The signs your body is begging you to slow down (and why you keep ignoring them)

If you’re deliriously happy in all aspects of life: work, relationships, health, you name it—you can skip this article. Though you might want to forward it to someone who isn’t as pleased with life.

Many of us receive clear signals that something is off, and we ignore them as best as we can. We happily sweep them under the carpet—hoping the problem will go away when we ignore it. Or we manage the symptoms without ever addressing the cause.

I see it all the time. Men and women alike.

The signs that something is off

Like the man who spends more and more time playing sports, hanging out with friends, or burying himself in work because at home things are less than ideal. Or because he’s so wound up, he can no longer sit still and relax.

Or the successful businesswoman who is so stressed that she has developed a specific routine to deal with the side-effects of putting her body through too much for too long.

I’m not talking about a regular massage to relieve tension in neck and shoulders. But true physical issues that need regulating and likely a doctor’s visit. Whether it’s eczema, migraine, heart palpitations, insomnia or something else.

Of course, it starts smaller. Many people are familiar with fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, irritable or moody, brain fog, difficulty concentrating, a cold that takes forever to go away. You can read more about the first signs of stress here.

Why we ignore the signs

But we push through because there’s always more to do. It’s inconvenient to look too closely at why you’re feeling this way. Maybe you were taught to be responsible, perfect, or never give up. Or perhaps you’re so busy that it never even occurs to you to wonder. After all, you’re not the only one feeling like this.

I want you to know it’s not normal. Even though the world pretends it is.

It’s not normal to feel stressed and overwhelmed most of the time. Not normal to dread going to work week after week. Not normal to toss and turn every night or get a headache each weekend or as soon as you go on vacation.

Most of us put our body through way too much for far too long. Our body is resilient and it does its utmost to keep functioning. But when you don’t give your body a chance to recover, your health will deteriorate.

You know your body is impacted by stress. When living in survival mode becomes the norm, your body will eventually develop more serious problems. Because it never gets the all clear that it can start tissue repair or proper digestion. With permanent stress your body stays alert and prioritizes fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

When all energy is fed to our extremities to escape or hide, there is no energy left to properly analyze the situation and come up with an aligned strategy. You literally can’t think straight when you’re stressed—so it becomes harder to see a solution.

Why it’s likely not your fault

This isn’t news to you. You know that. But why is it so hard to take action and make changes?

Well, part of it is that humans resist change. Most people like things to be predictable and familiar. There’s a reason people rather stay comfortably miserable than face the facts.

Second is that many of these changes are gradual. That’s why you will likely be the last to know that you’re heading for burnout, for example. That’s how it happened to me.

But perhaps even more important is that most of us were set up for failure by the conditioning we received growing up. I’m not blaming your parents or caretakers. They probably did their best with what they knew.

But we were taught to show up a specific way, to do what’s expected, to tone ourselves up or down. To not be an inconvenience to other people, to finish what you started, to offer help—regardless of whether you have any energy left to give.

Most of us will want to do a good job. That’s why some people only try things they know they’ll be good at. For others that means keeping at it for far too long.

Changing these habits and underlying beliefs is something we do in my Come Home to Yourself program.

Losing touch with yourself

As you may have heard, I lost touch with myself by doing everything I thought was needed and expected to be successful. The world had told me that the recipe for happiness was checking all these boxes. Until a series of wake-up calls showed me how far I had gotten away from myself. Until I realized that I had everything I thought I wanted—but I wasn’t happy.

Because the things I had accomplished were what society saw as ‘the dream’. The corporate job, the brand-new house, the handsome husband. None of them was wrong in itself but they were no longer what I needed—and they had come at a steep cost: my health.

I had spent so much time being who I was expected and required to be that it took these wake-up calls to show me how far off course I had gotten.

If you want to get clear on where you’ve lost touch with yourself, you have three options:

1. Come Home to Yourself and Love Your Life Again: my 6-week online program
2. One-day workshop in Dutch: Ontdek in één dag waar je het contact met jezelf bent kwijtgeraakt en zet de eerste concrete stap naar meer energie, rust en plezier.
3. Private Mentoring

Or you can muddle through. That’s up to you. 😉

All kidding aside, I truly hope you’ll take some time to reflect when you recognize some of the signs that something is off.

Take five minutes right now (or tonight) to write down the signs you recognized while reading this—whether they were physical, mental or emotional. Check where your body is feeling tense, where there are regular aches and pains that are not normal—even when you’ve gotten accustomed to it.

If after those five minutes you’re not entirely convinced that you’re doing great, I’d assume you’re not. Unless there’s an entirely logical and temporary reason for your discomfort, like surgery or the loss of a loved one, I highly recommend you take some form of action to get back to balance.

Because you deserve more, and your body deserves better. Whatever you do, please don’t wait for that dreaded wake-up call to force your hand.

If you have any questions about how these programs can support you or which is the best fit for you, you’re warmly welcome to a complimentary Clarity Session.

>> Register here for a free Clarity Session.

I would love to help you get clear where you lost touch with yourself and how to come home to who you truly are and love your life again!

Iris van Ooyen guides people home to themselves. As a life transformation mentor with 20+ years of experience, she offers hope with a compass—helping you find your way back to who you truly are when life’s demands have made you lose touch with yourself. She’s the author of Radiant: How to Have All the Energy You Need to Live a Life You Love. When you feel life should be more than this, contact Iris to come home to yourself—and love your life again. 

Follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.