Selfless Syndrome – how to cope, deal, & heal

Jen Hardy [00:00:31]:

Awesome. All right, Dr. Alex, I am so thankful that you have joined me today. Thank you again for being here.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:00:38]:

Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited.

Jen Hardy [00:00:40]:

I am excited, too. So something that just stuck out to me when I saw you was that you talk about something called selfless syndrome. And that sounds like so many people that I know, but I want to make sure that I understand it. So can you explain it a little bit better? And what does that mean and how does that happen?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:01:03]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I just wrote the book and published it in January, actually, because I think even for myself, I needed to dive more into what does this mean and how do we really get here? Because I’ve always said from the beginning, it’s that innate desire we have as women to take care of everyone and everything else except ourselves, which all of us can relate to. But even deeper than that, what I’ve really come to define it as, it’s a modern day stress response that’s lacking the ability to de escalate. And what I mean by that is, if you look at nature, I tell the story in my book. I’m actually joining you from vermont right now, which is where I’m from, although I live in Alaska these days. But when I was a kid growing up here, we would go hiking all the time, and we were on the way to one of my favorite hikes, and my mom suddenly stopped the car and got out. And we were like, mom, what are you doing? My brother and I were in the car. We’re both probably under ten, and she starts approaching. I realize, what are three little bear cubs? And I’m like, terrible idea. Mom. Trying to figure out if I can drive the car if something goes terribly wrong because we’re in the middle of nowhere. And sure enough, mama bear was there. But the thing that saved my mom was that mama bear does what all females in the world do. And that was she checked her cubs were okay in the midst of the threat, rather than just immediately charging my mom. And it gave my mom a chance to back away. And how this relates to humans is we have this innate thing to tend to make sure when we’re under stress. We’re going to make sure our people are okay. And then what we’re missing is women. Women do this thing called tend and befriend when we’re as part of our stress response because it’s naturally wired and they’ve come to understand us. It’s a little different from fight or flight. We’re missing that befriend piece and it’s been before COVID and all of that. Especially if we’re driven and high achieving women, which is who I speak to a lot when we’re under stress, we’re not having those opportunities to de escalate. And so we end up in this cycle where we’re just giving and giving and giving and giving and we don’t actually know how to do anything for ourselves or what we even need. And so here we are.

Jen Hardy [00:03:08]:

Yeah, I think that is oh my gosh, I lived my 1st 50 years like that. Just everybody else and everything else and nothing about me, which I thought was what I was supposed to be. Until I realized I am very unwell and if I don’t set up some boundaries and start taking care of myself, it’s not going to go well for me. So if someone’s in that, how do they recognize it and how do they stop?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:03:39]:

I’m 38 and I think I’m just one of those people that does life a little before everybody else. I end up helping those with maybe live longer. But I’ve had a lot of life experience fairly early. And for me, and what it is for a lot of women that I end up working with is some event happens. Like, either you get sick or someone really close to you. You watch them, their lives kind of fall apart through a health crisis and recognize that you’re headed in that direction or don’t want to be there, or there’s some sort of wake up call. And I host a show called the selfless Syndrome Show and wrote the book because I don’t want women to keep waiting for the wake up call. And so there’s this shift that needs to happen to recognize that we really are only as good to the people and the things that we love and care about as we are good to ourselves. And as we take care of ourselves. There’s a reason why on the airplane they say put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. And it’s like intellectually we all know this, right? We can say, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. And it’s something to know something and it’s something else to actually start to do things differently. So I think we have to really be willing to show up differently to be okay taking time for ourselves. And I used to when my son was young, because I was a single mom for a lot of years, it was so hard for me to take even half an hour by myself to do something I wanted to do. And I’d spend the whole time fretting about what he was doing or feeling guilty. But I finally learned that I was such a better mom if I just took that space. And so now that’s something that’s very much part of my day. And he just knows. He’s like, mom’s going to go do the things that make her happy. Okay. He’s almost ten now, so he has some grasp. But I think for each person, we just have to start taking some of that ownership back of ourselves, of our time of not. You used a great word, which is boundaries, learning what those are and how to implement them. And really, I talk a lot about even if you start with a minute, start protecting some time for yourself, and it will grow from there, even though it’ll feel really weird and hard at the beginning.

Jen Hardy [00:05:46]:

Yeah. And other people, I think, sometimes struggle with it, too, because they’re not used to you wanting to do that.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:05:52]:

Yes, there can be a lot of pushback in all directions, but I found less of it comes from spouses. Because typically in a fairly healthy marriage, we’ll put it I’ve been through divorce and now in a healthier relationship, but typically our spouses or our partners or the people who really love and care about us want us to figure out how to make more time for ourselves and do the things we need to feel good and to feel like ourselves again.

Jen Hardy [00:06:24]:

Yeah, I know before I had decided to choose to do that, if I was having a rough day, my husband would be like, okay, you’re going to go out now. You’re going to go do some things that you want to do that you like to do, because I can tell that you’re like, I couldn’t feel it in myself, but he could see it in me, and he would make me take that time. So sometimes it’s nice to have somebody who can see it like that when you can’t.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:06:49]:

Absolutely. Yeah, well, and I think we’ve so normalized. I get this from a lot of women I work with. They’re like, oh, but I’m not stressed. I’m like, our bodies physiologically don’t recognize the difference between, like, oh, the bear is trying to kill us and eat us, and you’re stuck in traffic or you have too many things on your plate that day. The physiological stress response is the same, and we just have become so accustomed to it. It’s constantly running in the background. So I don’t know a single woman who’s not stressed and couldn’t benefit from learning how to de escalate. I talked about de escalating, the stress, and it goes so far beyond, like, what’s your stress better? I mean, I went through this whole phase of like, what the heck does that actually mean? And had to learn how to figure out what that meant for myself.

Jen Hardy [00:07:43]:

I know you talked, too, about hormones and stress. So for women, especially, maybe women that are around, like menopausal age or a little whatever, do hormones affect stress?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:07:58]:

Yeah, well, it’s more stress affects your hormones, and it’s been interesting because a lot of the work I’ve done has been more with women in their menopausal age range. perimenopause can be like 16 years not to depress anybody, the time of going through that process. And I make the argument I don’t have any scientific data to back this up, but the amount of stress that we live with on a daily basis and carry in our lives and our lifestyle and just how busy we are, I think has set us up to be experiencing more menopause symptoms and more debilitating things. And I also think that when women hit that age, we suddenly are willing to recognize, like, hey, this isn’t normal or right, but chances are stuff has been going on for a long time. And what stress does is it drastically impacts your sex hormones, your thyroid, your digestive system. I mean, it’s interrupting all systems of your body. But specific with sex hormones being progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, all of which will decrease as you go into menopause, stress can impact that a long time before that. So, for example, if you’re under high stress for a long time, progesterone actually converts back into cortisol. So it steals progesterone, and then that’ll skew your levels. It can be part of what causes weight gain and frustration getting it off. And there’s all kinds of things that can happen with stress. So learning how to and we do need some stress. The stress is always going to be there. What we have to learn is how to recognize it in ourselves and how to actually do things that are restorative, that are bringing us out of that cycle and giving our nervous system a break. It’s not having the break where we.

Jen Hardy [00:09:38]:

Run into trouble, which is a great reason to go back to that whole thing about letting yourself have permission to take a break right. That we talked about with selfless syndrome. Because if you don’t, you are literally making yourself sick, then at that point, literally, if you’re running on constant stress right?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:09:57]:

Yes. And you’re going to be experiencing things like, I’ll just share I’ve spent the last month with my mom, who I was sharing with you. She broke her pelvis a couple of months ago, and I finally got her to allow me speaking of selfless syndrome, she’s like the worst example, but I finally got her to allow me to come and help her out for a little while as she’s getting back on her feet, literally. And I’ve recognized and I’m realizing how much I’ve healed because I’ve recognized like, oh, my stress is through the roof. And I’m comfort food eating, and I am on chocolate in a way I’ve never been before, and I’m still a cycling female. So I got my cycle a couple of days ago, and I have new symptoms. Like, I had to migrate with it because I’ve been under more stress. And so I can connect all those dots now. And I help other women kind of learn how to tune in with themselves to do the same. But a lot of us, we’re in our head. There’s no connection to what’s actually going on in our body and we’re just going through the motions and then wondering why suddenly we pause long enough to look in the mirror and realize we don’t like what we see and we don’t know who we are anymore. That’s the place I’m trying to avoid you getting to.

Jen Hardy [00:11:07]:

Yes. Which would be a great thing, right? Yeah. So you were talking about your mom broke her pelvis, so she’s obviously been in and out of the doctor’s offices. And you’re a doctor. So one of the conversations that I’ve been trying to have a lot with all of the doctors that I talk to is how we can be better patients. Because I know right now there’s a nursing shortage. There’s a shortage of things that people need, and a lot of people get frustrated at this point going to the doctor. I know, but I think it’s not always the doctor. Sometimes it’s us. So how can we be good patients so that we can get the best care and be a team with our doctor instead of feeling like we’re on opposite sides of the fence?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:11:51]:

Yeah, it’s a really interesting question and such a deep one, really, if I’m being honest. I think the last couple of years has done a lot to healthcare because there was so much burnout among healthcare professionals. I actually burned out as a chiropractor before that, and I’m just kind of coming out of realizing how traumatic just being a part of that system is. So my first thing is there’s a time and a place for Western medicine. We all go through those moments of needing it and recognizing it’s not always the provider’s fault. And there’s so much red tape, there’s so many hoops and things that they also have to jump through that going in as prepared as you can be to advocate for yourself and trusting your intuition to speak up and say, like, hey, this is what’s going on. Having a list with you. This is one of the things. My mom had nerve type pain going on the whole time and she’s never said anything about it because she always feels rushed by their agenda. So it’s going in prepared to advocate for yourself and maybe interrupt a little bit of the process, but realizing that they’re also running on a schedule, they’ve got so much on their plate, and I think we’re becoming, as a society, more proactive. At least that’s been my experience recently with having an idea of what we’re dealing with as much as we can before we go in. But really my biggest thing is be ready to advocate for yourself and do it in a loving and conscientious way, because the providers are just as stressed as you are and the bigger things are. Let’s be as proactive with our own health and preventing stuff as we can be. Make shifts to your diet. Do some of the things that you can find on Google, because Google’s got a lot of resources at this point as well. So I don’t know if that helps guide it all, but those are my absolutely.

Jen Hardy [00:13:41]:

Yeah, absolutely. And basically be prepared and be nice.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:13:46]:

Yeah, because they’re stressed out and having a rough time too. And honestly, I felt a little bad because I called one of my mom’s doctors kind of upset after reading their notes, but I recognized that it was a combination of her not being fully forthcoming and them being overbooked and overstressed and not being as attentive as they could be. So it’s a difficult situation right now. I’ve got so burnt out on the whole system, I’ve mostly exited it in a large way. I’m still in the health space with hormones, but I can’t imagine being in practice as a chiropractor and doing that. I hate massive burnout, and I know a lot of providers do, and it’s really sad, and something else is going to have to give. But as patients, we can be kind when we’re there.

Jen Hardy [00:14:34]:

I used to work for hmo, and they saw 20 to 30 patients an hour. How do you even do that?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:14:40]:

How do you do it?

Jen Hardy [00:14:43]:

Well, you cannot do it well. It’s not the doctor choosing most of the time to do that. It’s what’s set for them. And people don’t understand and they think, I don’t know, it’s a tough time. It really is. I mean, it’s a great time in medicine because we’ve got so many advancements in so many things, but also in other ways. It’s really tough because I think the time constraints, if nothing else yeah.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:15:14]:

The average and what I learned in school is if you spend more than seven minutes with somebody, you’re behind in terms of meeting bottom lines just for overhead. Like people don’t really look at the insurance side of it. And we’re one of the countries with the highest rates of medical care anywhere, which it’s just been inflated and inflated and inflated, but recognizing it’s not your doctors walking home with all that money in their pocket. There’s so much my overhead. I had a high six figure chiropractic practice for almost ten years, and it was all like we were barely breaking even every month, just keeping the machine running because you have to have three full time people chasing down money and there’s all these parts that you don’t even see behind the scenes. I’m going to get stressed out just talking about it.

Jen Hardy [00:15:59]:

Okay, well, we’ll talk about.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:16:03]:

Just being aware of where everybody’s at and what you’re walking into, and obviously you need to get the help that you need, but being kind and conscientious as you get it.

Jen Hardy [00:16:17]:

That’S awesome. Well, if someone’s listening, there’s a woman listening and she’s thinking, okay, but I’m so stressed out I don’t even know how to stop being so stressed and giving what are a couple of steps that she can take just to relax a little bit and to give a little bit less to everyone else.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:16:37]:

Yeah. So I was being serious about the 1 minute thing and I’ll answer this as a story just so if that woman is listening, you can understand kind of where I’m coming from. I, like I said, had a big chiropractic practice that I built as a single mom going through a divorce and I just had my head down. And this is, I don’t know if high achieving really relates to your listeners, but that’s a term I use. I was really driven, but the thing that was driving me was not wanting to be home because my ex husband struggled with alcoholism and I never knew what I was walking into. So there was a lot of trauma there. So I just worked and worked and worked and that is one of the ways that you deal with stress or by not really dealing with it. And by the time I was able to pick my head up and realize what was going on, I just bought a 6000 square foot building. I had a team of twelve. I had people counting on me, patients. I was well established in a pretty small community and I felt completely trapped by the whole thing. And what happened in my world was a series of events that forced me to pick my head up and pay attention. Meaning that one of our biggest insurance payers stopped paying us for six months so we couldn’t make overhead. That was not fun. I finally actually ended up going through bankruptcy just because I was constantly reacting. My wrist was actually torn in six places and I’d been ignoring that and it finally got bad enough, I couldn’t, couldn’t adjust and so it was like life just kept handing me these like, pay attention and finally I did. And it was hard and it was painful and there was a lot of not fun in it. But on the other side, I’m super grateful that I went through that because now I can help others go through that. So for anyone listening who you’re feeling like there’s no way I can slow down, I can’t stop, listen to, something is going to come up and force you to push pause. And so before that happens, or maybe it already has been and you’ve been ignoring it, give yourself permission. The whole world is not going to fall apart if you take 1 minute to breathe deeply in the bathroom, hiding from your family or whatever it is, you have to start to give yourself permission to do that. One of the things I have my clients do is just check in with all five of their senses because it’s something that takes your nervous system out of like pressing out mode and allows you to just ground yourself in where you actually are and that you’re safe and that you’re okay. Ideally, those things are actually true. And if they’re not, then that’s the first place to start. But taking that moment to just pause it will actually start to make a difference with everything, with your hormones, with your stress, with a lot of the things I hear from a lot of my clients is, mood wise, they just hit this point where they flip on the people they love because they’re too far past capacity, and they don’t like that. And this is one of the ways you start to reclaim it, not by doing more.

Jen Hardy [00:19:36]:

I like that. Yeah, the whole world is not going to stop if you give yourself 1 minute. I love that because we think that and we think because parents, I have seven kids and there was a time when I was just running, I was like a hamster on a wheel. But then I got really sick and suddenly everything stopped and we had to quit everything and it was the best thing in the world. And when I hear, moms, my kid does soccer and they do drama and they do this and they do this, but they don’t have to. Their life is not going to end if every child does not have four to five extracurricular activities. Oh, no. And I’m like, but I know what’s coming for you. Please just slow down and it’s okay.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:20:19]:

I think the blessing in the last couple of years with COVID has been a lot of things stopped. And I think a lot of people realize the beauty in that. And I’ve also noticed a lot of people filling their plates back up because it’s like, finally the world’s open again. And this is another thing, I like to go deep, so this is going deeper on this, but if you take time for anything, I would evaluate where are you investing your time and where are you investing your money and are you okay with that? Because it will tell you a lot about yourself and chances are you are not on that list at all. Or if you are, you’re way down there. And this is what I still struggle with, is like, getting my weekly massage. That is something my husband started getting massages twice a week and I was like, well, if you’re going to do that, I’m getting at least one a week. What the heck? So he actually was part of how I gave myself permission to take care of myself in that way because I’m worth it. And he was like, yeah, I’ll totally pay for you to get massage once a week. Go do it. Okay.

Jen Hardy [00:21:24]:

Oh my gosh, that sounds like so amazing.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:21:28]:

It is. But going back to where you put your time and put your money is where your values are and it can be really confronting I’ve done this myself. I’ve had clients do it. And if you don’t like where those values are showing up and what your priorities are attached to right now, it’s time to really get serious about shifting that.

Jen Hardy [00:21:49]:

No. And I think that’s so important because people will say, I don’t have time for this, and I don’t have time for that, but I really want to do it. But we all have 24 hours, right? And really, we are doing what we’ve chosen to do. And if what you’ve chosen to do is not what you like doing anymore, you are a grown up and you can say, I’m not doing that anymore.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:22:10]:

Yeah, that’s a boundary I’ve learned to reframe around time. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book the Big Leap by Gay hendrix. This is what I talk about on my show all the time. It’s like one of those that I’ve read it four or five times and every time it changes my life in a new way. But he talks about a concept in there called einstein time. And we live in a kind of newtonian physics world where everything is finite and there’s a start and end to everything and gravity is gravity and all that. But einstein is based on the theory of relativity. And so what that says is that time is relative, meaning there’s actually an infinite amount of time in the day because in any given moment, you are creating what you’re doing with your time. So if you don’t like what you’re doing with your time or the shift for me was realizing that because I was choosing what I was doing with my time and in creation of it, it allowed me to actually be fully present. So if my son like I home school my son on top of having my own podcast and a business that I run from home now. But if he was, like, hounding me and I’m trying to get a project done and we’re both just butting heads. I finally learned that if I just engage with him with all of my attention for it was usually much less time than it would have been. And he would get bored and go do his thing, and I would get my project done. But because I’m not distracted by all the other things that I should be doing in this moment, but I’m doing this instead and allowed myself to just be present, it opened up so much more time and so much more productivity and I get so much more done when I can engage in that way. Easier said than done again.

Jen Hardy [00:23:49]:

So for you listening, I need you to hear that because I think that is so important, that if there’s something like that, because I home school as well and I have a business and I have two podcasts and all this stuff. And it’s the same thing, though, where there are people that need you and instead of brushing them off brushing them off, brushing them off. And then having this constant back and forth, you do the focus thing and address the issue. Or if it’s not family, but it’s something there’s an issue, and it’s like a fly, right? I mean, not that my kids are like flies annoying me, but, like, another issue where it’s like there’s something you need to do, something you need to do, and instead of giving it that much time and brain space, just take care of it, and then you can move on, and then it’s not driving you crazy. And yeah. With the kids, I found that if we start our day with me giving them the attention that they need instead of making them wait for me to work a few hours, oh, my gosh, they’re so much happier, because if I’m working first, they think that that’s more important. So they need to know that they’re the most important. And then once we’ve established that, then I come and work, and then everything’s smoother.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:25:01]:

Yeah. And just to share an opposite, my son is actually the opposite. He needs quiet. I get to do whatever I want. Wake up time in the morning, so that’s when I work. And then we do school and do activities and stuff in the afternoon, and everyone’s different. So that’s the other thing. So many of us try to follow, like, I’m supposed to do this, I’m supposed to do that, and this is what my morning routine is supposed to look like. And this is all these shoulds, right? We have to stop shoulding ourselves. I had a guest early on say that on my podcast, and I stole it.

Jen Hardy [00:25:36]:

I say that all the time. Yeah. Don’t shit on me. I will not should on you.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:25:40]:

Yeah, we can. So let go of all of those post dues and just focus on what do you need and what does your family need to function and be happy and work and your house might not look, I get really entertained when I’m around my mom because she’s, like, an ocd neat freak, and I’m, like, dishes in the sink for two days. I really don’t care, because it’s not what’s important. If I were to focus all my time on trying to keep the house clean, I don’t have as many kids as you, but I’ve got stepson. So I have four boys and a male dog and a husband. So we have five boys in my house and a three story house. I’m like, we pay someone to clean that twice a week or every two weeks, not twice a week. And I’m not worried about it the rest of the time. It’s letting go of some of those things and expectations that maybe have come down generationally or societally, but if they don’t work for you and your family, why are we doing them?

Jen Hardy [00:26:38]:

Right? Well, and then that comes back to time and. Money, too. We have deep cleaning done in my house, too, by a company. Because the time and money that it would take, or the time that it would take us is so much more time than they come in with a team of eight they’re done in an hour and then we can all move on. That is worth what we pay them. It’s all relative. But if you enjoy the cleaning, then goodness gracious, do it all day long if you want.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:27:05]:

Right.

Jen Hardy [00:27:06]:

So I like that, giving everyone permission to do find out what you really enjoy and do that and stop doing all the things you hate because you get one life. Right. Don’t wait till you’re 80 and you don’t have decide.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:27:21]:

Yes.

Jen Hardy [00:27:21]:

Awesome. Well, thank you. You’ve given us so much to think about. Oh, my goodness. Now, if the people who are listening and they think, okay, wait, I need to find her, where can they find you?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:27:33]:

I am most active on LinkedIn and Facebook these days. I think I’m at Dr. Alex ridley on LinkedIn and I’ll send you my link for Facebook because I don’t remember what it is.

Jen Hardy [00:27:44]:

That’s okay. And I’ll have the links in the show notes so people can just click on it and go, see you.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:27:47]:

Yeah. And then I’ve got a podcast called The selfless Syndrome Show. And I’ve written a book called The selfless Syndrome the root cause of anxiety, exhaustion and hormonal chaos and high achieving women. And where can people find that?

Jen Hardy [00:27:59]:

Is that on Amazon?

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:28:01]:

Amazon? Yeah. Okay, awesome.

Jen Hardy [00:28:03]:

Okay. And we’ll have links to all of it. So that’ll be great. So you can find Dr. Alex because it’s going to change your life. It really is. If you make just a few subtle changes, lower that stress and the fact that you said it can actually make it so that we can’t lose the weight. I mean, how many women are trying so hard to lose weight and they can’t lose weight, but really we can get rid of some of that stress. And what you’re saying is that may make it easier if that’s the issue.

Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley [00:28:32]:

Especially because most of our weight loss tactics usually increase stress in our body. You’re totally shooting yourself in the foot.

Jen Hardy [00:28:38]:

Well, there you go. This is a book that we need to read. Okay, well, I can’t wait. Awesome. Well, thank you again, Dr. Alice, for joining me and telling us all this great stuff. Thank you. Awesome. Okay, I’m going to stop recording. That was.