Balance & Beyond Podcast

Episode Summary

#139: Why Your Brain Won't Switch Off?

Can't “Switch Off” at the end of the day? Sign up here to learn how in 45 minutes! https://balanceinstitute.thrivecart.com/switch-off/

Ever felt like your brain refuses to shut down even when your body is begging for sleep?

We’ve been there—staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., rewriting yesterday’s meeting, pre-empting tomorrow’s fires, and spinning through 40,000 mental tabs. The usual fixes don’t stick because the real issue isn’t time management or a better to-do list. The real issue is weight: we’re carrying problems that aren’t ours.

We walk through the quiet ways over-carrying creeps into our lives—absorbing a colleague’s stress, budgeting in our heads for someone else’s worry, pre-managing the imagined fallout from a boundary. Then we introduce a simple, powerful checkpoint: “Is this mine?” These three words separate empathy from over-responsibility and let us close mental loops without guilt. You’ll hear how to spot the 3 a.m. replay and end it, how to help without holding, and how to make stillness feel safe again so your nervous system can finally downshift.

Along the way, we unpack the identity knots that make this hard for high-capacity women—the reliable one, the fixer, the safe pair of hands—and offer practical ways to return what isn’t yours while staying warm and supportive. We also share our Switch Off mini-course designed to help you recognise what’s yours, close the loops your brain keeps open, and put down what you never needed to carry in the first place. It’s short, actionable, and built for real life.

If your mind keeps working long after you’ve closed your laptop, this conversation will help you reclaim space, clarity, and sleep. Listen, try the “Is this mine?” reset today, and tell us what you’re putting down first. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to grow the ripple.

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Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. I honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in!

Your brain won't switch off. You're in bed, exhausted, but your brain is still running. Replaying the meeting, rehearsing tomorrow's conversation, running through the list of all the stuff you didn't get done. You've tried everything. Meditation made you more anxious. Journaling felt like homework. Self-care just added one more thing to the list. And nothing works. Because the problem isn't what you think it is.

Your brain won't stop because it's overloaded, but not with your stuff, with everyone else's. Today I'm going to show you what's actually keeping you on and the one question that helps you switch off. Here's what not being able to switch off looks like. The 3 a.m. brain. You are staring at the ceiling, replaying what you said, what you should have said, how somebody's eyes went to the right when you said this, what so-and-so glanced at so-and-so. You can't do anything about it. It's already happened, but your brain won't let it go.

Your body may be on the couch, but your brain is still in the office. You're thinking about the email that you need to send tomorrow. I used to literally write it in my head, thinking I'd save the work of crafting it now in my head, so I didn't have to do it in the morning. That project that's behind, I'm troubleshooting. Maybe if I spoke to so-and-so, right, don't forget to follow up on this thing. You're not doing the work.

So I'm not technically working, but you're also not doing it. I'm just stuck in it. One of the things I used to do most often was checking my phone before I'd even got out of bed. Now you hear this all the time in all the guru advice, don't check your phone, not the first thing you do. But I had to check it because my brain had started running the moment my eyes opened.

And it wasn't a, oh, I wonder what's happening in the world. It's okay, I have to check what my day looks like. It felt like I had to get ahead, seeing what fires I had to put out. It felt like if I didn't check my phone first thing and perhaps fire off a few responses, I was coming in or starting my day flat-footed.

But the trouble was, from the moment my eyes opened, I was thinking about solving whatever fire was either in my off in my inbox. Or sometimes there was even fires that I was pre-empting before they even happened. I don't know about you, but one of the ways my brain won't switch off are the 40,000 tabs that it has open. Must buy some new sneakers for the kids. The car's making a weird noise when I put it in reverse. Need to go book that dentist appointment. It's been a while and I'm feeling twinging my tooth. That's right, must respond to so-and-so's text from three days ago. Wonder what I'm gonna say. Should I send a voice note or should I send a text message?

None of these are actually urgent, but they're all just sitting there, open, unfinished, and your brain just constantly loops through them because you haven't learned how to close them. And then something that I struggled with the most is learning how to rest. I would finally have the time by some miraculous crazy range of circumstances to sit, to do nothing, to just be. But I'd sit there on the couch, or let's say that I was watching a movie and it felt wrong.

My brain would start ticking and going, hang on, you've you've forgotten something. Something's gonna fall apart. And so it would crank through this crazy list of things in my head while I was trying to do nothing because stillness didn't feel safe. Your brain won't stop. And if you're anything like I used to be, you're so tired of being tired. Now, here's what most people think.

I just have too much to do. If I could get on top of it, if I could magic some more time, if I could magic myself a wife, then my brain would just stop. But that's not it. Because you've been, quote unquote, on top of it before. You've had a slow week, you've been on holidays, you've had a day with not so many meetings. But your brain doesn't switch off because it's not just your stuff you're carrying.

You are carrying everyone else's. And this is what keeps you on long after you're ready to shut down. Let's say your colleagues are a bit stressed. Well, you end up taking on board their stress, and maybe you're consoling them, maybe you're helping them vent, maybe you're troubleshooting in your head ways they could solve their problem.

Maybe your partner's worried about money and you start solving it in your head and thinking, right, next time I go to the shops, I might buy that pasta because that's 50 cents, and maybe then that will make it better. If your kids have had a bad day or then a bad mood, you're wondering, okay, well, I'm gonna replay that. And maybe if I say this next time and I fix it and I oh no, you're like, oh no, I'm not quite sure.

Or somebody might be disappointed if you say no because you've been asked to do something you really don't want to do. So you're pre-managing their reaction in your head, trying to reduce the weight of your no, or even convincing yourself to say in the first place. None of this is yours, but your brain doesn't know that. So it treats all of it: your work, their emotions, their problems, their reactions like it's your responsibility. And it won't stop until it's solved.

But this is the catch. You can't solve things that aren't yours. Because you're so your brain will not switch off because it's trying to solve problems that were never yours to solve in the first place. There's a question I teach in switch off. These three words change everything. Is this mine? That's it. How this works. When your brain is spinning, replaying, rehearsing, running scenarios, ticking through lists, you stop and ask, is this mine? Not can I help, not should I care, but is this actually mine to carry?

So let's say the 3 a.m. replay of the meeting. You ask yourself the question, is this mine? The meeting already happened. You can't change it. You can't go back and say it differently. Replaying it doesn't solve anything, it just keeps you awake. It's not yours to fix. Let bygones be bygones. Managing your colleagues' stress. Is this mine? They're overwhelmed. You can see it, you're very empathetic, and your brain goes, Oh, I need to help them, I need to make this better. But they're overwhelming not yours. Their workload, not yours, their feelings about their overwhelm and their workload, not yours. You can be kind, you can listen, but you don't have to carry it.

And lastly, let's talk about pre-managing someone's reaction to your boundary, to your no. Is this mine? Their disappointment, not yours. Their feelings about your no, not yours. Once you identify that something isn't yours, you can finally close the loop. You don't have to fix it, you don't have to solve it. You can just put it down. And when you do, your brain has one less thing to carry. Your brain will stay on because it's holding on to things you haven't closed. Is this mine? Is how you start closing them, especially when so much of what you're carrying isn't yours to hold in the first place.

Now I know what you're thinking. Yeah, but Joe, if I don't help, who will? They're relying on me. I care about them. This matters to me. You can still help. You can still care, but you don't have to carry it. There's a difference between helping someone and making their problem yours. There's a difference between caring about someone and taking responsibility for their feelings. What probably comes up right now of the thought of, oh my God, I'm I'm gonna ask, is this mine? is the guilt. And this is because your identity is wrapped around being the person who carries things, the reliable one, the one who doesn't drop the ball, the one that holds it all together.

So when you ask, is this mine? and the answer is no, because the answer is going to be no a lot. Spoiler alert, it feels like you're letting people down. But the unfortunate truth is, carrying things that aren't yours doesn't make you helpful. It actually makes you unavailable because your brain is so full of other people's problems, there's no space left for your own life. Now you're probably there thinking, oh my gosh, Jo, I carry everything for everyone. It's how I show love, it's how I feel needed.

But here's what keeps happening when you continue to carry things that aren't yours. And note that the longer you carry them, the heavier they get. You stop knowing what you need, what you want, what your problems even are, because your brain is so full of managing everyone else's stuff. You become so entangled, so meshed, there's no room left to even think about your own life. That's not helpful. That's self-abandonment.

You don't have to carry everything in everyone to be a good person. You just have to actually know what's yours. I created switch off because this is the work most women don't realize they need to do. They think, I need to manage my time better, I need to get a better list, I need to find better ways of carrying more. But the problem isn't time, it's what you're carrying.

"Switch Off" is going to teach you how to recognize what's yours and what's not. It's going to show you how to close the loops that your brain is holding open and how to put down what you've been carrying without the guilt, without drama, and without becoming someone you don't recognize. And it's just $27! Self-paced, less than 45 minutes, and it works.

You can check out the link in the show notes to grab it while it's still available. Your brain won't switch off. Not because you're doing too much, because you're carrying too much that was never yours. Is this mine? Three words, one question. Switch off is where you learn how to use it.