Podcast Episode:
303: Mindset matters and… it isn’t everything.
I am a HUGE fan of mindset work and I deeply believe that it plays a significant role in what you do and what you donβt do.
That being said, there are things other than our thoughts that can influence how we feel emotionally. Hello, hormones!
In this episode of the Grace & Grit Podcast, I talk about how our biochemistry can influence our mindset AND how our mindset can mess with our chemistry.
Are you ready?
Tagged Under:
Welcome to Grace & Grit.
The Grace & Grit podcast is your go-to resource for reclaiming, generating, protecting and expressing your power as a woman in midlife.
This show will completely change the way you think about health & well-being and help you make your second act the best one yet!
Recent Episodes
- 343: Midlife Transitions: Navigating the space in between.
- 342: Woman Reignited: Restore Your Personal Power In 24 Hours (or less!)
- 341: The Interplay Between Nervous System Health & Exercise: A conversation w/ Irene Lyon
- 340: Summer Remix Series: When βLoving Yourselfβ Feels Impossible
- 339: Summer Remix Series: The Call to Own Your Worth
Transcripts are auto-generated.
Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host, Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. As always, thank you for being here. I know thereβs a lot of spaces and places you could be. And so the fact that you showed up here, I do not take that lightly. And I always think back on the days when we were I think we got like 40 downloads a month in our first month of podcasting. And now to see that weβre getting 10s of 1000s of downloads a month is pretty amazing. And youβre a part of that, and I appreciate you oh so much.
Courtney Townley 0:57
Now today, I want to talk a little bit about the connection between our chemistry and our emotions. Because I feel like this is a topic that is time and time again being way over simplified. And itβs not helpful to make it overly simplistic. And I think that youβll have a better understanding of what I mean by that, at the end of the show today. What I do know is that it is human nature to want to put things in tiny little boxes with labels, we like to put things in boxes of understanding.
Courtney Townley 1:38
And even more specifically, I think we really like the idea that there is one solution to a problem. And truth be told, that is rarely, if ever the case with health and well being for so many reasons. I mean, letβs just think about this for a minute. If we think about conditioning the human body, I know that there are people who claim that they are runners, there are people who claim that they are dancers, or Olympic lifters, Pilates students, and all those modalities absolutely have immense power to condition the human body in some way. But we canβt say that one modality conditions the human body, because itβs simply not true. Right.
Courtney Townley 2:29
So, if weβre doing something like running all the time, but weβre not taking time to strengthen our body, or work on flexibility, our body is going to have limitations. If weβre always lifting heavy weights, but weβre not taking time to work on coordination and fluidity of movement and build our cardiac capacity. Again, the condition of the human body will be less, right, weβre not going to necessarily be conditioning the whole system through one modality.
Courtney Townley 3:06
And itβs kind of like trying to condition the human body by just training one muscle group, right, you could do bicep curls all day long. And youβre never going to actually improve the conditioning of anything outside that bicep muscle. So there are many things to consider when it comes to conditioning the human body. I also think of metabolism. Metabolism is so complex, like first, let me just remind you that metabolism is purely the efficiency at which your cells do all of their jobs. And we are sold this idea that just the way we eat, or the way we move will radically change our metabolism forevermore. But the truth is, the things that influence metabolism are wide and varied. There are so many things that affect metabolic function. Some of those things being your age, your activity level, your stress levels, your genetic influences, the ability that your body has to absorb nutrients, to create energy, to eliminate toxins. And all of these things are different in every human. So giving one blanket solution obviously can be problematic. I also think, just health in general.
Courtney Townley 4:41
Those of you whoβve been around this Podcast for a while have heard me many times say that health is very multi dimensional. It is not just physical. Thereβs a lot of other things we need to consider. When we are trying to help improve the well being of a human. We have to come said are emotional health, mental health, relationship health, the environment in which somebody lives in and how those environmental factors might be impacting their, what their health and well being so many things to consider. So my point is that thereβs a lot of things that influence the well being of a human.
Courtney Townley 5:22
But again, we tend to look for one solution. And I know that would be lovely. I mean, in the land of rainbows and unicorns, that would be awesome. Because itβs simple. It doesnβt require as much work, itβs very straightforward to just have one solution. And I donβt even think itβs that we necessarily, by choice, believe that itβs what weβre sold, right? Weβre sold this one form of exercise is going to improve your health forevermore, weβre sold this idea that if you just eat this way, for the rest of your life, you will be a healthy human. If you just take this one supplement, all of your health woes will disappear. I mean, I say that a little bit in jest, but also not. Because I do think that is largely how so many things are sold in the wellness industry. So why am I stressing this? Why am I stressing the multi dimensional nature of problems and solutions when it comes to health and well being? Well, the other day, I was scrolling on Instagram. And I came across a post by a coach that I actually really respected admire. And what she was sort of conveying in this post was that anxiety is purely a result of the way that you think.
Courtney Townley 6:54
And it ruffled my feathers a little bit. Because absolutely, I believe and teach that mindset is a very big player in how we feel emotionally. Itβs absolutely an influencer of emotion. But itβs overly simplistic to say that it is the only thing that influences our emotional landscape. And I happen to know that this particular coach is also primarily targeting middle aged women whose hormones are starting to shift in pretty dramatic ways. Because theyβre either entering perimenopause, theyβre in the throes of it or theyβre on the other side of menopause, right in terms of menopause being like one day, and weβre on the other side of of that.
Courtney Townley 7:55
Itβs really important that we acknowledge that hormones, which essentially the government of your body can also massively influence your emotional landscape. And I tell you, that to help you sort of reclaim your power around emotional landscape, and Iβm gonna give you some really strategic steps for doing that here by the end of the episode. But we donβt empower people by only telling them one part of the solution. We empower people by acknowledging the reality of all the things that are likely influencing this one challenge.
Courtney Townley 8:40
So, I want you to think of some of the hormones that you often hear referenced. When it comes to emotions. We talk a lot about cortisol. If you ask someone on the street, what cortisol was, I think most people would probably have some awareness, that it it has a role in the levels of stress that we feel. So definitely cortisol, that being really elevated, or really depressed, can suit can absolutely influence our hormonal landscape and powerful ways. We also hear about hormones like serotonin, right? Serotonin helps us to balance our mood. It promotes feelings of well being and reward.
Courtney Townley 9:32
And interestingly, a lot of serotonin is produced in our gut. So if we have gut challenges, serotonin might not be as available in our system as we would like it to be. And you could manage your thoughts all day long. But the absence of serotonin or the low availability of it is absolute. loosely going to influence how you feel in your life and about your life. We hear a lot about dopamine. Right? Dopamine, a lot of people call it the pleasure hormone. But really more accurately, itβs the motivation hormone. So it helps us to seek and draw and create drive for things that offer us pleasure. And thereβs lots of other hormones and lots of other chemistry that can affect dopamine in our body. Oxytocin, endorphins. These are all Biochemistry. These are hormones that influence the way we feel emotionally. And the thing I want to just highlight here today is that hormones are a lot like dominoes. When one gets out of whack, it kind of upsets the entire applecart of hormones. So, if we, if serotonin is disrupted, it doesnβt just affect serotonin, it can affect a lot of other hormones in the body. When estrogen is elevated, when progesterone is low, it doesnβt just affect those hormones, it affects a lot of other hormones. So it makes sense, that when hormones like estrogen and progesterone start to shift, as they do in midlife, the hormones that allow us to experience emotion also get disrupted. And thereβs a large swath of research that points to the link between females in the midlife transition.
Courtney Townley 11:51
And sort of the correlation between the sort of rates of depression, and even the experience of things like anxiety. And thatβs not because all of a sudden, a midlife woman is starting to think differently about her life. Itβs because her hormones are influencing how she is feeling on an emotional level. And estrogen and progesterone, Iβm just using these as examples. They are just two of hundreds of hormones in the human body. But estrogen and progesterone, help us to manage cortisol, which I just said is another hormone in the human body that helps us to manage stress, and progesterone, more specifically, it can really help us to keep anxiety at bay, itβs kind of a calmer downer. And progesterone helps us with feelings of calmness, feelings of control. And I say control in relationship to calmness. So when progesterone is on the way out the door, itβs declining because of the midlife transition. Absolutely.
Courtney Townley 13:10
We can experience things like elevated anxiety. And with estrogen leaving the party and progesterone for that matter. Our ability to manage cortisol in our system, in a way that we once did, is not as robust. This is why stress management becomes such a big deal in midlife, not only are you dealing with all you know the most stress youβve probably ever dealt with in your life at midlife, but you also have less of the hormones that can help you on a chemical level to manage the cortisol in your system. Now, I am not an endocrinologist by any stretch of the imagination, obviously. But I have worked with a tremendous number of women of various ages and stages of life over two decades. So Iβve worked with a lot of women over a lot of years. And my experience has taught me that biochemistry and mindset are big influencers in the emotional landscape of a human. But we arenβt doing ourselves any favors by just making it one thing.
Courtney Townley 14:39
I do think itβs really important for anyone who works in the wellness space to recognize that wild mindset work is immensely powerful and so important to be talking about. It is not the solution to everything and And when your biochemistry is disrupted, your capacity to manage your mind to do mindset work diminishes significantly. I mean, think about this, when you donβt get a good nightβs sleep, or you only get like two to three hours of sleep, Iβm sure thatβs happened to everyone listening at least one night of their life. How did you feel the next day? Not just on a physical level? But how did you feel emotionally? I know for me, when Iβm short on sleep, which by the way, does not take much, Iβm a really big sleeper. And if Iβm just shy on an hour or two, everything in my life becomes more dramatic. I am much more reactive to my life. I donβt have the resources available for what it takes for me to manage my brain in a way that is useful to me. And I know Iβm not alone in that.
Courtney Townley 16:14
Another example of our chemistry, influencing our emotions is ladies think about how you feel emotionally, just prior to your period, youβre still having a period. And even if you arenβt, go back in your brain to the days that you were experiencing a few premenstrual symptoms, all of us can relate probably to at least once, if not much more frequently, feeling more agitated, feeling a bit more anxious. Right, feeling a bit more volatile.
Courtney Townley 16:55
And think about what hormones are doing at that time, right? Estrogen and progesterone are dropping dramatically before you start bleeding. I also think of just something as simple as not moving your body. So limiting your body from movement. For a lot of people, I would say most humans, it creates a state of agitation. And itβs not just humans. Thereβs been a lot of studies done on animals in captivity, think of like all the sort of the the sea life at aquariums and animals in zoos. And they seem fine for long periods of time. And then all of a sudden, thereβs some huge emotional disruption. And they attack their trainer or something goes really haywire, they kill another animal. Because they arenβt moving in ways that they would normally move in the natural world. And again, thatβs just one influence probably thatβs playing into that. But it is an influence.
Courtney Townley 18:05
I also mentioned kind of gut dysbiosis earlier, having any kind of disruption in your gut health is absolutely going to influence how you feel on an emotional level. So I do not believe that your mindset is the only thing that impacts how you feel emotionally. And it feels a little bit dismissive and irresponsible for for anyone to be suggesting that I think. And thatβs not a thatβs not a, a judgement, as much as itβs itβs just a strong belief that I have that we have to be coming at these topics, from so many angles, not just one in order to be really helpful. And so in my own work, I didnβt use to do this. I mean, years ago, dear lord was I naive about the way I approached behavior change. But through a lot of education and a lot of experience, Iβve had gotten to a place where I really approach behavior change from four different areas from four different gateways.
Courtney Townley 19:09
And a lot of you have heard me talk about this before on the Podcast, but those gateways, our chemistry, biochemistry, taking care of our chemistry on the levels that we can, in order to make other things easier, like managing our thoughts. I talk a lot about strategy. Iβve done a lot of podcasts about that. Of course, we talk about mindset, thought management work. And then we talk a lot about emotional agility, the capacity to feel emotion. Now, I donβt want to get into how all of this is connected in todayβs todayβs episode because I mean, this is the body of work. I canβt possibly cover that in a 30 minute episode. But I do want to help you explore the link between biochemistry and your capacity to manage your brain to manage your thing. trying to control your mindset.
Courtney Townley 20:03
So, I just sort of said this earlier, but chemistry influences your capacity to manage your thoughts. And vice versa. Managing your thoughts influences your chemistry. So I already gave you a few examples of how your chemistry influences your ability to manage your thoughts. But so letβs let me give you a few examples of how thinking influences your chemistry. So this happened a few months ago, but for some reason, this just kind of stuck out in my brain today as an example. A few months ago, I went to the mailbox to get the mail. And there was a letter from our accountant, show, you know, telling us what we owed in taxes this year, and it was way more than I thought we would do. And then my thinking, my brain started having thoughts like, oh, my gosh, how are we going to pay for this? This is a problem. We canβt pay for this, this is too much. And that thinking, what did it do to my my chemistry, it raised cortisol. Right, it put my body in that fight or flight response, my nervous system started to get really activated.
Courtney Townley 21:24
But another example, is that the other day, at the end of the day, I had kind of a just a really full day, and I was feeling a little jacked up at the end of the day. And I walked out into the living room, and my dog was laying on the floor in front of the fire. So I lay down with him. And I just spent a few minutes petting him and talking to him. And I could just feel my entire system decompressing because, inevitably, I was probably spiking some dopamine in my system. Right. And I was, I was definitely spiking some oxytocin, which is your cuddle hormone. Itβs the hormone of connection. And those two hormones helped me to temper my stress my cortisol.
Courtney Townley 22:13
And I was thinking as Iβm laying with my dog, right, how much I love him, and how great the fire feels, and how nice it feels to be laying on the floor. I was thinking in a way that helped me to feel better. So I was helping myself on a chemical level. And I was also thinking in a way that helped me to feel better. So again, I just want to offer itβs not either, or, itβs not just about mindset, itβs not just about doing what you can to manage your chemistry. Itβs both. So what do we do about this truth? Like, how do we actually put it into action. And thatβs, of course, what I want you to walk away with today.
Courtney Townley 22:52
So, my first suggestion is number one, and this is going to sound just so simple, but simple is not easy, especially in a very busy world. The first step is you have to start paying attention to how youβre feeling, then that sounds crazy, because a lot of women are like, of course, I know how Iβm feeling. But do you? Like do you often check in with yourself during the day two question how youβre feeling, not just emotionally, but on a physical level as well. And to be quite honest, a lot of women I work with are very disconnected from how they feel in their body. They have trouble naming emotions, because they donβt often check in with emotions. So as simple as this step sounds, itβs actually a big obstacle for a lot of women, just this first step. So just a couple of tips for you on doing this number one, you know, you donβt have to be in any kind of special environment to do this. You could be driving in the car, you could be cooking dinner, you could be sitting at your desk working, and you with intention, take a few seconds to just check in.
Courtney Townley 24:04
And thereβs two levels based on this conversation that I would really encourage you to check in on number one, what am I physically feeling? What are the physical sensations I am aware of in this moment. Now a physical sensation is something like feeling tired, feeling hungry, having some kind of physical pain or discomfort somewhere. So a physical sensation is really something that starts in the body and then travels to the brain to inform you on something that needs to be done. You need to eat, you need to go take a nap. You need to get to bed earlier tonight. You need to scratch that itch on your shoulder. Those are physical sensations. Check in with those.
Courtney Townley 24:54
What are you feeling on that level? And then the second thing is what are you feeling On an emotional level. Now emotions, your a lot of your emotional landscape is is triggered by your brain, not just by your thoughts, but definitely by neuro chemistry. So there are messages that travel from the brain to the body. And these are things that we label as literally emotions. So you could Google a list of emotions, to see just how many emotions are available to you, as a human, thereβs a lot of them. But these are things like frustration, calm, excited, nervous, anxious, happy, and the list goes on and on. So check in with yourself during the day, multiple times a day would be awesome to ask yourself what youβre feeling physically, and what youβre feeling emotionally. Because once you have that Intel, you get to do part two, which is you get to become the detective, you get to become the person who starts interpreting the messages, right.
Courtney Townley 26:14
So youβre kind of a detective and an interpreter at the same time, this is step two. And what I mean by this is, once you gather some intel about whatβs truly going on internally, you can ask yourself some good questions. And one great question that I would encourage you to start with is how might my current emotions be influenced by my chemistry? So how is what I am feeling right now? And you could do this both emotionally and physically? How is that being influenced by my chemistry? As I go to, first of all, I go to basic self care. Am I feeling agitated right now? Because I didnβt sleep well last night? Because I havenβt eaten in eight hours. Because I actually havenβt moved my body really intentionally in three days. What is that coming from? Right? Where might my chemistry need a little bit of attention? Where are the gaps and use your physical sensation as guideposts. So if you have more aches and pains today than you usually do, why might that be? Did you eat something yesterday that might have influenced the way that youβre feeling physically? Did you sleep in a weird position? Do you have more stress than usual?
Courtney Townley 27:43
Thereβs usually five categories I asked people to check in on right we do this, we kind of do an integrity check with our self care. And in case youβve never heard those before, because youβre new to this Podcast, theyβre really simple. Whatβs the quality of your rest? Right now? Like how well are you sleeping? Are you given yourself enough sleep? Whatβs the quality of your diet? Whatβs the quality of your movement profile? Whatβs the quality of your thinking? And are you making time to connect with your with your community, with your family and friends? Those are the five areas I want you checking in on, when you feel like there is something physically going on with you thatβs a little off kilter. And that can also help you as a byproduct. When you address those gaps, you might emotionally start feeling better, that often happens.
Courtney Townley 28:39
Use your physical sensations as guideposts to some of the work that might need to be done to help you feel better on an emotional level. So I know for me, again, I use the example of sleep a lot because itβs such a powerful thing for me. When I donβt sleep well. My body definitely hurts like I just feel more achy and my joints I feel really heavy in my body. I get very pessimistic. I get very sarcastic. And knowing that those are signals to me of misalignment. I can certainly easily you know, go back to Okay, Courtney, you know that this is how you feel when youβre not getting enough rest. I addressed that gap. And not only does my body start getting out of physical pain, but I also start emotionally feeling better. But the other thing that we need to do is ask ourselves the question of how might I be contributing to unnecessary suffering here, right?
Courtney Townley 29:45
Sometimes you have physical pain because youβre literally injured or youβre dealing with some kind of chronic physical problem. But the way weβre thinking about that can cause us to unnecessarily so refer. I also want to offer you this, the way we think about our emotions can cause a lot of unnecessary suffering. So when I have anxiety, which by the way, Iβm in perimenopause, like I am deep in the throes of perimenopause, and I have more anxiety than Iβve ever had in my life, I donβt have it necessarily every day by any stretch. But I never really experienced anxiety on a, you know, any kind of consistent basis previously in my life. And when anxiety comes, I have the opportunity to make it so much worse than it needs to be, because of how Iβm choosing to think about it. So I literally can get myself in a position where I have anxiety about my anxiety. Because Iβm thinking I shouldnβt feel this way. This is a problem. Thereβs something wrong here. Right? Like, somethingβs wrong with me, that kind of thinking, all it produces is more anxiety. So when I noticed difficult emotions in my midst, like anxiety, or a little bit of irritability, or anger,
Courtney Townley 31:13
I want to think about it in ways that are more useful to me, like, what is this telling me? Is it that Iβm sort of skimping on my self care somewhere? And this is a byproduct of that? Or am I thinking about my life right now, or a situation right now, in a way thatβs producing this emotion? It could be either, right? Again, we said this earlier, itβs not either, or it can be both. And so what am I making this mean? And is what Iβm making it mean actually useful to me right now. And then I want to just wrap this up with this final piece, which is, once youβve started paying attention to whatβs going on physically and emotionally, once you have started to interpret some of those messages, and started to do some detective work about where you could take more responsibility for helping yourself out in those areas, you really are in such a great position to become your own hero.
Courtney Townley 32:12
What I mean by becoming your own hero, is that you can use the messages of both physical sensations and emotions, as filters are guideposts for where you need to start up leveling your self care, right. And when you are up leveling your self care in the ways that you know you can, but you still feel emotionally off, itβs time to reach out and ask for some help. So becoming your own hero does not mean you have to go it alone. It means you take the initiative to get more information. And that might mean going to a physician and getting some blood panels or hormone panels done. Right getting some tests to see whatβs going on chemically that might be influencing how youβre feeling. I think coaching is great for this, right? Like it just to help you figure out where the self-care gaps might be, and how to better manage your thinking. This coaching can certainly be useful for that. And absolutely things like therapy, right? There are definitely topics and things that coaches really probably shouldnβt be wrestling with, with their student with their with their clients. And there are levels of, of stress and even trauma certainly, that a therapist would be in a much better position to work with.
Courtney Townley 33:51
Once we have a little bit more information. And once we feel like we are taking responsibility for what we can to control our emotions, often youβre going to find that thereβs a little bit more help thatβs needed. And itβs your job to ask for it. So the big takeaway here is that you are a multi dimensional being and just start treating yourself like one, even on the emotional front. Parent your brain and take responsibility for your chemistry for how youβre eating, how much youβre sleeping, acknowledging that you might have some hormonal dysregulation, for reasons outside of your control. Ladies in midlife, I am specifically speaking to you. Because when we honor that emotions are affected by more than one thing, we are in such a better position to do deep healing on an emotional level. So I think itβs just itβs really helpful to your brain and ultimately your life, to look at emotions through the lens of both biochemistry and mindset management.
Courtney Townley 35:20
All right, my friends, I know that was a lot. Thereβs a lot baked into that conversation, but hopefully I just got the wheels turning a little bit. And if youβre a person whoβs just been, oh, itβs just all my thoughts. I just want to reassure you, itβs not all your thoughts, there are other things that could be going on and addressing chemistry is a really big deal. Alright, I will see you again next week. Have a lovely day, and take excellent care of yourselves.
Courtney Townley 35:51
Thank you for listening to the Grace & Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.
Are you loving the Grace & Grit podcast?
Subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode!
Click here to leave a review
Reviews are what keep this podcast growing!
Ready to find your midlife magic?
Say it with me βmy body is NOT the problem!β
Ahhhβ¦doesnβt it feel great to release the chains youβve lived with for so long?
Itβs true that the wellness and diet industry wants you to believe that your body is brokenβthat it needs to be fixed, resculpted, and forced into looking a certain way.
The Power Years Coaching is all about ditching that narrative and nourishing your body consistently. This is what provides the jumping off point for a life of self-leadership, trust in your wonderful body, and peace knowing youβre making the most of your second act.
Are you ready to put your best years ahead of you rather than behind you?
Letβs do it!
Your guide to changing the conversation around vitality and start truly showing up for yourself. Itβs all inside my FREE Midlife Magic Quickstart Guide.
Ready to make some magic?
Mend the fabric of your health story, one episode at a time.