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Welcome to the Sleep Coach. I'm your host, Shelly Simpson. If you're exhausted, but your mind won't shut off at night, you're in the right place. Each week, we'll unpack the science of sleep, hormones, and the nervous system so you can understand what's happening in your body and finally get the rest you deserve. Here we quiet the 3 a.m. mind, calm the body, and help you finally get the sleep you've been missing. Welcome back to the Sleep Coach Podcast. Today we are continuing part two of our emotional regulation series that I started last week. And today we're going to go a little deeper. In the last episode, we talked about something I hear from so many women in midlife. And you may hear this from your friends as well when you're in little conversations with each other. Like, why am I so reactive lately? Like I feel so emotional lately. What's up with that? One of the biggest things I wanted you to take away from that conversation was that emotional reactivity doesn't happen in a vacuum. We talked about how hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause can affect the brain and the nervous system. We also talked about stress, poor sleep, mental load, and the sheer amount many women are carrying at this stage of life. And we also talked about capacity because sometimes what looks like an overreaction isn't just about the thing that happened five seconds ago. It's happening in a system that's already overloaded. But that brings us to the next question. What actually happens between the trigger and the reaction? Because there's a moment, sometimes a very small moment, when your body knows you're getting activated before your mouth does. Maybe your jaw tightens, your chest feels tighter, you might feel your heart beating faster and your thoughts start speeding up. You feel the urge to defend yourself or even shut down, maybe walk away, or fire back. And then boom, the reaction. Most of us focus on the boom. Like, for instance, why did I say that? Or why did I get so angry? Or why did I shut down? Or maybe even why am I crying over this? But I want us to start paying attention to what happened before the boom, because that's where emotional regulation actually gets interesting. Your reaction doesn't begin when you raise your voice, burst into tears, or send the text. You probably shouldn't have sent, and maybe you should have waited like 10 minutes before you hit that send or reread it before you hit send. Because after you hit sin, you know it's too late. And it begins in your brain, your body, before you consciously are aware of it. And if you can learn to recognize those early signals, you can start creating a little space between what happens to you and what you do next. And that little bit of space can change a lot. So in part two of this series, we're talking about triggers, what's happening in your brain and nervous system when something sets you off, how to recognize your own early warning signs, and most importantly, what you can actually do in the moment because the goal isn't to become a woman who never gets triggered. I mean, we are emotional creatures. I honestly think God created females to be more emotional than our male counterparts. Can you say amen to that? Good luck. Because you still have a family, co-workers, and probably that group text. The goal is to get better at recognizing what's happening before the emotion takes over. So let's get into that. So, what is a trigger, really? We use the word triggered pretty casually. Something annoys us, someone annoys us, we get triggered. Maybe someone disagrees with us, you get triggered. Someone chews too loudly when we're already exhausted. OMG, this is a big one for me.

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I can't stand hearing people chew. That is like a big pet peeve of mine. So yeah, I definitely get triggered when that happens.

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But from a nervous system perspective, a trigger isn't essentially something your brain interprets as important enough to require a response. And here's the interesting part the trigger itself isn't always the biggest issue. Your brain is constantly evaluating what's happening around you. I mean, we talked about the amygdala, right? And that is the part of your brain that's going to try to protect you. It's going to ask questions like: is this safe? Is this a threat? Do I need to protect myself? Do I need to respond? And that assessment happens incredibly quickly. It happens pretty fast. Your brain doesn't sit down with a clipboard and calmly evaluate the pros and cons. It draws on previous experiences, memories, expectations, emotions, and information coming from your body to make a very fast assessment. That's one reason two people can actually experience the same situation and respond completely differently. Have you ever noticed that? So, like one person shrugs it off, and the other person is just completely feels overwhelmed and completely triggered. It's the same event, but the nervous system receiving that event are not. And this is important because sometimes we're only looking at the situation in front of us. We're thinking, why did that bother me so much? But your brain may be responding to much more than what's happening right now. Let's talk about what's actually happening inside the brain. As I've talked about before and just a few moments ago, we talked about the amygdala. And that's the emotional processing part of your brain. It helps your brain detect emotional significant information, particularly information that could signal a threat. Now, when I say threat, not talking about physical danger. You don't need a bear chasing you through the woods for your threat response system to activate. And that's not typically going to happen to us. But your brain also responds to social and emotional threats like criticism, conflict, rejection, embarrassment, feeling ignored, feeling out of control, feeling judged, feeling like you're falling. Even something that reminds your brain of a previous painful experience can influence how strongly you react. And I do want to digress for a second. If you hear a noise in the background, it's my husband outside blowing off the deck of our house that behind our house.

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So hopefully you don't hear that, but I hear it. So I'm wondering if you hear it. Let's get back to what we were talking about.

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Once your brain determines something that requires attention, your body's stress response systems can begin preparing you to respond. Your heart rate may increase, your muscles may tighten, your breathing may become faster or shallower, and you might feel hot. Like I get my face feels hot when I start getting upset, or it even turns red. Your stomach might tighten, your thoughts may suddenly speed up, your body's preparing you to do something like fight or get away or freeze, protect yourself. Remember that fight, flight, or freeze response that the amygdala is there to do in a response to protect you. So suddenly you're not simply having a conversation anymore. Your nervous system has joined the conversation to. This is where I think emotional regulation becomes incredibly practical. Most of us recognize that we're dysregulated when it's already obvious. I mean, we might be yelling or crying, or maybe we're furious or even panicking, or just completely overwhelmed, or we've shut down and decided we're not speaking to anybody for the rest of the evening. But your body often gives you clues before you reach that point. Think about what happens physically when you're becoming irritated. Maybe, just like I said before, maybe your jaw tightens, or your shoulders start to creep up towards your ears, and you might feel a tightness in your chest, or you just feel this unsettleness in your stomach. Again, maybe your face gets hot, you might start talking faster, your thoughts start racing, you might start feeling restless, and maybe you suddenly feel a strong urge to explain yourself or defend yourself. Or maybe your pattern goes the opposite direction. Maybe you get quiet, you start to feel numb, you stop engaging, you want to just leave. You think, forget it, I'm done, I'm out. Adios. Those are signals. And one of the most useful emotional regulation skills you can develop is learning to recognize those signals. Because once you're at a say nine out of 10 emotionally, it's much harder to make an intentional choice. But if you can catch yourself at say a three or a four, you have much more room to work with. This is where I want to connect today's conversation back to what we talked about in episode nine. Your emotional threshold isn't necessarily the same every day. Think about a normal Tuesday when you've slept well, you've eaten pretty good, you had some downtime, life's pretty relatively calm, it's pretty good. And then something annoying happens. You may think that's irritating. But you move on. Now, imagine the exact same thing happens after you've only slept, say, four or five hours over several nights. You just have not slept good at all. Maybe you're behind on your work. You haven't eaten since breakfast, and it's already two o'clock in the afternoon. Maybe your mom or your children need texted you and they need something from you, and you're just already feeling overwhelmed as it is. Or your husband asks you for something that's sitting approximately two feet in front of him. You ever been there? It's like the moms are always the ones to find something like within five seconds flat. And now you've had zero minutes to yourself. So, same trigger, but completely different capacity. This is why emotional regulation isn't simply about becoming mentally tougher. Your brain and nervous system are influenced by what's happening throughout your entire body and your environment. This is why sleep matters. Your stress matters, nutrition matters, hormonal changes can matter, mental load matters, and recovery matters. And when several of those are working against you at the same time, your threshold becomes lower. Something relatively small may suddenly feel enormous. Sometimes the tiny thing wasn't really the problem, it was simply the last straw. So I want to go into a little analogy. It's the what I call the coffee cup analogy. If you have a cup of coffee and someone bumps into you, obviously the coffee's gonna spill everywhere. Why did the coffee spill? The obvious is the answer because somebody bumped you. True, but coffee also spilled because coffee was already in the cup, and maybe it was filled to the brim. Now think about your emotional capacity the same way. Maybe your cup already contains things like poor sleep, work stress, maybe an argument with your spouse before you left for work. You're worrying about your parents, maybe they're having some health struggles, you're not eating enough, you're not eating what's nutritionally best for you. Hormonal changes, maybe some financial stress going on. You already have a calendar with absolutely no breathing room or what I call white space. Then somebody walks into the kitchen and asks, What's for dinner? Suddenly you're considering whether launching a skillet would be appropriate communication strategy. Is dinner really the problem? Probably not. It's that your cup was already full. The question just bumped it. This is one of the reasons I want us to become curious about our reactions instead of immediately judging them. Instead of only asking, what triggered me? We also need to ask, what was already in my cup? Find your trigger pattern. Here's where I want you to start doing a little detective work on yourself. The next time you notice a strong emotional reaction, don't stop at she made me angry, or my husband irritates me so much, or my boss is completely stressing me out. Go one layer deeper. Ask yourself, what actually happened? Then what happened in my body? Then what thought immediately went through my mind? And finally, what was already happening before this situation occurred? Let's say your spouse asks why something hasn't been done, or why maybe a bill hasn't been paid, or whatever the case may be. Immediately, what's gonna happen? Your chest is gonna tighten, your jaw is gonna start to clench, and then the thought flashes through your head, he thinks I don't do enough. Now you're angry. But let's go underneath the anger. Maybe what you're actually feeling is I'm overwhelmed, or I just don't feel appreciated, or I already feel like I'm failing at everything today. And that's very different from my husband asked me a question and I lost my mind. Now you're beginning to see the pattern. There's a trigger, there's a body sensation, then a thought, then an emotion, then the reaction. And when you start recognizing that sequence, you begin finding places where you can interrupt it. So what do we actually do with all of this? I want to give you something simple enough to remember when you're actually irritated. Because when you're activated or triggered, nobody needs a 14-step worksheet. I want you to practice four words. And they are notice, pause, regulate, and respond. So first, let's notice. Recognize your early warning signal, like how you're feeling in your body. Is your chest tighten? Uh, maybe you're talking faster. Are you getting defensive? Maybe your thoughts are starting to race, or you're doing the opposite and you're just shutting down. That's your cue. You're catching the reaction early. Then comes the pause. You don't have to respond immediately. And this can be pretty difficult, especially if you're someone who likes to explain yourself or defend yourself or solve the problem to make your point. Give yourself a few seconds. Sometimes you may need longer. You can literally say, Can I have a minute? I just want to think before I respond. That, my friend, is emotional regulation. You're not avoiding the conversation, you're creating enough space to choose how you want to participate in it. Then there's regulate. Help your body calm down a notch, not from a 10 to a zero. We're not trying to turn you into like some Zen monk in 30 seconds flat. Maybe you're going from say an eight to a six. Take a slower breath. Try allowing your exhale to be longer than your inhale. Notice your jaw and just unclench it. Unclench your jaw. Drop those shoulders if you feel them tightening up and raising. Put both feet on the floor and ground yourself. Possibly just take a short walk or step outside. Maybe just drink some water. Give your nervous system a moment to settle. Regulation can be incredibly boring, but that's okay. It doesn't need to look impressive to work. All right, then we go into respond. Ask yourself, how do I actually want to handle this? Notice the difference. Not what do I feel like saying right now? But how do I want to respond? Those two can be very two different questions. And I want to make something clear here. Emotional regulation doesn't mean being nice all the time. It doesn't mean ignoring bad behavior. And it doesn't mean never getting angry. And it definitely doesn't mean becoming the woman who calmly smiles while everyone around her behaves terribly. You can regulate yourself and still set a boundary. You can regulate yourself and disagree. You can regulate yourself and say no. Those two little letters, that little word that a lot of women have a hard time saying no. The difference is that now you're choosing the response instead of letting the initial emotional surge choose it for you. So the goal isn't to become unbothered. I think there's a misconception that emotionally regulated people just don't get upset or they don't get angry. They don't get anxious. They never lose their patience. They're not realistic. They're not even human. The goal isn't never get triggered again. That's almost impossible. I mean, we are human. The goal is recognize what's happening sooner. Maybe right now you realize you're overwhelmed after you've already yelled. That's awareness. Eventually you start noticing it while it's happening. Then maybe you'll notice it before. And eventually you catch it. And there it is. My jaws tight. I'm getting defensive. I need a minute. That, my friend, is progress. You're creating more space between the trigger and your response. And inside that space, you have choices. This week, I don't want you to try to fix every emotional reaction. I want you to just get curious and start to study yourself. Pick one moment when you notice yourself becoming irritated or anxious or defensive, maybe overwhelmed or quite possibly withdrawn. And afterward, ask yourself what triggered me? What happened in my body? What thought went through my mind? What was already in my emotional cup? And then one final question. What did I actually need in that moment? Maybe you needed a boundary. Maybe you just needed to eat something, or maybe you needed just rest. Maybe you need some reassurance. Maybe you just need five minutes alone. Maybe you need to speak up about something you've been avoiding. Your reactions can give you information. You just have to become willing to listen to them. As we continue this emotional regulation series, I don't want your takeaway to be, I need to control myself better. I'd much rather you start thinking, I want to understand myself better because awareness gives you options. And the earlier you recognize what's happening in your brain and your body, the more opportunity you have to choose what happens next. So this week, remember, notice, pause, regulate, respond. And maybe most importantly, when something spills over this week, don't only look at what bumped the cup. Ask yourself what's already filling the cup. If this episode made you think of another woman who's been wondering why her emotions seem to go from zero to 60 lately, please send her this episode. And if you're enjoying the emotional regulation series, follow the show so you don't miss part three. Because next, we're going to keep going deeper into what emotional regulation actually looks like in real life. Not just understanding why you react, but learning how to work with those emotions when they show up. I'll see you next week, my friend. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Be sure to hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next week. And before you go today, would you do me a quick favor? Please leave a rating in review. Your support will help more women find the show. Remember, you're not broken. Your body just needs support. Until next time, keep calming the mind, supporting the body, and creating the conditions for better sleep. Sweet dreams.