It's hard to take a break

Especially when your ego says you're the only one who can help

It’s five days until I get onboard an endless flight to London. It will be 927 days since I last got back from there. This is the longest I’ve not seen my parents - who are now in their 80s.

And, of course, this weekend, I put my back out and I’ve spent this morning trying to get an appointment with a physiotherapist.

It was a silly thing. I was just pushing our 4-year-old daughter on a bike with training wheels on. Just to get her up the most minor of slopes. I think the combination of stooping and pushing may have proved too much for my clearly out-of-condition spinal and abdominal muscles.

“How could I let myself get to this point?”

I’ve been diligently walking every day, but I clearly haven’t put enough work into re-mobilising and strengthening the right parts of my body after countless days sitting at my desk.

And now my back has gone into spasm to protect any vulnerable point of injury. Last night was terrible, waking every 30 minutes with pain.

Is there any silver lining to be found here? Any reframe of my situation that could help me understand the bigger picture in my life?

One thing I have been discovering is how hard it is for me to stop working. Even though I declared I’d be tasking it easier for a few weeks, or even months, with this and the occasional podcast and video being my only creative and work outlets.

I have observed that is it is challenging for me to stop working. For my mind to stop whirring. For me not to solve problems.

Part of this is most likely my ego.

For years, I was one of the few psychologists in New Zealand not only working in this space of disaster psychology and public mental health, but also prepared to talk with the media to talk about it. I like to think I am not that bad at it too. Carrying that responsibility also felt like a burden too, and I think I derived much of my sense of self-worth from this. Maybe more than was good for me.

Of course, this kind of work has only increased over the past 2.5 years, but so have the number of people who are now working in this space. If I’m honest with myself, although this is fantastic that there are more knowledgeable , excellent people, perhaps this feels somewhat threatening too.

Part of me is clearly worried about this. Here’s some of my most recent head-talk.

“I like the media work. What if it all goes away? What if no-one calls after I’ve taken a break? What if I don’t feel like being a psychologist any more? What if I don’t know what to do with myself? What if I’m really bad at taking my own advice? What will people think?”

So I found myself in a flurry of hidden activity. Even though I said I was taking a break, I kind of wasn’t, really. My mind was still whirring. When I tried to meditate, my busy monkey mind was constantly looking to the future, worried about work not coming in, or paying the bills.

Even on my daily walks, it was hard to switch off - perhaps even harder than if I was working on a specific project. And I think part of it is trying to make a success of this Substack, as if there is some kind of formula for success.

Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this. Maybe I just need to write this as though I was writing an email to a friend.

Maybe I could just chill a bit more, and be gentle with admonishing myself as I learn how to do that again. It’s been a tough 2.5 years.

Much of the time, we think of ourselves as brains, with our bodies as a merely convenient transport system to get our heads from A to B.

I suspect I have been doing this, even though in these pandemic times, my body hasn’t even been required to do much of that transportation at all. It just serves as a set of fingers and a voice to output my content to various channels. My body has been very much in service of my mind.

All this has reminded me of something the great Louise Marra once suggested to me on the Leadership New Zealand programme back in 2009.

“I think you need to spend more time in your body.”

And when I think back on it, I think there was a reason I went dancing for 30 days straight when I was doing my PhD.

After days spent in my head trying to design and run research studies and problem-solve issues as they came up, there was nothing better for me than losing myself in my body through movement, music, and lights.

So, when I’m on the physiotherapy table later today, wish me luck. I’ll definitely be in my body then. My back will make sure of that. Let’s hope I can get this mind/body balance working better for me.

And continue my journey towards taking myself a little less seriously.

I’m curious - how’s your mind / body balance going recently? Please feel free to drop me a comment on this post - I’d love to know. And thanks for supporting my work. You’re awesome.