Episode 9: Bracing for Impact Preparing for a High Cognitive Load Season 

In Episode 9 of The Jamerrill Show, I share what it looked like for me to navigate an unexpected high cognitive load season while already carrying ongoing stress, healing, work, and motherhood. After months of believing I was entering another long “limbo” year, sudden news in February 2026 required me to complete 50–60 hours of emotionally heavy personal work within just a few weeks all while managing: business responsibilities, parenting, dental appointments, a broken stove replacement, and caring for my nervous system. Instead of pushing harder, I explain how I simplified wherever possible, buffered my schedule, reduced unnecessary stressors, leaned into gentler walking instead of intense training, and returned to my core anchors: movement, nourishment, rest, and nervous system care. The heart of this episode is the reminder that simplifying during hard seasons is not failure, it’s strategy. And that preparing for overwhelming seasons often means protecting your energy before, during, and after the hard thing arrives.

Listen on your favorite platform

You can watch the full video episodes on my second YouTube channel, and the audio is available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms.

Key Takeaways

A high cognitive load requires intentional buffering.
When I know an overwhelming season is coming, reducing commitments, simplifying responsibilities, and creating margin helps protect my nervous system before the pressure fully hits.

Simplifying is a strategy, not a failure.
During intense seasons, lowering expectations and focusing only on the essentials is not weakness. It’s wisdom and self-support.

Nervous system care matters during stressful seasons.
Walking, rest, massage, sleep, nourishment, and reducing stimulation became essential tools that helped me process stress and continue functioning.

Movement can be adjusted to match your capacity.
Instead of pushing harder during overwhelming seasons, I intentionally shifted from intense running to gentler walking to better support my body and cortisol levels.

Sometimes the aftermath is harder than the event itself.
Preparing for difficult situations takes energy, but many times the emotional and physical response afterward requires even more recovery and care.

Resources Mentioned

• My Main YouTube Channel

Transcript

This may sound silly, but again, this is my life and my work. Welcome to the Jamerrill Show, friend. I’m Jamerrilll. I’m a mom of nine, a runner, 70 lbs down, and I am a woman rebuilding my one life right in the middle of real and ongoing hard seasons. And I’m reaching out to share with other women who need a place to start. If you’re trying to make it through another day, take one more step and build a life that you can hold on to while things are still hard, you’re not alone, and I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back again today, friends, to the next episode of the Jamerrill Show. I am so glad that you are here with me today. And I tell you, I wanted to film this episode about three weeks ago, right? Was it three weeks? Yeah, three weeks ago when I was going into what I knew going in. So, it’s nice. It’s nice sometimes when you have life things happen. Even if they happen really quickly and don’t give you a ton of notice, it’s nice when you have a little bit of leeway. And so I quickly got some information, gathered some facts that showed that I was about to enter a very high cognitive load season.

And my heart behind the Jamerrill Show is not to wait until I’m through the messy middle. Hopefully this is the middle. I’d love for this to be the end, but in reality, you know, there’s that whole reality thing. And reality is I’m probably very much messy middle, but I don’t want to have to wait to share encouragement and hope and strategies with you that I’m learning from when I’m at the end, wherever I think this end will be. And I’ve made it through this very intense season. I started the Jamerrill Show so I could share with you right in the middle of my journey. As I learn skills, as I reapply skills I have learned along the way, as I’m learning and gleaning new bits of encouragement and developing additional systems and strategies in my own life.

I feel like and I hope that some of this, and I’ve heard some very nice feedback, some of whatever this is that we’re going through is helping other women out there who are rebuilding and going through their own journeys. So, another little known fact or maybe it’s a very obvious fact is I have been in a giant limbo season for quite a while during this two and a half year journey that I’m on. There’s been long gaps of time in between major events. And I really thought, by all the data I had, that 2026 was going to be another limbo year. And there were some things on the calendar for later, like late fall 2026. And honestly, I thought when I got to that point, because I’ve been through this long enough now, I thought by the time I get to maybe some things will start to happen again late fall 2026, this could honestly go into 2027, even 2028. And that’s a very long season of unknown details, of no finality, of not being able to move on from one thing to another. And all of that unknown up in the air is also a lot on the nervous system.

And so good news is that mid-February 2026 and let me just say this note, this episode, hi, it’s in May, but, “Jamerrill, how do you do these things?” For me to actually do this podcast in 2026 and publish bi-weekly, I need to film a month or two in advance. So timeline, this episode is coming out in May. I’m recording this today is March 23, 2026. So if you’re watching this in May, hello, we made it to May. And so when I’m recording this, this is just how fresh this situation is after another season of 8 months of limbo from early summer 2025 to mid-February 2026. Yes, that’s roughly another 8 months of limbo. All of a sudden, mid-February, there was an opportunity to handle something big coming up mid-March. But what that sudden, you know, good news to maybe get out of limbo land mid-February when I got that information I knew that would immediately require about 50 to 60 hours of work on me to make it happen.

And this is something personal I’ve already put hundreds of hours into, if not over a thousand hours, over the past two and a half years. Also, being a single mom and working full-time and doing all the life and stuff and things, I had felt like January 2026, I had a pretty good start to the new year as far as content production on my main YouTube channel, also getting ahead and getting this podcast going. And also during that time, I put the work into moving to some new brand management, to a new company that would help me manage sponsored opportunities. I did a nine-miler trail event, my idea of a good time and overall, I felt like January was a good start. I got 100 miles in, or maybe it was 106 miles, which was twice as many miles as I got in January 2025. And I had a lot of running events planned for 2026 because again, running and movement is so good for my brain and my body. And participating in these large group events give me my little kitten claw of hope that allow me to have hopeful things with hundreds of people out in the woods and out on the roads and such to look forward to.

So January good, pretty good. Pretty hopeful. Still limbo land. Still thinking limbo land was going to the end of 2026. Breathing in and out. Making the best of it. Got a good start into February. First two weeks of February. Pretty solid. Very hopeful. Also, I’m thinking here. I’ve done two 25Ks. How did this go? Early February. I think it was actually Valentine’s weekend. Yes, I did my first 25K. Very fun. We have to talk about movement within every podcast episode. Okay, this is one of the ways that I make it through. That 25K was where I did it was more than a 25K. It ended up being an 18-miler instead of a 15-miler, and it was on snow, ice, and microspikes.

And then that next week, like, I got the news. Oh, by the way, we’re not waiting till towards the end of 2026. Um, this can happen now. We have a big thing in four weeks. Do what you need to do. Well, what that means for me as a mom and a businesswoman and a woman who’s healing and juggling a great many things is somehow all of a sudden I needed to find a 50 to 60 hour block. I knew I was going to need to take a whole week off of work and pour my heart and soul into finishing up this 50 to 60 hours of work that needed to be done. This was not work that anyone else could do. This is personal paperwork, personal details, and I needed to do it.

And same project. This particular stack of personal details and personal work, last summer, June 2025, I took two weeks solid. I probably put a good 120 to 150 hours into that project. I had to put my blinders on and I did nothing but that project, but also worked on my self-care. And it was that experience in June that helped me buffer with some of these strategies I’m going to share with you. When you know, it’s nice when you get a heads-up that there’s major cognitive load loading. Now, I know that we don’t always get that. And in June, I just suddenly had it. I did not know that it was coming. It was there. And I had to take off two weeks.

And it was so much paperwork that I had one of my teen sons bring up one of our camping air mattresses. And I set it up here on the kitchen floor. And I had my laptop set up and I had my printer set up, and I ordered a new printer from Walmart. ChatGPT told me the best printer that would work with my phone, and I could lay on that air mattress, it just made sense, and print the documents I needed. It would take hours of organization on my little screen and all of that, but I could print from my phone. And that was two weeks of my life in June. And when I turned that project in, I then needed a solid week for my nervous system to exhale and come back down. And I do think it took me a few weeks to heal and restore and re-energize from that big two-week investment.

And in February, what I needed to do was update all of that big work I did in June suddenly. So, I had gotten two good weeks of work in February. And all of a sudden, I was like, “Ah, so now that I’m finding my rhythm and my footing for 2026, I get to clear my schedule and do nothing but this for the next seven days.” So what I did is I looked at my calendar again. Valentine’s Day was Saturday, so this was whatever—probably that, you know, Monday I got some news. Wednesday I got the full news. And I looked at my calendar on Wednesday and I was like, “Okay, I have five days until the following Monday.” I can even tell you dates. I like seeing dates and things because sometimes I’m like, “Why did I do this or why did this take me so long?” And then when I look at the calendar, oh yeah, and I have compassion on myself, that makes sense. So found out some things on February 16th, February 18th it was: big thing is now going to be in March.

So I looked at February 18th and I said, “Okay, I’m giving myself five days to prepare to enter into the big heavy cognitive load zone. In this five days, I need to, like if I have any sponsor work for my main channel coming up, I need to get that done.” Now I need to, with my videos I probably need to film I need to get another grocery shopping video done. I knew during the 60-hour week I would not be able to get videos done and I wasn’t ahead. Now my biggest income stream is my main YouTube channel. I know that’s not perfection. I know in a perfect world as an online business owner, we should have physical products developed and things that we sell and like, I have this Pioneer Woman platter. I should have my own like Jamerrill Stewart platters and be selling them and have a warehouse. I’m not there yet. I have ideas, but I’ve been surviving a few things.

So, I knew my income stream from my main YouTube channel. I needed to somehow over that five days figure out how I could at least get a few more videos done for February. I believe I ended up publishing seven videos in February, which is still not my goal, but it was something. And so during that five days, I looked at my schedule for the rest of the month. I cleared everything that I could. I knew that going into my paperwork deep dive was going to bring about more grief. I knew it’s not just the paperwork and the numbers and the heavy cognitive load. There’s a lot of emotional layers to it. And I knew it was going to take high focus and high detail and a lot of organizing and a lot of decision-making. And it wasn’t something I could delegate or delay. But again, giving myself that five-day buffer to just accept reality.

“Okay, Monday I have to go all in on this project.” And if I started the project looking at my calendar on February 23rd, my goal was to turn it all in on Feb on sorry, on March 2nd. And I believe I was able to turn it in March 3rd. And I knew this would be heavy nervous system activation time. And as much as I know, you know, we love, we know that I love running in all its forms, when I have a high cognitive load coming on because I also I have to watch the stress in my body. I have to watch my inflammation. I have to do what I can to care for myself, get my rest, and also try to lower my cortisol. And I know that running naturally raises cortisol.

So, at that moment, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to pull back the running right now temporarily. I’m going to continue to get my time on my feet and my walking because my gentle walking helps me process many of the things coming at me.” I get a lot of answers while I walk. I walk myself into a lot of peace and acceptance. And you know, we love those hope molecules. So, I still needed my hope molecules to make it through. But that was one of the things to help support the big oncoming cognitive load. I was like, “Okay, I had these running plans, you know, doing my three to four runs a week for February.” Um, there was also that weekend, maybe it was February 21st or 22nd, I had a 10 mile trail event I was signed up for and I was like, “Okay, taking that off. Not going to be able to do that. Just as much calm and rest and peace, sleeping well, watching my nutrition, taking care of my one life.”

On February 23rd, I had an appointment that morning out before I started this project. And I also got a full-body massage because that is so helpful for me. Of course, I have a history of neck and shoulders thing and I’ve been fine. But usually when I get a massage, you know, sometimes I’ll get one a month, sometimes it’ll be one every three or four months. That usually registers on my sleep tracker on my watch. It registers as a nap. And so I know that’s just taking good care and blessing my body back, and it’s nice and relaxing. So, I also, I cancelled my running event for that weekend, and scheduled a massage.

I knew, uh, mom life, food life for our home. “Hey, why do you make all those freezer meals, Jamerrill?” I knew we had freezer meals. We had just had several big cooking projects on my main Jamerrill Stewart YouTube channel where we made dozens and dozens of muffins. And I knew I had about 15 to 20 freezer meals in my freezer. Also, I did not have a lot of breakfast freezer meals. Those go super quick around here. So, I did easy-lift things that I totally give myself permission for and make sense to me, no problem. I ordered the Walmart already-done pancakes. The bags are maybe $3.97. They’re not that much for a bag of 24 pancakes. And so I also, you know, pancakes and bagels, and we have freezer meals for dinner, and you know, we always have a lot of fruit around here. Again, just making the load a little lighter for the heavy cognitive load that was coming up.

So how I buffered my time is I got ahead where I could during the 5 days. I cancelled what I could during that 5 days. I made work lighter where possible, and I gave myself as much margin as I realistically could. And so after that five-day buffer and the best I could do to prepare my life and my brain and my body, I dove in and I did that huge cognitive load amount of work over the following week. And I did not run that week. I just continued with my walking as a buffer. And during those days with that high cognitive load, I would have to leave my printer I had a whole like, this is a 15 some-odd feet long table. I had eight or nine feet of it with all my papers spread out, my printer ready to roll. And I would take breaks throughout the day 15 minutes here, an hour there. I would take what papers I could with me along on my walks. And again, moving my body is really helpful for me to process and make it through hard things.

And also, there were additional real-life elements that came at me during that dedicated work week where again, I wasn’t able to work on my business at all that week. And like anyone who can afford to miss a week of work, but I also had to coordinate, this may sound silly, but again, this is my life and my work. My large stove had broken, and the manufacturer wanted to replace it for me. And during that week, while I have my heavy cognitive 60-hour paperwork week, I’m also working with the stove manufacturer, working with scheduling the shipping company, and working with my local propane company because I had to have them come out to unhook the stove. And I had to coordinate the shipping date, and I had to coordinate the propane company coming back as soon as they could after to hook everything up.

And that may not sound like a huge deal, but I have a household to feed and I make a lot of big cooking videos. So, I had to get the timing right because I was already missing a week of work to do this 60-hour personal project. And then looking into March, I could not have it where the propane company disconnected the stove and the propane, let’s say March 4th, but then the stove wasn’t delivered until March 11th, and then the propane company couldn’t come back to hook it back up until I’m going to say March 17th. I had to highly detail the stove coming and all the moving pieces of that puzzle so the overall unit was down the least amount of days possible. From the future I can tell you it was totally down four days start to finish.

Oh, and what also made the stove delivery week fantastic, all the moms deep-breathe with me, is that was the same week I had eight bi-annual dental appointments for my household. That was for myself and seven of my nine kids. And those appointments, your dentist is probably like mine. I mean, they have a good business. I make those appointments out every six months, but I’m actually scheduled out for like a year and a half in advance sometime. So, who knew February and March would be such a heavy load for me? But there we were, the same week. My good planning of the stove disconnecting, coming, reconnecting, and cooking again is the same week. Those eight appointments were two different days that all I did was get us to the dentist those two days and have four to six hours at the dentist both days and a 2-hour round trip there and back.

So, that’s just a week in March. And I’m getting breathless just saying all of that. And my life is not any different than any other woman’s life. As women, we have many layers that we juggle and that we manage. And there are many of us that are doing this on our own. So in February from the 23rd to the 27th, I look at my calendar to remind myself. I put in my 60 hours and got my big stack updated. And I worked on configuring the stove configuration the best I could so I would not also miss too much additional work in March. And so during that recent high cognitive load season, I went back to my basic framework that has carried me through each part of this hard season so far. I took every day back to my core anchors, which is my movement and my nourishment and my rest and care for my nervous system.

I have those basics integrated into every day of my life. But during the high cognitive load seasons, I cancel, I reschedule, I clear as much as I can. I put these are like—like those horse blinders, okay? I put my blinders on and I will literally say things to myself like, “Okay, all you can do right now, you can get your morning vitamins. It’s dark outside. You can see that. And when I’m done, all I’m going to be able to do, I’m gonna get my evening vitamins. I got a pile in the morning. I got a pile at night. I’m going to make myself a calming tea, might be lemon balm tonight. And I will get my vitamins. And that will be what I can do.” And so when you know something hard is coming, I know we don’t always get an announcement and then be able to take five days to buffer and then start the big thing and pull ourselves through it the best we can.

Many times and I’ve had these, too, guess what? You are in an unimaginable situation right now. This is it. It’s happening and there’s no time to prep or prepare. But in this recent season for me, I at least got a total four-week notice because I got the first notice was, “Hey, we’re doing this. Get everything updated.” And that was for a big personal event that was going to happen 4 weeks later. And what I just shared with you was how I worked my already overflowing full life to make it happen and care for myself in the midst of all of it. So when you know something hard is coming, you can take a moment sometimes, sometimes a few days, to prepare before it hits. And you do not have to do everything during that time. You can select your few things that matter most.

I knew during that time I still had to manage the whole situation with my stove coming up because if I didn’t that was going to affect my work and affect my income a few weeks into the future and I was already missing a week of work to get this done. And your capacity may change and that’s okay. Simplifying your life as much as you can is a strategy. It’s not a failure. And I even made sure I was doing things on purpose during that particular time, like laying down flat. If I lay down flat at 8:30 and don’t set my alarm until 7, even if I’m not, because we listen to audiobooks at night, even if I’m not going to sleep until 9:30 or 10:00, or if I’m reading or journaling, I’m still down flat. That’s still a good overall rest time for my body and my one life. And that’s one of the ways that I support my nervous system on purpose.

And I hope my recent high cognitive load season encourages you to be at your own steady pace even in a hard season. And what I was preparing for was for a much bigger situation. And at that time, I thought the prep of the 50 to 60 hours of work was going to be the hardest part. But what I didn’t fully understand, because it’s a new situation I’ve never been through it before, is what would come after. I had already been through and been surviving a very long season with a lot of uncertainty and a long season of waiting. And then suddenly everything was moving very quickly. And what followed that big moment has honestly affected me since that time. It’s been a week now, more than I expected. It’s been a very hard past seven days on my nervous system.

And so, in the next episode, I’m going to share what this has been like, the emotional impact, and how my body and nervous system have responded and how I’m caring for myself as I walk through this new layer. Because sometimes we prepare for work, but we don’t realize how much the aftermath is going to require of us. So, I prepared for what I knew, but I couldn’t totally prepare for how my body would respond and how I would feel. 

So, come back to the next episode of the Jamerrill Show. The next episode is going to be called “The Only Way Out is Through.” And I hope today’s episode is helpful for you in many ways. If nothing else, if it helps you feel less alone in your own hard season and your own struggles, I’m very grateful for you listening today. And I hope you can take some encouragement and some strength with you as you face your own challenges and as you work your way through. I appreciate you. I’ll chat with you in those comments below and I’ll see you at the next episode.