How to handle getting sick

I used to be very stressed out about my body's health and well-being. Like, VERY STRESSED OUT. 

I used to get sick a lot and was very self conscious about needing to take days off of work and also angry and upset about not being healthier. 

I had recurring pain that was misdiagnosed and misunderstood for years, and once I was beginning to figure it out, I developed another set of mystery symptoms that doctors now consider to be IBS, pretty much because they can't figure out anything else it could be. 

Sore throats used to be so common for me that one year my best friend filled my Christmas stocking with Ricolas, and I probably used all of them before January was over.

A few years ago I had a bad reaction to a medication and wound up with hives all over my body as well as inside my mouth. 

I've done several kinds of elimination diets and other protocols in an effort to fix my body or at least gain a better understanding of what's happening with it. 

Back in the day, I did a lot of lamenting about all of this. I felt very sorry for myself. I spent a lot of time obsessing about my health or lack thereof.

I read a lot of books about health and wellness, both very woo-woo books and also lots of pop science stuff. I saw tons of doctors and specialists of all kinds. 

This cycle went on for years. I would dedicate myself to my health and give it my all. Then I would wear myself out and give up for a while. 

What does all of this have to do with burnout? EVERYTHING.

Burnout is what happens when we try to use negative thoughts and feelings to create positive outcomes. And one of the places that burnout happens is in the actual, physical body.

But burnout is also something that we experience about our bodies. And when I was deep in my own burnout mindset, I wasn't just burning out at work. I was burning out in my relationship to my body and my health. 

Why? Because I was trying to create the results I wanted using terrible fuel. I was trying to use fear and anxiety to drive my productivity at work. And I was trying to use fear and anxiety to drive my efforts at physical wellbeing.

I am sure you can see why this did not work. You cannot use fear as a mechanism for creating health. You cannot use anxiety as a mechanism for creating confidence. 

And yet, this is what so many of us try to do. 

We try to scare ourselves into taking better care of our bodies. We try to worry ourselves into doing better at work. 

It's not just worry and anxiety though. Sometimes we also try to fuel ourselves with rage. Or we try to guilt trip ourselves into doing what we think we should do, whether we want to do it or not. 

With me and my body and my burnout, it was, yes, you guessed it, all of the above. I raged. I worried. I twisted myself into knots and then resented being twisted into knots. And it all went on for a VERY LONG time. 

But fortunately, a long time is not the same as forever. 

And I'm going to pause here, because that is an important piece of information for y'all to consider. 

I used to think, if things haven't changed yet, if I haven't changed yet, then maybe this is like, just the way things are. 

One of the most important things coaching has taught me is that the past does not have to be the predictor of the future. 

Just because I've always been a certain way, or done a certain thing, does not mean I have to keep being that way or doing that thing. 

This is the best news in the world. We give up on so many things in life because we haven't figured them out yet. 

But it doesn't have to be that way. A very long time, even years or decades or many decades is not the same as forever. Even if you have long since given up hope. Things can always change. 

And this brings us back to me and my body. Because while I spent a lot of time (and energy and money) trying to make my body healthier, I also had a lot of fear that things would never change or that they would only get worse. 

But of course, that's not what happened. Kind of the opposite of that happened.

I have learned to cultivate health in my physical body, but I have also learned to cultivate a new (and more resilient) mindset, which I can now tap into no matter what's happening in my physical body. And in some ways, that's worth way more than perfect physical health. 

Here's the thing. I still get sick. I was sick just a few weeks ago. I still have IBS and that other mystery thing, although both are very well managed. I even still get sore throats sometimes, and I definitely have a bag of Ricolas around here somewhere. 

But y'all. My whole experience of my body and my health is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. 

I used to feel like a victim of my own health (or rather, my lack thereof). Getting sick was never just getting sick. It was always a huge, emotional ordeal. It was always a this shouldn't be happening situation. 

But. People get sick. That is part of life. And my resistance to that fact did not change it. All it did was create a lot of suffering. FOR ME. 

In addition to being sick and dealing with my body and its various symptoms, I would also spend a lot of time thrashing around in self pity and rage and generally shaking my fist at the Universe. 

And here's why I did that, y'all. Because I didn't know what else to do. Because I couldn't figure out how to do a good job taking care of my physical body and I had a lot of self-judgment about that. 

Because I didn't want to get sick and so I thought fighting with reality was helpful. But, of course, it wasn't. And I probably got sick a lot more as a result of it. 

All that thrashing around and trying to use negative feelings as fuel just lead to more and more burnout. 

It's December. It's winter. It's life as a human. The reality is, some of us are going to get sick sometimes. Most of us, in fact. 

And that's ok. 

This is 100% not what I would have wanted to hear when I was back in my getting-sick-all-the-time phase. But it's what I needed to hear. 

I saw getting sick as such a personal (and, ahem, MORAL) failing. I saw it as a weakness. A flaw. I thought it meant that something had gone wrong. And I didn't want anything to have gone wrong, so I raged against it. 

But, counter-intuitively, accepting that bodies get sick sometimes and it doesn't have to mean anything bad about me or the world or anything is actually where ALL the relief is. 

It's a little bit of a brain melter, but go with me. 

Getting sick is part of a normal human life. And when we decide that it's not, and that instead it means something has gone terribly wrong, we are creating an additional stress response, but only  because of how we're thinking about the situation. 

We make a perfectly normal human experience a symbol of pain and personal failure. 

Does this sound melodramatic? Maybe. But, for the person I used to be, it's totally accurate. In some part of my mind, I thought that if I could just figure out how to be a better version of myself, I wouldn't get sick anymore. 

So no wonder being sick felt like the end of the world. It didn't feel that way because of the being sick itself. It felt that way ONLY BECAUSE OF MY THOUGHTS about being sick. 

This is so important, y'all. 

There is so much in life that we rage against, and we think it's obvious and right to rage against it. But the raging against it is often the exact thing that's making it feel so terrible.

I'm not saying that you should enjoy being sick. (Although, if you can figure out how to enjoy it, like, why not?? Why not make the best of it?)

What I am saying is that it's always our thoughts that create our experience of our lives, for better and for worse. 

When I used to get sick all the time, I thought that I needed to physically feel better so that I could emotionally feel better. But I had that backwards. 

Learning how to think differently, even about being sick, means that I can emotionally feel ok, even when I physically feel like shit.

It also means that I can now tell the difference between the physical discomfort of being sick and the emotional turmoil of fighting with reality. 

And that is EVERYTHING. Because, honestly, being sick is a lot easier without the emotional turmoil. 

Past me would fully flip out to hear this, but it's true. When I don't beat myself up or think that being sick is a personal failure, it's not actually that hard to handle. 

Even when my body does things I'd rather it not do, there's so much less suffering now. 

This is what resilience is. It's NOT always being in perfect health. It's not being able to stay up late and get up early and still feel fine. It's not never getting sick. 

It's failing and having to figure shit out along the way and not knowing and continuing to show up anyways. It's being willing to question your old stories and let them go if they aren't creating the results you want. It's seeing human life for what it is and enjoying it anyways, even if part of it is also being sick sometimes.