On Rest and Healing

It has been three days and I haven’t left my house yet. I cancelled Thanksgiving because I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to sit upright at a table and hold conversation. I stayed home and ate chicken soup that my mom dropped off and slept for most of the past three days.

The thing is, I was going to pull it together to keep going and go to all the events I had planned, sick be damned. It took a dear friend to point out to me that I sounded burnt out and needed a vacation. That, and how could I expect to get better until I rested?

A full day into doing nothing and still being so very tired, I wondered at how much I needed someone else to tell me to stop and rest. Which is crazy because I tell my clients all the time that they need to slow down on forcing themselves back into action when they have injuries. And I know that rest is when the body recovers, when the body grows stronger, and when the body and mind integrate new movement knowledge—I know that recovery and strength don’t happen in the moment of action but afterward. And here I was, three weeks into a head cold, six weeks into a lyme flareup and I was going to force my way through another long weekend full of engagements and just hope that I’d get better along the way.

Here is the thing: I have a very difficult time figuring out when the sick that I am is part of Lyme, etc or if it is something else, something that I should deal with. Because I’ve been so actively sick for so much of my life, not only do I not know what healthy is (so I don’t determine what being sick is well), when I get sick, I tend to brush it off as just part of Lyme, etc., or, what I live with constantly.  I will push myself to extremes (like breaking an ankle and walking eight miles to a hospital or getting up and going to work after my PICC line opened and I bled through four comforters and my mattress or continuing on with life as usual when I am shitting blood) simply because I am really good at living life in discomfort, pain and exhaustion. I just tell myself: this is nothing, you have made it through so much worse than this.

I don’t know anymore where to draw the line. If I am so used to doing life while sick, if I don’t really know what well feels like then how do I know when sick is too sick? Because I don’t have the option to pack it all in and take a year off (which is what I’d really love to do) and just—sleep. 

What I know is that I'll work with clients who are training, hard, for some goal: to climb a mountain, to run a marathon, to lose weight and they will push and push and push, working out constantly but then they will hit a plateau. Often, I find, if they take a week or two off completely, they come back stronger, able to perform the exercises they previously couldn't and are more coordinated. Because the body grows stronger while at rest, not in the gym. I know this but forget to apply it to my own life: if I don't give my body the conditions to heal, how can I expect to fully recover?