🔥 You don’t owe what you thought you did.

Sadie Speaks is my personal writing — short, honest essays from the deep middle of things. They started as emails to my list, but they’ve become something more: snapshots of truth, power, and self-return, written in real time.

🎧 Listen to me read it — just the way I meant it.

💬 Prefer to read? Here’s the original text.

I’m officially one week into summer vacation, and it’s both exactly what I needed and more than I can handle. Taking mornings at my own pace and having fewer appointments gives my nervous system space and feels like freedom. But being with my kids 24/7 is triggering somatic memories of COVID times, when I was also home all day…back then caring for an infant, two toddlers, and homeschooling a first-grader. By myself.

That wasn’t hard. It was impossible.

Lately I’ve been feeling that “impossible task” energy creep back in. Even though I’ve felt it before, I only first named it a few weeks ago, when I realized I was carrying Alex’s return-to-office stress. He was the one commuting, yet somehow my body was bracing.

I didn’t know what to call the feeling at first. But I recognized its shape: grumpy, irritable, low-key pissed. Tension in my face, in my shoulders. Hard to focus. Wanting to be alone. Quick to snap. 

Most of us have a catch-all term for this kind of state. In Sadie World, I call it anxiety. Think of it as your personal default label for nervous system dysregulation. Like naming your kid, you get to pick the word that fits your vibe. And naming it is good. Truly. Because awareness is a skill. But once you name it…what then?

Welcome to the junk drawer. This is where named-but-not-yet-understood nervous system dysregulation goes. When you’ve glanced at the feeling just long enough to know something’s up – but not long enough to figure out what it actually is, or what you ought to do with it.

The problem? You know how hard it is to find anything when the matches and spoons and cling wrap and chip clips and charge cords and Chinese restaurant sauce packets are all chilling in the same space and collectively being called “junk.” That’s about how easy it is to decode dysregulation when you’re calling it all by the same name.

If you want to understand what your body’s really trying to say, you’ve got to sort through the mess.

So let’s start sorting.

Imagine you’re an alien learning to be human, and someone hands you a bucket of utensils. You know they’re for cooking and eating, but…which one flips eggs? What do you use to cut butter? To eat olives? And why are there so many kinds of spoons?!

At first, all the tools feel interchangeable. But over time – with curiosity, and trial and error – you begin to sort. To learn the different flavors of your dysregulation. 

Because all dysregulation kind of feels the same at first. Kind of like all tea just tastes like…tea. A bit bitter. Earthy. Dry. But if you drink enough tea, and pay attention, you start to notice the differences. Darjeeling is light and twiggy. English Breakfast is bold. Earl Grey tastes like perfume and eighteenth-century sophistication.

Sensing your dysregulation is the same. If you sit with it long enough – not just stuff it into a junk drawer – patterns emerge. Eventually you’ll find yourself saying something like, “Oh, THIS is a spoon! One uses this to eat soup. How interesting.” 

And your life will change forever.

Let me show you what I mean. Here are a few real-life examples from Sadie World. Yours might look totally different – and that’s kind of the point.

• Performance panic: I’m going to visit a friend in downtown Lancaster. I have to parallel park. What if I hit another car? What if I’m too close to that fire hydrant? What if someone’s watching me and I look like an idiot needing 17 tries to get this right?? That tight, frantic, I NEED TO DO THIS RIGHT feeling? That’s a flavor.

• Running late spiral: I’m trying to get the kids out the door for a pediatrician visit. We’re already late. One kid scrapes her leg climbing into the car. Do I go back in for a bandaid and risk missing the appointment? My blood feels hot. My brain floods with urgency. Another flavor.

• Creative exposure twitch: I write something raw and share it. (Like this.) Did I say too much? Was I too weird? Did I make people work too hard to understand me? Will they still like me? That simmering freak-out about how I’ll be received? Another one.

Each of these situations looks different. But early on, they all feel the same. That’s why the sorting matters. 

But back to this week’s flavor – impossible task dysregulation. What defines this one? It doesn’t respond to action. Most nervous system distress has a fix-it impulse attached to it. You’re flooded, so you do the thing – calm the kid, finish the task, send the text – and the pressure lets up. But this one? No matter what you do, it doesn’t go away. It hums underneath everything. You rest and still feel like shit. You finish the task and still feel behind. You give in to the screaming kid and still feel upset.

Impossible task dysregulation is like a hunger that doesn’t respond to food. You keep eating but you’re never satiated. Until you start to wonder if maybe this isn’t hunger. Maybe it’s something else, like your body trying to tell you: this can’t be fixed by doing more.

So if doing more doesn’t help…what are we actually trying to fix? What’s the impetus for all that pressure that Just. Won’t. Let. Up?

Impossible task dysregulation originates from any expectation you’ve internalized without questioning. Taking a friend soup when they’re sick – even if you don’t have the spoons to make your own family dinner – because that’s what a good friend does. Making your kids a “real” lunch (something better than Bagel Bites and sliced strawberries) while you’re writing a grant proposal – because that’s what a good parent does. It’s anything you’re trying to achieve or hold together because you think you have to – not because you’re consciously choosing to.

And that’s really important. Because nobody feels good about doing stuff they never actually agreed to.

So who told you that you have to do all this stuff?

This here is the kicker: nobody did. Nobody! Not directly, anyway. The script you’re following was pieced together decades ago from subtle, sometimes-misinterpreted cues – filtered through the lens of a seven-year-old just trying to survive. (Hint: That seven-year-old is you, whether you had a “hard” childhood or not. Growing up is rough, guys.)

You didn’t agree to all these bullshit expectations. You just inherited them.

But now they live in your bones. I have to do this. I have to keep going. Because stopping feels…dangerous. Like the wheels will fall off. The house will collapse. 

Or someone will stop loving you.

This is the operating system we’re all running, until we do the inner work to update our software. But once you can clearly see the bugs in the system – everything changes. You stop thinking the problem is you. You stop sprinting to catch the carrot and disembark that hamster wheel, climb the bars of the cage, and bite through that string with your teeth. 

That’s where the power is. Not in burning down your life and moving to New Mexico in your vintage RV. Just in seeing the shape of it clearly.

Right now, for me, the impossible task is this: Parent fully. Lead the family into our summer routine (which is still nebulous and nowhere close to forming organically). Run a business. Handle the house. Prep for the vacation we’re leaving for in two days. Oh, and also squeeze in that pediatrician appointment. 

And – if the stars align – maybe I can get into my office and write. Because that’s what keeps me sane.

But Lucy, ten going on sixteen, is mad that I won’t make her fettuccine Alfredo from scratch for lunch. Cora cried the whole ride to the pediatrician because I wouldn’t turn around for that bandaid. I have a full day of office work to knock out before we leave and a suitcase that’s still empty and I am only one person with one nervous system and one flag. Which is currently waving.

Cue impossible task dysregulation. 

I used to override it and just keep pushing. Old me would’ve diced that garlic and grated the cheese – seething the whole time, yelling at everyone, and finishing the day with a buttload of resentment and zero words on my page. 

Then I started seeing it…but I wasn’t willing to stop. Because preteens are mean, and I feel like a bad mom when I feed them frozen foods.

But now? I’m tired. I’m over this dog and pony show. And I want to stop – I just don’t know how to do that yet without consequence. 

But here’s the magic I found: When I finally named it – this is impossible – the pressure broke. Just a little. Just enough for me to make a tray of Bagel Bites, slice a quart of strawberries, and disappear into my office to write this. 

So I could begin the work of…whatever’s next.

And I’m not exactly sure what that is. But I think it starts with reading the fine print of the soul-mortgage I signed without understanding. 

I think it’s a refinance.

Rates are better now. And I don’t owe what I thought I did.

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — you can book a session with me here. I’d be honored to hold that space with you.