Episode 10
“What would happen if you did just the bare minimum?”
I gasped and prepared to launch into a diatribe about how that was not only impossible but against the very nature of who I was.
I was sitting in my licensure supervisor’s office on a Friday afternoon in late 2011. At the time, I was working for a community mental health agency and for months leading up to this point, she had witnessed me slowly burning out, becoming a shell of who I once was. I was overworked, underpaid, and regularly asked to put myself in physically and psychologically dangerous situations. I felt helpless and desperate–not a great combination.
Before I could launch into my speech of why doing the bare minimum wasn’t an option, she interjected again and reminded me that my version of bare minimum was still close to 100%. I exhaled when she said that–she knew me and she was right. She challenged me to do only the tasks that were required in my job description and not a sliver extra. Knowing my propensity for internal competitiveness, she challenged me to try it after the upcoming holiday season.
When January 2012 came around, I took my supervisor up on her dare and began to do the bare minimum.
Everything got worse.
Not at work though. My clients were ok, my paperwork was in on time; I maintained my excellent performance at work.
But the extra space in my life–the space where I was previously grinding, burning the wick at both ends, and careening towards burnout–provided space to see how bad things truly were. This extra space meant I could no longer deny what was happening. And in some rare form of boldness, instead of denying what was happening, I opted to just continue doing the bare minimum.
My body seemed to take that as permission to keep telling the truth. I developed severe food allergies that caused major inflammation, digestive issues, and pain. I started isolating myself because I had no energy to be social. And then the panic attacks began. Every Sunday after church, I would feel severe anxiety creeping in until one Sunday it turned into hours of panic attacks that could not be ignored.
This was not what I signed up for when I agreed to do the bare minimum. And yet, my body only needed a small door of opportunity to be cracked open to show me that something had to change.
***
March 2023
I hung up the phone after my second session of the day; tears started streaming down my face. Today was my first day back at work, on a reduced schedule, since my hysterectomy. I desperately wanted to be ready to go back to work but after just two sessions, my body seemed to be telling me a different story.
Actually, my body wasn’t telling me a different story. My body was screaming a different story. It was as if I could hear my body audibly screaming “No! Please stop!” Anxiety began to rise as I knew I was at a crossroads. I hadn’t budgeted for taking more than two weeks off, and yet, if the last 2 hours were any indication, there was no way I was ready to go back to work. My pain levels were rising, my abdomen was swelling and it felt like all of the progress I made the previous two weeks was becoming a thing of the past.
In tears, I called my mom and told her what was happening. She asked if I wanted her to come back to Tennessee; the sentiment was kind. Truthfully, I did want her to come back. But intuitively I knew that what I needed, even more than her coming back, was more time off. After a few minutes of chatting, I was exhausted and told her I needed to lay back down; I told her I would call her when I decided what to do.
A few hours and a nap later, I was listening to a voice message from a close friend; she knew what was going on and the dilemma I was facing. “Your savings account is there to save you”...she was responding to a message I sent earlier when I told her that I had money in savings to cover my living expenses if I were to take more time off, but I was hesitant to dip into that in case there was a rainy day. But, she reminded me, this was my rainy day. This was what savings were for.
I had four sessions scheduled for the following day, so before going to bed, I sent a text to my friend and my mom and let them know I would reevaluate after my sessions the next day but that I would likely take the rest of the month off.
The next day, I completed my first session–in bed, again–and as I clicked “save” on my client’s session note, my body began screaming again. I realized there would be no way I could wait until the end of the day to make my decision. I knew what I had to do; I texted my three clients who had sessions scheduled for later in the day and canceled and then drafted an email to all of my clients letting them know of my status and shared that I needed to cancel sessions through the end of the month.
(Side note: I just need to send a giant thank you to my clients because they are so amazing. This past year has been bizarre, medically, and they have been so understanding with the time I’ve needed to take for recovery. Many of them emailed me after I sent out the message letting them know I needed to take the rest of the month off, to thank me for practicing what I preached and that it helped them trust me more! I am so grateful for each person I work with!)
As soon as I hit “send” on the email, my body seemed to melt. I laid on my bed with tears of gratitude running down my face and I felt like a puddle–both because of the tears and because my body had been bracing for having to go back to work, which meant putting healing on the back burner.
I reflected on what I had just done–I had put my money (literally) where my mouth was. It wasn’t actually financially convenient to take 3 more weeks off of work; I wasn’t sure how I was going to make ends meet, especially knowing that I had several thousand dollars worth of medical bills coming my way. But I knew that I had to practice the message I shared with my clients every day, multiple times each day: your body is wise, listen to your body and you will gain the information and answers you need. I had done that; I felt proud to have listened.
***
I spent the next 8 days in bed with almost zero activity. I gave myself an hour each day to edit my book (still had to meet those publisher deadlines!) and another hour each day to read. I walked my dog in the morning and in the evening, I heated up the meals my mom left for me, and then retreated back to my bed with ice packs, ibuprofen, and tylenol on rotation.
By day 9, I was going stir crazy and drove to the greenway (a paved trail that goes along the river–one of my favorite places to be) and walked the slowest two miles I had ever walked. I was exhausted after, but it was the first time I felt a semblance of normalcy in over three weeks. The next two days I was rebellious and sat on my patio all day, both days, because of how nice the weather was. (Had I thought it through better, I would have scheduled my hysterectomy for the summer months since I hate the hot weather! Being inside during the spring was really difficult.)
They were glorious days–sitting outside, going to the greenway to slowly walk a little bit more; I even got my car washed. I felt like life was getting back to normal. And then I crashed again. After those two days of sitting all day instead of laying down, my body said “enough” and I was flat on my back for another week.
My life was slow and small. Doing any work–even checking my email–took more energy than I had to give. I quickly realized that the hardest part of my recovery was giving myself enough patience to actually recover. I had worked too hard on developing a relationship with my body, though, to try and push myself toward healing faster.
Like I tell my clients often: we heal at the pace our bodies decide and often it’s only by going slower that we can eventually go faster.
***
After a month of being in bed nearly 100% of the time, my body began to come alive again. It was then that I realized that it had taken my body a full month not only of hysterectomy recovery, but a full month of not moving at such a fast pace, to realize how unsustainable life felt. My body needed an entire month–prompted by a major surgery–to come down from the ridiculous pace that I was running at and feel a sense of peace. When this happened my emotions turned back on, creativity felt available to me, and it no longer felt like I was putting forth enormous effort to just put one foot in front of the other.
I thought back to my hopes for the new year–the hopes I had written about nearly four months prior and remembered my focus on basic needs. I chuckled that the year had already turned out in such a way that basic needs were literally the only thing I could focus on. I had no other energy to focus on anything else. The most prevalent need I had been focusing on (other than recovery) was food–getting enough of it, that is. My journey with food is another story for another day (or book!) but suffice it to say, though I still had (and have) a long way to go with food, the evidence of how hard I had already worked in this area became obvious as I recovered from surgery.
It was during this time that I began to hear my body beg me not to return to work in the same capacity that I had. The past two years had been a blur: finishing my dissertation and my PhD, building a house and moving in, starting, managing, and growing a company…all while maintaining a client load, trying to have a social life, tending to relationships, continuing my own healing work and the day-to-day grind of life.
As I laid in my bed, day after day, my anxiety spiked anytime I thought of stepping back into my “real life” when my out-of-office time was up. It was as if I could hear audible sobs coming from within–begging me not to do what I had always done. I reflected on what that meant and realized that in the past year, the only times I had really given myself a chance to rest for longer than a weekend was when I was recovering from surgery. Even though I had intended to take a month off last summer, my plans for rest were scrapped by spending the month in crisis management mode after finding out a former colleague had been actively trying to sabotage me personally and professionally.
This was followed by another surgery and recovery period which was followed by an increase of symptoms, and declining physical and mental health that ultimately led me to begging my gynecologist to take my IUD out–and you know what happened from there!
Laying in bed for five weeks afforded me the opportunity to consider how much I had been through: physically, emotionally, and relationally. It also afforded me the opportunity to consider that life didn’t have to be the way it had been the past year.
Though I didn’t have concrete answers, each time I allowed myself time to imagine different possibilities, a different schedule, a different pace–my body felt freer and more at peace. I knew I was at a crossroads: listen to the messages my body was giving me or run at such a feverish pace that I would eventually collapse–literally or figuratively–and I would be forced to deal with a mess that could be avoided.
***
As I write this episode I am nearly three months post-op which means I’ve been back to work for two months. I’ve honored the commitment I made to my body and my life to slow down, delegate, prioritize, and make efforts to strike a balance.
Though I didn’t make the commitment again to do the bare minimum (I learned my lesson to never commit to that again!) I noticed a similar thing happen. My commitment to slowing down, creating space, and making efforts to find balance in my life offered the rude awakening that things had been pretty bad. Despite sticking to “office hours”, reducing my client schedule, and hiring additional support staff at my company, various symptoms began to reappear in addition to the hysterectomy recovery I was already dealing with.
More (severe) allergic reactions, nausea, brain fog, and a complete inability to form cohesive thoughts and sentences. This time, however, I listened. I knew myself well enough to know–both from my experience in 2011 and my recovery thus far that I didn’t need to wait until she was screaming at me or half-dead to listen. I would listen now. I didn’t do anything particularly profound–I went on walks, I made myself eat, I went to bed earlier, and I spent a lot of time sitting while doing nothing. Basic needs.
And things started to get better.
I can’t say that I have it all figured out or that I am the perfect model of slowing down and listening to my body. Heck, as I write this I can barely keep my eyes open because I’m so tired and hungry (don’t worry, I am also counting down the minutes until I meet a good friend for Mexican food and margaritas!) I just know that I am no longer interested in unnecessary suffering. I lived too many years of my life glorifying the suppression of myself, ignoring my needs, pushing myself past my limits, and believing that suffering was a badge of honor that gave me worth and value. No more; that is no longer my life.
That wretched little copper “T” that caused so many issues is actually the thing that seemed to save my life.