MMS_AprilEp01 - I Didnt Fall Off_Audio
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Dr. Julia Bowlin: [00:00:00] I didn't fall off. I stepped away a few weeks ago. My husband passed away.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Hi there. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin and this is Mindset Medicine. Take one deep breath and let this episode meet you where you are. And before I go any further, I want to acknowledge something right up front. I've been gone and I know when someone who's usually consistent goes quiet. People notice and sometimes they wonder if something's changed or if something fell apart.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So I want to be clear, I didn't fall off. I stepped away a few weeks ago. My husband passed away. Many of you have known about my husband's cancer journey through all of my different podcasts. Or maybe you know, me personally or work with me. But even saying that out loud still feels really unreal, like it belongs to somebody else's life.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And if you've ever walked through something like that or anything [00:01:00] that just well stops life mid-sentence, you understand this in a way that doesn't need explanation. Everything familiar shifts, time feels different. Simple things feel heavy. Even things like answering a text or deciding what to eat, things that normally take seconds suddenly feel like they're requiring energy that I didn't have.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And the idea of staying consistent, suddenly it felt completely irrelevant, so I didn't record. There were moments I thought about it, moments where I almost sat down, almost hit record. I even opened my laptop a few times, turned the microphone on, and just sat there realizing I didn't have anything honest to say yet.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And it would've been me trying to make meaning that didn't make sense to me yet, and that would've just happened too quickly. So trying to stay on when I was internally a mess, everything just had to go quiet. I mean, I just had to take a break. So [00:02:00] instead I let things be quiet, I stepped out of the noise of the have tos, need tos and should toss and into what was really real for me at the moment, which is grieving, which I'm still doing on the daily, multiple times a day.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: But I am back, but not in the way people use. Amen. When they say that I'm not coming back stronger or more motivated, and I'm definitely not coming back with some polished message that's wrapped up in a big lesson. I'm just coming back with some perspective. The kind that you don't go looking for the kind that life just hands you whether you're ready or not.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And this is something I talk a lot in mindset medicine is about not forcing yourself to perform through a moment, but actually understanding what your system is asking for inside of it. And here's something we don't talk about enough, especially in high performing spaces. We all love a good plan. We love structure and we love consistency and momentum.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: We build entire [00:03:00] identities around being the person who shows up no matter what, but life doesn't ask for permission before it just flat out interrupts you. It doesn't check your calendar. It doesn't wait until it's convenient. It just arrives. And why life arrives and when it does, it doesn't gently tap on your door, it barges in and it rearranges the entire room.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And suddenly those systems that you trusted, the routines that you relied on, they don't fit the version of you that's sitting there anymore. Now, here's where most of us go. Automatically. We try to close the gap. We try to get back to who we were as quickly as possible. We tell ourselves, just get through today.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Just stay productive. Just don't let things slip because we've been trained to do one thing really, really well, to keep going, to be dependable, [00:04:00] to be capable, to be the one who handles it all, and that works. Until it doesn't, because there's a quiet line that most people don't see in the moment. The line between being strong and overriding yourself, and once you cross it, you don't feel powerful anymore.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: You feel disconnected. So over the past few weeks, I started noticing things that I probably would've missed before. Grief didn't show up the way that I expected. I thought I had enough anticipatory grief that I was gonna be able to walk through this grief naturally in the way that I thought I should.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: But grief didn't show up the way I expected it to. It wasn't just emotion. Sometimes it was a mental fog, like it was trying to think through something and it just wouldn't land, like my brain didn't connect the dots. I'd read the same sentence two or three times, and I'd realized that I hadn't actually processed any of it.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Sometimes it was exhaustion that [00:05:00] didn't make sense on paper, like I had slept, I had eaten, why am I so tired? Or a much lower tolerance for noise conversations, decision-making, even small, tiny demands like making the freaking coffee. And there were moments when I caught myself thinking. What is wrong with me?
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Why can't I focus? Why does everything feel slower? And then I realized something really, really important. Nothing was wrong. My system wasn't failing. It was responding. It was doing exactly what's designed to do when something this significant happens. My system, my nervous system, my brain, my body, my intention, my perspective, all of it was just asking for space.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And instead of arguing with that, I let it be what it was. And you might even notice that just hearing that maybe there's a small part of you that really needs to soften a little bit. [00:06:00] Not because it needs fixed, but because maybe there's something in you that you don't need to keep pushing through right now.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And I'm not asking you to fix anything right now. I often don't do that, but I am wanting you to take notice of something. Where are you trying to push yourself back into a version of you that's no longer fitting for the moment that you're in right now? I know I am changing on the minute, on the hour on the day.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Crazy amounts. Changes of perspective, beliefs in myself, what I should and could and would be doing in the past, but I'm not because I just don't have the bandwidth. So where are you trying to push yourself back into a version of you, maybe something in the past that no longer fits the moment that you're in now.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And there's nothing wrong with needing space, even if it doesn't make sense, even if it doesn't feel productive. So many of us are productive addicts because our [00:07:00] self-esteem and our belief in our self is directly connected to how productive we are. There's nothing wrong with needing space, even if parts of you are trying to overwrite it, because not everything you go through is meant to be pushed through.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Some things are just meant to be sat with, to be allowed to be felt in a way that doesn't require immediate meaning. You don't have to give meaning to everything. Maybe we just need to sit in it. And the truth is, the more you let that space exist, the less you have to fight yourself inside of it. You don't lose yourself in these moments.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: You meet yourself differently, and that changes how you move forward. Whether you realize it or not. So in the next episode, I'm gonna talk about what happens after this when you stop trying to go back, but you're not fully sure who you are yet either. That's [00:08:00] where I'm at, so why not talk about it? That's that space in between when things feel unclear, a little unsettled, and honestly a little uncomfortable because that's where most people try to rush.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And it's also. Where something important starts to take shape. Thank you for spending this time with me and staken with me in this Mindset Medicine episode and coming back. Until next time, may you be happy, be healthy, and be fulfilled.
Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about mindset medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional [00:09:00] life.
