Recharging Your Batteries

While it’s easy to intellectually know that we need rest in order to get on with the business of adulting, it isn’t always that easy to know what kind of rest we actually need. Pausing to recharge is hard enough on its own, but unless we get clear on what kind of energy we’re trying to fill up on, we’re probably just going to stay stuck in the same spin cycle of exhaustion.

This episode is your reminder and invitation to check in with yourself and get clear on which of your batteries is actually running low – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social… ice-cream-ial… and from there, check in with what you actually need in order to recharge.

Running on empty is how we burn out on ourselves and our relationships. So let’s all take a deep breath and figure out what we need to properly fill up the tanks.

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Read the Transcript Below

Cate Blouke:

Hello, my love.

This episode goes out to anyone listening who is fucking tired – whether it’s existentially or physically. This is for anyone who’s overwhelmed, who’s stressed out, who’s burnt out, who’s crispy, who’s weary, who just needs a fucking break.

This one is for you, my love. (Even if it’s just me in the future, because that happens to me with some regularity.)

But today I’m doing all right. I’m coming out of a period of rest, of the universe doing the thing where I’m going real hard and then I hit a wall and then I’m just wiped out and I’m forced to slow down. And it’s got me thinking about rest and about slowing down.

When I started to think about what I wanted to talk about today, it was really about that. It was about slowing down. But when I dug a little bit deeper, slowing down has always been really hard for me. And what I realized is that underneath the slowing down, or the idea of slowing down, is this idea of rest, and what rest means, and what rest does for us.

And as somebody with ADHD and CPTSD and a tendency to be in flight mode a lot and to have a lot of energy and to go go go go go go go, that idea of rest has always been kind of hard for me to wrap my head around, and even harder for me to put into practice – because on the broader scale, like, rest tends to mean like taking a nap, sitting still, reading a book… all of which can be really challenging for me when my system is activated and I have a lot of like restless energy.

And what’s been coming up for me lately is this idea of expanding my definition of rest and really thinking about like what part of me needs rest. And since I don’t especially like the word rest since it’s hard for me to conceptualize, what was really helpful was shifting the focus away from “rest,” because again, to me, rest means like lying down, sitting still, which just aren’t often very appealing to me, and moving away from the idea of rest to the idea of recharging, of rejuvenating, of recognizing that my internal batteries are low and they need to be recharged.

You know, the other metaphor is like, running out of gas. Running on empty. [singing] “Running on empty…” You know, like we can conceptually know that we can’t do that. And yet, so often in our lives, we do it. We try to do it. I do it. I see my clients do it. I see my friends do it. That like, we’re just struggling on the daily basis. We’re fucking out of gas. And we just keep trying to push. We just keep trying to push. And it doesn’t work. And it just makes things worse.

But I know for me, it’s been a long process of A) getting to a place where I can recognize that I’m trying to push myself past my own capacities, and then B) get in touch with what I actually fucking need in those moments. Because, man, it is not always easy to figure out what we need.

And what I have found helpful in that what I want to offer to you, my love, is a sort of tool or shift in perspective to recognize that we have multiple different kinds of batteries. Whether you’re woo -woo or not, I will talk about it in terms of different types of energy, but I mean that quite literally, mental energy, physical energy, emotional energy, and possibly other kinds.

All of us have a certain capacity for mental exertion, for emotional exertion, for physical exertion, right? And oftentimes for me, it’s emotional and mental energy runs out. I just run out of steam. I burn myself out, I overdo it, I push too hard. And those are the batteries that need recharging. But oftentimes, like, I’m not physically tired. And so a nap isn’t gonna fucking do it for me. So I have to think about, like, how can I give my brain a break – when I have all of this energy stored in my body.

You might not be surprised to hear this, but I have been nicknamed an Energizer Bunny on more than one occasion in my life. I’m just an upbeat, hyper person in a lot of ways. And so it’s been incredibly helpful for me to open up to different modes of rest.

So I live in Portland, it’s springtime, it’s beautiful out. I have this year turned into a gardener. That is not something that I have ever really seen in myself or been like, yard work has always felt overwhelming. But now that like I get to plant flowers (and maybe Miley Cyrus is partly responsible, [singing] “I can plant myself flowers”), like that has been – rather than a chore – a useful way to direct my energy when I’m not physically tired, but I am mentally and emotionally.

I can throw on an audiobook, I can throw on some music, I can go out in the yard and like move my body without really having to engage my brain. And that works really well for me, that’s restorative for me. It’s rejuvenative, it’s regenerative, it’s a form of recharging or at the very least like not further taxing the parts of me, the energetic batteries that are low.

And similarly, on the days when I am physically tired, whether it’s because I didn’t sleep well the night before, whether it’s because I did a long run and am physically worn out, that doesn’t always mean that I’m also mentally fatigued. And so I have found it incredibly helpful, and maybe this seems completely fucking obvious, but to me it wasn’t, to recognize those different areas of where am I depleted.

Where do I need recharge? Where do I still have energy? And how can I focus that in a way that’s gonna like restore the parts of me that need restoration?

And so it really has become a more kind of targeted and intentional practice of focusing on my different energetic batteries, my different needs. And instead of trying to do like a one size fits all, let me just take a nap. Let me just take a bath. Let me, you know, zone out and watch some TV… I’ve started to get more agile and more nuanced in my modes of restoration.

And this has been incredibly helpful, especially like as an introvert who presents as an extrovert, as someone who does tend to have a lot of like physical energy, but lower emotional bandwidth. It’s been really helpful to start to parse those things out and check in with those parts of me. Because especially when I’m depleted, I can have my list of things that can be restorative. So for me, that looks like baking is often restorative. Sometimes reading a book is restorative. Sometimes taking a bath is restorative. Sometimes having a really connected phone call with someone is restorative.

But when I’m in a place of depletion, I don’t always know which of those tools is the most helpful to reach for. Taking a bath isn’t the cure -all. Taking a nap isn’t the cure -all. Reaching out to someone I care about deeply and having a meaningful conversation isn’t the cure -all.

But each of those tools does have its value, definitely has distinct and really important value, depending on which energetic batteries need restoration or recharging. And so it was an incredibly helpful tool for me to start really thinking about, like, okay, what are my batteries?

Beyond the broad strokes, emotional, mental, physical, I also have a social battery. I have a creativity battery. I have a novelty battery and an adventure battery. And those are like sub batteries if we’re really getting into the weeds. But really starting to pay attention to that helps me make sure that my needs are getting met. And also helps me like balance out getting those needs met because I absolutely have a battery of needing social connection, meaningful social connection, but I also have a battery of socialization in general, like being out in the world. I have a sensory overstimulation battery.

And for me, this level of detail has been really helpful as someone who tends to overcommit myself, who has historically not had a really good sense of what my capacities are, what my bandwidth is, starting to like get a feel for the nuances and think about it as like separate buckets of energy that both need expenditure and recharge has been incredibly helpful.

And I also had a really interesting call with my coach this week where I’ve been trying to get myself to do core exercises for like months now. And some PT exercises. Like some stuff that I know is good for me. And I just haven’t been able to fucking get myself to do it. And part of that is that I haven’t really known where to put that in my day. Like there’s some practical habit stuff around it, but really it’s that it’s been feeling like a chore.

And my coach offered me a perspective shift that rather than like looking at this as a chore, like what if I looked at it as like, charging my solar plexus chakra, which worked really well for me. I’m pretty woo, I’m spiritual. The idea of using physical movement to restore or charge for the day or build up my energy in my energy center really helped to shift that for me and I have actually been doing it. And it’s been feeling good and it hasn’t been feeling like a chore anymore.

And so whatever framework feels useful to you, whether it’s just the mental, emotional, physical, whether it’s which of my chakras need some energetic loving today, where am I getting depleted, where do I need restoration, placing attention on that and really checking in can open up the opportunity for actual restoration and better rationing of your actual energy.

Like, I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I can do like one social thing a day and then I’m probably tapped out. And so I can plan better for that.

And similarly, you know, summer’s around the corner, or if you’re listening to this, not when it comes out, like something’s around the corner and someday you’re gonna plan a vacation. And really thinking about like, what do I want out of my vacation? What kind of vacation?

What kind of restoration or energetic recharge do I want this vacation to serve? I’ve got some summer plans coming up and was just talking about this with a friend that I’m going on vacation with of like, okay, like is this a let’s go be in nature and relax and recharge in that way kind of vacation?

Or is this like, let’s go see something new and have an adventure and recharge that curiosity and creativity and novelty bucket kind of vacation. And what I’ve found is the more in tune with these things I am, the more I’m able to obviously take better care of myself, but also show up better in my relationships. Because the truth is we have to meet our needs first.

And if we can’t identify those needs, if we can’t check in and be like, like which part of me is depleted? What do I need? We certainly can’t expect our friends, our partners to do that for us. But I know I have in the past, you know, put, I’ve tried to offload that responsibility and it usually hasn’t gone especially well.

And I’ve been finding a lot of sort of surprising richness in slowing down lately. I got knocked on my emotional ass a couple weeks ago and I’m still kind of coming out of that and have been moving really slowly and really embracing this idea that’s been present for me probably the last two years. This idea that like nothing is urgent and that when I’m feeling a whole lot of urgency it tends to be a signal that I’m in fear, that I’m in stress, that I’m in trying to control.

And when I can take a step back and check in with myself and like see where I’m depleted, like feel into that, like where in my body is my depletion? Where in my spirit is it? Like what do I actually need right now? I’m a lot more able to like set the urgency aside and stop trying to push and force and power through and let things unfold a little bit more naturally and a little bit more easily and a little bit more relaxedly and kind of feel like I’m in the flow rather than I’m in the swimming upstream.

This happened with this week’s episode. I sat down the other day to record and it just like wasn’t… I started like three different times and it just wasn’t going and I historically really would have kept trying and getting frustrated and it would have been this whole thing. Instead, I just recognized that my creativity or inspiration battery or capacity to talk battery was low and that I wasn’t gonna serve myself or you by trying to push through that. And so I gave myself permission to harken back to a couple episodes ago to just maybe not get this episode out exactly on time to remember that: nobody’s gonna die.

Like, the getting this out, not getting this out, like the stakes just aren’t that high. And that was a really big, like, shift for me to hold things more loosely, to, like, tell my perfectionism to fuck off, to let sleep and food and going for a run do its job to recharge that creativity battery so that then I could sit down and record this episode and feel good about it and feel in the flow and trust that this is gonna reach whoever it’s supposed to reach and speak to whoever it’s supposed to speak to and that like, I don’t need to manage and control all of my fucking life in order for things to work out pretty well.

So my invitation to you as we wind this episode down is to check in with like, what’s your battery status? How you doing physically?

How you doing emotionally? How you doing mentally? What are your other batteries, if it’s helpful to you to parse that out in more detail? And like, where do you really need a recharge? Where have you been running on half power, 20 % power? You know, like, what part of your energetic world have you been like putting on low power mode and like plugging in for 10 minutes and then trying to like power through again?

and what is that part of you really need today, tomorrow, like in the week ahead? What kind of restorative, repleting gesture can you offer yourself to help your whole system be running more smoothly? And sometimes it can be simple as just taking one great big deep breath wherever you are. So let’s do that. Let’s just like,

Wrap up this episode by taking a deep breath together.

[deep inhale and exhale]

And noticing the way that that moment of deep breath soothes our nervous systems. It offers just a little bit of respite and relaxation and presence to the reality that like, whatever’s going on, however tired we are, however exhausted we are, however much bullshit we’ve had to put up with today or this week or this month, we’re gonna be okay and we’re gonna get through it.

And there are always things we can do to refuel, to recharge, to offer ourselves whatever it is we actually need in this moment in order to show up just a little bit better, just a little bit more kindly, just a little bit more compassionately, and a little bit more tenderly with ourselves and the people in our lives.

So I’m sending you a great big energetic hug and an invitation to reach out for whatever kind of restorative practice is needed today in your heart, in your soul, in your spirit, in your body.

I hope that when you take a moment to really connect with that, you’re able to then reach for the thing that is gonna actually meet your needs. Because while I might sometimes think that Cheetos are gonna soothe my emotional needs, sometimes a good cry and a call with a friend is probably the better option.

So I hope that you’re able to find whatever option you need today to get. the recharge that you need, and to really give yourself that gift. The gift of not trying to push through, not trying to overdo it, of trusting that when we slow down, when we step into the flow, and when we stop fighting with ourselves, there’s just so much more opportunity for possibility, for hope, for joy, and for the love that we want to cultivate in our lives.

So, big hugs, get the rest you need.

You’re doing great.