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#126: Why You Really Can’t Switch Off (Even When You’re Exhausted)

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You’re productive. You’re high-functioning. You get stuff done.

But when it’s finally time to rest?
You can’t. Your brain is busy, your body’s tense, and you end up scrolling your way into another restless night.

In this episode, I’m diving into what’s really going on when you can’t switch off — even when you’re beyond exhausted. 

We’ll explore:

  • Why rest feels uncomfortable (even when your body is screaming for it)
  • What autonomic rigidity is, and why it’s keeping you stuck in a go-go-go mode
  • The “Window of Tolerance” and how to know when you’re in it (or totally out of it)
  • How to start retraining your nervous system to return to calm — without forcing or fixing

Plus:
 I’ll share effective ways to start shifting your state today.

Mentioned in the Episode:

💛 The Clear & Calm Reset
3 soothing nervous system audio tools to help you recalibrate in 4, 8 or 16 minutes.
Perfect for mornings, mid-afternoon pauses, or evenings.
Grab all three for just £11 → The Calm & Clear Reset

💨 Breathe Better Basics
My 45-minute functional breathing mini-course to help you identify and correct sneaky breath patterns that are keeping your body stuck in stress.
No fluff — just science-backed tools to help you finally feel calmer, clearer, and in control.
Yours for £47 → Breathe Better Basics

🎧 If you loved this episode, don’t forget to leave a review or share it with a friend who needs a reset.

Download The Breath Check-Up - your FREE guide to understanding how well you're breathing right now.

Download my energising 5 Minute Morning Practice to get your day started in the best way possible.

To find out more about my membership The Inner Space go to: https://www.pollywarren.com/theinnerspace

Email me at: info@pollywarren.com
https://www.pollywarren.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pollywarrencoaching/

Speaker 1:

Are you, like me, riding the roller coaster of midlife and menopause and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self-doubt? Well, it's time to stress less and shine more. It's time to ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and tap back into the incredible woman you already are, because midlife isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning of becoming more you, more grounded, more radiant, more powerful than ever before. Join me each week for real, uplifting conversations to help you feel better, think clearer and live with more joy, purpose and ease, because it's never too late and you're to metamorphosis. Well, this is a little bit different. You can't actually obviously see, but I am actually recording this episode in a cupboard. So I've been waiting all day. It is Monday. I've left it really last minute to record this episode, which is due due out tomorrow, and all morning my next door neighbours have been having scaffolding put up and there's been loads and loads of noise. I've been waiting for the moment to record without all the noise. Anyway, they're still there. So I thought you know what I'm going to move into a cupboard, which is kind of the only place in the house where I can't hear the noise. So here I am kneeling, my laptop is propped up on the laundry basket, but hopefully it will be a nice clear sound. So that is what I'm doing. It feels a bit weird, but actually it feels OK. So here we go.

Speaker 1:

So this week again I am doing a solo episode. It is just me, and today's episode is for you. If you are someone who often feels quite tired, quite exhausted, but you struggle to switch off, it's that feeling you have when, at the end of the day, you finally sit down but your brain doesn't stop and you know you need to rest. You can feel that in your body, but it's like you're kind of still stuck in that fifth gear. I want to tell you something really important, something which I wish someone had said to me during the height of my perimenopause years. But also at that time I had the small children, I was doing it all, and actually it still does feel like that sometimes, when my nervous system is kind of holding everything really, really tightly and my mind can't stop. Basically, the reason that you can't switch off is because your body has just forgotten how to. It's not that you're bad at resting, your body has just forgotten how. So this episode is all about that. So it's about why we stay on when, in fact, everything else inside us is begging for us to switch off and begging for us to take a break and rest.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to be discussing what's actually happening in your nervous system and how we can gently, safely and effectively remind the body how to come back to a feeling of calm, without force, without faking it, how we can really come back to a true sense of feeling really chilled out. So what we're going to talk about are a few key things. So we're going to talk about what autonomic rigidity is. That's a bit of a mouthful, but I'm going to explain why your nervous system might feel stuck in stress mode. I'm going to talk a little bit about a concept called the window of tolerance and how to tell when you're in it or if you're kind of totally outside of it. I'm also going to talk about the real reason stillness feels so hard, especially if you're quite a high-functioning woman, and I'm going to share some simple tools that can help you soften back into your body, and I'm going to definitely walk you through some practices you can try immediately. Going to definitely walk you through some practices you can try immediately, so let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So what we're talking about this inability to be able to switch off it really is something that has been such a part of my life and it's something I've really noticed with a lot of the people I work with and just generally with a lot of people, full stop. So it's when you have the busiest day and you're dreaming of that moment when you can just sit down, you can relax, but yet 10 seconds later you're checking your emails, you suddenly get up and tidy a messy corner, or you're looking at the washing pile and you decide, oh, I can only relax when I folded that. Or then you start. Then you do sit down, then you start checking Instagram and it's like you're constantly doing something. You have this need to do something.

Speaker 1:

I used to think this meant I wasn't trying hard enough to relax, I wasn't doing enough things to help me relax, that something was wrong with me, that I needed to be more disciplined, perhaps more kind of zen. But here is what I've learned and what changed everything for me your body doesn't know how to switch off because it doesn't feel safe enough to switch off. That always on feeling isn't. It's not a personality flaw, it's not just you. It's a nervous system pattern. What I was experiencing, and what you're probably experiencing, is something called autonomic rigidity. Now, this is what that means your autonomic nervous system, which I know now. I've spoken about this quite a lot and I know that you probably know this, but it has two main gears. So you've got your sympathetic, which is when you're alert, activated, doing moving, and then you've got your parasympathetic, which is more restful, relaxed. It's more restorative, and it's when you digest your food and your body heals. And when you live, as majority of us do, in a world where doing is rewarded, where high performance is normal, where anxiety, people pleasing, probably some level of trauma, have trained your body to stay on alert. What happens is your system adapts, it learns that being on is safer than being off, even if you're feeling so exhausted. So this is what we call autonomic rigidity. It's when you get stuck in that alert state, not because you're broken or you're just that is the way you are. It's because your body thinks it's been really clever and it's protecting you.

Speaker 1:

And this shows up in so many different ways. So, for example, you could just be. You say, you're lying on the sofa all day. You're thinking you're relaxing, but actually you are still lost in really loads of worrying thoughts and you can't get out of them. So you never really feel like you're resting. You could even be, for example, outside having a lovely walk, you're on a really serene path, but what happens? You're not really truly there. You're and my gosh this has been me on so many occasions You're kind of rushing through it. For me, if I'm taking the dog for walks, sometimes it's like I've got to get this done, I've got to tick my ticket off the list. So you rush through it and you kind of almost have this need to get it over with so that you can start your next thing. So you're never really relaxing and enjoying it.

Speaker 1:

It could be that you know you are surrounded by your family, your friends and I mean this one particularly with your friends. Maybe you're still worrying about what they're thinking of you. Or if your family are still worrying about, are they okay, what's going on? Another way it can show up is and gosh, I'm sure you can rate this one you're reading a book and then you read the same page about five times and you just realise none of it is going in. Or, even worse, you're listening to one of your kids tell you a story and then you realise you haven't actually heard a word.

Speaker 1:

So it's when you're not present in the moment. It's when your brain is off doing a million other things. It's thinking about the email you've got to send, it's thinking about the work call you've had or the client. And it's not failure, it's not. It's your body saying I don't feel safe here yet. So it doesn't matter what you're doing. What matters is how you're doing it, because, on the flip side, you could have a full week of work. You finish everything, you finish all your tasks for the day and you feel like you did enough. You feel like, oh, I can shut my laptop and I can properly chill out. You could be stuck in traffic really awful traffic jam, really late but if your nervous system is relaxed and regulated, then and you feel safe, then you can feel relaxed and grounded in your body and just knowing you're not in a rush. You could be, for example, really low on money, but you know your needs are covered.

Speaker 1:

This is where we want to get to, to this place where, even when things aren't going well, you have this ability to be able to still feel like you can switch off. So that is the absolute where we're heading for. But equally, we want all those other good moments. We want to be able to appreciate those as well and enjoy those. So to rest is simply to be within the capacity you have to feel safe. Okay, I'm going to say that again. So to rest is simply to be within the capacity you have to feel safe. Okay, I'm going to say that again. So to rest is simply to be within the capacity you have to feel safe. Ultimately, that is what our nervous systems are primed for. They want you to feel safe.

Speaker 1:

When we're safe, we go into this, into our parasympathetic, into our ventral, vagal state, and that's when everything feels good. That is what we want, and the good news is, you can gently retrain your nervous system to come back to safety, come back to calm. You can teach your body what safety feels like again, and you can learn to rest. It's not as a task, but as a state. Your body remembers and it will remember because you have, at once upon a time, been able to do this. So this is what I'm going to show you how to do so.

Speaker 1:

Next, I want to introduce you to a concept that's really changed the way I myself and many of my clients think about their energy, their emotions and their ability to cope, and it's called the window of tolerance, and once you know how to work with it, it becomes a really empowering tool to use when things feel like they are spiraling out of control. So just imagine your nervous system has a let's call it a natural zone, a range where everything feels good, everything feels manageable, you're alert, but you're also calm. At the same time, you're able to focus, you're able to adapt to situations, you can take on life and you feel like the best version of you. This is your window of tolerance. This is known when you're in your. It's known as your ventral vagal state, and this is the zone we all want to be in the majority of the time. This is where we want to hang out and spend most of our time in.

Speaker 1:

But when you're under chronic pressure, when you're carrying all the loads even if they're, you know, invisible loads and you're constantly on, what happens is you get pushed outside of this window of tolerance and your system does what it's wise to do. So we can either go up, we get into that sort of hyper arousal, where that's your fight or flight, your sympathetic mode. That's when you start to feel a little bit anxious, a little bit snappy, overstimulated, you overreact at things, you can't think clearly, you feel like you have to keep going, even if inside you know you're crushing or your system goes into hypoarousal. So this is known as your dorsal vagal state. So this is when it's kind of like the freeze or the fawn or the collapse. So this is often when you can sometimes feel numb, you can feel flat, disconnected. It's kind of like that depressed state. You can't think clearly but you also can motivate yourself to to make changes, to, to do stuff. It's when you're feeling really or exhausted but you can't rest. So this is probably it, when you know a state also known as burnout, um, and it can. You know it's a. It's it's part of the trauma response as well.

Speaker 1:

So that feeling of being off, like your spark has completely gone or your emotions are just too much, that is when you've fallen outside of your window of tolerance. And the thing is, despite what a lot of people think, you can't use your mindset, you can't mindset your way back into it and you can't talk yourself into calm if your body doesn't feel it. You need to speak the language of your nervous system. So the reason why your mindset won't work here is because these states aren't created by thoughts. They're created by the body. Your nervous system is responding to feeling your brain responsible for reason, for thinking things through, for reflection and for calm. They simply go offline, they just disappear. So trying to think your way out is really like, I suppose, it's a bit like shouting directions at someone who's just not even in the room. So it's a bit like shouting directions at someone who's just not even in the room, so it's just not going to work. And that's where we need to have gentle tools that really focus on the body. That's when we need those, and there are so many. There's a variety of different tools, and many of which I teach these in Breathe Better Basics, one of my courses, and also in the inner space, my membership, and of course, also my one-to-one offerings.

Speaker 1:

So if you've been trying to force yourself to relax which I certainly have, you know, if you're trying to force yourself to meditate because you feel that's going to help you, or simply just trying to do less although I think that's always really hard because often in life there are so many things to do, and it's not about doing less so much. It's about finding ways to to manage everything you're doing in a way that feels good. I would say to you, if you're doing all of those things, you're not doing it wrong. Your body just needs it needs a new map, a new map back to know what calm feels like. So let's just talk about the how. How do you do that? Well, it's not with willpower. Well, it's not with willpower. It's not by force, it's not by forcing stillness. It's about reminding your body what safety feels like, and that is through physiological experience. So, as I said, it's not just the mindset work. Obviously, mindset work is really important and there's definitely a place for it. But with this, with feeling safe in your body, you've got to remind your body what that feels like.

Speaker 1:

So a really good way of doing this is through something called NSDR, which stands for non-sleep deep rest. Now, this term was coined by Dr Andrew Huberman, so I love his podcast. It can be quite science-y in certain places, but I do actually really like him and he's talked a lot about non-sleep deep rest. What it is. It's a category of practices that guide the body into a state of real deep restoration without actually needing to go to sleep. So it's things like yoga, nidra, body scans, progressive muscle relaxation, guided deep rest, meditations, certain styles of breath work. All of these different practices will help give your system a break. So it's going to help give your system a break from the doing and also from being in a state of constant vigilance. These practices allow the body to downshift, to let go of the tension which perhaps it didn't even realise that it was carrying. It's about retraining and reminding your body how to relax. So these states really mimic the early stages of sleep, but with still having that conscious awareness, so without actually going to sleep. So it's great. They are great practices to do it during the day and the research shows that they really do offer huge benefits, not just for relaxing, for calming, for feeling this felt sense of safety, but also there are huge benefits for learning, for recovery, for focus. So I just love this.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, when you're trying to absorb new information so that might be you know you've just had a really intense meeting or you've had some sort of training session, or you're doing a course, or you listen to a really quite detailed podcast or something you're studying to a really quite detailed podcast or something you're studying. Your brain needs time to get all of that new information in and then, obviously, to consolidate that information, and this is where NSDR shines. So this was so brilliant when I did my recent breath science training. It was such an amazing course but, my goodness, some of the lectures in there were so detailed, they were really full on science and my little brain was kind of going, oh my gosh, this is really hard.

Speaker 1:

So actually what I would do is I would listen to just a short, like a 10, 15 minute NSDR practice practice. And because I had learned that basically, when you are in this deep state of rest, what happens is it increases the slow wave brain activity, even while you're awake, and it's that slow wave activity which is strongly linked to memory consolidation and that's the process where your short-term memories are filed away into long-term storage. So I will take that because for me, for my midlife brain, which can sometimes feel foggy and sometimes feel a little bit slow, if I can lock in learning and reset my mental focus with a bit of an NSDR, I'm all over it and sometimes that's all we need. We need to have a little break which means we can recall more. The problem is when we're overloading our brains constantly, constantly, constantly, because we feel like we need to just keep on going and not having a rest, then nothing actually gets locked in. So that these protocols are really powerful. And actually, if you stick around, I'm going to share an NSTR practice which I've actually created which you can get your hands on. The link is in the show notes, but I will tell you more about that at the end. Okay, so another thing which I'd like to just talk about here is and I know I've mentioned this before, but I really feel it's worth mentioning again because it's just not talked about enough For so many of us, especially those of us living high functioning, in high achieving mode the body's default breath pattern can actually be part of this problem of not being able to switch off.

Speaker 1:

So that is, if you are, quite unknowingly, often not breathing as efficiently as you could. So it might be if you're mouth breathing unknowingly, your shallow upper chest breathing unknowingly, perhaps you're holding your breath without realising it. Often, many of us are over breathing during the day and yet we're under breathing at night. All of these are signals that we are not safe and actually I'm just going to mention this night time breathing because and actually I might do a whole episode on this, because this is another really important part of this which many of us are unaware of when we go through perimenopause and menopause, we become more susceptible to something called sleep apnea and this can actually be really dangerous and cause a load of really not very nice complications as we get older. So metabolic disease, heart disease, lots of different things and there are a few reasons for this Mainly oestrogen as it drops as we go through perimenopause and menopause.

Speaker 1:

Drops as we go through perimenopause and menopause Because oestrogen supports muscle tone and that includes the muscles in your upper airway and also the muscles that keep the throat and airways open. When that oestrogen starts to reduce, it basically also means a reduced muscle strength in these areas and that can lead to your airway collapsing more during sleep. So, especially if you're lying on your back, it basically makes the airway more prone to partial or even like full obstruction at night, and that's especially actually during the relaxed state of sleep, and that can be really dangerous because it means that you stop breathing, so you never go into really deep states of sleep and your nervous system is constantly sort of on high alert because it feels like you're not safe, because you're not, because you keep having to wake yourself up because you haven't got enough air. So these are all real signals of threat to your nervous system. Also, progesterone, which also decreases as we go through perimenopause and menopause, is actually a respiratory stimulant. So this hormone helps keep your breathing rhythm steady. It keeps it responsive to carbon dioxide levels and as we get less progesterone at menopause, that obviously is going to take away that protective it's going to be. You know this protective effect fades.

Speaker 1:

So just, I might do a whole episode on this, actually, because it is really important, but just to note that, as midlife women, your body, even if you feel like you're calm, your body sometimes is hearing. You know something's not safe. So if you are someone who snores or breathes heavily at night, this is something to really really bear in mind. Very simply, when you start breathing in a way that's more efficient, that's more aligned with how your body was designed, you stop sending these constant danger signals. So you signal safety instead and just a consistent message and that is really powerful and it's what starts to create real flexibility in your nervous system. So, yes, I have brought it back to breathing again, but it is so important. You know, what we want to do is go from being on all the time to having access to that off button where we can actually start to switch off without feeling like you know we're doing something wrong. Your breath is one of the most underused tools for regulating your nervous system, and yet it's something which is always there, it's always with us, and I just want to add in here it's not about adding more to your plate. It's really not, because that's completely not what we're looking for here. It's about teaching your body a new pattern, one that says you're safe now, you know you can relax, you can rest Now.

Speaker 1:

Something which I've battled with for a while, and so I'm sure it might be it might also feel the same for you is the belief if I slow down, won't everything fall apart? How's everything going to get done? Nothing's going to work, and slowing down does feel unsafe, because your identity has been built around productivity. We have been so rewarded for being so productive, for performing, for proving ourselves, so it's not your fault. It's how your nervous system has adapted to survive in a world that celebrates doing, especially for women, the world that celebrates doing, especially for women. But the truth is you do not need to live in overdrive to be effective and your nervous system doesn't need to be maxed out for you to feel motivated. So you are allowed to feel calm and still get loads of stuff done. And in fact, when your body feels safe, I find your energy is cleaner, your mind is sharper, your intuition is so much louder. You just function at a much better level. So you get more done. You really do, and I've noticed now, when I, you know, practice this stuff, that I am so much more present with my clients, with my family.

Speaker 1:

I don't go down that negative spiral as often. I'm not saying I don't because I still do, but I don't go down it as often when something goes off track. My sleep at the moment, touch wood is great and I think, for the first time in well since I can really remember, I just have, I don't put so much pressure on myself. I've got a lot less self-pressure to constantly be on, and yet I'm still working hard. I'm still doing loads of things, but I think because when your body believes it's safe, you gain access to an inner steadiness that can't be faked. So instead of asking how do I do all the things? How do I get everything done? How do I keep up? Instead, the question becomes how can I feel resourced enough to show up for what matters? That's the shift.

Speaker 1:

It's about knowing and reminding yourself that you're not falling behind. Instead, you're coming back to your regulated, calm, restful, better functioning self. And when your body is no longer in a constant state of alert, that's when your real energy comes back online. It's not that kind of real, frantic energy which we all know. It's the kind that's clear, sustainable, creative. That's when our creativity starts to really return. It's the kind that fuels you without burning you out in the process.

Speaker 1:

So here's what I invite you to take from this conversation. If you have resonated with some of the things I have been talking about the fact that you know if you feel like you're wired but tired, you're productive but you're far from being peaceful, if you're super busy but yet you're feeling unfulfilled, it's not a mindset issue. It's a nervous system signal. You're not broken. You've just been stuck in a high alert state for too long and your body's forgotten what it likes to truly switch off. But the good news, you can remind it. So that's why I just want to share with you a couple of things which might be able to help you.

Speaker 1:

So I created something called the Clear and Calm Reset. So this is I'm going to put the link at the bottom here in the show notes three short but really powerful audio. So I made them different lengths so that you could just choose which one is right for the moment, and I made them short so that they can fit into busy lives. One is literally four minutes, one is eight minutes and one is 16 minutes. I would go for the 16 minutes if you can, but I understand that obviously time is tight and you can download these straight to your phone.

Speaker 1:

Now, these recordings are a little combination of some of these NSDR protocols, so it's not really about the breath in these. It's more about just putting it on and just receiving it, just listening to it. You have nothing really to do apart from to listen. It will give you a proper brain break. It will help you to remind your body what calm safety feels like. So you can grab all three. They're just 11 pounds, so that's one option you could do to help yourself If you're ready to go a little bit deeper and actually retrain how you are breathing so it stops triggering that fight or flight response all day long.

Speaker 1:

Then I've got a little mini course called breathe better basics, which would be a great next step. So it's the. The actual learning of how to breathe better is just 45 minutes long. It's broken up into really small videos. It's all science facts and then with this, the best bit is, you get five recordings. They're 10 minutes each and they get progressively more challenging. But they start really easy and get progressively more challenging so that you can it kind of really meets you where you are, but you can feel like you're progressing. And that is 47 pounds, so I'll put the link there as well.

Speaker 1:

And always just a reminder you can always come into the Inner Space, which is my membership, which is £27 a month. So there's lots of different ways. And in the Inner Space, actually, we always start by doing some of these NSDR protocols just to feel that safety in our body. So, yes, there we go. Everything's in the show notes. You know, remember, your body, potentially, has been holding a lot for a long time. So it's your, it's your opportunity now to really use some tools to help remind it how to feel that that sense of safety, and it changes everything. I absolutely, absolutely promise you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please let me know what your thoughts are and let me know any feedback. I'd be so grateful if you could subscribe. If you want to write a review, that would be amazing. Come and send me an email at info at pollywarrantcom, or come over to Instagram at pollywarrantcoaching. Have a wonderful rest of the week and I can't wait to speak to you next time. Take care, lots of love, bye.