(Title image: Photo by Melanie Stander on Unsplash)
My oncologist keeps telling me that I’m too hard on myself.
This has been something he’s repeated for the nine years that I’ve known him. He says this when I express my frustration with not being as strong or resilient as I used to be. When I complain that I can’t lift as much weight and get injured more easily.
“Relax,” he tells me. But I have a desperate drive that pushes me, as if I’m fearful of stopping or even just slowing down. As if I’m going to sink if I rest for a while.
It’s not just my workouts in which I feel this. It’s also apparent in my professional life which, I admit, did not head down the path that I was expecting it to, and cancer didn’t help. Now, at a time in my life when I’m supposed to be winding down and enjoying a retirement coming in the not-so-distant future…no, I tell myself there’s still so much more to do to get myself to a point where I can finally rest.
(Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash)
Well, I needed to get that off my chest. As you can image, this kind of mentality has some downsides.
I was reminded of that when, last week, I was again invited to present during an event in which I’ve participated for the past two years. It’s one that I spend about four months practicing for.
The first time in 2024 I was mildly anxious but everything went very well. I couldn’t wait to do it again in 2025.
But last year was really tough for me. I was grieving the death of my father, dealing with weird migraine auras, working on a professional certification that I felt insufficiently prepared for and trying to juggle some major financial changes in my life. I didn’t have the same amount of time to prepare and, consumed by self-doubt, I allowed anxiety to creep in.
No, wait. That’s a lie.
Anxiety didn’t “creep in”, it hit me like a tidal wave. Preparing for an event that should have been amazingly positive and allowed me to showcase my expertise instead kept me up at night. It made me miserable. I obsessed over preparations and couldn’t wait for it to be over.
My presentation came and went well enough. But the experience left me feeling wounded.
Like I said, 2025 was a difficult year with major changes in my life. It stayed difficult up until the last days of December, when I finally had a chance to decompress and enjoy where I was in the present moment.
But when I recently received the invite to once again participate in this year’s event, I felt a familiar undercurrent of panic and despair. And that elicited shame.
First, I tried not to think about it. But that didn’t work well and my anxiety grew. I really wished that I could find an excuse to skip this year but I couldn’t turn it down—that would be “giving up” which would have left me defeated.
Or would it have?
(Photo by Chirag Bhardwaj on Unsplash)
I have spent so much of my life doing things “for my own good”. When it comes to exercise, that is a very good thing indeed. But what about when doing something genuinely results in anxiety and dread? I had a long track record of pushing through those situations. Over and over again, I would barrel headlong into them, figuring that the more I did things like this, the more comfortable I would get with them. Although it didn’t always work like that. Sometimes, all it did was allow anxiety around it to build even more, painted with self-criticism for feeling that way.
But what if, instead of beating myself up, I took a breath and showed myself some grace? Just this once?
I poked at the possibility of declining the opportunity to present this year, just to test out how I would feel about it. And it immediately felt like a relief. All that anxiety fell away and I saw all the other things I could spend my time doing that I would otherwise put off because practicing required so much mental energy. I made the decision to listen to what my brain and body were yelling at me.
“For Pete’s sake…!“
This wasn’t a cop-out. This was giving my worn-out self a little love. I need more of that.
Frantic Shanti 