MMS_Ep02 - When Your Capacity Changes_Audio
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Dr. Julia Bowlin: [00:00:00] Continuing to push through while holding grief, anger, admiration, love, and expecting yourself to function like nothing's shifted. That's not strength, folks. That's self abandonment. Dressed up as productivity.
This month is about returning, but not rushing about honoring what's changed without forcing yourself back into who you used to be. It's about recognizing that sometimes the most honest thing you can do is to just pause, because not every season is meant for momentum. Some are meant for perspective. Hi there.
I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, and this is Mindset Medicine. In the last episode, I talked about stepping away and what life forced me to see when everything slowed down. And if you listen to that, there's a good chance that you maybe recognize a little something in yourself. That [00:01:00] quiet shift where things feel differently, but you can't quite fully explain why.
I hope so. So today I wanna talk about what comes next because awareness is one thing, but knowing how to respond to that awareness, oh, that's where people contend to get stuck. And here's what I've noticed, both personally and professionally. Most people assume that their capacity is fixed, that their version of themselves on a good day should be available to them all the time, and that's just not the case.
Folks, when things feel slower or heavier, or harder than usual, people don't often question their expectation. They question themselves saying, why can't I focus? Or Why is this taking so long? Or Why does this feel harder than it should? And without realizing it. That their capacity has changed, a natural shift occurs, and they might interpret it as a personal failure, like something's wrong with them.
So what is capacity? [00:02:00] Let's ground this. When I say capacity, I'm not talking about discipline, I'm talking about motivation. I'm talking about what your system can actually support right now. Your ability to focus, to make decisions, to process information, to regulate emotions. And to recover after a lot of effort.
And here's what matters most. Capacity isn't static. It changes. It doesn't stay the same, even minute to minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, year by year. It changes and it changes based on what you're carrying and what you've been experiencing and what your system is still processing, whether you're aware of it or not.
And you might feel it in small ways. Tasks that usually feel automatic and easy might require more effort. You might open your laptop and sit there a little longer than usual, trying to gather yourself before you begin. You might be rereading the same email, not because it's [00:03:00] complicated, because it's just not landing in your brain.
Maybe by midday you feel like you've already spent more energy than you expected, and that's not a flaw. It's not a personal identity flaw. It's capacity. What happens when capacity drops? This is where things might start to unravel, because when capacity drops, most people don't adjust their expectations of themselves.
They try to maintain them. So instead of asking themselves, Hmm, something feels shifted here, how do I move and roll with that? Instead, we might respond by pushing harder, telling ourselves, you gotta focus more, drink more coffee, or just get it done. From the outside, it can look the same. Might still be showing up, processing and producing, but internally it feels completely different because sometimes it's not about the task.
It's coming home and seeing somebody riding down a bike path [00:04:00] and without warning there's a hit. Because I remember we were riding bikes this time last year and now that version of life doesn't exist for me anymore. Sometimes our system just doesn't move on From that. It holds it, and our capacity can shift on a dime.
So I wanna talk about oftentimes the invisible mismatch that people don't see. This is the piece that changes everything once you see it. There's a mismatch happening oftentimes between the version of us. We are expecting to show up all the time. The version of us that's actually present and that gap, that's where friction lives because we might be walking through a room and there are pictures of people.
For me, one of my husband, when he is thin and sick and near death, and then right next to him is [00:05:00] another picture. Three years ago when he was vibrant, alive, traveling and dancing. My brain isn't filing that as neutral information. It's processing contrast, and I'm feeling loss, love memory all at once, and then the next moment if I expect myself to focus, be efficient, and move quickly as if nothing just happened, that's the mismatch.
I hope that gap. Explains it to you. I want you to get that. There's sometimes, it doesn't have to be as big and as life altering as mine just was, but it could absolutely potentially be small little things that distract you or focus you. You might get a phone call that changes your capacity. Right? Or a text that shifts your brain's ability to focus.
And that's the mismatch, right? So what is this neuroscience? I'm always bringing things up about our autoimmune system, our nervous system, [00:06:00] and I wanna talk about cognitive functioning. That's our brain. So let me pause here for a section, because what's happening here isn't random. I'm talking about cognitive load.
What do I mean by that? Your brain has a limited capacity for processing. Oftentimes I tell my clients, I label it as mental real estate. You only have so much mental capacity, mental real estate to manage attention, decision making, emotional regulation, your memory. And when life changes, especially after a loss disruption or ongoing emotional input, your available capacity doesn't just dip.
It shifts and sometimes dramatically. Your expectations oftentimes don't shift at the same speed, so now you're not just cooking, you're cooking while holding loss or absence. For me, it might be like trying to log into Netflix and sing his name, [00:07:00] opening up an audible account and realizing the count is still in his name, looking at the airline miles, but now I can't access them.
Right? These are things that are gone. They're shocking. To my system and each moment, even small on the surface, but neurologically, they're stacking over and over and over again. And this is why the morning period could last so long and why people should really not make major decisions in the first year because there's so many micro moments of adjusting and our capacity dipping up and down and all the way around.
You know, my, my boss God lover after her big loss. You know, and she answers a room, she says, and now I'm a crier. And I guess I have to understand that, 'cause I was never a crier before, but my capacity has changed. My emotional tenor, the gap between who I used to be and who I am now, that capacity has changed so [00:08:00] much.
Right. But everyday things can happen like that with you. They don't have to be, again, this big, it just means that we're not less capable, it's just we can't carry as much. Right now because there's too many other things stacking up. So here's the shift that I'm asking you to ask yourself. How do I get back to my normal pace?
Right? That's what we tend to ask ourselves. How do I get back to that high functioning, high motivated place while still carrying all this chaos? Well, the answer is no. We can't. I'd rather us ask, uh, myself included. What does my current capacity actually support? Because this isn't about lowering our standards, it's about aligning our expectations with our present reality.
And that might look like doing fewer things, but actually being more present, creating space between tasks, giving yourself little more time instead of stacking tasks. Multitasking [00:09:00] over and over again. It might look like taking a little bit longer to do something and not labeling it as a problem or something wrong with us.
We're not stepping back. We're just recalibrating. And if you're listening right now, just slow down with me for a moment and just take a breath and notice your current pace in your life, not the pace you think you should have, not the pace you used to have. Or want, but the actual one that's here right now.
And notice your body. Notice your mental rhythm. And gently ask yourself, where am I expecting more from myself than I actually have access to right now? No fixing, no adjusting. Just notice where am I expecting more from myself? They actually have access to right now. [00:10:00] And if it feels right, you can acknowledge that what you're carrying, the people, the moments are still with you in different ways.
Steady, present, and maybe all these pressure points are not demanding anything from you right now, right this moment. And sometimes just being quietly present is enough. I'd like to reframe strength a little bit, and this is where we need to redefine something, because a lot of people were taught that strength means consistency at all costs, pushing through, powering through the same pace, the same output no matter what.
But real strength is the ability to recognize when something has changed and to respond to it, not overwrite it, not ignore it, just respond. Continuing to push through while holding grief, anger, admiration, love, whatever it is you're holding and [00:11:00] expecting yourself to function like nothing's shifted.
That's not strength, folks, that's self abandonment, dressed up as productivity and being labeled as productivity, but it's not honoring yourself. So if you are in a season like me where things feel different. Your focus isn't what it used to be. Your energy isn't what it used to be. You're not behind, you're not failing.
Your capacity has changed. And once you recognize that, you can start working on yourself and working with yourself again, and instead of working constantly against ourselves again, I know this might have been a little bit. Odd and a little round about and, and I'm still trying to get my brain, so I appreciate you if you're hanging in there with me.
But this conversation really wasn't about slowing down for the sake of it. It was about recognizing when something has shifted internally and responding in a way that actually supports ourselves. Because capacity isn't something we [00:12:00] want to fight against. It's just something we need to understand. And when we do, we don't lose momentum.
We rebuild in a way that's sustainable. As we move into the next episode, I'm gonna take it one step further and look at, while pushing through has been conditioned over and over as a strength and what is actually costing us over time. Thank you so much for spending this time with me, and until next time, may you be happy, be healthy and be fulfilled.
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 [00:13:00] wiser in your personal and professional life.
