In the past, I’ve bemoaned the lack of warmth people have. Maybe it’s a capital city thing, but the level of hyper-independence makes it nigh on impossible to have a sustained relationship with anyone. People are too emotionally unavailable, or too busy doing their own thing.
Fast forward to more recent times, I’ve seemingly turned into the person I complain about. In the last week, I had numerous people come up to me to say they recognise me. My response has often been a blank and puzzled stare. At least I’ve gotten practice in trying to ask ‘ who are you?’ in a somewhat polite way.
Last weekend I came across someone who paused silently when they saw me. I had no idea who they were, so I essentially just ignored them. They had to stop me to say that we’ve met before. Turns out we had a coffee some years ago. I tried to make a feigned apology that I barely remember yesterday, let alone a few years ago. My attempts failed, and they looked somewhat offended. Oops.
I end up meeting people from a lot of different walks of life, meaning I gather a world of acquaintances. Due to the sheer number, I tend to forget people unless they have had a particularly distinct impression upon me.
But people seem to remember me. I guess people seem to remember my, well, distinctiveness, even if they don’t remark upon it at the time. I’ve also stayed in Brussels long enough now that I’m starting to loop around in seeing people again, even if it is several years later.
This places me in a rather strange role in life. I feel like I am oft the observer looking in. I can bring unique perspectives into a group, but I will never be a part of it. It is both enriching and lonely.
Accepting this societal role has taken time. I’ve spent many years trying to be open and forthright with people, but probably have ended up coming off intense rather than amicable. I also seemingly have what people describe as an intimidating aura. I used to get somewhat depressed by this, particularly when I craved people’s love and affection.
But now I feel like I might as well lean into it. I’ve decided that I have officially entered my aura farming era. People are scared of me? Good, they should be. Folk aren’t able to place me? That’s because my existence is beyond their understanding.
Playing into the role makes it a lot more fun. I can play with it, tongue-in-cheek. It also feels easier, it’s like I am going along with where I logically fit in the world. No longer am I trying to compete on how extroverted or energetic I am compared to other people.
I spend time with people, but I am far more guarded with my time and energy than I was before. It means that I can preserve my inner sanctity and independence, whilst also being authentic in public spaces. If I spend too long in a certain space, I can feel it gnawing away at me.
I can’t help but find some funny irony. In an attempt to fit in, I’ve ended up taking up a persona that is distant from people. I am doing what society wants of me, which is to push society away. It is as coherent as it is parodoxical.
But there’s also a sense of calmness and clarity that comes. It’s a lot easier to navigate the world when you know what your position is.
Most people have heard about yoga, but fewer know about ayurveda. If yoga is the physical and spiritual practice, ayurveda is the science of health, based upon practices refined over thousands of years in South Asia.
I’ve been experiencing a burnout, and I’ve found that our modern-day approaches are pretty poor. Ayurveda gave me the first systemic explanation of burnout that actually made sense. My body’s ojas, or vitality being depleted, the body would need rest. It takes as long as it needs, and although there are things that help, there is no shortcut to rest. This was honestly pretty revolutionary for how I approached my burnout.
My exploration got me into learning more about the fundamentals of ayurveda. There are three different prakritis, or constitutions. These are Vata – made up of ether and air; Pitta, made up of fire and water, and Kapha, made up of water and earth. We are made up of different combinations of these three things.
As someone who has struggled with their weight throughout my life, I finally had a framework to help explain why. I have a dominant Kapha prakriti, meaning a strong build, but one prone to lethargy. My challenge is that I am constitutionally built to hold weight, making being thin difficult. The upside is that I have generally healthy skin and hair.
Ayurveda is clear that there’s no point in someone like me trying to be skinny, like a Vata dominant type would be. They naturally lose weight easily, but are also more likely to have dry hair and other issues. Pitta dominants meanwhile are medium build, likely to be competitive and sporty, but are more prone to have issues around inflammation and anger.
In the midst of this burnout, I learnt about my own neurodivergence. I received an Autism assessment in 2024, and although untested, I am sure I have ADHD too. This means I fit into the particular category often called ‘AuDHD’. The strange blend of craving creativity but also routine.
A few months ago, I went to see an ayurvedic doctor for a pulse check. What was interesting was that I had both an excess in Kapha and Vata. The Vata made sense – the element of air represents shifts and changes, which describes my constantly shifting burnt out brain perfectly well. But the Kapha was more surprising – I had presumed that since I was low in energy, that meant that my Kapha reserves had been exhausted.
I started reading a new book, entitled Yoga and Ayurveda by Dr. David Frawley. I’ve only reached a few chapters in, but I read something that shifted my thinking dramatically. In Ayurveda, we all have prakritis. But there are ancient texts that state we can have different prakritis for our body and our mind.
This clicked a new understanding. Perhaps my body’s tendency is to be Kapha dominant, whereas my mind is Vata dominant. These two in excess lead to imbalance, but in very different ways.
This made my mind return to how this might map onto neurodivergence. As my brain ticked along, I realise that it actually maps up extremely well. If we follow the logic of ayurveda, we can get many different valuable answers too.
Let’s start with someone with an ADHD profile. They are often people who are fidgety and constantly shifting thoughts. These two things map clearly. They have a vata dominant mind, and a vata dominant body.
Likewise, someone with Autism. They are Kapha dominant in mind and body. Physically, they tend to like routine and discipline. Mentally, they can be very structured, to the point of inflexibility.
Then, there are AUDHD people like me. I have a very fast moving, Vata dominant mind, but a Kapha dominant body that likes to sit still. This is a strange combination, and one that is perenially misunderstood, and often mistreated too.
But there’s nothing to say it couldn’t be the other way around, I could be a Kapha dominant mind – someone who needs clear conceptual structure – but a Vata body that needs high physical stimulation.
What is really interesting is that we can break this down further. As mentioned earlier on, constitutions are made up of different elements.
Let’s take the example of Autism. The stereotype of autism is often based upon having alexithymia – having a lower level of empathy and ability to experience emotions. This suggests someone who has a very earth dominant Kapha. The earth builds resistance which leads to difficulties when connecting with others.
But we are also seeing a growing number of autistic people who do not fit this mould. Women, ethnic minorities and queer people often have a very different experience. These are people who have heightened sensitivity (oft fitting into the ‘Highly Sensitive Person’ category), yet still exhibit wider autism traits. I would definitely count myself in this group. For these people, they have an excess of water – the element which governs flow and emotions. This causes their Kapha imbalance.
Likewise with ADHD, my hypothesis is that there are different archetypes. There are those who are much more ‘air’ heavy. These are people who are in constant motion, they are often continuously reacting to things in front of them and live their life in a free-flowing state of response. This can be categorised as those with strong impulse responses.
But then there are also those ADHD profiles that are ether dominant. Ether governs space, and can be described as covering creative potential. These are the people who constantly have new ideas, but may struggle to finish them. It fits the archetype of a person with ADHD who has started twenty different projects but struggles to complete any of them.
This dissection alone I think is a very valuable way of framing neurodivergence, beyond what traditional literature says. I can only report from anecdotal experience, but this matches up pretty well with what I see from the neurodivergent community.
But there is more value to this than just a diagnostic tool. Ayurveda is rich because it has a direct ability to treat different imbalances. I am not an expert on exact remedies, but the fact that treatments exist could be an extremely valuable resource. I know that my own methods of applying mustard oil on my skin during the night has done wonders in reactivating my body from its Kapha-excess slumber. Perhaps this may be good for other autistic folk too.
But Ayurveda can also help us understand how we may work to fix this balance from an energetic perspective. The one prakriti that I have not talked much about is Pitta. Pitta governs our internal flame, and plays a key role in digestion. When it is out of balance, stomach problems often follow. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that neurodivergent people have higher rates of IBS.
Pitta is extremely important because it is the central prakriti that can bring our dominant sides into balance. The fire can give drive and direction for Vata-heavy ADHD people, and it can also push Kapha-heavy autistic people out of their shell.
I believe this is why we are often so sensitive to meaning. Burnout is often caused when we no longer feel like our work matters. Our internal flame is generally more fragile due to our constitution, so it can get put out easier. I always found it so difficult in my job for this reason, which I noticed was in contrast to the rest of my colleagues. It seems like neurotypical people are less sensitive to this.
We therefore need to be far more careful with how we guard our Pitta, or internal fire. Doing things that are Pitta draining are more negatively impactful for neurodivergent people. I think it is why we are so sensitive to meaning, and often are characterised as ‘justice seeking’. We need to ensure that what we are doing keeps that internal flame going.
Things that have a minor effect on others’ Pitta can have a disproportionately high affect on ours. Neurotypical people without such dominant Vata or Kapha are less prone to this. Or, they may be naturally Pitta-dominant people, who are naturally competitive anyway.
It is therefore more important to be extra guarded with our time and energy. I feel some level of confidence in saying this, because it lines up with pretty much all the advice that circulates in neurodivergent groups.
I realise that I am but a voice in an ocean of opinions around neurodivergence. But I do think also that there is something that can be extremely valuable for people by looking through this lens.
I am sure that there is much more that can be dug into beneath this through the thousands of years of ayurvedic practice that could massively help neurodivergent people. We are, after all, a chronically under-served community.
Yesterday, I went to the osteopath. We start the sessions with her asking what the issue is, after which she focusses on that area of the body.
Although the session was ultimately helpful, I can’t help but feel that there is something a little backward in this. Me, the non-expert, ends up needing to explain my symptoms and what I think is going on with my body.
I think I am particularly bitter this week because of the realisation about how much my chronic bodily tension has affected me up until this point. I actually follow a pretty typical route for a high-masking autistic person, where I held so much tension that went unnoticed for decades by everyone around me. I think it’s why I’ve had so many difficulties in eating, sleeping and weight management.
What frustrates me with modern healthcare is how little focus there is on overall wellbeing. The culture is that you go to the doctor because you have a problem. Once the problem is negligible enough to be ignored, we forget and carry on with our lives. It then slowly gets worse until we need to look for miracle drugs or interventionist surgeries.
For me, this has meant that healthcare becomes an activity of self-advocacy. With the osteopath, I talked about how my body has undergone pretty rigorous changes in the last few weeks – demonstrated by daily photos that I had taken and asked for analysis through AI. I wanted a second pair of eyes to actually confirm whether this was the case.
Her reframing response back to me was that oh, so you’re saying your body changed a bit? I had to reassert the point that my physical shifts have been rather dramatic, not ‘un peu’. These small areas of undermining can be subtle, but they are quietly debilitating.
I had jaw pain come up as a sensory response to the session. When I told her, she did massage it which did help a lot. At the end of the session, I mentioned how teeth grinding is a common autistic trait. Although I can’t expect the professionals to know everything, there was something quite frustrating of having to explain in french something that I only learnt by going to self-organised autistic gatherings.
The verdict from my session was that my system has improved, with better breathing, but some tension still. I got some basic exercises to improve the situation. After that, it was on me. Not a more holistic view that I was hoping for, nor a practical suggestion of when or whether I should come back.
I want to emphasise that my osteopath is clearly skilled and knows what she is doing. She is also generally pleasant and friendly. So this is not about railing against a single professional. Yet the medical care, and overall culture and system towards healthcare leads to these rather unsatisfactory situations where I feel like I am left fending for myself.
When people talk about privilege, I’m not sure they fully understand how widely privilege affects different walks of lives. This isn’t just about being able to be treated better in the judicial system. It also affects how we navigate pretty much every single system in our life.
For example, many neurotypical, white people can go to a dietician or personal trainer that would give advice that broadly work for their body. The chances of me, coming from a racialised and genetic makeup, along with neurodivergent traits would be pretty likely to be failed.
My personal gym plan helped build muscle, but overall caused my health to suffer. It put more stress onto a system that was already chronically braced. I constantly felt like the regime I had was too intense for my body, but I bought into the gym mantra that my personal trainer also implicitly encouraged that this was just about pushing through. Now, in hindsight, it makes sense why the regime didn’t work.
This whole predicament leaves people like me in a difficult situation. On the one hand, we know how the system can inadvertendly harm us through well-intentioned but misguided advice. On the other hand, we also realise that we are not experts in everything, and so we need to be open to getting genuinely valuable support.
The uneasy compromise is to take more of the burden: we research and prepare extensively ahead of getting professional advice.
The challenge is that we cannot put full trust into a professional who may mix genuine scientific knowledge with cultural biases or outdated viewpoints.
A key moment for learning is when things stop working properly.
Most of us have no idea how our car works. We don’t really need to either, so long as its functioning correctly.
But the moment something goes wrong, we decide to investigate. We open up the hood of the car, only to have the level of our ignorance be laid bare. We have no idea what we are looking at, nor how any of it really works. Time for us to learn quickly, else we be stuck on the side of the highway in the middle of the night.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on my breathing. Without realising, I would take shallow breaths, likely fuelled by general stress and anxiety. Even in yoga classes, I learnt of ‘belly breathing’, and thought that this was the correct way to regulate the internal system.
It was only when my osteopath pointed out the need for me to breath through my diaphragm that I really started paying attention to it. Suddenly, I realised I had a muscle that I was previously unaware of. I think I follow the path of many high masking autistic people in this regard. Chronic body tension being held together into adult life.
The good news was that once I had identified the issue, the changes have come pretty quickly. I’ve felt my chest open up a lot more, and my posture has improved significantly. My shoulders have gone from being heightened and tense, to lower and more relaxed. My pelvic tilt has also shifted to a more neutral, healthy stance without me even actively trying. I didn’t even know I had a pelvic tilt until now.
The bad news is that his has had a whole lot of destabilising effects. On Sunday, I had a ‘vestibular episode’. I woke up dizzy, and household objects felt weirdly distant from my depth perception. By the later afternoon, I needed to throw up several times.
My body had such a rapid body alignment correction that I was standing slightly taller, and with a more upright head. This confused my spatial perception to the point where I’ve had to basically avoid sudden movements for the last few days. I spent the evening lying in bed with a weird spinning sensation going on in my head, even with my eyes closed.
I’ve also had weird feet pain. Someone asked me yesterday whether I was limping, and the answer was yes, apparently. I had random pain in my right foot. I think due to putting weight on parts of my foot that had previously been underused.
Today, I have quite acute jaw pain, which I think is a sign of the releasing pattern from habitual clenched teeth. A few days ago, massaging my cheek bones seemed to help. Now I’ve noticed the pain has shifted, and it’s further down, towards the inner part of my jaw. To massage it, I have to reach my finger inside my mouth and rub it gently.
This has not been a particularly enjoyable period, but it’s at least been informative. But perhaps one silver lining is that I’m gaining a lot of really valuable insight into how my body works.
I’m seeing that the more I tune into the different mechanisms, the more attuned I am to myself. My eating habits have become more particular, and I think it’s a positive sign that I’m desiring what my body actually needs, rather than stress eating out of a fear of scarcity.
Mentally, it’s also been relieving to break out of the autistic stereotypes too. I believed for a while after my diagnosis that I had poor interoception, meaning that my ability to read my body was poor. Now I’m realising that it’s probably actually very strong, but been numbed from a lifetime of being taught to ignore it. As I let go of my conditioning, I’m regaining a strength that will serve me for the rest of my life.
This morning, I felt like I wanted to stretch my body.
This small fact may sound unremarkable, but it is probably the first time that I genuinely wanted to move, rather than felt like I should.
I’ve previously exercised because it was good for me, or it made me feel better. In my recent low-activity state, I’ve missed the psychological relief it gave me.
But nowhere did anyone explain to me that the body is actually meant to want to do these things. Rather than being a rag doll to command, it is a living, breathing organism with its own signals and impulse.
I spent a large part of last year trying to kick start my health at the gym. I had a personal trainer with a strength building regime. It did work – I gained muscle, felt stronger and generally much fitter.
But in many sessions, I felt like I was pushing my body through it. I was pushing my strength of will to force myself to lift weights. By the end of the session, I felt tired. My digestion worsened, and I would often spend the rest of the day recuperating at home.
I was getting stronger, but not healthier. In some ways, my body was struggling even more than it had been. It’s why I realised I needed to actually stop for a while. I needed to re-learn how to listen to my body. A life of neurodivergence and masking has meant it’s something I’ve not done in a long, long time.
What seems to be missing in modern day beliefs around exercise is that the desire is meant to come as much from the body as it does from the mind. If the body is not wanting to do something, that’s actually an important sign.
I’ve noticed this for myself. As the weather brightens up, I get some sense of pressure that I should go outside and enjoy it. Good Belgian weather doesn’t last long, after all. But if I do a quick check-in with my body, I find that it would much prefer resting at home.
When I have tried to override that by forcing myself outside, I end up exhausting whatever small energy I had left. This often means that I feel very wiped out for the next few days. I’ve had to learn that it’s often not worth the cost.
In the past, I always wondered how people had such discipline to wake up early to go for a run or do yoga. I never realised that it’s not all meant to be a battle of the mind. When the body wants it too, there’s an alignment which makes everything easier. But you can’t align with the body if you’re not listening to it properly.
Although not quite a physical activity, it’s similar to what I feel like with my writing. This will be my 220th article since January 2022 without missing a week. If this was just a question of discipline, I would have got tired many months ago. But now, my sense of expression is as much integrated with my body as it is with my mind. If I haven’t written anything in a week, it is as if I have an internal bodily impulse that tells me that it’s time to write.
So my conclusion is that we ought to listen to our bodies far more than we are currently doing. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if you internally feel that you don’t want to do that exercise class, you shouldn’t go. The short term gain of psychological relief is not worth the longer term effect of telling your body that it’s signals do not matter.
We only get one body in this lifetime, so it’s probably worth listening to it.
Many people smoke to regulate their stress rather than actually enjoying the taste. People often drink heavily as a form of escapism, rather than the social aspect.
There are often deep, underlying reasons for harmful behaviour. Without addressing these, you’re unlikely to kick any type of bad habits.
But equally, there comes a point where certain things have just become habits. If we do something long enough, it becomes an automatic instinct, even if we know they no longer makes sense.
I was reflecting on this question in regards to my health. I have chronic tension. I was functional, until I was not. A burnout precipitated the need to open up the hatch and see what was really going on underneath. I have essentially trained myself to be in a state of constant brace, and heightened vigilance. I seem to have followed a relatively typical pipeline as a high-masking autistic person (happy autism awareness day)
When you grow up not really understanding what’s going on, you learn to be constantly monitoring how you should act. It’s a bit akin to having to be an actor performing on a stage, making sure that you memorise and deliver your lines correctly (many autistic people actually do this as a coping mechanism).
No doubt, there has been things that I have needed to process. It’s a big psychological burden when someone finally explains why things didn’t really make sense to you for your whole life. I’ve needed that time to essentially re-evaluate my life up until this point.
But there comes a time to address the real, practical dimension of it all. My chronic tension has led to consistent, shallow breath and braced posture. Although this has slowly improved with rest, I’m still some way from a healthy breathing pattern and posture.
A lot of the back issues I’ve had recently have been a result of this tension. My osteopath told me that the source of my back pains were actually from a lack of breathing from the diaphragm. This was having a knock-on effect on the rest of my body.
For all the trauma and explanation, it’s now about shifting the habits I’ve built. That means consciously changing the way I breathe rather than further delving into why.
I felt prompted to write this article because I sometimes feel that people can get too caught up on talking about their traumas. Not to say that healing trauma is not a crucial element, but because I find that people use it as a reason to explain and justify, rather than as a means to actually change.
I had a conversation with someone recently who was so caught up in her own trauma that it became impossible to speak with her. She interrupted me mid-sentence on a totally different subject to talk about how women were given no rights in Ireland 50 years ago. When I tried to point out she had just completely derailed the conversation, she accused me of not caring about what she said. In the end, I had to just walk away.
Trauma cannot be used as a justification for being rude. If you genuinely want to overcome it, you also need to build healthy habits. If you’re constantly fixated on something, you have to shift your brain’s habits. This person could not hold a conversation with me without constantly interrupting me. She also kept pulling it back to what she wanted to talk about.
I’ve been in many spaces where the logic has just become ‘communicate more’. If we all just speak and speak about how hard we have it, we will solve everything. Unfortunately, that’s not actually how it works. In fact, it can actually make people end up being more self-centred and narcissistic.
At some point, we do need to take responsibility for where we’re at. Understanding our past can help bring us peace, but ultimately, it doesn’t change our current predicament. The only way to do that is shifting our habits and behaviour.
A few days ago, I went to the cash machine, then walked directly to the supermarket. I bought a full load of groceries and walked back home.
I had no major fatigue or back pain flaring up. Believe it or not, this was notable progress.
It sounds so insignificant, but in the context of what I’ve been experiencing, this is a sign that I can slowly rely on my body again. It’s also incrementally more than I’ve been able to do in the last few weeks, and a much better bodily response than I’ve had in years.
I like to pretend that I’m some sort of wise oracle, but sometimes my philosophical messages come purely out of a survival instinct. The truth is, if I didn’t appreciate the small positive steps I’ve been taking, I would probably have gone insane by now.
I’m not one for massive reminiscing into the past. I find that if we dwell there too long, we lose our grip on the present. But having a reference point to small incremental gains can be useful. The fact that I’m functioning far more effectively than I was about a year ago demonstrates that my health is improving.
In a world where want instant, dopamine providing feedback, there are many things that inevitably take a long time. Health is an obvious example of this, but I think it goes for many things, like building a skill or any other long term project. Attempting to speed up the process only ends up making it slower, and often more painful.
I’ll admit that it’s a challenge to find the balance. Whilst it’s good to appreciate when things go well, too much naval gazing can be risky. For example, it’s handy to look at the immediate past, but if I compare myself to before my burnout, I would undoubtedly get depressed. Back then, I was working full time, regularly travelling, writing and pursuing several hobbies.
It’s also important not getting too caught up in what it all means, and over-extrapolating the win’ part of it either. After all, the night after I woke up with anxiety in my throat at 4am, which messed up somewhat my next day. The small steps aren’t big ones, no matter how much we might wish them to be.
Small wins are just that, small. They build up incrementally, but only when we continue sowing the seeds for them to grow. A lack of patience and discipline can squander our progress.
And so, I plod along. I see recovery in sight. Part of me feels like it’s not too far. But another part of me feels like it will take longer than I expect. Either way, it doesn’t change too much practically. Slow recovery, step by step. I’ll get where I need to be.
For the first time, I played with the notion that I may never recover. Perhaps the energy of old will never return. My new existence is one of exhaustion and management.
This may sound defeatist, but I don’t think it is. I do believe that I will recover, slowly, but surely. But considering how long this has gone on, and realistically how far off anyone’s expectation this has been, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility to think that I may never get better.
Rather than sounding bleak, there is a sense of simplifcation that comes with such a thought. No longer do I need to constantly find this something that I need to fight. No longer do I need to feel like I am delaying my life to a magical ‘when’ time. It allows me to be present, and not worry too much about the future. There is a freedom in this.
What has really struck me around burnout in western culture is how much this becomes a constant battle with your health. It’s as if we are a captain of a ship, furiously turning one way or another. Maybe one miracle drug will solve all. When that doesn’t work, maybe some ancient meditation practice will be the cure. Many of us have been sent into burnout due to micromanagement, but we may be doing the exact same thing to our bodies.
The double edged sword of our modern lives is that there is always more information. If you’re not satisfied, there is an endless burrow of further things to research. The idea that people can get sick at any point has disappeared from the modern psyche.
When we are sailing our ship through the rocky terrain of life, sometimes it’s better to flow with the viscous waves rather than constantly trying to fight them. People often prefer to try directly into a torment, rather than admit to themselves that such a storm is brewing. The damage will be done, no matter how hard we pretend it’s not there. But being in constant denial will only heighten the pain when it inevitably comes.
This is not a post in favour of fatalism. Some people do just give up. To them, the torment spells doom. Perhaps they may see the pain as deserved, or over-interpret it as a sign that nothing can ever be good. These aren’t healthy positions. Life is too short to give up on it.
There is a middle path. Being conscious about the realities of the world, whilst also doing what we can about it. I fear that it is a point that is too nuanced for people in this day and age.
But all I can do is practice what I preach. Be cognisant that I cannot control the world. Surrender to its torments, but not surrender to myself
I’m waking up with nausea. My back is flaring up. A fifteen minute walk is leaving me in agony. I’ve had to cancel on three social events this week.
I’ve regressed to the point that leaving the house seems like a risky endeavour. The nausea leaves my appetite in confusion. I know that I need to eat, but my sense of appetite is totally suppressed.
Such is the world of recovery. One week is good, another three weeks are difficult.
I’ve felt quite bitter around how isolated I’ve been forced to be. My small sources of regular social contact have been stripped away. I miss regular exercise, and the sense of calmness from going to the gym. But I also know any attempt to force myself into such activities will only make me worse.
Patience, is the answer, as they say. But it is far easier to give it as advice than actually live it. ‘These things take time’, as if I didn’t know after two years. By the end of the conversation, I mention the end of the year as a rough recovery date. The response? ‘Oh wow, that’s a long time’. Turns out that the people preaching patience aren’t often very good at it themselves.
At least I am no longer in the spiral of wondering whether I am doing something wrong. Many people end up panicking when they see new pain arising. In reality, this is a moment where my body is releasing a lot of tension. The back pain, according to my osteopath, is coming from my breathing coming more from my chest, rather than my diaphragm. The sense of anxiety has had such an effect on my body that it has changed the way I breathe.
I’m not an anxious person. I actually have a far healthier mentality around worries than most people. The problem is that I am in a system which has pushed my sense of concern and worry to a consistently heightened level. It’s an important distinction to make, because there isn’t anything about me to fix. But there is something to fix with the system.
Nonetheless, I do feel somewhat in despair. It’s hard to navigate a sense of isolation and pain, particularly when I know there’s nothing I can really do about it. I can either choose to accept it, or try to avoid it and ultimately just make it longer and harder.
The additional loneliness is having few outlets to talk about these difficulties. Well meaning friends, and often even professionals, give generic advice. They essentially revolve around worrying less, taking a break or changing diet.
Such conversations quickly become tiring. I end up having to explain that if it were that simple, I would have ‘fixed’ this years ago. But I also need to be careful in the way I phrase my answer. If I push back too much on someone arguments, they may react badly. Many people without realising it have cult-like beliefs around health.
Because going to the gym worked for them, they believe that this is a solution that will work for everybody. The idea that people can do all the right things and still be doing poorly makes them question their sense of fairness in the world. Many people are not willing to do that.
There is no magic solution, aside from rest. Flare-ups during recovery are documented, and they will pass. It was previously digestion, then it was feet issues, now it is back pain. I don’t know what the next issue will be, but I guess I’ll know soon enough.
The fact that I am feeling pain is the sign that my body is cleansing and waking up. This is the paradox of recovery.
Last year, I stopped going to the gym. I had been going around two to three times a week. I had a personal trainer, who set me different strength exercises and increasing weight goals. On paper, I was doing everything I should have been.
Just before stopping, I got a blood test. Generally my health was good, but my cholesterol was particularly high. Most notably, my HDLs (the ‘good’ cholesterol) was quite a lot lower than they should have been.
If conventional wisdom were to be followed, my health should have gotten worse. I was no longer exercising, I stopped paying too much attention to diet and I returned to a very sedentary lifestyle.
When I got a blood test around a month ago, I asked to check my cholesterol again. The results were stark. I had a rather large improvement. My HDLs had sizeably increased, whilst the LDLs (bad cholesterol) had also dropped. Other markers such as my CRP which measures inflammation also dropped from 2.2 to 1.0.
The reason for this change I believe was that I have finally been addressing long-term, in-built stress. Trying to push my way through this hole was only digging me further into health issues. When I stopped exercising, I ended up having a large crash. I ended up resting a whole lot. It was some of the most miserable months of my life. But it was also what my body needed.
I’ll admit that I write this with a level of bitterness. It has been frustrating that I have had to essentially figure this out on my own. The advice around me has consistently pointed me in the wrong direction. Doctors tried giving me antidepressents, which only served to numb sensation rather than improve things. Therapy felt like I was paying for the privilege of explaining to a white person the complex nature of migration, racism, autism and other areas.
My personal trainer didn’t really understand burnout. He got so caught up in increasing the weights and improving form that he forgot that my original aim was to improve my health by losing weight. People around me, meanwhile have suggested that I just move around more, or try and eat healthier to kick my health back into gear.
The first place where I saw burnout written in a more open way was in ayurveda. I remember reading Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution which talked far more openly about energy depletion. My energies were things to be balanced. The solution depended on the person’s constitution, not what worked for the majority of people.
What I’ve found particularly striking is how much people seem to have a cult-like belief in the conventional wisdom’s we get taught. When someone with authority tells us that exercise = good, eating more = bad, we take this as gospel.
In reality, the best thing I could have done was to take a break from exercising and stop worrying about what I was eating. The sad reality is that I learnt to ignore my body telling me this, because everyone around me was saying that this was wrong.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I understand why. My body is so genetically and physically different to the people I live around in Brussels that following norms around health and wellbeing can be fraught with risk. If I’m not careful, I will be told things that may be actively bad for my health.
I’m not anti-science, nor anti-western. But I am anti-oversimplification. In our attempts to constantly streamline and simplify, we have lost the essence of seeing diverse realities.
Studies that are supposedly unanimous turn out to be based upon group-think, tested on a homogeneous population. In the worst case scenario, such as on MSG, we see big powerful lobbies creating studies to actively discredit ethnic foods for financial reasons.
So if I can give any conclusion, it is this. Neither blindly follow, nor be a blind skeptic. Be wary of results that aren’t really working, but also be wary of conspiracy theories or alternatives that are too good to be true.
Ultimately, we only get one life. We might as well live it by doing what is best for us.
