Recent Lessons from Listening To Myself Over Others
Plus upcoming draw, this week's hard pass, and some reading recommendations.
I want to shake things up a bit with this newsletter, and something I’ll be doing is having a draw each month. I’ve so much merch, books and goodies in my studio, and I have to stop waiting for the perfect opportunity to share them. So, at the end of this month to kick things off, paid subscribers have the opportunity to win a ‘recovering people pleaser’ sweatshirt and a one-hour coaching session with me (two separate prizes). There’s also a signed copy of The Joy of Saying No with a couple of lovely bookmarks, and that draw is for all subscribers.
Hard pass: Putting off doing stuff I enjoy until I’ve done all the other things on my never-ending to-do list
Let’s be real, there’s always stuff to do. It’s always easy to not find time to do the thing you enjoy, even if it’s just for ten minutes because, you know, you haven’t ‘earned’ it or you’ve still got that other thing to do. But there’s always things to do. I think the last time I didn’t have leftovers of things to do was when I was sixteen. So, for instance, rather than wait until I’d done all the other things before making art today, I got out the tufting gun before ten am, and it felt good.
Reading
I’m reading a lot of books at the moment after a hotchpotch few weeks of scattered reading, but I’m about to finish a couple. I’m listening to the audiobook of Green Dot by Madeleine Gray, about a twenty-four-year-old having a workplace romance with a married man. Turns out, despite things being oh so different with social media, affairs are pretty much the same as they ever were.
I’m also reading an early copy of my friend
’s book, Modern Friendship (available to pre-order), which has made me wince, laugh, and sigh at the intricacies of friendship and sometimes navigating hurts, endings, and confusion, as well as joy.Recent Lessons from Listening To Myself Over Others
Recently, while chatting with a friend about being in our late forties (how did that happen?) and feeling as though our bodies have gone bananas, she admitted that despite knowing she’s needed to see a health practitioner for at least two years she hasn’t. “I barely take paracetamol, and that’s only if my headache’s really bad”, she said.
My friend thinks medical intervention, even from herself, is only for when you’re in dire straits, which raised the question of how bad things would have to get before she’d take herself seriously.
A couple of days after our chat, I had a follow-up hospital appointment about the strange pains in my tummy and the persistent pain in my side for the last eighteen months. Afterwards, as I walked around Waitrose in a daze, thoughts lurching between potentially having surgery, trying to decide what to have for lunch, and whether I wanted to get their free newspaper, I thought, Sure, am I really in enough pain to warrant surgery?
Right on cue, I felt a surge of pain I’m clearly desensitised to and clutched myself at the self-service checkout. Okay, Professor Life, I hear you! When, days later, my acupuncturist mentioned her needing to have one of my surgery options despite not being in pain, it made me realise I shouldn't base my choices on pain endurance.
Here’s what I know about myself and so many of us: I’ll muddle through with health discomfort.
The idea of being a ‘nuisance’, ‘burden’, ‘melodramatic’, or perceived as a ‘hypochondriac’ lurks in the back of my mind. Let’s be real, a lot of us muddle through discomfort full stop!
But this mentality of regarding ourselves as only being worthy and in need of attention if we’re up shit’s creek, or believing that immense pain is the marker of what warrants our attention and willingness to accept help, or sometimes believing we need to resolve our ailments and issues ourselves with a ‘better mindset’, more self-work, exercise and the like, blocks us from taking ourselves seriously. We don’t listen to ourselves enough.
To be clear, I don’t think medicine solves everything (and also recognise that access to healthcare varies wildly around the world). As of this month, I am in remission eighteen years from a disease where doctors advised I had no option but to go on steroids for life to avoid premature death. I also believe in second (or more opinions) and agency over our health instead of being automatically compliant (read: people pleasing) with medical practitioners.
Sometimes doctors get things wrong and sometimes bias plays a role in diagnosis, treatment, and options, including who and what is taken seriously. This can endanger our health and the quality of our lives if we override messages from our bodies in the name of being agreeable and avoiding being ‘difficult’.
Like when doctors claimed I didn’t need to be concerned about fibroids, so I wasn’t and didn’t connect them with the pain I’ve been in for eighteen months.
I’m someone who’s also benefited hugely from alternative medicine and therapies. However, I don't reject medicine, and I resent this notion that some folks peddle that if we’re unwell, it’s because of mindset blocks and manifesting our health due to not saying, doing and thinking the right things. Next thing, we’re gaslighting ourselves into believing that, for instance, not eating or exercising ‘right’ 100% of the time caused all our problems. It’s just like how we think not being ‘pleasing’ and ‘perfect’ 100% of the time caused someone to mistreat us or not want a relationship. Oh hell no!