Woman vs Wall: My Mental Wellness Showdown

A few weeks ago I hit the Wall. Yes, *that* proverbial Wall. I can safely say it was the first time in my work life that I got there.? And I decided to do the previously unthinkable to me: take off.

It is not that I am a workaholic; having had the life journey that I had, my biggest worry has always been taking my foot off the pedal. The definite roll-back that would follow frightened me. It is not something I wanted to face or deal with.

Fear, therefore, has always been a contributor to this keep-going attitude of mine: to work more, longer, harder, every day. But, you drive that fast for that long, what do you come up to? Hello, Wall!

Let me describe the Wall to you. Your body aches, everywhere. You put a hand on where it hurts, and you don’t feel anything wrong there, but the pain intensifies and moves to another body part. You are in a fog; yesterday, today and tomorrow all merge into one. You are running on autopilot, irritable and unpleasant. You lose the compassion you have for all things living. You sleep but you don’t rest. You eat and you can’t stop eating, trying to fill that hole inside you, but it is bottomless. You stop caring, your performance turns south, and you begin to self-loathe.

You are running on autopilot, irritable and unpleasant.

But the worst thing about the Wall is the ricochet. You hit, you bounce off, and if you don’t grab onto awareness and stop yourself, you will head straight back, bouncing off The Wall like a rubbery ball time and time again, losing a piece of who you are with every impact until you are no longer recognizable, to yourself nor to others.

When faced with the threat of The Wall, awareness is your helmet and life jacket.?

Stop. Feel, think, and see how you are and who you are. While work is a part of all of us, it is not the whole. We have a duty to nurture the whole. It is enough that the world is hard on you, don’t be hard on yourself too. Allow yourself the awareness of your situation, and take a break.

I did.

When faced with the threat of The Wall, awareness is your helmet and life jacket.?

4 days into my “mental health break” I realized that what had been causing my heart to miss beats was the Fear. The Fear of what would happen if I took my foot off the gas pedal and my life began to roll backwards, lose my livelihood, my position? Fairly common feelings, I would imagine.

Ok. Now, compare that to the fear you have of causing damage to your heart, your immune system, or to develop a stress induced non-communicable disease? Fear of losing your health, your friends or your family because you had become intolerable and insufferable?

Today, 15 days after I checked myself out to begin a?mental and physical reset, I am heading back to my life, to find the gas pedal again. On the flight back, I did a body scan to see how I feel.?

Guess what? I feel great! I lost that sense of heaviness, the cloud in my head has blown away, and the procrastination streak has been slayed.

I may have even turned magnetic!

To my surprise, I have had two total strangers comment to me on my “glow” this morning. Several people at the airport broke into smiles upon making eye contact with me, and three stopped in the plane aisle to have long and really profound conversations with me, uninvited! And, 2 Emirates cabin crew (usually quite professional) asked for a hug as I was leaving the aircraft!

The healing is visible, it seems.

My last note is: please take a mental health break. Try and find your neutral again. The Wall is ugly. No one should get to the Wall.

I have to thank Barberyn Ayurveda Resorts, Sri Lanka. for helping me reset and going back to neutral. The care from the doctors and staff is exemplary. Barberyn is my happy place and I have been going there since 2016 for short breaks. The therapists are caring and giving without limit. I would not entrust my reset to anyone else.