I’m a school teacher and I recently went through a grueling stretch of days. Without getting into too much detail, suffice it to say it was a stretch of extremely overstimulating and triggering days. Messed up routines. Exhaustion. Emotional stuff. Mistakes and embarrassment. Yesterday I felt very “activated” and like I was wanted to scream. I didn’t scream (I work with kids) but I did feel really awful and like my insides were out of control. I’ve been doing some really difficult work in therapy and I think my body is just trying to process that while I work in a very not calm environment.

I woke up this morning and I have a gross head cold. I’m also physically sore from all the stress I was under the past two weeks. Kids are sick where I am and so many coughs and things going around. I could probably force myself to work through all this today, but I feel like doing so would be truly harmful to myself. I obviously feel on edge and like I’m going to snap from the last two weeks. My body is physically not feeling great. If I were talking to a friend I would say: “it sounds like you need to take a rest.”

So I took today off work. I’m feeling torn between one part of myself that is trying to practice being compassionate and loving towards myself and another part that is shaming me for being so pathetic and lazy. I also took medical leave in the fall for what was a serious collapse episode. I’m much better now but I’m still carrying a lot of shame about even having to have taken leave.

I just want to get to a place where choosing to care for myself doesn’t feel so wrong and bad and shameful.