Episode 164: Stress and Self Care

[00:00:00] Autumn Carter: Hi, this is episode 1 64 and I am talking about self-care and wellness.

[00:00:13] Welcome to Wellness In Every Season, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of wellness in all of its forms. I'm your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach, turn wellness coach, as well as a certified parenting coach dedicated to empowering others to rediscover their identity in their current season of life.

[00:00:32] My goal is to help you thrive, both as an individual and as a parent.

[00:00:36] Today is going to be very vulnerable and very real. If you get the chance, you might wanna switch over to video. If not, it's fine. Today, I'm just gonna start off with the really vulnerable and apologize ahead of time if I cry.

[00:00:55] So let's start with good news. Got my braces [00:01:00] off. Yay. Does not feel that ultra exciting because it real time. Just a couple weeks ago, my husband and I were out on a date. Yay. Spending time with him. He's my favorite person in the whole world.

[00:01:14] Favorite animal, favorite creature. He's my favorite. 16 years in. Still feel that way about him. That's the goal in life, right? To have somebody like that in our lives. Anyway, we were on our date and we came home and our babysitter had one of our dogs, we have two bluey dogs, one of our dogs on the couch.

[00:01:35] And I was like, oh, she's being a princess. Oh, even the babysitter got her up on the couch and the babysitter gave me a very serious look, and she said her leg swollen, like something's not right. We babied her over the weekend. We're very careful. This was late Saturday night. So my husband ended up taking her on Labor Day.

[00:01:58] He texted me right as I'm getting [00:02:00] ready to kayak. I'm blowing up the standup paddleboard with my friend and had that moment of, so I just pack it all away. Go help out because he's taking our four kids with him too. Texted him, he said, no, I got this. She made a change for the worst that had me very concerned.

[00:02:16] So I'm taking to her, to the emergency vet. I took her there two weeks later. It's now Thursday and I wasn't feeling well. My husband goes to play pickleball for me in my league 'cause he's a sweetheart and our dog's breathing is getting worse and she's whining. We have Australian cattle dogs.

[00:02:42] That's what bluey dogs are. High paint tolerance. So the fact that she's whining. It's a huge indication that something's wrong. Her leg is swollen up all over again. It went down. She was able to walk and run around. My daughter had played with him that afternoon, and then our [00:03:00] other dog was wanting to go out.

[00:03:02] He just kept ringing the bell, looking at me like, come on. I have lots of energy. So I encouraged my husband to take him out to play with, not realizing he was gonna take her out too. The next day, my husband gets home around 4:00 PM and that's when her life started falling and it got worse, and then the whining and the panting and heavier breathing with the panting, meaning that her heart was beating faster.

[00:03:28] I took her back to that emergency vet because our normal vet was closed fast forward to Monday, she gets a CT scan. Come to find out it might be cancer. It's in her leg, the same leg that she had surgery in a year ago. Because our dogs are sport dogs.

[00:03:45] They've earned ribbons and everything. They're in a relay race. Called flyball. I know I'm talking a lot about my dog and it's heavy. Here's the thing. Yes, I am devastated.

[00:03:58] I'm also doing really okay.

[00:04:01] That's what I wanna talk to you about. And for those of you watching on video, here's my little girl. She had to come sit in my office. That's her butt. Anyway I'll see if I can get her over in a little bit or send you a picture so you can see her. My Cala Lily.

[00:04:19] She's going through a really hard time. This afternoon, she is going to get a chest x-ray to see if the mass that's in her leg that she had surgery on last year, and it's not related to the surgery, which is weird to see. If the mass is spread, so chest x-ray and then she's going to get a needle to get a biopsy to see exactly what it is.

[00:04:43] Hopefully it's an abscess. I'm manifesting that, praying for that, all the things. But I was able to sleep well last night. I've been able to sleep okay, but last night I was able to sleep really well [00:05:00] because I have been dipping further into my self-care and knowing that it's out of my hands.

[00:05:10] We're doing all that we can do and she feels love and she's now starting to feel more comfortable. I haven't heard her whine. At all today, it's because I am doing the work on myself, and that is what wellness is about. She's sitting up right now. That is what wellness is about, is making sure that we are taking care of ourself so when stuff hits the fan, we have the resources within ourselves. We are in tune with our intuition, our spirit guides, our angels, however you wanna call them. And that's going off of a podcast that I recorded yesterday with somebody else, making [00:06:00] sure that we are spiritually healthy. That we are taking as good of care as ourselves so that we can then step up and have the resources we need and can take withdrawals from our self-care bank, so to speak.

[00:06:17] Hi. I hope you are enjoying this show, and I just wanna take a quick minute to share with you two things that are going on in the background that I'm very excited to announce. The first one is that if you are interested in experiencing any of these healing modalities that the guests that I'm interviewing or that even I'm speaking on during my solo episodes.

[00:06:46] I'm now offering that chance, and let me show you how to get there.

[00:06:54] If you go to my website, you go to wellness and every [00:07:00] season.com/listener. Wellness guest here. This is an automation that starts through my newsletter. Here you are putting in your first name and your email address and three different things that you are interested in, and you are welcome to explain a little bit more after that, and then you hit apply right now.

[00:07:18] This is your chance to take something that feels just so out there and it sounds great if you work with that person and bringing this into, I have needs right now. How can I have them met? This sounds amazing what this person is talking about, but I wanna see this actually happen with one of my peers that has something similar.

[00:07:43] This is your opportunity to have that happen. So wellness center season.com/listener, wellness guest is how you get here. From here, there are three people chosen at random. There's the first guest. And if they [00:08:00] say no or their scheduling doesn't work out, it goes to the second guest. Same thing, and then it goes to the third guest.

[00:08:04] It's randomized. Who's chosen? Do you want this? The second thing that I have to announce is that I'm now offering sponsorships. So this is so people can have ads like this one in my podcast. They can also have ads in my newsletter. And there are very different tiers that you can be in for this. If you know a business that wants this, here's interest form for this and it's wellness season.com/podcast/podcast sponsor.

[00:08:36] And you can find this easily on my homepage too. So don't worry about getting that right. And the point of this is so you get deals from aligned wellness branded companies and so that I can offer sliding scale coaching. We all know people who need coaching so badly, who are so ready to put in the work, but they don't have the finances to go [00:09:00] along with it for whatever reason in life.

[00:09:03] This allows me to offer more coaching to people in that category. By having people sponsor gets you deals, gets me the opportunity to work with more people who can't afford it. So. Those are my two things and I'll let you get back to the show. Love you so much and happy healing and happy wellness.

[00:09:25] That is why I talk about wellness when I was talking to somebody earlier today, they're asking, is wellness, are you talking about health and diet? Because that's the first thing that comes to my mind that is absolutely not it.

[00:09:37] For those who are just now starting the journey with me, I went back to school in my thirties and finished my undergrad in Applied Health. When I first learned about the originally five dimensions of wellness, it made so much sense to me because that is what makes up us.

[00:09:56] It's not just focusing on one thing to [00:10:00] then be balanced and so now it's grown to eight. And the eight dimensions of wellness are intellectual, environmental, financial, spiritual, professional, social, emotional, and physical, which is a really big umbrella that makes up us and that there's so much more involved that, but they still can go into those buckets, so to speak.

[00:10:27] When we are taking care of ourselves as fully as we can show up for the things in life that are out of our control, that feel chaotic and we can really, put our best self forward to take care of that situation and also make sure that we have the extra cushion of taking care of ourselves with that, because as we take care of ourselves, we can come up [00:11:00] with those.

[00:11:02] Very intelligent ideas and concepts that our creative self can come forward. Instead of sitting there thinking negatively and not having the mental capacity for different things or knowing that we are doing the best that we can the best that we can is variable depending on how we're doing during different types of day.

[00:11:27] So that is what I'm talking about. This is gonna be a shorter episode but I wanted it to be very real because I'm realizing. Over the summer, I lost a lot from my kids being so needy, but now that they're back in school, I can spend more time on myself and what fills me up and then connecting better with those that I want to coach and wanna help out and connecting better with those that I podcast with for you [00:12:00] guys.

[00:12:02] Connect better with those in my newsletter audience, my community members, to really help them with their wellness goals. Whether they're working with me right now, have in the past will in the future, maybe will never work with me, but they have the opportunity to experience what wellness can be for them.

[00:12:24] That's why I love individual coaching because it is so individual what our needs are. I have a greater need for stillness in my life because my childhood was very chaotic and was not still, and I have a greater need for peace in my life. Whenever I do a yoga practice and you set an intention, the first word that comes to my mind is I want greater peace

[00:12:49] and grounding. A lot of times if I don't go for peace, it's for grounding so that I then can feel peace. And [00:13:00] that leaves me to the question of what are you most needing right now? If you had a word that you are most needing, if your intention for today, pretend like you're doing a yoga practice.

[00:13:12] What would your intention be for yourself that would then lead you towards helping other people or whatever you're doing in your life? And my other question is, are you living from one chaotic moment to another? And if so, what do you need to do to change it? What I love about coaching is that I don't need to have the answers for you.

[00:13:44] I just need to ask the questions and give you space and give you any tool that like, let's try this tool, see if this works for you. I think this tool will work for you. I don't need to have the answers because you are the one living your life. You are the one that really [00:14:00] knows your lived experience. I haven't walked in your shoes

[00:14:04] I know my own experiences and the experiences that I've had from people that I've coached, but you know what you most need. So with that in mind, what do you most need? We can start with something simple.

[00:14:18] What do you most need in this moment right now? Do you need to forgive yourself for something?

[00:14:27] Forgive somebody else. Do you need to let go of whatever negative belief you've been holding onto? Do you need to get up and use the bathroom because you haven't checked with yourself enough to know that? Do you need to get a drink of water? Most people aren't drinking enough water. That's the one you can start with.

[00:14:44] Do you need to get up and stretch? Do you need to replace your shoes? And this is one that I've struggled with. I'm more in tune with it. But do you need to replace your shoes and you're not realizing it? Maybe that's where your knee pain is coming from. Your back pain, [00:15:00] maybe your back feeling a little outta whack.

[00:15:04] Or do you maybe need to adjust the seat in your car again because your posture has shifted and you aren't paying attention to that? What things are you not paying attention to that you can adjust right now? To show yourself love and to bring yourself a little bit more in that wellness alignment.

[00:15:21] Know that I love you. Know that you are worthy of love and wellness, and you are in the driver's seat to that. If you feel like you aren't, talk to me. It doesn't even have to be a paid coaching session. I offer them for free for you to see, for both of us to see, do you just need a one-off?

[00:15:45] Cool. I can happily help you. Do you need maybe a couple or is it worth us digging in and working together and really uncovering and helping you to have that amazing [00:16:00] transformation? That is my favorite. I love helping people have that whole butterfly moment. Whatever your needs are, know that I'm here for you.

[00:16:09] And if I can't help you, I have a huge referral network just from podcasting alone, let alone the fact that I just love connecting people that I used to do that all the time, but now that I've been married for 16 years, I don't do that for people who are single. So now it's more of this, your needs networking and business networking.

[00:16:31] Know that I'm here for you, know that I love you, know that you are worthy of love and you are worthy of wellness, it is okay to take some time for you. It is okay to reach and dream big and to have a desire to bring good into the world.

[00:16:51] We all know from if we watch the news, I try not to. 'cause that's too negative for me, especially my childhood. They watched the news way [00:17:00] too much growing up we all need more positivity in our life, so how can you bring that positivity to the rest of the world? All right, I'll see you in the next episode.

[00:17:12] Bye.

[00:17:15] Thanks for tuning into this week's episode. I am your host, autumn Carter, a certified life coach dedicated to empowering individuals to rediscover their identity, find balance, miss chaos, strengthen relationships, and pursue their dreams. My goal is to help people thrive in every aspect of their lives. I hope today's discussion inspired you and offered valuable insights.

[00:17:37] Stay engaged with our wellness community by signing up for my newsletter at wellness and every season.com/free resources. When you join, you'll have the option to receive a five day guide called Awaken and Unwind, five Days to Mastering Your Mornings and Evenings, along with Free Guides, special offers on my programs, practical tips, personal stories.

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[00:18:20] So please spread the word about our podcast and about our newsletter. Thank you for being a part of our podcast community. I look forward to continuing our conversation, sharing stories and exploring wellness in all of this aspects. Take care until our next episode. You can also work with me one-on-one or on demand through one of my programs by visiting wellness in every season.com/programs.

[00:18:47] One last thing to cover the show legally, I'm a certified life coach giving general advice, so think of this, this more as a self-help book. This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. [00:19:00] I am not a licensed therapist, so this podcast shouldn't be taken as a replacement for professional guidance from a doctor or therapist.

[00:19:07] If you want personal one-on-one coaching from a certified life and parenting coach, go to my website, wellness and every season.com. That's where you can get personalized coaching from me for you. See you in next week's episode.