26. Crying at Work and How to Regulate Your Nervous System
Have you ever found yourself on the verge of tears in a meeting or struggling to keep your composure when the pressure is on? A recent study shows that 45% of professionals admit to crying at work, so you are not alone. You might think you need to become tougher or more stoic, but the key here actually lies in understanding your body's natural responses.
As ambitious women, we often find ourselves in a chronic state of fight, flight, or freeze due to the stressors around us. Our brains code these stressors as danger, even if we aren't in actual mortal peril. The solution isn't to quit your job or go on vacation, but to take a closer look at how to regulate your nervous system so you're more resilient.
Tune in this week to discover the surprising science behind these emotional outbursts and how mastering your nervous system might just be the secret to keeping your cool, no matter what life throws your way. You'll learn to expand your window of tolerance for stress, and how to feel more empowered under pressure.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to identify your unique stress triggers, symptoms, and coping behaviors.
Why motion, stillness, and play are critical for a healthy nervous system.
The importance of embracing your feminine energy to complement masculine energy.
How to extend your edge and increase your window of tolerance for stressful circumstances.
Why vulnerability and emotions are actually signs of strength, not weakness.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Nina: Have you ever found yourself on the verge of tears in a meeting or struggling to keep your composure when the pressure’s on?
Kelle: What if the key to staying calm in those high stress moments isn’t about being tougher or more stoic, but about understanding your body’s natural responses?
Nina: Yeah, in this episode we’ll uncover the surprising science behind these emotional outbursts and how mastering your nervous system might just be the secret to keeping your cool no matter what life throws your way.
Kelle: Alright, if that sounds amazing, you are in the right place. Let’s get going. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. So today we’re talking about in a nutshell, those emotional outbursts you have that you really aren’t proud of.
Kelle: For example, and one we coach on with clients a lot is crying at work.
Nina: And maybe for you, this is yelling at your kids or you name it. We’re letting you fill in the blank here.
Kelle: We’ve coached clients about crying at work more than once though, and with so much love because we have been there. Our unmanaged stress and workaholic tendencies mean emotions and the likelihood of tears, it runs high. All crying really means, it means that we’ve touched the truth.
Nina: Yeah, we used to go cry in the bathroom, but now we just turn off video to try to pull ourselves together.
Kelle: Did you know Harvard Business Review says 45% of professionals have cried at work?
Nina: Wow, I believe it.
Kelle: Yeah. So why does it still stress us out and even piss us off when we shed tears on the clock?
Nina: I think it’s because we make vulnerability mean we’re unprofessional, too emotional or so female or weak, cue the shame spiral.
Kelle: Yeah. And this makes complete sense, rock stars, because we hunted and gathered in tribes back in the day, showing too much emotion made us unreliable for survival in the tribe. And therefore, more susceptible to predators if we were abandoned by our people. So, we’ve evolved to conceal any and all emotion just for our survival.
Nina: Yeah, over time this might have looked like a parent or caregiver saying, “Don’t cry, turn that frown upside down, walk it off, suck it up”, or even, “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”
Kelle: I see parents doing this and I also see coaches doing this, which drives me absolutely bananas. Don’t get me started. As humans socialized as women, we have this mindset that we have to do everything for everyone always, which creates a pressure chamber of overwhelm and stress on the daily.
Nina: Yeah, that ragey ticking time bomb feeling. Does it make a little more sense now?
Kelle: We know you’re passionate, rock star. We know you’re driven and we love your ambition. Come on.
Nina: But when critical feedback or setbacks at work start to devastate you on repeat, it might mean you’re overly invested in the work. And the solution here isn’t to quit your job, complain to HR or go on vacay at first. First we have to go inward and undo the beliefs and conditioning that are keeping you stuck in this workaholic purgatory and in tears at work.
Kelle: Yeah. And we have to reconnect mind and body. Your mind and body need to be connected, that’s really where we’re going today.
Nina: Yeah. Today we’re talking about what nervous system regulation means and looks like. And we’ll give you a few tools to practice so you can be more resilient when your nervous system shifts into survival.
Kelle: That’s really what regulation is, when we talk about a regulated nervous system, we mean one that is resilient.
Nina: Okay, so hang on though, let’s back up. Let’s bring in a client story and start there.
Kelle: Good call. Yeah, this client came onto the coaching call with us so overwhelmed, so ashamed, so exhausted. And this is how she explained it. I’m overwhelmed and I’m drowning. I’m missing things and I’m getting behind on things. The volume of work I have is so unreal. I don’t have all the answers when they ask me things. I didn’t approach it with confidence and I started crying.
Nina: We can all relate here. I mean, Kel, have you ever cried at work or been there when someone did?
Kelle: Oh yeah. Back in my pharmaceutical days, I had this one manager. It was when I was working at Merck and she expected so much of her team and of me. My other counterparts that had different managers, we would just look at them and we were just so like, “We wish we could have your manager.” And I didn’t see her unless she rode with me to the accounts but she was tough and she drove us all on her team to detail and sell in a very specific way. And it got to the point where I’d get really flustered around her.
One time we walked out of the call with an account where I got the door literally closed in my face. I was so frustrated, I started crying right then and there in the hallway at the hospital.
Nina: Oh, my God, totally. Well, I actually remember way back, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Wister used to cry sometimes when the classroom got out of control. She wouldn’t yell, but all of a sudden the lights would go off in the classroom and we’d all stop. And she’d be standing by the light switch with tears in her eyes. I’ll never forget how guilty I felt, like I had really done something wrong. It was funny though, because the boys in the classroom, again, this is second grade, they all kind of snickered while the girls just felt so sorry.
Kelle: Yeah, pretty understandable that a teacher might lose her shit, right?
Nina: So understandable. Oh, my God, another story. I remember crying at work when I was in PR. I had a boss who really didn’t have the skills to stay calm under pressure. And I can see that now, but at the time she was so aggressive and intimidating, her whole team would cry. It was a really tough team dynamic, not a lot of trust in our leader because her emotions were so volatile and she was so unpredictable.
And I remember trying to be strong for my AEs below me and it was hard to defend our leadership, it was really tricky. And this particular senior team member kept me up in my sleep. Do you know what I mean? Seriously, her aggressive tendencies too, sort of rubbed off on me in unexpected ways. I found myself kind of acting like her sometimes. And that’s when toxic behavior really becomes troublesome, when it spills over into your team and perpetuates.
Kelle: Yeah. And so how did you manage those AEs?
Nina: Honestly, I wasn’t even a coach at the time and I just remember letting them cry, giving them permission, not endorsing the boss or taking sides or anything. But just letting this one AE specifically, just bawl her eyes out and that’s kind of what needs to happen sometimes.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. And that’s exactly how we coached this client. First, of course, we met her on the call and let her cry. We let her continue to cry and bawl and just get all of the emotion out of there. She called it ugly crying, but we really just think it’s beautiful because it’s truthful. And we helped her identify this part of herself that was so effing overworked, so tired, so bent on proving herself and on being perfect. We sat with that part of her and really loved on and appreciated that part of her.
Nina: Yeah, our clients cry a lot with us and they all apologize at first, right, Kel?
Kelle: Yes, they totally try to keep it in and it’s like the floodgates open and they’re self-conscious that maybe they’re our only client who comes to the call and cries and tears and we’re just like, “Babe’s, we’ve got you.”
Nina: Hell, no, this is what coaching our clients is all about. We hold space for them to feel their feels, whatever they are and feel safe doing so. These are breakthrough moments in coaching.
Kelle: So, once we helped her actually feel her emotions and ugly cry them all out, identify the parts of her that were trying so, so hard that are doing their best to get through to the challenging circumstances around her. We could then shift into a more empowered mindset and take a closer look at her circumstances and decide what she wanted to do next time, how she wanted to show up.
Nina: Yeah, there’s no shame here. We can’t shit on ourselves for crying at work, or I guess we can, but it’s just not useful. It’s something that happened in the past. We can’t change it. So instead, we decide to figure out what to do differently next time.
Kelle: And this was client specific and helpful and what really needed to happen here was bigger picture selfcare which is what we suggested too.
Nina: Yeah, like we said earlier, when critical feedback or setbacks at work start to devastate us on repeat, it really is an invitation, it really might mean we’re overly invested in the work.
Kelle: The solution here is not to quit your job, complain to HR or go on vacay, which of course, I’ll just choose anytime anyway.
Nina: What we really need to do, though, is take a closer look at how to regulate your nervous system so you’re more resilient.
Kelle: Listen, for our clients, we have a go, go, go problem, go, go, go. I’m just going to say it.
Nina: Totally, we can relate to this personally. The, I’ve got it tendency and go, go, go problem, when we’re in go, go, go mode, we’re basically in a survival state, fight or flight.
Kelle: Yeah. And burnout could be seen as freeze, a functional freeze state.
Nina: Yeah, totally. And listeners, look back on episode nine, it’s all about your nervous system. It’s a pretty cool 101 if we do say so ourselves. It’s solid background for what we’ll talk about today.
Kelle: Oh, I didn’t tell you, Nina, I actually went for a walk with a former client of ours this weekend. And she had another 360 review. And this time she did cry, but it was just a little bit more like she was crying in a way that was healthy for her, not ugly cry.
Nina: Shamey, yeah.
Kelle: Yeah, just kind of like, oh, I’m seeing where I want to make some changes. It was a really, really lovely walk. So, what happens with our ambitious high achievers is we get stuck in this chronic state of fight, flight or freeze, because our brains are coding the stressors around us as danger. Even though we aren’t actually in mortal danger, that email from your boss or the ambiguous text from a friend that stresses you out isn’t actually a threat to your survival, but our nervous system codes it that way on default.
Nina: Yeah, I think COVID was an interesting microscope here. A lot of the over-doers out there, us included, the high achievers and high functioning doers, by no decision of our own. We had to slow down and a lot of us had to realize how deep of a state of burnout we were actually in.
Kelle: Yeah. We’re so used to going and doing and moving things forward. COVID put that all away, literally. I think for a lot of us that discomfort we felt, that antsy-ness and full on anxiety was our nervous system, resisting being somewhere it has never been before, literally.
Nina: Yeah. Most of our clients and us included, we don’t know what second or third gear looks like. We’re all in fifth or sixth consistently all day long.
Kelle: Yeah, our nervous systems on default don’t like change. Change means danger to our nervous system and that threatens our survival.
Nina: And the forced slowdown of COVID, woke up not just a lot of discomfort, but I think a lot of awareness too.
Kelle: Yeah, we love awareness. This is where any change process begins, and we can’t change what we don’t notice.
Nina: Yeah, I need to back up for a sec. We had clients going into COVID, an attorney I’m thinking of specifically. She had really young kids and was taking her youngest, who was five months old, to the office and nursing her on calls while she was settling cases. And while there’s really nothing right or wrong here, she just didn’t realize how cooked and burned out she was.
Kelle: Yeah, burning the candle from both ends in her body, mind, and emotions, she started developing physical, mental and emotional symptoms.
Nina: Yeah, this stress shows up as tension in your body and can really lock you up physically. For this client, she had terrible TMJ and IBS, so that’s jaw pain and bowel pain, FYI.
Kelle: And with the help of a coach and a functional medicine doc, she was able to feel better.
Nina: Yeah, the solution here, when you understand your nervous system, you can live in a way that’s supportive of a healthy nervous system, you can reap the benefits of that.
Kelle: Yeah, the first step here is to develop some awareness around your unique stress profile as we like to call it, what happens in your body when you feel stressed out and overwhelmed. So, we can’t change what we don’t notice and so this is where we love to begin.
Nina: Yeah, this personal stress profile tool is meant to increase your understanding of your unique and beautiful and perfect stress triggers, stress symptoms and your coping behaviors on default. We build this awareness to help you cope with stress more successfully.
Kelle: Yeah. We can’t always change and control the circumstance around us. So, the solution is always to come back to what we can control, which is always ourselves.
Nina: Yeah. Increased awareness of your triggers and stress symptoms will help you take action in the moment using a coping strategy that we’ll develop together when you coach with us. Effective coping in the moment might look like taking a rest, stepping away or treating yourself kindly.
Kelle: That treating yourself kindly seems so hard sometimes when you’re just so used to berating yourself. So again, why we do this, because stress itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What makes stress harmful is how we perceive it and respond to it. The negative effects of stress are more debilitating when it’s interpreted as being beyond our control. But the process of overcoming a stressful challenge can extend our edge, so to speak. We grow our window of tolerance for stress over time, making us feel more confident and skillful next time the shit hits the fan.
Nina: So, if you want to unpack your unique stress profile in a nutshell, answer these three questions, super basic. We love super basic. So first when I’m stressed, I typically think thoughts like, and make a list. The client thoughts that we shared with you earlier are super common. When I’m stressed, this is what I notice in my body. Make this list too. When I’m stressed this is how I tend to react or behave. This one is gold.
Kelle: That one is gold, yes.
Nina: So, we’d start here. And when I did this for the first time, the body sensations really stood out for me because I get clenched in my jaw and I also push my tongue into the roof of my mouth. I think this actually has a name. It’s called a tongue thrust. It’s literally a thing in PT.
Kelle: Interesting. Yeah, I start to sweat a little bit and it’s different than workout sweat, it’s stress sweat. it just feels totally different in my body.
Nina: I totally know stress sweat, it’s real. And I sometimes clench my hands and fists, I take shallow breaths and I feel really scattered, I don’t know where to start. And I get kind of bossy, fake bossy, like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. And I have this march, this bossy walk.
Kelle: Oh, my God, the bossy walk. I do not want to be around Nina when she’s got the bossy walk, people.
Nina: My neighbors all know it. They’re like, “She’s on a bossy mom walk.”
Kelle: And yeah, the shallow breaths, man. So now that you know all about our stress profiles, try this for yourselves, again, this awareness is really killer.
Nina: And so, from here what we want to do is help you and our clients expand their edge, to increase their window of tolerance for stressful circumstances. Does that make sense?
Kelle: Yeah, totally. We want to help our clients feel more empowered under stress and that’s all about building up tolerance, extending your edge, your perimeter, your zone or window of tolerance.
Nina: Because we all know people who have short fuses or who we’re careful not to stress out. We know their edge or window of tolerance is where it is. It’s clear, right?
Kelle: Yeah, we can help you extend yours, and here’s how we start. It’s not about changing anything outside of you at first. This work is the inner work. It’s the deeper work that creates different results in your life from the inside out.
Nina: Yeah. So, there are three foundational practices we suggest to clients to do that, to support a healthy nervous system. And again, we define a healthy nervous system as a resilient one. We encourage clients to practice these bigger picture practices regularly. And we also offer in the moment tools too for clients to practice in the moment when they feel triggered or dysregulated. But the in the moment tools are sort of more like band-aids, triage, you’re bleeding and you need to stop the bleeding. So, these bigger picture practices are where we like to begin to create high impact change.
Kelle: So, the first practice is motion. Don’t overthink this. What we want you to do, what we suggest you do is go for a walk, dance, jump, just move your body.
Nina: Kelle and I jump a lot, don’t we? We jump.
Kelle: We do.
Nina: We bounce.
Kelle: Stress gets stored in the body as tension and when we can move that tension through our tissues and out of our bodies, it just feels so good. So, motion is key, but again, this doesn’t have to be a full-fledged 60 minute Peloton ride or it’s just 10 minutes of raising your heart rate every day. Walk around the block, get some fresh air, anything that is going to be supportive to a healthy, resilient nervous system versus staying at your desk all day under the fluorescent lights.
Nina: Yeah, I actually get so much clarity and insight when I’m in motion, when I’m not in survival, but in flow on my bike or running a trail. I actually almost pulled over in Julie’s driveway the other day, Kel, on a bike ride because I had to stop and write a few things down in my notes app.
Kelle: I do that all the time. I pull over and I’ll do a quick voice memo for myself. Yeah, when we’re in motion, this is when we’re creative, compassionate, honest, and forgiving. We’re not in survival, and we can think clearly and really use our brains for us instead of against us. Some of my best work comes on these rides or these hikes.
Nina: Yeah, totally. So, the second practice that we suggest to support a healthy nervous system is stillness. This one is particularly hard for our clients and was for me too at first. We are so used to go mode, back to the COVID slowdown. So many of us were challenged during this force to slow down because we didn’t know how to handle the discomfort of doing less.
Kelle: Totally. We suggest this stillness practice to almost all of our clients. We start with as little as 30 seconds a day and build up from there.
Nina: And at first our clients are like, “This isn’t working, guys, I feel terrible.” And we’re like, “No, no, that’s actually perfect. It’s working. You’re right where you need to be.”
Kelle: Yeah, stillness is like pulling the arrow back on the bow. It feels backwards and wrong, but actually sets you and your nervous system up for powerful forward motion, even more focused, even more aligned.
Nina: Some of the best answers come when we pause. Some of the best resolutions come without having to do anything. So, titrate here, start with 30 seconds a day and build your way up to 10/20 minutes. Do this for 30 days straight and see how it changes how you respond versus react to challenges around you.
Kelle: It’s so true. And before we go onto the third one, I just want to say, when I meditate I just wish I had a pad that was right there with me so I could write down all this stuff, but I don’t want to interrupt my meditation, but it’s true. All of the good stuff is coming in when I get still. Let’s talk about that third practice in this framework and it’s play. So, this is huge. Play is critical when it comes to a healthy nervous system. A lot of our clients have lost sight of what it even means to play for them. And it makes sense, our ambitions and striving keep us hyper focused on a certain finish line and we forget about what used to make us happy, what used to make us laugh and play, what all that meant to us.
Nina: Yeah, this is all about the creative fun and playful things. For me, and I think a lot of the people who choose to live in Park City, play looks like hopping on my bike or putting my skis on or playing outside, really in any way I can.
Kelle: Yeah. I love this idea of play and going really fast on something. I was going really fast on my mountain bike the other day. We were just going down the road and just going really fast and just feeling the wind and kind of the adrenaline and the rush of it all. It’s just so fun.
Nina: Oh my God, and just chasing my kids at their speed, it’s bananas. Anyway, also something I love to do for play, speaking of kids, I sort of play innocent practical jokes on my kids. They’re getting older now and we can have a lot of fun here, but humor really lights me up. I love laughing and having fun with my kids, even if sometimes it might be at their expense. But here’s my rule, we have to both be laughing at the end of the joke.
Kelle: Yeah. So, for you, what might play look like, a happy dance, jumping on your bed after you score a big deal, photography, writing, singing? See what comes up for you here. When we started doing this work for ourselves everything changed, seriously.
Nina: Totally. I mean, without sounding cringey and don’t roll your eyes here, but this changed everything for me. I think about, for example, and Kel, I know you can relate to this, how I used to work out before doing this work. It was super rigid and programmed, I’m going to do this Monday, Wednesday and Friday and lift these weights. If I’m not sore, it didn’t happen, it doesn’t count, which was this punishment. And what I have found over time was, I had to relook at everything and kind of relabel things.
What I was telling myself, strong and weak looked like. These were completely backwards to me. I sort of prided myself on not being dramatic. I didn’t cry a lot or subscribe to a lot of drama. I could call my former self, stoic for sure, that lands. I thought this was strong and cool, and I sort of realized when I started to do this work, how much I was holding back by suppressing all of these emotions, not just sadness or anger, but the other end of the spectrum, too. Joy and wonder and happiness gets stunted, too when we live in the middle of the road. When we neglect the big negative feels, the big positive ones are blunted too.
Kelle: Ecstatic joy and love, totally.
Nina: Yeah, the ecstatic things. And that has totally come back into my relationships and my parenting and my work. When you do life from a place of joy, it’s addicting, fun, is so fun. That sounds redundant but it’s true. And when you’re in go mode, this isn’t available. You’re in survival and you’re focused on getting through the day, pushing and striving and doing. And when you can let go of that, it’s so freeing, but it takes some nervous system work and some thought work to do that.
Kelle: Yeah, it’s not like anything outside of you has changed. We want to stress that here, this is all because of this inner work. Using these tools, we can rewrite so many stories that might be holding us back, and feel safe living into new stories and new beliefs.
Nina: Exactly. I mean, I thought I was being strong by suppressing my emotions and not showing that side of myself to anyone, stoic like I said, sort of, look at me, I’m up early. The earlier I woke up, the more accomplished I was or something. And getting my workout in and doing all these things, I was trying to prove to myself, I think, that I could do hard things.
And then I had to take a look at what hard really meant to me. I mislabeled what hard things were, because for me, sitting still was excruciating, it was effing impossible. Not doing anything was harder for me than waking up early and going to the gym, but I didn’t have that awareness. And being vulnerable with my inner circle is actually much stronger for me than keeping it all in and being stoic and pretending I could do it all myself.
Kelle: Yeah. I mean a lot of this comes from our conditioning and society. We’re taught not to be overly emotional, and stoicism is sort of rewarded, but reevaluating this and questioning, is this still true for me? That’s the gold here, that’s the flex.
Nina: Questioning everything. I mean, we’re trained to look for the answers externally and blame things outside of us. But I think this fuller awareness we can gain of ourselves by going inward, helps us do that, to question everything, how we’re labeling things. Strength was totally not what I thought it was for me personally. This is all really personal. We all have different edges.
Kelle: Yeah. If you’re listening to this today, you value growth and your edges might be different than ours. This 6:00am workout edge for Nina doesn’t need to be expanded, but that isn’t the case for everyone.
Nina: Yeah. No, my invitation was absolutely a softening. I had been so caught up in my masculine energy, pushing and analytical and planning. I mean, what would it look like to really expand my edge on creativity and emotions and softness? That’s where I needed to go and continue to go today.
Kelle: This concept of feminine and masculine energy is a big one for our clients. I think we all could benefit from exploring our feminine edge. And this is huge for the women we work with, we abandon it. And if I’m being real, we tell ourselves we need to hide our feminine energy, especially in the workplace, it’s wrong. And listen, we still get our toes done and love a little Botox, don’t get us wrong here, but we don’t realize there is more than that to embracing our feminine energy.
Nina: Yeah, feminine energy isn’t anti-male by the way.
Kelle: We love the men.
Nina: We’re just exploring the difference between the two energies and suggesting we all expand that edge, accept our feminine energy instead of hide it.
Kelle: Oh, how the world would be a kinder, gentler, more badass place if we could just embrace our feminine energy in a way that complemented the masculine energy around us.
Nina: Amen. Let’s start a movement.
Kelle: We will, we’re on it actually in this next episode that’s coming up.
Nina: Yeah, stay tuned for more here on feminine energy, and specifically what we like to call feminine leadership.
Kelle: Okay, that’s it for today, you all. Thanks for being here.
Nina: Yeah, thanks all. Take care.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
Kelle: What if the key to staying calm in those high stress moments isn’t about being tougher or more stoic, but about understanding your body’s natural responses?
Nina: Yeah, in this episode we’ll uncover the surprising science behind these emotional outbursts and how mastering your nervous system might just be the secret to keeping your cool no matter what life throws your way.
Kelle: Alright, if that sounds amazing, you are in the right place. Let’s get going. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I’m Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. So today we’re talking about in a nutshell, those emotional outbursts you have that you really aren’t proud of.
Kelle: For example, and one we coach on with clients a lot is crying at work.
Nina: And maybe for you, this is yelling at your kids or you name it. We’re letting you fill in the blank here.
Kelle: We’ve coached clients about crying at work more than once though, and with so much love because we have been there. Our unmanaged stress and workaholic tendencies mean emotions and the likelihood of tears, it runs high. All crying really means, it means that we’ve touched the truth.
Nina: Yeah, we used to go cry in the bathroom, but now we just turn off video to try to pull ourselves together.
Kelle: Did you know Harvard Business Review says 45% of professionals have cried at work?
Nina: Wow, I believe it.
Kelle: Yeah. So why does it still stress us out and even piss us off when we shed tears on the clock?
Nina: I think it’s because we make vulnerability mean we’re unprofessional, too emotional or so female or weak, cue the shame spiral.
Kelle: Yeah. And this makes complete sense, rock stars, because we hunted and gathered in tribes back in the day, showing too much emotion made us unreliable for survival in the tribe. And therefore, more susceptible to predators if we were abandoned by our people. So, we’ve evolved to conceal any and all emotion just for our survival.
Nina: Yeah, over time this might have looked like a parent or caregiver saying, “Don’t cry, turn that frown upside down, walk it off, suck it up”, or even, “Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve.”
Kelle: I see parents doing this and I also see coaches doing this, which drives me absolutely bananas. Don’t get me started. As humans socialized as women, we have this mindset that we have to do everything for everyone always, which creates a pressure chamber of overwhelm and stress on the daily.
Nina: Yeah, that ragey ticking time bomb feeling. Does it make a little more sense now?
Kelle: We know you’re passionate, rock star. We know you’re driven and we love your ambition. Come on.
Nina: But when critical feedback or setbacks at work start to devastate you on repeat, it might mean you’re overly invested in the work. And the solution here isn’t to quit your job, complain to HR or go on vacay at first. First we have to go inward and undo the beliefs and conditioning that are keeping you stuck in this workaholic purgatory and in tears at work.
Kelle: Yeah. And we have to reconnect mind and body. Your mind and body need to be connected, that’s really where we’re going today.
Nina: Yeah. Today we’re talking about what nervous system regulation means and looks like. And we’ll give you a few tools to practice so you can be more resilient when your nervous system shifts into survival.
Kelle: That’s really what regulation is, when we talk about a regulated nervous system, we mean one that is resilient.
Nina: Okay, so hang on though, let’s back up. Let’s bring in a client story and start there.
Kelle: Good call. Yeah, this client came onto the coaching call with us so overwhelmed, so ashamed, so exhausted. And this is how she explained it. I’m overwhelmed and I’m drowning. I’m missing things and I’m getting behind on things. The volume of work I have is so unreal. I don’t have all the answers when they ask me things. I didn’t approach it with confidence and I started crying.
Nina: We can all relate here. I mean, Kel, have you ever cried at work or been there when someone did?
Kelle: Oh yeah. Back in my pharmaceutical days, I had this one manager. It was when I was working at Merck and she expected so much of her team and of me. My other counterparts that had different managers, we would just look at them and we were just so like, “We wish we could have your manager.” And I didn’t see her unless she rode with me to the accounts but she was tough and she drove us all on her team to detail and sell in a very specific way. And it got to the point where I’d get really flustered around her.
One time we walked out of the call with an account where I got the door literally closed in my face. I was so frustrated, I started crying right then and there in the hallway at the hospital.
Nina: Oh, my God, totally. Well, I actually remember way back, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Wister used to cry sometimes when the classroom got out of control. She wouldn’t yell, but all of a sudden the lights would go off in the classroom and we’d all stop. And she’d be standing by the light switch with tears in her eyes. I’ll never forget how guilty I felt, like I had really done something wrong. It was funny though, because the boys in the classroom, again, this is second grade, they all kind of snickered while the girls just felt so sorry.
Kelle: Yeah, pretty understandable that a teacher might lose her shit, right?
Nina: So understandable. Oh, my God, another story. I remember crying at work when I was in PR. I had a boss who really didn’t have the skills to stay calm under pressure. And I can see that now, but at the time she was so aggressive and intimidating, her whole team would cry. It was a really tough team dynamic, not a lot of trust in our leader because her emotions were so volatile and she was so unpredictable.
And I remember trying to be strong for my AEs below me and it was hard to defend our leadership, it was really tricky. And this particular senior team member kept me up in my sleep. Do you know what I mean? Seriously, her aggressive tendencies too, sort of rubbed off on me in unexpected ways. I found myself kind of acting like her sometimes. And that’s when toxic behavior really becomes troublesome, when it spills over into your team and perpetuates.
Kelle: Yeah. And so how did you manage those AEs?
Nina: Honestly, I wasn’t even a coach at the time and I just remember letting them cry, giving them permission, not endorsing the boss or taking sides or anything. But just letting this one AE specifically, just bawl her eyes out and that’s kind of what needs to happen sometimes.
Kelle: Yeah, totally. And that’s exactly how we coached this client. First, of course, we met her on the call and let her cry. We let her continue to cry and bawl and just get all of the emotion out of there. She called it ugly crying, but we really just think it’s beautiful because it’s truthful. And we helped her identify this part of herself that was so effing overworked, so tired, so bent on proving herself and on being perfect. We sat with that part of her and really loved on and appreciated that part of her.
Nina: Yeah, our clients cry a lot with us and they all apologize at first, right, Kel?
Kelle: Yes, they totally try to keep it in and it’s like the floodgates open and they’re self-conscious that maybe they’re our only client who comes to the call and cries and tears and we’re just like, “Babe’s, we’ve got you.”
Nina: Hell, no, this is what coaching our clients is all about. We hold space for them to feel their feels, whatever they are and feel safe doing so. These are breakthrough moments in coaching.
Kelle: So, once we helped her actually feel her emotions and ugly cry them all out, identify the parts of her that were trying so, so hard that are doing their best to get through to the challenging circumstances around her. We could then shift into a more empowered mindset and take a closer look at her circumstances and decide what she wanted to do next time, how she wanted to show up.
Nina: Yeah, there’s no shame here. We can’t shit on ourselves for crying at work, or I guess we can, but it’s just not useful. It’s something that happened in the past. We can’t change it. So instead, we decide to figure out what to do differently next time.
Kelle: And this was client specific and helpful and what really needed to happen here was bigger picture selfcare which is what we suggested too.
Nina: Yeah, like we said earlier, when critical feedback or setbacks at work start to devastate us on repeat, it really is an invitation, it really might mean we’re overly invested in the work.
Kelle: The solution here is not to quit your job, complain to HR or go on vacay, which of course, I’ll just choose anytime anyway.
Nina: What we really need to do, though, is take a closer look at how to regulate your nervous system so you’re more resilient.
Kelle: Listen, for our clients, we have a go, go, go problem, go, go, go. I’m just going to say it.
Nina: Totally, we can relate to this personally. The, I’ve got it tendency and go, go, go problem, when we’re in go, go, go mode, we’re basically in a survival state, fight or flight.
Kelle: Yeah. And burnout could be seen as freeze, a functional freeze state.
Nina: Yeah, totally. And listeners, look back on episode nine, it’s all about your nervous system. It’s a pretty cool 101 if we do say so ourselves. It’s solid background for what we’ll talk about today.
Kelle: Oh, I didn’t tell you, Nina, I actually went for a walk with a former client of ours this weekend. And she had another 360 review. And this time she did cry, but it was just a little bit more like she was crying in a way that was healthy for her, not ugly cry.
Nina: Shamey, yeah.
Kelle: Yeah, just kind of like, oh, I’m seeing where I want to make some changes. It was a really, really lovely walk. So, what happens with our ambitious high achievers is we get stuck in this chronic state of fight, flight or freeze, because our brains are coding the stressors around us as danger. Even though we aren’t actually in mortal danger, that email from your boss or the ambiguous text from a friend that stresses you out isn’t actually a threat to your survival, but our nervous system codes it that way on default.
Nina: Yeah, I think COVID was an interesting microscope here. A lot of the over-doers out there, us included, the high achievers and high functioning doers, by no decision of our own. We had to slow down and a lot of us had to realize how deep of a state of burnout we were actually in.
Kelle: Yeah. We’re so used to going and doing and moving things forward. COVID put that all away, literally. I think for a lot of us that discomfort we felt, that antsy-ness and full on anxiety was our nervous system, resisting being somewhere it has never been before, literally.
Nina: Yeah. Most of our clients and us included, we don’t know what second or third gear looks like. We’re all in fifth or sixth consistently all day long.
Kelle: Yeah, our nervous systems on default don’t like change. Change means danger to our nervous system and that threatens our survival.
Nina: And the forced slowdown of COVID, woke up not just a lot of discomfort, but I think a lot of awareness too.
Kelle: Yeah, we love awareness. This is where any change process begins, and we can’t change what we don’t notice.
Nina: Yeah, I need to back up for a sec. We had clients going into COVID, an attorney I’m thinking of specifically. She had really young kids and was taking her youngest, who was five months old, to the office and nursing her on calls while she was settling cases. And while there’s really nothing right or wrong here, she just didn’t realize how cooked and burned out she was.
Kelle: Yeah, burning the candle from both ends in her body, mind, and emotions, she started developing physical, mental and emotional symptoms.
Nina: Yeah, this stress shows up as tension in your body and can really lock you up physically. For this client, she had terrible TMJ and IBS, so that’s jaw pain and bowel pain, FYI.
Kelle: And with the help of a coach and a functional medicine doc, she was able to feel better.
Nina: Yeah, the solution here, when you understand your nervous system, you can live in a way that’s supportive of a healthy nervous system, you can reap the benefits of that.
Kelle: Yeah, the first step here is to develop some awareness around your unique stress profile as we like to call it, what happens in your body when you feel stressed out and overwhelmed. So, we can’t change what we don’t notice and so this is where we love to begin.
Nina: Yeah, this personal stress profile tool is meant to increase your understanding of your unique and beautiful and perfect stress triggers, stress symptoms and your coping behaviors on default. We build this awareness to help you cope with stress more successfully.
Kelle: Yeah. We can’t always change and control the circumstance around us. So, the solution is always to come back to what we can control, which is always ourselves.
Nina: Yeah. Increased awareness of your triggers and stress symptoms will help you take action in the moment using a coping strategy that we’ll develop together when you coach with us. Effective coping in the moment might look like taking a rest, stepping away or treating yourself kindly.
Kelle: That treating yourself kindly seems so hard sometimes when you’re just so used to berating yourself. So again, why we do this, because stress itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What makes stress harmful is how we perceive it and respond to it. The negative effects of stress are more debilitating when it’s interpreted as being beyond our control. But the process of overcoming a stressful challenge can extend our edge, so to speak. We grow our window of tolerance for stress over time, making us feel more confident and skillful next time the shit hits the fan.
Nina: So, if you want to unpack your unique stress profile in a nutshell, answer these three questions, super basic. We love super basic. So first when I’m stressed, I typically think thoughts like, and make a list. The client thoughts that we shared with you earlier are super common. When I’m stressed, this is what I notice in my body. Make this list too. When I’m stressed this is how I tend to react or behave. This one is gold.
Kelle: That one is gold, yes.
Nina: So, we’d start here. And when I did this for the first time, the body sensations really stood out for me because I get clenched in my jaw and I also push my tongue into the roof of my mouth. I think this actually has a name. It’s called a tongue thrust. It’s literally a thing in PT.
Kelle: Interesting. Yeah, I start to sweat a little bit and it’s different than workout sweat, it’s stress sweat. it just feels totally different in my body.
Nina: I totally know stress sweat, it’s real. And I sometimes clench my hands and fists, I take shallow breaths and I feel really scattered, I don’t know where to start. And I get kind of bossy, fake bossy, like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t. And I have this march, this bossy walk.
Kelle: Oh, my God, the bossy walk. I do not want to be around Nina when she’s got the bossy walk, people.
Nina: My neighbors all know it. They’re like, “She’s on a bossy mom walk.”
Kelle: And yeah, the shallow breaths, man. So now that you know all about our stress profiles, try this for yourselves, again, this awareness is really killer.
Nina: And so, from here what we want to do is help you and our clients expand their edge, to increase their window of tolerance for stressful circumstances. Does that make sense?
Kelle: Yeah, totally. We want to help our clients feel more empowered under stress and that’s all about building up tolerance, extending your edge, your perimeter, your zone or window of tolerance.
Nina: Because we all know people who have short fuses or who we’re careful not to stress out. We know their edge or window of tolerance is where it is. It’s clear, right?
Kelle: Yeah, we can help you extend yours, and here’s how we start. It’s not about changing anything outside of you at first. This work is the inner work. It’s the deeper work that creates different results in your life from the inside out.
Nina: Yeah. So, there are three foundational practices we suggest to clients to do that, to support a healthy nervous system. And again, we define a healthy nervous system as a resilient one. We encourage clients to practice these bigger picture practices regularly. And we also offer in the moment tools too for clients to practice in the moment when they feel triggered or dysregulated. But the in the moment tools are sort of more like band-aids, triage, you’re bleeding and you need to stop the bleeding. So, these bigger picture practices are where we like to begin to create high impact change.
Kelle: So, the first practice is motion. Don’t overthink this. What we want you to do, what we suggest you do is go for a walk, dance, jump, just move your body.
Nina: Kelle and I jump a lot, don’t we? We jump.
Kelle: We do.
Nina: We bounce.
Kelle: Stress gets stored in the body as tension and when we can move that tension through our tissues and out of our bodies, it just feels so good. So, motion is key, but again, this doesn’t have to be a full-fledged 60 minute Peloton ride or it’s just 10 minutes of raising your heart rate every day. Walk around the block, get some fresh air, anything that is going to be supportive to a healthy, resilient nervous system versus staying at your desk all day under the fluorescent lights.
Nina: Yeah, I actually get so much clarity and insight when I’m in motion, when I’m not in survival, but in flow on my bike or running a trail. I actually almost pulled over in Julie’s driveway the other day, Kel, on a bike ride because I had to stop and write a few things down in my notes app.
Kelle: I do that all the time. I pull over and I’ll do a quick voice memo for myself. Yeah, when we’re in motion, this is when we’re creative, compassionate, honest, and forgiving. We’re not in survival, and we can think clearly and really use our brains for us instead of against us. Some of my best work comes on these rides or these hikes.
Nina: Yeah, totally. So, the second practice that we suggest to support a healthy nervous system is stillness. This one is particularly hard for our clients and was for me too at first. We are so used to go mode, back to the COVID slowdown. So many of us were challenged during this force to slow down because we didn’t know how to handle the discomfort of doing less.
Kelle: Totally. We suggest this stillness practice to almost all of our clients. We start with as little as 30 seconds a day and build up from there.
Nina: And at first our clients are like, “This isn’t working, guys, I feel terrible.” And we’re like, “No, no, that’s actually perfect. It’s working. You’re right where you need to be.”
Kelle: Yeah, stillness is like pulling the arrow back on the bow. It feels backwards and wrong, but actually sets you and your nervous system up for powerful forward motion, even more focused, even more aligned.
Nina: Some of the best answers come when we pause. Some of the best resolutions come without having to do anything. So, titrate here, start with 30 seconds a day and build your way up to 10/20 minutes. Do this for 30 days straight and see how it changes how you respond versus react to challenges around you.
Kelle: It’s so true. And before we go onto the third one, I just want to say, when I meditate I just wish I had a pad that was right there with me so I could write down all this stuff, but I don’t want to interrupt my meditation, but it’s true. All of the good stuff is coming in when I get still. Let’s talk about that third practice in this framework and it’s play. So, this is huge. Play is critical when it comes to a healthy nervous system. A lot of our clients have lost sight of what it even means to play for them. And it makes sense, our ambitions and striving keep us hyper focused on a certain finish line and we forget about what used to make us happy, what used to make us laugh and play, what all that meant to us.
Nina: Yeah, this is all about the creative fun and playful things. For me, and I think a lot of the people who choose to live in Park City, play looks like hopping on my bike or putting my skis on or playing outside, really in any way I can.
Kelle: Yeah. I love this idea of play and going really fast on something. I was going really fast on my mountain bike the other day. We were just going down the road and just going really fast and just feeling the wind and kind of the adrenaline and the rush of it all. It’s just so fun.
Nina: Oh my God, and just chasing my kids at their speed, it’s bananas. Anyway, also something I love to do for play, speaking of kids, I sort of play innocent practical jokes on my kids. They’re getting older now and we can have a lot of fun here, but humor really lights me up. I love laughing and having fun with my kids, even if sometimes it might be at their expense. But here’s my rule, we have to both be laughing at the end of the joke.
Kelle: Yeah. So, for you, what might play look like, a happy dance, jumping on your bed after you score a big deal, photography, writing, singing? See what comes up for you here. When we started doing this work for ourselves everything changed, seriously.
Nina: Totally. I mean, without sounding cringey and don’t roll your eyes here, but this changed everything for me. I think about, for example, and Kel, I know you can relate to this, how I used to work out before doing this work. It was super rigid and programmed, I’m going to do this Monday, Wednesday and Friday and lift these weights. If I’m not sore, it didn’t happen, it doesn’t count, which was this punishment. And what I have found over time was, I had to relook at everything and kind of relabel things.
What I was telling myself, strong and weak looked like. These were completely backwards to me. I sort of prided myself on not being dramatic. I didn’t cry a lot or subscribe to a lot of drama. I could call my former self, stoic for sure, that lands. I thought this was strong and cool, and I sort of realized when I started to do this work, how much I was holding back by suppressing all of these emotions, not just sadness or anger, but the other end of the spectrum, too. Joy and wonder and happiness gets stunted, too when we live in the middle of the road. When we neglect the big negative feels, the big positive ones are blunted too.
Kelle: Ecstatic joy and love, totally.
Nina: Yeah, the ecstatic things. And that has totally come back into my relationships and my parenting and my work. When you do life from a place of joy, it’s addicting, fun, is so fun. That sounds redundant but it’s true. And when you’re in go mode, this isn’t available. You’re in survival and you’re focused on getting through the day, pushing and striving and doing. And when you can let go of that, it’s so freeing, but it takes some nervous system work and some thought work to do that.
Kelle: Yeah, it’s not like anything outside of you has changed. We want to stress that here, this is all because of this inner work. Using these tools, we can rewrite so many stories that might be holding us back, and feel safe living into new stories and new beliefs.
Nina: Exactly. I mean, I thought I was being strong by suppressing my emotions and not showing that side of myself to anyone, stoic like I said, sort of, look at me, I’m up early. The earlier I woke up, the more accomplished I was or something. And getting my workout in and doing all these things, I was trying to prove to myself, I think, that I could do hard things.
And then I had to take a look at what hard really meant to me. I mislabeled what hard things were, because for me, sitting still was excruciating, it was effing impossible. Not doing anything was harder for me than waking up early and going to the gym, but I didn’t have that awareness. And being vulnerable with my inner circle is actually much stronger for me than keeping it all in and being stoic and pretending I could do it all myself.
Kelle: Yeah. I mean a lot of this comes from our conditioning and society. We’re taught not to be overly emotional, and stoicism is sort of rewarded, but reevaluating this and questioning, is this still true for me? That’s the gold here, that’s the flex.
Nina: Questioning everything. I mean, we’re trained to look for the answers externally and blame things outside of us. But I think this fuller awareness we can gain of ourselves by going inward, helps us do that, to question everything, how we’re labeling things. Strength was totally not what I thought it was for me personally. This is all really personal. We all have different edges.
Kelle: Yeah. If you’re listening to this today, you value growth and your edges might be different than ours. This 6:00am workout edge for Nina doesn’t need to be expanded, but that isn’t the case for everyone.
Nina: Yeah. No, my invitation was absolutely a softening. I had been so caught up in my masculine energy, pushing and analytical and planning. I mean, what would it look like to really expand my edge on creativity and emotions and softness? That’s where I needed to go and continue to go today.
Kelle: This concept of feminine and masculine energy is a big one for our clients. I think we all could benefit from exploring our feminine edge. And this is huge for the women we work with, we abandon it. And if I’m being real, we tell ourselves we need to hide our feminine energy, especially in the workplace, it’s wrong. And listen, we still get our toes done and love a little Botox, don’t get us wrong here, but we don’t realize there is more than that to embracing our feminine energy.
Nina: Yeah, feminine energy isn’t anti-male by the way.
Kelle: We love the men.
Nina: We’re just exploring the difference between the two energies and suggesting we all expand that edge, accept our feminine energy instead of hide it.
Kelle: Oh, how the world would be a kinder, gentler, more badass place if we could just embrace our feminine energy in a way that complemented the masculine energy around us.
Nina: Amen. Let’s start a movement.
Kelle: We will, we’re on it actually in this next episode that’s coming up.
Nina: Yeah, stay tuned for more here on feminine energy, and specifically what we like to call feminine leadership.
Kelle: Okay, that’s it for today, you all. Thanks for being here.
Nina: Yeah, thanks all. Take care.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to kelleandnina.com. That’s K E L L E and nina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit https://www.kelleandnina.com/ for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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