Busy Bodies Get Ignored

Have you ever said to yourself “What’s going on with me today?” The truth is we are all too busy. We are too busy to get enough sleep, too busy to eat healthily every day, and too busy to notice what’s going on with our bodies. We lack self awareness - not of who we are as individuals, but of our bodies and how our actions can affect those around us. As I watch my daughter grow taller and her limbs lengthen, I am constantly having to remind her to be mindful that she doesn’t accidentally kick or hit someone or something as she moves around. As we all grow older and take on more responsibilities, we get so busy that we stop paying attention to how our actions affect our bodies and others around us. While we are so busy being busy and not listening to our bodies, the days turn into weeks which turn into months and then years.

Time flies by as we are inundated with work stresses, family and home life, trying to keep up with friends and/or make new ones. With wars going on, Supreme Court rulings, tariffs, and everything else that's happening, it just adds to the chaos. It is easy to lose track of yourself with so much constantly coming at us. We are pushing our bodies (and minds) to their limits in ways we’re not even aware of.

When was the last time you had a drink of water or got a good night's sleep? Are you giving your body what it needs to thrive, or just survive? Besides the 15, maybe 20, minutes that you spent talking to your primary care doctor at your annual physical, when is the last time you checked in on yourself? When is the last time you asked yourself, if ever, whether the things you are doing on a day to day basis add up to a long, happy and healthy life? Have you been too busy to really think about it? Or have you just seen so many tragic losses that you have given up the thought? The latter is really sad and if that’s truly the case, you should talk to a mental health professional. But if it’s the former, I ask you this: How well do you know or even understand your body? Or do you expect the doctors that you see for 15 minute appointments to be the experts of YOUR body?

Surprise! They aren’t. They are experts in the body system you are seeing them about. They don’t necessarily know you. You are a unique individual and they have, on average, 15 minutes to learn everything they can about you, your symptoms, and match them to a malfunction, disorder or disease that they know well. It’s quite incredible what they do! They compile the story of you, run diagnostic tests to rule out or confirm what they think is happening to you, but you are their first source for information. What you say in that visit guides them towards their diagnosis. If you don’t understand your own body, how are you relaying that information? How are you helping your doctors to help you?

We constantly receive signals from our bodies about what they need. However, when these signals don’t fully disrupt our day-to-day functioning, we dismiss them. We tell ourselves it’s nothing and we keep going. Or better yet, we take something to treat the symptom without ever figuring out why we’re getting this signal in the first place. For instance, you get a headache, do you think to yourself “why is my head hurting” and address the reason, or do you grab a couple of Tylenol, Advil or Aleve and swallow them, hoping it will all be better in about 20 minutes, so you can get on with the task at hand? We get so accustomed to ignoring the signals or finding the quickest fix that we forget how to listen to our bodies.

We no longer recognize the symptoms as signals. Instead, we see them as annoyances that are interrupting our busy lives. Now, if you really think about it, in general, things don’t get better when you ignore them, they only get worse. What if that headache you ignored was a signal of something important? It could be something with an easy fix like drinking more water, eating, or getting some sleep. It could also be a signal of something greater like a problem with your eyes, your thyroid or even your brain. When you go to the doctor in a few months, or even longer, do you remember to mention that headache? Or has so much else happened in the meantime that you forget and only mention the symptoms you are having in the moment or in the past few weeks?

As a mom, my first inclination is to do whatever is needed for my child. For the first 2-3 years of her life, I prioritized her over everything else. I would make dinner for the family, make her a plate, and set her up at the dining table (or her kids table) to eat. I would then stand in the kitchen and take a few bites of my food, and stop to clean up after her, and get her ready for bed. I would stop eating if she needed a refill of her water. I would stop if my husband asked me about a task that I hadn't yet completed. I would stop if the phone rang and one of her aunties was in a crisis.

However, I soon realized, she was learning from my actions. She started skipping bathroom breaks because she was too busy painting or playing with friends. She wouldn’t finish her food because she wanted to get back to whatever she was doing before her time ran out. She didn’t want to go to sleep at night because she feared she was missing out on some perceived fun she thought her dad and I were having without her.

She never saw me go back to my plate of food, or sit down to eat. I was teaching her to prioritize others over herself. I was showing her that you can ignore your body’s needs when you are ‘busy’. That wasn’t what I had intended. I had become so busy and consumed with taking care of everyone else’s needs that I forgot to pay attention. I forgot to pay attention to my own needs and I forgot to pay attention to the effect that my decisions (to prioritize my daughter and others) were actually having on her. I didn’t want that for myself and I definitely wanted better for her! I was making my daughter my excuse for not prioritizing myself. 

It’s time to stop ignoring the signals. We have to start listening to our bodies. The earlier we do, the easier the fix. If we wait too long, not even the best doctors can help. Being too busy is an excuse we all use when we have set our priorities to ignore ourselves. Staying up late to get that project completed before the deadline, skipping lunch for a meeting, eating dinner late because you had to finish the job, are all choices that we make that prioritize work over ourselves. We are willing to run home to feed, walk, and care for our pets and our children, but do we give our own needs the same urgency? Our bodies are signaling us to give it what it needs. It’s trying to tell us something. The ‘what’ will be different for each individual and will constantly be changing. The true question is do you have the WILL to take heed before your body quits trying.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for the next post in this series "Understanding the Signals".