S3 | EP 2: Feeling Behind (But Trying Your Best)

How is it when you’re trying your best, things still feel like they’re falling apart?
Your house feels messy, your routines are slipping, your mind is cluttered, and beneath it all… you carry this heavy, invisible weight.

This episode is for the people who feel like they should have their shit together by now…but don’t.

This episode we are talking about emotional entropy. That slow unraveling of your inner world. The guilt that creeps in when you're not as productive as you hoped.
The shame that whispers “you’re behind.” The pressure to always be “good enough.” The feeling of "will anything get better?"

In this raw and honest episode, I break down:
- What emotional entropy actually is (and why it’s not your fault)
- The guilt/shame loop and how to break it
- Why “doing more” doesn’t always help (and what to try instead)
- What to do when you feel like your life is a mess, and your mind matches it

This is not just another self-help pep talk, but a soft place to land. And if you’ve been silently struggling under the pressure of perfection, performance, or emotional burnout - this episode for you.

You matter. Learning to calm the chaos is right around the corner.

Website: https://cuethenewyou.com/

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Transcript

0:00

Hey Cueties, thank you for pressing play and spending some time with me today. I love that y'all are here, and I hope everyone had a lovely week. I am currently recovering from a Gaelic football tournament that happened last weekend up in Salu, Spain, and while it was a good time driving up there with teammates and having an adventure. Getting back home when the rental car broke down, but we lost to a team. We played so many times before in the semi-finals, and my body is sore and scraped from falling on the turf fields, but it was a great. Galo football season. That was actually my first Galo football season, and it was a lot of fun. Met some really, really cool people and I loved joining that group. And it's nice playing kind of a niche sport because wherever we move there has always been a team close by, whether that be a hurling team or Gaelic football in. It's almost like walking into a big group of soon to be friends because everybody loves playing this. Niche sport, but this episode isn't about Cale football. However, in my athletic career, I have felt behind in a lot of ways. And this episode, actually the next couple of episodes, comes straight from y'all. So I put a poll up on my Instagram stories about what y'all. Are struggling with that nobody really talks about. And this one was a winner. Feeling behind in life, but doing your best from past clients to myself, to friends. This is such a common feeling. I'm pretty sure we've all heard things like don't compare your life to others or everyone's on their own journey. And sometimes what people say doesn't clear up or validate how you are feeling. And I wanna talk about that. So we're breaking this conversation down into a few episodes because there are a lot of layers to uncover here. So there's the feeling behind in life, and for me that means everyone around me is doing better than I am and I'm still trying to figure my shit out, which is emotional entropy. Then there's the chaos of trying to keep up and maintain routines to keep, keep things afloat, which is physical entropy, and underneath that, the pressure to be good enough all the time. And that's mental entropy. The pressure being good enough too makes me think of people pleasing and perfectionism, and I've been thinking a lot. In a, in noticing a lot of cultural differences between America and Spain and how the Spanish don't necessarily have the people pleasing mentality. They're more blunt and they are doing what they want to do and not in like a rude way. One thing that gets me is because I've, I'm a people pleaser. I like look around and see, oh gosh, am I standing in, in somebody's way? And they don't care. If they wanna see something or watch something, they're gonna stand where they want to. They don't look behind them. They aren't concerned. Who's behind now? Not in, not in all cases, but in a lot of cases, a lot of them will realize that they are sitting in somebody's way, but. They're like, this is what I want to do and I'm gonna do it. Again, that's from my own experiences and observations being here. Episode one, the one you're listening to about entropy is going to be emotional entropy. Episode two will be. About mental. And then episode three will be physical, and that's when we're gonna get into habits and routines, which I'm excited about. And y'all, I honestly didn't know what entropy actually meant until somebody responded to this poll. They said entropy. So many things we cueuote uncueuote, organize constantly, return to chaos, laundry, dishes, habits, et cetera. So off to Google, I went to look up. Entropy, which means lack of order or predictability and gradual decline into disorder. I've definitely felt that. I just didn't know what that word, what that word, uh, how to sum it up in one word. So for this episode of emotional entropy, I want to help us get clear and have an understanding and walk away with some tools. About how to ease that invisible pressure we put on ourselves and calling all you perfectionists out here and start building systems and habits that support our actual lives, not just our expectations. Also in the future, I would love to have some guests podcast hosts who are relationship experts or people who have changed their marriage or relationship or around. By shifting the mental load because carrying the mental load is so emotionally soul draining, and I am actually working on that in real time, and it's not easy nor fun. In fact, it is confusing and uncomfortable for me, and it's just weird talking about the things that I haven't talked about in a very long time. Anyways. Even though I'm not an expert in this area, like especially with um, relationship, I want to add that to part of this podcast at some point. So if any of you listeners know someone who would like to join the podcast, I would definitely love to hear from you. Okay. So part one of feeling. Like you're behind, but you're trying your best. When I thought of feeling behind, I only thought of how it showed up for me, and that showed up by feeling behind in my career because I had my kids young and didn't have time to really dive into her career path because I was a stay at home mom. I did, I mean, I've had jobs, but never I. Like a solid career, I guess. So I've never been in the same field for very long. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when I compare myself to other people my age, it's where like my best friend has been an occupational therapist for like 15 years. My other friend has worked for the same company since they were, I think like 19 years old. And y'all were 35 now. And I have one friend who can basically retire early because of how long or short, I guess they have been a pharmacist and how they have invested their money into a company and gained a lot in returns, and they aren't much older than I am. And I'm over here again at 35, still trying to figure myself out and my business out, which thankfully, now taking a step back, I have a. Much clearer vision of what I want, and that's what I'm working toward. So if you've been here from the beginning, bless you. I love you. Feeling behind shows up in different ways for different people. Someone else is married, someone else bought a house, got promoted, started business. Seems further along than you what surprised me with the response from the poll was not about feeling behind career-wise or timeline-wise. But feeling behind in the aspect of organizing things like laundry, dishes, even habits, and having things kind of fall apart and constantly, they're returning to chaos. This was a new perspective for me, and it just gave me a hit of inspiration. And I want everybody to hear me when I say this. You are not lazy and you are not broken. You're likely carrying an invisible weight. Most people can't see, and you've been trying to perform your way through it. We are here and we are listening to this. Episode to hopefully get you to start changing, to start relincueuishing some of this pressure. When you try to create a short chart or a habit list where you try to keep things organized and it kind of falls apart, you haven't failed. That feeling of failing is. The most common feeling between all three types of entropy. We'll dive into from what I've gathered from my resources with each type, you just haven't given yourself enough grace or patience to see your progress. You look at all the negative things and skip over the positive things. And I'm so bad for this. But I've worked so long on myself and have read all the things, and I'm capable of bouncing back or getting myself out of a rut much faster now because of the awareness I have. You can't change something you aren't aware of. So you haven't failed. I think of it as you aren't aware of what you can change yet. Feeling behind is often due to a systematic or expectation issue and putting too much pressure on yourself to be good enough. And the good news is with that we can work on it. Emotional entropy is this cueuiet unraveling that happens where your inner world feels scattered heavy. Or you're on the verge of a breakdown. It's the emotional version of clutter, like believing old thought patterns, feeling guilty for not doing enough, or being enough or for even resting the pressure to keep up with your friends. Feeling like you're wasting your potential, pressuring yourself to achieve something meaningful in life and the fatigue of managing all the invisible responsibilities that no one else sees. Feeling behind in life isn't usually about one thing, but about accumulated weight and cumulative pressure. And I'm gonna break each one of these down, so we're gonna talk about a lot of things in this episode. So get ready. Accumulated weight is the emotional, mental, and physical burdens that slowly build up over time, but are often suppressed. This could be like not processing your emotions, lingering self-doubt, or letting your inner critic into the driver's seat. It could be letting responsibilities pile up slowly and not delegating or relincueuishing your mental load. Why is that word so hard to say? Relincueuishing. Your mental load accumulated. Weight ha happens when we start getting overwhelmed with everything and we start feeling exhausted and shutting down. And for me, when I shut down, I avoid, avoid, avoid, and escape until I'm so far down that I let the negative self talk take over But again, it takes me less time to bounce back than it has in the past because I've worked on this. And if I feel like I'm outta breath, it's because I'm actually excited. Like I had type out some notes for this and I'm excited to get into it. Um, and so I don't know. I, I guess I have a lot of energy right now, so excuse me for that. But it's also learning about how to navigate this mental load while not having a complete psycho mental breakdown and destroying everything around you, you know? Because we've all done that, right? Cumulative pressure has more to do with feeling anxious and thinking we should be further along than we are. And it has to do with expectations placed on you, either by yourself, by society, by your parents, or by others, and how those pressures amount over time. And when I think of this, I think of a rice cooker. We understand how a rice cooker or a pressure cooker, I guess works. You add the rice and water in the pot, you seal the lid, and eventually enough heat and pressure buildup, and over time the rice cooks. But imagine you keep adding more. Rice, more water, maybe even throw in some extra ingredients like veggies or meat, spices. And I am very guilty of this and I've had to stop adding things because I always mess up my rice. But you're asking the rice cooker to do more and more when you keep adding things. But it's still the same size cooker with the same pressure valve. And eventually that pressure has nowhere to go, and that lid starts to rattle the steam release valve hisses or smokes. And if it doesn't have an escape, it could overflow or potentially explode. I, I think I've read before, or you risk burning the entire dish, that is similar to what happens in our lives with every expectation. Task, role or emotion, we keep piling on without stopping and realizing anything. This creates a disconnect for us. Things just build and build and sometimes our emotions can get trapped in our bodies if we don't recognize them and release them. And we are then walking around with this pent up energy and we don't know what to do with it. So we look for ways to release this energy or we cope with this energy in a negative way, or you end up like the overfilled rice cooker and either pull the plug completely and shut down or you explode. A friend once told me that if we are mad at one thing, it's usually a good indication that we are actually mad or upset about something else, and this will help you. Learn to observe your emotions and feelings, and we will get into that in a second. But these two concepts often overlap where the feeling of not being good enough adds to your emotional weight. And can have you feeling like shit about yourself or your life. I am one who places this invisible pressure on myself, especially in sports, and I used to have really, really bad mom guilt, but also on this imaginary timeline of life when my life doesn't even look like my friend's lives that I'm comparing myself to or people on social media. Business wise, we may be around the same age, but have completely different lifestyles. So why am I rushing things? Whose timeline is correct? You know, being in Spain as well, they aren't living in urgent lifestyle and the US people always talking about being in the rat race, trying to make as much money as they can. At an early age to get all the things they want and weighing themselves down, and then it becomes this unhealthy lifestyle or trying to keep up with the Joneses or filling your calendar with so many things that being busy is a badge of honor. Whereas in Spain, I've had to shift my mindset around the feeling of urgency. My Spanish teacher, who was a couple of years younger than me, couldn't believe that I had kids. Because she's not in any hurry to have kids. I mean, I wasn't in a hurry to have kids either. We just kind of said, Hey, do we want kids? Yeah. Okay, let's try. And then it worked out. We didn't really think too much about it, but like, I love my kids. So anyways, one way to help you feel less anxious about feeling behind is reframing your perspective. We can do this by thinking I'm not behind. I'm on a different path, or I'm on my own path. Because life isn't a linear thing. We can just measure you, make your life how you want, you're in control of your results. Soandso isn't in control of your results if you feel pressure from social media because whenever you scroll, you're comparing yourself to others who maybe have a similar hobby or business than you. And you constantly think they're so far ahead of you, then step away from social media for a bit, put the fucking phone down, and take a step back and realize that they have put the work in themselves to get to where they are. And you can put work into yourself too. Of course, everyone's path looks a little different. You may have more obstacles in the way or mindset blocks to overcome, and that's okay. It's figuring out what works for you. That's what makes people's stories and lives intriguing. You aren't a copy of someone else. Your life isn't a copy of someone else's life. Sometimes we need to take a moment and reflect on what we think success means. This was a first cueuestion I asked when I first created my course, how to Be Hot and Successful, which then eventually turned into Cue the New You. And I ask, what does success mean to you and look like for you, of course, I cueuote James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits a lot, but he says, success is not a goal to reach or a finish line to cross. It is a system to improve, an endless process to refine when we do the physical entropy episode. We'll definitely look at atomic habits and look at systems, habits and routines, and we'll look at the power of habits by Charles duh Higg. But today I want to focus on the guilt shame loop because this can be a trigger for anxiety and self-doubt or self hatred for a lot of people. If you know me, I love bringing things down and simplifying things. So we are going to look at the guilt shame loop, like we look at a habit loop or a so think of guilt and shame as emotional feedback loops. You can throw anxiety in there as well. They kick in automatically based on deep rooted beliefs and patterns, not. Facts or truth, like the habit loop, the guilt shame loop also has a structure, and we can break it down like this. You have the cue, the interpretation and feeling, behavior and result. So let's break down each part. First the cue. This is when something either happens or doesn't happen, that triggers a belief of, I'm not doing enough, or I'm not enough, or I'm failing. For example, you sleep in the house is messy. You miss a workout. You didn't answer a text or email. You forgot to sign something for your kid. The cue or trigger could be internal, like a thought or external, like a comparison or comment. Next is your interpretation of the cueueue. Your brain interprets. That moment of personal failure as a belief based story. This can look like negative self-talk and telling yourself, I'm lazy. I should be better than this. Everyone else has their shit together. I've wasted time. Once again, you've spoken to yourself this way for so long that it has become a habit, and that habit has become your story. The more you do something, the more you do something. When you say these things to yourself all the time, your brain believes these things to be true. This happens without us realizing it because a lot of times we hold onto things we've carried that isn't serving us anymore. But once again, you can't change something if you aren't aware of it. This is why it is vital to understand our thoughts and challenge ourselves when we start to feel guilty or shame. or anxious and ask ourselves why we think this and where did this all come from? Is this thought or feeling, serving who I want to be? Okay. Next step. We have your feeling or emotional reaction for this. Choose one word to describe your emotion, like guilt. And feeling like you've done something wrong or shame and feeling like there's something wrong with you, and I want you to pause and name that feeling. I want you to pause and name that emotion and why you feel that way next, look at how you respond to this emotional reaction or feeling and what your behavior is. What happens when you do feel like you've done something wrong or you feel behind, or you feel like something is wrong with you? Do you try to fix a feeling or do you avoid it? Maybe you overcompensate and push harder. Maybe you people please, or you overcommit yourself. Do you shut down, avoid tasks, procrastinate, numb out, doom, scroll, binge eat, or do you beat yourself up and go into a state of mental self punishment? I am guilty of all of the above. I'm not gonna lie my, I have emotionally grown over the past few years, and I hope people see that, but my emotional reaction is like, because my brain formed this as a habit of protective behavior, doing all the things to avoid how I feel. Then the last part of the loop is a result. So the result is a reward. Your brain enjoys or gets out of doing this loop. And this can be temporary relief, like you either feel momentarily in control or relief from ever functioning. So temporary relief could be like binge eating, and the result you get from that is like a spike in dopamine, or it can be reinforcement where you spiral deeper into the belief that you're not good enough, which then reinforces this entire cycle or loop. so how can you change this loop? Like with Habit Loops, the goal isn't to remove guilt or shame entirely because they're just messengers. The goal is to interrupt the loop by changing your interpretation in response. So this is like with habit loop of cue, routine reward. This is like changing the routine. So let's go over the guilt shame loop again. You have your cue interpretation, feeling behavior result. So step one for change is to name the and try to name it without judgment. For example, uh, this is the part where I feel guilty for resting. So the cue would be, rest. Observe the cue. And why this became a trigger. Another example is instead of feeling guilty for skipping the gym, you then can say, I needed rest, and my routine shifted, and that's okay. Or you walk into the kitchen and you're like, fuck the dishes piled up again. That can then become my system needs adjusting, not shaming. Step two is rethinking your interpretation. Ask yourself, what am I making this mean about me? What am I making the dishes pile about me? About me? Is this story even true? Whose voice is this? Is this mine? Maybe my parents' voice societies, my partners. Why am I thinking the way that I'm thinking? Rewrite your story by reframing your perspective. This isn't about making excuses for yourself or not holding yourself accountable to doing the things, even when you don't want to do them. This is making the observation of why you're feeling this way and how to shift the narrative so you aren't caught in this guilt shame loop all the time. Maybe start thinking, this doesn't mean I'm behind, it means I need more support, or this is a moment of being human, not a moment of failure. So step three is to think about your future feelings. Do you want to feel how you felt in the past, or would you rather choose a more compassionate or empowering emotion? I feel like everybody would rather choose the latter, but it's hard to know how to get there if you don't know the steps or the why behind it. So if you want to go from feeling guilty to choosing, maybe permission. Permission to slow down, permission to not feel bad for being human. Permission to give yourself grace or to be kind to yourself in the busier seasons of life when you just can't keep up, like instead of punishing yourself, start supporting yourself more, giving yourself permission to slow down. It's okay if the dishes aren't done every night. If you need to go to bed instead of doing the dishes, go to bed. And ask yourself, what would I say to a close friend in a moment like that? Or what's one small way I can show myself kindness or permission right now? And some ideas for that could be maybe set a timer for five minutes and do a task. Send an email, do The dishes, sweep the floor, whatever. Do something for five minutes. Journal, uh, breath work. Go take a walk, try yoga. Actually, a great trick I just did on myself this weekend, and then I actually did it on my. On two of my kids as well was doing this counting method. I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but it's supposed to help calm anxiety and help you kind of reconnect with your body, but you choose five things. You can see four things that are of the same color. Choose, three things you can touch or feel. Name two things you can smell, and then think of one thing you can taste or you want to taste. This helps break the loop by redirecting your brain to think about something else, because our brains love solving problems and it just helps your body. Reregulate regulate reregulate. I think Reregulate is right. Anyways, step four is creating a new routine. So this could be when you write down the elements of your guilt shame loop. So you have the cue interpretation, feeling behavior you have, and this, and I've gone over the model that Brooke Castillo teaches. And you can kind of do this like doing the model. So you have your past, guilt, shame loop, and then you can create a future one, and then you can work in ways to bridge the gap. So instead of feeling guilt or shame, you can then learn how to become more like your future. Model. For instance, this, this can be an example of your future guilt shame loop. So the cueueue, I skipped a task, or the house feels messy. Your interpretation be, this is an observation, not a fact. So you aren't beating yourself up. The feeling you have learned to pause and you've learned to name the emotion. This is guilt and this is shame Your behavior. Instead of avoiding, you're going to do one supportive action, which is what we just talked about. So it can be breath work. You could journal, set that timer for five minutes and go do it because you're changing the routine, right? Um, use that anxiety trick or read affirmations. Tell yourself affirmations and the result you get is relief without self-abuse, or you're learning to trust yourself. Sometimes we just need to slow down and give ourselves permission to be human and grace to understand that some seasons in life are harder or busier than others, and that's okay. Life ebbs and flows. Business ebbs and flows. Your weight ebbs and flows. So why do we think, why do we put ourselves in a box to hit? Certain things on this imaginary timeline, like it's okay if routine shift. It's okay if your house is messy sometimes, but really think about what story you're telling yourself when things happen and you start to unravel. We'll touch more in creating new habits in your teens. When we talk about the physical entropy, because I can talk about this stuff all day long, and this really did give me a lot of inspiration. And I have a lot of episodes lined up now, and I'm ready to keep going'cause I love hearing from y'all. But let me leave you with a few key takeaways and I'm gonna give you a little homework because I love you and I want you to be able to apply what you hear in your one feeling behind is often a symptom of emotional, physical, or mental entropy. It's not just about the invisible pressure timeline or deadlines you are trying to meet. It's more about the emotional weight, cumulative pressure, accumulated weight, and recognizing where this feeling of falling behind is rooted in. We want to remember that we are living our own lives. We don't need to follow someone else's blueprint or lifestyle. The timelines are mostly made up by societal expectations, and they don't reflect your actual capacity or worth. Emotional entropy is real and you are not alone in feeling like that. That internal unraveling, the overwhelm, the guilt avoidance, the shutting down is valid and mostly everyone feels this at some point in their life. If they don't, kudos to them. But it doesn't mean you are failing. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean you can ever get your shit together. It means your emotional system is overloaded and needs observation and not judgment, me, compassion, not criticism, and you need to create safety, not punishment. Remember, we can't change something we aren't aware of. Becoming aware isn't meant for you to feel bad about yourself. It's to help you notice and name things and show you what hasn't been working. We all need a safe space where we can go and vent, and I hope that everybody has a space where they can do that. We need to release that pent up energy and we need to release some of the pressure that we put on ourselves, and that can look like asking for help, slowing down, actually learning how to feel your feelings. Maybe it's setting boundaries and reconnecting with yourself, but make sure you have someone safe you can vent to without them trying to like fix you or fix the problem. Sometimes you just need to let things out. Say the thing, write the thing in your journal. Get it out of your brain. Get it out of your body. All right. Here's a homework for the week. It's really short, but it will give you something to think about. First, take five minutes and grab your journal or phone and write down some expectations you feel right now. Or maybe the pressure you're putting on yourself right now, and this can be what you expect from yourself or from others, from social media, which to me, that's an entirely different ballgame. Social media anyways. It could be from your family, maybe your boss, and ask yourself, whose expectations, really is this? Do I even want it? Is this helping me, And see what comes up for you. Remember, we aren't judging ourselves. We are simply observing. Next, what is one small way you can reduce pressure this week? This can look like canceling a non-essential plan. Maybe it's ordering your groceries. For delivery instead of going to the grocery store. Maybe it's asking for help with dinner or plan a pizza night, or like, I always used to buy paper plates and cups to help cut down on loading and unloading the dishwasher because I just couldn't handle it for a while. It was a lot. It could be feeling an emotion that you have been avoiding, but what is one task you can let go of? If that has been weighing you down, remember, you are not behind in life. There's no gold medal for burnout. You are living your life the way you're supposed to be living it. And if you want to change it or improve it, you can. You have the power to do so. And if you are a visual learner, head over to my Instagram at Meritt Rollins Brown, because I know this is a lot to digest in one episode. So I will. I'm gonna put up the guilt shame loop in the step-by-step guide in a visual way over on Instagram. And I'll put another pull up in my stories about the episode next week. So thank you for being with me today. I appreciate every single one of you, and I hope that everyone has an incredible week and weekend. All right, I'll talk to y'all later. Bye.