breaking up with my stress hormones.

6 steps to break the addictive cycle of elevated cortisol levels.

The Friday before Thanksgiving I hit an energetic wall. I had just landed back home in DC after photographing a new restaurant opening in Boston and rolled my gear off of what I realized was my 26th flight of the year. Oof. A wave of exhaustion flowed through me. I felt a tickle in my throat and my brain felt a familiar buzz of being wired but tired. Shit. I could sense body flirting with the symptoms of burnout. I knew this feeling from when I was first diagnosed with PCOS: an excess of stress hormones flooding my system. I could feel cortisol running through me as quickly as my thoughts were bouncing from one loose end to the next. I opened my phone and went in a loop of checking Instagram, email, and texts. I was observing my mind’s craving for stimulus and cheap dopamine.

This was about to be my first break from work since the summertime and I was stomping my feet that I was about to spend the weekend horizontally recovering from the stress of the schedule I’ve been navigating this year. An overindulgence in the passion I have for my craft and an unwavering dedication to the business I’ve been building had starved my body and spirit of the energy necessary for continued growth. My first lesson of the week had arrived: Even if something nourishes you deeply, it can still deplete you.

two types of stress

There are infinite ways to label stress (environmental, physical, acute, episodic, social, etc… to name a few) but I want to focus on two primary types: normative and chronic.

• Normative - The body’s natural response to a perceived threat that utilizes coping mechanisms to create safety and return the body to homeostasis. Acute in nature, normative stress can encourage evolution and growth as we adapt to overcome it.

• Chronic - A prolonged state that taxes the nervous system, leads to dis-ease in the body, and serves as an endocrine disruptor.

Stress isn’t inherently bad. It’s when we live in a chronic state of stress that our systems deprioritize certain functions in order to prioritize survival. Side effects of chronic stress include elevated heart rate, glucose levels, and blood pressure, which lead to other patterns of dysregulation in our bodies.

step 1: acceptance

This was the first time I had been sick since healing my gut in 2023 and it took me 24 hours of clinging onto my belief that oregano oil heals all to eventually surrender and accept that what I needed to do was rest. Like really, truly, deeply rest.

This feeling was familiar. The chronic activation and release of stress hormones was something I came toe-to-toe with when I was first learning about how to heal my PCOS. My mind and body were sending me the same signals: a few unwelcomed pounds sitting on my frame, acne on my face, scattered thoughts paired with brain fog, indecisiveness, a daily feeling of needing to “do it all” and sharp food cravings.

As we approached the holidays this year, my thoughts were slanting more anxious than what I know to be the baseline for my mental health. I looked in the mirror and felt puffy from the stagnation in my lymphatic system which told me that I was living with some degree of inflammation in my body. I checked in with my integrative medicine doctor and I was due for my annual labs so off to LabCorp I went.

Bloodwork confirmed that my adrenals were in overdrive and my testosterone had ticked up until it was slightly above the optimal range. My period was reflecting this irregularity back to me. Over the summer I celebrated having 28-30 day cycles that were synced up with the lunar calendar, a first for me since regaining my period in the summer of 2023, after years of PCOS-induced amenorrhea. From September to November I experienced 36-day and 40-day cycles which served as my first vital sign that something was off. I was sitting with big feelings of disappointment for the inconsistencies in my self-care.

How did I let myself get back here? It’s easy to point to work and acknowledge stress. It’s harder to sit with myself and take an honest, non-judgemental look at why I was leaning into work so much. I had slipped into a subtle fight or flight mode for the past two to three months. What was I running from? What was the real or imagined threat? The true acceptance came when I realized my body was seeking elevated cortisol levels because that was a familiar (and thus “comfortable”) state of being.

step 2: stillness

As I laid in bed and watched the sunshine go from morning light to afternoon shadows I got curious with myself. I closed my eyes and asked my subconscious to serve up some answers for me. There was an intuitive knowing that my body had memorized the feelings of overwhelm that are triggered by a flood of cortisol. But when did I first learn this feeling? I traced it back to when I was in my early 20s and I was first pulling on the threads of what I had been conditioned to understand success to be: a six-figure salary and the busyness that comes with that paycheck. My job responsibilities were growing at a faster rate than I was as an individual and I began to associate success with stress. In order to be successful, one must undergo stress. Unfortunately, this method was proven to work in my life experience and I created an unhealthy association with the positive feedback loop between stress and monetary gain.

This time around felt different because I am running my own business and doing what I love; however, the parallel was in my root belief that in order to cultivate success for myself I needed to undergo stress.

step 3: rest

In one of my earlier posts, The Sum of All Things: How I Healed My PCOS, I wrote about the four bodies: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual/energetic. I like to look through this lens in order to identify what each body needs when I’m seeking balance. The word that kept coming to mind as I surrendered to my couch was overstimulation. In the hurry of the holiday season I was numbing in small ways in order to get through. A little extra caffeine and mindless scrolling paired with less nutrient dense meals and less time for stillness to calibrate to my needs. The buzz of city life had me humming through each day, unaware of how I was slowly disconnecting from the voice of my intuition telling me to slow down and take care of myself in small ways. I could sense that my physical body was seeking warmth and deep stretches, my mind needed fewer inputs, my spirit was craving ease and joy, and my emotions needed some focused attention in order to feel safe to surface.

Even though I knew I needed to recharge I found myself resisting. Underneath the surface there were subtle fears swirling of how I would be able to keep up with my workload and the elusive “success” I was seeking through the busyness. Why was it so hard to just sit with myself and meet my own needs? Why was choosing what’s good for me feeling so uncomfortable?

I was reminded of my recent post about resistance and the gentle lesson of leaning into the necessary discomfort that comes with change. It was in that moment that I decided it was time to look at why I was overextending myself. It was time to rewire my relationship with success and thus my relationship with my stress hormones. It took a conscious choice of breaking up with the addictive nature of my stress in order to choose a new way of being.

step 4: release

After clocking some serious rest, I turned to my meditation practice. With my eyes closed I took a few minutes to observe the swirling of my thoughts and I noticed the disconnection I felt with my body. Through the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza I learned about the importance of coherence. As I understand it, our brains and hearts slip into states of incoherence when we are “running a program” of memorized thought patterns and emotions in the body from the past. In my case, I was running the program of stress that my mind and body had memorized from years of overworking. I was creating a familiar stressful environment to propel me towards what I had unconsciously identified as a path to achieving success. It’s in this state that we are disconnected from the present moment and thus to source energy. Our nervous systems are dysregulated and our genes are downregulated which creates an environment for dis-ease to flourish in our bodies and hormones to become imbalanced (watch this video with Dr. Joe for a more in-depth explanation).

As I laid in stillness I focused on breathing into my heart space and creating a feeling of safety in my body. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I let myself feel deeply into the fears of failure and my PCOS returning. It was in this moment that I released what I had been gripping so tightly: the need to “do it all” myself so that I can feel a perceived sense of control. I went one layer deeper and learned that beneath that was a fear of not reaching my potential. It felt like this was a soul-level fear; something I was holding in the deepest parts of me. A fear that I won’t make the most of my inherent gifts and create meaning in my life. In hindsight, I can see how it was from this state of incoherence that I resisted asking for help in my business which led to me saying “yes” to things that were depleting my energy. These fears take root in soil that is fertilized by feelings of lack and disconnection from something greater than ourselves.

Intuitively, I knew that movement would be medicine. I went on a walk and felt the lightness I had cultivated by sitting with my emotions. I was present with the emotional residue left behind by the abundance of cortisol that was unprocessed in my system. By taking an honest inventory of why I was carrying stress with me every day I was able to release the pressure I was putting on myself. A feeling of clarity washed over me. It was a welcomed wave of emotion after feeling many waves of exhaustion and overwhelm crash over me in weeks’ prior. The second lesson in my healing had arrived: Go towards the hard feelings. Feel them deeply, and as you release them, let them free you from the limiting beliefs you’ve built in your mind to protect you from the fears that have taken root in your subconscious.

step 5: realign

With the newfound space in my mind I turned to one of my favorite tools when taking conscious steps towards change: writing a Prune & Water list. My therapist taught me this technique years ago and I return to it often. On a blank piece of paper make two columns. On the left hand side write down anything that you want to prune (reduce/remove) from your life, big or small, and on the right hand side write down anything that you want to water (increase/add). I give myself 2-3 minutes in each column to let my intuition serve up answers. Try not to overthink or over analyze yourself. Just let it flow when you put pen to paper.

Often I find that there are direct correlations between what I want to prune and what I want to water. For example, identifying that I want to spend less time scrolling social media and invest more time reading before bed. There’s a natural balancing that happens when you replace one habit with a new one. I return to my list daily when I first wake up to plant seeds of good intention for the choices I will make that day. I’ve noticed that if I begin my day with something on my “water” list then the rest of the choices I make that day come a little easier to choose what is in my highest good.

step 6: subtle shifts

Since starting this journey of writing about my experience with autoimmune conditions I’ve learned to use the word “heal” lightly. PCOS is something that can resurface for me at any time based on lifestyle factors and the conditions of my inner/outer worlds. This was my first experience I have had with reactivating my PCOS symptoms since “healing” in June 2023 and it was a timely wake-up call. I’m proud of how I listened to the signals my body was sending me and how I’ve taken aligned action to come back to center. When seeking balance, my acupuncturist reminded me to give myself a season (3 menstrual cycles / about 90 days) to observe noticeable change.

Here’s a look at my “water” list aka what I’m actively doing to reduce my cortisol levels, nourish my adrenal glands, and cultivate more balance in my mind and body.

• Morning Walks - Dr. Mindy Pelz’s book, Eat Like a Girl, dives into the magical world of how to eat to support our hormones and how subtle lifestyle changes can be made to balance our hormones. In the section about cortisol, I learned that our cortisol peaks 30-60 minutes after waking up in the morning and the way that cortisol is processed/released is through movement. Unprocessed cortisol is often stored in our fat, specifically belly fat, which is why it can be so stubborn to release. A gentle morning walk has been the change I needed in my routine to signal to my body that I’m in a state of ease rather than stress. I’m also soaking up the benefit of getting sunlight in my eyes first thing to help regulate my circadian rhythm.

• Mindful Consumption - Two main things have needed a little tweaking: caffeine intake and social media usage. The added stimulus from both were accumulating in my system and taxing it unnecessarily, leading to more stress.

• Boundaries - I’ve had to be more proactive in telling my family and friends that I need space in order to prioritize my highest good. Taking time to water my needs first allows me to show up more fully with others.

• Cycle Syncing - This has been the first year where my cycle has been “regular” enough for me to adapt and sync my lifestyle to my menstrual cycle. As I became more irregular over the past couple of months I found it really frustrating when attempting to eat, workout, and live based on where I am in my cycle. I’ve noticed that after clearing some of the stagnant energy I was accumulating, I’ve been more in tune with my body and able to cycle sync. For me, this looks like:

  • Food - I check this list when grocery shopping to make little shifts like incorporating more citrus during my follicular phase to metabolize excess estrogen and eating more starchy veggies during my luteal phase to support my glucose levels as progesterone rises. Goop wrote a good overview of how to nourish the four phases of our cycle if you want to dive a little deeper.

  • Movement - I noticed that in the busyness of the past couple months I was foregoing my workout for work. It became easy to convince myself that my energy was better spent serving my clients rather than serving myself. This left my body feeling sluggish and stagnant. I’ve felt called to create a consistent practice with a combination of Pilates, yoga, and gentle strength training.

  • Lifestyle - Knowledge is power when it comes to understanding how to align day-to-day activities with your cycle. Recently, I’ve said no to more social plans and given myself more grace with my capacity to be creative. I’m leaning into being more social and increasing creative output in the first half of my cycle and prioritizing more alone time and completing projects in the back half of my cycle.

• Focus on my “Why” - After overindulging in work and losing sight of the reason behind all of the photoshoots, trips, and clients I’ve experienced this year I’ve been really excited in anticipation of the winter months. I’m looking forward to taking time to slow down and get clear on which direction my compass is pointing and why. Recentering on the intentions I have for leading a purpose-driven life is something I’m grateful to be able to water this season. Clarity in this area will serve as a framework through which I can plant new seeds and make better decisions.

• Energy - I’ve made a conscious effort to choose my energy signature which is a result of choosing my intention for each day (sometimes multiple times per day). Without a conscious choosing, I was leaving room for my mind to default to overwhelm and stress when faced with moments of discomfort that are seemingly unavoidable in the process of growing and evolving.

Nothing on this list is revolutionary but it is revolutionizing how I feel in my body and my mind as we settle into the darkest days of the year. Normative stress is something we all learn to navigate in our own way, but chronic stress has become far too widely accepted.

My hope is that this post will support you in creating stillness and clarity so you can take aligned action to cultivate more flow and joy in your days, and thus more flow in the natural rhythm of your body.

Nature teaches us that winter is a time of death and rebirth. A time for stillness and a time for energy to be redirected to our roots so we may grow stronger in the seasons to come. As we round the sun on this winter solstice, I’m wishing you a healthy and balanced season that nourishes the soil from which you will grow.

With love (from my couch),

Birch