Name.
Anxiety, burnout, or something else?
What do I even call this?
By 2015, my daughter was nine, headed into third grade, and my son was off to kindergarten. For the first time in years, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel that was having little kids constantly underfoot.
That's exactly when the business found a new gear of its own. My business partner and I bought a building, took on a historic tax credit project in one commercial space, were renovating another mixed use project flipping a single family home and meeting with architects to finalize the design of eight townhomes on a parcel we owned in the city.
Just as one kind of intensity eased, another one, bigger, took its place.
I still didn't have a name for what I'd been noticing for years, the clenched hands, the wine at night, the constant hum underneath everything.
What I did have was questions about what I had begun to let myself notice. Was it anxiety? Was it burnout? Was I going crazy? Could I just not handle it? What was wrong with me?
Naming isn't always a clean diagnosis. Sometimes it's just the moment the questions get asked out loud instead of pushed down. And asking them, even without an answer yet, is what makes the pattern visible. A visible pattern means it has less opportunity to quietly gnaw at you from the inside.
I didn't have the word yet. But I'd stopped pretending I didn't need one.
If you can relate to this, you might want to check out my cohort coming up on November 1st. You can learn more about Honest Hours here or check out my free stress reset quiz via the let's connect button below.
