Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator. And I'm Doctor Adity in the Rucar, a physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're here to peel back to layers around why it's so easy for society to guard men's time as if it's diamonds and to treat women's time as if it's infinite like sands. And whether you are partnered with or without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries, this is the place for you for all family structures. We're here to take a time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim our time. Hi, Hi d D. I'm going to tell you another story today. It's a story that I tell in fair Play that I think about all the time. It was about a woman that I met that I called Josie. Since she was a young kid, she identified herself as a skier because when she was eight years old, her parents blurred on a winter ski camp for the Poconot, and she told me about the feeling she felt at the end of that first day that she was never going to come off that mountain, that she felt spiritually connected to the world in a way an eight that sometimes when we're in uh, I I just recentent eight year old. He's now ten, but that's when his I think existential thinking began. And she said she felt really connected with nature, and as she got older, her love for the sport just grew. She did everything she could to ski. She worked after school, she saved money, and eventually she earned a ski scholarship at the University of Vermont, where she joined their alpine ski team. And then she tells me about a day after marriaging kids, where ten years into her marriage, she was feeling a really deep loss and longing for her earlier self. She had not kept up her ski practice, and so she planned a ski vacation with her family. She was really excited about it. So the trip happens. They were going to the Poconos. She was introducing her kids to that first mountain that she felt that spiritual feeling. But her flight from Tampa to Philadelphia took longer than expected. There were long delays in connecting flights that made everyone cranky, and by the time they started to descend, Josie's two older boys were being screamed at by the light attendants, taking off their seatbelts, throwing snats at each other at the flight attendants. She had her thirteen month old with her and she was still breastfeeding, and she started to feel like she had to breastfeed or she was going to get mastadis. Her husband, usually helpful, was in a terrible mood and they collect their bags, their double stroller, their booster seats from the baggage carousel. She's dealing with three melting down kids, a child on her boob, whining about being hungry, and in all of the chaos, the thing that she was most excited to bring with her her beloved skis. She had others, but she kept this one pair that felt very sentimental to her. Her beloved skis did not come out from the luggage on time, and she tells me about the feeling of saying, I'm going to resign myself to leaving these skis at the airport. Her child needed to nurse, she really needed to get to the hotel, and they left and she says, you know, I really spent that weekend tending to the baby. My husband tried to get my kids interested in skiing. They grew bored. They've made snowman. They spent a lot of the time in the room and their devices, And she was really reflecting on the fact that a piece of her was left behind when she left behind her skis. She ended up eventually got her skis, she found them, but the whole experience to her was a metaphor for what it means to love something so much and then as life goes on, to leave that piece of you behind. You know, motherhood is just one facet of a multifaceted life, and for this woman Josie, skiing was such a large part of her identity prior to getting married and having children and having a family, and those skis really represented that part of her identity which she cherished and valued. She had lost along the way and was trying to reclaim it on this trip and passed down that legacy to the next generation. And so losing the skis was never about the skis. It was something so much greater than that. It's like when she lost the skis, she was fighting for that part of her identity and holding onto it. And what does it mean to have not just the external pressures but the internal pressures that we often identify as guilt and shame. I feel guilty because I want to go on a ski weekend to maintain my skill set. Who could even think about doing that? I have young children in the home. I would be leaving them. I feel guilty for leaving them. I feel internally shamed by others if I'm not a perfect parents. I wonder if you could help us understand these feelings of guilt and shame. What are they? Where do they come from? You know, when we think about guilt and shame, guilt is that feeling of regret over a wrongdoing that someone has done, typically yourself. Shame is a little different. It's when we view ourselves as being less than We feel less worthy, less valuable, and it's usually in response to something external, like a social construct. So for me, guilt has been really interesting the thing to think about. It had a good place in my life for a while. But I think when I was a parental child, a d D and growing up but the sabled younger brother and a mother who worked nights, I think guilt help propel me along. I think feeling guilty about disappointing my teacher, or feeling guilty because I didn't complete the homework assignment the best that I could. It wasn't always a bad thing. Negative experiences or emotions or feelings can help us be the catalysts of change, and they can be a positive thing if it helps you make change and take strides like you did in your life. When we think about mental health, these emotions guilt many others. When they start bleeding into your sense of identity and you're unable to place a clear border around it, that's when trouble can set in. So it's not necessarily that having a negative emotion is bad. It can propel us to a better place, just like having stress isn't bad. When scientific terms, it's called when something is adaptive that chal and just when something that is negative goes from being adaptive to maladaptive that it no longer serves a positive function. It's hard for you to get up in the morning, hard for you to do your work, to engage with people and have meaningful relationships. That's that red flag, and hopefully our listeners and even you and I and our friends and colleagues before we get to that place of danger. There are many tells and many things we can do before it becomes maladaptive. We're so excited to talk about all of this with today's get Dr Cheryl Gonzalez Ziegler. We're meeting her after the break. Dr Cheryl Gonzalez Ziegler is here with us. She's the best selling author of Mommy Burnout, the podcast host of Dr Cheryl's pod Couch I Love That Podcast, a ted X speaker, and runs a private practice group in Denver, Colorado. She's an expert on topics related to parenting, women's mental health, and stress. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be talking to both of you. You are a canary in the coal mine, Cheryl calling these issues out I think when people were not ready or willing to listen to them. And I really appreciate you being here because we're talking today about a subject that you know very well, you speak about often, and your tips and practical tricks have helped me immensely. And that topic is guilt and shame and it's relation to burnout, its relation to keeping women small, not living in their full power, whether it's outside the home and their unicorn space. And so I want to know if we can just start with how you got into your work, How did you know that burned out mothers should be the source of an entire book. I'm happy to share how this came about because it is a little bit of a story, and it was really organic and took a couple of years. I have a private practice in Denver called the Child and Family Therapy Center, So oftentimes moms would be bringing their kids in and for whatever different reasons, my kids being bullied, they have anxiety, I think my kids cutting, they have depression. So they come in with the presenting problem being something going on with their child, and then usually by the end of the intake session they would joke and say, maybe it's me that needs to be coming into therapy. Then I really had become evolved to the point where oftentimes about half the week I would spend with just the parents and then maybe half the week with kids. And when we were meeting, I just started noticing certain things. They were saying, I'm exhausted all the time. Is this all there is? I waited all my life for this to get married to have the house, to have the kid. Why am I not happy? And I noticed the same kinds of thoughts and questions. And I also noticed that whether they were a stay at home mom or a working mom, there was no difference. They were all saying the same thing. And I was really struck by that. And then I had my second child. I had this feeling, and it was pretty quick a couple of weeks after I had him, like I was drowning underwater, and then I would come back up and take a deep breath and just to drown again. And then I thought, Oh, my gosh, I think this is what those moms have been talking about for these past years. This is what it actually feels like. I truly like a breathing issue, like a like I'm trying to just catch my breath, like I'm trying to snee go off and spend time in the bathroom the only time I wasn't being bothered or asked a question or being tugged at. And so it was at that moment that I thought to myself, especially when I got back to work, which by the way, I was like counting the weeks until I could get back to work because I was like, oh, working is so much easier than this. And then when I got back there, I realized a simple thought. If my three o'clock only knew how my four o'clock felt, and that the five felt like the four, I just think the world would be a better place. And so when I was originally writing Mommy Burnout, the working title of it was modern Day Motherhood. And when my agent read it, she said, you're gonna need to name this condition, Like you can't just say this is modern day motherhood, and like, but it is, and she's like, work on that, like what what is the condition that what's going on? And so really I started doing research on chronic stress and um stress in general, and then once I got back to looking at burnout from a true clinical definition, I thought, wow, this is it. I think that you can experience burnout in the different occupations that you hold, in the different roles that you have. And I thought the definition, which is the physical and emotional exhaustion that results from feeling like you are unaccomplished or not good at your job, I thought just matched motherhood really well. And so that's how it kind of all came together. You know what's amazing Cheryl is that, in spite of you having all of the research and the education is a psychologist, you went through that experience, you felt all of the same things. It is remarkable and even to this day, because it's been a lot of years now that I've been really focused on women's health issues, chronic stress and burnout. And even though I am in that world, the only thing that means that I like to tell people this is I still experienced stress and then chronic stress. But I just know the signs and I'm quicker now too correct right, I'm quicker to say whoa, we have to put the brakes on right now? Or no? Or I know how to say no now. I did not know how to say no a few years ago. That's what I want for people. I just want them to know the signs, the symptoms, and the what to do because stress is a normal part of everyday life. So we have so many questions for you, and I'm going to start off and I'm going to quote you. You have said before, just because you've become a mother doesn't mean you have to surrender your entire life and all of your dreams. We have this false conception that to be a good mom means you must sacrifice who you are as a person. That simply isn't true, and it's a huge mistake. When I read that, I had that aha moment the same way you did with all of your patients. Can you tell us a little bit about why this thinking is so common for what you describe as modern motherhood. So when I was doing research and I look back, it was so interesting. We probably have all read The Feminine Mystique by Betty for Dan. I remember when I read it. I read it in a women's studies class in college. It didn't strike me personally, so I probably read it, got my grade and moved on. But when I was studying the history of motherhood reading books that were written more like in the seventies and the sixties. If you just open up that book, chapter one is called the Problem that has No Name, And I was like, huh, And if you read it, it's all about the problem that has no name is the pressure and the stress that women who become mother's feel. That there's a condition in which you get married and you have children, and you think that your role is going to become very clear, and then all of a sudden you lose your identity in your children, and by doing so, the vast majority of women are highly, highly distressed. They lose interest, they feel that they're not interesting. But essentially they were saying, at three o'clock in the afternoon, when I know those kids are going to come home, I take what we call Mommy's little helper, which we now know our anti anxiety medication. Right, So Mommy's Little Helper was like xan X, and they were doing that in the nineteen sixties. So the modern day version of that is wine America takes anti anxiety meds by the millions, So we are still doing that in addition to then socially acceptable drinking that we all couch as like we need it right on wine time, Mommy's juice, mommy juice, all these things, all these code words that we have for I'm so stressed that I need to alter my chemistry and my reality to just get through the afternoon. So when we not only get the message that well, that's just part of being a woman, and you know, if you have a problem with it, we'll like just something. Just take a pill, or take a little CBD, or you have a little marijuana or whatever. It's going to be just mellow out if we keep perpetuating that, and we keep ascribing to that this is the legacy that we're leaving our children, which is motherhood is in some ways so stressful and you lose your identity that you have to numb your way through it. And I really want to change that narrative. It doesn't need to be that way. But I think people don't know the way out of that because that's not something that's really shown to us. We don't know the way. We have so many forms to self medicate, and it's just because we're just trying to power through and come out, like you said, rather than feel all of those feelings. Absolutely, you just reminded me when you said that. But I didn't mention social media, right, that's a very modern way that people come out binging on Netflix. It's just anything that in moderation can be perfectly healthy or fine, but anything that takes us consciously, purposely away and out of our reality should be a yellow to a red flag to somebody that, wait, maybe you actually do need to practice presence and see what's going on here. To me, the new sort of epidemic is losing ourselves in our feeds and our screens. There's a metaphorical storm going on. But can we learn to dance in the rain as opposed to drown in it? And you have some great practical advice for sort of first steps for recognition about I want to live more at the intersection of meaning and happiness because we know that meaning without happiness is a lot of what we're talking about here. Being defined by our roles does bring meaning. I think we'd all hear as parents say that we have meaning. But when three o'clock comes around, if I'm holding the afternoon card or the weekends, oh my god it you know, my heart pounds on Friday night. So if we want to make our leisure time more nutritious, and we want to understand that life is dancing in the rain, we're not telling you it's going to be you know, cupcakes and rainbows. But where would you suggest people start. It's really hard, right because on the one hand, you say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to see parents numbing out, And on the other hand, self care. You must do self care. You must put on your oxygen mask. Right, So if you look at those things, I can see how somebody might say, well, which is it, because maybe my self care is binging on Netflix or scrolling on Instagram and looking at whatever beautiful homes or whatever it is that you're looking at. So I like when people ask those questions and I'm like, okay, good, let's have a conversation about this. Self care is truly something that is subjective. I don't get to tell you, and you don't get to tell me what my self care is by the day or maybe even by the hour. We know when somebody has a young baby, self care is taken a shower. We know that, right. We know that when you are maybe nursing, self care is putting clean braun. But then you get older and I'm not nursing anymore, So self care isn't putting a clean braun for me anymore. Every age and stage as my role as a mother has something different. Going away or spending any time with any one of my girlfriends is probably my greatest self care area, and I do that. People will say to me, well, how do you do that? Don't you feel bad? I'm absolutely not, because when I get my time to be social, to go out to just relax and not if someone you know, ask me questions, tugging on me when I come home. I am definitely a better mother, I am a better therapist, I'm a better wife, I'm a better everything. Because I'm acutely aware, like I'm running on empty. That's what burnout is. You're running on empty. If I allow myself to continue to run on fumes, guess what that one dinner, happy hour or weekend with my friends will not fill me up. So sometimes people want to know what's the difference, Like, how do you know when you're stressed or when you're burned out? When you're stressed, going and doing some of the self care stuff will fill you back up. When you're burned out, that doesn't cut it. And now all of a sudden, you realize, oh, I have a major life adjustment to do. Now, it's not a minor one. Oh can I get away for a night, it's beyond that, or even within your relationship, maybe one day at night actually is not going to cut it. Right. So I am acutely aware that this needs to be something that I do often. It needs to be something that is very attuned to where I'm at right. Sometimes I need quiet time, but then the next week I want to be out with maybe one friend or maybe a group of friends, and so I do that, and I make that commitment no matter what. That's self care in the intersection of guilt and shame because I will not even think twice about doing any of these things because I know that everybody benefits from it. So when I make decisions, and Eve talks about this as well, I make values driven decisions. Right, my value is mental health, of course. Right. So if I were to go out, and let's say I were to drink too much, and then the whole next day I have a hangover, I can't even hardly function with my family, I feel like crap, I have a headache laying on a couch, that actually, for me is not a values based decision. That wasn't a great decision because it didn't feel me up in order to be able to give and receive with my family the next day. But if I go out, I have a good time, I dance the next day, A values driven decision for me says, now I'm ready to be really present with you. I got I got my time alone or with friends or whatever, and now I'm here for you kids, versus feeling resentful or feeling a crap or feeling tired. And so that's how I make decisions and it helps me a lot with guilt and shame. I'll tell you one more story. Last Monday, I did a talk away and it was in driving distance, but it was at a gorgeous spa at a ranch. And so they're like, oh, yeah, well, you could just drive up in the morning. It's like an hour and a half from Denver. You could be back in the afternoon. I was like, maybe you want me to come for my night. I gotta come the day before I got my night and it was so beautiful, right, And I will tell you at a tinge of like, oh, was this a little too indulgent because I didn't have to be away for a night. And I was like, no, no, no, no, right, So I'll have the feelings like anybody else. But I'm quick and I'm like, why did you make this decision? I go back to my values. Why did you make this decision? Because it's gonna be good for my health. I got to do yoga, I took a beautiful walk, I soaked in the sun that was in the mountains, and I even had quiet time to myself to read a physical book. If I have a tinge of guilt, I go back to is this in line with my values? Am I in integrity? This happened to me. Also on Monday night, my friend invited me to see a screening of West Side Story. So at first I was like that again, say I could watch it later, I can see it in the theaters. I don't have to go now. I had to record my audiobook on Sunday, so I hadn't seen Anna in a while. So blah blah blah. Listening to myself, you know, I feel guilty. I feel guilty. And then finally I made the decision not to put Anna to bed. I'm making the choice not to put Anna to bed because A I really want to see West Side Story. I love musicals, especially when they're representing the people's lived experience in a more authentic way. And number two, my good friend Christie is the producer of this movie, and I really want to support her. And it was the best. It was the best that I'm still thinking about the movie. I looked up Jerome Robbin's choreography to do a couple of Unicorn space eight counts, and I'm still filled up by that two hours and I couldn't put Anna to bed and feel that. So I made that choice because and I think that reframe that you have us do instead of the self talk. I feel guilty because to saying I made the decision, because I made that choice, because it's so powerful, because then you can communicate it to your children without ambivalence. Absolutely, I'm gonna really try to highlight this seat of saying to my kids, I have to go do this talk, right, and everything about our body language changes and we act so like we're being tortured, like I'm sorry, you know, guys, I'm not going to be home tomorrow because I have to do this talk. It makes it seem like, oh, well, mom must be going to go do something so dreadful, right, the look on her face, her tone, her body language, or the apologetic like sorry, guys, I am not going to be home tomorrow night. Right. We're not doing them any favors by putting on that voice and acting small and acting all guilty. So I don't do that. I say, guess what, you guys, you know how much I love devil thumb Ranch. I get to go there, do a talk and go to the spot. It's not amazing, and they're just like so used to it that they're just oh, good mom. Yeah. And so I'm like, so, yeah, I'm not going to be here tomorrow. I'm missing a basketball game. I'm so bummed. Daddy will take videos and I'll look at them, call me on the right home. Because of course, did I inventory what was I missing? I was missing my son's basketball game, and I don't like to miss their games. It was a choice, though I was not forced. And so in my decision making, I like to also communicate not just first to myself why yes this is a choice of making, but second to my kids. I want to show them that I love my job. I want to show them that I value friendships. I want to show them that I value my health, not just in words, but in action. And so that's really important to me. Now I'm going to play the devil's advocate. Some people say, well, what if you don't love your job and you really do feel like you have to do it, this isn't something that you want to do. There's still a values based decision there. Guys. I have to go on a work trip because mommy has to bring home money. So we can eat so that we can have Christmas, or we can go on vacation, or we could just pay the bills. And so I'm sorry that I'm gonna, you know, miss the basketball game, but I love you so much and i care about taking care of you so much that I'm going to go do this and when I come back, I can't wait to see you. Right. So it might not be as Rosie is enthusiastic as my first version, but it's still being honest and it still leaves I hope as you hear me say that it leaves you with a different feeling when you know why your parent is making the decision that they are. As you're speaking the two scenarios, I just think essentially what you're saying is that you can be a mother and still lead an authentic life. And when your children see that messaging from you saying that you're excited to go on this trip and you'll see them when you get back, recognizing and acknowledging the things that you're going to be missing, I think that also gives them an example of how to be. I think of this quote as you're speaking, Cheryl, what's important is to create a life that you don't need to escape from. We always think about all of these vacations, right, like I need to get away, I need to take a vacation. But what about changing that notion on his head and actually building a life with a partner, with children, with all of those responsibilities and obligations, and rather than think of them as something heavy, think of it as part of a creative process to build a life that is so wonderful, enriching and fulfilling with all of those time outs. Like you've said that you don't have to escape from. I love that quote so much. I did track it down and it was a writer named Brianna West, So shout out to you, Brianna for that beautiful quote that true self care is building a life you don't want to escape from. I think what the three of us are talking about is, by no means is probably any of our lives rosie, perfect, beautiful, lovely every day. It is truly the mindset. And I don't want for me and for the patients that I work with. I don't want those children to feel like they are a burden, or that they have taken the joy and the spirit out of their parents. Right that, Oh, I used to be because I do hear that a lot too. People will say to me, you know that I used to be a CFO. You know that I used to be a teacher. These moms will tell me this, and I take it and I hold it for them because I know what they're trying to say. What they're trying to say is I used to have another identity. If you find you're going through multiple seasons of this, at some point, you have to know I have to pause. I have to do something different. I can still love my children and fill in the blank, and maybe if everybody did that for themselves, right, I can still love my children and fill in the blank. Forget the butt. We all know butts are and eraser words we don't want to use. But I love them. But and people say that I love my kids, but they drive me crazy. I love my kids, but I just want to be alone sometimes. So I love my kids, and I deserve of a night to myself. I love my kids, and whatever you're filling the blank is, and I do this. I've been doing this for many years with people. I promise if people practice it, and not just once, but you practice it, you're consistent with it. It will manifest, it will happen, and your family will genuinely be healthier and happier because of it. I love this exercise that you're walking us through instead of the butt put in the end and fill in the blank. Is that what you would recommend as that first step for the woman who is feeling all of those feelings in that cycle of shame and guilt and wants to get out but doesn't know how. Absolutely. One of the first things that that has come at least to my mind right now, is even understanding the difference between shame and guilt. If you have shame, that is usually a private secret, deep seated feeling that is internal that is so scary to release that you don't even tell anybody. It's something that is such a burden because it's generally kept a secret. That's shame. Guilt is usually quite specific. I feel bad about Oh, I feel bad I didn't put the kids to bed. I feel bad I didn't say I love you when they walked out the door. I feel bad I forgot to kid my sign my kid up for karate. It's usually you feel bad about and then fill that blanket, and and that does plague women because they wind up feeling like, gosh, well I have like fifteen of those a day. How many times can I feel bad about something? And so that is a very real experience and gets in the way a lot of times from women really growing. But I do want to distinguish it from shame, which puts you almost in shackles because it's a very lonely, dark experience. So I really want people to get in touch with that difference between guilt and shame and to know that shame needs to be shared in order to really heal past it. It's like trauma and guilt is something that I think can be really helped by purpose driven talk. What is the little voice in your head? What is it saying to you? How can I rewrite that narrative? What are your values? Do you have a value statement? Do you have a family value statement? Keep that as your anchor point and ground it. So I just wanted to speak to that. Wow, it's like a mic drop. You're a living, walking ball of wisdom. I hope your kids I can tell them how proud I am of you to them keep shining because there's so much what you said said today that we can use to apply to make our lives better. Thank you, Thank you guys so much for having me on Hi. It's me Eve. Are you a therapist, counselor coach or nutritionists that has thought about introducing the fair Play system directly to your clients, Well, now you can come and roll in the fair Play Method, a new online program that provides you with hands on training, a ton of valuable resources, and a community of certified professionals who are all part of a greater cultural movement for systemic change. Learn more about how you can help your clients shift the domestic workload in their own homes towards more equity, more fairness, and greater connectivity. Visit fair Play method dot com. So, as you may know, now, every episode of this podcast ends with an action item for you are listeners that we call a time out. This is really a time for you to focus on yourself and reflect on what you're hearing today, and we're starting to come versation first with ourselves and then ultimately with those around us. I loved all of Cheryl's insights Leave, but probably the most profound one for me is just this idea that she would see patient upon patient upon patient in a day they'd all be struggling with the same thing, these intense negative emotions. They would be feeling so isolated, and yet no one was talking to each other. And so it's this wild, surreal experience of feeling isolated. But it's a collective experience. And Cheryl was the only one, through her vantage point of being a clinician, who was able to see that pattern. And I'm so glad she's speaking about that and really making this a common theme and a common thread for all of us, because we're all suffering in different ways, and yet we don't talk to each other because of our guilt and our shame, which are real isolating forces. Oh my god, I think I wouldn't be doing this podcast with you. We need something else to do. Write like a hole in our head, as my grandmother would say. But we were doing this for that reason. We want you, we're here listening with us to understand that private lives are public issues. That the more we stay isolated and in shame as opposed to collectively understanding that this is normal, the smaller we are, and when when we can become and then we don't ski anymore. We we leave our skis at the airport metaphorically. So today we are going to build on Dr Cheryl's amazing self talk reframe about guilt and shame where we're going to bring it to the surface. We're gonna not let shame isolate and high us in darkness. So what we would like all of you to do, when you can safely, is to think of one time in your life recently where you felt guilty about something or some that's coming up that you feel guilty about doing. So you know, a deity in in the past, I would say, I know, after a really long day today, tonight, I'm going out to dinner with my friends Dara and Susanne. And in the past I probably would have said, wow, I really feel guilty for heading out to dinner right after a really long work day because Seth took the kids to school this morning, so I will have not seen my kids all day today. What Dr Cheryl is asking us to do is to take I feel guilty because I feel guilty because I'm not putting my kids to bed tonight, and to write down instead I made the choice, because I made the decision because so this is how it would work. I feel guilty because I'm not putting my kids to bed instead, I will write down I am making the decision not to put my kids to bed because I really believe in friendships, and I know that to believe in friendships you have to spend time on them and cultivate them. And so that is why I'm going to make the decision to go out to dinner tonight with Dara and Susanne. Do you have one as a practice that we could do for our listeners. So yesterday I had a thirty minute window and I could have spent those thirty minutes downstairs with my family or exercising. And I really needed to exercise, like you, I'd had a really long day and I just needed to decompress. I felt a lot of guilt about making that choice, but I sent a quick text to my husband and I said, hey, I need thirty minutes. It felt difficult to send it. Immediately after sending that text, I felt a great sense of relief and felt a sense of power, and I exercised. And then when I showed up thirty minutes later for my family, I was present, I was happy, and I was a better mom and a wife. Dr Cheryl talks a lot about this but we can only fill other people's cup when our cup is full, and really it's one of the greatest gifts we could give to ourselves as moms, as wives, and as human beings. So that's what we're working on today in our Time Out, but stay tuned for next week, where we moved from how we talk to ourselves our self talk into how we communicate what we need to others. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to Time Out, a production of I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm Ev Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social media at Eve Rodsky and learn more about our work at fair Play Life. And I'm Dr Ad Narukar, Harvard physician with a specialty and stress resilience burnout in mental health. Follow me on social media at dr add ne rucar and find out more about my work at dr add dot com. That's d R A d I t I dot com. Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda farrand Aaron Stover and Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team is Ali Perry, Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Cranchich. We hope you all love taking a much needed time out with us today. Listen and subscribe to Time Out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Welcome to Time Out. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space, activists on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator. And I'm Doctor Adity in the Rucar, a physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're here to peel back to layers around why it's so easy for society to guard men's time as if it's diamonds and to treat women's time as if it's infinite like sands. And whether you are partnered with or without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries, this is the place for you for all family structures. We're here to take a time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim our time. Hi, Hi d D. I'm going to tell you another story today. It's a story that I tell in fair Play that I think about all the time. It was about a woman that I met that I called Josie. Since she was a young kid, she identified herself as a skier because when she was eight years old, her parents blurred on a winter ski camp for the Poconot, and she told me about the feeling she felt at the end of that first day that she was never going to come off that mountain, that she felt spiritually connected to the world in a way an eight that sometimes when we're in uh, I I just recentent eight year old. He's now ten, but that's when his I think existential thinking began. And she said she felt really connected with nature, and as she got older, her love for the sport just grew. She did everything she could to ski. She worked after school, she saved money, and eventually she earned a ski scholarship at the University of Vermont, where she joined their alpine ski team. And then she tells me about a day after marriaging kids, where ten years into her marriage, she was feeling a really deep loss and longing for her earlier self. She had not kept up her ski practice, and so she planned a ski vacation with her family. She was really excited about it. So the trip happens. They were going to the Poconos. She was introducing her kids to that first mountain that she felt that spiritual feeling. But her flight from Tampa to Philadelphia took longer than expected. There were long delays in connecting flights that made everyone cranky, and by the time they started to descend, Josie's two older boys were being screamed at by the light attendants, taking off their seatbelts, throwing snats at each other at the flight attendants. She had her thirteen month old with her and she was still breastfeeding, and she started to feel like she had to breastfeed or she was going to get mastadis. Her husband, usually helpful, was in a terrible mood and they collect their bags, their double stroller, their booster seats from the baggage carousel. She's dealing with three melting down kids, a child on her boob, whining about being hungry, and in all of the chaos, the thing that she was most excited to bring with her her beloved skis. She had others, but she kept this one pair that felt very sentimental to her. Her beloved skis did not come out from the luggage on time, and she tells me about the feeling of saying, I'm going to resign myself to leaving these skis at the airport. Her child needed to nurse, she really needed to get to the hotel, and they left and she says, you know, I really spent that weekend tending to the baby. My husband tried to get my kids interested in skiing. They grew bored. They've made snowman. They spent a lot of the time in the room and their devices, And she was really reflecting on the fact that a piece of her was left behind when she left behind her skis. She ended up eventually got her skis, she found them, but the whole experience to her was a metaphor for what it means to love something so much and then as life goes on, to leave that piece of you behind. You know, motherhood is just one facet of a multifaceted life, and for this woman Josie, skiing was such a large part of her identity prior to getting married and having children and having a family, and those skis really represented that part of her identity which she cherished and valued. She had lost along the way and was trying to reclaim it on this trip and passed down that legacy to the next generation. And so losing the skis was never about the skis. It was something so much greater than that. It's like when she lost the skis, she was fighting for that part of her identity and holding onto it. And what does it mean to have not just the external pressures but the internal pressures that we often identify as guilt and shame. I feel guilty because I want to go on a ski weekend to maintain my skill set. Who could even think about doing that? I have young children in the home. I would be leaving them. I feel guilty for leaving them. I feel internally shamed by others if I'm not a perfect parents. I wonder if you could help us understand these feelings of guilt and shame. What are they? Where do they come from? You know, when we think about guilt and shame, guilt is that feeling of regret over a wrongdoing that someone has done, typically yourself. Shame is a little different. It's when we view ourselves as being less than We feel less worthy, less valuable, and it's usually in response to something external, like a social construct. So for me, guilt has been really interesting the thing to think about. It had a good place in my life for a while. But I think when I was a parental child, a d D and growing up but the sabled younger brother and a mother who worked nights, I think guilt help propel me along. I think feeling guilty about disappointing my teacher, or feeling guilty because I didn't complete the homework assignment the best that I could. It wasn't always a bad thing. Negative experiences or emotions or feelings can help us be the catalysts of change, and they can be a positive thing if it helps you make change and take strides like you did in your life. When we think about mental health, these emotions guilt many others. When they start bleeding into your sense of identity and you're unable to place a clear border around it, that's when trouble can set in. So it's not necessarily that having a negative emotion is bad. It can propel us to a better place, just like having stress isn't bad. When scientific terms, it's called when something is adaptive that chal and just when something that is negative goes from being adaptive to maladaptive that it no longer serves a positive function. It's hard for you to get up in the morning, hard for you to do your work, to engage with people and have meaningful relationships. That's that red flag, and hopefully our listeners and even you and I and our friends and colleagues before we get to that place of danger. There are many tells and many things we can do before it becomes maladaptive. We're so excited to talk about all of this with today's get Dr Cheryl Gonzalez Ziegler. We're meeting her after the break. Dr Cheryl Gonzalez Ziegler is here with us. She's the best selling author of Mommy Burnout, the podcast host of Dr Cheryl's pod Couch I Love That Podcast, a ted X speaker, and runs a private practice group in Denver, Colorado. She's an expert on topics related to parenting, women's mental health, and stress. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be talking to both of you. You are a canary in the coal mine, Cheryl calling these issues out I think when people were not ready or willing to listen to them. And I really appreciate you being here because we're talking today about a subject that you know very well, you speak about often, and your tips and practical tricks have helped me immensely. And that topic is guilt and shame and it's relation to burnout, its relation to keeping women small, not living in their full power, whether it's outside the home and their unicorn space. And so I want to know if we can just start with how you got into your work, How did you know that burned out mothers should be the source of an entire book. I'm happy to share how this came about because it is a little bit of a story, and it was really organic and took a couple of years. I have a private practice in Denver called the Child and Family Therapy Center, So oftentimes moms would be bringing their kids in and for whatever different reasons, my kids being bullied, they have anxiety, I think my kids cutting, they have depression. So they come in with the presenting problem being something going on with their child, and then usually by the end of the intake session they would joke and say, maybe it's me that needs to be coming into therapy. Then I really had become evolved to the point where oftentimes about half the week I would spend with just the parents and then maybe half the week with kids. And when we were meeting, I just started noticing certain things. They were saying, I'm exhausted all the time. Is this all there is? I waited all my life for this to get married to have the house, to have the kid. Why am I not happy? And I noticed the same kinds of thoughts and questions. And I also noticed that whether they were a stay at home mom or a working mom, there was no difference. They were all saying the same thing. And I was really struck by that. And then I had my second child. I had this feeling, and it was pretty quick a couple of weeks after I had him, like I was drowning underwater, and then I would come back up and take a deep breath and just to drown again. And then I thought, Oh, my gosh, I think this is what those moms have been talking about for these past years. This is what it actually feels like. I truly like a breathing issue, like a like I'm trying to just catch my breath, like I'm trying to snee go off and spend time in the bathroom the only time I wasn't being bothered or asked a question or being tugged at. And so it was at that moment that I thought to myself, especially when I got back to work, which by the way, I was like counting the weeks until I could get back to work because I was like, oh, working is so much easier than this. And then when I got back there, I realized a simple thought. If my three o'clock only knew how my four o'clock felt, and that the five felt like the four, I just think the world would be a better place. And so when I was originally writing Mommy Burnout, the working title of it was modern Day Motherhood. And when my agent read it, she said, you're gonna need to name this condition, Like you can't just say this is modern day motherhood, and like, but it is, and she's like, work on that, like what what is the condition that what's going on? And so really I started doing research on chronic stress and um stress in general, and then once I got back to looking at burnout from a true clinical definition, I thought, wow, this is it. I think that you can experience burnout in the different occupations that you hold, in the different roles that you have. And I thought the definition, which is the physical and emotional exhaustion that results from feeling like you are unaccomplished or not good at your job, I thought just matched motherhood really well. And so that's how it kind of all came together. You know what's amazing Cheryl is that, in spite of you having all of the research and the education is a psychologist, you went through that experience, you felt all of the same things. It is remarkable and even to this day, because it's been a lot of years now that I've been really focused on women's health issues, chronic stress and burnout. And even though I am in that world, the only thing that means that I like to tell people this is I still experienced stress and then chronic stress. But I just know the signs and I'm quicker now too correct right, I'm quicker to say whoa, we have to put the brakes on right now? Or no? Or I know how to say no now. I did not know how to say no a few years ago. That's what I want for people. I just want them to know the signs, the symptoms, and the what to do because stress is a normal part of everyday life. So we have so many questions for you, and I'm going to start off and I'm going to quote you. You have said before, just because you've become a mother doesn't mean you have to surrender your entire life and all of your dreams. We have this false conception that to be a good mom means you must sacrifice who you are as a person. That simply isn't true, and it's a huge mistake. When I read that, I had that aha moment the same way you did with all of your patients. Can you tell us a little bit about why this thinking is so common for what you describe as modern motherhood. So when I was doing research and I look back, it was so interesting. We probably have all read The Feminine Mystique by Betty for Dan. I remember when I read it. I read it in a women's studies class in college. It didn't strike me personally, so I probably read it, got my grade and moved on. But when I was studying the history of motherhood reading books that were written more like in the seventies and the sixties. If you just open up that book, chapter one is called the Problem that has No Name, And I was like, huh, And if you read it, it's all about the problem that has no name is the pressure and the stress that women who become mother's feel. That there's a condition in which you get married and you have children, and you think that your role is going to become very clear, and then all of a sudden you lose your identity in your children, and by doing so, the vast majority of women are highly, highly distressed. They lose interest, they feel that they're not interesting. But essentially they were saying, at three o'clock in the afternoon, when I know those kids are going to come home, I take what we call Mommy's little helper, which we now know our anti anxiety medication. Right, So Mommy's Little Helper was like xan X, and they were doing that in the nineteen sixties. So the modern day version of that is wine America takes anti anxiety meds by the millions, So we are still doing that in addition to then socially acceptable drinking that we all couch as like we need it right on wine time, Mommy's juice, mommy juice, all these things, all these code words that we have for I'm so stressed that I need to alter my chemistry and my reality to just get through the afternoon. So when we not only get the message that well, that's just part of being a woman, and you know, if you have a problem with it, we'll like just something. Just take a pill, or take a little CBD, or you have a little marijuana or whatever. It's going to be just mellow out if we keep perpetuating that, and we keep ascribing to that this is the legacy that we're leaving our children, which is motherhood is in some ways so stressful and you lose your identity that you have to numb your way through it. And I really want to change that narrative. It doesn't need to be that way. But I think people don't know the way out of that because that's not something that's really shown to us. We don't know the way. We have so many forms to self medicate, and it's just because we're just trying to power through and come out, like you said, rather than feel all of those feelings. Absolutely, you just reminded me when you said that. But I didn't mention social media, right, that's a very modern way that people come out binging on Netflix. It's just anything that in moderation can be perfectly healthy or fine, but anything that takes us consciously, purposely away and out of our reality should be a yellow to a red flag to somebody that, wait, maybe you actually do need to practice presence and see what's going on here. To me, the new sort of epidemic is losing ourselves in our feeds and our screens. There's a metaphorical storm going on. But can we learn to dance in the rain as opposed to drown in it? And you have some great practical advice for sort of first steps for recognition about I want to live more at the intersection of meaning and happiness because we know that meaning without happiness is a lot of what we're talking about here. Being defined by our roles does bring meaning. I think we'd all hear as parents say that we have meaning. But when three o'clock comes around, if I'm holding the afternoon card or the weekends, oh my god it you know, my heart pounds on Friday night. So if we want to make our leisure time more nutritious, and we want to understand that life is dancing in the rain, we're not telling you it's going to be you know, cupcakes and rainbows. But where would you suggest people start. It's really hard, right because on the one hand, you say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to see parents numbing out, And on the other hand, self care. You must do self care. You must put on your oxygen mask. Right, So if you look at those things, I can see how somebody might say, well, which is it, because maybe my self care is binging on Netflix or scrolling on Instagram and looking at whatever beautiful homes or whatever it is that you're looking at. So I like when people ask those questions and I'm like, okay, good, let's have a conversation about this. Self care is truly something that is subjective. I don't get to tell you, and you don't get to tell me what my self care is by the day or maybe even by the hour. We know when somebody has a young baby, self care is taken a shower. We know that, right. We know that when you are maybe nursing, self care is putting clean braun. But then you get older and I'm not nursing anymore, So self care isn't putting a clean braun for me anymore. Every age and stage as my role as a mother has something different. Going away or spending any time with any one of my girlfriends is probably my greatest self care area, and I do that. People will say to me, well, how do you do that? Don't you feel bad? I'm absolutely not, because when I get my time to be social, to go out to just relax and not if someone you know, ask me questions, tugging on me when I come home. I am definitely a better mother, I am a better therapist, I'm a better wife, I'm a better everything. Because I'm acutely aware, like I'm running on empty. That's what burnout is. You're running on empty. If I allow myself to continue to run on fumes, guess what that one dinner, happy hour or weekend with my friends will not fill me up. So sometimes people want to know what's the difference, Like, how do you know when you're stressed or when you're burned out? When you're stressed, going and doing some of the self care stuff will fill you back up. When you're burned out, that doesn't cut it. And now all of a sudden, you realize, oh, I have a major life adjustment to do. Now, it's not a minor one. Oh can I get away for a night, it's beyond that, or even within your relationship, maybe one day at night actually is not going to cut it. Right. So I am acutely aware that this needs to be something that I do often. It needs to be something that is very attuned to where I'm at right. Sometimes I need quiet time, but then the next week I want to be out with maybe one friend or maybe a group of friends, and so I do that, and I make that commitment no matter what. That's self care in the intersection of guilt and shame because I will not even think twice about doing any of these things because I know that everybody benefits from it. So when I make decisions, and Eve talks about this as well, I make values driven decisions. Right, my value is mental health, of course. Right. So if I were to go out, and let's say I were to drink too much, and then the whole next day I have a hangover, I can't even hardly function with my family, I feel like crap, I have a headache laying on a couch, that actually, for me is not a values based decision. That wasn't a great decision because it didn't feel me up in order to be able to give and receive with my family the next day. But if I go out, I have a good time, I dance the next day, A values driven decision for me says, now I'm ready to be really present with you. I got I got my time alone or with friends or whatever, and now I'm here for you kids, versus feeling resentful or feeling a crap or feeling tired. And so that's how I make decisions and it helps me a lot with guilt and shame. I'll tell you one more story. Last Monday, I did a talk away and it was in driving distance, but it was at a gorgeous spa at a ranch. And so they're like, oh, yeah, well, you could just drive up in the morning. It's like an hour and a half from Denver. You could be back in the afternoon. I was like, maybe you want me to come for my night. I gotta come the day before I got my night and it was so beautiful, right, And I will tell you at a tinge of like, oh, was this a little too indulgent because I didn't have to be away for a night. And I was like, no, no, no, no, right, So I'll have the feelings like anybody else. But I'm quick and I'm like, why did you make this decision? I go back to my values. Why did you make this decision? Because it's gonna be good for my health. I got to do yoga, I took a beautiful walk, I soaked in the sun that was in the mountains, and I even had quiet time to myself to read a physical book. If I have a tinge of guilt, I go back to is this in line with my values? Am I in integrity? This happened to me. Also on Monday night, my friend invited me to see a screening of West Side Story. So at first I was like that again, say I could watch it later, I can see it in the theaters. I don't have to go now. I had to record my audiobook on Sunday, so I hadn't seen Anna in a while. So blah blah blah. Listening to myself, you know, I feel guilty. I feel guilty. And then finally I made the decision not to put Anna to bed. I'm making the choice not to put Anna to bed because A I really want to see West Side Story. I love musicals, especially when they're representing the people's lived experience in a more authentic way. And number two, my good friend Christie is the producer of this movie, and I really want to support her. And it was the best. It was the best that I'm still thinking about the movie. I looked up Jerome Robbin's choreography to do a couple of Unicorn space eight counts, and I'm still filled up by that two hours and I couldn't put Anna to bed and feel that. So I made that choice because and I think that reframe that you have us do instead of the self talk. I feel guilty because to saying I made the decision, because I made that choice, because it's so powerful, because then you can communicate it to your children without ambivalence. Absolutely, I'm gonna really try to highlight this seat of saying to my kids, I have to go do this talk, right, and everything about our body language changes and we act so like we're being tortured, like I'm sorry, you know, guys, I'm not going to be home tomorrow because I have to do this talk. It makes it seem like, oh, well, mom must be going to go do something so dreadful, right, the look on her face, her tone, her body language, or the apologetic like sorry, guys, I am not going to be home tomorrow night. Right. We're not doing them any favors by putting on that voice and acting small and acting all guilty. So I don't do that. I say, guess what, you guys, you know how much I love devil thumb Ranch. I get to go there, do a talk and go to the spot. It's not amazing, and they're just like so used to it that they're just oh, good mom. Yeah. And so I'm like, so, yeah, I'm not going to be here tomorrow. I'm missing a basketball game. I'm so bummed. Daddy will take videos and I'll look at them, call me on the right home. Because of course, did I inventory what was I missing? I was missing my son's basketball game, and I don't like to miss their games. It was a choice, though I was not forced. And so in my decision making, I like to also communicate not just first to myself why yes this is a choice of making, but second to my kids. I want to show them that I love my job. I want to show them that I value friendships. I want to show them that I value my health, not just in words, but in action. And so that's really important to me. Now I'm going to play the devil's advocate. Some people say, well, what if you don't love your job and you really do feel like you have to do it, this isn't something that you want to do. There's still a values based decision there. Guys. I have to go on a work trip because mommy has to bring home money. So we can eat so that we can have Christmas, or we can go on vacation, or we could just pay the bills. And so I'm sorry that I'm gonna, you know, miss the basketball game, but I love you so much and i care about taking care of you so much that I'm going to go do this and when I come back, I can't wait to see you. Right. So it might not be as Rosie is enthusiastic as my first version, but it's still being honest and it still leaves I hope as you hear me say that it leaves you with a different feeling when you know why your parent is making the decision that they are. As you're speaking the two scenarios, I just think essentially what you're saying is that you can be a mother and still lead an authentic life. And when your children see that messaging from you saying that you're excited to go on this trip and you'll see them when you get back, recognizing and acknowledging the things that you're going to be missing, I think that also gives them an example of how to be. I think of this quote as you're speaking, Cheryl, what's important is to create a life that you don't need to escape from. We always think about all of these vacations, right, like I need to get away, I need to take a vacation. But what about changing that notion on his head and actually building a life with a partner, with children, with all of those responsibilities and obligations, and rather than think of them as something heavy, think of it as part of a creative process to build a life that is so wonderful, enriching and fulfilling with all of those time outs. Like you've said that you don't have to escape from. I love that quote so much. I did track it down and it was a writer named Brianna West, So shout out to you, Brianna for that beautiful quote that true self care is building a life you don't want to escape from. I think what the three of us are talking about is, by no means is probably any of our lives rosie, perfect, beautiful, lovely every day. It is truly the mindset. And I don't want for me and for the patients that I work with. I don't want those children to feel like they are a burden, or that they have taken the joy and the spirit out of their parents. Right that, Oh, I used to be because I do hear that a lot too. People will say to me, you know that I used to be a CFO. You know that I used to be a teacher. These moms will tell me this, and I take it and I hold it for them because I know what they're trying to say. What they're trying to say is I used to have another identity. If you find you're going through multiple seasons of this, at some point, you have to know I have to pause. I have to do something different. I can still love my children and fill in the blank, and maybe if everybody did that for themselves, right, I can still love my children and fill in the blank. Forget the butt. We all know butts are and eraser words we don't want to use. But I love them. But and people say that I love my kids, but they drive me crazy. I love my kids, but I just want to be alone sometimes. So I love my kids, and I deserve of a night to myself. I love my kids, and whatever you're filling the blank is, and I do this. I've been doing this for many years with people. I promise if people practice it, and not just once, but you practice it, you're consistent with it. It will manifest, it will happen, and your family will genuinely be healthier and happier because of it. I love this exercise that you're walking us through instead of the butt put in the end and fill in the blank. Is that what you would recommend as that first step for the woman who is feeling all of those feelings in that cycle of shame and guilt and wants to get out but doesn't know how. Absolutely. One of the first things that that has come at least to my mind right now, is even understanding the difference between shame and guilt. If you have shame, that is usually a private secret, deep seated feeling that is internal that is so scary to release that you don't even tell anybody. It's something that is such a burden because it's generally kept a secret. That's shame. Guilt is usually quite specific. I feel bad about Oh, I feel bad I didn't put the kids to bed. I feel bad I didn't say I love you when they walked out the door. I feel bad I forgot to kid my sign my kid up for karate. It's usually you feel bad about and then fill that blanket, and and that does plague women because they wind up feeling like, gosh, well I have like fifteen of those a day. How many times can I feel bad about something? And so that is a very real experience and gets in the way a lot of times from women really growing. But I do want to distinguish it from shame, which puts you almost in shackles because it's a very lonely, dark experience. So I really want people to get in touch with that difference between guilt and shame and to know that shame needs to be shared in order to really heal past it. It's like trauma and guilt is something that I think can be really helped by purpose driven talk. What is the little voice in your head? What is it saying to you? How can I rewrite that narrative? What are your values? Do you have a value statement? Do you have a family value statement? Keep that as your anchor point and ground it. So I just wanted to speak to that. Wow, it's like a mic drop. You're a living, walking ball of wisdom. I hope your kids I can tell them how proud I am of you to them keep shining because there's so much what you said said today that we can use to apply to make our lives better. Thank you, Thank you guys so much for having me on Hi. It's me Eve. Are you a therapist, counselor coach or nutritionists that has thought about introducing the fair Play system directly to your clients, Well, now you can come and roll in the fair Play Method, a new online program that provides you with hands on training, a ton of valuable resources, and a community of certified professionals who are all part of a greater cultural movement for systemic change. Learn more about how you can help your clients shift the domestic workload in their own homes towards more equity, more fairness, and greater connectivity. Visit fair Play method dot com. So, as you may know, now, every episode of this podcast ends with an action item for you are listeners that we call a time out. This is really a time for you to focus on yourself and reflect on what you're hearing today, and we're starting to come versation first with ourselves and then ultimately with those around us. I loved all of Cheryl's insights Leave, but probably the most profound one for me is just this idea that she would see patient upon patient upon patient in a day they'd all be struggling with the same thing, these intense negative emotions. They would be feeling so isolated, and yet no one was talking to each other. And so it's this wild, surreal experience of feeling isolated. But it's a collective experience. And Cheryl was the only one, through her vantage point of being a clinician, who was able to see that pattern. And I'm so glad she's speaking about that and really making this a common theme and a common thread for all of us, because we're all suffering in different ways, and yet we don't talk to each other because of our guilt and our shame, which are real isolating forces. Oh my god, I think I wouldn't be doing this podcast with you. We need something else to do. Write like a hole in our head, as my grandmother would say. But we were doing this for that reason. We want you, we're here listening with us to understand that private lives are public issues. That the more we stay isolated and in shame as opposed to collectively understanding that this is normal, the smaller we are, and when when we can become and then we don't ski anymore. We we leave our skis at the airport metaphorically. So today we are going to build on Dr Cheryl's amazing self talk reframe about guilt and shame where we're going to bring it to the surface. We're gonna not let shame isolate and high us in darkness. So what we would like all of you to do, when you can safely, is to think of one time in your life recently where you felt guilty about something or some that's coming up that you feel guilty about doing. So you know, a deity in in the past, I would say, I know, after a really long day today, tonight, I'm going out to dinner with my friends Dara and Susanne. And in the past I probably would have said, wow, I really feel guilty for heading out to dinner right after a really long work day because Seth took the kids to school this morning, so I will have not seen my kids all day today. What Dr Cheryl is asking us to do is to take I feel guilty because I feel guilty because I'm not putting my kids to bed tonight, and to write down instead I made the choice, because I made the decision because so this is how it would work. I feel guilty because I'm not putting my kids to bed instead, I will write down I am making the decision not to put my kids to bed because I really believe in friendships, and I know that to believe in friendships you have to spend time on them and cultivate them. And so that is why I'm going to make the decision to go out to dinner tonight with Dara and Susanne. Do you have one as a practice that we could do for our listeners. So yesterday I had a thirty minute window and I could have spent those thirty minutes downstairs with my family or exercising. And I really needed to exercise, like you, I'd had a really long day and I just needed to decompress. I felt a lot of guilt about making that choice, but I sent a quick text to my husband and I said, hey, I need thirty minutes. It felt difficult to send it. Immediately after sending that text, I felt a great sense of relief and felt a sense of power, and I exercised. And then when I showed up thirty minutes later for my family, I was present, I was happy, and I was a better mom and a wife. Dr Cheryl talks a lot about this but we can only fill other people's cup when our cup is full, and really it's one of the greatest gifts we could give to ourselves as moms, as wives, and as human beings. So that's what we're working on today in our Time Out, but stay tuned for next week, where we moved from how we talk to ourselves our self talk into how we communicate what we need to others. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to Time Out, a production of I Heart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm Ev Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social media at Eve Rodsky and learn more about our work at fair Play Life. And I'm Dr Ad Narukar, Harvard physician with a specialty and stress resilience burnout in mental health. Follow me on social media at dr add ne rucar and find out more about my work at dr add dot com. That's d R A d I t I dot com. Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda farrand Aaron Stover and Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team is Ali Perry, Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Cranchich. We hope you all love taking a much needed time out with us today. 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