90. Why Overstimulation increases Self-Criticism

October 28, 2026

You're not too sensitive, you're not weak and you're not broken.

Your nervous system is just running software that was designed for a world that no longer exists and every text message, alarm clock, email notification, and piece of your best friend's drama is being processed the same way your ancient brain would process a bear in the woods.

This is the final episode in Janna's four-part series on self-criticism, and it pulls together the neuroscience behind why being overstimulated and being hard on yourself are not two separate problems. They are the same dysregulated state, showing up in two different ways.

By the end of this episode, you'll understand why you spiral when you're overwhelmed, why no amount of rest seems to fix the exhaustion, and exactly what your brain is trying to do when it dumps a lifetime of "you're not good enough" evidence on you all at once. You'll also have a new level of compassion for your own brain because once you understand why it's doing this, it changes everything.

Episode Highlights:

[0:38] — The series finale: This is episode four of four in Janna's deep dive on self-criticism all leading to her new program, How to Stop Being a Toxic Bitch to Yourself. If you haven't listened to episodes 87–89, she recommends going back. Each one builds a different piece of the picture: your brain, your emotions, your nervous system.

[1:34] The foundation: Why beating yourself up to get where you're going guarantees you'll feel like crap when you arrive. What got you there is what you'll experience once you're there. The inner critic doesn't clock out at the finish line.

[2:00] Overstimulation 101: Most of us are wildly overstimulated and if you're neurodivergent, that level just skyrocketed. But even if you don't identify that way, this applies. Janna's goal isn't labels it's understanding why your brain is doing what it's doing so you can work with it instead of against it.

[4:16] The factory settings: Your nervous system was built for a world with lions, poisonous plants, and physical survival. Making a mistake in that world could literally kill you or your loved ones. So your brain learned: mistakes are dangerous. Self-criticism = protection. This is not a character flaw. It is pre-installed software.

[5:43] What your brain thinks is a threat: The text message. The email. The "hey, can we talk?" from your boss. Your best friend's drama landing in your lap. Your dinner that needs to be made. The timer going off on the lasagna. Your alarm clock. Your brain processes every single one of these as a potential threat high alert, every time.

[7:10] The blood flow problem: When your nervous system goes into high readiness, blood flows to your lungs, heart, legs, and arms everything you need to run or fight. Your frontal brain, the part responsible for critical thinking, conscious reasoning, and personality, gets less blood flow. This is why in a state of overwhelm, you can't think clearly. You're not doing it wrong. You literally have less blood in the part of your brain you need most.

[8:38] The mile sprint you didn't know you ran: Every nervous system threat response even the timer going off uses roughly the same amount of mental, physical, and emotional energy as running a mile as fast as you can. If you're processing dozens of these before 9am, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix makes complete sense.

[10:00] Even good things trigger the response: A positive message, exciting news, an unknown notification your nervous system prepares for all of it equally, because it can't tell the difference between a bear and your best friend. The twig snapping could go either way. The body prepares, regardless.

[10:59] The good news: You can reprogram this. Creating safety in your nervous system so the email doesn't trigger the same response as the lion is a learnable, trainable skill. It's exactly what Janna teaches in her program.

[11:27] How your brain makes things mean things: From childhood, your brain learned to attach meaning to situations: "When this happens, I make it mean this about me." Then it spent years decades finding evidence to prove it was right. The meaning came first. The evidence followed.

[12:21] Conditioning the spiral: Every time a strong emotional response goes uninterrupted, your brain tags it as "significant" and makes the pathway stronger for next time. This is how social anxiety grows. This is how pre-shift anxiety in nursing develops. You didn't create it on purpose but you can uncreate it.

[13:03] What overwhelm actually means to your brain: When the nervous system goes into threat mode and clear thinking goes offline, your brain arrives at one conclusion: "I am not capable of handling this." That may not be true. It is almost certainly not true. But that's the verdict your brain just returned and now it gets to work finding evidence.

[14:12] The 17-year-old crush: Your brain reaches back to a moment from adolescence blurting something embarrassing in front of a boy as evidence that a woman in her 30s can't handle a professional situation today. It has no filter for recency or relevance. It just finds the file. Janna's interrupt: "Does that actually have anything to do with what's happening right now?"

[15:07] The avalanche: Overwhelm → "I'm not capable" → RAS finds all the evidence → decades of subconscious negative beliefs start pouring out → brain concludes you need to try harder, do more → you do more → you still don't feel like enough → "there's something wrong with me." If you've been down this spiral, you're not alone. Janna's been there. Many times.

[17:13] Why the brain can't just make you stop: Your brain cannot override your free will. It cannot take over your body. So when it wants you back in the safe zone, it uses the only tool it has it dumps thoughts and beliefs on you, one after another, to get you to retreat voluntarily. The self-criticism is the ammunition. Getting you to safety is the mission.

[18:00] The safe zone vs. where you're meant to be: "I've stepped too far out of my comfort zone." "This has never worked for me before." "I'm not good enough for this." Sound familiar? Those are your brain's ammunition not the truth. Your nervous system wants you safe. Your soul wants you growing. If you're listening to Unlocking Your More, you want the more. The work is learning to live in the tension between those two pulls without the inner critic running the whole show.

[21:05] What regulated actually looks like: This is the goal. Walking into a situation you don't want to be in a hard conversation, a high-stakes moment, a conflict and instead of going into fight/flight and saying things you regret, you're clear-headed. You can say: "I understand why my body is reacting this way. I can give it what it needs. I can calm my nervous system down and now I can think." You can ask questions that deflate the situation instead of escalating it. That's not a personality type. That's a skill.

Try This After the Episode:

Start noticing your nervous system in real time. The next time a notification, alarm, or message lands pause for two seconds before you respond.

Notice: Does your heart rate increase slightly? Do you feel a pit in your stomach? Do your shoulders tighten? Do you feel a low hum of anxiety before you've even opened the message?

That's your nervous system doing exactly what Janna described. You don't have to fix it right now just notice it. Awareness is the first step to being able to work with it instead of being run by it.

Then ask yourself: Is this actually dangerous? Or is my nervous system just really good at its (outdated) job?

Reflection Questions:

Where in your day do you notice your nervous system responding with more intensity than the situation probably warrants?
When you feel overwhelmed, what does your brain start telling you about yourself? What "evidence" does it reach for?
What would it look like to walk into a hard conversation clear-headed instead of reactive? What would be different?
If your self-criticism is your brain's way of trying to keep you safe what is it actually afraid of?

Mentioned in This Episode:

📌 Episodes 87–89:The first three episodes in the self-criticism series. Janna recommends listening to all four in order for the full picture.
🔗 How to Stop Being a Toxic Bitch to Yourself: Janna's 6-module live program launching November 5, 2026. Covers brain reprogramming, emotional processing, and nervous system safety. First time teaching it live, meaning direct access to Janna and the ability to submit your specific questions. → https://www.jannaholterman.com/stopbeingatoxicbitch

Connect with Janna:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannaholterman/
Website: www.jannaholterman.com
Podcast: Unlocking Your More — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Substack and iHeart Radio

If this episode hit:

Share it with anyone who's ever been told they're "too sensitive," or who can't figure out why they're so exhausted even when life isn't that hard. The answer might be their nervous system running a program that was never updated for the world they're actually living in.

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe this series has one more landing place, and you're not going to want to miss it.

Keywords: overstimulation self-criticism, why am I so hard on myself when overwhelmed, nervous system and self-criticism, fight flight freeze self-criticism, overwhelm inner critic, why do I spiral when I'm overwhelmed, brain threat response modern life, frontal cortex blood flow stress, nervous system safety, self-criticism neuroscience, inner critic overstimulation, chronic exhaustion nervous system, conditioning anxiety, pre-shift anxiety nursing, overwhelm not capable, Janna Holterman, Unlocking Your More podcast, how to stop being a toxic bitch to yourself

Episode Transcript

Janna Holterman (00:38)
All right, let's get to it. Today we're going to be talking about how overstimulation actually increases our level of self-criticism. So, this is the final episode of the four episodes, all focusing around self-criticism, all landing and leading up to my new program, How to Stop Being a Toxic Bitch to Yourself. And so this really, if you haven't listened to the first three episodes, I'll go back and listen to them.

Janna Holterman (01:05)
They're all building in different components to help you understand your brain, your nervous system, your emotions, and how they all work together to either amplify your level of self-criticism or improve your level of self-criticism. Because ultimately, I want you to understand and be able to incorporate the learned skill of developing a better relationship with yourself so that you can actually create a life you want to live.

Janna Holterman (01:34)
Because if we're beating the crap out of ourselves to get where we're trying to go, we are gonna feel like crap when we get to where we want to be, because what got us there is going to be the experience that we have when we're there. So let's start a little bit about overstimulation. Most of us are in

Janna Holterman (01:56)
Incredibly overstimulated. And there's gonna be points where you recognize how overstimulated you are. And especially if you fall into one of the categories of like neurodivergence, your level of overstimulation just like shh skyrocketed, right? But even if you don't self-identify as neurodivergent, right? I mean, we're all a little weird in our own way. But if you didn't want to label it, cool, right? Like, I don't generally care to label myself with those kinds of things.

Janna Holterman (02:23)
But sometimes it really helps people identify and work with themselves to be like, I know, it makes it make sense for me to have a label. And this is exactly what we're doing. I want it to make sense for you to understand why your brain is doing what it's doing, why your nervous system is doing what it's doing, why your emotions are doing what they're doing, and creating your current experience and reality in your life so that you have a better understanding and more competition.

Janna Holterman (02:51)
passion to help work with yourself rather than against yourself to create more of what you want, right? Sounds pretty good. So let's start with overstimulation. Why are we so fucking overstimulated, right? Like we're so many people are so overwhelmed. And well let's go way back, way back to our instincts of our body and our brains and our nervous systems. And I know we've already talked about this. If you didn't listen to those last three podcast episodes, go do it, right? But

Janna Holterman (03:21)
Again, right, little reminder, refresher. So our nervous systems, our instincts as human beings have not evolved for modern day society. So that reminder being that your brain, your nervous system, your emotions are primed and ready to respond to threats, physical threats. There's a lion around the corner, and if you mess things up, it literally could.

Janna Holterman (03:47)
Be a death sentence, right? You could be harmed. If you were to go and gather food and you pick the wrong plant to eat, and that plant is poisonous, it literally could harm you and your loved ones. Making a mistake is potentially deadly for your brain, right? So that's why our brains are naturally negative and we naturally tend to lean towards self-criticism because your brain has instinctually determined that making a mistake could potentially kill you.

Janna Holterman (04:16)
And therefore, we shouldn't make any mistakes. But part of being a human, part of living in our world is making mistakes. And I can tell you from personal experience, I've learned a fuck ton more from the mistakes that I have made. And when I went and looked at them and evaluated them and processed them and moved past them with more skills, knowledge, and tools because of the mistake that I made, it actually has helped me grow more.

Janna Holterman (04:44)
But when I was in my peak self-criticism, and I'm not saying that I don't criticize myself now, it's just a lot better than I was. I was probably at like a hundred being the most, I was probably sitting between like a 94 and a 99 on a self-critical level for decades of my life. Right. And so when I was at that level of extremely high self-criticism, everything that my brain interpreted was me making a mistake, was leading into a

Janna Holterman (05:14)
Full out spiral. So now I want you to kind of look at the world around you. So your brain is primed to respond to potential threats. What would your brain think is a potential threat? You creeping through the forest, the twig snapping, and it wasn't you. You're like, my God, is there a bear? Like, you know, I have to be on high alert to be prepared to respond. Now we don't have that threat.

Janna Holterman (05:43)
Most of the time, unless you are truly out there hunter-gathering, living up the grid, but then you probably wouldn't leave be listening to this podcast episode. But I would love if you did, right? On your Starlink, right? Connecting in remotely. It's all good. So most of us, I'm gonna speak, for most of us who are going through life with all kinds of electronic devices. We have careers, we have jobs, we have coworkers, we have loved ones that we care about. You know, some of us have kids, some of us have pets.

Janna Holterman (06:13)
All of these things create things that your brain is gonna go on alert for. The text message, the email, the message from your boss, the hey, I need to talk to you from your coworker, your best friend's drama that she's trying to unload on you, high alert. Your dinner that needs to be made, you need to provide food for yourself, you need to provide sustenance for yourself, high alert. Even sometimes like a timer going off, your alarm clock.

Janna Holterman (06:42)
Going off. High fucking alert, right? have you ever had your alarm go off and you immediately go, my God, I am like in a state of anxiety, panic. What the hell is happening? Your nervous system is saying there is a stimulus that I have to respond to. And so what happens, right? Your nervous system says, I need to be prepared for anything. I need to be prepared for anything that could happen.

Janna Holterman (07:10)
And the way your nervous system is designed is thinking more about those bears, right? Thinking about that potential threat in the woods. And if there was a potential threat in the woods with like that wild animal, you're gonna need blood flow to your lungs, your heart, your legs, your arms so that you can run the fuck away as fast as possible. Potentially in need of like, you know, throw hands, get up and do a little punchy punch because you need to defend yourself.

Janna Holterman (07:40)
So what doesn't happen? Where, if your blood flow is diverted so that you can react, guess where your blood flow isn't going? Your brain. Your brain is actually your frontal brain specifically. So your part of your brain that's responsible for critically thinking and your conscious logical thought and your personality to some degree gets less blood flow. So we're in a state of high readiness, high prepared.

Janna Holterman (08:09)
to respond to threats. But is that text message actually life-threatening? Is that email life-threatening? Is that hey, I need to talk to you from your boss, your friend, your whatever person is your alarm clock, the timer on the stove for the lasagna that's cooking really life-threatening? No, it isn't. But your nervous system doesn't know that. Your brain doesn't realize that.

Janna Holterman (08:38)
And the thing is, because we respond as if it were life-threatening, we have these nervous system response. We wonder why we're so anxious, we're so overwhelmed. Because our nervous system is responding to all of these stimuli as if it is a potentially life-threatening thing. And it uses so much energy, right? Like each each one of those stimuli, you just ran like a mile around the block as fast as you could, even if you're not.

Janna Holterman (09:05)
physically active after it, the amount of energy required mentally, physically, emotionally to respond to those quote unquote threats is enormous. So it's no wonder why we're so drained and exhausted most of the time because our nervous system is constantly freaking out. But here's the thing: I want you to understand this so that you can start noticing it. I want you to be able to look around and be like, wow, like

Janna Holterman (09:34)
Yeah, I actually do feel my heart race a little bit or my palms got a little sweaty or I do feel slightly anxious or like a little disarmed at this moment when I'm like dealing with this situation or I get this text message or you know, all these things like, I do notice like the pit in my stomach that happens when I get a a message from my boss or even just like an email. Like just notice how is your body responding? Even good things, right?

Janna Holterman (10:00)
you can literally get good messages and your brain, your body, your nervous system is responding as if it could be a potential threat, right? Because you could be walking through the woods and you hear the snap of the twig. It could be a bear, but it also could be your best friend. Might be good, but you need to be prepared regardless. You need to be prepared. And that is what your body and your nervous system is doing. It is preparing, it is readying you for the threats that are potentially happening. So how does that

Janna Holterman (10:29)
Get into the self-criticism component, right? So that's why we're overstimulated, is because our nervous system is not designed, it is not evolved for modern day society. The fantastic news is you can reprogram it, you can create safety in your nervous system, in your brain, in your emotions that is going to allow you to calm that response. So when you get the email, you get the text message, you get your alarm clock going off, or the timer on the stove for your lasagna.

Janna Holterman (10:59)
It doesn't create that same level of response. But we have to understand how that works. And that's something that I'm going to teach in my how to stop being a toxic bitch to yourself program because nervous system safety is a huge, huge component of us being kinder to ourselves. So let's get into that part of so now you have a little more understanding and maybe a little more compassion for like why am I so overwhelmed all the time? Why am I so overstimulated?

Janna Holterman (11:27)
So when we look at our nervous systems and our brain, your brain makes a lot of things mean certain things. So basically, a lot of the time it comes from our childhood of when this situation happens, I'm gonna make it mean this about me. And then I've found evidence to reinforce that because your brain is always trying to be right. Your brain wants to solve problems, but it wants to solve problems that it already knows the answer to. So it's just going to find more evidence to reinforce the belief systems.

Janna Holterman (11:55)
The neural connections, the nervous system responses that it already knows. So you allowing the freakout, the panic, because you didn't know how to stop it is actually amplifying that neural connection. It's what basically happens is when we have a strong emotional response, positive or negative, your brain is saying, Hey, this is significant. We need to remember this.

Janna Holterman (12:21)
And then we can condition our brains unconsciously to amplify that response. And that's why sometimes people get, social anxiety or anxiety, you know, pre-shift anxiety was is something that's very common in nursing, right? Like you condition yourself to say, it is going to be unsafe for me to go into this environment where the demand is too high, the pressure is too high, it's too much. So we get.

Janna Holterman (12:47)
overwhelmed and a lot of the times when we get overwhelmed then it can spiral into that full nervous system response which can spiral into anxiety and the rest is history right so what does overwhelm actually mean for our brain so your brain subconscious definition and what it's finding evidence for when it comes to that feeling of like overstimulation or overwhelm is I am not

Janna Holterman (13:16)
Capable of handling this. So that may not be true. And most of the time it isn't. This is the crazy thing, is our belief systems were created when we were between the ages of zero and seven. Some of them we picked up from our parents, some of them we just were conditioned by the things that we witnessed as a child. So some three-year-old watching an event happen and saying, Hey, from a three-year-old's perspective, this is how I should handle this situation.

Janna Holterman (13:44)
And then they spent years, decades even reinforcing that that was the best way to do it because our brains are super biased. So if you wanted to be positive in that situation, you could find evidence to be positive. But if you wanted to be as negative as all get out, your brain can find a hell of a lot of evidence support to be all negative, right? So this is what happened. We conditioned ourselves. So your brain is looking at a situation and being like, she ain't she ain't capable. She can't handle this.

Janna Holterman (14:12)
why can't she handle this? Well, let me tell you, when she was 17, she did this stupid thing where, you know, she had a crush on this boy and she like blurted out something really, you know, uncomfortable in front of a whole group of his friends, and it was super embarrassing. Therefore, she cannot handle this situation now that is like when she's in her 30s. Is it factual? You're like, okay, well, maybe she did blurt that sentence out when she was 17 in front of a boy that she had a crush on at the time.

Janna Holterman (14:41)
But does that have any relevance to today's situation? No. But our brain is really good at bringing up those situations to remind you that you probably aren't capable, that you haven't figured it out, that you haven't worked hard enough, that you haven't earned the right, that you aren't far enough along, that so-and-so has figured it out and you haven't. And so therefore you're the problem. Right? This is what happens.

Janna Holterman (15:07)
Our brain is overwhelmed, it's overstimulated, and your brain is like, Well, she's not capable. And so what happens? Your brain gets to work and now it's finding all the evidence that you're not capable. And so when you go down this spiral of how not capable I am, that kind of leads to a whole lot of decades worth of evidence that your brain is now filtering to you. And then you're looking at that and being like, shit, maybe I haven't worked hard enough. Maybe I should just try harder. Maybe I should just

Janna Holterman (15:35)
Do more and then it'll be okay. And then you continue to do more and you still haven't created the results that you expected for yourself. And you're like, well, now there's something wrong with me. I am the problem, right? I can I can tell you this because I've definitely been down this spiral so many times with my brain before I understood what was happening. And if you're just now being like, shit, like I can see this happening, that's okay. This is this is perfect because you didn't wait another 10 years to figure this out.

Janna Holterman (16:04)
You're figuring it out now. And I want you to just pause and be like, wow. Okay, so where else is this happening? When else is this happening? Okay. So the reason that my brain went to the negative was the nervous system response. My nervous system overreacted. And then my brain was like, okay, clearly I'm not capable because I'm having this nervous system response. And then all of like the buried

Janna Holterman (16:34)
Deep subconscious negative beliefs that I have criticized myself.

90. Why Overstimulation increases Self-Criticism

In person Retreat Oct 2-5, 2026