Hi, this is Monica Packer, and you're listening to about progress, where we are about progress made practical.

If I were to sum up 2023 in one word, that word would be overwhelmed.

This year has been full of so many joyful moments and huge blessings, but adding a fifth child to our family has stretched me more than I ever expected it to, and I would consider myself a realist, especially when it comes to having a newborn.

Now while I haven't loved this feeling of overwhelm, I'm

honestly so proud of how I moved through at all, both mentally and practically,

not because I did it anywhere close to perfectly, but because I feel that all the work I've done the last few years helped me cope with this chronic overwhelm feeling better than I would

have and have in the past. Instead of shame and resentment, I felt more compassion alongside the frustration and anxiety

that overwhelm can bring most certainly but I felt that I was better able to

sort through what was on my plate and to pair things down to baselines and remove

other areas of my life altogether as much as that was challenging for me to do.

I know that this is a time of year where many of us are judging through that overwhelm.

And this coupled with the turmoil of the greater world and the many moving parts of our intimate world can often lead us to staying stuck in the

overwhelm rather than navigating it well. So to help, I invited Stacey Toth to discuss Overwelm in the special bonus episode.

You've likely heard Stacey's voice before because we have aired her trailer for her podcast the whole view at the end of many of our own episodes. Stacy and I are both part of the Cloud 10 Network and her show is one that I picked out of the lineup when I was exploring what fellow Cloud 10

podcast I wanted to personally listen to. And as I was listening to her show, I knew we had to have

her on about progress. What you will hear today is actually the second half of a recording Stacey and I did together.

We did a little trade.

So on about progress today, you'll hear Stacey teach us how to improve and access your

mental coping skills when you're overwhelmed. Stacy will cover the signs of

overwhelm you may be ignoring starting with the surprisingly physiological signs, and she'll also share some tools

you can access to better move through overwhelm mentally, and surprisingly also, many of those

are physiological in nature too.

...