Learning To Rest - As A Workaholic
*I am not sponsored by any of the brands of the products mentioned in this article.
Learning to rest in general is a challenging thing in itself. Add in chronic illness and you have yourself a bit more of an obstacle. Lastly, include the personality of a workaholic and the societal ideology of work culture and you have yourself a real dilemma- or just another fancy way of saying my name.
As a society, we tend to view rest as something that needs to be “earned” in order to be able to spend time doing it. This large error in “productivity equaling rewards” (in this case “rest”) just goes to show how much we’ve built an ideal around using our bodies as objects and tools as a means to our productivity rather than appreciating and respecting the things that it is doing for us already.
This whole scenario just unfolds once you add illness into the mix.
If you are chronically ill and unable to work due to your illness, society may view you as “lazy”. -Why? Why do we create such a stigma around working basically until our bodies collapse or show some other way that we physically and or mentally cannot go further?
Why do we treat our bodies this way?
Since becoming chronically ill my body has become real great at letting me know my energy limits- so much so, that I tend to listen to it when it “speaks”.
Initially, getting sick and having energy issues was extremely frustrating because I was used to overdoing everything in life.
It was a persistent battle of me trying to “secretly” do extra things in a day without my body noticing. I think you all can guess that my body won a 100 out of 10 of those arguments.
My particular illness causes me to be bedbound for many weeks to months at a time which is what I define as a “flare”.
After my second flare, I began having more fatigue and energy issues where my energy would deplete from doing things like breathing or watching a movie. It was completely incomprehensible to me at the time that a “non-physical” tasks could exhaust me to a point that running a mile would do.
It was then that I was introduced by the media to the “spoon theory”. The spoon theory was developed by Christine Miserandino back in 2003 (1) and it is a concept to help explain how energy expenditure works for the chronically ill.
The spoon theory describes a sample day starting with a certain number of “spoons” which are used to represent energy. Each task done throughout the day will take away a spoon and some tasks may take multiple spoons to complete them. Once your spoon is used it cannot be replenished or taken back. Each day the “starting pool” of spoons is a new number and each day how many you use for one task may differ. Lastly, if you overdo yourself in a scenario where you do not have spoons-you’re asking for a world of trouble.
This theory provides energy in the form of looking at it in a daily expense quota. You have to be thinking about your tasks in a day, weeding out which tasks you don’t have the energy for (or the energy for in combination with other things).
RECOGNIZING YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS & EFFORTS
The first thing that will take time to achieve but will help in the process of learning to accept rest is knowing and feeling that what you are doing is enough.
We seldom realize or even take a millisecond to appreciate the things that our bodies are doing for us on a daily basis-even those who live in chronic pain and/or are chronically ill.
Taking time to live in the present and realize that you in this moment are enough will help you separate yourself from your productivity and who you are as a person.
You can do this by taking time in your day to think of the things you’ve already overcome or make a list of things that you have already done in your day to show yourself that you are working even if it’s not in the “conventional” way of work.
ESTABLISHING A WORK-LIFE BALANCE
The largest thing with being a workaholic is that the lines of personal life and work life blend together. Developing a work-life balance is vital. As my high school mentor had told me so long ago, I needed to find who I was outside of work.
I work in a particular industry in a particular field where the “workaholic culture” thrives. It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that there was finally a light shed on the industry to realize how absurd the ways we were treating ourselves was.
I work in stage management which is a field within the technical side of theatre. It is absolutely my passion in life, and I love it more than anything.
As a teenager in high school, I first dipped my toes into the industry and what it entailed fulfilled my workaholic personality and more. I had a complete disregard for my body and neglected its messages fully.
I surprisingly got a very overloaded version of stage management (so much so that college and professional jobs were actually a break) and I kept diving deeper into it completely ignoring advice from my mentors to take breaks and rest from theatre as a whole.
I even recall a discussion I once had with a mentor of mine who had said that colleges wanted to know who I was “outside” of theatre. I at first thought the question was ridiculous since I was majoring in stage management, but my opinion definitely changed after I began getting burnt out after doing 32 shows without any breaks in between them (and some were even done at the same time as one another).
When I had to explain the workload of the job to someone unfamiliar with theatre, I often referred to it as being similar to the working hours of someone within the medical system. You spend all day from early in the morning until very late at night working and managing (meaning there’s little mental rest) and then you go home to finish up anything you didn’t get to finish during work because it’s likely needed for the next day. So, you go to sleep very late and then you wake up very early the following morning.
You work most holidays and have little vacation time (*dependent upon many other factors but speaking generally).
Now, I’m not saying these things to steer someone away from pursuing stage management (ask me and I’ll tell you all the reasons I love it ;-)) in fact, these are some of the reasons why I love it. I just mean to use this example to show how certain industries can take the ideology of workaholic culture, and amplify it to a point where it becomes so engrained that its own employees don’t realize the effects until they (in the pandemic’s case) are forced to stop.
Nowadays, there are actually a lot of steps being taken to dismantle the work stigma and culture to make this job (and many others) less taxing and create more boundaries between work and life.
So how do you change this?
CHANGE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR BODY:
Well, the first thing about changing your relationship with your body is, you’ll naturally have a very strong opposer which will show you the consequences if you don’t listen-which is your chronically ill body.
The body sends signals such as pain for a reason, not to try and hurt you but to make you recognize that something is wrong. So, work on listening to it and you’ll begin to change your relationship into more of a “teamwork” relationship instead of one person trying to steer the ship.
CHANGE YOUR “AT HOME” WORKLOAD:
When I come home, I try to have as minimal an amount of work that I can in order to signify that my home is a resting space and not a workspace (generally speaking). If I am not able to finish up things at work, then depending on the amount that’s left to complete, I either complete it when I get home and then rest for the remainder of the evening, or I save it (or split it) between multiple days.
In my line of work, I am able to get things prepped in advance so it’s less work later on which I would urge you to do if you can because this will lighten your workload in general resulting in you having to take less work with you home.
PORTIONING OUT YOUR “SPOONS”
As explained earlier in the spoon theory, you now have to go into every day deciding which tasks get to be completed based on how many spoons you have.
I try to look at my to-do list and pick up to 2 things off of it to do per day. I always try to save an extra spoon just in case something comes up, and I try to make sure I’m taking lots of breaks in between.
I am also a college student, so for this, I try to take breaks between doing homework and spread it out over the week, so I don’t overdo it (see more in my article “Going To School With TPN”).
This will take a lot of trial and error to learn what your body’s limits are and to know how many spoons you can use and what activities take more energy than others.
The name of the game here is pacing yourself and respecting the pace that your body is moving at, because you can wish all you want that it’s a different pace but, that won’t change how it’s moving. The best way is to accept that it’s moving at that pace and adapt yourself to achieve what you can from it.
Take your time learning your body and know that you will get into a rhythm that you can compromise between respecting your body’s needs and your mind’s.
WAYS TO REST
There are many different ways to rest so I wanted to highlight some possible options and also include some options if you’re starting out to better help distract you from that to-do list!!
If you’re anything like me, my to-do list is both a physical copy and lives in my mind (to remind me of my tasks).
A great way to stop your thought patterns from jumping to your to-do list is to recognize when you’re thinking of it and stop yourself! Go back to your distraction and try to ignore it. It’ll take practice but you will get better at it with time.
It is not resting if you are thinking of the things, you should be getting done!!
METHODS:
Watching TV: If you are just starting out, put something on that is really attention grabbing (maybe a thriller or drama).
Reading: Something again very attention grabbing if you’re just starting out.
An Arts Activity: You could knit, do puzzles, or paint just to name a few different arts activities. The key here is to have no stress so try to pick something you enjoy doing and get lost in.
As you get better at distracting yourself from your to-do list, you will be able to switch from watching a thriller to calmer shows perhaps the “Great British Baking Show”.
WAYS TO CONSERVE ENERGY
Alongside portioning out your spoons, there are ways to do certain tasks around the house and limit the amount of spoons you might use for a given task.
These are also useful tricks if you happen to be in a flare because they can help you conserve your energy.
Here are 2 things you can do to help conserve your energy:
Use Instacart or another delivery grocery service: I use this on days where I need to get items from the grocery store like toilet paper and/or Clorox wipes, etc. and don’t have enough spoons to be able to go get it and do the other things I needed to complete that day.
If I absolutely needed these items the same day, I would Instacart it so they would be delivered to my building, and I would only have to use minimal spoons to go pick it up from downstairs.
Soak dishes when it’s not enough to run the dishwasher: I always have few dirty dishes in my house since I am someone who generally cannot eat. Therefore, it’s a bit of a waste to run the whole dishwasher for one dish but if I don’t have enough spoons, I don’t have the energy to wash the one dish right then and there.
On top of this, if I leave the dish, the food will be that much harder to clean off. Well, not anymore!! When I don’t have enough spoons, I fill up the dish with hot water and let it sit in the sink. Over time the hot water helps pull the food off of the dish, so it doesn’t stick to it- making it harder for when you wash it the following day.
If I need to go multiple days without washing dishes, each day I empty out the water and refill the dish with hot water, so it continues to not get food stuck in it.
All of this will ultimately take time and practice but if you accept that your body is needing these changes, then you can begin to work with it instead of against it.
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