The tiredness sleep cannot fix

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open, the identity you built no longer fits, and the future feels terrifying, nobody around you seems to get it. Welcome, I'm Jodie Brooks, and this is Messy Midlife. Because this isn't a crisis, it's a calling to connect. There's a particular kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. You know the one. You've had eight hours, you've ticked the boxes, you've done all the things you're supposed to do, and yet something in you is still exhausted. Not your body, something deeper than that. Hello and welcome back to Messy Midlife. It's not a crisis, it's a call in to reconnect. I'm Jody, and if you've been with me through the last few episodes, you've been doing something quite extraordinary. You've been paying attention. In episode nine we looked at the first two layers of awareness, what we are doing and what we are feeling. I asked you to sit with those two layers, to notice your habits, to name your emotions. Today we go one layer deeper, because once you start noticing what you do and what you feel, something else begins to stir. A sense that there is something more going on underneath than you have been able to name. Things we have not yet named, patterns we have not yet seen, stories we've been living inside without quite realizing it. That is what today is about. Returning to yourself, not in one grand leap, not in a dramatic breakthrough, but in the quiet, steady way that real awareness always works. There is a moment in midlife when you start to realise that doing more and feeling more are not the whole story. You can notice your routines, you can notice your mood, you can even name your stress, your sadness, your resentment, your exhaustion, and still there can be something deeper. Tugging at you. A sense that you're not yet seeing the full picture. That is often where the real turning point begins. Because sometimes what is most important is not what is obvious, it is what is quietly shaping everything from underneath. And that is where returning to yourself starts to become more than a practice, it becomes a process, a journey of discovery. I want to start with the iceberg. We've spoken about it before, this image of the conscious life sitting at the tip, visible, manageable, something we can point to and explain. But underneath the waterline, the vast, quiet, unseen part of us, the part

Why this matters — beneath the surface

that is actually doing most of the steering. And here is the thing about icebergs. They do not announce themselves, they do not send a calendar invitation, they simply sit there underneath the surface, shaping the direction of everything. Your reactions, your patterns, your relationships, your choices. Most of us spend our whole lives dealing only with the tip. We manage the exhaustion, we manage the conflict, we manage the anxiety, we stay on top of things, just about, but the drift, that quiet creeping sense that your life is happening to you rather than being lived by you, the drift often comes from the part below the surface that we have never properly looked at, and that is where returning to yourself actually begins, not at the surface, underneath it. I want to talk to you about the hidden layer, the space between what we can see and what we cannot yet see, because so much of our life is built on things we have never properly questioned, the roles we took on, the expectations we absorbed, the beliefs we inherited, the survival strategies we learned a long time ago, and still use even though our lives have changed. We often think we're choosing freely, but sometimes we are simply repeating what has always felt familiar. And familiar is not the same as true. That is why awareness deepens over time. At first we notice the doing, then we notice the feeling, and then if we stay with it, we begin to ask, what else is going on here? And that question matters because it opens the door to what we do not yet know. I want to offer you a word today that might feel a little unexpected, archaeology. Not the Indiana Jones version, not dramatic discoveries in foreign deserts, I mean the quiet, careful kind. The kind where you brush away the layers very gently, without force, to begin to see what has been underneath all along. So much of what shapes us in midlife is not recent, it's old. The roles we took on long before we had a choice in the matter, the expectations we absorbed from families, workplaces, cultures, absorbed

The iceberg returns

so deeply we forget they were absorbed at all. The survival strategies we learned as children, people pleasing, overachieving, shrinking, performing, that once kept us safe have now become the very things keeping us from ourselves. We often think we're choosing freely, but sometimes we are simply repeating what has always felt familiar. Now, returning to yourself is not about becoming a different person, it's about becoming more fully aware of who has been there all along. Back to our iceberg. It is looking below the surface to what we have not seen, to what we are only just becoming aware of, the part that is often quietly directing us, and that allows you to notice where you have drifted away from your own truth, where you've been performing, where you have been pleasing, where you have been surviving instead of living, and then gently, without judgment, beginning to come back. That return might look small from the outside, a different answer in a conversation, a boundary you did not set before, a moment where you pause instead of react, a quiet sense that something in you is waking back up. That is what I mean by returning to yourself. I want to ask you to pause here just briefly and think about one pattern in your life that keeps showing up. Not a fault, not a failure, just a pattern. Where does it come from? How old does it feel? You do not need to answer that right now, but let yourself notice that the question is there. Because that noticing, that willingness to look past the surface is exactly what returning to yourself requires. This is awareness reaching into understanding. This is the bridge. I know this from my own life. There came a point after the cubicle moment, after I'd stepped off the hamster wheel, where I realized I could name my exhaustion, I could name my disconnection, but I still could not explain it. Not fully, the first sign that something was changing for me was not a big decision, it was a growing awareness that I could no longer keep living without asking better questions. I'd already noticed the exhaustion, I'd already noticed the disconnection, I'd already noticed the moments where my life fell out of sync with who I really was, but I still had to discover what lay underneath all of that. What was I protecting? What was I avoiding? What had I never fully let myself see? That is not an easy place to sit, and you could call it messy, in fact. As I sat in that mess and

The hidden layer — familiar isn't the same as true

asked what was I not seeing, my awareness grew, looking backwards, not forwards. So many self-help books and gurus ask us to create goals for the future, to imagine and desire a life yet to come, but what awareness taught me was something very different. The iceberg wasn't concerned with the future, it was setting its course based on the past, and the past was not unknown to me. What was unknown to me at this stage was just how it was steering my iceberg. I stopped asking questions about what I wanted and started asking what I do not want, do not want to do, and do not want to feel. Because when you ask those questions, your iceberg will surface the resistance and try to convince you otherwise. And in that resistance, I see the opportunity to stop a past memory from controlling your direction, like an archaeologist uncovering the buried treasures and artifacts. As I asked those questions, I began to see how the childhood trauma had made me a people pleaser, and the abandonment had made me abandon myself, and the rejection had left me always feeling like an imposter in my own world. Now all these would take much more work along the journey of the principles, but one uncovered treasure at this stage would change a considerable amount. What I did know now was that I had forgotten to update my identity from the business owner to the employee, so I'd made my time in corporate world much worse than it ever needed to be, because I had cared like it was my business. Like it all depended on me. And empowered with this truth, I could now go deeper. When doing something, when feeling something, I could now ask, am I responding like the owner or the employee? It didn't fix itself overnight, but it did change my return to work and the 18 months that followed. I should also mention the impact of these two books here. First, Mel Robbins, the Let Them Theory, and importantly, the Let Me Theory in the book. And a book by Sarah Knight. The life-changing magic of not giving a flip. You know

A quiet archaeology

what I mean, but in the interest of not having to mark this podcast as X-rated, you'll have to use your own imagination for the F-word there. I also started to ask this question of myself: Do you need to have an opinion on this? Because there are so many occasions that we leap into formulating an opinion, stirring up emotions where we have no control or need. And I especially did not need to formulate the opinions of my old identity, company owner. All these combined helped me return to myself in so many situations, asking, what am I not seeing here? They became a constant tool to keep my iceberg autopilot in check and start listening to the messages it was sending me. Those messages from my inner self that pile up when we do not listen, the text, missed calls. Most of us at this stage in the journey have started listening to a few of them. We've picked up one or two. This week I want to invite you to read one more. One pattern, one reaction, one place where your response feels bigger than the moment, or smaller than you really feel. And I want you to get curious about it. Not critical, not analytical, just curious. So the question to sit with today is this what am I not yet aware of? You don't need to rush to answer it. In fact, you probably cannot answer it all at once, but you can become curious. You can notice where the same patterns keep showing up, you can notice where your reactions feel bigger than the moment, and you can notice where your body seems to know something before your mind catches up. That is often the edge of awareness. And if you can stay with that edge without forcing it, something does begin to shift. At the edge, have courage to stay curious. Curiosity is such a powerful part of this work because it helps us to stay open without getting overwhelmed, without judgment and without criticism. If you try to force answers, you often end up feeling pressured and self-critical. But if you stay curious, you give yourself permission to unfold more slowly. You begin to realise that the things you thought were fixed may not be fixed at all. And that is fine. This is powerful. That is awareness in action. That which felt like just me may actually be something learned. That which felt like a personality trait may actually be a pattern. And that is freeing. Not always comfortable, but freeing. And remember, you can always flip the question to I don't want if the answers don't come when you ask

Returning to yourself

what you want. And if the sat nav goes off route, if you find yourself slipping back into autopilot, do not panic. Just pause, recalibrate, and come back. That is not failure. That is faithful practice. For some people, returning to themselves looks like more energy. For others, it looks like more truth. For others, it looks like more boundaries, more peace, more honesty, more self-trust. Sometimes it begins with a tiny shift. You realise you do not want to say yes automatically anymore. You realise you need a little more quiet. You realise the old story is not the only story. That is returning. It is not a finish line, it is just the beginning. For me, it meant no overwhelm, less anxiety, and a slow, gradual return to joy. So this week I want to leave you with one gentle invitation. Stay curious about yourself. Ask what is obvious, ask what is felt, ask what might still be hidden. You do not need to solve it all, you just need to stay open to it. Because the work of returning to yourself is not a moment, it's a direction, and every time you choose to look a little deeper, even briefly, even imperfectly, you're moving in that direction, towards what is true, towards what is yours, and towards the person who has been there all along underneath everything that you have been carrying. And next time we get to explore this theme through another lens, because I'm joined by my wonderful guest Nicole Anderson. Nicole talks beautifully about the messy middle, about pausing, reflecting, and redefining what success actually means on your own terms. Her story is such a powerful reminder that when life cracks open, it's not always a sign that everything is falling apart. Sometimes it is the moment we begin to see more clearly what really matters. So as you sit with your own reflections this week, remember that awareness is not just about noticing what

Pause with me — one pattern that keeps showing up

you do and what you feel, it's also about becoming curious about the things you have not yet seen. That is how returning begins. That is how the deeper work starts. And if you would like to continue this conversation, come and join us in the community at authenticcoaching.me. The link is in the show notes. I'd love to see you there. Let me know what resonates for you right now. Just click Connect with Jody at the top of the show notes and send me a message. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep coming home to who you really are. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messy Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection and personal growth. It isn't a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect.