My newfound happiness is sitting in the stillness.
I can make a cup of tea, sit in the warm sunshine of my garden, and relax. This has been quite a journey. Nothing has changed yet everything has.
I still work as a nurse in a busy unit. I still have kids, bills. All the responsibilities. That hasn’t changed, so what has? Choice.
Choice in how I show up. Choice in how I choose to belong in my community and feel safe. A choice you can make too.
It’s a very basic human need to want to belong to our tribe. We love our people. To be kicked out would be incredibly painful, not quite like the literal survival threat our ancestors faced, but our brains haven’t quite gotten that memo yet. The fear of not belonging lights up the same parts of the brain as if our lives depended on it.
We want to belong, to our work communities, our families, and our friends.
And somewhere along the way we learned that belonging had a price. That our place in the group depended not on who we were — but on what we contributed.
So we link our self-worth to our productivity within these communities. We don’t say no in fear of disappointing a family member. We overextend ourselves to support our work team. Helping others for a sense of belonging can morph over time into working too much, leading to isolation. And saying no can trigger guilt.
Guilt was a big one for me.
I worked extra hours all the time to help my unit. I love my work peeps, of course I would! What would happen if I said no? That triggered guilt, would they have a bad day now because of me? Is this my fault?
What I didn’t realize was that behind all that busyness in my life was a very basic need to belong. To feel safe in whatever community I was a part of. If I slowed down and tried to care for myself, I felt guilty. Guilt is its own conversation — we can save that for another day and another blog. But for now, just notice how quickly the guilt arrives when you try putting yourself first.
Safety became transactional. And thus, elusive. It could be taken away if I was not productive enough.
This mindset sets us up for failure. These goalposts are always moving and the criteria is always changing depending on who is doing the judging. We are left to the whims of others. And that is exhausting.
That voice in our heads that we hear when we slow down? That voice is a lifetime of judgement. We unknowingly place this on ourselves to feel that we belong, to feel safe. Maybe it’s your voice. Maybe it’s a long forgotten voice from your past that still runs in your head today. The end result is the same.
We judge our worthiness by how much we live up to external expectations that we cannot control. Burnout is the end result when this impossible expectation finally comes crashing down.
And here is where we have choice. The burnout — the breaking down — creates space to really look at what we believe. And who we believe we are. Now that we understand that we can stand aside and listen to this ongoing narrative in our head — we can also question it.
Is this thought good for me? Do I want to keep this belief? Who am I really when I stop performing and just be myself?
Nothing external may change for you. It didn’t for me. But my choice at this moment was to reject the premise that I must do something to belong. We are allowed to take that break, to say no to the extra shift. We are allowed to care for ourselves too. Without guilt.
I can sit in my pretty garden, relaxed and enjoying the warm sun. And when that nervous voice in my head chimes in and says “we should be doing something,” I can smile and think, we already are.