Episode 226 - When You're So Tired You Just Can't

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In this episode, I’m sharing something that came straight out of a coaching call — because I realized this is not a one-woman problem. At some phase of life, every single one of us ends up here: so tired we can’t think straight, can’t be ourselves, and are seriously at risk of making the worst possible decisions at the worst possible times.

We’re talking about what it really means to be below baseline — that foggy, heavy, emotionally fragile place where your brain suddenly thinks it’s a great idea to reorganize the linen closet or re-evaluate your entire marriage at 2 AM.

We explore:

✨ The three levels of self-care — exceptional, routine, and baseline

✨ How to recognize when you’re officially below baseline

✨ Why you cannot trust your brain when you’re exhausted (treat it like your drunk best friend)

✨ The two non-negotiable rules for getting yourself back to normal

✨ How one or two early nights can completely change how you feel about your life

If you’ve been scrolling late, snacking nonstop, snapping at people you love, or feeling like you’re just dragging your body through the day — this episode is for you.

🔗 Mentioned in this episode:

👉 Work with me privately: kaylalevin.com/coaching

👉 Get my free No-Prep At-Home Date Night Game: kaylalevin.com/datenight

💌 Know someone who’s completely exhausted? Send them this episode — because sometimes the most loving thing you can do is remind a woman that she doesn’t need to fix her life… she just needs to go to bed.

Transcript

Ep. 256 - When You're So Tired You Just Can't

[00:00:00] cause this will happen when someone's below baseline. They'll be like, oh, but I've been wanting to just organize that linen closet and I finally got an extra hour. I'll feel so much better when I just get that done. That job has been driving me crazy.

[00:00:12] Your brain is below baseline. You are crazy right now. No, you are not organizing a linen closet right now.

[00:00:18]   

[00:00:22] Welcome to How to Glow, where we get real about building the marriage of your dreams. I'm certified coach Kayla Levin and I help married Jewish women go from surviving and overwhelmed to thriving and connected through practical tips, real life inspiration, and more than a little self-awareness along the way.

[00:00:39] 

[00:00:42] Hey, my friends. Okay. I just got off a coaching call and as soon as I finished that call, I was like, she was so not the only one that needed to work on this. All at some phase in our life need to work on this. I was like, that's a perfect thing for a podcast episode. So we're gonna talk today about when you are just so, so tired.

[00:00:59] I wanna give you some tools of getting through it, but I also wanna make a really, really, really strong push for why you should actually try and resolve this problem. Okay. So I teach self-care in a little bit of a different way, which is I break it up into three different categories.

[00:01:15] This is really critical because if you don't know which level of self-care you need to solve for, you're going to put the wrong solution in place. I'm gonna start from the top. Exceptional self-care. Those are the. Again, exceptional things that you can't do on a regular basis. They might be very expensive or they might be very hard to get to, or they might take a lot of time.

[00:01:36] It might require you having all your sisters in one place at the same time. Right. Exceptional self-care. Oh my gosh. It's absolute self-care. It feels amazing. I'm so happy for you every time you get to have it. We're not really trying to work it into our regular schedule. Okay. So I just wanna put it there.

[00:01:49] 'cause it, it is a real thing and sometimes it's, you know, something that we wanna focus on. Routine self-care. No matter how busy you are, I want you to know what would be ideally routine self-care for you. So routine self-care is, I know I'm at my best. So for instance, for myself, if I go for two long walks, especially with a friend, and I have three workouts, my at-home workouts in the course of a week.

[00:02:15] I am good for routine self care. I could probably just do two home workouts and I would be totally fine for routine self care. I do not need to do more than that to be at my best. Feeling good physically, right? In terms of health, there's a certain amount that it needs to be right. Beyond that, it's like maybe exceptional.

[00:02:31] I do not need to be going to a spa and having some kind of like nutritious chef making all of my food for me to feel. Really, really good in terms of the food that I'm eating. That's routine self-care, right? How much do you need? How much spiritual connection, maybe listening to a sheer social connection.

[00:02:46] Sleep right. For you to really be No, I'm good. I'm like, I'm really good. I'm, I'm able to operate at my best. Yes, I have hormones. Yes, I might have stress. Yes, there's other things in my life, but when it comes to just how well I'm taking care of myself, my routine, self-care, those are things I want built into my week as much as possible.

[00:03:05] And there are seasons where we can have more. And there are seasons when we can have less and that's okay. But having an idea of this is actually really helpful because sometimes you will find yourself with 30 minutes, and if you know that time outdoors really has a lot of mileage for you, you're gonna be a lot less tempted to sit on the couch and scroll because you're gonna realize, well, scrolling isn't actually part of my routine selfcare.

[00:03:27] It's not in anyone's routine self-care, by the way. Right. But you have an alternative that you're going to turn to that's more compelling because you've thought this through. So even if it's not something you can actually put into your calendar at the moment, I do wanna make a strong push for routine self-care.

[00:03:42] But the topic of this week's podcast is your baseline self-care. And many of you have heard me talk about this before. I want you to listen again because we could not be reminded of this too often. Below baseline is when you are just completely not yourself. How does it feel to be below baseline?

[00:04:01] Your body feels 20 pounds heavier, just dragging it through the day. The idea of getting in and out of the car seems like a massive hurdle. Emotionally, you might be more fragile. You might be more responsive, you might be more cranky or critical. Your brain is absolutely not helpful, right? It's going to worst case scenario or it's going to the the worst thing about everybody around you, and you're completely not in a space of being able to just step back and look at your life with clarity and objectivity and be proactive because you're really just kind of putting out fires and just in a very foggy state of mind, okay?

[00:04:43] It feels awful to be below baseline. When you've just had a baby, you are by definition, below baseline When you have just had a surgery or just by definition below baseline. When you are very sick, you are below baseline, right? It might not be every single one of those example of those, symptoms that I described, but when you are, your body's not okay, you're not getting enough sleep, you know, anything like that.

[00:05:06] I saw with my coaching clients during COVID that not being able to see people outside of their house. I actually was putting people below baseline, which was interesting to me. 'cause to me, I always thought of social time as kind of like, you know, that's like a routine or exceptional.

[00:05:20] Like those are like really, really good things to be able to do. Probably routine. I didn't think of it as baseline until we had COVID and then we saw that like, no, really, people were like getting to a very dark place because they were stuck in their house for so long time out doors can definitely be part of baseline, but when we're looking to get to what is my baseline level, I'm not saying eight hours of sleep.

[00:05:38] Right. I, eight hours of sleep is my routine. 10 hours of sleep might be my exceptional, right? Like if I got a 10 hour night, I don't, I don't even, I could stay asleep for 10 hours, right? So. So an extra sleep is exceptional. Routine is what I need to get to really be operating at my best on a regular basis.

[00:05:54] Baseline would be like maybe six. And I, I don't want you to get too hung up on these numbers 'cause people are so different with sleep. But, you know, maybe if I'm going below five or six or I'm going below seven many nights in a row or whatever the thing is, like, if I'm below baseline, I'm, I'm now going through my entire life with this extra weight, with this extra challenge.

[00:06:17] And when we're below baseline, we actually aren't in a proactive space enough to prioritize getting out, and that's why I want this to just be a really clear line for you and a really clear rule. If I catch myself below baseline, there are two main rules. Number one, my top priority is to get back to baseline.

[00:06:40] At the next possible moment. So no, I'm not gonna go to sleep if I'm supposed to be watching my children and they won't be safe if I'm sleeping right, but the next possible opportunity for me to go to sleep, it might mean I'm not sitting down to dinner with my family and I'm just gonna go climbing to bed.

[00:06:54] Right? I and everyone has their own dynamics and their own things that, that work for their families and don't work for their families. So don't, again, don't hold anything too tightly in terms of examples, but it just becomes, that's my next project. My next project is not to clean the kitchen. My next project is to get back into bed until I feel better.

[00:07:12] Okay, so that's rule number one is when you're below baseline that. Just priority number one, right? Which it's not really fair to say priority number one 'cause you probably will have other things, like, again, watching your children, or you might have to show up at work, or you might have to do some of those things.

[00:07:25] But this is not the time to, you know, oh, what I've been wanting. 'cause this will happen when someone's below baseline. They'll be like, oh, but I've been wanting to just organize that linen closet and I finally got an extra hour. I'll feel so much better when I just get that done. That job has been driving me crazy.

[00:07:41] Your brain is below baseline. You are crazy right now. No, you are not organizing a linen closet right now. No. You are not creating some new projects, some new creative projects in your life. No. You are not gonna stay up and study this parenting book with your husband. You are going to bed because you are below baseline.

[00:07:58] I think when we're below baseline, we feel like we'll never get out. And so we're like, I'll just have to find a way. If I don't, if I don't learn to organize the linen closet below baseline, it'll never get done. And I'm saying, do you know we get you out of baseline first? And then you do it from that place.

[00:08:13] If you still think it even feels so urgent and necessary, which it might, it might not. The other rule about being below baseline is you do not trust your brain. You treat your brain like it's your drunk best friend. Okay. It's telling you everything that's wrong with life. It wants to make a lot of important life decisions.

[00:08:34] It thinks this is the time that we should finally unburden ourselves about that thing that's been bothering us with our sister-in-law and confront her about how she doesn't have good enough boundaries or whatever the thing is, whatever ideas it comes up with. Whatever decisions it wants to make. It likes below baseline Brains love to evaluate marriages like, how is my marriage doing?

[00:08:54] Or like, was it good for me to marry this guy? No. What do you do with the drunk best friend? Those of you didn't go to university. I'll tell you, you put them to bed, okay? You make sure they have something to drink and you put them to bed and you just make sure they're okay. That is what you are doing with your brain.

[00:09:09] You are not taking anything seriously. You can listen, you can smile, you can nod, you know? Okay, I hear you. I, we don't have to argue because there's no point in arguing. There is no point in arguing. There's no point in coaching yourself. There's no point in going to a mentor. There's no point in any of this.

[00:09:24] We are not taking this brain seriously. Right now. It is not operating. And by the way, I've always used the example of drunk best friend because I don't know, I have. But this is actually one of the ways that they talk about sleep deprivation, is that every, I can't remember, I should really look it up for you guys, but like every certain amount of sleep that you miss, it's like taking another shot of alcohol in terms of how it lowers your ability to operate.

[00:09:46] We don't operate well when you are sleep deprived. It's like you are drunk, right? And think about what, what things you wouldn't allow yourself to do if you knew that you. We're, we're inebriated. You would not be making life decisions. You would not be doing any of these things. I mean, at least I hope you would, or I hope somebody would be stopping you.

[00:10:04] Okay? So that's how we wanna be treating our brains when we're below baseline. So we don't wanna be making any decisions from below baseline When you know that you're there, and I know that the feeling, again, the feeling can often be that you feel like you're never gonna get out of that space. But watch out because that's very much a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[00:10:26] I've seen it on myself, I've seen it on my clients. If you think there's no way for me to get out of here because I have a newborn, there's no way for me to get out of here because I have X, Y, Z, whatever the situation is, then you will definitely make that true. Right? And it won't seem worth it to just like go to bed early one night because who cares?

[00:10:43] I'm always gonna be sleep deprived. Okay, so. I just wanna like highlight that for you. So when you, when you hear yourself thinking that way you can catch yourself. Alright, how can you get back to baseline, especially if you have a baby? Um, because that's probably where I coach on it the most frequently.

[00:11:03] But again, there are other ways we could be below baseline line.

[00:11:09] Okay, now I wanna talk about how to get back to baseline, especially this being especially true for people with very, very young children. Okay, so number one, as you know, as you've been told, the old mantra, whatever, sleep when the baby sleeps, which is, even if you're just lying down and you can't actually go to sleep, rest your body.

[00:11:31] Take a nap. If you can go back to bed after carpool, if you can, um, go to bed early. Find weird times of day that you can nap, that you can lie down if all you're doing is lying and just being comfortable, that is still rest. Okay. Be ruthless with what you've got on your list right now. This isn't the time.

[00:11:51] If you are below baseline. You do not need to be hosting Chaves guests unless that is part of your career. If you are below baseline, this is not the time to be trying out all the new recipes in the dinner Done. Two cookbook, although you should at some point, if you're below baseline, this is the time to be ruthless with your schedule.

[00:12:10] This is the time to cut, cut, cut. And I wanna just. I, I know that sometimes the things we're adding to the schedule, those are the things that we think are gonna give us the HIAs that we're lacking. The reason you're lacking HIAs in your life is because you're exhausted. It's not because you don't have this new project going on.

[00:12:25] Okay? But it doesn't feel that way. I know it doesn't feel that way, and I just wanna offer to you that. Most people, their general state, when they're taking care of their baseline and maybe even some of their routine self-care is to pretty much like your life. So if you're ending your day feeling like, oh my gosh, I just need to just have time to myself and scroll on the couch because this day was such a beast, probably what you need is to go to bed.

[00:12:55] Because I don't know anyone who told me like, well, now that I had a chance to scroll for an hour and a half, I just feel so much better about my life. Okay, so be ruthless with your schedule. Even if you can only give yourself one week, three days of being ruthless, of cutting things out. Do it as much as you can tell your husband this idea of baseline.

[00:13:15] He'll get it. This is something, this is really great for. Husbands, this concept because this is not an issue. This is a problem with a solution. Now watch out 'cause you're gonna be annoyed. You're gonna wanna tell him about being below baseline and have him just talk to you about how bad it is that you're below baseline and how much he empathizes with you for being below baseline and how amazing you are that you're still doing all these hard things even though you're below baseline.

[00:13:37] He's not gonna wanna do that. He's gonna wanna try and help you get above baseline. That's actually what you need him for. What you think you want him to say is not helpful. Right now, you're already giving yourself all the empathy for being below baseline. You need him to solve the problem.

[00:13:54] Thank G-d you're married to a man. So he will help you solve the problem. He will give you ideas that you don't even like, but that are probably very good, like. I, I think I've been saying we should get that cleaning lady to come twice a week instead of once a week, and you didn't think that she should be coming twice a week because X, y, z reason.

[00:14:11] But he's, he's probably right at this point. You know why? Because you're below baseline, so you're not very good at making decisions right now. And because he's an amazing problem solver, I'm not saying you have to do everything he says, I am saying you should tell him, you should get him on board and then you should allow him to fix the problem.

[00:14:31] That is very hard. For almost all of you, if not all of you listening to this right now, let him fix it in his way. Know the kids will not get a bath. I don't care. You need sleep more than they need a bath, for example. Okay, another one. I think I might've mentioned this, but I wanna go back to this. This is really big.

[00:14:56] Don't underestimate the value of one or two early nights. If all you can do is there's one night where you can clear the schedule and you can climb yourself into bed at like 7:00 PM I'm not even kidding, or 8:00 PM or the second the children go to sleep, do it. You will be amazed. How different you feel.

[00:15:18] If you've been below baseline for a while, you will be amazed. You will look around and you'll be like, oh, for example, this one came up in the session. She's like, I hate cleaning, so I don't wanna clean. I'm so overwhelmed. I said, you don't hate cleaning. You probably would actually enjoy cleaning. You're just tired.

[00:15:34] So who wants to clean when they're tired? When you're tired, you wanna sleep. Nobody wants to clean. It's a physical activity. She's like, oh, you're right. We don't mind our lives. They're not a huge drag. They're not emotionally draining when we have the energy to deal with our lives. But if you don't, you're not getting enough sleep to deal with your life, you won't like it very much.

[00:15:55] That just makes sense. And when you've given yourself one or two early nights where we've just gone to bed at the first possible moment. And you say, honey, I'm sorry. You're gonna come home from rf. I'm already gonna be asleep. I'm just completely below baseline. I know that I'll be such a happier person if I just, I just need to catch up.

[00:16:12] I'm like, so behind you'll be again, you will be so amazed by how different you feel. You'll feel like you have had a personality transplant and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I'm like a happy person. What happens here? I think I like my children. Okay. That's what I want for you. If you're below baseline.

[00:16:33] And although your husband probably already suggested this, if you've been pushing off additional help, so I'm not talking about somebody who wants to be a stay-at-home mom and now she's gonna start sending her kids to a babysitter because she's below baseline. I don't know that that type of thing is necessary, but what I've seen, this is actually personal.

[00:16:50] What I've seen for myself is that I usually push off the next stage of help too far too long. So for instance, if my kids are only going to. A daycare till one, and I know that next year it's gonna be three I I probably push that three o'clock year, like one year too long. Right. And one way to, to help with that, and I'll give you another example.

[00:17:11] So it could be babysitting, it could be cleaning help, it could be asking your husband to maybe take over dinner once or twice a week. Or it could be just baking a, a big, like a bigger dinner and serving the same thing a couple nights, right? So something like that. Um, some people do amazing things with their neighbors, like, okay, Monday night, just double up and then, you know.

[00:17:30] And then I'll, I'll, you know, you'll, you'll give me half your dinner on Tuesday night. I'll double up and there's so many things you could do. Can my kids play at your house in the afternoon so I can take a nap and tomorrow I'll do the same for you? Okay. So it doesn't, you don't need a husband or the money for these things.

[00:17:42] You can find this with your peer group. But if you've been pushing off additional help, this might be the time to consider. Is this all happening? Is the reason I'm below baseline because I really actually do need that one extra thing. And I've been, I've been saying no, because for whatever reason, you know, I'm feeling hung up on it

[00:18:00] Okay. And sometimes you need to get some outside support. Now, most of the time when a person's below baseline, what's really happening is they just kind of, they got sleep deprived and then because they were sleep deprived, they made further bad decisions about getting more sleep, and then that just kind of, it, it just snowballs out of control until they've just a walking zombie for a while.

[00:18:20] So most of the time I don't think that you necessarily need any kind of major life overhaul, any major outside support. You actually just need to go back to bed. And get back to yourself, and then you'll be able to make great decisions. And you'll also remember how great it feels when you are well rested so that you will prioritize it more in the future.

[00:18:38] But you just need to like get outta that downward slope of, of being sleep deprived. Okay? But there are times when you might need a bigger life change. You might need different medical help than you're getting, you know, it might be that you're, if you're seeing that there's. You know, you've gotten a couple nights of sleep and then just the, by virtue of going through your daily life, you keep going back down to baseline.

[00:19:03] It means that your daily life isn't working, and if you and your husband are at a dead end, this is a time to talk to a mentor, one of your parents. If your parents are good at this, you could bring in a coach. You can hire me to work with you. Bringing somebody with an outside perspective in to look at your situation and help you find those things.

[00:19:23] Because number one, again, when you're below baseline, it's very hard to think creatively and proactively.

[00:19:28] And number two, because we usually don't really see our way out of a given situation. We usually just see how we just, we just kind of keep our noses down and keep on trucking, right? And sometimes having that outside perspective, uh, it could be a career counselor. I don't know. Like there's so many different, right?

[00:19:43] But there's so many places where we can get support. And if there's something, anytime that you're just banging your head against the wall with the same problem coming up over and over and over again, it's time to say, I need to go find the support that I need. Where, where, where can I get another opinion that I respect?

[00:19:58] Where can I get, you know, a, a professional to give me different kind of advice or different, you know, a different solution. I wanna go outside of myself because it's, we have to give ourselves a deadline for figuring things out on our own and we'll, we'll suffer a problem for so long. Often we don't even realize.

[00:20:16] If you were to think like, how long has it been? If you're listening to this and you're thinking you're falling into this category, I want you to think about how long has it been since you have been above baseline. How long have you been in this particular kufa? If it's been more than a couple weeks or months?

[00:20:30] Right then it's amazing how long we can put up with really, really challenging situations and like when we go back and we're like, oh my gosh, this has been two and a half years. I can't believe it's been so long. Why? Because your nose is to the ground. You know, you are just getting through. You weren't even noticing all this time pass.

[00:20:47] And so this, that, that's why I'm suggesting to you like, make sure if this is going on for a while, bring in an outside person because you'll just keep putting up with it and trying to just sort of survive day to day and, and you can get that extra help. Okay, so everybody early bedtimes tonight.

[00:21:05] Um, I hope this is resonating with you. I, I know this is something that comes up all the time and I, I just want you to like star this episode or save this episode for the next time that you need this pep talk that you just see yourself. Whatever it is that your thing is, it's, by the way, scrolling makes a lot of sense.

[00:21:19] If you're a person who ends up scrolling, the reason you're scrolling is your body doesn't have the energy to do anything else. It requires nothing of you. But for whatever reason, you have to stay awake or you think you have to stay awake, or you think that it will feel better if you do it. Also, eating carbs and sugar makes a lot of sense.

[00:21:37] Why? Because it gives our body some fake energy. So these are two red flags you might catch on yourself. Also, maybe crankiness, like fighting, yelling, things like that that you, if you're not normally a yeller, and all of a sudden you see yourself yelling, these are red flags, you can just keep an eye out for, right?

[00:21:53] If I'm sitting on the couch and scrolling at night. That maybe I should check if I'm below baseline. If I'm raid the pantry multiple times at night, I should probably check. If I'm below base, I'm probably tired. I probably just need to go to sleep. So this one really just was specifically about tired. As I said, baseline, we can go below baseline for a lot of reasons, but I wanted to really specifically focus on being sleep deprived.

[00:22:17] So that's what we talked about this week. For anything. If you're looking for more support, you are trying to just make your life a little more marriage friendly, a little more you friendly. If you specifically wanna dive into your marriage, I would love to meet you and talk about how that might work for you.

[00:22:34] Just head over to kaylalevin.com and click on private coaching to set up a free consult call where we can discuss how coaching might help you in your unique situation. I have a couple spots open right now and I would love to see if. Maybe it's for you. Okay. And everybody else, early bedtimes, have a great week.

[00:22:53] And if you know somebody who's totally exhausted, do me a favor, would you send them this message, this episode? 'cause I, I just think we just need a lot more well-rested women in klal Yisrael. What do you think? Okay. Talk to you in a little bit. Bye-bye.