Journey towards a sustainable life
It’s 1 AM on Sunday morning and I’m sitting in our guest room bed with drowsy eyes, a racing heart, and a heavy chest. I think it’s anxiety but it could also be the fact that I have aspiration pneumonia from how much I’ve been vomiting the past few weeks. I’m four months pregnant and have had to contend with endless nausea and vomiting - which was just recently reduced by being finally given a bottle of the magic drug - Zofran.
Three hours ago, I was coaxing my son to bed. As I reminded him that it’s healthy to go to bed at a reasonable hour - which would have been three hours before the coaxing began - he told me I was “out of my mind”.
And well, yes, I am out of my mind. But not in the way he meant it. He explained that I was absolutely out of my mind to think he should go to bed when he really, really needed to continue practicing his drawings of the Land Before Time characters. “I can’t quit mom! I need to draw Little Foot”.
So, I let him climb into bed and continue to draw Little Foot until he fell asleep on top of his crayons and paper. And I went to the guest room where I scrolled on Twitter to get out of my mind for no less than an hour.
As I doom scrolled, I couldn’t keep my mind off of what was really bothering me. The fact that on Monday - technically tomorrow - I was going to need to have a very serious talk with some colleagues. And, I knew that they weren’t going to like what I had to say.
Like my 5 year old kept awake by the need to continue practicing the outlines of his characters, I laid in bed staring at the blue light of my phone rehearsing in my head what I might say if I say the thing half way and what I might say if I say the thing all the way. I’m so overwhelmed that even when I am having the conversation in my own mind, the words don’t come out. But I do know if I say the thing all of the way, the thing I am going to say is that I am quitting.
The problem is that I never quit anything. That’s a lie - I do quit things like eating healthy, going to the gym, and keeping up with my laundry. But I don’t quit relationships or jobs or projects. I just hope that they quit me.
The day before, I went to a first appointment with a new therapist. I parallel parked in front of a brick row home with a swing sign that read “Dr. Maura McKenna - Psychologist”. I had never been to a psychologist before. Usually I visit with social workers and counselors and somatic healers. I choose profiles based on who seems the floofiest - a word that means mushy, and sweet, and more embodied than I - but this time I didn’t want the coddling that comes along with it. I wanted tough love. I truly have no empirical reason to believe psychologists offer more tough love than any other mental health professional - but something about the aesthetics of the title just looks tough to me.
I needed to be scared straight. I needed someone to tell me that my life was out of control. That I had too much on my plate. I wanted them to provide me with marching orders. A list, perhaps - with all of the things I should do as soon as I leave to get my life in order. Even further, I wanted a script for my Monday conversation.
I walked into Dr. McKenna’s office. It didn’t look as scary as I had hoped. A fire was burning, there were cozy couches everywhere. I was already being coddled.
I sat down and looked down at my jeans. I had put some on today because it felt like a special occasion. Plus, I didn’t want her to write in my mental status exam that I looked disheveled. But, there it was. Some sort of brown stain. Maybe chocolate? I did, however, have makeup on, so I think that saved me from any low marks in that arena.
“Have you been to therapy before?” Maura asked.
“I’m a therapist actually”, as soon as I said this I regretted it. I knew what it did to tell another therapist that you are a therapist. Suddenly they stop giving it to you straight. They say things like “I’m sure you already know why you do that so we don’t need to go into it” or “you’re a therapist, so you understand what’s happening here”. But, I don’t. I can see the patterns in others. But not always in myself.
I predicted correctly. Maura said it. “Oh, okay. Well then there probably won’t be a lot I can tell you”.
“Oh, well I’m a couples therapist. Not a psychologist. So I hope you can help me”.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I am totally and completely burnt out,” I shared. “It’s been a hard year”.
I along with many others have been feeling the impact of burn-out since 2020. People - through mostly no fault of their own - have been constantly swamped by emotional, physical, and mental stress.
I spent the good part of the remaining hour giving the rundown.
I share that I work multiple jobs at 60 hours a week. But I also want to offer the presence of being a stay at home mom so when my son isn’t at school I fit the rest of my work in after he goes to bed. I let her know that I never get a break from people. I love people, I tell her, but truly I am never left alone. E-mails, DM’s, Slack Messages and Texts roll in any time I step away. I run to the bathroom and come back to several messages “can you talk?”
“People are always mad” I share, “probably not more mad than usual - or maybe so because I think the Pandemic has made everyone more irritable - but I have so many people in my orbit that every day I am dealing with at least one person who is unhappy with a decision I have made or the way I’ve communicated something”.
I talk about how hard it is to navigate so many difficult conversations every day. That I never have a sense of peace.
I share with her that Sam died in September. I cry to her because I haven’t really had anyone else to cry to about it. Everyone else was more deserving of the upset so I let them have it. “That’s how it seems to go for me in general”, I say. “Everyone else seems more deserving of the upset, so I don’t really have anyone to talk to about my own feelings”
“Oh, and I forgot to tell you about the multi-year adoption process” I say. I go on about the endless navigation of bureaucracy. The expenses related to it. The heartbreak.
Lastly, I describe that my body has been through the ringer. I was hospitalized after getting COVID. I had a miscarriage. I’ve had gravidarum hyperemesis. “What’s that?” she says. “Oh, it’s when you’re vomiting upwards of 10 times a day from pregnancy”. And, I top it off by sharing that I've just gotten over pneumonia.
I stop. I feel awkward. I have shared too much. I know exactly what she is thinking. She’s thinking I am manic or I don’t have boundaries or that I’ve done all of this to myself.
Usually when you hear someone say “I know exactly what they were thinking” you then find out that they were wrong. That the person had a different assessment and that it wasn’t nearly as self critical as had been initially assessed.
Not this time. Maura responded to everything I shared with an air of judgment - “Well it sounds like you don’t have boundaries and you need to take something off your plate”. I felt a bit surprised by the lack of empathy. This, though, was the tough love I had set myself up for.
“You’re right”, I said.
Maura looked at the clock and let me know it was time to go.
I left the session feeling disappointed. I was glad for the tough love but had been hopeful to get some advice. How exactly could I quit? I felt so frozen that I wasn’t even sure which words I would say. I wanted my marching orders.
It’s everywhere and it’s hard to quit
Being overwhelmed is everywhere. Almost every couple that I meet with is facing their own serious overwhelm - individually and relationally. I help people each week to peel apart the overwhelm, to understand what needs to be shed, and to create more fulfilling lives.
And yet, as recently as a few months ago, that story above was my story. No matter how much I recognize that too much is too much I struggle as much as the next person to change the ways in which I engage with overwhelm.
I struggle to say “no”, to recognize my limits, and to create a sustainable life.
This will likely be a life long journey for me. And, I was able to quit the thing, navigate the stressors out of my control (random physical illness) and get to a more stable and steady place.
When things feel the way they did for me a few months ago, I recognize now that it’s a sign that something needs to change. I often call this a period of “shedding” where too much has been layered on and something needs to shed off.
I am doing so much better than I was in 2017 when I first began looking at the ways in which shifts in society have created unsustainable systems that leave us all stressed out and feeling as if we don’t measure up.
My husband and I have worked hard to move the Tetris pieces of our lives so that life makes sense to us rather than us always having to make sense of it. And in doing this work alongside my work as a couples therapist, I have been researching the impacts of things like changing relational roles, the mental load, the impact of social media, technology, and a very heavy world on the landscape of relationships.
Something you can think about:
What is feeling stressful in my own life?
How is this impacting your relationships? Are you becoming more irritable with the people you love? Having less time with them? Withdrawing because you’re totally touched out?
Is there something that could be shed from your life? What is the lowest hanging fruit? Sometimes this might mean canceling a few subscriptions that are costing you too much money and sometimes it might mean leaving a commitment or changing a job.
This is a copy of my first article on my Substack called The Balancing Act.
I’ll be talking about the pressure people and relationships are under in every day life and practical thoughts about how to navigate it. You can subscribe to The Balancing Act here.
What you can expect
When I do write to you, I will share stories, thoughts, or research I have come across. Most importantly, though, I will share with you the very real strategies I have seen work for people in the real world. I am not just going to talk about lofty conceptual ideas, I want to also help you break down how you can improve your own life, feel better, and manage stress differently - while also recognizing we are all human and some of this will always be a little messy.
Like me, you will ebb and flow on this journey. Finding yourselves removed and then possibly trapped again later by stress. The point isn’t perfection here. The point is being able to identify what isn’t working and to make changes to improve your life when you can.