Feeling Behind in Life: Running Out of Time

Transcript

This is episode 13 of In The Messy Podcast. I'm your host Jan, a registered psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada. And this podcast exists because we envision a future where every relationship, no matter how messy it may seem, has the potential to evolve into something beautiful and thriving. And if you like this podcast, I'd love it if you can hit the subscribe button and please leave a review.

So today we're gonna talk about how to cope when you're feeling like you're running out of time. So when you're ready, let's begin. Have you ever looked at your life and just felt like time is slipping through your fingers? Maybe you're saying to yourself, oh my gosh, like I am 35 years old and I still haven't had any relationship potential and I'm getting older by the minute and I can't do this anymore.

I'm running out of time. Or maybe you're seeing all of these other people that have graduated, your peers and they're all in corporate and they're making tons of money and you're feeling like, oh, when am I going to have my career break? Or it may be you are asking yourself, I've been dealing with so much anxiety, so much depression, that I just feel really crippled right now, and I'm seeing everybody move forward with families, with plans, with their careers, with vacation even, and I'm just stuck here. Where is my growth, where is my time to shine? And it's especially harder in this day and age of social media where we start to compare ourselves to the people that we see. And that beauty standard and if I was younger, I wish I did bungee jumping. I wish I achieved so much more. I wish I, and you can fill in the blank here.

As a psychotherapist, sometimes my clients come to me and they're genuinely upset because they feel like they lacked in life and now they just have to catch up. And it's really hard because when you look at them, you see the pain and the torment and the struggle of, I want to achieve all of these milestones. Why can't I? I'm pushing myself. Why can't I succeed? I am always failing. So one of my clients came up to me and. This is a few years ago, and she was crying and really upset because she's getting older and she wants to find the love of her life, and she's been on dating apps. She's tried everything underneath the sun, and it seems like no guy wants her. No guy wants to be with her. No guy wants to start something that lasts with her.

And for her, that was really upsetting and she was having all of these thoughts about, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, i'm not wife material. People just keep on leaving me and I don't know why. Even when I ask them, I don't know why. They just say, it's not a good fit. I love that conversation that we had. Goodbye and she felt like she's running out of time. And her anxiety, she felt it all in her body, in her heart, in her gut, in her shoulders, all over, and she didn't know what to do with it. And she came to me saying, Janette, I'm just so lost, I've done everything that I can, but it feels like I'm running out of time. So today I just wanna talk about. You know why that feeling happens, why it's so common, and also some practical ways to cope so that you can reclaim your peace, your purpose, and to continue going rather than getting stuck in the situation that you're in.

So I want you to ask yourself. What does running out of time feel like for you? Some people feel a lot of anxiety around it and they're feeling it manifesting in their body. Maybe they feel it in their heart, and it's just this knot that just is hard to untangle, or maybe it feels like a iron fist that just keeps on punching your gut. There's that anxiety there, and maybe there's that urgency I gotta do something. I really gotta make something happen because if I don't make it now, if I don't make that career change now, if I don't do something now, I'm just gonna stay the same. I'm gonna stay stuck. And at the same time, it might feel like I am so overwhelmed because I don't know where to start, or it's just too much. How am I going to get from point A to point B? And it feels terrible, doesn't it? When you're just so stuck, it feels like you can go on Reddit, or maybe you could go on Instagram, or maybe you're even listening to this podcast to figure out what to do. And that The main point that I want you to get from this is to just identify this feeling of running out of time and how it feels in your body. And then understand yourself when you feel that feeling, what do you end up doing? Do you freeze? Do you start running away and avoiding, do you tackle it head on, right? Or you just worry about it without really doing anything? Or maybe you do something completely different, right? Something you're good at, maybe, it's chores, right? Sometimes when I'm feeling stressed, when I'm feeling like I'm running out of time, I'll do something. And in university, instead of doing the studies for my exam or writing that paper, you bet I would be doing my chores and that would be something that would be very counterintuitive, but somehow that kind of made me feel better. So I would do something, even though I feel like I'm running out of time, even though this exam is stressing me out, or this decision is stressing me out, I'll do something else. So it's normal to feel like this. It's your attachment. Your values and your goals just showing up. And so just validate that and say, yeah, I'm feeling like I'm running out of time because I want more for myself.

And some of these common triggers are unfortunately comparing yourself to others, right? When you see other people doing something so great, maybe you're thinking to yourself, why couldn't I come up with that? Why is everything so hard for me? Maybe it's societal pressures of, by this age I should know how to deal with certain things, or I should have a job by now, or I should have a family by now. These are the societal pressures. There's also this idea of seeing milestones pass. So for example, in your relationship, you've been dating for so long. You want to move to the next stage, but you don't really know how to, and it feels like, oh no, I'm losing time. Especially for women. Some women including myself, and that's why I can speak to it is after a certain age, you're just wondering when you're gonna get engaged or when you're gonna get married because your biological. Clock is ticking and you want to have a family and you want to move on with your career, right? And maybe there are other milestones. Maybe your health isn't doing well, maybe your career isn't doing well. Maybe those personal goals that you've had every January 1st has not been met. And so it feels like when am I going to reach those goals? So it's normal to feel this way. Everybody feels it some way or another, and it just doesn't help that social media is just blaring in your ear and your face what the social standards are of today.

So why does this happen? I wonder if we can take a deep dive into anxious attachment and ask yourself. Are there moments where this anxiety of running out of time is connected to my underlying attachment style? Does that anxiety somehow help me? To feel a little bit more safe if I'm doing something about it.

What that means is that your brain's alarm system is getting triggered, right? And we've already talked about so many different ways of how to calm that amygdala down, calm that fear center down so that our logical sides of our brain can. Become reactivated again. And we can think about this in a very reasonable and rational way. Not void of emotion, but not overrun with emotion. And then also there's maybe fears there. Fears of doing things poorly, fears of it's not perfect? For example, finding that perfect person, finding that one person that fits all your boxes is preventing you from connecting with somebody that is actually really great and would really love to be in a relationship with you.

Perhaps there's also the idea of worrying for the future because. Sometimes that's what anxiety does, right? We don't just worry about the present, sometimes we worry about the future when we feel like we've lost time and we're messing up our future self or our future life. So in this nervous system perspective, I want you to understand that when you feel anxious, your nervous system is starting to get hijacked. The sympathetic system is increasing your amygdala's firing, your frontal cortex is not firing as much, right? And so we tend to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn when we think about the lost time. And sometimes what happens is we start to catastrophize, right? It's a big word about all the bad things that can happen. And sometimes it's so true, right?

If I don't get a job, then I won't be able to pay my bills, then I won't be able to find somebody that loves me because they want somebody who is financially secure And then if I can't find somebody, then I'll be all alone and I'll live in a box as a homeless person and I will die. And so that is catastrophizing. That's the anxiety running amuck. And perhaps. The anxiety also creates this huge barrier and it overestimates what should be done rather than, okay, what is the little baby step that I can do now to move myself a little bit closer to that goal? And so I would just wanna highlight that. Often says less about reality and more about what's happening on the inside, that internal pressure, 'cause when you look around, nothing really has changed in your environment, nothing really has changed about you. However, there's that internal pressure of I gotta get something done or something bad might happen. I'm gonna miss out. I'm gonna lose control. My life is not going to be the thing that I want it to be.

So what shall we do in the meantime? We have something in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT, that is all about distress tolerance. How can we calm ourselves and soothe ourselves down when the emotions get too much? So that includes grounding and self-soothing, doing breathing exercises, mindfulness activities, scanning our bodies, doing short meditation, could also help to do a perspective change as well.

And the fastest way that I find is to actually journal what is actually under your control. The thing about journaling is that while your brain is going so fast, sometimes it's good just to slow that down by writing things down.

Another thing is prioritization, which is identifying one to three key actions instead of trying to fix everything at once. If it is I need to find somebody that loves me, that cares about me, perhaps it is actually going to networking events to find people that you would be attracted to and find more touch points. It could potentially be messaging that person that you are interested in and also have self-compassion for yourself.

And it's important while you're having self-compassion and telling yourself, Hey, this is a really hard moment. I'm struggling right here, right now. It's also important to reframe that inner voice from saying, I'm too late, I screwed up, I messed up in my life to I'm exactly where I am right now, i'm exactly where I need to be right now in this season. And that's okay. Everybody has their journey.

Longer term strategies include helping you to work on your attachment and the inner voices that might come from your childhood. It will help you understand your fears and the patterns that keep you stuck, and prevent you from actually achieving what you wanna achieve. It will help you prevent also from future panic.

Another thing is boundary setting. A lot of the times there are unnecessary pressures. Such as what society says or what your parents say, or what your family says, or what your friends are doing, that really pressure you. And so instead of saying yes all the time, this is what I want, almost setting a boundary and saying, I wanna focus on what truly matters for myself. Another thing that you could try to do long term is to break cycles of comparison. So focus on yourself, on your personal growth rather than timelines. And there's a saying better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today. If you can focus on comparing yourself to yesterday or a year ago for sure, there are some points of growth that you would be able to see, even though they may be slight. Another thing that you can try doing is doing the daily micro practices. Keeping consistent habits to help you feel grounded and secure. That's why I always encourage my clients to have a gratitude journal, something to help you understand that, okay, I am better today than yesterday, and I will continue to improve because I'm working on myself. Even when life feels fast, you can take moments in your day to step back and be mindful about what's actually going on inside.

So when my clients implement this in their lives, they actually find a lot of different results. For example, one of them decided that, you know what? I'm gonna focus on my own personal growth. I'm not gonna focus on getting a guy, and I'm not gonna focus on, okay, I'm running out of time. I'm just gonna focus on myself. And actually within six months, because she was doing the things that she loved to do and that gives her joy, she actually met somebody at volleyball. She was not looking for a relationship, but because she was already doing things that made her happy, right? There were people that take notice and there was a guy that approached her, and now they're in a relationship.

Not to say that's gonna happen to you, but when you focus on what you can control, rather than let anxiety control your narrative and the dialogue that you have. Other people notice it and it's attractive to people.

So focus on what you can say other than I'm behind in relationships, I'm running out of time in life, and focus more on how I can make small daily shifts to help myself regain control and regain peace. And it's a ripple effect. When you feel calmer, you make better decisions, and you can gain stronger relationships with yourself and with others.

And so in closing, I want to remind you that you don't have to solve everything all at once. Your sense of urgency doesn't have to control you. Focus on the next step, then once you've achieved that next step, focus on another one and another one. So an actionable takeaway is pick one small thing today to slow down, ground yourself, and focus on what truly matters and every small step creates momentum and the right time to do it is always now.

So notice any one area in your life where you feel like time is slipping, and just journal what you can do about it right now. If this episode resonated to you, share it with a friend, leave a review, or you can connect with me over on my website at janettechu.ca. That's J-A-N-E-T-T-E-C-H-U dot C-A for more tools on emotional resilience and secure relationships.

And finally, if no one has told you yet, I believe in you and I'm here for you in the messy.