Decision Fatigue & Nervous System Saturation: How to Restore Before Fall

Listen to Episode 43: Decision Fatigue & Nervous System Saturation: How to Restore Before Fall

By late August, many of us feel an unsettling combination of fullness and exhaustion. We've had a summer full of events, but now we're facing "decision fatigue"—that dread when someone asks, "What do you want to do?" In this episode, Blaze dives deep into the reality of nervous system saturation, explaining why months of novel experiences and seasonal demands have left your brain "buffering."

She uses the relatable analogy of a computer running too many programs to describe how our capacity gets depleted, leading to irritability and a feeling of being "tired but wired." Blaze offers a compassionate framework for recognizing these emotions not as failures, but as signals that you need a "hard reboot." Learn how to simplify your routines, reduce inputs, and build trust systems to spread the load, so you can enter the fall with restored energy rather than burned-out resentment.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• Why the end of summer often brings decision fatigue and a feeling of being "tired but wired."
• The concept of nervous system saturation and how months of novelty deplete our capacity.
• The "computer analogy": How many "programs" are you running, and when do they start crashing?
• Why "buffering" (brain fog, snapping at people) is a signal for rest, not a character flaw.
• How to distinguish between physical fatigue and nervous system exhaustion.
• Practical strategies for a "hard reboot": simplifying routines, reducing inputs, and automating decisions.
• The importance of building trust systems (friends, tools, communities) to spread the load.
• Why emotions are signals, not problems to fix, and how to respond with compassion.
• How to prepare for the fall without adding more stress or demanding stability you don't have.
• The freedom of accepting where you are right now and being easy with your current capacity.

Hello my friends, welcome back. This week we're going to talk about our emotions and what happens specifically towards the end of the summer.

I don't know how you're feeling, but I can take a pretty accurate guess, I think, which is that you're a little bit frayed at the ends right now and feeling like you're simultaneously pleased with how much has been going on and really full.

Like there's just a lot happening. You might feel closer to tears sometimes for no reason or a little bit more irritable. Again, for small things that you're like, "I shouldn't be this upset about traffic this morning, but I'm furious and it sucks."

We are tired, we're cranky, we're a little bit...

I don't know, everything is closer to the surface. And I think that this is the counterpoint to what we were talking about last week, where we were talking about how we're kind of overstimulated. So much has been happening for so long that when you're a sensitive person, like you're just taking in so much more.

This week I want to talk about it in terms of your nervous system and what it's been accumulating over the entire summer, because it is a little bit different, although it's closely connected to like physical fatigue.

So physical fatigue, you go and do a workout and your muscles get really tired and you may find that you feel pleasantly exhausted or your muscles ache, but you're ready to get some rest and you might have a really deep sleep.

With you're nervous system, which is what's processing like all of your emotions as well as your body moving through things and taking in daylight and changing your circadian rhythm. And it's also processing all your thoughts. Like I think of your nervous system as so tied into how we're thinking and what we're processing.

When that's been under constant stimulation for a long, prolonged period of time, we fizzle out quickly. We feel like we're tired but we're wired, so it's like this I'm exhausted and I'm not sleepy but I just can't think anymore and I don't want to have to make any more decisions.

And when I'm asked to figure out like, hey, where are we going to go this weekend? Or what do you want to do? It's like a dreaded question where I'm like, why are you asking me that? And it feels like an attack. So if you get to that place too, or someone asks, what do you want to do this weekend? Or where do you want to eat? And you feel like you're being attacked.

That's usually a sign that your nervous system is just saturated and overwhelmed and you're like, "Man, Decision fatigue is a real thing. I can't make any more decisions." It feels like decisions are flying at us constantly all summer long.

And I think that we accumulate them day by day. But I also think that in the context of months and months of activity and unusual activity at that, usually because there's much more.

socializing and family gatherings and all that kind of stuff. Some of them are high tension, some of them are people that you don't normally interact with.

and it asks a lot of us. It's not normal routines, and so we get more and more tired.

Something that I noticed years ago was that when I would go and take a class and be learning something new,

I would be so hungry and I would eat so much more.

And I was so confused as to why I didn't think about food at all while I was learning and taking the class and doing things.

But then, you know, the bell would ring, it's time to go eat. And I'd be like, "Wow, I could eat a mountain." And then I'd go back and do class and work really hard for four or five hours and then come back and it's time for dinner. And I could eat a mountain again.

And it was only in that moment that I realized, "Well, learning, doing something different than I normally do and paying attention to things in different ways than I normally have to."

is hugely energy-consumptive for my brain and for my body. So you need the fuel to be able to counteract that.

and sometimes in the summer. We don't think of our lives as demanding that much of us other than what we assume is normal.

So we think that it's normal to be busy all the time. That's just a society expectation right now, right?

We're gonna be busy, we're gonna be entertaining people, we're gonna be up really late, we probably are gonna get up pretty early.

And we have extra chores and things that are seasonal that don't come up all the time. So we're like, oh, I have to weed the garden, but I also have to weed whack along the edge of the property. And I also have to make sure that the lawn is good.

and I probably should seal the pavement in the driveway. There's just lots of extra things.

that are not our usual things that we're coordinating and each new novel experience.

or unusual experience takes a lot more energy from us in our brains to process.

than our normal routines. So it's probably pretty easy for you to be like, oh, I know my nighttime routine, I like, put it on the alarm clock, I get into my PJs, I wash my face, I brush my teeth, I read a book or watch TV show and I go to bed.

that takes no real effort from you because you don't have to think about it.

In the same way that maybe your commute to work is kind of autopilot and you're not thinking about it most of the time. That's not taking a ton of energy unless something weird comes up on it.

But thinking about when you have to mow the lawn, when it's going to be raining this week, how high the pollen count is, did you take your allergy medicine, wait, who needs to be brought to what event?

All of that is a lot that isn't usual, that your brain does have to think about and it is giving you pushback even though it seems very small.

So I want you to recognize that at this stage of the year, we are pretty full up.

with lots of experiences that while minor, most of the time, have accumulated.

to deplete us. And if we're not intentional about taking some time to build up more capacity and to restore ourselves,

then this pattern just continues to deepen and get more and more dysfunctional.

I don't like being a cranky person. I know that I do it. I'm okay with it now because I understand that it's not my definition of myself. I don't think of myself as a cranky person. When I'm being cranky, I recognize that it's me calling out for something that I need.

So I look at how things are going right now is not necessarily like a regression in my life. It's not me.

being cranky as a sign that everything's going wrong or I did anything wrong. It's just a sign that life has been pretty full.

and I need a little bit more buffering time in between things. I love thinking about buffering time. So sometimes when I'm trying to come up with a new idea or get something done or a project and I find that my brain just stops, like someone asks me a question and I'm like, "What?"

I think of it now as our computers just buffering, buffering, like trying to upload the information and it just needs time for processing.

And when it gets to the point that it's happening all the time, where I'm like, "God, I can't answer questions right now, and I feel overwhelmed or I'm annoyed by the questions."

It's not easy anymore and I just want to break. I go, "Oh, well, what do I do with the computer?"

that is buffering all the time and slowing down. Like usually I have to turn it off and give it like a hard boot, like a reset because it needs time to just sort all the things.

So that translates into actual physical rest and getting sleep so that our brains can clean themselves out.

It's so important and I think the average American just doesn't get enough sleep so I can't.

talk about that enough. But I will question like, okay, am I getting enough sleep? Is it quality sleep? Is it cool enough in my room? Do I have the fan on? Like, what do I need to do to help that be a more pleasant and

practically helpful experience. Am I asking too much of myself? And here's in the computer analogy, I think.

How many simultaneous programs am I running right now? And I want to ask you that too. Like how many simultaneous programs do you have going at once?

And what is your normal happy operating system capacity?

And it's gonna be different for everybody, but I tend to find I like to have maybe two to three programs running at once.

but I really start to get unhappy at five and I get really sad at 10 plus.

And everything starts suffering and even my normal routines, like what I would call my normal programs start crashing and failing when I've got too many things going on. So that's a nice light and easy way to describe what happens to us at this time of year and just in general in our lives when we've piled too much on is to think of it as okay,

How many processes? How many things am I trying to coordinate right now and holding in my consciousness or holding in my body?

And is that effective? Or do I need a breaker to offload some of this?

So one of the more effective things I think we can do is to figure out where the supports in our life.

And this is something that I teach in the anchor of the whole life course is where do we look for our support systems?

And it can look like a great many things. It can be our friends, it can be systems that we have in place that we're just using normally like computer programs or

notebooks or whatever it is that we have. So some of them are like physical objects, some of them are actual communities.

Some of them are particular friendships or mentorship. Some of them are classes. But we look at those as what are the support systems that we have in place that help us deal with any of these particular demands that we have on us.

So if I look at my life right now, the demands are prepping for another school year for my child.

getting ready for the house upkeep that's going to happen in the fall, so making sure that the gutters

get cleared out and that we're ready for snow in the winter and all the things that are a lot easier to do at this time of year than later.

it's recognizing that I'm preparing for when all the leaves are going to come down and it's nowhere close to that happening yet, but it's in my brain thinking about it. So I have all of this like

future prep going on and then the actual things that are happening now. So it's still how many sleepovers are we happening?

Are we happening? Oh my gosh. This is how tired I am, you guys. How many sleepovers are happening? How many gatherings of friends coming?

to, you know, play with me or play with my daughter, hang out, how many trips have I got planned, where are we traveling?

Just the regular maintenance of life. How's my car doing? Do I need to get my tires rotated?

I probably should go get it cleaned. Like there's just a lot of stuff. And it's interesting that my mind just wanted to call it junk. There's a lot of junk going around up in here and I need some place to offload it.

So if that's where you're at as well, it's a good time right now to just recognize that that's where you are and that it's okay.

And you didn't do anything wrong by getting here. We're all here. It happened to every single one of us.

just existing in society is going to give you this kind of accumulation. So it's normal and it's natural.

And what I think society tells us to do is just keep going. Just keep going, get ready. It's time to go buy a whole new wardrobe for the winter and for the fall and get ready for school.

It's, you know, we have things that we're excited about too and stuff that we're looking forward to. Like, I honestly can't wait to have a night where it gets down to like 70 degrees. That would be amazing. But we're not there yet. So we have stuff.

All of that being said, it's okay to go, "Okay, where are my supports? How can I deal with all of the things that are happening or are about to happen?"

in a way that is more effective or spreads the load a little bit. What do I need to do to pace myself maybe? And that's part of it too, is how do I manage my life in a way

that lets this all be doable and not burdensome or stressful or terrible.

I guess I no longer expect my life to never have stress. I don't know why that seems to be a goal that we have is to be like, "I just want to have a stress free, awesome life."

Of course we do, but we don't really. I don't expect that to ever happen. There's always going to be some kind of stress. I just want to have enough tools in my toolbox and enough resources around be they.

time, money, friends, just relationships, whatever that helps me spread that load in a way that feels good and manageable and everybody is doing all right.

So I think of that as just building trust systems in my life.

so that everything just ends up somehow okay. Through my effort, but hopefully not like...

Curculian effort.

I had so much energy for massive efforts back in April. And I did. I did many epic things. I think I spent a week just like

shoveling dirt and carrying it across my yard and putting it in the garden. And I remember getting to the point where that didn't feel hard anymore. And I went, wow, I've really leveled up.

And I know that if I had to do that same level of effort today, I'd be like, "Oh my God, I'm so tired. Why am I so feeble?" So, you know, it ebbs and it flows. And I'm willing to accept that where I'm at.

at different points in my life and at different times of the year is different. I want to offer that to you too to go, "Hey, it's okay to be where you're at right now and to be easy with that and kind to yourself."

It's totally okay. So what I think is best for us.

in being able to correct the deterioration of a overwhelmed nervous system is to just normalize it.

and not make it into a problem. Like, you can reduce your inputs if at all possible, so for me, it's about just...

not making things hard. I've got easy dinner plans. I'm not changing anything. I'm totally okay if I eat the same breakfast every single morning because I don't have to think about it.

and not thinking about it frees up more space to make a decision later if I have to.

I'm also just kind of going with things that are already planned and not trying to add extra things into it because that's making me feel

a lot saner. I guess that's what I can say. I don't feel as crazy if I'm not adding more things to do because it's not the time for that.

I think this is not the time to try to demand stability for myself either, so I'm not saying that I have to be happy all the time or that

know if I have a crazy moment or snap at someone or break down that it's the end of the world. I'm definitely not punishing myself for that. Instead, I'm looking at those moments and offering myself more support.

Because honestly you guys, like our emotions aren't a problem to fix. They're just the signal.

about everything that's going on and it can be a signal that something in your life needs more space or needs more.

care and compassion and awareness from you. I think when we learn how to interact with our emotions in that way, it becomes a really much more pleasant back and forth and you're not shocked or upset by anything that comes in, you're just seeing it as information.

And that's really healthy. So I am sending you all a great big hug and wishing all of us to have just a nice quiet evening.

with the beverage of your choice that makes you feel the most happy. Something delicious to eat that brings a smile to your face.

Yes, let's leave on that note and I'll see you next week where we're going to talk about rest and preventing early burnout before we get into the fall.

where ironically the world wants to demand so much more of us when everything in our body is saying, "No, we just need to do less right now, so we're gonna talk about it and keep it real next week."

Alright, I'll see you then. Muah.

Related Episodes

Series: Restoring Capacity and Managing Saturation When the nervous system is overloaded, the only solution is to slow down and restore. These episodes explore how to recognize the signs of saturation, simplify your life to reduce cognitive load, and find the deep rest needed to transition into the next season.

• Ep 42: When the World Gets Loud: How Sensitive People Can Find Quiet in Summer Chaos – Strategies for managing sensory overload and creating a "quiet oasis."
• Ep 13: Motivation vs. Capacity — Why You're Not Lazy (And How to Start Without Forcing It) – Understanding the difference between lack of motivation and lack of capacity.
• Ep 10: Wintering — The Power of Rest and Retreat – Why retreating and slowing down is essential before you can sustainably move forward.
• Ep 05: What if You're Not Broken - Just Tired? – A compassionate look at holiday burnout and the human urge to push through limits.
  

🌿 Want help building rhythms that work with your energy instead of fighting it?

The Living in Rhythm Starter Kit offers grounded tools to help you recognize your current emotional state, understand your nervous system's signals, and uncover the support systems already present in your life. It's a gentle guide to finding clarity and connection when you feel saturated.

Download it here.

🌿 Looking for a deeper, live experience this season?

I'll be hosting an Autumn Equinox gathering on September 23rd — a space to slow down, reflect, and work with the energy of harvest and release in real time. We'll be exploring how to let go of what no longer serves us and prepare for the quiet wisdom of winter.

You can learn more and save your spot here.