I had a lightbulb moment in my 20’s, working at a production company in soho, where you had be be nearly dead to consider taking a day off and holidays were frowned upon. I looked at one of the more successful producers in the company (being a producer was the next step for me) and there she was, over worked, stressed, with a healthy narcotic habit and just her cats to keep her company when she finally did go home at night, and I realised that that’s not what I wanted. Shortly after I took sabbatical, went travelling and when I came back started work at a housing charity, stopping work fully when I had my second child. But It felt like I’d opted out and failed and it’s only now (late 40’s) that I’ve made peace with the decision. I was told I could have it all if I worked hard enough, but what is ‘all’? Why is it that I’ve felt like a failure for most of my adult life when actually, now I think I made a really healthy decision!
I really think a majority of people feel they've failed profoundly, deeply, & can never be corrected or redeemed. Not healthy. Our society is quietly, desperately deranged.
I've been thinking about this. That we know (often we alone know), what we were aiming for, what goals and ambitions we envisioned for ourselves. So, while others see our success, we know when we've fallen short of the mark.
Yes, that is true too. So a disconnect between what we achieved and what we envisioned, or between our own and societal expectations. I wonder if all / most mud-age adults feel this??
I've been thinking about this. That we know (often we alone know), what we were aiming for, what goals and ambitions we envisioned for ourselves. So, while others see our success, we know when we've fallen short of the mark.
Funny you should say that. I am fairly well known within my friends and family of often being able to pull out a good story! I haven't written about it, or any of the others. I am tempted to, if only because I don't want to forget them! Do you think I should?
Oh Sam this is just so true. Your note in the picture is the equivalent of the mantra I came across: ‘listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to when it screams’. As a high earning air traffic controller with what looked like the world at my feet I had my breakdown post a traumatic bereavement. My life fractured and has never been the same since. I have a very similar photo - in it I am tiny, skinny, the weight I was when I was 16. I’m holding a glass of champagne at the top of the OXO Tower on my wedding anniversary in a beautiful green dress. Dark glasses shielding my broken eyes. So many people commented on how amazing I looked, but I was a princess dancing on broken knives. When I look back at that photo it breaks my heart for the woman I was then, but reminds me how far I have come. Sending much love x
Beautifully put. When I was not doing well (insomnia, exercising 60-90 minutes per day obsessively) I got such social approval for my tiny body. I feel like I was dancing on broken knives, too.
Wow, your story is so powerful and moving. It's incredible how you've transformed and grown through such challenging times. Your strength and resilience shine through your words. Sending you lots of love and admiration for your journey. 💖✨
Cal Newport has pointed out that high-achieving knowledge workers who have tasks thrown at them all the time tend to only cry uncle when they’re at 120% capacity and truly can’t take it - they only feel ok saying no (apologizing the whole time they do)when the stress in their bodies is so bad it tips the scales for them. They literally can’t take anymore so then it’s time to draw a line - yikes! Society lauds high-functioning sorts, but when you reach that point, your brain isn’t even calling the shots, your body is forced to pull rank, and that is less admirable. Another book to recommend on this topic: Nap Ministry, by Trisha Hersey.
Denial is SUCH a powerful thing isn’t it? In recovery rooms we have a squiffy acronym for it: Don’t Even (k)Now I Am Lying. Thanks for this story. I have a few pics like that too - drawn and dead-eyed but trying to fake my way out of it.
That ‘if you don’t make time for your wellness…’ bit? It’s real. Sometimes clichés seem to lack originality because they’re actually just that fucking true.
I share this not for any purpose but context and connection (no empathy/sympathy needed 🤓): I ignored my health in favor of going HARD, with my career, in my relationships, and grew cancer in my body until it ran rampant.
Fixing and healing is a much heavier job than front-loading the right decisions. Thanks so much for broadcasting this, and for living it!
Thanks so much for asking… As I type this, no detectable cancer in my body (3 years into a stage IV diagnosis). It took changing absolutely everything about my life to get here.
Like you, Sam, I get pretty cringey using words like ‘journey,’ but haven’t yet found one better. It’s been a trip I’m grateful for, but sure wish I didn’t have to get to the cliff’s edge before realizing how loose that gravel was!
Bree…., oh my…. You just wrote my story! Just recovering from breast cancer at 41, and finally decided to take 6 months off work to recover physically but also emotionally… I also feel like it’s been a journey of self discovery and learning to enjoy being still and just ´being’ after years of running. I wish you all the best and thank you for sharing your story.
Emilie! I’m sad we’re bound together in this way, but quietly happy too; it’s a special commonality.
Sending big ups for taking the time for healing and ‘being’—so much harder than it looks, right?? The changes prompted by hitting these brick walls (cancer, psychic breakdown, injury, all of ‘em) can be truly profound, but there sure are big decisions to make and actions to take.
Sending you so much love, Emilie! 🧡✨
(Ps, will be writing more specifically about my cancer experience soon, would really love to hear your thoughts 🙏🏻)
OMG the breakdowns—PLURAL. With the benefit if hindsight I know that my “first” was not actually the first, merely the one that sent me to a medical professional—and even then, it killed me to take time away from work for 3x/week therapy; just give me a pill and I’ll be on my way thank you very much!!! It took another few public and private meltdowns to really stop and listen to what my body and brain were telling me—and much like you, it involved leaving behind the career I’d worked so hard for. I was 35 at the time, and I think I can now trace the first breakdown to my freshman year in college; it involved being so stressed and sick and run down that it took a golf ball-sized lump appearing on my neck for me to finally stay in bed for a few days—and in truth it was probably vanity more than exhaustion that tipped those scales. WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES???
Oh man. When you came on the pod I remember thinking we had this in common. Do you have it under control now? Still a massive over-achiever, after all!
Totally under control? No. But a LOT better than <checks calendar> 11 years ago, and more importantly I now *recognize the issue* which makes it much easier to deal with. I was blind to it for so long; I thought I HAD to push myself so hard to “succeed” (even when a boss back in 2001 kept saying “You know you’re not winning any points in Heaven” when I would come in to work sick).
Working harder/longer/better than everyone else wasn’t just a thing I did; it was my IDENTITY—taking my foot off the gas would have felt like suicide (ironic, given the actual ramifications of leaving my foot *on* that metaphorical pedal). When I finally left my last job/career I was so anxious, I told my husband I felt like I was dying, and he said he wasn’t surprised, because I was effectively killing off a version of myself—the overachieving corporate worker bee—that I’d been embodying so wholly for so long (15 years at that point).
Now I know that my workaholism isn’t a superpower; it’s a compulsion. And even if I still think it served me in some ways, I have to acknowledge that it ruined me in so many others that it wasn’t worth it in the end. And you know how I feel today about weighing whether something is “worth” including in my Fuck Budget!
I still really struggle with “doing nothing,” but these days I win the fight more often than not. (I should finally read the Jenny Odell, huh?)
This is a rallying cry for, and from, the women of my generation who lived a life not believing, but rather being certain, that you can never work too hard, give enough, be too busy, or stop comparing yourself to some unclear idea of having it all under control. We cracked our own psyche and our precious bodies into pieces.
What you describe I feel so viscerally. I jumped on and off the overachiever addiction train over and over. I still, at 65, find myself saying SWEET BABY JESUS JUST STOP. I'm much less self destructive now but my God, you are right. It's an addiction requiring constant attention and focus on recovery.
Ouch, it almost physically hurt to read this. I could see so many echoes of how I used to be in this. Working in a senior role in the NHS, struggling in to work with a chest infection/pneumonia because I was so desperate to not let my colleagues down, despite the fact that we were all working at beyond maximum capacity, holding together a broken system with sellotape and hope.
Thank you for sharing, Sam. I'm in my second breakdown, luckily my first eight years ago taught me to stop and listen to my body. So this one hasn't been the same fall from a cliff, more a slow and steady burnout, where I've done tiny bits of work alongside massive internal shifts that I'm giving space to with plenty of walks and therapy. I've put on a fair bit of weight around my middle - cortisol - and struggle to excercise due to acute post-excercise fatigue, but at least my walking keeps me moving and I stretch and go for a short swim as often as I can. It's so important to recognise we can't be on top of it all, all of the time. A great strength indeed. Xx
Sam, thank you so much for this, it's so brilliantly and generously written. And a very timely reminder of what our bodies are best at. It's a cliche, but I can always be better at listening to my body, because it has important information for me! And I've spent far too long silencing it, numbing it, thinking it's separate from me, and thinking it just needs a newer and more expensive serum.
Since I stopped drinking alcohol almost two years ago, I've become much more aware of shifts and signals from my body - and I think I'm a lot 'lazier', or rather, I'm in touch with the cost of hitting the override button, and I'm quick to stop, drop and roll. I always felt so, so guilty about not working at full capacity when hungover. Now I get different kinds of hangover - from seeing a lot of people, or working an extra long day - and I'm more inclined to allow myself some proper recovery time. As always, it's a work in progress. But I'm starting to understand that I used alcohol as a way to ignore my body when it has an 'inconvenient' message for me.
I have one of those pictures too. Taken at my husband's 40th birthday celebrations in 2013 shortly after I'd had a mental health breakdown that I chose to treat myself by moving out of London to Devon, making more time to look after myself, and more than halving our monthly expenditure so I didn't have to work so much. But I was still partying a lot and the picture was taken in a pub and I have a puffy red face and am about 2.5 stone overweight. It really made me stop and think about all aspects of my lifestyle and start to make even more changes. Now 11 years later I am the healthiest, both physically and mentally, I've ever been, with one more breakdown on the way to here in 2016.
Sam, I loved this - thank you. I read it on the walk home from school in the sunshine. I'm at a slightly different life stage - one that leaves me with very many conflicting feelings about the decisions I have take about career vs kids/life. (I loved working in magazines, but current situation needed one of us to step back). This made me reflect that perhaps the road not taken is not as rosy as it looks from the outside. Especially as I am an above and beyond type - I definitely hear you on working hours no one actually expects you to.
I am so glad you made the change - even if it requires you to use the word wellness!
I love this piece so much. I learned late in life , after punishing my body first as a ballerina, then as a climb the ladder corporate executive, to make my body my partner, not my slave . When my mom died and then my husband left me not long after I was peak skinny self , as skinny as I’d been as a 20 year old ballerina . There were pieces of me everywhere and i considered, briefly, ending my life. But everyone told me I looked great! So slim and beautiful. Why we think the world values us more the tinier we are is something I think about a lot.
I have a very similar photo...Mine was taken while I was still teaching, working ridiculously long hours in a culture where being ill was simply not accepted. It was a badge of honour to keep going. I now look back and realise what madness it was. Congratulations on a year here! I love your posts and podcasts and coindentally have just bought "The Body Keeps the Score" and wa off-put by the text, but will now persevere!
I didn't get physically ill but see so much of myself in this. Work was everything to an obsessive degree. More important than relationships, family, anything. I resented even taking a holiday! Thanks for the reminder and a great piece x
Thank you for your candor and courage to write this. Your essay may actually be the thing that forces me to (finally) acknowledge how right you are. God help us all
I had a lightbulb moment in my 20’s, working at a production company in soho, where you had be be nearly dead to consider taking a day off and holidays were frowned upon. I looked at one of the more successful producers in the company (being a producer was the next step for me) and there she was, over worked, stressed, with a healthy narcotic habit and just her cats to keep her company when she finally did go home at night, and I realised that that’s not what I wanted. Shortly after I took sabbatical, went travelling and when I came back started work at a housing charity, stopping work fully when I had my second child. But It felt like I’d opted out and failed and it’s only now (late 40’s) that I’ve made peace with the decision. I was told I could have it all if I worked hard enough, but what is ‘all’? Why is it that I’ve felt like a failure for most of my adult life when actually, now I think I made a really healthy decision!
You were the smart one. I’m sure your then boss would agree. Assuming she’s still around…
I really think a majority of people feel they've failed profoundly, deeply, & can never be corrected or redeemed. Not healthy. Our society is quietly, desperately deranged.
I've been thinking about this. That we know (often we alone know), what we were aiming for, what goals and ambitions we envisioned for ourselves. So, while others see our success, we know when we've fallen short of the mark.
I think it’s often that our personal goals and the goals society says we should have are out of synch?
Yes, that is true too. So a disconnect between what we achieved and what we envisioned, or between our own and societal expectations. I wonder if all / most mud-age adults feel this??
I've been thinking about this. That we know (often we alone know), what we were aiming for, what goals and ambitions we envisioned for ourselves. So, while others see our success, we know when we've fallen short of the mark.
You’ve got yarns, Hannah!! Have you written about this? (Life transitions are my jam, so super interested)
Funny you should say that. I am fairly well known within my friends and family of often being able to pull out a good story! I haven't written about it, or any of the others. I am tempted to, if only because I don't want to forget them! Do you think I should?
YES!!! I do, like… 💯.
Just that one-off comment has me so intrigued, Hannah, and feeling like it’s just the tippy top of a beautiful glacier.
Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it for you. Do it! 💗🙌🏻
"Holidays were frowned upon," I love that! 😂
Oh Sam this is just so true. Your note in the picture is the equivalent of the mantra I came across: ‘listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to when it screams’. As a high earning air traffic controller with what looked like the world at my feet I had my breakdown post a traumatic bereavement. My life fractured and has never been the same since. I have a very similar photo - in it I am tiny, skinny, the weight I was when I was 16. I’m holding a glass of champagne at the top of the OXO Tower on my wedding anniversary in a beautiful green dress. Dark glasses shielding my broken eyes. So many people commented on how amazing I looked, but I was a princess dancing on broken knives. When I look back at that photo it breaks my heart for the woman I was then, but reminds me how far I have come. Sending much love x
Seconding Bree’s comment. Funny how people think we look fabulous when we’re broken inside
Totally. It’s actually heartbreaking 💔
Beautifully put. When I was not doing well (insomnia, exercising 60-90 minutes per day obsessively) I got such social approval for my tiny body. I feel like I was dancing on broken knives, too.
💔❤️
Emma… oof, what a beautiful comment. ‘…a princess dancing on broken knives…’ 💔
Too too familiar, though in sisterhood with the distance you’ve travelled!
❤️💔
Wow, your story is so powerful and moving. It's incredible how you've transformed and grown through such challenging times. Your strength and resilience shine through your words. Sending you lots of love and admiration for your journey. 💖✨
Thank you, that means such a lot ❤️🫶
Cal Newport has pointed out that high-achieving knowledge workers who have tasks thrown at them all the time tend to only cry uncle when they’re at 120% capacity and truly can’t take it - they only feel ok saying no (apologizing the whole time they do)when the stress in their bodies is so bad it tips the scales for them. They literally can’t take anymore so then it’s time to draw a line - yikes! Society lauds high-functioning sorts, but when you reach that point, your brain isn’t even calling the shots, your body is forced to pull rank, and that is less admirable. Another book to recommend on this topic: Nap Ministry, by Trisha Hersey.
It reminds me of that insidious mantra, “if you need something doing ask a busy person.” No! Don’t!
LOL. I have said this many times, and mostly believed it.
that's because you, like me, are a mug!
Denial is SUCH a powerful thing isn’t it? In recovery rooms we have a squiffy acronym for it: Don’t Even (k)Now I Am Lying. Thanks for this story. I have a few pics like that too - drawn and dead-eyed but trying to fake my way out of it.
That nails it. Lying for years (decades).
Wow, I've never heard that acronym before but it's perfect.
All of this, Sam.
That ‘if you don’t make time for your wellness…’ bit? It’s real. Sometimes clichés seem to lack originality because they’re actually just that fucking true.
I share this not for any purpose but context and connection (no empathy/sympathy needed 🤓): I ignored my health in favor of going HARD, with my career, in my relationships, and grew cancer in my body until it ran rampant.
Fixing and healing is a much heavier job than front-loading the right decisions. Thanks so much for broadcasting this, and for living it!
How are you doing now?
Thanks so much for asking… As I type this, no detectable cancer in my body (3 years into a stage IV diagnosis). It took changing absolutely everything about my life to get here.
Like you, Sam, I get pretty cringey using words like ‘journey,’ but haven’t yet found one better. It’s been a trip I’m grateful for, but sure wish I didn’t have to get to the cliff’s edge before realizing how loose that gravel was!
So perfectly put. Glad you’re doing well.
You and me both. 😉 Here’s to both our journeys. 🙌🏻
Thank you, Laura! Abundance of the all the same right back to you 💗
Bree…., oh my…. You just wrote my story! Just recovering from breast cancer at 41, and finally decided to take 6 months off work to recover physically but also emotionally… I also feel like it’s been a journey of self discovery and learning to enjoy being still and just ´being’ after years of running. I wish you all the best and thank you for sharing your story.
Emilie! I’m sad we’re bound together in this way, but quietly happy too; it’s a special commonality.
Sending big ups for taking the time for healing and ‘being’—so much harder than it looks, right?? The changes prompted by hitting these brick walls (cancer, psychic breakdown, injury, all of ‘em) can be truly profound, but there sure are big decisions to make and actions to take.
Sending you so much love, Emilie! 🧡✨
(Ps, will be writing more specifically about my cancer experience soon, would really love to hear your thoughts 🙏🏻)
I’ve been shocked by how many have the same story. Take care xx
Yes we can, indeed. 🙌🏻🔥
Thank you for your linking arms here, Laura; my heart warms with the energy of your message. You’ve got exactly the magic combo for healing. ❤️🩹 ✨
Onward!!
OMG the breakdowns—PLURAL. With the benefit if hindsight I know that my “first” was not actually the first, merely the one that sent me to a medical professional—and even then, it killed me to take time away from work for 3x/week therapy; just give me a pill and I’ll be on my way thank you very much!!! It took another few public and private meltdowns to really stop and listen to what my body and brain were telling me—and much like you, it involved leaving behind the career I’d worked so hard for. I was 35 at the time, and I think I can now trace the first breakdown to my freshman year in college; it involved being so stressed and sick and run down that it took a golf ball-sized lump appearing on my neck for me to finally stay in bed for a few days—and in truth it was probably vanity more than exhaustion that tipped those scales. WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES???
Oh man. When you came on the pod I remember thinking we had this in common. Do you have it under control now? Still a massive over-achiever, after all!
Totally under control? No. But a LOT better than <checks calendar> 11 years ago, and more importantly I now *recognize the issue* which makes it much easier to deal with. I was blind to it for so long; I thought I HAD to push myself so hard to “succeed” (even when a boss back in 2001 kept saying “You know you’re not winning any points in Heaven” when I would come in to work sick).
Working harder/longer/better than everyone else wasn’t just a thing I did; it was my IDENTITY—taking my foot off the gas would have felt like suicide (ironic, given the actual ramifications of leaving my foot *on* that metaphorical pedal). When I finally left my last job/career I was so anxious, I told my husband I felt like I was dying, and he said he wasn’t surprised, because I was effectively killing off a version of myself—the overachieving corporate worker bee—that I’d been embodying so wholly for so long (15 years at that point).
Now I know that my workaholism isn’t a superpower; it’s a compulsion. And even if I still think it served me in some ways, I have to acknowledge that it ruined me in so many others that it wasn’t worth it in the end. And you know how I feel today about weighing whether something is “worth” including in my Fuck Budget!
I still really struggle with “doing nothing,” but these days I win the fight more often than not. (I should finally read the Jenny Odell, huh?)
I’m just sitting here nodding - and so is my husband. Yes a thousand times yes to the Jenny Odell.
This is a rallying cry for, and from, the women of my generation who lived a life not believing, but rather being certain, that you can never work too hard, give enough, be too busy, or stop comparing yourself to some unclear idea of having it all under control. We cracked our own psyche and our precious bodies into pieces.
What you describe I feel so viscerally. I jumped on and off the overachiever addiction train over and over. I still, at 65, find myself saying SWEET BABY JESUS JUST STOP. I'm much less self destructive now but my God, you are right. It's an addiction requiring constant attention and focus on recovery.
Thank you from my heart for this.
Ouch, it almost physically hurt to read this. I could see so many echoes of how I used to be in this. Working in a senior role in the NHS, struggling in to work with a chest infection/pneumonia because I was so desperate to not let my colleagues down, despite the fact that we were all working at beyond maximum capacity, holding together a broken system with sellotape and hope.
Thank you for sharing your experience
So glad you’re through it too
Thank you for sharing, Sam. I'm in my second breakdown, luckily my first eight years ago taught me to stop and listen to my body. So this one hasn't been the same fall from a cliff, more a slow and steady burnout, where I've done tiny bits of work alongside massive internal shifts that I'm giving space to with plenty of walks and therapy. I've put on a fair bit of weight around my middle - cortisol - and struggle to excercise due to acute post-excercise fatigue, but at least my walking keeps me moving and I stretch and go for a short swim as often as I can. It's so important to recognise we can't be on top of it all, all of the time. A great strength indeed. Xx
Sam, thank you so much for this, it's so brilliantly and generously written. And a very timely reminder of what our bodies are best at. It's a cliche, but I can always be better at listening to my body, because it has important information for me! And I've spent far too long silencing it, numbing it, thinking it's separate from me, and thinking it just needs a newer and more expensive serum.
Since I stopped drinking alcohol almost two years ago, I've become much more aware of shifts and signals from my body - and I think I'm a lot 'lazier', or rather, I'm in touch with the cost of hitting the override button, and I'm quick to stop, drop and roll. I always felt so, so guilty about not working at full capacity when hungover. Now I get different kinds of hangover - from seeing a lot of people, or working an extra long day - and I'm more inclined to allow myself some proper recovery time. As always, it's a work in progress. But I'm starting to understand that I used alcohol as a way to ignore my body when it has an 'inconvenient' message for me.
I have one of those pictures too. Taken at my husband's 40th birthday celebrations in 2013 shortly after I'd had a mental health breakdown that I chose to treat myself by moving out of London to Devon, making more time to look after myself, and more than halving our monthly expenditure so I didn't have to work so much. But I was still partying a lot and the picture was taken in a pub and I have a puffy red face and am about 2.5 stone overweight. It really made me stop and think about all aspects of my lifestyle and start to make even more changes. Now 11 years later I am the healthiest, both physically and mentally, I've ever been, with one more breakdown on the way to here in 2016.
Keep a calm smile, and relaxed eyebrows, maybe a daily 2 hour sound bath
I’m all good now 😊 The picture was taken a long time ago and things are completely different in my life now 🙏💙
Sam, I loved this - thank you. I read it on the walk home from school in the sunshine. I'm at a slightly different life stage - one that leaves me with very many conflicting feelings about the decisions I have take about career vs kids/life. (I loved working in magazines, but current situation needed one of us to step back). This made me reflect that perhaps the road not taken is not as rosy as it looks from the outside. Especially as I am an above and beyond type - I definitely hear you on working hours no one actually expects you to.
I am so glad you made the change - even if it requires you to use the word wellness!
This resonates with me fully!
I love this piece so much. I learned late in life , after punishing my body first as a ballerina, then as a climb the ladder corporate executive, to make my body my partner, not my slave . When my mom died and then my husband left me not long after I was peak skinny self , as skinny as I’d been as a 20 year old ballerina . There were pieces of me everywhere and i considered, briefly, ending my life. But everyone told me I looked great! So slim and beautiful. Why we think the world values us more the tinier we are is something I think about a lot.
I have a very similar photo...Mine was taken while I was still teaching, working ridiculously long hours in a culture where being ill was simply not accepted. It was a badge of honour to keep going. I now look back and realise what madness it was. Congratulations on a year here! I love your posts and podcasts and coindentally have just bought "The Body Keeps the Score" and wa off-put by the text, but will now persevere!
Listen on audible! Much easier. Stay well x
Thank you!x
I didn't get physically ill but see so much of myself in this. Work was everything to an obsessive degree. More important than relationships, family, anything. I resented even taking a holiday! Thanks for the reminder and a great piece x
Thank you for your candor and courage to write this. Your essay may actually be the thing that forces me to (finally) acknowledge how right you are. God help us all