Amanda likes to dance in the rain, enjoys live music, and prefers to be barefoot in the grass. With her love of dogs and nature, you might be surprised to learn she used to identify as a workaholic. “I’ve always worked two to three jobs at a time. I was in flight mode.” Amanda is describing the go-go-go of the hustle culture so many of us embraced after graduate school. “I felt like I’d been hit by a truck leaving grad school, I felt so unprepared.” Now Amanda chooses to see 3-4 clients a day in private practice to support rest and health, although the journey to this current pace of life was unexpected.
“I had a full time job, a small private practice, and was supervising a team,” Amanda shared. Then she got COVID-19 in May of 2020. “I was bedridden for the first five months of my 3.5 year healing journey.” Amanda describes being dizzy and fatigued most of the time, having to close her private practice and work her full time job from her bed. “I took calls laying down. I did supervision on the phone laying down. I did zoom meetings laying down.” Amanda could only sit up for an hour at a time and developed new symptoms every month.
“My body wasn’t strong enough to push COVID out,” Amanda says. She was forced to slow down in order to take care of her health. “Being a COVID long-hauler stopped me in my tracks and I was forced to stop abandoning myself and attune to my needs. The road to recovery has been painful and defeating. It seems like when I take two steps forward, I then take 10 steps back.” Amanda quit her full-time job and reopened her private practice, pacing herself each day to avoid a health flare-up or crippling fatigue. She describes feeling pressure in the beginning to push herself beyond her limits or risk letting others down. Then she came to realize the importance of putting the oxygen mask on herself before putting it on others. Pacing to avoid a flare-up has been a difficult journey and full of sacrifices. Flare-ups can still happen. “I still wake up sick. Sometimes it feels like dizziness, other times like the flu.”
Yet, Amanda has learned so much having long COVID and has changed aspects of her life for the better. She is grateful to have the resources and support she needed for this significant change. Many COVID long haulers and others with chronic illnesses have lost jobs, spouses, housing, etc. “Others have not been as fortunate as I have been to recover to the point of being able to start their own business. This experience has made me acutely aware of the blessings I have been given and I’m determined to never take privilege, support, resources, and my health for granted again.” She says it helped her realign her priorities to health, nature, and family. It helped her slow down and engage in “being” more than “doing”. Her clients have similar experiences to her own, where she gets to help them find balance and unsubscribe to the hustle culture as well. “Clients want to know we are human,” Amanda shared. “Notice when your body says no,” she says, “ chronic illness has been so misunderstood. It made me a lifelong advocate and cracked my world open to many things, including how our society has unchecked ableism which can cause harm.”
Being present and curious about our urges to overwork or chase a dream is something Amanda wants colleagues to think about. “Doing our own work is so important,” she says. She suggests that noticing and honoring our limits make us better, as humans and as helpers. “Long COVID changed me as a person and has made me a better therapist,” Amanda disclosed. She has also benefited from doing her own work in therapy. She reflects that she may even been more emotionally healthy now as a COVID long-hauler than when she was a workaholic, which says a lot about how workaholism can cause harm. Amanda encourages colleagues to slow down and be present. “You’ll be a better therapist for it.”
Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!