#notestotreehira 20: On my cortisol complex
Learning to live by days without work as my central pivoting force; where stress is not my breathing point
Dearest Treehira and friends,
For a long time, and maybe even till some months ago, I described myself as someone who ‘thrives in high-stress environments’ in job applications. I would wear this quality with a badge of honour because it meant I could manage multiple deadlines, responsibilities, and responses with a ‘can do- can solve-anything’ kind of attitude. This was precisely the character trait of someone who worked in production and/or marketing and events; was resourceful at trying to figure out what was the next job she could do. It is a quality that has helped me do lots of amazing things and also the same quality that seeped into how I dealt with my relationships with my partners, and my parents…..even if the circumstance was momentarily intolerable. I would stick through the tough bits because it was how I understood the concept of ‘growing through being in the thick of the fire’.
It wasn’t until I moved to Europe to do my masters and hung out with some of my course mates from very different lives and backgrounds, who would express feeling overwhelmed and bothered by deadlines, that I realised I had quite a high tolerance to stress. I was also almost addicted to the feeling of being high-strung (or occupied) which has affected my threshold for feeling stress.
I wanted to understand how my body had stored or understood stress. It turns out that our bodies activate a complex series of responses in different parts of our bodies in response to any sudden physiological or physical stressors to eventually release the hormone, cortisol. According to Nat Geo, “cortisol allows the body to regulate everything from metabolism to sleep to immune function and inflammation, but it’s arguably best known for helping the body respond to perceived threats, a role that’s earned it the nickname of the “stress hormone.”
Aside from the biological explanation of this hormone, I noticed that when I had little or fewer things to do in a day, I found it incredibly difficult to do nothing or have nothing planned. I was almost used to feeling stressed that a non stressed life seemed….uneventful.
It made me think back to my life as a student - when I would do a part-time job while studying to pay for my living expenses, then after graduating I would work two or more jobs so I could pay for rent, my tuition loans and give my parents an allowance, and then live a decent enough life that allowed me to keep up my hobbies and relationships.
I mean, everyone has probably said this once, I realised, I was a human doing more than a human being.
The truth is, nothing I was doing in that version of my life were things I didn’t want to do or did out of obligation or societal pressure…….but…..it was the same attitude that drove me to perceive inaction as laziness :”( or and that any languorous rest or break I would like to take *must* be result of hard work (labour, long hours, projects, a big deadline, etc.) The underlying question at that point, and sometimes still creeps up to me is …’do I deserve this xyz’?
The idea to me back then and even now…..is if I had slept, ate, meditated, and exercised in some permutation, what other kinds of ‘leisure’ or ‘rest’ do I need? These thoughts are inherently convoluted with the idea that we deserve rest only after work, and that any idle mind is a ‘devil’s playground’.
These last months without permanent corporate employment, and living out of a very capitalist country like Singapore have given me a lot to think about this concept and my relationship with stress.
This week’s #notestotreehira is my on desire to detangle my sense of worth from my work and the stress I am capable of handling from living that kind of ‘high performance life’.
It will be a slow….and possibly painful and a tender journey of accepting my loose and current employment situation and way of life for what it is, instead of demanding and yearning for it to be more. I am here now, and everything has led me to this moment.
From June to September, there will be a bit more ‘emptiness’ to my life after the last few months of intense moving and production work. I would like to permit myself to sleep when I feel like it, to wander where I feel drawn to, to play and to learn without necessarily a schedule or the impending question of what this would add up to? Of course, I would like to be guided by what feels good to me at that moment, and allow myself to sit through and let pass the feeling of being chided by guilt or a fear that there is something better somewhere else, because these are thoughts from a past version of myself.
I’d like to be brave enough to feel the loneliness, the emptiness and the meandering feeling of moving through what comes for me, at least for these 3 months, whilst knowing that I might in moments, like any human, yearn or crave for another version of life that is more stable. It is going to be immensely difficult (for present me). And I hope this #notestotreehira and this habit of writing once a week will encourage me to keep to this intention.
What about you - what is something you’re looking to do this summer for you? :)
🌼 1/5 of my milestone!
haha, the irony of this little note of bloom is that i’ve hit 20/100 of my routine of wanting to write 100 #notestotreehiras. This has been a fun little exercise of writing just because I want to and the 100 number is to build a habit of writing frequently, so here I am using substack and sharing these weekly thoughts with 50 other people. Thank you for being a kind reader over this cyberspace, i’m so grateful!
Is there anything I can help you to keep accountable? Let me know :)