achievement and productivity are rooted in survival
“I am the woman I want to be. […] At this time I don’t need to go out of my way to seek out new opportunities. I can focus on what I have, appreciate it and do my best at it – do my best at work and do my best at school and do my best (taking care of myself) at home (the home that I love) and see what opportunities come my way.”
From My Journal, Day 35
The foundation I had built my entire life on cracked, and I was in denial about it. Moreover, I was adamant about pushing forward and building on top of a fractured base.
Instead of allowing myself to process the end of a relationship, I was concentrated intently on achievement and productivity. I had a full-time job, and I was studying in school.
My goals were to maintain a 4.0 GPA and do research in school, and get promoted at work – all at the same time. As I wrote in my journal, I wanted to “be so good at what I [did] others [talked] about it.”
If that was not enough to distract myself with, I was fixated on following healthy lifestyle habits, which included regular sleep, clean diet, hydration, running, strength training and yoga, meditation, reading and journaling, everyday chores, and extensive daily and weekly self-care regimens. Brainwashed by social media, I wanted to be “that girl.” I strived to embody an image of a girl who, citing my journal, had “a beautiful white smile,” “supple clear skin,” and “a fit body;” who “[looked] well-groomed at all times and [felt] confident about it.” I wanted to be an epitome of perfect health – inside and out. I wanted a glow up.
None of these habits were new to me. In fact, I invested a lot of effort into establishing some of them in the years prior. They brought value to my life, and I follow many of them today. I say many but not all because combined all these practices make for a very busy schedule. Individually, they may facilitate physical and mental health, but when piled on top of each other they leave no room to think and feel, rest and recover, shed and rejuvenate, and simply allow my emotional body, my lungs and my skin to breathe. For, if there is anything more vital to health than doing, it is non-doing.
Thus, in a persistent attempt to be healthy, I was neglecting my health. Furthermore, I was ignoring the urgent wounds I immanently suffered from the breakup.
It was as if I had broken a leg, and I insisted on continuing to run. In fact, training for a 20-mile run was also a part of my plan, and I did incur injuries while running due to overstraining, which then deterred me from running for some time altogether. I also pulled a glute muscle while doing yoga, which took me months to recover from.
I was completely out of touch with my physical body, my surroundings and my inner reality.
In truth, I was in a survival mode. And I had been in a survival mode for many years. The biochemical signature states of my nervous system were that of arousal and stress. On the surface, I needed to achieve and prove myself. Underneath my ambition and perfectionism, however, I was merely trying to be safe. The belief that I needed to excel was deeply ingrained in my unconscious. I can trace this belief to as early as middle school. I do not remember its origin, but I can infer that it developed as a defense mechanism against criticism. Growing up in a household and educational system where praise was scarce and criticism was abundant, and being quite intelligent and capable by nature, I learned to shield myself with excellence. Thus, fear of failure and anxiety to perform took the driver seat in my life. I was not motivated by recognition and reward. In fact, those made me largely uncomfortable because they put me in a spotlight and added more pressure onto me. I was simply protecting myself. I believed that if I did well and I looked well, nobody could touch me.
Relaxation and stillness felt unsafe. I had this strange conviction that in order to do well and be well I needed to stress and obsess over everything. Unknowingly, I believed that I needed to be tense and I needed to try hard regardless of where I was, what I did and who I engaged with. It took me a long time to see that the need for self-preservation was at the root of this skewed thinking. In other words, if I was not alert, I was in danger. Afterall, vigilance is a primal survival instinct of all animals, including humans. It is for this reason that I have always found deep breathing so agitating. Deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous system felt self-defeating and unwise because it hindered my ability to defend myself. If I was not on my toes and paying attention, who would protect me?
I set goals and built habits precisely so I could feel confident and calm like, I imagined, a lion strolling through a jungle would, but the very states of confidence and calmness felt unsafe. I was no king of a jungle. I was a rabbit surrounded by snakes. As a child, now woman, as someone who was never taught self-care, self-respect and boundaries, I was a prey, and it would have been foolish to forget that.
This is why I found myself unwilling to pause after the breakup. I was trying to push hard because that was the only way I knew to survive. However, I was too hurt to keep it up. I was like a wounded animal – too weak to fight.
The reality was that I did not follow through with the daily routine consistently. I never completed a 20-mile run. I did not turn meditation and reading into a regular practice. My lifestyle habits regressed as weeks and months went by. My physical body and home were neglected. I had bad acne. My home was messy. And I would eventually drop research work, and then leave school altogether.
I slid in a downward spiral, and it was only the beginning.