Tag: Burnout

Aching for an Injury

(Title image: Photo by Alex Bertha on Unsplash)

My life was recently interrupted by a back strain. I was moving a side table to vacuum under it and stupidly bent at the waist instead of using my legs, pulling the table towards me.

And suddenly I felt an electric jolt of warmth and pain in my back from hip to hip.

This, my friends, is not my first rodeo. I’ve been having back issues since college, when I slipped on ice and thudded down on my lumbar spine. However, first swimming and then strength training reinforced my back muscles and made me less susceptible to injuries like this.

Less susceptible, but not impervious. I was reminded of this in early 2025 when I felt a serious twinge rowing on my erg but stubbornly refused to stop because there were only four minutes left in my workout and I’m a stupid ass. That little stunt required a recovery period of about a month.

Yup, right THERE.
(Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash)

This time was a teensy bit different. The back strain was manageable. It happened on a Saturday, but I was still able to carry laundry, and then I worked out CAREFULLY on Sunday. Yeah, it hurt a bit but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Then came Monday morning and I decided to do a modified version of my high intensity interval training. Sounds crazy, I know, but it was modified. However…towards the end, I started having more discomfort, but again, I figured I could finish it before I did anything really bad to myself. Yeahyeahyeah IknowIknowIknow.

It wasn’t a great workout, but I was moving gingerly and seemed to be holding together. But afterwards, in an effort to “protect” my back, I knelt at my computer (I’ve got my setup adjusted so I can do that when sitting doesn’t feel good) and started my workday.

Maybe it was the fact that I kept tightening my glute muscles to take pressure off my back, and there were adjacent hip muscles that got irritated, but by the time my Monday morning Zoom meeting came around I was having intense back spasms, basically whenever I moved.

Even deeper breaths set them off. I was having trouble staying upright.

Eventually I capitulated and crawled off to bed, resorting to my laptop to get any work done, which was minimal.

So all of that might sound bad, but as far as I’m concerned, here’s the REAL issue. While I managed a few hours of work every day, most of the time I was forced to lie on my back. This should be a horrible thing, not being able to move without pain.

How do I stop feeling guilty about taking a break?
(Photo by Abishek Subba on Unsplash)

Instead, it felt like a relief. My bosses and co-workers knew my situation and didn’t expect much. I didn’t push myself and considered this an obligatory rest week from workouts. And it was phenomenal.

My back gradually improved and by the end of that week I noted, somewhat ruefully, that I was almost back to normal.

It made me sad. I had really needed the break, needed the release of expectations that I would be productive. And that week I had my excuse. It was like a hall pass that allowed me to shirk all my other responsibilities.

This was exactly how I’d felt during my chemo infusions. The after-effects of chemotherapy were miserable and I could not wait to be done with them. But in the background, there was a glimmer of relief that I was allowed to actually rest without anyone expecting anything of me.

And here I am going through those feelings again.

So, I know this is a problem. If getting injured or sick is the only thing that gives me permission to recover from my life, then clearly I need to reevaluate my priorities and maybe make some time for that.

Even after almost a decade of practicing mindfulness and meditation, I am sorely lacking in this aspect of self-care and self-compassion. I know I am. But it’s so hard to stop pushing myself.

So I don’t know now. Am I really being mindful if I’m driving myself to burnout?

Showing Self-Mercy

(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.

Yes, this would be me. No excuses.
(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?

Cutting myself some slack after a lifetime of beating myself up feels like the way I expect these kittens feel.
(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.