Minisode Series: Help! My Husband Can't Read My Mind (and Other Revelations)

After a two-week absence, I return to discuss managing overwhelming anxiety and the importance of addressing past traumas rather than tucking them away. Despite positive external feedback at work, my internal critic has been relentless.

• Anxiety often stems from unaddressed past experiences that eventually resurface
• Hormonal changes during menstrual cycles can significantly amplify existing anxiety
• Communication with partners is essential - they can't read our minds about when we need help
• Men and women often approach household and parenting responsibilities with different perspectives
• Taking personal time without guilt is crucial for mental health as a woman, mother and entrepreneur
• Setting boundaries with children about spending time with other caregivers is healthy
• Direct communication prevents resentment building in relationships

Remember to tune in every Sunday for our guest episodes running through June, with potential extensions due to growing interest from amazing guest speakers.

Chapters

• 0:00 Catching Up After Two Weeks
• 1:08 Managing Anxiety and Mental Health
• 3:36 Asking Partners for Help
• 8:01 Taking Time for Yourself
• 11:37 Future Episodes and Sign-off

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello everybody, this is Gail Rosen's podcast. This podcast is created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am really sorry because it's been about two weeks, a little over two weeks since my last miniseries episode. I was trying to do them consistently and then for some reason well, actually I know why, but in the last two weeks just things got away from me, and you've heard me say before I'm a huge advocate of giving yourself grace and sometimes things have to be let go and unfortunately for me that meant I wasn't able to record a solo episode like I usually like to. So we have a little bit of catching up to do so. First things first, addressing like what pulled me. To be perfectly honest, nothing in specific or in particular changed or happened, but I suddenly became overwhelmed, or happened, but I suddenly became overwhelmed.

Speaker 1: 1:08

I've been talking to you guys a little bit about anxiety and how I have anxiety and what I do to maintain and deal. Sometimes I'm not so great at that, right, and like that's all of us. Sometimes we fail at trying to maintain our mental health and our anxiety and whatever else is bothering us and, to be perfectly honest, that's okay, dust yourself off, we try again tomorrow, like that's really the big thing here is that no one is perfect, no one is perfectly managing their stress, nobody is perfectly doing anything, even the people at the top of the top. You know, you see, like these people with all this money or people that you know, you see, like these people with all this money or people that you know seem to have these really great jobs or this, and that the next thing, everybody has stress, everybody has something that they need to deal with. That's not pleasant for them and we all do it in different ways.

Speaker 1: 2:00

So, with my anxieties, the last I want to say, for the last week and this is probably also because it was my menstrual cycle as well my anxiety was like through the roof, and not just my anxiety. I texted my cousin and was like, during this time of the month I am, it's like a bundle of like emotions. At any point in time I can be crying, crying from joy, enraged, or like on the verge of divorce in my head, like nothing really happening in real life, nothing's happening around me, but my mind like runs away with itself and I kind of just have to like deal with what I'm dealing with. So the past week and a half two weeks roughly, my anxieties have started to really just enhance, go up. Now I know what a lot of this is. I know that it comes from a place where I was feeling really anxious last year quite a bit, and so when I transitioned over to my new role and my new job, those anxieties are still with me.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Just because I'm in a new place in my life doesn't mean that any of the old anxieties have gone away. It just means I have to actually address them and deal with them now and try to get them back to normal. That is applicable to pretty much all anxieties. If you found that in your early 20s you were intensely anxious or you had to go on medication, you were depressed, you had an eating disorder, you were in an abusive relationship all these things if they have happened to you, or anything really, any trauma, anything that's happened to you, if it's not dealt with, if you do not face it and you just tuck it away at some point down the line, it is going to bubble up again. So it's best to just deal with it when you can and when you feel like you're ready for it, just address it.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So my anxiety is around not being good enough at work and failing at work and feeling like I'm not doing what I should be doing or I'm not delivering what I should be delivering, that I should be doing better. I am my own worst critic, consistently. Now not one person has said this to me recently. Everyone seems very pleased with me and my performance, but nevertheless in my head I attack myself consistently. Has said this to me recently. Everyone seems very pleased with me and my performance, but nevertheless in my head I attack myself consistently. Jenny, you should have replied to this differently, jenny. You should have been more on top of this, jenny. Next time you got to do this better. I'm actually curious, like and I would love to hear from some of you Am I the only loony bin here that is constantly in my head judging myself? Am I the only loony bin here that is constantly in my head judging myself? But that's also part of it too. I know that that's me in my head judging myself. So, in any case, the last two weeks have been intense, not because of anything happening, but because of me in my head. So there's that Now, the last week, because, again my cycle, so my hormones were kind of enraged.

Speaker 1: 5:16

I was getting very like nitpicky with my husband about him stepping in and like helping me with the kids, like running them around for activities and to different activities and doing things with them, mostly because the activities that I'm running around to are for my twins, for the girls and it's girly activities, and my husband very much is like no, he steps up for our son for sure, and if he needed to he would do it for the girls, but he doesn't want to be sitting at a dance studio waiting for his daughter. So like, honestly, some of you might be like kind of shaking your head, like, oh, just tell him to do it anyway, I let it slide. It's one of those things that, as his wife, I get it. I understand. I'm not going to press unless I really need to, because I'm like what's the point? He doesn't really want to do it, it doesn't really bother me unless I really need help. So me, unless I really need help.

Speaker 1: 5:59

So this past week all of a sudden in my head I'm enraged. I'm like you don't help, you need to do something. You need to take them, you need to do something, you have to help with some of the runarounds. But part of the problem is kind of what I just explained to you. I never ask for help with the running around effect. I actually quite enjoy being involved in all their activities and I like doing it.

Speaker 1: 6:23

But the times that get stressful for me is when I have outside obligations and that's when I'm naturally like, oh, just step in. So unless you specifically tell your husband or partner, hey, can you step in? If you have always been the one to step in and do everything, how can you expect your partner to just know that you need them to help? There is no actual way for your partner to read your mind. Now, some of you may, in your head right now, be saying, yeah, but you know he or she is there, they see me, they see me struggling, like, or they see that I'm stressed out, they should just step in. I'm going to be honest with you. Like, especially for men outside of like the male-female dynamic relationship I'm not sure if it's any different, different, but I know for male female marriage I feel like the men the male is going to just be like kind of not focusing in there or not really not aware. That's not the right way to say it. Oh, like they're aware, they're not dumb, but they just don't look at things the same way that we do. They just don't. I have in my head at all times like 150 things that I'm supposed to be doing. I don't really see that with men Like I just don't. So and I've heard from other other moms that you know they see the same things in their husbands, that you know they have to be pressed a little bit. So if you are feeling frustrated, press say, hey, you need to do something here here now.

Speaker 1: 8:02

The reason why this is top of mind, the reason why I'm rambling about this, is because today I pressed, now I was super stressed out. I, I do um, live, um productions for folks like I. I'm the woman behind the curtain and I will produce people's live series. So today I had a live series that I was producing and I'm always anxious on production day. That's what? Production day is the day that something launches. I'm always anxious on production day, always Professionally, you know, in my daytime job and my podcast job always anxious about it. Today I also happen to have to be obligated to do something for my kids religious classes and it was kind of bumping right up against when I'd be doing this live broadcast. So all week I think this was also added to it too. I was getting really hypersensitive and stressed out about having to deal with that today. Everything went fine, it all went off without a hitch.

Speaker 1: 8:53

But that didn't mean I was going to let go the fact that I wanted my husband to do something with the kids, because again, nine times out of 10, it's me doing the things. So I pressed and I pressed a little bit hard and he took the kids out and they're doing an activity together and they're, you know, go to the park and doing things that he likes to do with the kids. I think that I know he did it because I basically pressed him for it and he's older than me and there's a lot of reasons why I don't press too much. But it's so good to see that with him, with the kids, because they don't get that really valuable one on one time as much as they get with me and them. Having that exposure to him in a more fun way is really important to me, because most of the time he's like the bad guy who has to discipline them, because I don't always do that. So it's good for them to be able to have a moment with him where it's fun and they're just like having a good time. And that's actually part of the reason why I'm recording right now is because I pressed and I kicked everybody out of the house and I did a little bit of straightening up like I wanted to, and now I'm out running errands and going to pick up some fresh produce. I just started juicing recently, so I'm like leaning into that really heavily and you know, I'm just kind of having alone time, which is also, obviously, if I'm having alone time, I need to talk to you guys. But it's important that solo time.

Speaker 1: 10:28

As a woman, as a mother, as a wife, as an entrepreneur, you need to have a minute where you can just breathe and you can't feel guilty about it. And let me tell you, my children begged me to come with them. They begged, they were please, begged me to come with them. They begged, they were please, mommy, just come with us, please. All the way up until they were getting in the car continued begging and I had to, at this point, just say no. I had to put my foot down and say no, just go with your father, it's fine, like it's okay, he can handle it. You know, like nothing's going to happen. So little lesson today. If you are finding that you are frustrated one, don't wait for your husband to read your mind. That's not going to ever happen and you're just going to build resentment. To take the opportunity Don't feel guilty and take that important time to be by yourself for a little bit.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I hope to be back to regular recordings for my little mini-sode episodes in the upcoming weeks and I'm appreciative of all of you. I hope you've been enjoying the guest episodes. They're running every single Sunday all the way through June. Really, really interesting guests are there for you and I've been having some intro calls. I actually may be scheduling guest episodes past June because there's so many people interested in being on the podcast. So just stay tuned and I appreciate all of you so much. I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.