Rachel’s Room🛋️

Happy Thursday. Cadre crew. Hello. I'm so sorry I'm a few minutes late. I am having a very bad time management day and did not set my clocks. I was out of town when daylight savings happened. And so, like, my stove is still set to a different time and whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm here. I. Hopefully you're here. I had therapy today, which was really great because I really needed it today. And she talked. We talked about some really interesting things that I wanted to share and that are actually very relevant to this month's topic on Cadre.

Hi, Speak, Wonder. Hi, Rachel. This month on Cadre, the theme is acceptance. And today my therapist went over. Wow. It is dumping outside a practice that's in acceptance and commitment therapy called. Oh, God, am I gonna remember this now? The acronym is ace, Accept, Connect, Engage. So the whole idea is to use this exercise as, like, a grounding technique. In moments when I find myself either numb or dissociating or, like, noticing that I'm distracting myself from a big feeling, which I do a lot.

And so the. The idea is like, let's say I notice that I'm. I'm numbing or I'm not really, like, connecting with my body or my emotions. I first acknowledge it's acknowledge on accept. Acknowledge what I'm thinking or feeling. So I might say out loud, or if I'm in public, I can write it down or think it. Like, I. I notice I'm having thoughts about all the things I have to do. I notice I'm. My body is feeling tight. I notice I'm losing touch with my surroundings. I notice, and I just name everything that I'm noticing, and then I connect.

So then I connect with my physical body. So that might mean, like, wiggling my fingers or wiggling my toes, moving my arms in some way, trying to just get my body, like, moving, stretching, and really getting in the body and out of the head and then engage. So looking around the space I'm in, maybe naming things, I see sort of noticing what's around me in my physical environment. And the idea is to sort of, like, give ourselves, like, a quick little pause and a way to get out of our head and into our body and then also back into the space.

So we did that today on my call with her, and it was really helpful because I noticed that, like, immediately afterwards, I was like, okay, I'm not in my head as much because I live up here. This is where Rachel lives, is in the brain, and I need to work on getting more in my body and connecting with my body. So that was a tool that she taught me today that I'm gonna try and start implementing. Because I also have noticed that one of the big reasons at the end of the day that I'm so, like, I feel so exhaust it at the end of the day.

And it's not like a kind of fatigue that I feel when I've like, exercised a lot or like been like studying a lot. Like, it feels like, like it feels like a spiritual fatigue. And I'm realizing that it's because I don't give myself moments throughout the day to be what I call off duty. Because the reality is like, I am on duty all the time. Whether it's for work, whether it's for play, whether it's for well being, whether it's for Milo, whether it' my friends, I'm on duty and I need to carve out intentional times throughout my day where Rachel is off duty.

I am. I don't answer to anyone. I don't have anything required of me. And this is not necessarily like rotting time or like intentional rest or meditation, because that's still on duty. It's just like, I don't. I. It's like an hour of vacation for my brain. And. And I'm realizing that, like, I really need that because I notice at the end of the day that's all I want is to like, be off duty. But my nervous system is so wired from being so on all day long that it's really hard for me to unwind. So my unwinding at the end of the day is still active, which means I'm not really ever giving my parasympathetic a chance to relax.

So I my homework along with doing this. This ace practice is to schedule out my day where I am scheduling in off duty time, which means I have to schedule my schedule. So when I get off of this live with you guys, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna schedule for my week. These are times that I'm off duty. And I think this will be really helpful because I work for myself and I work online. And I'm noticing that my work boundaries are bad right now. Like I'm. I wake up and the first thing I do is check my email.

I check social media, I check my texts, I check all my apps. I am on and available from the minute I wake up. And I need to practice not being on and available all the time. And it's very hard when my phone is with me all the time. And it's how I have access to everything. And also when a lot of my work revolves around being on apps on my cell phone. And so making sure that I'm being much better about my work boundaries, I think will also help with that really, really intense fatigue at the end of the day because I'm also doing a lot of scrolling, doing a lot of scrolling on the apps and a lot of consuming and that's a lot of information for a brain to process all day long and it's not really meant to do that.

So this is my admission of being addicted to my phone as well and needing to do a better job of scheduling times that I'm using it for work and scheduling times when I am off duty. So gonna try and work on that and then we'll report back on how that's going. Love the Rachel says, love the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. Yes, that is an excellent mindfulness exercise. I love that one very much. Just walked into a wall because I was so focused on what you're saying. I hope you're okay. Please be careful. Walked into a wall.

I've done that so many times. I'm the queen of walking into things and tripping on things, which is also a product of multitasking, which I'm also trying to do less of. I'm trying to do more of one thing in the moment, one thing at a time, to give my body and brain a chance to like, focus on one thing at a time and also not get hyper involved in a lot of different things, which is also like keeping my nervous system super, super high Activated. No. A black eye. Oh my God. That's terrifying. Um, thawi.

Maybe put some ice on it, baby. Oh, I'm sorry. Also, I have to share. I just got this handheld sewing machine that I'm incredibly excited about so, so that I can hem things at home, but I think I've already broken it because another thing that I like to do is start using things without reading instructions. Does that work for me? No. Do I keep doing it? Yep. So I'm gonna read the instructions and actually use this properly because again, practicing doing things slowly instead of rushing and feeling like I have to do things fast, I can take the time to read instructions and do it the right way and not get frustrated and not have things break right after I use them.

So there's a lot of things I'm trying to do for my well being right now. It feels like a long list. I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest so I hope you all had a lovely Halloween and that you're settling into November. I don't know about you, but it is disgusting here in Seattle. It is so gray and so rainy. The season has begun. So here we are. Here we are. Well, I am wishing you all a lot of love and off duty time and single tasking. And I will report back next week on how it goes and what I learn.

Love you all so much and I'm really happy you're here. See you next week. Ta. Bye. Off to sew that? It's. What the. Really? Really. Oh, my God. So what did you do? What did you just do? Not unreal. What the. All right. It. It's. It's Sam. It's okay. Go to your bed. Go to your bed. Good boy. It.