Could ‘pushing through’ when we need rest be what damages our health the most?
When you sought to understand the biology of our human inner experience, you would find that pushing through when rest is actually what’s needed can overtime negatively impact our health in a vast number of ways.
But is it stress that is the problem?
In short, no.
Not all stress is bad, in fact a certain level of stress is life enhancing and resilience building. What is harmful is when we don’t recover after stress, or when we misdiagnose the state of overwhelm as ‘just stress.’
Pushing through when we are in a state of overwhelm just might be one of the worst things we can do for our entire system, setting the stage for multiple health conditions.
For me right now, I feel like I’m navigating a kind of grief around this. I’m reflecting on all the times I powered through when I should have just… rested.
Our society cheers on the “hustle.”
We love seeing those marathon runners, the go-getters, the people who seem to run on pure energy. What we don’t put together is the after mark of this long term pushing through, being what we know as burn out.
Add to that the narrative many of us carry – that rest equals lazy, or that it means we’re lacking something, or just not good enough – and ‘pushing through’ becomes our default setting.
We don’t even stop to think about what we might actually need.
The thriving journey is a rich tapestry filled with so many amazing insights that help us to understand ourselves and what it means to be human.