Heal Within with Dr. Evette Rose

When Spilled Coffee Feels Like the End of the World + Meditation

• Dr. Evette Rose • Season 15 • Episode 12

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Ever wondered why spilled coffee can sometimes feel like an absolute catastrophe? That moment when a minor inconvenience triggers an emotional response completely disproportionate to the situation isn't about the size of the stressor—it's about your capacity to handle it.

The real culprit is what scientists call "allostatic load"—the cumulative wear and tear on your nervous system from prolonged, low-level stress. When your system never fully returns to baseline, you're perpetually running on edge. Your amygdala becomes hyperreactive, interpreting minor events as potential threats, while your prefrontal cortex—responsible for rational thinking and perspective-taking—becomes less active. This neurological state creates the perfect storm for overreaction: your physiological readiness is elevated, your emotional buffer is depleted, and small irritations stack up until one tiny additional stressor pushes you over the edge.

Fortunately, this cycle can be broken. Through nervous system regulation techniques like deep breathing, meditation, and micro-recovery breaks throughout your day, you can reset before reaching burnout. The guided meditation included in this episode offers a practical tool for creating your own mental sanctuary—a place to reset and release accumulated stress whenever you need it. By recognizing your personal signals when approaching your threshold and implementing regular regulation practices, you can prevent the buildup that makes minor inconveniences feel overwhelming. Remember, you are worthy of stopping and resting. Your healing journey happens one breath at a time.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Heal Within, here with me, Dr. Evette Rose, trauma therapist and also creator of the Metaphysical Anatomy Technique. And this podcast is here to be your safe space to explore emotional healing, nervous system repair and also deep inner transformation. Emotional healing, nervous system repair and also deep inner transformation. And if you are ready to go deeper and you would like to be supported in your journey, you can always book a one-on-one session with me or with one of my certified metapsychology coaching practitioners, and you can also join us for our upcoming live healing retreats, events, workshops and so forth at metaphysicalanatomycom. And now let's begin your journey back to wholeness, one breath and one breakthrough at a time.

Speaker 1:

And today's podcast we're diving into when spilled coffee feels like the end of the world to. When spilled coffee feels like the end of the world, it's almost like when small things feel like they break you. Can you relate to that? This is something that I absolutely have experienced. I mean, even just recently I had a moment like that, not specifically with coffee, but I definitely had a moment, you see, and what I realized after? The fact that it's not the size of the demand that matters, but whether, and especially for me in that moment whether I had enough reserves to handle it. You see, it's like the daily drains on our energy that we're not normally aware of that Sometimes I don't know if you've had moments where you just go, go, go, you do, do, do and we get stuck in almost like this autopilot state where we are stressed but we don't realize consciously how stressed we really are. And when moments like this take place, we might not even be aware of how our nervous system decides when to shut down versus when to actually keep going and practical ways to just slow down the drain on your capacity and make these small deposits almost like back into your account, because it's not about the demand, it was about my capacity. And as I look back at my life and I can really see that I've been through some hard challenges, like most of us. We've had our good times and we've had our trying times.

Speaker 1:

And what happens is when we start to experience and endure this constant low-level stress, we start to also run on this low-level edge. And that is when the body is under this continuous low-level stress that's sometimes called allostatic load and your nervous system is never, it doesn't really fully return to its natural baseline. Now let's unpack a little bit what allostatic load refers to. This is almost like it's like the wear and tear on the body and also the brain from all this prolonged activation of the stress response. And even if you're not necessarily in that full fight or flight, the sympathetic nervous system, it remains particularly switched on and this is keeping the stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline slightly elevated. And this creates that state of hypervigilance where your brain is scanning for threats, often without you actually realizing it. And where does that leave the brain? Because how we interpret the world, our environment ourselves, drastically changes when we are under the influence of stress, because you don't really care about I mean those days where we just don't care if our hair is brushed enough or done well enough, because we're so stressed we just so focus on getting something done or getting to that end goal right. So how we perceive ourselves, what we interpret, what we rate as being important versus being less important, it drastically changes right. So that low level stress. It really affects the brain in a lot of measurable ways. You see, like the amygdala, it becomes a lot more reactive. That's interpreting also a lot of more smaller events as maybe potential threats. And this is priming you to snap over these minor frustrations. Then our prefrontal cortex right, that's the part of the brain that's responsible for our rational thinking, that impulse control and also perspective taking, that area, this now becomes much less active under this long-term low-level stress, that chronic stress, and this means that you have less capacity to talk yourself down to almost like self-regulate through self-talk and reframing. And the hippocampus that's also affected, right, because stress can shrink the connections here and that is impairing our memory, making it so much harder to recall context in that moment.

Speaker 1:

Now, why do these small things feel so big? You see, on a normal, let's say, rest day, your brain, it really can start to filter in these minor stressors without a lot of trouble. No-transcript. This is now when we start to move into what's called this physiological readiness. Right, your heart rate, your blood pressure and stress hormones are already elevated. So the jump from calm to alarm, it's like that and it's stronger. You have a reduced buffer as well. So your brain has much less emotional regulation capacity left. It's almost like imagine having your battery on 10% instead of 80% and triggering stacking also takes place. Now this is when these small little irritations can start to accumulate, almost like in the background. It's like traffic, a lot of emails, maybe ongoing noise from construction work, until a tiny little additional stressor flips you.

Speaker 1:

We also have what I already briefly started to touch on is the perception shift. So that's when the amygdala, almost, like it, overweights the importance of a really small event. So that's why, like a spilled drink, can feel like a complete catastrophic failure. And then, added to that, we have the emotional interpretation layer. Remember everything in life, we have an emotional reaction to it. Layer Remember everything in life, we have an emotional reaction to it. And then we sometimes form an opinion around that reaction and how it made us feel. Because when we look at psychological research as well, it's showing us that when our brain is tired and when it's stressed, these cognitive distortions are much likely, much more likely.

Speaker 1:

And then we start to catastrophizing and that's when we interpret the event as far worse than what it actually is. This ruins everything. Can you relate? I absolutely have had moments like that where something is just you know we're cooking dinner and then there's just that not enough garlic to add to the dinner, and then it's like, why is there not enough garlic? It's just such a small issue, we can improvise. So this is when we have also that personalization feeling. It's all about me, I am failing again, I am doing everything wrong again. I mean, for me personally, it feels like I'm slipping into this victim state, and we've all had that all or nothing thinking right. It's almost like we see the day as just being bad because of one small failure or mishap. You see, all these mental filters, they magnify the emotional impact of what otherwise would have been just the inconvenience that we can just brush off our shoulder. Now, that's understanding the issue.

Speaker 1:

But how do we start to break the cycle? You see, the good news is that this can also be reversible with the nervous system regulation and all this emotional resilience training that we learn and we see, and this is something that I am very passionate about in my work. I mean, I teach this in my workshops. So what we want is we want that parasympathetic activation. We want practices like deep breathing, meditation, slow exhalations. All of this signals safety to our nervous system. And something that really helped me is micro recovery breaks, short pauses throughout the day to reset, instead of waiting for that burnout to force you to reset.

Speaker 1:

One thing that I also love is cognitive reframing actively questioning and reframing the meaning of small events and especially when we start to overreact, when we start to feel that stress is building up. That moment, that deep breath right, sometimes we have when we feel angry. We have at least I think it's at least 90 seconds when we have a trigger before we end up reacting. So it's like we have this 90 second buffer to start to reframe, to take action, take a deep breath, break the pattern, break state or get up, walk away. But sometimes the surge of that built up energy, that built up stress sometimes just feels like a damn wall that is breaking, and so that's why for me, during the day for me it's not negotiable I take regular breaks and I actually jump. So I love to jump, shake my arms, shake my legs until I feel tired and then I'll do box breathing, which for me is I love box breathing and we can actually do that in the meditation today.

Speaker 1:

So to just talk you through that, and also what I would call the alpha brainwave state, where we breathe in the mouth and out the nose 13 times, and for me this is an incredible ideal reset when I start to feel irritated, when I start to feel snappy, when I start to feel, wow, I'm starting to have these negative thoughts. I'm not saying kind things to myself. I'm not thinking kind things of my environment circumstances. That, to me, is my indication of I'm overstepping my own boundary and limitation in terms of where my threshold is and what I can and cannot handle. So I've learned to really truly become more disciplined in relationship to my signals and my emotions and my thoughts as well.

Speaker 1:

So let's do this. Let's jump together now in a healing meditation where we can start to do regular exercises to help you to just gently regulate and have these different pauses during the day, instead of getting stuck in that autopilot mode where we sometimes just keep pushing through when we know we actually shouldn't. So when you are ready, I invite you to take a nice deep breath, whether you're lying down and if you're walking, it might be best to sit down somewhere, if you can or pause and then come back to the podcast episode for the meditation at another time, and please don't drive when you're doing this. All right, very good, let's start by taking a nice deep breath. Very good, and notice now as you're breathing.

Speaker 1:

One of the most important things is when you feel stressed and when you feel things are spiraling is to come back to your breath. Your breath is a very powerful anchor and gateway and signal to follow to come back into the body, signal to follow to come back into the body in a very gentle, gentle way and notice as you're focusing on your breath, just as you're inhaling and exhaling, just notice how your body is moving, notice your heartbeat Is your heartbeat fast or slow? And notice. Just notice how does your body feel. Maybe it's tense, maybe it feels unable to fully relax, finding yourself now allowing your shoulders to just drop, dropping more into the surface beneath you, or, if you're sitting down, just let your shoulders drop and, as they do, just opening your jaw just a little bit, just relaxing your jaw, and notice as you do that, how your thought starts to quiet down. And notice and notice wherever your body feels unable to relax. It could maybe be in your legs, stomach, maybe it's your mind.

Speaker 1:

Notice where in your body, where do you feel restless, where do you feel all the stress has accumulated, and just shift your awareness to that area of your body now and notice as you do.

Speaker 1:

Is there maybe a color that comes forward, a message, maybe an image, as you're finding yourself, building awareness around this stress?

Speaker 1:

I invite you to find yourself in an open space, almost like starting to step into a forest, and there's a beautiful stream, a gentle stream, in that forest and I invite you to go and sit there on that, on the sandbank there next to the little stream, and looking at the water, seeing how it's just gently running past, always moving it's never still and as you're noticing that beautiful stream and as you notice that stream, here and there are leaves falling in it and then just seeing that leaf running along the water, going down, down down the stream, very gently, very effortlessly and notice now whatever it is that you're feeling, allow those sensations to be there and lying down next to the stream so that you're lying parallel to the stream and as you can hear the water gently running next to you, finding yourself just like putting one hand in the stream, feeling the coolness of the water on your hand and notice as you do feel the stress from your body moving through your arm into that stream and feel how that little stream that's forever moving is taking away that stress.

Speaker 1:

It's like your emotions become the leaves that fall here and there in the stream and watching the leaves and the emotions just gently drift away, down, down, down, down down the stream, and as you are looking at the stream and you have awareness, you hear it, remembering now, in that moment, that you are not alone, that life is always in constant movement, just like that stream, and what that also means is for you to be reminded that emotions are also always moving and changing. And even though things are always moving, it doesn't mean that we always have to be on the move. That, just as you are now there, lying there next to that stream, resting, catching your breath, that we can stop, that we can stop and we can come back to our breath, one breath at a time, one sensation at a time, one thought at a time. If you wish to entertain, I thought and just noticing yourself focusing on the sound of that stream, how the water is just trickling ever so gently next to you, finding your body, feeling the gentleness, almost copying that gentle flow of that little stream, rinsing out and releasing any built up stress in your body.

Speaker 1:

Wherever you wish the focus to be, bring your awareness there and let that stream gently release that stress. Feel how it's just draining out of your body into the stream, down, down, down, down, down down that stream, and noticing as it does. It's like there's there's space opening up and it's a beautiful kind of space. It's a peaceful space, a space where you's a peaceful space, a space where you can feel peaceful and safe, where you can just allow yourself just to expand into that, a place where you can just breathe, and a place where you can just breathe and a place where you can just be Allowing the stream to do the work for you. It's a reminder that we can sometimes just stop and catch our breath, come back within and notice the peacefulness that you feel, how gentle your breathing is and your body feeling at ease, fully supported by the surface beneath it and, with this beautiful place and space that you are in, I invite you to gently bring this back with you in the here and now.

Speaker 1:

Notice the surface beneath your body, notice your breath and, if you ever feel you need to, you can use this as a rest. Rest and stop stopping place. It's like a little sanctuary that you can go to. You can change it in whatever way you want. It's like a little sanctuary that you can go to. You can change it in whatever way you want, but have this sanctuary that you can take with you wherever you are, a sanctuary that you can connect to whenever you need it.

Speaker 1:

Gently start to come back more and more and, when you feel ready, giving yourself a nice big stretch and gently come back. Well done, and gently come back. Well done, well done. Thank you so much for being here with me until the very end. Remember you're not alone. You are healing one step at a time and one breath at a time, and the affirmation for today is I am worthy of stopping and resting. So if this episode touched you, then please share it with someone and also maybe on their healing journey, and, as always, breathe deep, listen within and stay gently, curious. And until our next podcast episode. I love you guys. Big hugs to you. Be the light that you are. Bye everyone.