EP 90: A Deep Dive Into Procrastination with Sheridan Ruth

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Before, we start today's episode, I want to give you a heads up that this is a two-parter. Tune into part one today, then come back next week for part two. Enjoy. Hey, I'm Kaitlin Cuevas, the girl behind all things Think Happy.

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I'm a wife, mom of two cute and crazy kiddos and a lover of Golden Doodles, cheesy analogies and pump-up music. I've taught hundreds of women what I'm here to teach you, and that's how to reduce your daily stress, decrease your unproductive time, and most importantly, increase the amount of time you have to pour into you. Join me each week as we dive into topics such as time and task management, increasing productivity, building habits and routines, keeping your cup full, and.

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So, so. Much more. Welcome to the Think Happy Podcast. Hello and.Welcome to Episode 90 of the Think Happy Podcast. I love milestone episodes. They make me so happy.

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The next big milestone will be Episode 100. Which. Holy moly, I cannot wait. We are going to be doing a big time celebration for that one. So keep your ears tuned. Keep your eyes on.

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Instagram, keep your...

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I don't know. Stay tuned for what that's going to be all about, okay?

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Yeah, episode 100 is going to be... Oh, my gosh, we're just 10 episodes away from that, you guys. Triple digits. What in the world?

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You. All. This week has been filled with all of the curveballs. So for starters, Oakley is in a super busy season of work, which just in a nutshell, means he is not able to be around to help much at home. And so between Eleanor, James and myself, at least one of us has been sick consistently for the past two weeks. I don't mean that one of us has been sick for a whole two weeks. Just we've all been tag teaming being the sick one for like two weeks straight. And now James's amazing sweet nanny is out sick. It's Tuesday when I'm recording this. She was not here today. She was not here yesterday. So needless to say, my week has not unfolded how I had originally planned. But excuse me, overall, I'd say we are closer to thriving than surviving, which I mean, I consider a mega win. I really give credit to my routines for helping just to keep me sane.

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Over, these past couple of days. So for example, my exercise routine has helped me continue just with intentional movement, which I am someone who really needs movement when things get stressful. Also, my weekly grocery routine has made mealtimes just super unstressful. And I feel like with a two and a half year old and a very mobile nine-month-old and no adult backup support, that's just saying something that mealtime has not been stressful. And I just tell you that because it is leading me. I was up a little exciting announcement, drum roll.

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Here. Think Happy is rolling out a brand new program that is going to be 100 % geared toward Mamas. Spoiler alert, it is called momlife. So momlife will focus specifically on time and task management for moms and specifically on building routines for moms and families, all while keeping moms cup full. So I'm currently looking for a handful of moms who are interested in being part of the beta rollout. So this beta rollout will be a two-month program that will include access to the online training materials, group coaching calls, daily messaging, even a one on one coaching call with myself. The investment is $97 per month for each of the two months. So if you are interested, DM me mom on Instagram. So now onto today's episode. Whether or not you're a mom, you will likely have experienced some procrastination in your life. I laugh when I say that because I actually know that the majority of you are nodding your heads right now because who hasn't procrastinated? Our guest today, Sherid and Ruth, is going to talk to us about what our bodies are physically doing when we procrastinate, okay? What they're physically doing and how to fix it.

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We had so much fun recording this episode and we even dug into me personally and some of my own procrastination tendencies. Oh, man, it is just a great conversation to listen to. It is not only educational, but it is very entertaining. So Sheridan is a certified integrative somatic trauma therapist. She is a yoga therapist and I... Oh, gosh, Luke. I think I'm making myself cough. Okay, here we go. Sheridan is a certified integrative somatic trauma therapist. She's a yoga therapist and Ayurvedic wellness coach who unites ancient esoteric wisdom with evidence-based innovative neuroscience. Her expertise comes from years of experience and coaching others through hair loss, relationship anxiety, entrepreneurship and OCD, plus her decade-long embodiment of these practices. And you guys, with that being said, here is part one of our conversation.

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All right, everybody, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Sheridan. And I. Think you should introduce yourself, Sheridan, because before... Or everyone has already heard my intro, but I want you to.

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Tell us just tell us a little bit about you, your background, your amazing story, how it led you to where you are today with your business and your show. Just take it away.

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Yeah, there's a couple of things. I'm going to actually start from the beginning. When I was seven years old, I started losing all of my hair to an autoimmune disease called alopecia areata. I now have zero hair, no hair at all. But that was the catalyst to a pretty intense, low self-esteem and problems with self-image and confidence. That ran into me ending up in a really abusive relationship, which ended. Then I ended up in this yoga, trauma, healing, body-based therapy, somatics and nervous system work. I wanted to help people with that because it helped me so much and I was able to like I was able to stop feeling like I needed to wear a wig, love what I look like in the mirror, start doing what I'm really passionate about in the world and speak up and start having really lovely, nourishing and healthy and secure relationships. I was like, I wanted to help other people do this, and started building my business and coming from this lens of nervous system regulation and trauma healing. I've expanded each year, each month, each day into working just with people with their health and self-image into relationships and then adding on working with entrepreneurs and their health and nervous system and all of that stuff.

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So yeah, now I'm here. I think just for context, my training is in trauma therapy, somatic trauma therapy and yoga therapy and aerobeta.

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Amazing. Oh, my gosh. I have really been looking forward to this conversation for a couple of weeks now. Really, ever since we talked a couple of weeks ago for your show. Yeah, my podcast. Yeah, we just really hit it off. And this... Yeah, I'm just excited for this conversation. I think that the Think Happy listeners are going to love what you have to say. So I'm going to prep the stage just a little bit. So through your journey, and you've already mentioned this, you found an interest just in the human body. And I find this so interesting because through your studies, you're now able to explain what is physically happening.

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In our bodies when we feel certain things, specifically what we're going to talk about today, procrastination. And so I cannot wait just to hear what the body is doing, but also how to fix it. We're going to get to touch on both of those. And hopefully along the way, we can get to a point where we feel maybe more in control of our procrastination. I feel like it's probably one of those things where you never cross the finish line and check it off the list. But yeah, just to dive in. Can you walk us through what our bodies are doing when we procrastinate? And then I guess my follow-up question to this would be why our bodies are doing this?

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Yeah. I like to think of procrastination as a sign the body is perceiving that it is not in its best interest to do the thing that you think that you want to do. Now, the body has basically one job. The nervous system has one job, and that is to keep you... Sorry, my cat is like running around with me. You're going to have to sit down. You can hear it tangling.

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No, we're down for that. A lot of times, Guppy, my dog will come in. I actually had to lock her out today. Well, it's not that. Yeah, you're just like.

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Wanting all of the attention. So our body has one goal, which is to keep us safe. Everything that the body perceives to be uncertain or dangerous is something that it's going to avoid. There's two things here. One, unsafe means something that it knows how to deal with, something that it can say, I've dealt with this before. I know exactly how to solve this problem. We're good. Or something that you and I objectively can say that's actually really unsafe. Now, the thing is, sending an email objectively, pretty safe. Yeah. Not going to die.

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Not going to die. Doing the laundry, pretty safe.

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Pretty safe. Yeah. However, the body might not perceive it as safe because it has a whole different understanding of safe. So if it's an email that I've never sent before, it might say, Well, that's an uncertain territory. Uncertainty. Don't know how to deal with uncertainty. Uncertainty equals darkness equals safe. It's very primal. It's very unsafe. If you're doing anything that you haven't done before in front of people that you haven't done before in a way that you haven't done before and you're procrastinating on it, it could be that the body is simply saying, Well, that is an uncertain territory. Therefore, I'm going to avoid it because it's the equivalent of walking into a dark cave where there could be a bear that I would definitely need to... I don't know how to escape a bear, so you die, basically.

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Definitely scary and unsafe.

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Definitely unsafe. That's what's happening on the body level. Your body saying, Well, that's unsafe. It can also happen if there's a part of you that is perceiving the task to be something that would compromise your level of resources or how much people love you. Essentially, what the body is always doing, the question it's asking hundreds of thousands of times a minute is, Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe or am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? Am I safe? Am I loved? And so if... There's a thing that I need to do, but I'm either going to be really harsh and critical towards myself when I do it, or somebody else could possibly be harsh and critical towards me, it's saying, Well, if that action is going to result in a lack of love, in an environment of pain and discomfort. Pain and discomfort is something that I am wired to avoid, so I'm not going to do it. That's why we procrastinate. Even when we have the best intentions, even when logically we can say, Well, it's just not a big deal.

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Just do the laundry, send the email, the body is having an entirely different relationship to it.

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Yeah. Ultimately, it seems like procrastination is resisting something. And I think that hearing this will resonate with listeners because it doesn't matter if we're procrastinating on something small, like the email or laundry or something big, maybe like having a tough conversation. But because if we really get honest with ourselves, we can likely trace that procrastination back to resisting something. So for me, like procrastinating on... I made a joke about the laundry. It is about resisting doing a chore that I don't enjoy and that I feel like takes up-time that I could be doing something more enjoyable, right? I feel like if we want to lean toward the more enjoyable task, it might feel safer. But then maybe procrastinating on something bigger like the it's resisting feelings of awkwardness or hurting someone's feelings or even resisting an outcome of what that conversation could be, something like that.

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Yeah.

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I'm super curious about the laundry.

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I hate the laundry.

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But why? What do you think is going to happen? What happens when you do the laundry that's so uncomfortable?

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I feel like laundry takes away from time that I could be either spending. So maybe I'm doing laundry during my kid's nap time on the weekend because typically I'm doing laundry on the weekends. So I feel like it's time taken away that I could be fully focused on hanging out with Oakley, my husband, or that I could be working on my business or something like that. That's like moving the needle forward in my relationship with my husband, moving the needle forward with my business, something like that.

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Sorry, can I just use you as an example?

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Oh, girl, yeah.

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Yeah. It sounds like to me your nervous system believes moving the needle forward is safe. I think that's a really pretty... I think that's a pretty safe assumption. It's saying, in order to be safe, I need to be moving the needle forward in some way. This energy of staying stagnant is probably the way that the body is perceiving it. Other people might perceive it as peace, calm and tranquility, just funny there. But the body is saying, Well, if I'm not moving the needle forward, I am at risk of being eaten by a predator.

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Yeah?

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And I will avoid doing that.

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You have hit the nail on the head because I get so antsy, I literally will feel uncomfortable if I'm sitting on the sofa watching a show, even if it's just hanging out with my husband when I know there are things that I could be doing. It does not feel good to me. It does not feel relaxing. It feels like I'm wasting time and putting off doing the things that I know that I have to do.

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Yeah. And I hate to put you on the spot, especially on your podcast.

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I love it.

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Yeah, that's a sign that a lot of the day, and a lot of the actions that you pursue are pursued in the pursuit of safety because we think that we have to be moving. So it's a sign that you lean towards more of a fight, maybe flight. But I have to fight or I have to keep moving in order to be safe. Your body is literally saying, I'm actually not 100 % sure that I'm safe. With everything the way that it is, I'm actually not convinced that I'm safe. Now, you and I know that you're safe because there's no threat around you. But probably what it's thinking is like the news, the the bank account, the people on the internet. Now just tell me if I'm projecting, but that's why we perceive these things as predators. We think we have to keep going to run from the predator. Sometimes it just is very counterproductive because we also need to look for the laundry and we also need to relax.

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Exactly. Oh, my gosh.

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I feel like you just like peeled me back like an onion and I freaking love it. Yeah.

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I freaking love it. It's so interesting because a lot of this, I don't know if you've ever gotten into different personality tests and stuff like that. I did a series on the show. Actually, it was a three-part series on Enneagram, and it was divided up into the different triads. Yeah. And so I interviewed actually three women at a time, a group interview for each of the triads and just hearing the similarities and the differences inside of each triad amongst the whole enneagram world was so interesting to me and I feel like it would be so much fun to take the information that you know and peel back some of the personality. And I just use the Enneagram as an example because it's the one I'm not so familiar with, but peel back some of that because a lot of it, I feel like we're able to recognize about ourselves. But the way you just said that, it's like, yes, 100 %.

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That's actually so cool that you interview different people. I'm going to go back and look for those episodes. I'm an ennegram two. What are you?

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I'm a three.

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Okay. Yeah. I thought maybe she was a three. I get along really well with threes because the way that I think about it, and this is I think we'll give a good map, is that when your nervous system is regulated, you are in what we call the state of the self. It's just this being space where it's really, really safe to be. You're calm and you're connected and you're curious and you're playful and everything just feels tranquil and a little bit soft and loving and peaceful. That's our natural state of being. The map the enneagram gives us is it tells us which parts of ourselves have developed and taken a hold of the wheel in order to maintain safe. It tells us who our warriors are or who our little things like that. The enneagram is not my zone of expertise, but I do know a little bit about it. I know that if I'm speaking, I'm going to use myself as an example and like a one because that's the enneagrams that I have more experience with. If I'm speaking with an enneagram one, I know that they have a partner that is a perfectionist and I also know that they have a part who is an inner critic.

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If I'm speaking with an enneagram seven, I know that they have a peacemaker inside of them who just wants to make sure that everything is fine. If I know that I'm speaking to an enneagram too, I know that they have a little helper inside of them. The pacemaker and the helper and the perfectionist and the inner critic, they were all developed from a stress response. It's this energy in the body that thinks that it's always running from some threat. And the strategy that it's using is criticism, procrastination, perfectionism, all of that. And at the center of that is when you when you peer a little back, when you get to that sense of self that we all have that sometimes we're more connected with, sometimes we're not, that's when you're in that calm and all of your different parts of yourself and all of your different core wounds and fears and all of the different the world is just running around you, but you are calm and you are regulated and you are soft and you can hold it all at the same time.

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Yeah, yes. And I feel like when I get to a point like that, those are the times where I am able to find more joy in folding the laundry or more joy and just sitting on the sofa, not being, quote unquote, productive. Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, here's another episode we have to do.

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I'm surprised. I'm surprised. I know.

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We need to hang out.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so cool that you see that because that pleasure and that joy that you feel regulates the nervous system even more.

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Yeah. Yeah. Oh, science. Man. Thank you.

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For joining me for this week's episode of The Think Happy Podcast. I would so appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review. And if you just can't get enough, find me on Instagram at thinkhapy_co, that's co, and online at thinkhapyco. Com. I'll be back in your ears next week with another episode of The Think Happy Podcast.