September 9, 2025 • 42 mins
If your brain needs a boost, learn how simple daily routines can ease stress and reduce brain fatigue. Renee gives examples and solutions to help you find routines that help your life go smoothly.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to increase and maintain seratonin and dopamine so your brain functions better—so you can be more productive, feel calmer, and enjoy life.
🔆 SUBSCRIBE to my podcast 🔆
🌼 SHARE this episode with a few friends.
Leave a 5 star REVIEW ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Thanks so much!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
Renee Allen, host of this podcast. I'm excited to be here today.
I first have to just thank you because it makes me so happy
to know that people are actually listening to my podcast because
I'm really, really bad at the marketing part.
I, I, yeah, I won't even get into
that. But yeah, getting the word out is not my forte.
(00:52):
So thank you for that. And if you could continue to do that,
even just by listening yourself, downloading episodes will help
the visibility for people who are listening to podcasts like
this and might want to find one like mine, or even just sharing
an episode with somebody or giving it a review or something
like that, that I'm going to try not to be distracted
(01:13):
by my glasses being crooked. Okay. Video is another thing, another
distraction. I'm going to try to let go of that bit by bit.
But today's episode is about helping your brain, stopping
the fatigue that can happen in your brain, boosting your brain's
power. Even though you might have executive dysfunct, you
(01:36):
still have the ability to do things.
It's just different. You might have one hand tied behind
your back or something to not be able to do it the same as
somebody else. And when you have that executive dysfunction
and you're not able to get yourself to do something and you have
to make a lot of decisions, a daily routine can take
(01:56):
out that decision making. You've already made the decision and
now you just go through the flow and you're not questioning it
because it's working. If there's a major disruption in that,
that routine doesn't get to work one day, that's okay, you can
go back to it the next day. So it doesn't mean you have to
be so rigid, but there's a lot of freedom in having that
daily routine. And it makes a big difference from being
(02:20):
either overwhelmed, exhausted, or just feeling like
I should be doing more, I should be doing more, you know, not
being able to get yourself to do things that shouldn't be feeling
like dragging your feet. They should just be feeling like one
step, what is it called? One put one foot
in front of another from Rudolph the Red Nosed
(02:42):
Reindeer. But yeah, so you might know that
already. You might know. I do really well when I have a daily
routine, when I have a morning routine, when I wake up, and I
do the same thing every morning. When you have children, you
know that children do well with routines.
They almost, I wouldn't say they crave routines, but they definitely
(03:03):
do better with routine. And School teachers know that.
They have them come in, they have them put their backpack here,
go and sit at your desk, or line up here.
They have a routine so the children know what is expected of
them and they do it. And the classroom functions better, but
the children function better too, because they don't have to
think about, where am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to
(03:24):
do? In any situation when it's unfamiliar like that,
it does take more brain power and it can be
confusing and it's, you know, the whole thing of going up to
order food and you have no idea what, what the options are, how
it works. Is it a meal deal? Is it
a. Yeah, it can be exhausting. Just something like that.
(03:44):
So you look at your own house or if you have an office
or if you, you know, home office, it could be a workplace.
If you don't know what you're going to do, do when you get there,
it's going to be a lot harder to be productive because unless
that's part of your day planning out what you're going to do,
but unless you have some structure to it, it's going to be a
(04:05):
lot more difficult for your brain. In the last few episodes,
I've become really curious about dopamine and serotonin.
And I talked about it somewhat last time.
And it's kind of like when you finish a phone call and
then you think, oh, I forgot to talk to him about this, or I
forgot to ask him that. I thought of so many
more things. So I'll probably keep talking about dopamine and
(04:27):
serotonin. I'm not a doctor, I'm not someone who studied
this in college, but I'm studying it now.
And it's fascinating to understand how they play a
role in our brain's ability to get ourselves to do
things and how ADHD can make it
(04:48):
harder for you to have either one of them.
And one of the things is stress. So if you have
stress in your life, because I could talk about the things
like, okay, here's all the things that you can do to get
some serotonin in your body. Like being out in the sun.
Natural sunlight stimulates the serotonin production.
(05:10):
So there are things like that. Exercise, working out in the morning,
going for a walk, swimming, cycling, any of those things boosts
the serotonin. If you've had the runner's high, I believe that's
what it, what it is. But
so there can be the things that make it come up, but there
are also the things that deplete it and even
(05:35):
a hug can boost serotonin. There are things that help you feel
calm inside. A massage, those things that help you
feel calm or just at ease. It doesn't have to be
mellow. But even just laughing. Sorry, I keep hitting things.
I know the microphones are picking it up.
But even just laughing can bring a sense of
(05:55):
calmness to us, right? Or holding a puppy, holding a baby, if
the baby's happy, or if you've just calmed a baby, the
baby's fallen asleep in your arms. So all those things you think
of, that, you know, feeling, feeling good.
So those are the things I said I could talk about.
And then of course I talk about it. But what I really want to
talk about so in more depth is what depletes it, what
(06:17):
gets in the way of that serotonin function in your
brain and makes it so you don't keep going.
So you're trying to get something done and you lose interest
or you can't get yourself to get into a
routine. It feels kind of clunky and all that.
So there are a lot of things that can get in the way.
(06:38):
One is stress. So if you have a
routine, it's lowering the stress because you don't have
that uncertainty. You don't have to make the decisions.
When you're making decisions, if they're not easy for you to
make, that can be stressful. Have you ever had a time that
you are trying to make a decision and so you talk to
somebody and you, you run through all the things.
(07:02):
Well, if I did this, if I did that, and you just don't know.
And in that state, you're in a stressful state.
If you have less stress, you have a lower cortisol
level. If you have more stress, you have more cortisol.
And cortisol is what leads to what they
say, you know, like things like the belly fat.
Not that we're just trying to do this because of that, but the
(07:24):
stress hormone causes different problems in the body,
even just how we're put together, you know, how
our bodies are. It causes problems for our nervous system
to be in that fight or flight mode. It makes it harder to sleep.
So we all know all that, right? But it also makes it so
(07:44):
the brain doesn't have as much capacity to produce serotonin
or to receive the serotonin. There's receptors in
the brain and. Oh, dang it. So sometimes
I'm going to have to turn off my video and keep talking to you
on audio. Every once in a while, this bye bye
(08:06):
to you video people. Every once in a while lately my
video program has made it. So it just
all of a sudden starts making it where my mouth
and like I'm moving. After I'm moving, I can see
myself in the mirror of sorts. So I'm just stopping in
(08:27):
and I'm going to start it again. Yeehaw.
Huh? Yeah. My mouth's mouth. Watch. Is it
okay, recording again on here. Hello again to
you YouTube people and all my audio listeners, which is most
of you. Thank you for being patient because I
(08:48):
want to figure this out. It's kind of funny because I've mentioned
before my YouTube videos might have one or five views.
So with the actual video. But one day I had 350.
Now I think it's up to 400. I have no, no idea why.
I think it's all about where YouTube puts it and then people
find it and they click on it. But it was kind of bizarre.
(09:09):
So in case this becomes a 400 watching.
And I know some people have thousands and hundreds of thousands,
but in case there's 400, I just, I'm just trying to get
it to not be too frustrating here. But back to the stress.
So serotonin, high cortisol does a
few things that interferes with serotonin.
(09:30):
It uses up your resources. Cortisol demands a lot
of energy and nutrients and it doesn't leave as much for
serotonin production. Don't ask me how that works, but that's
what experts say. And then there are just as there are
dopamine receptors. Told you before about how my psychiatrist
(09:50):
told me it's not that you don't produce enough dopamine, it's
just that you have more receptors or need more to satisfy
the receptors to, you know, might be, you know, I mentioned
the landlord, you know, like the rent costs more.
So even though you have the same amount of dopamine as somebody
else, you need more to pay that person.
(10:11):
But it could even just be they're just a greedy landlord.
So it could be the same amount of receptors.
He told me that we have more dopamine receptors, but I don't
know for sure if that's true. I saw that it can be kind of a
blend of too many receptors or the receptors needing
more to actually fire and work. Right.
So stress hormones can actually disrupt the receptors from
(10:35):
receiving the serotonin. So the serotonin has a
purpose to keep us calm, to keep us on target, to get
us to do things, to be in a flow of things.
If we are calm to Begin with. So it's just kind of
this vicious circle kind of thing, or kind of a happy
circle because we start the right way.
If you have the calmness from a daily routine, from
(10:58):
planning something out, from making your system smoother, streamlining
your system, making it so you don't forget things as easily and
you're not running back and forth last minute and arriving later,
whatever, or just trying to get dressed and
not being able to find socks, you know, that kind of thing, all
of that adds to stress. So if you can set yourself
(11:19):
up for success, you will have lower stress.
It won't disrupt the serotonin receptors receiving what you
have, it'll produce more serotonin by doing something.
You're happy, you're in a groove, all of that.
And, and then also stress hormones, cortisol can
(11:41):
disrupt your sleep. And when you have poor sleep,
it lowers the serotonin because serotonin is needed to
make melatonin. It's all just interacting together.
So the basics are, we know we need our sleep, we know we
need less stress, and we know we need a routine.
And
(12:01):
the part that we seem to have the most, like I'm in
control, I can make this happen, is to
develop a routine and to develop a system in your day,
your week or whatever so that it's going smoothly.
There are other explanations about serotonin.
I'm not gonna get into all of them, but just briefly that when
(12:25):
you lower stress, it helps you have a healthy
balance of dopamine, serotonin, and different things that
help with mood, focus, motivation. And we know about the
sleep digestion, even helps digestion.
But what happens if you look at just how your habits
can change or how your day can look, whether have a
(12:48):
high stress day or a low stress day.
If you have a high stress day, you might skip a meal,
you might not eat as nutritiously and the nutrients help
produce the serotonin and they, they help you.
Like I don't know if you've heard about when you eat turkey,
(13:08):
that it has tryptophan in it and you feel really calm and relaxed,
like you're going to fall asleep, that's the serotonin levels
going up. There are other foods that can give you that maybe
not in such a high dose. So if you've ever felt that way,
and it might just be being full too, but you're kind of like
ah, in a little la la land. But you might also
just be inside all day, never get outside, take a walk, it's
(13:29):
more stressful. You haven't been out in nature, being out in
nature, hopefully there's not a lot of bugs, can help
you be a little more calm. And if you're worrying a
ton, you are thinking, oh, I should be doing this,
I should be doing that. You know, you're thinking all these other
things that's going to lead to the stress.
So you can see kind of that whole circle again of you're stressed.
(13:51):
The things that you are doing aren't as good for producing
serotonin. They're not as good for having that dopamine,
that uplift and stuff. You're more troubled or whatever.
And when you have a day, not that life is always going to
be all perfect and rosy, but if you at least have
some kind of routine,
(14:14):
you might have the same thing for breakfast every day.
You might set yourself up for success by making meals in advance
on a Saturday or something. Or even just, I mean, really simplified.
It doesn't have to be, you know, egg white cups or
something like that. My daughter's been making egg cups.
And the thing that I like to make are oatmeal cups
(14:34):
where they don't have flour in them.
I like muffins too, but oatmeal cups are simpler with just
oatmeal. And they. I usually do pumpkin and chocolate chips and
a little bit of maple syrup or something.
And you bake them still. They're not as big as a muffin,
but they're more dense and they don't have the flour in it.
Not that I never eat flour, but just, you know, an option.
But if you have something to just grab and go, no
(14:56):
decision in the process. You just know, this is what I'm going
to eat before I leave. This is what I'm going to drink when I
wake up. This is what I'm going to do.
And there are other things that just can even help you get
to that point. So the stimulants that maybe you're taking
medication, maybe you drink coffee, maybe you have an energy
drink in the morning, or you drink ice water.
(15:17):
Do you drink something really cold? I know there's all, you know,
there's always information about something that's good or bad.
But I was thinking about it with the dopamine boost.
What have I done in my life for years to get
me to be going in the morning and drinking ice
(15:37):
water, like getting ice and drinking water and chewing on ice.
And I know my dentist told me not to chew on ice and stuff, but
I think that is a stimulant for me, is to chew on ice,
to have my mouth and my throat be completely cold as
much as possible throughout the day.
Ask the people in my life. I am that person.
And if you hate, they hear the sound of chewing.
(15:58):
I'm. I'm sorry. You may not want to be around me because that's
what I love to do, but that is a stimulant for me.
If you think about your mornings, what do you do?
What have you done for years, maybe even before you knew how
to. You had ADHD that helped you wake up and get
going. And maybe you've struggled with that.
Maybe you haven't been able to do that.
(16:20):
Or maybe you realize if I exercise in the morning, I'll do
so much better the rest of the day. Or if I wake up early
and shower. I've been taking cold showers more.
I've struggled with showers. I think I've shared that before
on my episode about the dread factor.
When you start to dread things. Or maybe you've always dreaded
it. Like I've always dreaded and not liked washing my face.
(16:41):
But
I was just looking on Reddit because, you know, the ADHD women's
group, and there's probably an ADHD adult one, too.
I don't know if they're called groups on Reddit, but that's just
what I'm going to call this up. And someone was saying something
like, yeah, I've been reading a lot of people have hygiene issues
because of ADHD. And I thought, well, not wanting
(17:03):
to take a shower doesn't necessarily mean you have hygiene
issues, does it? If you find other ways to clean
yourself. But one way is to not even wait for
the water to get hot. If you don't have, you know, immediate
hot water is just to get in that cold shower
and just pretend like I'm washing my hands really fast, get out
(17:25):
and just use dry shampoo. My friend Stacy went.
She did something where you. You went at least a month without
washing your hair. And she exercised every day to the point of
being sweaty. So she managed it. She had beautiful hair.
She still does. She has way better hair than I do.
And hey, Stacy, you're out there. She says she has ADHD
too. Undiagnosed. Undiagnosed. But pretty sure she does.
(17:49):
And anyway, she, yeah, she had total good
hygiene but was not shampooing her hair.
And I don't even think it was because she didn't take a shower.
She probably took a shower. But there are other ways to clean
so you don't have to have hygiene issues.
If you don't do those things. What was my point?
Oh, your morning routine. If it includes a shower, mine has
before. It's really fun. If it includes putting on makeup
(18:11):
for, or not putting on makeup or grabbing a hat and going,
then that's fantastic. But if you can get
into a groove and especially if it includes things that are important
to you. So when you're setting up your morning routine, you're
saying what is essential? Having enough time, then the
first thing is what time do you wake up?
(18:33):
Actually the first thing is probably, what time do I go to bed?
Because if you want to be able to get up at a certain time, you
need to be able to go to bed at a certain time so that
you don't have a high stress day. You need to get enough sleep
and you need to get yourself into that routine so your body
will naturally fall asleep more easily.
Might not as easily. You might have a busy,
(18:55):
busy brain. You might take ADHD medication that does
disrupt that. Finding what works for you for sleep.
I might make another episode about sleep, but listening to something
in your ears, don't feel bad about it.
If you have to go digital at night and it helps you fall asleep,
sleep to listen to white noise or a calm story
(19:15):
or a calm podcast episode. That's my thing.
I just paid Patreon for the, for the podcast that I
listen to so that their commercials don't wake me up.
I liked it better when they didn't have commercials.
But they have to, they have to make a living,
I guess anyway, they have to make it work.
It's not, it's not cheap. I'll just tell you, right, that it's
not cheap having a podcast, but it is fun.
(19:36):
So low stress day. So this is your routine day.
It's eating nutritious foods. The Internet says balance
meals. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that
because you get to, well, you get to define what's balanced and
you get to define what's a meal. Don't feel the pressure of having
a full on meal if you're still getting your nutrition.
(19:58):
Don't feel like it has to match what people have traditionally
eaten forever or you know, if you're healthy
and you're able to get fruits and vegetables in a smoothie
or a soup. Smoothies and soups are the best things for adding
fruits and vegetables that you may or may not taste.
(20:18):
So. Oh, have you ever figured that out
yet? It's one of the greatest secrets because maybe you don't
Like a lot of vegetables. Maybe you do, maybe you like them,
but it's a huge hassle to cook and cut them up
and things like that. So you buy some frozen vegetables, you
throw them in a soup. You just buy, you know, those soups
(20:40):
that are in a box instead of a can. Tomato soup or butternut
squash is really good. And the Imagine brand, I'm not every.
Obviously nobody's listening to me. I don't get paid to advertise.
The Imagine brand is more expensive, but I think it's a lot
better than the Pacific. But the butternut squash soup, the tomato,
those are great bases to just throw in vegetables.
(21:02):
Vegetables. And even if you don't want to taste the vegetable
when you're eating it, just use one of those hand blenders, or
if you've got a big blender, blend it up first.
Becomes creamy. You don't even taste it.
The soup is the hot smoothie, and the smoothie is the
cold smoothie. So. And the cold smoothies, you can
add in greens. You can buy your greens and freeze them.
(21:25):
The big boxes of kale, spinach, or bags.
I usually get the boxes because they take up a lot of room in
the freezer. But
if you freeze them right away and use the handfuls frozen, put
them right in, they taste good. If you let them thaw, it doesn't
taste. It's like it's some gas or something.
Doesn't taste good. But after years of buying greens that I
(21:46):
had to throw away because I'd keep forgetting them, that I had
them, the frozen is the way to go. And
same with, with, with the frozen vegetables.
I mean, fresh vegetables are good, too.
And if you're okay with that, it is fun.
It's. It's a tactile thing. It is fun to wash them
and stuff, but it makes a bigger mess.
And if you don't want to make mess in your kitchen, then make
(22:09):
the smoothies, make the soup, and wash your blender as fast
as you can when you're done because it's a lot harder to wash
later. So that's my little mini. My mini workshop on nutrition.
But if you have a balanced meal, if you
have something, it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't have to be balanced.
It's something that can fill you up and give you nutrients and
(22:32):
move your body in some way. So that's your lower stress day.
You're able to move, you're able to relax.
I don't know if you like yoga like I do.
Do some yoga. Just lay down and Put your legs up
the wall. If you haven't seen my lie down and let go video,
it's on my website. It's free to do.
You literally just lay on the floor and take your legs
(22:54):
and have the wall support them. The wall is one of
my favorite yoga props. And even if it's a door,
lock the door so no one's coming in.
And just let your legs relax straight up.
Or they can go wider. But always do it slowly because I sprain
something or I don't know what's before the sprain.
It's the strained muscle by your feet are
(23:15):
heavier. So if you just let the legs go out, you might not be
warmed up for that. But, yeah, that's your low
stress day. Putting your feet up in the air.
If you don't have wall space, go to your couch or your bed, lay
down and just put your calves in, your feet on there.
Let the rest of you lay down, put the feet up in the air, and
it will really help the stress level lower.
(23:36):
Just lay there and breathe and think about good things.
Let go of everything else if you really have to.
You just think about breathing. But yeah, so serotonin production
works better when we're not stressed.
You're steady, consistent. Doesn't that sound lovely?
Have a steady, consistent life. Honestly, with my podcast,
(24:00):
I. I need a day that's just like, this is my
recording day. Because I have not been consistent.
That may have to be my thing that I need to be accountable to
you for is to choose a day and have that be my recording
day. And not only that, because I have chosen that before, but
actually have my recording time. And I had lots of excuses before.
We always do. Right. But one of them was that my yoga schedule
(24:21):
can change a lot. But I freed up my Mondays more and today's
a Monday. This is for my Tuesday episode.
Yeah. So I need to do that. But yeah, think for yourself.
Think for yourself. Think about yourself and your own schedule.
What are you doing that's not consistent that you want to
be consistent in? What are you not including in your morning
(24:44):
routine? Maybe you don't feel like flossing at night,
so make flossing your morning routine.
Put that dental floss by the soap at your sink.
When you wake up and you go to the bathroom and wash your hands,
there's the dental floss. It really doesn't take very long.
And even though I maybe like it, but if you don't like it,
look at. Look at the clock. Look at the second hand and see it
really doesn't take that long. And it makes such a difference.
(25:07):
My dental hygienist was so happy with me when I went
a few weeks ago. She's like, I don't see any bleeding.
I'm just like, yay, my blossom paid off.
But okay, so let's go to.
I want to talk about dopamine too.
So the dopamine is what helps us do things, that boost.
(25:30):
That helps us do things. What's interesting is stress can
actually help dopamine at times. And if you
think about a deadline, that's stress.
That stress is a short term, temporary boost of dopamine.
And we go, oh no, someone's at the door.
(25:50):
I'm going to clear this path so no one sees all this mess
or whatever. If you were like that, I've been like that before.
So that can temporarily get you to go into action.
But if it's a chronic stress, if it's a long term stress, it
depletes your dopamine over time. And that's why when you're
really stressed, you're reaching for sugar, right?
You're reaching for those things that can boost it.
(26:12):
You know, I need some caffeine, I need some, I need this, I need
this, I need, ah, you know, and those are the things that
cause us just to max out. So, yeah, I'm going
to skip past my other notes about this and later I'll
think I forgot to talk about that.
But there is a stress dopamine cycle.
(26:33):
And that is if you have stress, you have the
cortisol. And so your stress goes up, your cortisol
goes up, the dopamine goes down, your motivation goes down,
and then the things that you have to do go up, right?
So when you're not able to accomplish things, it goes through
(26:56):
the cycle of. Because of having stress and lowering your dopamine,
lowering your motivation, you have a whole day to
get something done. Maybe you don't, but there are days that
I feel like that I feel like I have these big windows and because
I let the stress of something else come in, it can disrupt,
(27:17):
makes it so I'm not even accomplishing what I want to do.
And then I have more to do afterwards.
So look at what might be bringing stress into your life.
I know there are many people that have high stress jobs
or high stress life, a lot of family members or
someone that you're caring for. If you have that high
(27:41):
stress life, then what you need to do is learn how
to manage your stress. We can reduce stress a lot
by not letting it come in in the first place.
And then we can also just figure out how to manage the stress.
And that can be with the things that can increase that happiness,
(28:01):
the happiness feeling in the brain and that's going for the
walk. All those things that I've mentioned before, laughing with
a friend, laughing with a TV show, you know, laughing
with a podcast. Oh, my goodness. I have a podcast that makes
giggle all the time. So finding those things that can reduce
(28:22):
the stress for you could be deep breathing.
Breathing can be really helpful. Years ago, well, a
few times actually. So during COVID I was missing
my yoga people. And at first I was only teaching on audio, so
I thought, oh, I'll just, you know, like make some audio recordings
(28:43):
of breathing techniques to help people in my classes
and stuff. And it was really interesting because I was just sitting
there in a chair leading them through the breathing and I
noticed my own nervous system just getting calmer and calmer
and calmer.
And then when I had injuries, like I had
(29:07):
to have wrist surgery and stuff after that, I made recordings
for them and just being in bed and on medication for
my pain. Calmer, calmer. Com, you know, it would
just really help, even with my pain management and stuff, to
have that calmness in my body. So. So let's talk about
(29:29):
a routine morning. Finding the ability to
have the sunlight. If you can, you might live where there's not
a lot of sunlight. So find other things that give you that
feeling. Lighting a candle can give that feeling.
It's not the same, you know, UV ray benefit or
(29:49):
whatever you're getting with your melatonin production in your
skin and all that, but. Or vitamin D.
What am I saying? Melatonin, vitamin D production in your skin.
So you're not going to get that from a candle, but it might relax
you. If you like to see a fire, if you like to see a flame
and you can light a candle. If you live somewhere where you're
allowed to do that, then do it. If you have a
(30:10):
fireplace and you can light a fire in your fireplace, that can
be calming. Think for your think. I keep saying think
for yourself, which sounds like I'm talking to a child.
I'm not. But think about your own life and how
you can find things that are calming for you, that can
just get you in a mellow brain, relaxed mood.
(30:35):
Your brain's not tired, you're not stressed.
What can you do to bring it from that stress level to the
calm from, you know, you don't have to
be energized all the time. But maybe you do something that helps
you feel energized. It's your exercise or maybe you eat
something and that helps you feel energized.
(30:55):
But other, other things are comfort foods.
Those are probably the things that are producing the serotonin.
Where we sit there, the pasta, the bread, and we're like, you
know, just feeling all mellow. So, yeah, oh, I think
that's going to be it. I always say that.
And then I think of five more things.
But
(31:17):
yeah, anything you think of, if you like
to write, if you like to talk to people, if you like to
listen to music. I guess there is one more thing I
want to talk about because sometimes stress comes in when
we don't plan on it. In fact, a lot of times it comes in right
when we don't plan on it. And that might be life experiences
(31:38):
and that we can't really help unless it's a relationship
that's not positive or work environment that's not positive.
Positive. Like if you're able to make a change in your life to
reduce that stress, that's one thing.
But a lot of things like health issues or injuries or
(31:59):
things that happen, accidents or something, whatever problems
come in, family life, friendships and stuff, if there, if
there are things that we want to help with, we need to help
with, that we need to be involved with, that's one thing.
If it's a relationship we don't have to be in and it's causing
problems for us, then that's what you evaluate.
(32:23):
Is there that kind of experience, that relationship experience
that will cause stress. But I'm happy to be here
and help and I will know when to slow down and
when to, you know, like not over exhaust, over exhaust myself,
exhaust myself. But so you're finding that balance, right?
You're finding the balance within the relationships that you're
(32:45):
going to keep, you want to keep, you want to help, but you might
have to pace yourself with how you're doing it or find ways to
get breaks or things. And then there are the relationships that
maybe that's stressful and I don't need that relationship in
my life anymore or I don't need that environment, I don't need
to work for those people anymore. Are, and those are the things
you evaluate. A whole other category is the things
(33:08):
that really aren't in your life you have
no control about, but come in somehow.
So you read your emails in the morning and it could even just
be hearing about a sale and then you get distracted and
then you're stressed out because you don't know if you should
buy it or not. And they're telling you there's only like six
hours and then it goes away or whatever.
(33:30):
So that can be a stress. It's not life altering, right?
Unless you're buying something you really can't afford and causes
a problem, you have to move out of your apartment or something.
But those kind of things you have to learn
some kind of management for. And I'm saying this, you know, raising
my hand high because I need to learn some kind of management
for that, that when I open up my computer or
(33:51):
I open up my phone. How many times have you done that?
Intending to write an email or to look something up
or to order this thing from Amazon? And usually
for me it happens when I shut my computer half hour, hour,
whatever, later and start to do something else.
And I remember, oh, you need to do this.
(34:13):
And I thought that's what I got on my computer.
Begin with. And some of those things that distract us on
our computers or our phones are stressful, especially if we're
taking in news from the world or something.
And you need to find that balance. How
much do I want to know about it and how much is too much for
my own health, my own day and the things that I
(34:34):
need to take care of in my life.
And that becomes a huge factor in how balanced
you are and how you're able to function.
Because now that you understand, and maybe you understood before
I did, about how stress can play a part in
how well our brain functions and how we get maxed out and
(34:56):
how we really aren't as capable as we have been before and we
wish we could be, then maybe just block some of
that out or maybe tell someone who's feeding that information
to you, maybe you have somebody in your life who likes to share
all the woes of the world and at some point just say,
okay, I can't listen anymore, I can't listen anymore.
(35:18):
You can say that out loud. I'm a very non confrontational person
and I've said that out loud about COVID before even Covid even
came. My husband was watching. Well, I don't know if he was watching
news. He was just reading a lot. And tell me for months, this
thing is coming, there's nothing we can do about it.
I'm like, I don't want to hear about it.
If it gets here, tell me. But until then, I don't need
(35:40):
to be stressed for two months, you know, so you can, you can
control. And I just thought, I'm not Going to believe it
until it's. I wasn't a denier. I was just like,
I'm not gonna face that until I have to face
it. So, you know, and you get to
decide what things, at what point you see that
(36:03):
information as being needed in your life.
It's like my doctor told me, he said, when you see.
He used a hunting reference, I don't know if you're a hunter
or if you would rather not hunt animals.
But he said, I'm realizing I could be
talking to a big audience here, but.
Or a variety of, you know, I'm trying, I'm a people
(36:24):
pleaser. I'm trying to please you all, make you all comfortable.
But he said if you see, you know, a wolf coming in the forest,
and we have no wolves here, so it's just imaginary for me.
But you see a wolf coming in the forest, he said, I'd rather
shoot it before it gets too close. So at some point,
when something's getting closer, you might need to prepare and
make, you know, that's just an analogy.
It doesn't mean we're going to shoot things.
But if there was a wolf coming, I probably would.
(36:46):
Even though I don't know how to shoot very well at all.
But like, I live where there's hurricanes now.
At what point do I start to think, oh, this might come here and
maybe I should buy more water, so maybe I should get
some more food. Maybe I should. I don't know what else.
I'm new to the hurricane scene, but we do live in North Florida
(37:09):
where they aren't affecting us too terribly.
We're in the middle of the coasts. Oh, I think that's
it. Another episode that's a little bit
everywhere. But my hope is to help you
think of all these things so that you can evaluate how.
(37:34):
How a daily routine would be helpful for you.
And it can be simple things. It could be.
And it could even be different on different days.
It's better if you have the same thing every day to start out
and end with. With. And it's probably easier if you
do similar thing for eating. But if you need to do
things like some things are once a week, some things are once
(37:54):
a month. You fit those in and you have that day
be that thing. And if planning and consistency is
a struggle for you, I hear ya. Sometimes it's easy
for me and sometimes it's like. But I don't know, it's having
to make that decision. Huh. Sometimes some decisions better than
(38:14):
no decision. And just seeing how it goes and
Figuring it out. So thank you for being patient
for me. Patient for me with me as
I figure out the YouTubing part of it.
If you're just listening on
audibly, whatever that's called. If you're just listening
(38:38):
and you ever want to check out my YouTube channel, just out of
curiosity, just to give me some more followers, subscribers,
they call it different things in different places, but that would
be great. And really my hope is that not very
many people look at it until I get better at it.
Today I backed up the camera. I'm a lot more comfortable than
having it so close to my face.
(39:03):
Different lighting's different every day.
But thank you so much. Thank you so much for being
here. Let me know. Come to go to my website,
renee-allen.com if you're on my email list,
then you might start getting emails from me.
I haven't sent any in a little while, but I'm getting more
comfortable with my new format. It's all.
(39:25):
It's crazy having to learn new things and get
comfortable with them, but it gives you an opportunity to
be in touch with me each week or even in between, and let me
know how these things are affecting you in your lives.
Because I see it in a lot of people's lives.
I read about it, but it's fascinating to me that it
(39:45):
impacts so many of us in such a great way.
And even if you don't have adhd, but you have a lot of the
symptoms, you have a lot of similarities.
I'd love to hear how this is helpful for you and what
your. Your hurdles still would be. You
know, the whole listening to a way to do something better
and then think. But that won't work for me because
(40:10):
that. I'd love to help with that, too, because
I know there's a lot of struggles that we have that I
might not share that you may have. But.
Yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My husband kind of hates it when people end a sentence with
yes. But I've learned that when we say
(40:31):
things like or yeah. Or whatever, our brain's just
thinking. We're just thinking here at the end or in the middle.
And our brains have to rest a little bit, think a little bit,
regroup. Sometimes we can talk a mile a minute, and sometimes
we need a little. Yeah.
Oh, my goodness. Thank you again. It's always hard to say goodbye,
but I will. So thank you so much for being here.
(40:54):
I will be back. Bye.
Open windows Broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(41:32):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies. I'm cut short.
The silence of sound has yet been found, but
not by me,
(41:53):
Sam.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
Renee Allen, host of this podcast. I'm excited to be here today.
I first have to just thank you because it makes me so happy
to know that people are actually listening to my podcast because
I'm really, really bad at the marketing part.
I, I, yeah, I won't even get into
that. But yeah, getting the word out is not my forte.
(00:52):
So thank you for that. And if you could continue to do that,
even just by listening yourself, downloading episodes will help
the visibility for people who are listening to podcasts like
this and might want to find one like mine, or even just sharing
an episode with somebody or giving it a review or something
like that, that I'm going to try not to be distracted
(01:13):
by my glasses being crooked. Okay. Video is another thing, another
distraction. I'm going to try to let go of that bit by bit.
But today's episode is about helping your brain, stopping
the fatigue that can happen in your brain, boosting your brain's
power. Even though you might have executive dysfunct, you
(01:36):
still have the ability to do things.
It's just different. You might have one hand tied behind
your back or something to not be able to do it the same as
somebody else. And when you have that executive dysfunction
and you're not able to get yourself to do something and you have
to make a lot of decisions, a daily routine can take
(01:56):
out that decision making. You've already made the decision and
now you just go through the flow and you're not questioning it
because it's working. If there's a major disruption in that,
that routine doesn't get to work one day, that's okay, you can
go back to it the next day. So it doesn't mean you have to
be so rigid, but there's a lot of freedom in having that
daily routine. And it makes a big difference from being
(02:20):
either overwhelmed, exhausted, or just feeling like
I should be doing more, I should be doing more, you know, not
being able to get yourself to do things that shouldn't be feeling
like dragging your feet. They should just be feeling like one
step, what is it called? One put one foot
in front of another from Rudolph the Red Nosed
(02:42):
Reindeer. But yeah, so you might know that
already. You might know. I do really well when I have a daily
routine, when I have a morning routine, when I wake up, and I
do the same thing every morning. When you have children, you
know that children do well with routines.
They almost, I wouldn't say they crave routines, but they definitely
(03:03):
do better with routine. And School teachers know that.
They have them come in, they have them put their backpack here,
go and sit at your desk, or line up here.
They have a routine so the children know what is expected of
them and they do it. And the classroom functions better, but
the children function better too, because they don't have to
think about, where am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to
(03:24):
do? In any situation when it's unfamiliar like that,
it does take more brain power and it can be
confusing and it's, you know, the whole thing of going up to
order food and you have no idea what, what the options are, how
it works. Is it a meal deal? Is it
a. Yeah, it can be exhausting. Just something like that.
(03:44):
So you look at your own house or if you have an office
or if you, you know, home office, it could be a workplace.
If you don't know what you're going to do, do when you get there,
it's going to be a lot harder to be productive because unless
that's part of your day planning out what you're going to do,
but unless you have some structure to it, it's going to be a
(04:05):
lot more difficult for your brain. In the last few episodes,
I've become really curious about dopamine and serotonin.
And I talked about it somewhat last time.
And it's kind of like when you finish a phone call and
then you think, oh, I forgot to talk to him about this, or I
forgot to ask him that. I thought of so many
more things. So I'll probably keep talking about dopamine and
(04:27):
serotonin. I'm not a doctor, I'm not someone who studied
this in college, but I'm studying it now.
And it's fascinating to understand how they play a
role in our brain's ability to get ourselves to do
things and how ADHD can make it
(04:48):
harder for you to have either one of them.
And one of the things is stress. So if you have
stress in your life, because I could talk about the things
like, okay, here's all the things that you can do to get
some serotonin in your body. Like being out in the sun.
Natural sunlight stimulates the serotonin production.
(05:10):
So there are things like that. Exercise, working out in the morning,
going for a walk, swimming, cycling, any of those things boosts
the serotonin. If you've had the runner's high, I believe that's
what it, what it is. But
so there can be the things that make it come up, but there
are also the things that deplete it and even
(05:35):
a hug can boost serotonin. There are things that help you feel
calm inside. A massage, those things that help you
feel calm or just at ease. It doesn't have to be
mellow. But even just laughing. Sorry, I keep hitting things.
I know the microphones are picking it up.
But even just laughing can bring a sense of
(05:55):
calmness to us, right? Or holding a puppy, holding a baby, if
the baby's happy, or if you've just calmed a baby, the
baby's fallen asleep in your arms. So all those things you think
of, that, you know, feeling, feeling good.
So those are the things I said I could talk about.
And then of course I talk about it. But what I really want to
talk about so in more depth is what depletes it, what
(06:17):
gets in the way of that serotonin function in your
brain and makes it so you don't keep going.
So you're trying to get something done and you lose interest
or you can't get yourself to get into a
routine. It feels kind of clunky and all that.
So there are a lot of things that can get in the way.
(06:38):
One is stress. So if you have a
routine, it's lowering the stress because you don't have
that uncertainty. You don't have to make the decisions.
When you're making decisions, if they're not easy for you to
make, that can be stressful. Have you ever had a time that
you are trying to make a decision and so you talk to
somebody and you, you run through all the things.
(07:02):
Well, if I did this, if I did that, and you just don't know.
And in that state, you're in a stressful state.
If you have less stress, you have a lower cortisol
level. If you have more stress, you have more cortisol.
And cortisol is what leads to what they
say, you know, like things like the belly fat.
Not that we're just trying to do this because of that, but the
(07:24):
stress hormone causes different problems in the body,
even just how we're put together, you know, how
our bodies are. It causes problems for our nervous system
to be in that fight or flight mode. It makes it harder to sleep.
So we all know all that, right? But it also makes it so
(07:44):
the brain doesn't have as much capacity to produce serotonin
or to receive the serotonin. There's receptors in
the brain and. Oh, dang it. So sometimes
I'm going to have to turn off my video and keep talking to you
on audio. Every once in a while, this bye bye
(08:06):
to you video people. Every once in a while lately my
video program has made it. So it just
all of a sudden starts making it where my mouth
and like I'm moving. After I'm moving, I can see
myself in the mirror of sorts. So I'm just stopping in
(08:27):
and I'm going to start it again. Yeehaw.
Huh? Yeah. My mouth's mouth. Watch. Is it
okay, recording again on here. Hello again to
you YouTube people and all my audio listeners, which is most
of you. Thank you for being patient because I
(08:48):
want to figure this out. It's kind of funny because I've mentioned
before my YouTube videos might have one or five views.
So with the actual video. But one day I had 350.
Now I think it's up to 400. I have no, no idea why.
I think it's all about where YouTube puts it and then people
find it and they click on it. But it was kind of bizarre.
(09:09):
So in case this becomes a 400 watching.
And I know some people have thousands and hundreds of thousands,
but in case there's 400, I just, I'm just trying to get
it to not be too frustrating here. But back to the stress.
So serotonin, high cortisol does a
few things that interferes with serotonin.
(09:30):
It uses up your resources. Cortisol demands a lot
of energy and nutrients and it doesn't leave as much for
serotonin production. Don't ask me how that works, but that's
what experts say. And then there are just as there are
dopamine receptors. Told you before about how my psychiatrist
(09:50):
told me it's not that you don't produce enough dopamine, it's
just that you have more receptors or need more to satisfy
the receptors to, you know, might be, you know, I mentioned
the landlord, you know, like the rent costs more.
So even though you have the same amount of dopamine as somebody
else, you need more to pay that person.
(10:11):
But it could even just be they're just a greedy landlord.
So it could be the same amount of receptors.
He told me that we have more dopamine receptors, but I don't
know for sure if that's true. I saw that it can be kind of a
blend of too many receptors or the receptors needing
more to actually fire and work. Right.
So stress hormones can actually disrupt the receptors from
(10:35):
receiving the serotonin. So the serotonin has a
purpose to keep us calm, to keep us on target, to get
us to do things, to be in a flow of things.
If we are calm to Begin with. So it's just kind of
this vicious circle kind of thing, or kind of a happy
circle because we start the right way.
If you have the calmness from a daily routine, from
(10:58):
planning something out, from making your system smoother, streamlining
your system, making it so you don't forget things as easily and
you're not running back and forth last minute and arriving later,
whatever, or just trying to get dressed and
not being able to find socks, you know, that kind of thing, all
of that adds to stress. So if you can set yourself
(11:19):
up for success, you will have lower stress.
It won't disrupt the serotonin receptors receiving what you
have, it'll produce more serotonin by doing something.
You're happy, you're in a groove, all of that.
And, and then also stress hormones, cortisol can
(11:41):
disrupt your sleep. And when you have poor sleep,
it lowers the serotonin because serotonin is needed to
make melatonin. It's all just interacting together.
So the basics are, we know we need our sleep, we know we
need less stress, and we know we need a routine.
And
(12:01):
the part that we seem to have the most, like I'm in
control, I can make this happen, is to
develop a routine and to develop a system in your day,
your week or whatever so that it's going smoothly.
There are other explanations about serotonin.
I'm not gonna get into all of them, but just briefly that when
(12:25):
you lower stress, it helps you have a healthy
balance of dopamine, serotonin, and different things that
help with mood, focus, motivation. And we know about the
sleep digestion, even helps digestion.
But what happens if you look at just how your habits
can change or how your day can look, whether have a
(12:48):
high stress day or a low stress day.
If you have a high stress day, you might skip a meal,
you might not eat as nutritiously and the nutrients help
produce the serotonin and they, they help you.
Like I don't know if you've heard about when you eat turkey,
(13:08):
that it has tryptophan in it and you feel really calm and relaxed,
like you're going to fall asleep, that's the serotonin levels
going up. There are other foods that can give you that maybe
not in such a high dose. So if you've ever felt that way,
and it might just be being full too, but you're kind of like
ah, in a little la la land. But you might also
just be inside all day, never get outside, take a walk, it's
(13:29):
more stressful. You haven't been out in nature, being out in
nature, hopefully there's not a lot of bugs, can help
you be a little more calm. And if you're worrying a
ton, you are thinking, oh, I should be doing this,
I should be doing that. You know, you're thinking all these other
things that's going to lead to the stress.
So you can see kind of that whole circle again of you're stressed.
(13:51):
The things that you are doing aren't as good for producing
serotonin. They're not as good for having that dopamine,
that uplift and stuff. You're more troubled or whatever.
And when you have a day, not that life is always going to
be all perfect and rosy, but if you at least have
some kind of routine,
(14:14):
you might have the same thing for breakfast every day.
You might set yourself up for success by making meals in advance
on a Saturday or something. Or even just, I mean, really simplified.
It doesn't have to be, you know, egg white cups or
something like that. My daughter's been making egg cups.
And the thing that I like to make are oatmeal cups
(14:34):
where they don't have flour in them.
I like muffins too, but oatmeal cups are simpler with just
oatmeal. And they. I usually do pumpkin and chocolate chips and
a little bit of maple syrup or something.
And you bake them still. They're not as big as a muffin,
but they're more dense and they don't have the flour in it.
Not that I never eat flour, but just, you know, an option.
But if you have something to just grab and go, no
(14:56):
decision in the process. You just know, this is what I'm going
to eat before I leave. This is what I'm going to drink when I
wake up. This is what I'm going to do.
And there are other things that just can even help you get
to that point. So the stimulants that maybe you're taking
medication, maybe you drink coffee, maybe you have an energy
drink in the morning, or you drink ice water.
(15:17):
Do you drink something really cold? I know there's all, you know,
there's always information about something that's good or bad.
But I was thinking about it with the dopamine boost.
What have I done in my life for years to get
me to be going in the morning and drinking ice
(15:37):
water, like getting ice and drinking water and chewing on ice.
And I know my dentist told me not to chew on ice and stuff, but
I think that is a stimulant for me, is to chew on ice,
to have my mouth and my throat be completely cold as
much as possible throughout the day.
Ask the people in my life. I am that person.
And if you hate, they hear the sound of chewing.
(15:58):
I'm. I'm sorry. You may not want to be around me because that's
what I love to do, but that is a stimulant for me.
If you think about your mornings, what do you do?
What have you done for years, maybe even before you knew how
to. You had ADHD that helped you wake up and get
going. And maybe you've struggled with that.
Maybe you haven't been able to do that.
(16:20):
Or maybe you realize if I exercise in the morning, I'll do
so much better the rest of the day. Or if I wake up early
and shower. I've been taking cold showers more.
I've struggled with showers. I think I've shared that before
on my episode about the dread factor.
When you start to dread things. Or maybe you've always dreaded
it. Like I've always dreaded and not liked washing my face.
(16:41):
But
I was just looking on Reddit because, you know, the ADHD women's
group, and there's probably an ADHD adult one, too.
I don't know if they're called groups on Reddit, but that's just
what I'm going to call this up. And someone was saying something
like, yeah, I've been reading a lot of people have hygiene issues
because of ADHD. And I thought, well, not wanting
(17:03):
to take a shower doesn't necessarily mean you have hygiene
issues, does it? If you find other ways to clean
yourself. But one way is to not even wait for
the water to get hot. If you don't have, you know, immediate
hot water is just to get in that cold shower
and just pretend like I'm washing my hands really fast, get out
(17:25):
and just use dry shampoo. My friend Stacy went.
She did something where you. You went at least a month without
washing your hair. And she exercised every day to the point of
being sweaty. So she managed it. She had beautiful hair.
She still does. She has way better hair than I do.
And hey, Stacy, you're out there. She says she has ADHD
too. Undiagnosed. Undiagnosed. But pretty sure she does.
(17:49):
And anyway, she, yeah, she had total good
hygiene but was not shampooing her hair.
And I don't even think it was because she didn't take a shower.
She probably took a shower. But there are other ways to clean
so you don't have to have hygiene issues.
If you don't do those things. What was my point?
Oh, your morning routine. If it includes a shower, mine has
before. It's really fun. If it includes putting on makeup
(18:11):
for, or not putting on makeup or grabbing a hat and going,
then that's fantastic. But if you can get
into a groove and especially if it includes things that are important
to you. So when you're setting up your morning routine, you're
saying what is essential? Having enough time, then the
first thing is what time do you wake up?
(18:33):
Actually the first thing is probably, what time do I go to bed?
Because if you want to be able to get up at a certain time, you
need to be able to go to bed at a certain time so that
you don't have a high stress day. You need to get enough sleep
and you need to get yourself into that routine so your body
will naturally fall asleep more easily.
Might not as easily. You might have a busy,
(18:55):
busy brain. You might take ADHD medication that does
disrupt that. Finding what works for you for sleep.
I might make another episode about sleep, but listening to something
in your ears, don't feel bad about it.
If you have to go digital at night and it helps you fall asleep,
sleep to listen to white noise or a calm story
(19:15):
or a calm podcast episode. That's my thing.
I just paid Patreon for the, for the podcast that I
listen to so that their commercials don't wake me up.
I liked it better when they didn't have commercials.
But they have to, they have to make a living,
I guess anyway, they have to make it work.
It's not, it's not cheap. I'll just tell you, right, that it's
not cheap having a podcast, but it is fun.
(19:36):
So low stress day. So this is your routine day.
It's eating nutritious foods. The Internet says balance
meals. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that
because you get to, well, you get to define what's balanced and
you get to define what's a meal. Don't feel the pressure of having
a full on meal if you're still getting your nutrition.
(19:58):
Don't feel like it has to match what people have traditionally
eaten forever or you know, if you're healthy
and you're able to get fruits and vegetables in a smoothie
or a soup. Smoothies and soups are the best things for adding
fruits and vegetables that you may or may not taste.
(20:18):
So. Oh, have you ever figured that out
yet? It's one of the greatest secrets because maybe you don't
Like a lot of vegetables. Maybe you do, maybe you like them,
but it's a huge hassle to cook and cut them up
and things like that. So you buy some frozen vegetables, you
throw them in a soup. You just buy, you know, those soups
(20:40):
that are in a box instead of a can. Tomato soup or butternut
squash is really good. And the Imagine brand, I'm not every.
Obviously nobody's listening to me. I don't get paid to advertise.
The Imagine brand is more expensive, but I think it's a lot
better than the Pacific. But the butternut squash soup, the tomato,
those are great bases to just throw in vegetables.
(21:02):
Vegetables. And even if you don't want to taste the vegetable
when you're eating it, just use one of those hand blenders, or
if you've got a big blender, blend it up first.
Becomes creamy. You don't even taste it.
The soup is the hot smoothie, and the smoothie is the
cold smoothie. So. And the cold smoothies, you can
add in greens. You can buy your greens and freeze them.
(21:25):
The big boxes of kale, spinach, or bags.
I usually get the boxes because they take up a lot of room in
the freezer. But
if you freeze them right away and use the handfuls frozen, put
them right in, they taste good. If you let them thaw, it doesn't
taste. It's like it's some gas or something.
Doesn't taste good. But after years of buying greens that I
(21:46):
had to throw away because I'd keep forgetting them, that I had
them, the frozen is the way to go. And
same with, with, with the frozen vegetables.
I mean, fresh vegetables are good, too.
And if you're okay with that, it is fun.
It's. It's a tactile thing. It is fun to wash them
and stuff, but it makes a bigger mess.
And if you don't want to make mess in your kitchen, then make
(22:09):
the smoothies, make the soup, and wash your blender as fast
as you can when you're done because it's a lot harder to wash
later. So that's my little mini. My mini workshop on nutrition.
But if you have a balanced meal, if you
have something, it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't have to be balanced.
It's something that can fill you up and give you nutrients and
(22:32):
move your body in some way. So that's your lower stress day.
You're able to move, you're able to relax.
I don't know if you like yoga like I do.
Do some yoga. Just lay down and Put your legs up
the wall. If you haven't seen my lie down and let go video,
it's on my website. It's free to do.
You literally just lay on the floor and take your legs
(22:54):
and have the wall support them. The wall is one of
my favorite yoga props. And even if it's a door,
lock the door so no one's coming in.
And just let your legs relax straight up.
Or they can go wider. But always do it slowly because I sprain
something or I don't know what's before the sprain.
It's the strained muscle by your feet are
(23:15):
heavier. So if you just let the legs go out, you might not be
warmed up for that. But, yeah, that's your low
stress day. Putting your feet up in the air.
If you don't have wall space, go to your couch or your bed, lay
down and just put your calves in, your feet on there.
Let the rest of you lay down, put the feet up in the air, and
it will really help the stress level lower.
(23:36):
Just lay there and breathe and think about good things.
Let go of everything else if you really have to.
You just think about breathing. But yeah, so serotonin production
works better when we're not stressed.
You're steady, consistent. Doesn't that sound lovely?
Have a steady, consistent life. Honestly, with my podcast,
(24:00):
I. I need a day that's just like, this is my
recording day. Because I have not been consistent.
That may have to be my thing that I need to be accountable to
you for is to choose a day and have that be my recording
day. And not only that, because I have chosen that before, but
actually have my recording time. And I had lots of excuses before.
We always do. Right. But one of them was that my yoga schedule
(24:21):
can change a lot. But I freed up my Mondays more and today's
a Monday. This is for my Tuesday episode.
Yeah. So I need to do that. But yeah, think for yourself.
Think for yourself. Think about yourself and your own schedule.
What are you doing that's not consistent that you want to
be consistent in? What are you not including in your morning
(24:44):
routine? Maybe you don't feel like flossing at night,
so make flossing your morning routine.
Put that dental floss by the soap at your sink.
When you wake up and you go to the bathroom and wash your hands,
there's the dental floss. It really doesn't take very long.
And even though I maybe like it, but if you don't like it,
look at. Look at the clock. Look at the second hand and see it
really doesn't take that long. And it makes such a difference.
(25:07):
My dental hygienist was so happy with me when I went
a few weeks ago. She's like, I don't see any bleeding.
I'm just like, yay, my blossom paid off.
But okay, so let's go to.
I want to talk about dopamine too.
So the dopamine is what helps us do things, that boost.
(25:30):
That helps us do things. What's interesting is stress can
actually help dopamine at times. And if you
think about a deadline, that's stress.
That stress is a short term, temporary boost of dopamine.
And we go, oh no, someone's at the door.
(25:50):
I'm going to clear this path so no one sees all this mess
or whatever. If you were like that, I've been like that before.
So that can temporarily get you to go into action.
But if it's a chronic stress, if it's a long term stress, it
depletes your dopamine over time. And that's why when you're
really stressed, you're reaching for sugar, right?
You're reaching for those things that can boost it.
(26:12):
You know, I need some caffeine, I need some, I need this, I need
this, I need, ah, you know, and those are the things that
cause us just to max out. So, yeah, I'm going
to skip past my other notes about this and later I'll
think I forgot to talk about that.
But there is a stress dopamine cycle.
(26:33):
And that is if you have stress, you have the
cortisol. And so your stress goes up, your cortisol
goes up, the dopamine goes down, your motivation goes down,
and then the things that you have to do go up, right?
So when you're not able to accomplish things, it goes through
(26:56):
the cycle of. Because of having stress and lowering your dopamine,
lowering your motivation, you have a whole day to
get something done. Maybe you don't, but there are days that
I feel like that I feel like I have these big windows and because
I let the stress of something else come in, it can disrupt,
(27:17):
makes it so I'm not even accomplishing what I want to do.
And then I have more to do afterwards.
So look at what might be bringing stress into your life.
I know there are many people that have high stress jobs
or high stress life, a lot of family members or
someone that you're caring for. If you have that high
(27:41):
stress life, then what you need to do is learn how
to manage your stress. We can reduce stress a lot
by not letting it come in in the first place.
And then we can also just figure out how to manage the stress.
And that can be with the things that can increase that happiness,
(28:01):
the happiness feeling in the brain and that's going for the
walk. All those things that I've mentioned before, laughing with
a friend, laughing with a TV show, you know, laughing
with a podcast. Oh, my goodness. I have a podcast that makes
giggle all the time. So finding those things that can reduce
(28:22):
the stress for you could be deep breathing.
Breathing can be really helpful. Years ago, well, a
few times actually. So during COVID I was missing
my yoga people. And at first I was only teaching on audio, so
I thought, oh, I'll just, you know, like make some audio recordings
(28:43):
of breathing techniques to help people in my classes
and stuff. And it was really interesting because I was just sitting
there in a chair leading them through the breathing and I
noticed my own nervous system just getting calmer and calmer
and calmer.
And then when I had injuries, like I had
(29:07):
to have wrist surgery and stuff after that, I made recordings
for them and just being in bed and on medication for
my pain. Calmer, calmer. Com, you know, it would
just really help, even with my pain management and stuff, to
have that calmness in my body. So. So let's talk about
(29:29):
a routine morning. Finding the ability to
have the sunlight. If you can, you might live where there's not
a lot of sunlight. So find other things that give you that
feeling. Lighting a candle can give that feeling.
It's not the same, you know, UV ray benefit or
(29:49):
whatever you're getting with your melatonin production in your
skin and all that, but. Or vitamin D.
What am I saying? Melatonin, vitamin D production in your skin.
So you're not going to get that from a candle, but it might relax
you. If you like to see a fire, if you like to see a flame
and you can light a candle. If you live somewhere where you're
allowed to do that, then do it. If you have a
(30:10):
fireplace and you can light a fire in your fireplace, that can
be calming. Think for your think. I keep saying think
for yourself, which sounds like I'm talking to a child.
I'm not. But think about your own life and how
you can find things that are calming for you, that can
just get you in a mellow brain, relaxed mood.
(30:35):
Your brain's not tired, you're not stressed.
What can you do to bring it from that stress level to the
calm from, you know, you don't have to
be energized all the time. But maybe you do something that helps
you feel energized. It's your exercise or maybe you eat
something and that helps you feel energized.
(30:55):
But other, other things are comfort foods.
Those are probably the things that are producing the serotonin.
Where we sit there, the pasta, the bread, and we're like, you
know, just feeling all mellow. So, yeah, oh, I think
that's going to be it. I always say that.
And then I think of five more things.
But
(31:17):
yeah, anything you think of, if you like
to write, if you like to talk to people, if you like to
listen to music. I guess there is one more thing I
want to talk about because sometimes stress comes in when
we don't plan on it. In fact, a lot of times it comes in right
when we don't plan on it. And that might be life experiences
(31:38):
and that we can't really help unless it's a relationship
that's not positive or work environment that's not positive.
Positive. Like if you're able to make a change in your life to
reduce that stress, that's one thing.
But a lot of things like health issues or injuries or
(31:59):
things that happen, accidents or something, whatever problems
come in, family life, friendships and stuff, if there, if
there are things that we want to help with, we need to help
with, that we need to be involved with, that's one thing.
If it's a relationship we don't have to be in and it's causing
problems for us, then that's what you evaluate.
(32:23):
Is there that kind of experience, that relationship experience
that will cause stress. But I'm happy to be here
and help and I will know when to slow down and
when to, you know, like not over exhaust, over exhaust myself,
exhaust myself. But so you're finding that balance, right?
You're finding the balance within the relationships that you're
(32:45):
going to keep, you want to keep, you want to help, but you might
have to pace yourself with how you're doing it or find ways to
get breaks or things. And then there are the relationships that
maybe that's stressful and I don't need that relationship in
my life anymore or I don't need that environment, I don't need
to work for those people anymore. Are, and those are the things
you evaluate. A whole other category is the things
(33:08):
that really aren't in your life you have
no control about, but come in somehow.
So you read your emails in the morning and it could even just
be hearing about a sale and then you get distracted and
then you're stressed out because you don't know if you should
buy it or not. And they're telling you there's only like six
hours and then it goes away or whatever.
(33:30):
So that can be a stress. It's not life altering, right?
Unless you're buying something you really can't afford and causes
a problem, you have to move out of your apartment or something.
But those kind of things you have to learn
some kind of management for. And I'm saying this, you know, raising
my hand high because I need to learn some kind of management
for that, that when I open up my computer or
(33:51):
I open up my phone. How many times have you done that?
Intending to write an email or to look something up
or to order this thing from Amazon? And usually
for me it happens when I shut my computer half hour, hour,
whatever, later and start to do something else.
And I remember, oh, you need to do this.
(34:13):
And I thought that's what I got on my computer.
Begin with. And some of those things that distract us on
our computers or our phones are stressful, especially if we're
taking in news from the world or something.
And you need to find that balance. How
much do I want to know about it and how much is too much for
my own health, my own day and the things that I
(34:34):
need to take care of in my life.
And that becomes a huge factor in how balanced
you are and how you're able to function.
Because now that you understand, and maybe you understood before
I did, about how stress can play a part in
how well our brain functions and how we get maxed out and
(34:56):
how we really aren't as capable as we have been before and we
wish we could be, then maybe just block some of
that out or maybe tell someone who's feeding that information
to you, maybe you have somebody in your life who likes to share
all the woes of the world and at some point just say,
okay, I can't listen anymore, I can't listen anymore.
(35:18):
You can say that out loud. I'm a very non confrontational person
and I've said that out loud about COVID before even Covid even
came. My husband was watching. Well, I don't know if he was watching
news. He was just reading a lot. And tell me for months, this
thing is coming, there's nothing we can do about it.
I'm like, I don't want to hear about it.
If it gets here, tell me. But until then, I don't need
(35:40):
to be stressed for two months, you know, so you can, you can
control. And I just thought, I'm not Going to believe it
until it's. I wasn't a denier. I was just like,
I'm not gonna face that until I have to face
it. So, you know, and you get to
decide what things, at what point you see that
(36:03):
information as being needed in your life.
It's like my doctor told me, he said, when you see.
He used a hunting reference, I don't know if you're a hunter
or if you would rather not hunt animals.
But he said, I'm realizing I could be
talking to a big audience here, but.
Or a variety of, you know, I'm trying, I'm a people
(36:24):
pleaser. I'm trying to please you all, make you all comfortable.
But he said if you see, you know, a wolf coming in the forest,
and we have no wolves here, so it's just imaginary for me.
But you see a wolf coming in the forest, he said, I'd rather
shoot it before it gets too close. So at some point,
when something's getting closer, you might need to prepare and
make, you know, that's just an analogy.
It doesn't mean we're going to shoot things.
But if there was a wolf coming, I probably would.
(36:46):
Even though I don't know how to shoot very well at all.
But like, I live where there's hurricanes now.
At what point do I start to think, oh, this might come here and
maybe I should buy more water, so maybe I should get
some more food. Maybe I should. I don't know what else.
I'm new to the hurricane scene, but we do live in North Florida
(37:09):
where they aren't affecting us too terribly.
We're in the middle of the coasts. Oh, I think that's
it. Another episode that's a little bit
everywhere. But my hope is to help you
think of all these things so that you can evaluate how.
(37:34):
How a daily routine would be helpful for you.
And it can be simple things. It could be.
And it could even be different on different days.
It's better if you have the same thing every day to start out
and end with. With. And it's probably easier if you
do similar thing for eating. But if you need to do
things like some things are once a week, some things are once
(37:54):
a month. You fit those in and you have that day
be that thing. And if planning and consistency is
a struggle for you, I hear ya. Sometimes it's easy
for me and sometimes it's like. But I don't know, it's having
to make that decision. Huh. Sometimes some decisions better than
(38:14):
no decision. And just seeing how it goes and
Figuring it out. So thank you for being patient
for me. Patient for me with me as
I figure out the YouTubing part of it.
If you're just listening on
audibly, whatever that's called. If you're just listening
(38:38):
and you ever want to check out my YouTube channel, just out of
curiosity, just to give me some more followers, subscribers,
they call it different things in different places, but that would
be great. And really my hope is that not very
many people look at it until I get better at it.
Today I backed up the camera. I'm a lot more comfortable than
having it so close to my face.
(39:03):
Different lighting's different every day.
But thank you so much. Thank you so much for being
here. Let me know. Come to go to my website,
renee-allen.com if you're on my email list,
then you might start getting emails from me.
I haven't sent any in a little while, but I'm getting more
comfortable with my new format. It's all.
(39:25):
It's crazy having to learn new things and get
comfortable with them, but it gives you an opportunity to
be in touch with me each week or even in between, and let me
know how these things are affecting you in your lives.
Because I see it in a lot of people's lives.
I read about it, but it's fascinating to me that it
(39:45):
impacts so many of us in such a great way.
And even if you don't have adhd, but you have a lot of the
symptoms, you have a lot of similarities.
I'd love to hear how this is helpful for you and what
your. Your hurdles still would be. You
know, the whole listening to a way to do something better
and then think. But that won't work for me because
(40:10):
that. I'd love to help with that, too, because
I know there's a lot of struggles that we have that I
might not share that you may have. But.
Yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My husband kind of hates it when people end a sentence with
yes. But I've learned that when we say
(40:31):
things like or yeah. Or whatever, our brain's just
thinking. We're just thinking here at the end or in the middle.
And our brains have to rest a little bit, think a little bit,
regroup. Sometimes we can talk a mile a minute, and sometimes
we need a little. Yeah.
Oh, my goodness. Thank you again. It's always hard to say goodbye,
but I will. So thank you so much for being here.
(40:54):
I will be back. Bye.
Open windows Broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(41:32):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies. I'm cut short.
The silence of sound has yet been found, but
not by me,
(41:53):
Sam.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!