exhaustion

Do you listen to your body? Or is your head filled up with all the noice and to do-lists so you don’t think you have time to listen to your body? You maybe hear or feel something is wrong, but you ignore it? Because you don’t have time for that right now… If not now, then when?

10 years ago I didn’t listen to my body. I worked as a spa-manager at a hotell in a ski resort. I also had my own company with massage treatments once a week. After a couple of months I’ve got a dermoid cyst in my ovary. I needed antibiotics to get rid of the infection before I went through the surgery. Five days after the surgery I got diarrhea, of course I thought I had an infection from the surgery.

I was wrong.

It was a parasite, cryptosporidium, in the drinking water in Östersund. Nearly 30.000 people got sick. My immune system wasn’t so strong due to antibiotics and surgery, so my body was the perfect home for those parasites. I had problem with diarrhea for a month, I could only drink fluid replacement and soup, one spoon every 10 minutes. It was horrible! We had to boil our water or buy water at the store.

I tried to work, because you can’t be away from work for too long when you work within tourism. It is a really crappy industry in that way, particularly when you have a manager position. After a month I got better and went to work full time again. It was Christmas time and the working hours was crazy. Many of my employees got the flu, and so did I. My immune system couldn’t handle it at all. Another month of sickness went by before I got well again.

I remember I was so tired, but I still tried to do my job as a spa manager and taking care of my own customers. Suddenly my back was hurting in a way it had never done before. None of my pain killers helped me. I also couldn’t control my right leg. I walked like Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). This was a pain I had never felt before. I tried to do anything I know that used to work for me, but nothing helped. At one point I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to the hospital and got three morphine injections. It helped for a while, but I still had sever pain. The diagnosis was three herniated discs.

I hadn’t listen to my body. At all!

I had tried to please all the people around me, my boss, my employees, customers, friends etc. instead of taking care of my self. The price I got to pay was extremely high, with rehab for a year and a half and a total mental, physical and economical collapse. I had to put my own company on hold and the spa manager job was gone. I felt very lonely in this situation, most of my friends are very active outdoors and suddenly, when I couldn’t do any of the outdoor activities my social life was also pretty much on hold.

10 years later

So 10 years have passed by and a lots of things happened during these years. Good and bad. This last year have been upside down for the whole world due to the pandemic. During the last couple of months I have been working really hard. First I released my ebook “The invisible pain – my faithful companion” in December, then I launched my membership “Become the CEO of long term pain“. Also working with my massage clients and some extra hours in a store. Just to survive financially. But the last couple of weeks my body started to scream to me.

Really loud! I listened.

I felt extremely tired all the time, irritated and hopelessness.

So I went on sick leave. I realized that this is not going to end up well if I don’t stop now. My mastermind group gave me restrictions to only work 1 hour a day. The first week I didn’t even open up my computer. I went out in the woods, to my favorite cliff where I could look out over the sea. Sat there, boiled my coffee on my gas stove and wrote my thoughts in a notebook. The writing has always been a good therapy for me. It makes it easier to straighten out the thoughts in my head.

I had a few massage clients last Friday, I wanted to see how my body reacted to do that kind of work again. My body gave me an instant reply.
On Saturday I got a really annoying cough.
No fever, no soar throat or anything else.
“Only” a really hard cough.
I tested negative for covid-19, so it’s probably a cold.

Ok body, I hear you!

I still need more recharging time. I need to be honest to myself about what is really working for me, what kind of jobs I want to and can do and what kind of jobs I need to cut down.

Due to my long term pain I live with a constant exhaustion, my body is always in stress due to the pain. It constantly tries to heal itself, although the acute injuries are healed a long time ago, but the pain is still there and the brain can’t separate these two types of pain from each other. That is why I need more recovery time than a “normal” person. That is one of the reasons I want and need to have my own business, so I can control my everyday life with enough recovery time and physical activity everyday.

So I turned down the offer to continue as a Chairman of the board of my tenant owners association and I turned down a couple of other offers as well. Things that mostly take energy and time and not gives me that much energy (or money) back. It is not always easy to say no, but it is important. For your own health and wealth.

When you say no to one thing, you open up to say yes to other things.

Make sure you always goes back and listen to your body and your own valued direction. What is right for someone else doesn’t have to be right for you, it takes courage to know and go to action for the things that is right for you. But you know what? You are going to grow a lot when you do that!

Are you listening to your body now?

Take care of you!
With love, Cattis