When Too Much Is Too Much

Which is exactly what brought me here today.

On the podcast I talked about something I have been sitting with for weeks now. That feeling of too much. Not too much bad. Not too much good. Just too much. All of it arriving at once and your body not knowing what to do with any of it.

And I told you I was going to do what I always do. Take it to my therapist. Take it to my neuroscience professor. Send my bestie a few voice memos she did not ask for. And then come back here with everything I found.

So here I am. With the receipts.

And I want you to know before we go any further. None of this is behind a paywall. None of it ever will be. Because I lived more than half my life without access to this kind of information. And I refuse to let one more person go a single day without having it available to them. I already paid that price. You do not have to.

So pull up a chair. Let us get into it.

Why Your Body Cannot Tell the Difference Between Good and Bad Stress

Here is the thing nobody tells you. Your nervous system does not have a category for good stress and bad stress. It only has one response. On or off.

When something stressful happens, whether it is a book deal or a broken Achilles, your body releases the same two hormones. Adrenaline and cortisol. They flood your system, your heart rate increases, your muscles tense, your brain sharpens its focus. Your body is preparing to respond to a threat.

The problem is your body cannot tell the difference between a threat and a blessing. It only knows that something big is happening and it needs to get ready.

Researchers call the cumulative effect of all this stress the allostatic load. Think of it as your body's running tab. Every stressor, good or bad, adds to the tab. And when too much keeps landing without a release, the tab gets too high. Your system stops being able to reset between events. The stress response that was designed to be temporary gets stuck in the on position.

That is not a character flaw. That is not weakness. That is your biology doing exactly what it was designed to do for too long without a break.

Here is what that looked like in my life in real time. My grandmother got sick. My significant other broke his Achilles. I left a note on my estranged daughter's door and did not hear anything back. I texted my mom good news and the response was not what I needed. All of that was happening at the same time as a vacation I had been looking forward to, good news about my book, my daughter moving into her new apartment, and becoming an empty nester.

Good and hard arriving at the same door. Joy and grief living in the same house. And my nervous system running one tab for all of it.

Too much just became too much. And it had nothing to do with how strong I was or how much faith I had. My body was simply overloaded.

What the Journal Pages Actually Told Me

I want to tell you something I shared on the podcast that has stayed with me.

I keep travel journals. Thirty pages each. January was full. February was full. March had fifteen pages. Half empty. Vague. Careful.

I did not need anyone to diagnose me. The pages told me exactly when the allostatic load got too heavy.

And here is the science behind why that matters. Research by Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas found that writing about emotional experiences actually changes how the brain and body respond to stress. When you put words to what you are carrying, something shifts neurologically. The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking and emotional regulation, becomes more active. The amygdala, your brain's fear and alarm center, calms down.

In simple terms. Writing your thoughts down moves them out of your body and onto the page. It frees up mental space that was being used to hold everything together. And clinical research shows that regular journaling can reduce cortisol levels, lower anxiety, improve immune function, and even reduce blood pressure.

But here is what I learned the hard way. When you stop writing, all of it comes back. The mental space fills back up. The cortisol has nowhere to go. And what was manageable starts to feel unbearable.

March had fifteen pages because I had gone quiet. Not just in my journal. In myself.

I was editing my own private pages. Protecting people who would never even read them. Scared to make the hard things real by naming them. And the irony is that keeping the pages empty did not protect anyone. It just kept me stuck.

I went silent in the one place I was supposed to be spoken.

The Morning Framework and What Your Body Is Already Doing

Here is something my neuroscience professor told me that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

Your body starts preparing for your day before you even open your eyes.

In the first 30 to 45 minutes after waking, your cortisol levels rise significantly. This is called the cortisol awakening response and researchers believe it is your body's way of mobilizing energy and focus for the anticipated demands of the day ahead. Think of it as your body's daily briefing. It is scanning for what is coming and getting ready.

And here is the part that changed everything for me. Research shows that what you anticipate for the day actually influences how much cortisol your body produces in those first minutes. Higher anticipated stress equals a higher cortisol spike. Which means how you set your mind in the morning literally affects your body's stress response for the entire day.

This is why the morning anchor is not just a spiritual practice. It is physiological. When you intentionally set your mind before the noise gets loud, before the phone, before the to-do list, before the world kicks in, you are actually influencing your body's chemistry for the hours that follow.

For me this looks like worship, scripture, and sitting with Him before anything else. Not as a checklist. As a conversation. Asking one question. What am I seeking today. Because when I seek Him first everything else stays in some kind of order. And when that seeking shifts, everything shifts with it.

That is not just faith talking. That is your prefrontal cortex staying online instead of your amygdala running the show.

The Evening Surrender and What the Science Says About Letting Go

I used to read that as good advice. Now I read it as a biological instruction.

Here is what researchers have found about what happens in your body when you end the day with release instead of rumination. Studies show that a gratitude or surrender practice at night lowers nighttime cortisol levels, improves heart rate variability which is a key marker of nervous system balance, and significantly improves sleep quality. People who practice some form of intentional release before sleep fall asleep faster and have fewer negative racing thoughts because their brain is not trying to process unresolved concerns at 2 in the morning.

One study found that simply writing down a to-do list for the next day before bed helped people fall asleep nine minutes faster. Not because the problems were solved. Because the brain had somewhere to put them. It released the pending concerns and made space for rest.

That is surrender in biological terms. You are telling your nervous system it is safe to rest. You are giving your body permission to turn off the stress response for the night instead of keeping the tab running while you sleep.

This is the framework I come back to every single day. It is not a perfect practice. Some mornings I skim the surface. Some nights I skip it entirely and wake up scrambled. But the research also tells us that missing a day here and there does not derail the process. It takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic, not the 21 days you may have heard. And the science shows that consistency over time matters far more than perfection on any given day.

Grace is built into the biology.

If You Want to Go Even Deeper

My professor recommended a book that I want to pass on to you. It is called Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. It is one of the most accessible and honest books I have read about what actually happens in your body during stress and more importantly how to complete the stress cycle so your body can actually finish what it started.

It is not clinical. It is warm and readable and full of real stories alongside the science. And it will give you a whole new language for what too much actually feels like in your body and what to do about it.

You Are Not the Only One Going Through It

I want to close with something I said on the podcast because I think it needs to live here too.

We are not the first people to feel this way. And we will not be the last. The whole Bible is full of people carrying more than they thought they could hold. People who were overloaded and overwhelmed and questioning everything. And He kept showing up in the middle of it anyway.

The science confirms what scripture has always said. Your body was not designed to carry everything indefinitely. It needs a place to release. It needs a morning to reset. It needs a night to let go. And it needs community. People to sit with you in the too much so you are not sorting through it alone.

That is what this space is for. That is what the kitchen table at Just Jelly Unfiltered is for. That is what the comments section and the DMs and the emails are for.

You matter. What you are carrying matters. And you do not have to figure it out alone.

I have already paid the price of going without these resources for too many years. So none of this will ever be behind a paywall. Come back here whenever you need it. Share it with someone who needs it today. And if something from this blog or the podcast has landed for you I want to hear about it.

Come find me over at Just Jelly Unfiltered for the kitchen table conversations. And stay right here at Lavish Life Living for the deeper dives.