Black Ice Lessons

One day, back when I worked in an office and before I had kids, there was a freak day in the middle of Winter when the whole of my town was covered in black ice.

That morning, completely unaware of what lay outside, I headed out of my back door to take my chickens some hot water for their breakfast (yes, I really loved those chickens). As I got to the steps that led to their coop, I hit the black ice, and in cartoon fashion my legs flew from under me. Before I knew it I was on the floor – wind knocked out of me, my ever dislocating left shoulder out of place, with the bowlful of hot water cooling rapidly as it soaked into my clothes.  

I was so dizzy and disorientated I lay there for a good few minutes on the freezing stone flags. I then coaxed my shoulder fully back into its socket, and as I couldn’t actually stand, I began to crawl slowly back to the house where I collapsed in the porch calling for my husband to come and help me up.

He got me onto the sofa and made me a cup of tea, where I rested for a few minutes feeling sick and in pain. Then, a few minutes later I said “Right, I don’t want to be late – I’d better get to work”…

My husband tried valiantly to persuade me to call in and at least tell them I wouldn’t be in until lunchtime to give myself time to recover and to check that my body was OK. But no. Never one to make a fuss, never one to let anyone down, I headed in at the usual time like nothing had happened.

Why? Why did I drag myself into work feeling awful? I certainly didn’t have anything ‘big’ going on at work and I wasn’t a brain surgeon in my previous career – no lives would be lost if I took the morning off.

Back then, there were three main reasons – all linked to my chronic people-pleasing.

1. Disappointing people/letting other people down left me feeling so uncomfortable I couldn’t bear to do it. Making that call to say I wasn’t coming in felt so much worse than just going in and just trying to get through the day.  
2. My self-worth was directly linked to my productivity. If I wasn’t doing what I should be in my job – who the hell was I?
3. A ‘just keep your head down and push on’ mentality was my default to any challenging situation.

Hmm, I wonder why I was so stressed all the time? 😉

The journey from then to now is a long and winding road of children, career change and a LOT of work. When I reflect on that story I feel like a different person now, nevertheless, while I may be further down the path, this STILL comes up for me regularly – I’m on this journey just like everyone else. Yes, I’m more practiced at advocating for myself but old patterns die hard. So onwards up the spiral I go.

What I didn’t realise back then, is that in not letting other people down, in putting everything I had to offer ‘out there’ first, I was letting myself down on a fundamental and elemental level.

And there is a very real mental and physical cost to that.

The sobering statistic that women now make up over 80% of auto-immune disease sufferers and the link between this and chronic stress and how it interplays with female hormones is eye-opening and something that Dr Gabor Mate discusses in this short video clip.

I know now that I have to find a different way of operating in this second half of life if I am going to continue to thrive. My body just isn’t going to tolerate it, and nor should it. After all, yes it’s hard to change the patterns of a lifetime, but not as hard as the alternative.

With love, Claire x

PS. Can you relate to this? People-pleasing/self-worth/self-care are all pieces of the puzzle that we work on in my 1-1 program Chaos into Calm… because it’s hard to find relief from stress when all your eggs are in someone else’s basket.  And, watch this space for news on a very special workshop coming up later this Spring where we will dive into this too – Drop me a message if you’d like to find out more. x