In praise of writing, and an insight into adrenal fatigue

Hello, my name is Trudie. You might remember me from such places as... this very blog, which I
have somewhat abandoned of late. Please read on as I attempt to redeem myself with this shiny new blog post.
When I started www.onegroundedangel.com three years ago, I made a commitment to post three times a week. I was at war with myself, struggling with my sense of self and feeling isolated by what I perceived as the oppressive blanket of being an outsider (I was just starting to wake up to my spiritual calling). The angels advised me to ‘write my way out of it’.
And it helped. As the words flowed before me on the screen, a sort of alchemy occurred: I began to make sense of my emotions and could see the path ahead with a smidgen more clarity. My black spots diminished. Suddenly I had a sense of purpose; my life had meaning. Responses from others who 'got it' buoyed me; I began to feel less alone - still freakish (well, the best people are!), but more accepting of that.

Then, without my intending it, my blog morphed into a business site as my angel card business started to gain traction. With the demands of social media and a YouTube channel, launched one year ago, my commitment to the blog waned.

These days I am barely managing one non-social-media-driven post a month. Those I do post are more functional than personal, and while that’s probably OK for the majority of people who click through to my site looking for information on my spiritual services, it’s kind of not OK for me. Because without a written portal for my thoughts, I’ve noticed I’m more likely to ruminate and get stuck in unhelpful thought patterns. Writing truly is cathartic. Science confirms it – research from Pennsylvania State University in the US found that keeping a ‘thought journal’ every day improved emotional balance.

So on that note, here’s an update on what’s been going on in my world of late.

This year I’ve been really struggling with low energy. Not just the ‘wow it’s been a big week’ sort of fatigue, but the ‘urge to sleep all weekend but still wouldn’t feel refreshed’ type. It’s not like any sort of fatigue I have ever known – and that’s coming from someone who has had insomnia much of her adult life. I did not notice that what I was enveloped in was not a normal sort of exhaustion. After a mild cold cleared quickly but left me feeling even more flat, I decided enough was enough and I sought out a naturopath.

What came up in tests was not low immunity, as I’d suspected, but abnormally low levels of the stress-hormone cortisol. The result: adrenal fatigue. Which was laughable since in my work as a health writer I’ve covered that very topic more than once in the past, interviewing the likes of holistic nutritionist Dr Libby Weaver, but failed to notice the symptoms in myself.

Adrenal fatigue is what happens when you operate at breakneck speed for too long. Essentially,

your body, interpreting the pressure you’re under as a dangerous situation, goes into fight or flight mode, releasing adrenaline to help you survive. This is designed to be a short-term response, to get you away from the perceived danger, but in today’s high-pressure environment, this has become a long-term state. Because our stress never dissipates, so the adrenaline keeps getting pumped out. Too much adrenaline in the body raises blood pressure and causes inflammation, so the body releases cortisol to bring these down. Because the body is unable to sustain prolonged high-cortisol release, the adrenal glands crash. You will feel, as I have for most of this year, like you are dragging your body around, day after day, and never able to regain your energy. Other effects others have reported include: constantly getting illnesses, sudden unexplained weight gain you can’t shift, low sex drive and constant irritability.

As well as dosing me up on myriad herbs and potions, my naturopath has instructed me to make some much-needed lifestyle changes. I’m banned from looking at my phone or tablet after 9pm (the blue light from these screens raises cortisol output). I must wake up between 6am and 7pm (sleeping in is a bad idea), and must be in bed by 9.30pm. I can only exercise in the mornings, at low or moderate intensity. I must reduce my sugar intake (something I have been using as a crutch to get me through the afternoons, as I don’t drink caffeine). When I’m working from home, I’m encouraged to take a short afternoon nap.

Not surprisingly to those who know me well, it’s the evening phone restriction that’s been the hardest change to implement, but it’s forced me to address my phone dependency. I spend too much time on social media, and that’s been partly contributing to my inability to switch off at the end of the evening. And so I’m trying to relax my tendency to keep checking into the online world on a regular basis; I am now questioning my compulsion to respond to every single message. These are the things that prevent me feeling fully present in my off-line (actual) life, and contribute to my difficulty relaxing in weekends and holidays.

It’s been a few weeks since I started implementing these changes – some days I do better than others – and I’m already starting to feel better. It’s a long road ahead to fully heal my energy – there is no quick fix for adrenal fatigue – and I need to be patient with the process. However if I don’t spend the time now restoring my health, I’ll crash again in the future, and then I can’t do what my soul came here to do. My body is, after all, a home for my soul. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

This is what happens when you don't listen to your body

Are you listening to your body when it tells you what it needs? Because if you’re not, it will find a way to reach you – and you probably won’t like it when it does.

Here’s what recently happened to my friend. She does very long hours, often long into the night, and admits she doesn’t really understand the meaning of the word ‘rest’. For months her body had been giving her cues that her stress levels were out of control, but she kept on going. So her body found a way to reach her that she could not ignore. 

Last week the poor thing fell over in the most ridiculously freak-accident way – and got a concussion. She went to work the next day – but felt so dizzy she had to go home. The next day she could barely get out of bed. The following day she went to work and had to come home because her head was throbbing. On the weekend she went to brunch with a friend and had to get her friend to drive her car home as she was too exhausted. Having had a concussion myself, I know how frustrating this can be – and that it takes a really long time to get back to normal functioning.

Look, accidents happen – and I wouldn’t recommend going looking for a reason when they do. But in this case I can’t help but wonder if her body and the Universe have conspired to get her to give it what she so desperately needs – rest, and a lot of it. 

What I’m getting at here is there’s only so long you can go on running yourself ragged. Your body cannot sustain an exhaustive pace forever, so unless you give it regular time-outs, it will short out in some way. In the modern age where busyness is a religion, we like to think we can do so much more than what we have physical capacity for – our brains are writing out cheques that our bodies can’t cash, I guess you could say. This is why people get sick as soon as they go on holiday. This is also why people get colds and coughs that linger for weeks at a time, then return a month later – because they didn’t stop and let the illness take its course, allowing their immunity to build back up. Instead they took Codral and kept turning up to work.

Maybe my friend’s accident is purely bad luck, but I don’t really believe in luck and the angels have taught me there’s no such thing as coincidence. But regardless of the cause, my friend is benefiting hugely from this enforced period of rest, as frustrating as it is.

When your body tells you to stop, it’s a good idea to listen – before it *makes* you listen.

Are you on someone's Meltdown Watch List?

“She was drowning but nobody saw her struggle.”

This quote pops up on my Pinterest feed from time to time (often attributed to Hamlet – um really?) and it always reminds me of the private struggles of so many people, particularly women, in maintaining the façade of I’m-beyond-busy but-it’s-totally-fine-I-can-handle-it while internally they are falling apart. What I’m talking about is the unwinnable battle to meet our own, and others’, expectations of what a full and successful life looks like, and the toll that takes on our physical, mental and emotional health.

The refusal to ask for help because everyone else seems to be coping (top tip: they are not), and that would appear weak. And how we worsen that struggle by keeping it private.

This is particularly relevant at the moment because so many of my daily angel card readings have been urging us all to slow down, say ‘no’ more often and to make finding peace a priority.*

A friend of mine recently joked about adding a mutual friend’s name to their Meltdown Watch List. This is kinda funny, but also kinda not. Because it’s true.

I know people with so many balls in the air they can no longer see the clouds. They have children, ailing parents, relentless business demands, high-maintenance landlords, gruelling deadlines, overgrown lawns, intense exercise routines, friends they never see and relationships under strain. I know you know people like this too. Perhaps you ARE that person.

I have a friend who works 60+ hours a week. She went to see her doctor because she couldn’t figure out why she was in tears almost every day. The doctor prescribed anti-depressants to allow her to continue with her relentless schedule (instead of listening to the messages her body is sending her, urging her to stop). It’s clear to me she’s not depressed – she’s exhausted.

I find the thought process that drives this lifestyle really interesting – the ways we delude ourselves that prolonged exhaustion is normal and that we can continue to live at break-neck speed. Memo from your body: you cannot.

Recently I interviewed holistic nutritionist

Dr Libby Weaver

for a

Women’s Health

magazine story about exhaustion. She talked about how women are paying a high price for trying to do everything at once, and refusing to stop. The result is everything from weight gain to digestive issues, fertility problems and prolonged moodiness.

-

Guys, life is busy. I can’t change that, and neither can you. Also, I don’t have kids, so I feel like I can’t fully understand the scale of difficulty involved in finding stillness when you have a family. I don’t know how you can make your life more manageable but I do know that if you have good reason to believe you are on someone’s Meltdown Watch List, you have to ask yourself some serious questions about the way you’re living. You can have everything you want – your mum was right about that – but not all at once.

If you are drowning, you must call for a lifeguard. Your lifeguards are your partner, your siblings, your closest confidantes and your most trusted work colleagues – these people are your support team. If they know that you are struggling, they can help you find solutions to move forward.

This team does not, however, include people who are draining your mental or physical energy with their demands. When it comes to dealing with those people, learn to say no. Saying no is a difficult thing for many women because we worry that it means people won’t like us. But here’s the truth: if relationships with these people are worth their mettle, they will be robust enough to cope with you cancelling coffee dates or refusing to babysit their raucous children every week/help plan their wedding/drive for two hours to groom their pony. Say no (especially to the pony thing; that’s ridiculous) without fear of fallout. You are the only one in charge of your physical and emotional health; protect these priceless resources by deciding what is most important in your life. Prioritise those things, then relax your standards on what is not.

You can stop drowning right now.

*If you’re not across my daily card readings, follow me on Instagram

@onegroundedangel

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