Healing
We may not notice it in the moment, but routinely overstretching our resources always comes at a cost in the end.
There are many shocks to the system when we leave any circumstance that has been a guiding force in our lives. Be it a circle of friends, a city, an apartment, or a job. Fun fact: in psychology, something as seemingly mundane as “moving house” is associated with a trauma response in our central nervous system and one of the high stresses we can go through, after the death of relatives!
Today’s article is about the toll that my 25 years in a socially complex (dare I say tricky) and high-pace environment has taken on my system. It is a cautionary tale. My time in corporate has been very rewarding, no doubt. But the price was steep, physically, mentally, but also in terms of time it took to recover.
It took me 1 year to completely “detoxify and detach” from a place that was my home in many respects. 1 year to recover good sleep. 1 year to stop the questioning inner monologue about this interaction or that. 1 year to get over the physical backlash (aka “the cost”) that my body served me.
This was a gradual process and I saw small incremental gains by being quite diligent with exercise, rest, leaving time open in my agenda for deep thinking, vacations and engaging in joyful activities. It was about rebalancing myself physically and mentally. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
The body
Anybody that has gone through periods of intense stress only to immediately fall sick on the first day of their long-awaited vacation will know what I am talking about. Leaving an adrenaline-fuelled survival mode is a signal to our body that it can finally open the pressure valve it had closed to keep us going.
Shortly after I left my job and in the midst of doing all the wonderful things I previously didn’t have time for, my physical health was unraveling. I needed surgery on my back, with months of rehab and learning how to build a regimen for myself that would ensure my health in the long run. I have to tell you, not being allowed to sit for 2 months and either standing or lying down throws your daily habits off-balance more than you’d think!
The Mind
Another element that required rethinking (and healing, in a way) was my relationship with the fixed structures that dictated the rhythm of my life. We work, we take vacation, a pay-check hits our bank account, we allocate non-vacation freetime to our partner and loved ones during evenings and the weekend.
Our reward system gets tethered to our work, at least if you have as entangled a relationship with work as I did at my level. Our self-esteem, even though we know that this is not healthy, gets wrapped up in the people-based systems we spend most of our waking hours in (work). All of these psychological fundamentals falling away at once is another shock to the system that required mending and evolving. Strangely, we all dream of having more time to do the things we really want to do. But if all of a sudden we have all the time in the world, it can get surprisingly hard to do them.
The Transformation
Amidst the ups and downs of a post-corporate world, this was also a time for contemplation, for stillness. It was a time to reconnect with passions that were true to me, rather than those I cultivated as a means to enable a rich and rewarding life. It was a time to ask myself what I wanted from life, rather than doing what life wanted from me. It was time to discover new horizons. Every crisis is an opportunity. Our true feelings come to the surface, unadulterated by external expectations. Painful as it was, I found it to be an extraordinary moment in time to refocus my inner alignment. Without inner alignment, we cannot transform. And if there is any worthwhile pursuit in life, it is transformation.
I’ll tell you what taking that step entailed in the next installment of this small series. Thank you for reading. My hope for the more personal and sometimes painful parts of this series is to reach those of you out there that have gone, or are going, through similarly difficult periods of mending and growing. It can feel like we have to go it alone, but I can guarantee you that more of us reach moments such as this in our lives than you think.
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