MIND MOVES:It takes a concerted effort to get re-energised, writes TONY BATES
DURING MY summer break from this column I did a number of things to recharge the system. Like many of you, I’m sure, I hit a wall of fatigue around June, and wondered if I would ever feel human again. My recovery has been a gradual one. As I reflect on it, I can see that it progressed through a number of distinct stages.
Initially, there was a period of immobilisation – lounging around – that lacked any kind of dignity or grace. I sat around and haemorrhaged fatigue. It was hard to find any merits to my inactivity, but people who have “been there” assured me that this is a critical stage of the recovery process.
I felt like my body had applied some emergency brake to bring my hyperactivity to an abrupt halt. For some time I was like a caterpillar that weaves a silk cocoon and enters a twilight world where it is neither an earth-crawling worm nor a winged flier. I could not continue to live as I had all year, but neither was I yet able to live in a more balanced alternative.
The challenge I faced in this stage was to be patient and to trust that my body would resume normal operations if I let it rest a while. And it did. My energy slowly reappeared, and one morning I woke feeling alert, rather than the more familiar feeling of wanting to avoid reality.
With a return of my physical energies, I began to walk and resume light exercise. This shifted my recovery into a second stage, one I think of as activation. I discovered exercise gave me energy rather than took it away. It released my muscular tension and produced a healthy tiredness rather than a dead weariness. It was important to pace myself at first. This was hard, as my expectations far exceeded my actual abilities. But setting modest and manageable goals gave me an experience of success and motivated me to get out there again the next day.
Three months into this rehabilitation process, my mind as well as my body began to move in new ways. I experienced a clarity that had been missing. I arrived at a place that allowed me to look at my life from a fresh perspective. I recognised patterns in my behaviour that had led to burnout, and I realised there were some behaviours I had to let go and some I needed to reinstate. This was my enlightenment stage.
People had been telling me not to work so hard, to relax. While this advice was valid, it missed a fundamental point. It is not sufficient to work less and simply vegetate: relaxation needs to be creative. In truth, what I needed was to do more rather than less, but to do what gave me back the energy to live and work wholeheartedly.
In response to feeling stressed and tired, I had tended to do more of the things that depleted my energy. I relied on quick fixes rather than activities that asked something of me but also gave me back vitality. I used food and drink to take the edge off my tiredness and artificially boost my energies, which reinforced rather than relieved fatigue. I watched undemanding TV to help me forget about reality, when what I needed was to engage more deeply with what was most real and important in my life.
Recovery for me has been as much about soul retrieval as about physical healing. About realigning my consciousness with what matters deeply to me. About going to bed earlier so I can rise and walk for an hour in Phoenix Park before heading to work. About listening to my body more and nourishing it, rather than ignoring it. About taking time to pursue what gives my life meaning and not allowing myself be carried away by distraction.
We all tend to let go of what’s most important when we are faced with pressures that take a lot out of us. Recovery begins when we become aware that this is happening, forgive ourselves for feeling the way we do and take action to reverse it. Nothing can begin to heal until we recognise the state we are in and connect with it.
I’m happier these days. I approach the rest of this year determined not to be as drained by the end of it. I know I will lose my way from time to time and need to rediscover the simple truths that seem so clear to me now. Such are the joys of being human.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie)