Reducing Stress and Anxiety for a More Joyful Holiday Season - with Lindsey Carnick

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:00  

Hi everyone, before we jump into the show, I just wanted to share a quick update. I know that here in the month of December, it can feel very overwhelming, especially for working moms who are doing all the things to close up the year at work and do the annual reviews and close out the fiscal year, while also doing all the things at home to make the holiday season magical and the present buying and the event planning and the activity juggling and all the things that are going on right now for you. So I wanted to design something that would help anyone who is in it right now to just bring us together for a quick few minutes and talk about stepping back and looking at the holiday season and actually enjoying the holiday season, instead of just having to feel like you're going through the checklist and missing out on everything because you're just doing, doing, doing, doing, going, going, going. So I have designed two webinars. One will be on December 10, where I will be talking about the holiday season as a whole, some practical strategies for juggling all the things and minimizing overwhelm and actually enjoying the holiday season at least a little bit. And in the second webinar on December 19, I'll be talking about how to avoid checking your email on Christmas or any holiday that you're celebrating, and talking about how to remain present in whatever you're doing over the holiday break so that that way you can show up in the way that you want to, and you can feel really good and not have all the guilt of feeling like you missed out on your kids' Christmas or your kids' Hanukkah. So both webinars will take place at 2:30pm EST on those days. If you go to my website, coachleanna.com you'll find all the details you can register and you can watch live or on demand. These are both free webinars, and I would also love it if you could share this with a friend or colleague who may also be feeling the stress of the holidays and could benefit as well. I'd really love to help this reach more people, because I know how challenging this time of year can be, and I just want to help. So I really hope to see you there. All right. Now on to our show.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:31  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:53  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me this week, and I have with me a special guest today. Her name is Lindsey Carnick, and I'm so excited to introduce her and to have this conversation. So welcome, Lindsey. 

Lindsey Carnick  3:09  

Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:11  

Yeah, so glad to have you. And Lindsey and I touched base yesterday about what we wanted to talk about. I said, if you're open to an organic conversation, those are my favorite kind to have, and she's totally game for it. So I'm so excited that you were, because that's the kind of conversations I love to have. So maybe if we could start off, if you can just kind of introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about you. 

Lindsey Carnick  3:32  

Sure. So my name is Lindsey Carnick, and I'm a LCSW licensed clinical social worker. I'm a psychotherapist. I've been doing this for about 15 years. I see adult individuals and couples, and my specialty is change. Now within that, I also see a lot of folks for anxiety and stress management. Those are my two sort of concerns of interest and specialty. But I'm really deeply interested in anybody who wants some kind of change, and if that's internal change or external change, both of those things are equally compelling to me, and that's what everybody I see has in common, is that they're looking for some kind of change. In addition to that, I speak nationally at conventions, retreats, continuing education events and a whole sort of wide range of speaking platforms where people are wanting to learn very concrete, practical, tactical ways of doing stress management and burnout prevention. My theory is that everybody knows what would be helpful to them. It's just that few people have the time to do what would really be helpful to them. So I specialize in these very practical, immediately applicable sort of techniques and strategies that people can utilize immediately, without any special carve out of time or resources or facilities. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:53  

Yeah, all of us can relate to not feeling we ever have enough time, and we have all these wonderful recommendations and things that we know would maybe make things better for us, but it can be challenging to find, you know, to carve out the time whenever we've got so many responsibilities at work and at home and every aspect of our lives. I'm curious how change fits in to anxiety and stress management, or kind of like, what's the through thread? 

Lindsey Carnick  5:20  

Well, certainly feeling anxious is something that many people want a change from. Okay, right? People want to have a change of experience. Yes, that living in a state of anxiety, or frequently experiencing anxiety or high levels of stress is something that people would like to have be different in their lives. And it's such a conundrum, because often change itself is very stressful for many people, but they do want something different than what they have. Yeah, we use the phrase comfortably uncomfortable, right? Where people are sort of uncomfortable, but the idea of doing something different is both appealing and terrifying.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  5:59  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  6:00  

Or it seems inaccessible, which is also sort of daunting and anxiety provoking in other ways. We were talking about time a second ago. So many people struggle with feeling like the things that they want to do or that they could do aren't good enough, right? That time should look like something that if you are going to take care of yourself, then you must have 60 minutes to go to yoga, if you are going to take a walk, then you must have X amount of time to make it worth it, to make it count, right? And that's a tremendous amount of pressure, and most people would like to get out from under that pressure, and yet have sort of landed in a place where they go, but I can't make more time. So where's the out? And I'm deeply interested in helping people find those hidden sources of freedom where  says, okay, you don't have to make more time. I wouldn't want you to. But if you can figure it out, let me know, because I'm also deeply interested. I'd be Dave Manchester in that if you figured out the trick. But how do we create freedom for ourselves, right where there seems to be nothing but constraint, and that, to me, is the most exciting part of change.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  7:14  

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it sounds like you're saying you don't necessarily need to take more time. But it's like, how can we actually be more accessible, be less time to get more time? 

Lindsey Carnick  7:26  

Yes, yes. How can we sort of move laterally within the constraints, as opposed to fighting the constraints? Right? There's a wonderful working psychologist named Shad la June, and he has this analogy about a smelly gorilla sitting in your living room and you don't like the smelly gorilla. Well, the fastest way to dislike it even more is to wrestle it. Right? So most people are saying, I don't like the smelly gorilla and I'm going to wrestle it right now. They're getting more and more of this thing that they don't like right, up close and personal, in close quarters, and the game is always to figure out how we can go, Okay, there's a smelly gorilla sitting on my couch. How am I going to work with this so that I'm not experiencing the smelly gorilla that I hate all the time, and I'm going to let it sit on the couch, because fighting it gets me more wrapped up in the thing I say I don't want.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  8:17  

Yeah, and I think that your point of it feeling like it's not enough if I'm gonna work out, well, I have to carve out such a large amount of time that I can never find in my calendar. How will I ever do that? I think that makes so much sense and resonates as well. I remember it's kind of like, I think in our high achiever perfectionist brains, we think of that we have to kind of go all the way, or it's not worth doing at all. I remember, even when I was starting this podcast, it took me months to actually launch it, because I kept thinking, Well, what if I start it and then I, you know, get distracted, or what if I get sick? What if I can't keep producing it? What if I can't do it consistently, and eventually it was just like, Well, I'm not doing it at all anyway. Like, why am I so afraid? What if I just did it and tried it and started and then I'll just do what I can and some weeks I'm not going to post whenever I can't post. And I think exercise, as you know, as the example that we're talking about is kind of like, well, I either have to be completely on an exercise routine, and I need to be doing it consistently, and I need to be doing it for a set amount of time a day. I can't just go for a walk right now, because I'm not on an exercise routine,

Lindsey Carnick  9:36  

Right, or it's not Instagramable. It doesn't seem to sit the fit some sort of profile or external set of criteria about what this is supposed to look like, right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:47  

Yeah. 

Lindsey Carnick  9:48  

I think I was telling you my my great horror and delight at this Apple Watch situation. The first time I ever saw an Apple Watch. I don't know how we were, what we were talking about, exactly, but somebody said, Oh, and you would probably be really interested. Because there's a function on this thing, and it's a breathing exercise. And this person was already getting sort of like dismissive about it. There's a breathing exercise, I don't know there's a little picture. You follow the picture like what? Show me, show me, show me, show me, show me. Shows me the Apple Watch breathing thing, which I'm sure is still on Apple, watches where the little picture expands and contracts, right, and one cues you to inhale, and one cues you to exhale. And I said, Oh my gosh, that's I love that so much. That's incredible. And this person was like, Well, I mean, I'm like, I don't know, what are you gonna do? Like, breathe for three minutes. I was like, yeah, yeah, you should. You should definitely do that. But there was a sense that, like, nobody ever wanted to put a picture on Instagram with them, like sitting there breathing to their Apple Watch, right? People want to put pictures on Instagram of doing headstands on beaches or that fits this criteria of like majestic by any other name. And I think that's a real daunting thing to be surrounded by, right? Because it does create the sense that there's a threshold for what counts and what doesn't count. And many of us go, you know, this is the culture that brought you that expression, go big or go home. I guess I'm going home because I certainly don't have time to go big, and I don't teach also, and that's a real shame, because so many of us are missing out on things that could be so deeply helpful to us and meaningful to us, and when we get in that all or nothing thinking like you were mentioning about the podcast, right? Perfection is the enemy of good enough. It's one podcast is more than zero, right? It's all bonus points. Everything is in the plus column, whether it's one minute or four minutes, or 400 minutes, in the aggregate are all at once. It's all good. Literally, it's all good.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:47  

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I would also say even if we don't plan to post it on Instagram, I think it's like seeing it all the time and seeing the expectation of what it should be, what it's expected to be, what other people are doing. Then, even if we're not trying to share it, our culture is so ingrained in us, and we see it all the time and think, Well, that's what they're doing. Like, I'm not able to do that. So should I even bother doing it at all.

Lindsey Carnick  12:15  

100, I completely agree. I think whether you actually have Instagram or any intent, so to speak, is completely irrelevant. I think there's this internalized sort of framework that says, Does the thing I'm thinking about meet some kind of criteria, and if the answer is no, then why bother? Why am I going to do that?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:33  

Yeah, so how would you answer that question? Like, why bother?

Lindsey Carnick  12:39  

I want people to be present and not miss out on their lives. Deeply.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:47  

Agreed.

Lindsey Carnick  12:48  

And I want to experience my life. I want to experience my life. I do not want to wake up periodically and go, Oh, I was living up here. I was living in a dream. I was living in all these other places other than the one, than what's happening. And I think every time we bother, we are prioritizing being in our lives and not missing out on our lives. And I find that so deeply compelling, especially living in a culture that in many ways, encourages us to stay zoned out and not be present. You know, you can no more purchase something, whether it's in person or online, being pinged about the next thing that you should purchase. You're like, well, I just got this thing. What do you mean? I enjoy this pair of pants for two seconds? No, no. You don't even have that pair of pants yet, and you're being prompted to think about the next pair of pants, right? We are constantly being pushed to sort of mentally hoard experiences and items and things that we don't yet have, and when we participate in that, we're missing out on what's happening right now because we're living out ahead in some place that doesn't exist yet, including the next pair of pants. And I find that horrifying and tragic, and I don't want to experience that. That's why I bother. How about you? Why do you bother?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:16  

I would say similarly, I think it's like because whenever I think about at the end of my life looking back, well, am I going to be happier if I put out one podcast episode or zero? Am I going to be happier that I tried to stay engaged in my life, or that I stayed zoned out, even if I didn't do it perfectly? Am I going to be happier that I attempted or am I going to be happier that I just said, Well, you know, why bother?

Lindsey Carnick  14:44  

Just let it.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:45  

Yeah. I think for me, that would be why to bother to is because I think that that's more of the life that I want to live, that I will feel happier about when I look back on my life, that that I'm glad I did it that way.

Lindsey Carnick  14:59  

Yeah. Yeah, and so many people are missing out. We're missing out on what I would call really quiet majesty of the present, right? It's interesting in the sense that, I think in the last decade or so, you know, people have become mindfulness has become very much a buzz word, and being intentional, it's sort of a buzzy concept, right? But I think there's also this sense that being mindfulness and dialed and present is more important during some moments than others, which is interesting, and I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with that. Certainly, some moments are more monumental than others, and some you're going to feel sadder that you missed out on than others. And also, I don't think the reverence for presence should be reserved to like your kids graduation or these, like big moments that are sort of like the capital bull face. Do not miss out on ones right? There's so much time that we don't pay attention to I can give you a perfect example. You and I are both sitting right now. You're sitting wherever you're sitting up. You know, these rooms we're indoors. But if we took a second and just noticed how good it is in that space you're sitting in, it's not exceptional in the sense that you're not in some amazing art gallery surrounded by amazing art. But the environment that you're sitting in right now, the environment I'm sitting on. It's climate controlled. The temperature in here, it's lovely. The lighting is good. I'm talking to somebody nice and friendly. This moment is so good. It's not big and bold, like the cover of Vanity Fair good, but it's good. And I want to be present for those moments, because there are so many of them, and it's so easy for people to get distracted, I think, and just be intentional about being present for the big, shiny ones that you know, make the top 10 hits List, right? And also, there's so many good ones that don't make that list the time, right? We don't need to be running from peak experience to peak experience being intentional only about peak experiences because we're aware of their peak experiences.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:06  

Yeah, yeah. I think there's a quote from a movie. I can't remember where it's from, but I remember it being something about, like, in the scrapbooks, you have all these, you know, pictures of the big events and, you know, the core memories and things like that, but all the in between that happens, like in between those pictures, that's life.

Lindsey Carnick  17:30  

I love that. It's the ones you don't frame.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:32  

Exactly, the day to day. Sure, you know, mundane, monotonous, good, normal, right? That we don't always-

Lindsey Carnick  17:42  

Yes

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:43  

-take the time to really soak in, yeah,

Lindsey Carnick  17:46  

Absolutely. You know, I think my family likes to tease me because I like vegetables a lot. Often I don't put any seasoning on them, and they think this is ridiculous, and cretinous and unsophisticated, non civilized. And my thing is that I love the way the stuff tastes. I love the way the stuff tastes with nothing. I like a good ranch dip and much as a green Goddess dip, as much as the next person on a carrot, I really do. But I also love a plain carrot, cooked raw. Don't care. I also love sweet potato with nothing on it, not cooked in garlic, no butter, no nothing. I mean, the flavor is really amazing. Now, is it the same as when, you know, my mother in law does something outrageously impressive with the sweet potato, you know, and makes it into something spectacular? Of course not. It's different. It's not less good.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  18:37  

So I'm curious about what brought you to this work.

Lindsey Carnick  18:42  

Well, there's what brought me, and then there's what brought me, I suppose.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  18:46  

Okay.

Lindsey Carnick  18:47  

Yeah. I, once upon a time, was in a PhD program in the humanities, and I did a couple years of that, and I thought to myself, I don't see myself in this for the rest of days. I just don't this has been incredibly interesting and fun, but I can't see myself as an academic. And at the same time, I made a friend who's working on a nonprofit, and he said to me, you're not doing anything. Come work for me part time. I, you know, I need a warm body. And I said, Yeah, right. I went and did that. He was running this really innovative, incredible program in community mental health. That was really remarkable. And I said, this is interesting. This is really, really interesting. And I sort of got interested in social work, and so I bailed out of this PhD program I was in, went and got a master's in social work. And my intention was to be a policy wonk. I really believed in macro, but the macro level really matters, and I still do. I believe the upstream conditions really, really matter to people's lives. And when I got out of grad school, I fully intending to go into something in policy or analysis, systems, systems change. And I had been trained, no matter what your trained as a therapist in the clinical social work program, and the first thing I fell into, which had a tantalizing temptation called benefits, couple years in grad school, and that's, that's a big, glowy word.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  20:12  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  20:12  

I was working as a therapist in a maximum security prison for juvenile males, and that was a life changing experience. There was so much that I experienced there that pushed me and grew me in so many different directions, and also started me on growth trajectories that I hope will never have an end point. I really deeply hope. And I learned a lot there about change and stories and how stories and change do and do not intersect, and I found that so deeply compelling, and it also really prompted me to think deeply about my own stories and how those things impacted me, and what that meant for me and my other vectors in life, and that is where I really started being a therapist, I think, in the philosophical sense, because I started thinking through what it meant for change to happen in people's lives. And that continues to be incredibly compelling to me and incredibly meaningful to me. That's how I got started. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  20:12  

Yeah, well, tell me more about stories. So you're talking about, like, the stories that we tell ourselves. 

Lindsey Carnick  21:31  

Yeah. So everybody has a collection of stories about themselves, right? And some of those stories are explicit and some aren't. Yes? Some of them are ones we know very well and that we can sort of make self deprecating comments about or toss off. How many times will somebody sort of make a joke about what role they played in their family? You know, I was the golden child. Hahaha, you know, you know what comes with that? Or I was the, I was the black sheep. Haha, you know what comes with that? Right? We point to these story lines, these sort of narratives and tropes that are very familiar, and yet it seems to me that often our ability to point to them obscures from us how meaningful they are, because they are still animating us in very important ways, and just because we sort of have our eye on them doesn't mean they're not influential. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  22:20  

Sure. Yeah. 

Lindsey Carnick  22:22  

And I think that's very important. And I think you know, stories is equivalent to meaning making for humans, right? That's how we do it. We make meaning out of events by creating stories around those events and explanations and justifications and those frameworks, in my experience, have really important ramifications for how we then go out and show up in our lives, and that has ramifications for the directions in which our lives go and which doors open and which doors close, and what it looks like when we go through those doors, and maybe even why we choose some doors over others, maybe to our detriment. I think that's profoundly important for most people. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  23:09  

Yeah, and it sounds like from working in the prison you saw kind of maybe some stories that led to the choices that were made or the outcome.

Lindsey Carnick  23:19  

Oh, for sure, and for sure, people's ability to envision themselves doing something differently, which could mean a lot of different things, right? But the strength of your storyline, I mean, a storyline is a true narrative. So the stronger your storyline, or multiple storylines, the more inevitable you see a certain climax and conclusion as, right? And so when we're committed to those storylines, whether we think it's inevitable or we've chosen it, or it's uncomfortable to imagine something else, or we just don't believe it's possible to have something else meaningful, it's impactful.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  23:52  

Yeah, like, I'm unlovable, so I can't have a relationship. I'm not smart enough, so I can't get that promotion, or can't get that, you know, be in that role that I want to be in, that kind of thing.

Lindsey Carnick  24:03  

Sure, it's I'm the responsible one, so I can't try certain things or take a different direction, because I'm the one who has to hold everybody else up. And if it is to be it is up to me. Very dangerous storyline, right? Very limiting storyline. And often, I think, along with those, people have a tremendous amount of fear that is understandable, because we are comfortable in those roles. Yeah. I mean, even when we're uncomfortable, we're comfortable, right? And it's, it can be very intimidating to imagine trying on a new role that you're not good at.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  24:39  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  24:40  

Because you're a beginner, by the time we get to adulthood, we are experts in in those roles, right? And so expertise is always very comfortable.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  24:48  

Yeah. 

Lindsey Carnick  24:48  

And people brain horn is very uncomfortable.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  24:51  

Absolutely. Well, it's just like what you were talking about with anxiety earlier. It's uncomfortable in some ways, and also comfortable in other ways, because it's kind of like, you know, I think it's. People stay in roles at companies that they don't like, or, you know, that aren't unfulfilling because they're like, well, at least I know what this one entails, right? It's kind of the devil you know, is that the saying?

Lindsey Carnick  25:12  

Absolutely, yeah, it's the familiarity factor. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but at least it's predictable. And I will take uncomfortable and predictable over unpredictable.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  25:24  

Even if it could be exponentially better, but yes, yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  25:27  

Yes, because it could also be exponentially worse, and I'm not willing to run that risk. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  25:31  

Yes, absolutely. So it sounds like then you do. You talked about learning about change and stories there, and then was anxiety and stress management a big part of of that, or did that kind of evolve over time in terms of the kinds of people that you were seeing and issues that you were dealing with?

Lindsey Carnick  25:50  

Yes and yes. So certainly, every experience that I've had as a therapist has always had a component to it. You know, being human is a fundamentally anxious experience, and what makes folks anxious certainly varies from person to person, right? But everybody's got some things they're concerned about right. Now that's different from saying, I'm not saying everybody has clinical anxiety. That's not true at all, I would be very clear. But the experience of feeling uncertain and not liking that feeling is basically universal, right? At least under some conditions for people. My interest in anxiety has been a through line for as long as I've been doing what I'm doing, simply because it's so prevalent for so many people who are seeking change, right? And that's what people seek out a therapist for. They want something to be different, whether it's a relationship to be different, whether it's a job to be different, whether it's some internal experience they're having to be different. There is usually-

Leanna Laskey McGrath  26:56  

Yeah. 

Lindsey Carnick  26:57  

-worry associated with either continuing to have more of the same right, or doing something different, or the daunting possibility that nothing can be different, that's very worry provoking. I'm going to use the word worry instead of anxiety, yes. So I think it's a through line in the sense that many people seeking out care are dealing with some kind of negative feelings around a change that maybe has already happened, maybe might happen. Maybe they want to happen, maybe they don't want to have happen. It's a through theme, for sure. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  27:30  

Well, I think the thing you just said is so interesting, that story that nothing can be different is just that right, it's a story. It's a belief that we're holding, even if we might want it to be different. A lot of times, we might have a story that it can't be because we're holding the world up or whatever, whatever circumstances or situation that we're in. We might have this, like very deeply held belief that nothing can change, that it just the way that it is, is the way it has to be,

Lindsey Carnick  28:04  

Yes, or we've imagined, in many cases, a set of consequences that will result from, say, setting down a certain storyline about ourselves. And the specter of those consequences is so daunting that it's intolerable. It doesn't mean that those consequences are inevitable. It just means it's what we're imagining. Because usually when people imagine the consequences of making a change. So for example, you know you you mentioned not taking care of everybody, right? Like not doing that, people imagine that everybody else will absolutely fall apart. Right? That sounds like a very undesirable consequence, especially for people you love and care about or whatever the conditions are right, and our beliefs about what will happen if we set those things down are usually rooted in some old things, not contemporary reality. And that's always interesting for people. Often, when people feel like they can't stop being something or stop being some way, because that's the example we're talking about, right? When someone believes, let's make up an easy example, that if they were to stop running to the rescue every time person F in their life, needed whatever, right? Then that person would just have nobody and usually not accurate. It's usually a sort of inflated sense of responsibility and an inflated sense of anxiety about what happens if I stop doing this, and then this person doesn't get what they need and and now well, and now it's my fault. It's my fault because I could have done it and I didn't do it, and so I'm now responsible for them not getting the fill in the blank, whatever it was, ride to the airport. And those fears really trap people into believing that they have to maintain these roles forever, if for no other reason than the anticipated catastrophized consequences are so daunting that they go, You know what? I'd rather live with this sort of uncomfortableness than that yes, be anxious that that's going to be the result? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  30:20  

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like if there's going to be anxiety, either way.

Lindsey Carnick  30:25  

Yes, exactly, exactly. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  30:28  

Yeah. I'm smiling about your story of rushing to someone's rescue, because I remember in a therapy session, my explaining this situation to my therapist, and her question to me was, what is it that makes you believe that you need to be the hero in this person's story? And I was like, oh god. It was like, one of it was one of those moments that I'll always remember, because I was just like, I never imagined that it could be any other way. And also, I never had it put to me that way, that that that's what I was doing, but it really was what I was, you know, believing was needed every time this person needed something.

Lindsey Carnick  31:10  

Anne Lamott, the writer, has a great quote which is helping is the sunny side of control. And I always thought that was so profound, right? Because in many instances, our helping instinct is really mitigating our own sense of anxiety, not the other person's. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  31:28  

Yes.

Lindsey Carnick  31:29  

They're not worried about find another ride to the airport nearly as much as you're worried about them not finding another ride to the airport. And then you being the bad guy, right? Nine times out of 10.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  31:39  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we're thinking about. So obviously, the holidays are coming up, and this is a stressful, anxiety inducing, I think, time for a lot of people, especially moms, executive moms, you know, we're trying to close out our year and, you know, make sure that we end the year strong at work, and also make the holidays magical for our kids, and plan all of the things, all of the family events, make sure that everyone has what they need. And, you know, we get everyone around to all the people, and there's just a lot right, and that our houses look wonderful and that we have things for all of the class parties and all of the parties that we're going to, and it's this time of year, I think can be a lot. And I guess I'm just curious, any thoughts that you have, advice that you have, you know, things that might be helpful for folks to think about during this time of year, specifically.

Lindsey Carnick  32:40  

yes, the number one question that I would recommend that everyone, myself included, keep firmly in their crosshairs is, what are my values, and is this thing in this moment a way of living out my values, or something else? Because so much of the things that we put on the must do list are not actually must do's in accordance with our values, and that works in a couple different ways. One is we have an incongruent sense of what matters where. Example, if you signed up to host your kids third grade holiday party, okay, your kid, nor any of the other kids are going to remember whether you homemade cupcakes and put all little doodads on the top and had the perfect little ruffly cake cup, and whether they were, you know, Snoopy with a ice cream cone Christmas Tree, or whether you bought a 12 pack of cookies. They won't. They really won't remember. And if your value is your kid knows you show up for them. What matters is that you're there with a 12 pack of cookies, not that you brought the prettiest cupcakes that anybody ever saw in their whole life, and sometimes in the pursuing of our values, which is always noble, I want my kid to know that I care, we miss the mark, we overshoot the mark and get into the territory of ego. Not only will my kid know that I care, but I will show up with the prettiest cupcakes anybody ever saw, so that these other parents will all think, fill in the blank, and the teacher will think fill in the blank, etc, etc. And we really need to gently reality test those ideas, right? Because anybody who's ever interfaced with a teacher knows that a teacher knows good and well, that your parenting has nothing to do with how fancy the cupcakes are you brought, right? The teacher has some crystal clear criteria on how they're judging your parenting, and the cupcake elaborate is not one of those metrics, right? 

Lindsey Carnick  34:50  

And similarly, we can get caught up, you know, caught up in like, what will other parents think? What? You know, this person always brings something really, really elaborate, etc, etc. That's fine. That's, that's their life, right? And you don't, you don't know anything about them, and they don't know anything about you. You are the expert on your values and what it looks like to live your values and to weed out anything else that is not an expression of those values. And we have to ask ourselves, when it comes to these things that create so much duress, especially in the holidays. Am I what is the reason for which I am doing this thing, and is it really in the service of something that's meaningful to me, or am I getting distracted? Am I getting caught up by metrics that I imagine are swirling around me, which to some degree may be real or imagined, but you get a choice about whether you participate in that. You get a choice about whether you participate in that. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  35:47  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  35:48  

And I come back to that again and again. You know, when people feel conflicted around the holidays, it's often because they feel like there's so many demands on them, right? As you point out. And I think our job is to go through those demands and triage which ones are in alignment with our values.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  36:08  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  36:08  

And which ones aren't. And then things get actually pretty simple and pretty clear.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  36:12  

Yeah. Well, I love so much everything you just said. And a couple of things that popped out for me is when you were talking about doing it for, you know, the teacher or the other parents, that kind of thing. I think also sometimes we do things because we have this expectations of ourselves. And especially I notice that when we lean more into work, like, when it's a busier time at work, then we start feeling guilty. We start feeling like, Oh, I'm not giving enough over here in this other area of my life, and so I need to, like, push harder over here and give more over here. And it ends up that we just keep giving, giving, giving, and, you know, depleting ourselves. And so sometimes it might be that we're trying to make the fanciest cupcakes to prove to ourselves that we care about our kids, right, and not just our jobs. 

Lindsey Carnick  37:01  

Yeah, sure. And it's up to all of us again to slow down and really be thoughtful about what we're doing. Byron Katie, who I love, great book. Yeah, love Byron Katie, right? Who would you be without your story? Do you really believe that making the fanciest cupcakes makes you a caring parent or makes your kid believe you know what I mean, you don't believe that. You don't absolutely believe that nobody believes that because the kids like cupcake and they don't care if it came from the store or you or the moon. They really, really don't, right? So we have to ask ourselves, do I believe this belief that's driving me right now? Am I being driven by a concept that I don't even buy into? And often, you know, that's the essence of mindlessness, is being driven unthinkingly, unconscientiously by something that you don't buy into. And I think that's true for many of us, at many points in our lives where we feel caught up in or swept up in a current of what we ought to be doing, or what love looks like, or what gratitude looks like, and so I'm doing the thing, but it's really not our expression of the thing, and that feels so icky because it's so disingenuous. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  38:16  

Yeah, well, I think that the busier we get, a lot of times, the easier it is to go mindless, just to, like, fall into that pattern where we're like, Well, I don't have time to think about my values. I don't have time to think about what I want, because, you know, I'm just going and that's, I think often, what our instinct is to do is just put our heads down and just get the job done and keep moving forward. Keep trudging forward, and that, I think, then leads to some of those times where we're spending way more time than we have to make the Snoopy cupcakes, and we're we don't stop and ask ourselves, why am I doing this? And you know, what value does it really have? And it's like we feel like we can't stop and check in with ourselves and have that level of mindfulness. And it's so ironic, because it would save us so much more time to buy the cookies at the store than to, you know, spend hours making the cupcakes.

Lindsey Carnick  39:11  

Yes, absolutely. And it's hard. I'm really empathetic. I struggle with this myself. Certainly the cookie thing is funny, because I come from a family where my mom was a baker. I mean, like, professionally, and she has strong feelings about homemade things. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  39:27  

Oh, yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  39:28  

Really strong feelings about homemade things, right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  39:30  

Yep. 

Lindsey Carnick  39:31  

And I can remember getting to a point in my life, and I can remember several instances where I would be forcing myself to bake things at crazy hours that made no sense for something the next day that people, firstly, did not care about and secondly, would not have taken it, who wouldn't have thought twice about it, right? If I had showed up with a box of cookies instead of a plate of cookies, nobody would have known. This the let alone thought about it, they're cookies, right? But I had this story about how if I didn't hand make things, people would think I didn't care about them. People would think that I took them for granted, and just would like, oh, whatever from the store will do. This whole storyline about what it would mean to people if I didn't show up with something homemade. And luckily for me, I started reality testing that theory at some point, and I discovered that people just thought I was nuts, actually translated into like, oh, you really care. They were like, Oh, you're bonkers. Wow, I don't know why you did that. I wouldn't have done that. That's nuts, right? Yeah, they actually thought it was straight bonkers. I've been carrying around the story that says, If I don't execute this like this, then these people will think this, and then they'll think this about me, and then it's all downhill from there. And that whole storyline was absolute bonk. Yeah, now you can bet to this day, I still have a little bit of like a should probably make something, you know, that's my first default reaction, and that's okay, because I recognize that not as a fact or the way things are. I recognize that as this really lovely expression of something I value, which is other people feeling valued. And at some point I was confused about expressions of value, right? And what I've discovered is that when you bring something to somebody, something, they say, Oh, thank you. And they don't overthink it about like, well, she bought this versus baked it. So does that mean she likes me more or less, or she values this relationship enough to bake me something or not enough to bake me something? Nobody thinks like this. Nobody right? Me. I mean only me. Although, interestingly, I would never judge somebody for that. When somebody shows up at my fill in the blank event and they've purchased something, I never think to myself, Oh, gosh, this person doesn't really care, because if they did, they would have baked this by hand. That thought has never occurred to me. Yet somehow I went through most of my life assuming that if I did that, I would be judged as flat terrible. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  42:16  

Well, it's very interesting how we do this. Our brains tell us that this is so important for us, even though we can logically recognize that we don't think that way in the reverse. 

Lindsey Carnick  42:29  

Yes, I mean, you know that that poor person named I, we rake over the coals in ways that we would never treat anybody else, but this I character really gets the short end of the stick every single time. We are really rough on I. And I think it's helpful in some ways, to maybe think about I as an entity like and are you holding I to the same standard you would hold Leanna? And if the answer is no, which it probably is, then you might want to recalibrate a little bit, right? Because if it's good enough for Leanna, it's good enough for I.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  43:07  

Yeah, well, I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about, like, our mindset and story about that, like, if we don't go all the way, then it's not worth doing, especially around the holidays. It's like, we've got to make sure that everything you know the lights are up, and the garland and the decorations and the tree and whatever else you know that we need to make sure is done, and the presents, it's like we've got to do it all the way or not at all. And I think that recognizing that that is a story, and it's an option, we could do it all the way, and here would be the consequences of that, or we could buy the cookies, or we could, you know, we could do it good enough. We could do it, you know, to make sure that it's done. And what you were talking about earlier kind of made me think about the importance of, just like, stepping back and looking at that macro view. And I think so often when we're in it and we're going and doing things, and we get so caught up in like, each little thing, each little task, all of the little micro things. And I think it's important to remind ourselves a step back and look at the macro view, like holistically. This holiday season, what are we doing and is it enough? Not is each little thing going to be enough?

Lindsey Carnick  44:26  

I love that, and I totally agree with that. And to your point about, you know, you said a second ago, going all the way, what does that mean? I mean, what do we think are the consequences of not doing that? Like, what exactly is the fallout?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  44:38  

Yeah, well, our kids won't feel loved, right? Like our kids will have a terrible holiday, right? They won't be as great as every all the other kids.

Lindsey Carnick  44:47  

Right. Which, of course, is patently not true, because what we know about what makes things meaningful for kids, I mean, we know this empirically, right? Is that A, comparison is the thief of joy. And B, it's adults who are in comparison mode, right? Kids don't you know, it's adults who know, I could have, I could have baked real cookies, but I chose not to. The kid just goes, cookie, great. I'm ecstatic. And the fact that you didn't spend two and a half hours on this meant you spent two and a half hours doing a puzzle with me. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  45:18  

Yes, I love that.

Lindsey Carnick  45:19  

Right? You, bought yourself time back that's in alignment with your values. You know, if you ask a kid, and I would not try and ask a kid this, because it would be a complicated question for a kid, but we can think it through. If you said to a kid, well, mommy can't play with you right now because she's baking you cookies, but then you're gonna have cookies, versus Do you want a cookie right now, and pull out of this bag or this box, and we can do a puzzle? The kid's gonna pick the second one.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  45:45  

Yeah, every time. 

Lindsey Carnick  45:47  

And you can every time. And you could, sort of like, and people try and do this, you know, you say, like, well, you know, mommy's making special cookies, and trust me, they're better. But this, none of this means anything. Kids want your time. Yeah, they really, really, really want your time and attention, right? And everything else is pretty much gravy, unless you frame it for them as, well this thing is more valuable, so we're doing it this way. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  46:09  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  46:10  

That's, you know, when we teach them comparison, we teach them how to steal joy from themselves. Because instead of being like, Oh, cookie, they go, Oh, I could have had a homemade cookie, except no kids said that ever.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  46:21  

Yeah, and then they and then they grow up and bake in all hours of the night to make sure that 

Lindsey Carnick  46:27  

For staff meetings, for people who don't care.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  46:30  

Right. I think the other thing that happens is that whenever we put so much pressure on ourselves and we spend all this extra time doing all these extra things, we actually end up stressing ourselves out a lot more, and then we don't usually show up in the way that we want to with our kids, right? And so it's like, not only are we not doing the puzzle, but now we are a little bit more on edge, a little bit more stressed, a little bit more easy to anger, you know, a little more snappy well, and especially, you know, frustrated if they don't appreciate the thing that we're doing. 

Lindsey Carnick  47:07  

Yeah, I was gonna say, primed for resentment. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  47:09  

Yeah, absolutely. 

Lindsey Carnick  47:10  

Kids are one easy example. But adults too. Adults don't again, the people my staff meeting don't know that I stayed up all night baking, unless I advertise it, right? So now there's this expectation on my part, whether I admit it or not, right, whether I'm conscious of it or not, that this will be appreciated, that I made all this effort. Nobody knows. And again, if they did, they'll be like, you're bonkers. I bought burritos on my way. Yay me. You are a terrible decision maker, lady.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  47:37  

And then we create a story that no one appreciates us and 

Lindsey Carnick  47:41  

Yes, yes, and that we're unseen and unheard and unsung, and we, you did that yourself, right?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  47:46  

Yeah, it is very in the culture like we talked about. It is when almost every woman that I talk to looks at her value to an organization as the time put in, how hard she works, not necessarily her inherent worth or her intelligence, you know, that kind of thing. It's more like I'm going to be the hardest worker on the team. I'm going to always go above and beyond and do whatever it takes. And I think that we have kind of been trained to show people that we care and prove our worth and value by working harder.

Lindsey Carnick  48:28  

Yes, I totally agree with that, and being aware of that and sort of sitting with and tolerating the little bit of mild distress with the idea that comes along with letting go of that, right? I mean, that's not an easy thing to just let go of, because, depending on the conditions, you know, we've been sort of socialized to believe there are consequences to that, right? There's a reason women are overcompensating. It didn't come from nowhere, and yet we still get to make a decision about our values and what we want our lives to be about. And there may always be, or frequently be some tension there, and there may frequently be a sense that we can't be all things to all people, because that's true, and it's up to us to set the tone of saying, I don't have to be all things to all people, and I'm okay with that, and be willing to be, if judged is the word, then, so be it, because only I'm living my life, and either I'm going to do that in accordance with my values or I'm going to do it in accordance with somebody else's values and I'm going to choose mine. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  49:55  

Yeah, it's just like, you know, we said before, there's anxiety, either way, there's consequences either way, right? Of anything that we choose, if we choose to live thinking about what everyone you know, making sure that we're all things to all people, then there are a set of consequences that go along with that, and the set of benefits as well. And if we choose to say, I'm gonna live in alignment with my values, same thing, right? There's still a set of consequences that goes with it and a set of benefits, and it's just to your point, we get to choose which ones we want to bring with us. 

Lindsey Carnick  50:31  

Yeah, I think what I would add to that is that I think often our set of beliefs about the consequences of choosing not to be all things to all people are not congruent with the reality, and that gets back to like, do you really believe that your kid or your teacher is going to think differently of you because you made the most elaborate cupcakes or didn't? Some of the consequences, not all, some of the consequences are imaginary.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  50:56  

Yeah, absolutely.

Lindsey Carnick  50:57  

Or imagined, right? And so I think that matters.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  51:00  

Yeah.

Lindsey Carnick  51:00  

Because when we start to make decisions about which values we're going to show up for and which values we're going to, you know, prioritize and be in alignment with, if we're making those decisions based on inaccurate beliefs about what the consequences are of not doing that, then that's skewing the experiment for sure.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  51:22  

Absolutely.

Lindsey Carnick  51:23  

Right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  51:23  

Yeah, well, I love this conversation, and I think that hopefully we're giving everyone just some things to think about in this holiday season, as we are feeling the stress and anxiety of wanting to be all things to all people, and, you know, having these very high, unrealistic expectations of ourselves, as we tend to do. So I'm curious, Lindsey, is there anything else that you would want to share or offer for folks to think about? You know, that might be helpful as we're getting into a season. 

Lindsey Carnick  52:01  

Yes, a couple of things. One is, I can't emphasize enough the power of modeling, and sometimes it's hard for people, myself included, to think it's back to the you know, that person named I, what, what that person should or should not be getting or treated, right? It's hard to do things for ourselves, to convince ourselves that it's worth it, to do it ourselves, and modeling things like boundaries and living in accordance with your values is so good for other people too. We are not doing anybody a favor when we allow them to run over our boundaries, or when we allow them to talk us into something we don't want to do, or twist our arm into something we don't have time for, you are not helping them by going along with that, you are actually doing them a disservice, believe it or not. And sometimes it's helpful to try and remember that if you won't do it for your own sake, do it for theirs. You're not doing them any favors. You're not helping them learn how to be successful in the world with other people by letting them railroad you. It's not a good way to get your needs met, and eventually that's going to be a losing strategy for them. So you can help them get on the road to success by not enabling that behavior. Yeah, that's a good thing for them, right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  53:23  

Yeah. 

Lindsey Carnick  53:24  

And sometimes I think of it that way when I'm struggling to do it for myself, so to speak.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  53:31  

Well, I love that perspective. I think so often, similarly, I will recommend to moms, to you know, think about if you can't do it for yourself, do it for how you're going to show up for your kids, or right or like.

Lindsey Carnick  53:43  

Absolutely.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  53:44  

Because a lot of times to your point, I totally agree, we have a hard time justifying doing something for ourselves, but whenever it will benefit somebody else, then sometimes it feels a little bit more accessible. So I love that perspective 

Lindsey Carnick  54:00  

More justifiable, yeah. The other thing I would say is about the idea of gratitude, which I think is an interesting, you know, powerful concept, but that also has some interesting ins and outs and interpretations. You know, gratitude is really great. And also, for some people, it creates a tremendous sense of guilt. Yes? So somebody feels will have a pang of, you know, sadness or grief or irritability, or whatever the case may be, and then immediately feel guilty. And it's mostly women, right, immediately feel guilty, and they sort of start to brow beat themselves. I shouldn't feel irritated right now. I should be 100% grateful 100% of the time for all these things that I have. And I shouldn't be irritated at my children, because there are some people who want children and don't have them, and how dare I am a terrible human being. And it's right down this sort of slide into like almost self loathing, because they were feeling irritable because their kids. They just don't paint on the floor, or whatever the case may be. And I just want to, you know, remind all of us that A, gratitude is not an inoculation against regular human experience like irritability. It's just not it's not supposed to work that way, quite frankly. And you can be irritated that your kid just spilled paint on the floor, or fill in the blank, whatever thing you're irritated with. That's not a commentary on whether you're a grateful human being or not. That's called, It's irritating when paint goes on the floor. This is not about gratitude or being grateful or ungrateful. And if there's someone in your world who you're going to see over the holidays, who grates on your last nerve, and your first instinct is to be annoyed with yourself and be like, I'm a terrible person. I should be grateful that I even have a fill in the blank relative, because some people don't, and you're down the road to sort of like berating yourself and self loathing about how terrible you are. It's not necessary. Being irritated with somebody who irritates you, not a referendum on whether you're a grateful person or not, it's called you're feeling irritated. That's okay. And I think for many high performing women in particular, this is a really painful experience that they have a lot of the year, not just at the holidays, where they are feeling some kind of feeling that strikes them as unacceptable for someone who is grateful. I shouldn't have that feeling, because I'm aware of how much better I have it in these ways than all these other people. If I were truly grateful, then I wouldn't ever have those feelings. What does this say about me? And I just want to reiterate that it doesn't say anything other than you can be incredibly grateful and still be irritated. You can be incredibly grateful and still be sad, and everything being in your life going really well compared to whoever it is you're thinking of doesn't mean that you won't feel sad or doesn't mean that you won't experience suffering. These are universal experiences that are not relative and don't take away from other people. You acknowledging that you're sad doesn't take away from someone else's sad, whether their conditions are objectively better or worse, or more desirable, or whatever. We're all having the same experience here. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  57:27  

Yeah, I think that's such an important thing to remember. I think that kind of the way our society is set up, it's kind of like we have this expectation that as we kind of move up the rankings or the hierarchy that we should experience, we should be happier more of the time. We should experience more positive emotions and really not experience negative emotions anymore. It's like we probably have an assumption that famous people don't have as many negative emotions. And I think what you're, I hear you saying is that actually, we're all having a human experience. 8 billion of us on this planet are having a human experience that involves both positive and negative emotions, and that that doesn't mean that something has gone wrong or that you know that there's anything wrong with you, you know it's just part of the experience. 

Lindsey Carnick  58:20  

It's just part of the experience. And in this world of information, where we all have so much information about what's going on with other people in in a granular sort of way, that's really remarkable, right? I mean, I don't know how much more granular it can get at this point. We may we may have peaked out on granularity, but it's very understandable that when you're sitting in your, you know, nice office, or whatever it is, and you see pictures of somebody in a war torn part of the world, it's understandable that you would go, God, I have nothing to complain about. What's wrong with me? That is that's bad, right? That is suffering that's real. And what I hear so often is people saying, like, my my problems aren't real. Compared that's a problem.  I'm aware that these are not problems. And what I would say is that we can make a really powerful connection toward that, that thought, which is like, Oh, I see a person in a war zone, and I think to myself, Wow, that person has real problems, and comparatively, I have no problems. And that's a good thought to have. Okay, that means you're awake, that means you're conscientious, that means your head's screwed on straight. And also that doesn't mean that you don't feel sad about what makes you sad, and you are entitled to feel sad about what makes you sad. The fact that somebody else is in a war zone doesn't have anything to do with the thing that makes you sad. Sad or not sad, and it's not going to cancel out, brow beating yourself with what's happening to other people is going to make you feel so much worse. Okay? It's not going to make pop you out of it and make you feel better. It's going to make you feel guilty, more guilty that you feel bad when you feel like you have no reason to feel bad. It's not necessary. You can just acknowledge and go like, Yeah, this is a sad thing going on in my life. That is a sad thing going on my life. I'm not claiming to be in a war zone. I'm not, I'm not claiming that it's like that, but it's okay to be honest, relative to where I am in my life, that this is a sad thing going on for me, the two things aren't related.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:00:38  

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Appreciate you saying that. So where can people find you should they want to work with you? And what would they reach out to you for? And how do you work with people? Tell us more about that.

Lindsey Carnick  1:00:51  

I'm licensed in nine states, so I see private clients in nine states, and certainly the best way to get a hold of me is on my website, which is www.onwardpsych, P, S, Y, C, H, services.com, there's a Contact Me form. There's a phone number which I answer. You can call me on the phone. You can text me the phone number on the site. There's also an email contact, so they're welcome to find me there. I work with adult individuals and couples. I also do keynote speaking across the country, workshops for large groups of people who want to learn practical tactical stress management and burnout prevention skills. And practical tactical, to me means they require two minutes or less and no additional time or resources or costumes or facilities or equipment, you can just step around the corner or you can just sit in the same place you're sitting and sort of intervene with yourself when you're having an acute stress episode. So I'm busy with those which is really wonderful, and if you're interested in some of those practical, tactical coping skills, every Wednesday on Instagram, I put out a video with a practical tactical coping skill and very concrete examples and demos of how to use them. I like people to walk away with something they can use immediately no matter what.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:02:16  

Yeah, I love that. Well, wonderful. And we'll link everything in the show notes and on the website, so everyone will be able to find you and go check out Lindsey and her work. And of course, if your company needs a keynote speaker, or if you're looking for support and you live in one of the nine states, then be sure to reach out to Lindsey. So thank you, Lindsey, so much for being here today. Really appreciate this, and I just love this conversation. So thank you.

Lindsey Carnick  1:02:42  

It's been such a pleasure. Leanna, thank you for having me. It's been really lovely. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:02:46  

Likewise, well, thank you so much everyone for tuning in, and we will see you all next week. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:02:54  

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.