have to go into the thousands of thought loops that you already have going on. Then we redesign the transitions in your day, the before and after of meetings. The task switchings, the commute, um, so that those are moments where we are able to.

Decrease the stress that you're experiencing and like let it go and like reset instead of building it up through the through throughout the day. And then you end the day, it's nighttime. You are carrying all of this stress from the day and you feel angry or you feel really tired and it's just like a lot for your body.

If we can just instead like. Decrease. Make sure that it doesn't build up quite as much. It's much more effective. And my, my beautiful, beautiful human, we pace your ambition. You have got so much drive, so much focus, so much vision. We love this so much about you. We don't want that to push you over into a red zone.

We don't want that to push you over into burnout. Find your way of like pacing that so you don't have so many crash and burn cycles where you're like full, full, full, yes, yes, yes. Energy for three days and then like completely depleted for the next two. And we make sure that you're ending your day on a green enough loop.

So it's like what is your end of day protocol to reset. It might take some time. What is it? Is it a shower? Is it writing down? Is it like a brain dump? Is it a massage? Like a self massage even? Like what is a way? Sometimes I have clients, I've done this myself, where I just do a specific meditation that I share and it results in tears coming up, and the tears come up because they're so beautiful and they heal our, they heal our nervous system.

They help us release cortisol, literally cortisol just coming outta your eyes, and then you move on and you're happy for the rest of your day. There are so many wonderful ways that we can reset this for you. It is all accessible, all available to you, and I'm so excited to be able to share and like guide you through this journey.

Um, links down below to podcast. Link down below to connect with me on a curiosity call. If you wanna explore doing this work with me. Um, free resources, nervous system regulation. PDF Burnout is weird. Seven people's stories of how they all came back to their, their feeling of being themselves. It is all available for you down below.

Um. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. Keep going and I'll see you on the next one. Highly recommend you go and check out those podcasts I mentioned. I.