Live with Dr.Charryse 🧠: “When you Feel Like You Can’t Keep Up With Life”

Good morning, Kaidro Sphere. I hope that the sound of my voice finds you as well as possible. If you are listening to this in real time. There's a lot going on in the world. There's always been a lot going on in the world, but in particular, we're coming right on the cusp of Hurricane Helene. I, being someone who's located in North Carolina, this is still very near and dear to my heart as I'm watching so many areas that are right around the corner, corner areas that I frequent still be devastated and ravaged.

So with that in mind, I don't want to jump in and assume that everything is great, but I hope that today is as well as it can possibly be for you. Which leads us to where we often begin two ways. Where are you in the world? So that we can create that collective opportunity to remind ourselves that we are not alone and that there are people all across the nation joining together and looking for community and looking for support. And then rate your week. If you had to rate your week on a scale of one to ten, what would you rate it?

One, meaning it's down in the dumps, ten, meaning it's been a fabulous week thus far. This is just your opportunity, your simple way to check in and ask yourself, where am I? Am I good with where I am? What do I need? Do I want to stay here, or am I seeking some type of progress or improvement? And if this is your first time here, I'm so glad you came. I'm Doctor Charisse Johnson, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. And I come into this space a couple times a week to help you work through all things, life and particularly, what does it mean to live well, love well, and play well, and how do you continue to cultivate that?

You know, I was thinking the other day that the way that I personally talk to myself when things are busy and chaotic and demanding can be very different than the way that I speak to myself when things are calmer and less overwhelming. And I think that's pretty true for most of us. This is also a season where I'm looking around and I'm watching all of this commercialism around, pushing and pressing, and I tend to see it from the end of the year all the way to the beginning of the new year. So one of the things that I want to just acknowledge, and some of you may have heard me speak to this before, is that this actually isn't the time to push or to press.

You're going to see all these memes and commercials and posts that are telling you you have three months left in the end of the year, fight to the finish, push hard and do all of those things. And that is a perspective, right? Maybe that is something that you want to do. And if that's what you want, by all means do what you need to do. But if that's also where you are, I want you to pay attention to how you're speaking to yourself and the impact that it's having on you to want to push to that degree.

During a time of year where all signs tell us to do something very different. Fall is a time, in many ways, to fall back. Like, even the name of the season speaks to how we can utilize it and what's important. Fall is a season where we see the time of year shorten, where the days get darker earlier, which forces that additional melatonin to begin to rise into our circadian rhythm. We notice that we start to get tired a little bit earlier and there's a desire to sleep more. And all of those things are appropriate and accurate for what your body needs.

I might say that every week from here until the end of the year, so that we can really learn to embrace what even ecologically is happening and what biologically is designed to happen in us. So I want you to really keep that in mind as we focus into today. I want us to talk about expectations. One of the first things I was thinking about, you know, when I kind of look at this topic, is, what did you learn growing up about meeting expectations? And if you're comfortable, share a little bit with us in the chat.

Right. Did you grow up in a home where there were no expectations? And you're like, I don't really care. Care. There were never any expectations on me. I kind of did what I want. And so maybe I struggled when people did have expectations on me. Or perhaps you grew up in a home that had very high expectations. Whether those expectations were spoken or unspoken, they were very extreme. And as a result of that, you constantly felt like you had this moving bar that you always had to reach. And maybe the only time that you were given any type of validation or praise or support was when you were being a high achiever.

Now, for some of us, that's intrinsic. Some of us, no one places a ton of expectations on us, and we are just like that on our own. We can be our own worst enemy at times. And then you may have lived in a situation or grown up in a situation where no matter what you did, it wasn't enough. There was always a fire to put out. There was always something that needed to be done or accomplished or a little bit more that you can do. And I really encourage you to take inventory around who are the influences in your life growing up.

Who are the influences now that are impacting the expectations that you're putting on yourself? And particularly how is that influencing the way that you are speaking to yourself in this moment? Now, my hope for you is that you're in a season where you are speaking to yourself profoundly, where you are telling the world, hey, I know what I need to do. I don't need you to tell me. I will move at a pace that is in alignment with what I value for myself and taking care of myself. That is dream scenario.

That is my dream for you always. But if you are not there, I do want you to take a moment and reflect on who are the influences, both past and present, that influence what you expect of yourself. And then spend some time really considering what expectations are you currently placing on yourself. And as a result of those expectations, how are you talking to yourself? What's your inner dialogue saying to you? Are you saying things like, you're doing amazing job, hang in there? Or do you notice that you're saying things to yourself like, what is wrong with me?

Why can't I do anything right? I need to do more. I need to sleep less. Right? Because the quality of your inner dialogue, your inner critical voice, is going to tell you what your expectations are. And those pieces together, what you're saying to yourself, what those expectations are, how those expectations are rooted in beliefs and core beliefs that you've had as you grow up, combine to really pour into our state of mental well being. If you constantly feel like you don't live up to the expectations that you've set for yourself or that others have set for you, you're not typically going to feel too great about yourself.

But you get to choose what you expect, right? Maybe that's something that you write down somewhere. I get to choose what I expect for myself because part of how we get caught into the rat race and the comparison trap and feeling overwhelmed like we're not doing enough is we start paying attention to the people around us. So it is important to have a level of blinders on when it comes to your expectations so that you don't allow the unrealistic expectations that other people have to make you feel like, oh, maybe I need to be doing more now.

There's a balance to that. It's great to have people around us that motivate us it's great to have movers and shakers around us that encourage us. Wow, we can do really impactful things and very inspiring things with our life if we want to. Those kind of people make us better. But if those kind of people are in our life and they are unhealthy and they are constantly on the go and they're not taking care of themselves, well, then it can make us feel like, well, if they're busy, if they're doing more, maybe I need to do the same thing.

And I want to remind you today, that is not true. We all have a unique capacity to the amount of effort, the amount of work, the amount of initiatives that is healthy for us. And it's important for you to have a good understanding of what pace allows you to continue to take care of yourself well. And then how do you know when you are starting to move off of that pace? And as a result of that, your expectations change, and then you find yourself in a situation where you're like, hey, I'm talking to myself in ways that I have really worked to cut ties with and to abandon, because it never fails.

When our pace is too great, when the expectations are too high, we have a tendency to beat ourselves up. We have a tendency to be highly unkind to ourselves quietly. Right? So I don't want you to just focus on what are you putting out there to the world, because someone will see you and ask you how you're doing. You're like, I'm great. I'm good. I'm doing all things I want you to pay attention to. What are you saying to yourself in those more quiet moments? What are you saying to yourself at the end of the day?

What are you saying to yourself when you're exhausted? Are you speaking to yourself through a lens of compassion? Or are you allowing your expectations to yell and scream at you to the point where it tears you down if you're there, see what it would be like to move over to a more neutral state, then possibly over to a state of being very proud of all that you accomplish in one day. Here's one thing that I want to encourage you to do as an application piece as you go throughout the rest of the week and get to the end of each day, I want you to sit down and remind yourself of three wins that you've experienced.

This is going to be really challenging for some of you. I know that there are a few of you that the moment I said that, you were like a win experience wins every day. Yes, you do. If you look for them. And if you identify them, three things that you're like, that was a win. I showed up today. I got dressed today. I followed through on what I said. I want it for myself today. Right, that's an example. It can be just that simple. But I want you to search for those wins and become accustomed to really shifting and turning the needle, moving the needle in your life around the expectations that you place on yourself.

Notice when the expectations that you place on yourself are causing you to feel like you're not enough. To feel like you are not capable of doing the things that you've set for yourself. Sometimes you're just set too much out there for yourself, and it's just time to put some things on pause or remind yourself that everything does not have to be done today. Maybe that's what you remember if you remember nothing else. I want you to remember that everything does not have to be done today. Prioritize right what's important and pay attention to what you need and how you feel.

And remind yourself every single day you're enough. You've always been enough. You just have to believe it. All right, we'll talk soon. Have amazing rest of the day.