Resilience Fatigue: When Enough is Enough

At the end of July, COVID-19 finally caught up with my household. I felt like we had been playing Dodgeball with it for over two years and it got my daughters and me at the same time.

At first, our symptoms were relatively ‘normal.’ My daughters had fevers and we all had sore throats and achy joints. Then on Day 4, I was up all night with a sick dog (who knows, maybe he even got COVID!) while at the same time, I was knee-deep in packing for a 3-week cottage venture that would have us out of the house for a home renovation. Yes, did I mention I also needed to pack up all of our belongings and furniture from our bedrooms and home office for our departure a week and a half later?! I was stressed.

COVID-19 seemed to pick up on that and hit me hard. I have heard that COVID can have a way of finding your weak points. Me, I get headaches still from a brain injury 10 years ago and I am also a migraine sufferer. COVID took a hold of my brain and wreaked havoc on it. My headache was so intense and constant that I couldn't get out of bed except to vomit for 6 days. This excruciating suffering couldn’t be alleviated by anything in my arsenal of brain pain meds.

I had no choice but to lie in bed in so much pain I couldn’t even talk to my children. So parenting during this time was impossible. I wasn’t able to eat or drink anything. By Day 5, I was afraid I might have to get the girls to call an ambulance for me as I knew I would soon need some sort of fluids in my system. But, I prayed it wouldn’t come to that. The last time an ambulance was called to our house, it was for their Dad and he never returned home again. He died of cancer. I didn’t want to scare my girls.

When I started coming around a bit, my head was so sore still that my energy to do any packing or moving had to be done in 15-minute intervals. I am thankful I snuck in my fourth vaccination before COVID struck. I am not sure what it would have looked like otherwise. And, I am also thankful I had planned to take the month of August off so this allowed me to have my sick time during this period which did not impact my work.

While I was lying in bed, I thought to myself, ‘I just feel done.’ I have risen to the surface after my brain injury, my Dad’s death, my husband’s death, and the pandemic, but now the intense physical suffering I was experiencing felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But, what exactly was I done with? I love my job as an Executive Coach so wasn’t willing to step away from that. My job gives me energy and is very important to me. My daughters are the light of my life and being the sole parent on this Earth is hard work, but it is my honour to be their Mom. So, what is it that I was really fed up with?

I thought about the journey I had been on over the past 10 years since my brain injury. It has been a wild ride. And, I have remained resilient throughout it all. But, I was tired of being resilient. I was feeling Resilience Fatigue.

I have never heard of the term Resilience Fatigue before. It is something I just coined in a moment of pain lying in bed. But, I think it is a very real thing and it is something I believe many of us are feeling right now.

We have gone through so much in the past few years. We all have different stories, but I don’t know of anyone escaping this pandemic unscathed.

I saw a news story on CBC news recently talking about ‘quiet quitting,’ which is essentially doing the bare minimum within your job to collect your pay cheque. There is a TikTok done on this concept with millions of views, too, created by Zaid Khan. People are feeling beaten down and don’t have the energy to rally themselves or their teams. This lack of energy to rise again is related to resilience and one’s capability to keep going. To keep surviving and thriving.

In the past when I talked to people about resilience through my coaching or interviews, I have described it like a muscle that you build at the gym. It is something we all have within us and when we face challenges, we get the opportunity to build our ability to be even more resilient.

But when we build muscle by lifting weights, an imperative part of the path to strengthening is giving it time to rest after its faced challenges. If you don’t rest your muscles, you will likely suffer an injury. This is what I believe is happening to the masses of our population. We are leaning into resilience, but are not getting much time to rest in between each challenge. Hurdles are being through at us fast and furious.

If you are feeling Resilience Fatigue and it is impacting your life and work, what do you do about it?

1. Resilience fatigue is likely not from a single incident. It is from ongoing stress. It is not going to be cured by a week, two, or even a month’s vacation. You can’t erase years of ongoing stress and the energy it takes to rally again by a one-shot vacation. You need to regularly make deposits into your resilience bank over your lifetime. And, it doesn’t have to be big deposits.

After you lean into your resilience, you need to take some time to rest, or else it will lead to Resilience Fatigue. It may feel like it is impossible to find time to rest during your busyness, but I urge you that you don’t have time not to rest to sustain your beautiful life and career. It is that important. It doesn’t have to be weeks of vacation. It could be a massage; an hour at the driving range; lying in your lounge chair outside, a yoga class, a walk for 15 minutes. The key is to do something that feels good to you.

2. Know that you are not alone. If you look at your social media feed, it may appear that everyone else is refreshed and having the time of their lives. But, this is likely not true for most people. We have all been thrown curve balls through this pandemic. I bet others think you are thriving, too, from the outside. When we stop to realize many of us are facing resilience fatigue, it makes us feel normal and not like the outlier of failure.

3. Take one day at a time. This was advice that my late husband often gave me, and I still repeat it to myself most days. When we look at the mountain of work or responsibilities upon us, it can feel overwhelming. All we can control is what we are doing in this very moment, so be mindful and present in this moment and trust that you are capable. The rest of what is important will fall into place.

4. Allow yourself to rest. There are always going to be to-dos in your life. But, it is important to create boundaries for you to do nothing even if it is just for 15 minutes. We tend to think that doing an activity equals success and that resting is lazy. But, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When you take time to do nothing and recharge your batteries, it allows you to be more resilient and efficient. I challenge you to put daytime rest on your to-do list and feel the sense of completion when you can check off that task!