Everything is Hard

I have a t-shirt that a friend of mine gave to me as a gift that says 'Everything hurts and I'm dying'. I laughed so hard when she gifted me this item a few years ago because I would often talk about being sore from my workouts, but that didn't mean I was going to go any easier in the next one. I would take pride in how hard I had worked and how challenged I felt during workouts. To wear that shirt while exercising sort of meant that the shirt was telling everyone else around me how hard I was working. It also highlighted my incredibly sarcastic personality. So, all in all, a fantastic gift for me.  (Also a reference to Leslie Knope in Parks & Rec, which is a wonderful show that I enjoy very much!)

I haven't worn that shirt in some time. And to be honest, I think I feel that putting it on right now would be just too real. Everything does hurt right now. And while I don't feel close to physical death, I feel physically weak and emotionally vulnerable. Fragile. A word that I would never have used to describe myself now fits how I have been feeling lately.

The pandemic. Job searching during hiring freezes. Recovery from a microdisectomy. Wanting to still be the uber supportive and engaged friend that I normally am to my friends and family. And now searching for new tenants to live in the house I live in. I am fighting with every ounce of energy to try and stay positive.

I recently read this article from Well + Good that a connection shared on LinkedIn. The title, "This is Why Exercise Feels So Hard Right Now - And How to Deal" obviously drew me in because exercise used to be my stress reliever and now I have a much harder time getting motivated to do it. I used to hit the gym or get moving when things were feeling overwhelming in my life and sweat would always make it better. That was before my herniated disc, of course. Now, I have to be super careful with what types of exercise I do, how often, how long and even at what intensity. Just monitoring myself and my body during a workout can be exhausting. This article helped to validate all that I have been feeling.

I've always known that stress in small amounts can be motivating. But right now, stress levels are at an all time high for myself and many other individuals. The lack of control that people are feeling, on a personal level, a community level and even as a country causes them to be in a heightened base level of stress. The article states that 'anything that feels uncontrollable is going to make stress much worse. And when your body is in a prolonged state of high-alert due to non-stop cortisol release, it sucks up a ton of your energy'. So when you workout with all of this going on, you not only feel the stress of the physiological work, but also the mental stress that you are dealing with day-to-day.

Cortisol, for those who don't know, is literally called the stress hormone. Along with norepinephrine and adrenaline, the other two stress-related hormones, cortisol can help you survive when faced with an immediate threat. Adrenaline and norepinephrine are quickly realeased at the first sign of danger to give you energy and make you alert. Cortisol is released more slowly and downregulates bodily processes that aren't crucial in the moment, such as reproductive drive, immunity and digestion. In the short term, this is all fine and dandy, but when cortisol is being constantly released the result can be quite deterimental. Long-term high levels of cortisol suppresses the immune system, increases blood pressure and blood sugar, decreases sexual appetite and can cause acne or obesity.

Your body cannot recover as quickly as it normally would when you have high prolonged levels of cortisol. Psychological stress actually makes the perceived effort of a workout higher too. So your workouts are going to feel harder, take longer to recover from and probably not be as satisfying as far as the endorphin release.  A doctor who was interviewd for this article makes some really solid sense of it when she says, "Let’s say you have a hard workout on Monday; you may have been able to go hard again the next day or on Wednesday in the past, but if you’re overly stressed, your body might not be ready to work out hard again until Thursday. If you do another high-intensity workout on Tuesday or Wednesday without giving your body the extra recovery time it needs, you’re causing more micro-damage, which warrants more recovery, and if you don’t allow yourself proper recovery from that second session as well, you’re creating a downward spiral".  

I wanted to scream when I read this!  Since I have been in recovery, I have been so beyond frustrated with how slowly the process has been going.  And I have been comparing my present self with my past self, the one without nerve pain and a herniated disc.  I used to be able to workout 5/6 days a week, hard, and be fine to continue doing that most weeks.  Now, if I do one high-intensity activity, I may need two or three days to feel like I have fully recovered.  It is so aggrevating!!  And yet, I still push it too hard sometimes because I am craving the endorphins that come with exercise.  I am longing for how strong I once was and am not thinking about the scientific facts that I have studied which tell me that I may actually be counterproductive by doing that.

So, after I read that article and had a good scream about it, I decided that today is a good day to be gentle with my body.  I am going to take a virtual yoga class later that will be challenging, but not high impact.  I have been taking a free class or two a week from CorePower Yoga, which they offer here and switch up every week.  Yoga is still hard for me, but does help me feel a sense of calm amidst the craziness.

We are all probably struggling with a sense of loss of how things used to be.  Whether that is socially, work-related, physically or whatever else, it is important to take time to step back and try to understand where you can make sound choices that will help you move through the uncertainty.

-Vicky