Episode Six: Why We Keep Outrunning Ourselves

Episode 6 of Becoming the Sanctuary explores a question that has been quietly sitting beneath many of the conversations this season: what are we actually running from?

Over the last several episodes, we've talked about emotional disappearing, nervous systems that don't trust peace, and the difficulty many people experience when they finally try to rest. Yet beneath those conversations sits another reality. Many people know they are exhausted. Many people know they need to slow down. Many people know they are overwhelmed. And still, they continue moving.

They fill every empty space. They stay busy. They stay distracted. They stay focused on what's next.

This episode explores the possibility that busyness is not always about productivity. Sometimes it is about distance.

Distance from grief.

Distance from uncertainty.

Distance from disappointment.

Distance from difficult conversations.

Distance from uncomfortable emotions.

Distance from questions we don't yet know how to answer.

And sometimes, distance from ourselves.

One of the most challenging realizations in any healing journey is recognizing that avoidance rarely looks the way we expect it to. Most people do not wake up in the morning consciously deciding to avoid their emotions. In fact, many avoidance patterns hide inside behaviors that appear productive, responsible, and even admirable.

Work can become a distraction. Productivity can become a distraction. Helping everyone else can become a distraction. Constant planning can become a distraction. Even meaningful goals and dreams can sometimes keep us focused outward instead of looking inward.

The method changes, but the pattern often stays the same.

Drawing from her own recovery journey, Kelley reflects on the realization that many of the ways people learn to avoid themselves begin long before they recognize them. Alcohol was one form of escape, but it certainly wasn't the only one. Overworking, overthinking, worrying, fixing, helping, and constantly focusing on everyone else's needs can all create the same outcome: distance from what is happening inside of us.

This conversation is not about judgment. It is not about labeling distraction as bad or suggesting that every form of busyness is unhealthy. Instead, it is an invitation to become curious about the role distraction plays in our lives and to ask a simple but powerful question:

What becomes uncomfortable when everything finally gets quiet?

Modern life makes that question increasingly difficult to answer. Never before have people had access to so much information, entertainment, stimulation, and distraction. We carry endless content in our pockets. We can scroll, stream, shop, watch, listen, consume, and distract ourselves almost instantly.

Yet despite being more connected than ever, many people feel increasingly disconnected from themselves.

This episode explores the difference between enjoyment and avoidance, between recreation and escape, and between rest and numbing. Those distinctions matter because not everything that feels relieving is actually restorative.

Sometimes distraction provides a healthy break. Sometimes it creates temporary relief. But sometimes it becomes a barrier between ourselves and the emotions, truths, and experiences that have been waiting for our attention.

Kelley also reflects on themes explored through Thrivewell Book Club and The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest. The book's exploration of self-sabotage, emotional patterns, and avoidance offers a powerful lens through which to examine the ways people often create distance from the very things that could help them heal.

One of the most important ideas discussed throughout the episode is that awareness alone is rarely enough. Most people already know their patterns. They know what they avoid. They know the habits they fall back on when life becomes difficult. The challenge is not awareness. The challenge is developing the courage to stay present when discomfort arises instead of immediately looking for an exit.

As the conversation unfolds, attention shifts toward what happens when we finally stop running.

What emotions have been waiting underneath the noise?

What truths become visible when the distractions quiet down?

What parts of ourselves have been patiently waiting for our attention?

For many people, the answer is not what they expect.

Sometimes what surfaces is grief. Sometimes it is loneliness, fear, uncertainty, or regret. But sometimes what emerges is clarity. Sometimes it is intuition. Sometimes it is creativity. Sometimes it is the realization that the very thing we've spent years trying to avoid is also the doorway to healing.

At its heart, Why We Keep Outrunning Ourselves is a conversation about presence. It is about recognizing that many of our coping mechanisms began as protection. They helped us survive difficult seasons. They served a purpose. The challenge comes when those same strategies continue long after they are needed.

Healing asks something different of us.

It asks us to slow down long enough to hear ourselves.

To become curious instead of critical.

To sit with discomfort without immediately trying to escape it.

And to recognize that what we avoid often grows, while what we face often begins to soften.

If you've ever found yourself constantly busy, constantly distracted, uncomfortable with stillness, or wondering why slowing down feels harder than it should, this episode offers a compassionate exploration of what may be happening beneath the surface.

Because sometimes the greatest distance we travel is the distance between ourselves and our own truth.

And sometimes the journey home begins the moment we stop running.

#BecomingTheSanctuary #ThrivewellEstate #HealingJourney #EmotionalHealing #NervousSystemHealing #SelfAwareness #PersonalGrowth #TheMountainIsYou #MentalWellness #Mindfulness #Embodiment #RecoveryJourney #InnerHealing #SelfDiscovery #HealingPodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello everyone and welcome back to Becoming the Sanctuary. If this is your first time here, my name is Kelly, founder of Thrive Well Estate and our first physical branch, Thrive Well Hub, located in Whitensville, Massachusetts. And this podcast is a space where we explore healing, embodiment, emotional awareness, nervous system regulation, creativity, human connection, and what it actually means to return to yourself while still living inside a very overwhelming world. Now, over the last few episodes, we've spent a lot of time talking about survival, what it looks like to disappear from ourselves, what it feels like when the nervous system doesn't trust peace, why rest can feel uncomfortable, guilty, or even undeserved. And while preparing for today's episode, I found myself coming back to a question that I couldn't quite shake. If so many of us are exhausted, why do we keep going? Why do we keep filling every empty space? Why do we reach for our phones the second life gets quiet? Why do we stay busy even when the busyness itself is exhausting us? Why do we keep adding more when we really need might be less? Because I don't think most people are consciously choosing to overwhelm themselves. And I don't think most people wake up in the morning and decide they want more stress, more pressure, more noise, or more responsibilities. And yet, somehow that's exactly where so many of us find ourselves. Constantly moving, constantly consuming, constantly distracted, constantly planning for what's next. And the more I've reflected on this in my own life, the more I've started to realize that sometimes busyness has very little to do with productivity. Sometimes movement creates distance, distance from grief, from uncertainty, distance from difficult conversations, distance from disappointment, distance from the questions we don't yet know how to answer. And sometimes, if we're really honest, distance from ourselves. One of the most difficult parts of recovery for me wasn't quitting drinking. And it wasn't learning how to rebuild my life. And it wasn't even learning how to sit with difficult emotions. It was realizing how many ways I had learned to avoid myself long before alcohol ever entered the picture. I could disappear into other people's problems. I could disappear into work, into planning, into worry. I could disappear into fixing. The method changed, but the pattern stayed the same. And I think that's something many people can relate to. Because modern life gives us endless opportunities to avoid ourselves. If we're uncomfortable, there's content. If we're lonely, there's distraction. If we're uncertain, there's noise. If we're hurting, there's always something available to help us look away for a little while. But the problem is that eventually the things we're running from don't disappear. They simply wait for us. And eventually every person reaches a moment where the noise gets quieter, the distractions stop working, and they're left sitting across from themselves. And that can be one of the most uncomfortable experiences in the world. So today's episode is really about why we keep outrunning ourselves, what we might be running from, and what becomes possible when we finally stop. All right. But before we get fully into this episode, and and I like to start my organized rambling, is like what I like to call it. Instead of controlled chaos, it's it's controlled rambling. Um so even though I record these episodes a few days prior, um today, as you're listening to this, is Friday, and I have also just put out an announcement on social media um explaining that there will be a bit of a change in hours in the apothecary. Um, and that is because I have gotten a full-time day job. Now, I'm sure that some will start to understand um what that day job is, but just for a little bit of my own privacy, um, I'm I'm just gonna say that it's it's a position that happened organically um through my own education and networking for ThriveWell. And it's just really aligned um with where I am and and you know, advocating for people and and helping people feel seen and heard. And so it just felt really right. But I'm adding that into this podcast because I want to talk about how that fits in um to this, to this episode, right? The title itself, why we keep outrunning ourselves. And I can tell you with a hundred percent honesty that working a full-time job on top of managing Thrive Well and building the community and the brand is is a recipe that that could create this distance from myself. So I have had to work very hard. It's a lot of schedules that I've worked and reworked and decisions based on not only what I need um for myself with Rival and this new position, but also with what I need for my home life and my personal life and and my my physical well-being and my mental well-being. Because, like I said, this has the recipe for me being able to just hit the ground running and forget about myself and and the people um that I love dearly. So I'm going to be looking a lot about at this episode with a little bit of a different lens, um, but also very proud of the work that I've already done to find balance in taking care of myself and make sure I have that rest. Because I don't think I would have made the decision that I did um, you know, to even close the hub for Sunday altogether. But I have to look at it, life is not these, you know, life is is a big picture made up of smaller temporary moments in life. And, you know, this is just the next pivot and the next stepping stone to be able to have that bigger picture um come to fruition and and build it in a way that I don't lose myself and I also don't collapse um, you know, what what I see thrive well becoming before it even has the opportunity to get there. So now that I've explained all that, not sure if even that made any sense. Thankfully, I will have a post that is a lot more, is less rambling and a lot more about the information um and the hours that we will be open and how that affects workshops, events, and all of that. So I would direct you to that post. And like I say, I'm always keeping you updated. And who knows, maybe eventually I can hire someone and some of the apothecary hours can come back. Um, but for right now, this is where we are. And what I want to talk about first is kind of that idea how motion um cre creates distance, distance from ourselves, distance from our loved ones, um, distance from the parts of ourselves or our habits that we need to face. Because staying busy is and has and can become a complete coping mechanism. You know, even in my own life, when I when I first got sober and I was really starting on my healing journey, you know, I'd given up alcohol and um it really jumped because when I came home from sober living and and being down the cape and starting my full-time job, I really became a workaholic because I wasn't quite ready to be able to, or I didn't think no, I it's not that I wasn't ready, I was afraid to face parts of myself now that I felt really raw and vulnerable. And that's the gift of of the healing journey is that you get to start feeling that way, but it can be really scary at the time at the same time. So I found myself, whether it was with work or or um, you know, special events or parties or hanging out with friends, I was I was filling every single empty moment that I possibly could. So much so that I had to get into the habit of giving myself permission to do nothing. I would put that into my calendar, do nothing days. Now, many people who knew me um back then and and slightly still even now, um, is that I didn't fully do nothing, right? I still had to do laundry or something, but I was still working on it. And even the fact that I was trying was better than not even being aware or acknowledging it um whatsoever. So it's just this idea that we constantly need to have something to do. Because, like we've talked about a few times now in the last few episodes, is that productivity it becomes a distraction, right? So we're we're all about the overworking, the overcommitting, the overplanning, and we're always looking ahead, right? We're future tripping, we're not looking at what we have now and how far we've come. Um, because a lot of it and a lot of the movement that we are are creating is is distance from our own emotion. And you know, I I remember my dad telling me, and um quite a few people in early recovery as well, is the good news is is you get your emotions back. But the bad news is is you get your emotions back. So I can totally relate and understand how scary um emotions can be, and it's it's that fear of the unknown. So I think the more that we look at you know, when we are busy and when we are working in any area of our life, just trying to ask ourselves am I manufacturing this busyness to avoid something, or is this actually needed? Because there will be parts of your life that we do need to work hard and we do need to push through, but we just look at the motivation and the intention behind it. And a lot of what helps me um in those moments is thinking about what we are actually running from. Like we said, we talked about the emotional part of it. Are we running away from grief? Are we running away from that uncertainty, that unknown? Uh, it took me years to finally be accepting of the unknown, walking into the unknown. Because a lot of times, even if we have chaos in our life or we're living an unhealthy lifestyle, we at least know what's coming. We know there's there's comfort in the chaos. I I can relate to that directly. But now it is more I search for the unknown, because within the unknown, yes, is the fearful of that we can't plan every waking minute of it. But as we talked about before, that's not really possible, anyways, because anything can happen. We need to have an idea of what our plan is, um, but not have it rock solid. But in addition to that, in the unknown is possibilities and change and feeling different and healing. So as scary as it can be, sometimes still I really do lean into it. Something else that we can be running from is loneliness. You know, I had moments in my life where I was lonely while in relationships in my past. And anybody who can relate to that or can understand um loneliness while you're in the company of others or in a partnership is some of the scariest loneliness to face. So I can understand, and and certainly did it myself, running away from that. And then we have the own own feelings of ourselves from the past or or present, is the disappointment, um, the regret, the fear that we have. Sometimes when we have to face a difficult decision, um, or we have to face identity questions, or just the uncomfortable truths of life. We we find, you know, there's something that I learned about as well on my healing journey, is something called toxic positivity. And I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but I'm gonna do my best to explain it. And is is when we don't give any of these negative emotions any attention, right? So we just want to think positive and be positive. But if someone you love very, very much with your whole heart unexpectedly dies, are you supposed to find the positivity in that right away? Or are you supposed to sit in that grief and really feel it so that you can really process it and understand that you don't have an answer for why this happened, but you can sit there with yourself and your support system and understand how hard it is and how much it sucks and how much it hurts, because it does. But if we are are pretending that these negative emotions don't exist and we're just living in this positive world, um, like we we even talk about in the philosophy, everything is a yin and a yang, everything is dark and light and the and the shadow, it's there. We if we try to work our way around it, we're we're just gonna keep shrinking and the chains are just gonna get tighter. So that's where it really leads to emotions that never get processed. Um, because I promise you, I'm I'm not a betting woman, but those emotions that don't get processed, they come out at some point. Um, you just don't know when. It it depends on how good you are at staying distracted and not allowing them to bubble up. Is it something when it gets quiet when you retire? Is it something, you know, when you find yourself single or without a job? Because things will eventually get quiet because life does. And um, I've had it where I've had to process a lot of moments in my life all at once. And trust me when I say it's easier to process them as they come. Now sorry, just taking a sip of my coffee and stripping all over me. A little warm today. But now this is a topic that we we are going to keep coming back to, and we have um pretty much in every single episode, until really modern life makes a change. Which I don't know, you talk to anybody, it could go one or it could go either way. I don't know, but it feels like a pendulum is swinging back the other way, but we still have to acknowledge that modern life makes escape easy. I mean, let's start with your phone, right? Because it doesn't mean that phones are bad or that technology is bad, or even when we think about how we could use social media in a productive way. Um, but these everything in life can become bad if we use it in a way that is to escape ourselves, our situation, life itself. So we really have to look at the difference between these tools and avoidance. I've been, and I talked about it, I believe it was last week, I've been really starting to keep track about when I do that doom scroll, right? Where I'm I'm sitting at the hub or at my house, and I have no reason to pick up my phone and just start scrolling. Or to be perfectly honest, sometimes there is a reason I'm picking up my phone, but my thumb just goes to Facebook or to Instagram or TikTok. And now I found myself scrolling, and I'm looking at whoever's in my space and saying, wait, what was I doing? That happened to you, um, because I think it happens to a lot of us. I know it happens to a lot of us, and so we have to think about what is my point of using this tool, and um what am I using it for right now? My friend, he shared, you know, he has he has a big equestrian team, and um, they ride in the discipline of dressage, and and I just love how honest he is about you know the hard work it takes to succeed and and what we have to sacrifice, but what we have to really save our energy to put into. But he shared um videos of himself at a um a competition over this last weekend. I think it was this last weekend, yeah. And he shared it with Amel Robbins voiceover, and she talks about social media, and and I really am grateful that he shared that because it I've really been wrestling with that idea myself because social media is here, and it's hard to just remove it altogether. And like we always talk about in everything, there is balance. So it's she talks about what social media is there for, it's not for other people, it's for us, it's for us to share our life and to share our gifts and share our struggles and and our triumphs, and you know, to just share that part of ourselves with the rest of the world in a modern time. Um, and I think that's a beautiful way to look at it. And like I said, I'm very grateful that he shared that. And I think we need more people sharing that idea that the answer isn't just to boycott it or to shut it out. Certain of these tools, they're here, and how do we start using them in a way that we can use them in safety? Because the scrolling and the the never-ending, you know, these ads, and and how many of you have gone so far down a rabbit hole you bought something off of one of these um, I don't know, just even just advertisements, or you're talking to somebody about something and suddenly you're you're on your computer for work or you're on your phone and you're just getting ads all over the place. The shopping can become um an escape, whether we do that in person. I personally, the summer I got sober, probably spent about $10,000 at the TJ Maxx down in Falmouth. Um, because that's how I was escaping. And it wasn't even like I had my job that summer was to get sober, right? So I did create a a nice little pocket of time for me not to feel these these crazy responsibilities, but it was my emotions myself that I was trying to escape, even though I didn't realize it at the time. And then something else that helps it um help us escape is binge watching. You know, we it no more are the times that you get to just watch one episode of something and have to wait till next week, or um, you know, or you just have to rely with what's on. No, now we can pick a show and oh, I love the ones that are like a show I discovered that have 20 seasons, right? That's the ultimate binge watching. But sometimes, you know, to be able to have the ability to sit there and rest and watch a couple episodes of something, again, you want we want the balance. And and like we talked about, we want to look at the difference. Are we using it to use it or are we using it to avoid something? Um because it's there's endless, there's endless content. I just hit my microphone. Um, endless content everywhere. Escape is easy, staying is harder. Because right now in this world, we feel like we need to stay stimulated, and and God forbid, boredom pops up, right? We have to avoid boredom. Um You know, like it like it's our job. And think about think about how we're passing this on to the next generation. How many of you have kids or have seen kids? You know, I love I do love those videos that I see during my doom scroll. I know I'm being a little hypocritical there, but like I said, I'm still on my own healing journey where it's like a road trip in the 90s that we're watching the raindrops on the window and which one wins. And and that's what preoccupies our time as we're going on a road trip. And now it's like you need to have the tablet and the phone and and toys and you know how much it it takes. Um, and and then the boredom is still there, right? Let's let's try to bring it back to the simpler ways. Um, so we are not so overstimulated, but we're still using these tools to our advantage. Um because when we remove it all away, that's why silence can feel really, really uncomfortable. And I don't know. I think the way you think about it is is that dissociation. You know, it's almost like distraction has become the modern anesthesia that it's just we can't even I mean, even just thinking about when you're driving down the road, sometimes I can dissociate so bad because I don't know what to do in those moments of not having some sort of distraction, and all I have is to drive the car, and then I end up at my destination and I don't even remember the journey. Um, but just always remember like I said, we're not gonna be able to just get rid of every distraction, that's not the point. Um, it's understanding the difference between enjoyment and avoidance. So, really just kind of remember that part. But as we move on, um how the pattern can change shape. Like I told you, when I first got sober, um, you know, at first it was alcohol. Alcohol was my form of escape, and it got very, very dangerous, and it worked really, really well. Um and then after I gave that up, I was in treatment and it jumped into shopping, and then I became a shopaholic, and that summer was over, and I had to come back into the quote unquote real world, so I got a job, and then I became a workaholic. Um, and then there was a bit that I had to really slow down even my own healing because I was becoming my isms were just going into that, you know, never seeing a product that I was happy with. I felt like I had to read another book, had to take another course. And and it's I always want to be better, but it's just sitting with where I am now and being grateful for what I have and and how far that I've come. Um, and it doesn't even have to be, you know, work in a sense of working for somebody else. It's you see the people who can never stop doing yard work. Um, it's that productivity. That's another shape that it can take. Or are you constantly helping everyone else? You know, do you have one day off a week and you said to your best friend you're gonna use it to help them move? And and it's not to say you don't help your friend move, but maybe say, hey, I have an hour or two to give you, not the whole day. I have things I need to do for myself, and you know, and and that's how we can help ourselves and our friend, and and not feel like our whole week is now burned out because we didn't create the space um and the time because we were worried about what would pop up if we did slow down just enough. Um, overthinking, that's a big one. How many of you have the overthinking gene? And I mean, I would go ahead and say I've talked to a good amount of people, and I would say that that is with a lot of us. Um we're overthinking, overthinking situations that could pop up, conversations that we've had in our past, where moments we could have done better, or fear of what could go wrong. And that's what puts us into this, we have to plan constantly. I remember seeing a therapist, you know, a few years ago, and and I was talking about that, you know, the overthinking in the worst case scenario. I was I was locked at the intersection of those two. And and she wanted me to break that down a bit. And so I told her, I said, Well, I just wanna, you know, what if this happens and what if that happens, and what if this happens, and I want to have plan A, B, C, D, all the way to Z. And she just looked at me and she said, What human being could actually be prepared for any situation that popped up? And and that's not the point. It's not the point that we need to fix everything or that we have to have a plan for everything. We have to sit with ourselves enough that when the moment comes that we need to pivot or we need to adjust or we need to make a different plan, that we haven't escaped into all these things, that we actually can sit with ourselves and the emotions that we feel and still walk forward through all of those feelings and trust that if I am there with myself, right? The goal is that that our body becomes safety. We are where we feel safe. And and everybody else that we've chosen to have in our life, they add to that. Um, we trust that given all the information that we have at the time, we're gonna make the best decision for ourselves and our loved ones to go forward. Um, because even like I said, where I'm at right now, I have to be very careful with this path forward because even meaningful work can become avoidance. I can I can put myself into the position of whether I'm at Thrive Well or this new position, or just in my you know, life in general, that I'm avoiding what I need to look at in myself, whether that be I think I should be further than I am, or the what's popping up, the deeper I go, the scarier it can get. But but it's also the deeper I go, the freer I feel, the safer I feel. So it's worth it. Um, and like I said, the method can change, but the pattern stays the same. So I know that I keep talking about this, and I really should start plugging our next book, um, letting go, because that is the book that we are on now. But I cannot let go of The Mountain is you. That book, and and we still have a couple of copies here. You don't need to order it from me. If somebody has a copy or you can order it, whatever is most convenient for you, do it. Because the self-sabotage, right? Because that book, if you remember, is is talking about how to to change self-sabotage into self-mastery. And to be to be able to do that, we have to be aware of where our self-sabotage is coming up. And there's so many avoidance patterns that that come up within that too. And and these same emotional patterns that that keep repeating, and we're just creating the distractions from the deeper truths, and that's why a lot of the common theme too is that awareness alone isn't enough. We start we need to start embodying these habits because the more that we embody the habits that are good for us, and that teaching us to stay and not outrun ourselves, and even when it's hard and you're uncomfortable. You know, I just had my my first book reading, not many people came, but I still got nervous. I was shaking, I was visibly shaking, and that uncomfortableness, especially in front of even just one person. Everything inside of me wanted to be like, you know what? Let's just not even do this. This this is silly, I'm not ready. But what did I do? I just read the book with the shaky voice, and then the body starts shaking. I started tearing up a little bit, I was not comfortable, but I stayed. I stayed and I read, and I read what I planned to read, and I got through it, and that's what I think that you will start to understand that the mountain is you, right? Just like that book says. We to climb that mountain, we have to face ourselves, but then understand how beautiful that growth can become when you do become the mountain that's just standing tall and knowing that you can now climb any of any other ones. Um and then other things about sitting with ourselves and our emotions and everything is you can't say, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't look at any part of my healing journey and say that any of it is is um possible without accountability and honesty. It's honesty with yourself when you're when you're sliding backwards, you know, when those old habits try to come back in. And it's the accountability of showing up with compassion to yourself and with others, because the more that we hold ourselves accountable is is the more that we stay on the right path of who we really want to be and where we really want to go and and who we want to take with us. And my honesty and my accountability is something that I am some of the most proud of now. And I can I I can promise you that if you are accountable and you are honest, I have a hard time finding any situation that somebody would still continue to be upset with you or disappointed in you, or whatever it is that we think is going to happen and is is keeping us from being accountable or honest with ourselves and to others. I've never been met with negative. I've always been met with understanding, um, respect, and it's it the more you do it, the easier the practice becomes. Um so now the question is, right, because we've talked about why we outrun ourselves and pretty much a common theme throughout these last few episodes, but what happens when we finally stop, right? Because eventually, whether that comes from just sheer exhaustion or it takes decades and decades and decades, and our body starts slowing down, everything starts to come to the surface. So whether it be emotions, grief, clarity, truth, it it all starts to come up, right? And for me, I wanted that to not that I wanted it to just bubble to the surface, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I did not want all that coming up to the surface on my deathbed when I really couldn't do much about it anymore. Um, so that's I don't want to wait till then. I want to do it now and I want to get better and I want to understand myself. And I want to realize what I've been carrying this whole time. Because once you realize what you're carrying, that's how you let it go. And if you can't, if it's something you can't let go, then you understand where it's a part of yourself to work on. Because where all of this leads is you reconnecting back to yourself. We're trying to find our way back to our true self, and and that person is in there, but it comes through this type of work where we need to get our nervous system to settle down. You can start to hear your intuition again, your identity becomes clearer, and you really the most healing I have ever had to date is through presence, is when I am right where my feet are. I realize that the grizzly bear is not coming out of the woods. If I'm dealing with difficult conversations, then I handle those conversations one at a time, one topic at a time. If I'm stressing about finances, I'm looking at, okay, what is due today and what is due tomorrow? And I'm trying to figure out my plan in a week-by-week basis, not in a year. That's way too overwhelming. We have to have grace with ourselves, okay? So that's what happens when we finally stop. And so the question is is that when we finally stop and all of this starts to come to the surface, what are you gonna do about it? And for me, that was coming back to the difference between escape and rest. A couple weeks ago, I wasn't even resting. I was escaping, I was still trying to hide myself in even a TV show where I'm saying that that's how I'm resting, I'm gonna sit there. And it's no, I'm I'm escaping on so many levels. So the difference for me in the last few weeks is understanding that difference of escape and rest. My doom scrolling, just a few days of tracking how much I was doing that has significantly lessened because I'm I'm not only just aware of what I'm doing with it, I'm embodying the practice. I'm intentionally putting my phone down, I'm flipping it over, I'm setting a different ringtone for for you know anybody that I really need to talk to that day, that's who I'm popping up and putting a different ringtone on. Doesn't mean I don't care about the other people in my life. I love them dearly. I have a lot of people in my life that I care about, and it can be hard to keep up with everybody, but I realize it's not possible to keep up with everybody every single day, all the time. So now I have different practices, right? Sometimes I'll I'll I've realized that you on a text message you can put it back to as on red. Unfortunately, some people it goes weeks before I respond, but I eventually do. Um, because I've created these practices to protect my rest when I need to. Because rest restores us, but escape delays that. Like we we cannot restore ourselves if we are constantly escaping ourselves. So again, let's remember the difference between avoidance versus recovery, allowing ourselves to rest without all of these distractions and knowing that when something does pop up, we're gonna be in a restored state that we can have a better plan for it going forward. Because we want to think more about intentionally slowing down than slowing down to just be able to escape into all our isms, right? Because we all have isms, it's just a matter of what those are for you personally. So I'm just gonna keep, and and I know a lot of this can start to sound repetitive, um, but that's what it takes. We we are rewiring our brains, we are rewiring our nervous systems, we are rewiring our bodies. We have to start to understand the difference between numbing versus nourishing and learning that difference, right? I I don't want to get this directly spiritual on on the podcast, but I'm gonna say it because anybody who's in recovery for a substance abuse issue, they know the serenity prayer. And if you don't know it and you're curious, look it up because it's all about knowing the difference of what can I change, right? Giving me the courage to change what I can and and then the strength to accept what I can't. And it's the wisdom of knowing the difference, right? And and part of that too, talking about the parts of ourselves that we can change is recognizing the personal patterns and choosing presence every single time over distraction and understanding why that distinction matters. And and try that in your own life, just this week, right? And or if that's too much, take it one day. Take one day where you start to recognize in yourself, right? And and understand when you're escaping and versus when you're resting or or doing something that brings you joy or creativity. I want you to really understand those moments in your own life and and try, try to choose presence over distraction. And what can help when the emotions can get scary or the thoughts that can get scary? There's a saying um that I heard in early recovery too, and it's a grateful heart will never drink. And if you replace never drink with never doom scroll, never binge watch, or never go shopping when I don't have money to go shopping because I don't want to deal with what I'm dealing with. Replace that word with anything else, and that's what helps you on the forward path. Being grateful for what you do have, for being grateful for the problems that you have, right? Because the lessons that can come with that, and the more things, um, situations or whatever that we have, the more problems that can arrive, right? So be grateful for the lessons that come for those, and just be grateful in general, grateful for the shoes on your feet, grateful for the warm bed that you get to sleep in, grateful for the business that gets to cause me so much stress because I'm living my dream, right? Slip the mindset because then once you do that, we start to have a deeper realization, and that deeper realization is something I cannot wait for you to feel because eventually life gets quieter, and eventually, like we said, the distractions stop working, and healing it requires that honesty and that presence. And something that I realized is that when I felt discomfort, it did not mean I was in danger, I didn't have to run away from it, and and that has helped me tenfold. It's gonna help me with this this new position that I have is is getting comfortable doing the uncomfortable work. Because what I realized is that with a hundred percent success rate, that from that uncomfortability comes growth and comes healing. But we have to face whatever is in that uncomfortableness before we can get to to that growth and to that healing and to learning the lesson that we're that we're meant to learn. Um, because emotions are meant to move through us, right? Like there's a reason we cry, there's a reason we laugh, it's it's this energy going through us, and when we store all that energy in us and we avoid, um it will just that energy needs to come out so it grows and it but it's staying stuck in our body, and that's why you see the people eventually things come to a head and they snap, and it's usually they snap over something that is far less insignificant than what the actual um problem is and what they're actually feeling. Because as we start to face all these, like I said, is that it softens it, it softens the feeling within us, it softens the situation, and especially when you open up and you communicate and you find other people going through what you're going through, you no longer feel alone, you you start to understand how somebody else was able to go through it, and and you either help each other or you listen and you understand what it's gonna take to get to that next step. Because once you return to yourself and you become emotionally available to your own life, I mean, feels like your life can just become limitless because you're not you are not holding yourself back, you're not wasting all your energy trying to outrun the very thing that can elevate you and become the catalyst to. The next level of your life. So on that note, it feels like I've been rambling for long enough here. But I want to just wrap this up. I wanna, I want to really bring it into the few points that I think are are very important and how it can help us from not running away from ourselves and staying. And you know, you want to make sure that you provide yourself with enough support, whether that be um, you know, therapist or family members or friends or whatever those people, um practitioners, whatever the type of people in your life that become your support system, help have them help you guide yourself through these as well. And that's why I created the space I did that we can help each other because working through some of this stuff is hard and it brings up a lot of emotions. And I know we are not running because we're weak. We're we're running because we're hurting, and avoidance, it it often begins as protection, um, but it doesn't stay that way. It it just then becomes numbing and we start to dissociate. But we we want to have compassion for the survival strategies that we've had to go through to get us to where we are today, um, and and have gratitude for what helped us survive because we wouldn't be here without every version of ourselves that had come in the past and and this different um defense mechanisms and survival tactics that we learned. Be grateful for that version of you that got you into where you are today, but then also knowing that they no longer serve us because we can learn to sit with ourselves and we can learn to create space for truth. Um I really, I really truly believe that. And like I said, it's it's hard, but it's so worth it. So you just we just need to keep going, and life is gonna get easier the more people that do this work, the more that pendulum starts to swing back, and the healthier we get collectively. Um, because eventually every person reaches a moment where the running becomes more exhausting than the stopping. And when that moment comes, healing isn't found by moving faster, I promise you. It's found by willing to sit besides the parts of yourself that have been waiting for your attention the the whole time. But I think that's a good place to actually stop. Um, thank you all again for um being with me here today and and for listening. And and if you can help us out and share this podcast if it helps with anybody that you think could use it. Um I'm just gonna really try and stay consistent and keep putting these out every Friday. And and next week will be episode seven. I can't believe it. Um, and we'll be talking more about then uh at that point, we're gonna talk more about how healing is not self-punishment, even though sometimes it can feel that way. Um, but, anyways, thank you so much again for joining me on Becoming the Sanctuary, and I will see you next Friday.