This is an interesting topic. When I first saw the prompt, I thought…interesting. How do I unwind after a demanding day? And I realised, that I don’t. I just keep going until I fall asleep in bed, often then probably having a restless sleep because my sympathetic nervous system is still going haywire. And it has forced me to confront the fact that, 16 years after my diagnosis, I haven’t always implemented the main lesson I learned after having cancer.
I have had some truly demanding jobs in my life, and I have experienced some really taxing situations. I worked with politicians for about 20 years, I had some narcissistic bosses, and I have worked through some really intense experiences in my job. One that sticks out in my mind was the London bombings of 7th July where I was in a hotel in London while my staff were scattered about the city, my parents were at work, and my boyfriend at the time was at a conference in the building outside of where the bus bombing happened. I had even told a member of my team to get on the bus if she could to get to my hotel because she was hysterical having been on the tube and witnessed the panic (not a bombed tube thankfully) before the bus blew up. I still had to get to the office that day, I had a lot of work to do because of the situation in the job I had, and frankly all hell was letting loose. It was one of the most jarring days of my life unsurprisingly. But I did nothing to unwind when I eventually got home. I watched the news coverage obsessively and when I woke up the next morning, I went back to the office and carried on as usual, getting on the tube even to get to meetings. Or as much as one can carry on as normal given the news a friend at work had been seriously injured in the bombs, and I shuddered every time I heard the police helicopters and sirens which had been the only noise in a strangely silent London the day before. When I woke up the next day, a Saturday, I had lost my voice. I didn’t have a cold or anything, I don’t even think it was laryngitis. I had just lost my voice I think because of the shock of what had happened, the stress of worrying about everyone, working through it and not unwinding at all. The thought of doing so hadn’t even crossed my mind.
It wasn’t just that event in that job, though, that caused stress and problems for me. The politicians I worked with and for were interesting shall we say, their advisors worse. The stress levels I was under and my colleagues were under was unbearable and the ‘lifespan’ of a career there for those in management positions was short. The bullying by the politicians and their advisors was immense. I already know that I didn’t sufficiently unwind in the evening from those experiences, I didn’t know how to. And I think that so much of the stress was internalised that I didn’t even realise I was stressed, I just thought it was an unpleasant place to work. I remember in one particular meeting, as I was coming down with the flu as it happened, thinking ‘what the hell am I doing in this job?’. But I put that thought down to coming down with the flu and did nothing about it. I eventually escaped and went to work in a much less stressful environment, though it too had its moments. I seemed to be getting a reputation at the time as someone who could sort out problems. I had seen through an apparently impossible funding process successfully and stared down a difficult individual in a partner organisation which meant I was being seen as someone who could do the difficult jobs. After a while, I started to see myself in the same way and a perfect storm was created of roles where I was to all intents and purposes, a troubleshooter which led to more stress. And less unwinding. All leading to the cancer that hit me in the middle of a very stressful time at work where we were pushing through large regeneration projects. It floored me unsurprisingly.
I realised then that I had been utterly useless at unwinding, at managing the stress levels and doing something that got my body out of fight, flight or freeze and into rest and digest. My sympathetic nervous system had, in effect, flooded my body consistently over a period of years with cortisol to keep me going. It was no coincidence that whenever I went on holiday and actually unwound for a period, I got a stinking cold. I never used up my whole holiday entitlement, I think I saw it as a badge of honour or some such stupidity. And there were stressful things going on in my private life as well with the ending of a relationship and my insecurities playing out distinctly in both my professional and private lives. If my life pre-cancer was anything, it was how to excel at living behind a mask. I was forcing the round peg of me to fit into the square hole of the life I was expected to lead. A life where I climbed the corporate ladder, and because I was good at my job I never questioned whether it was the one I wanted. A life where I got the mortgage and tried to have a relationship with a view to getting married and having children. This was all mapped out for me by, essentially, familial expectations and I think a little bit of society’s expectations. And me, ever the good girl trying to fit in, went along with it. I was desperately unhappy.
What cancer taught me, when you’re staring down the barrel of your own mortality, is that none of that matters. The ‘things’ don’t matter. The ego-driven career, doesn’t matter. All that matters is a sense of peace and belonging, of love. It was in this time I began to understand and explore my spirituality, and because I was ill everyone left me alone to do that. The only expectation on me at that point was to get better, and it was an expectation for once that I shared. It’s bizarre to say but when I wasn’t being bothered by the illness itself, I was happy in that period. I wasn’t rushing around like a lunatic, barking out orders and wondering how we were going to do what needed to be done in the timescales we had to do them in. I wasn’t dealing with difficult personalities while trying to get things done. All of that had been removed from me. No, I did quite a bit of writing, I did a LOT of reading, and I started to be the me I was always meant to be. Someone who had the space to think, to explore new intellectual and philosophical issues, someone who had the time to write about them as well. And when the illness got too much, when I felt physically awful, I had the time to rest, and I learned to meditate also.
One of the reasons I knew I had to see the doctor (I didn’t have the typical lump as the clue) was because I passed out twice in the street from exhaustion. My body wasn’t able to maintain the punishing life I was living and fight the cancer. I couldn’t eat, I slept all the time, and I felt so ill obviously. As soon as I didn’t have to be in the office, all of that went away. I had been doing a boot camp exercise regime led by a couple of amazing ex-Royal Marines, but as the illness had taken hold I had struggled to get there for 6am three times a week (yes, I did that on top of 60 hour working weeks). But when work fell away, I was able to go back to boot camp and I credit that in part with saving my life. I was in peak physical condition which enabled me to withstand the treatment, especially the operations which nearly killed me. I also had the time to eat well, to cook and prepare nutritious and healthy food rather than grab the quick dinners, often ready meals packed with salt and sugar. In short, I had the ability to take life slowly.
And that, for me, is what unwinding is about. Taking the time to take life slowly. It’s what nourishes our soul. I realise now that that was what I was doing in those days, I was nourishing my soul. My egoic mind was in meltdown about the diagnosis, I couldn’t listen to that because that way led to depression and negativity something I vowed not to do. I kept telling myself, I had a serious illness but I wasn’t seriously ill. When I think back, I think that my soul just took over the reins because my egoic mind was in freefall. So, I spent a lot of time in nature which was marvellous. I would walk the dogs in the woods, in parks, we would go for really long walks. I was exercising all the time even when it wasn’t intentional. I was out in the fresh air and I was enjoying the beauty of the world. I didn’t sit in front of the television at all, I read or wrote or exercised. Despite being in arguably the most stressful time in my life if I had embraced that option, I am pretty sure the stress of my life fell away. Because I was learning what was truly important in life.
But, life and the egoic mind took over again. I went back to work rather than do what I really wanted to do which was start up my own business. No, I returned to work and for a while I did well in minimising the stress, but it didn’t last. Since that time I’ve had pockets of similar moments – when I was on maternity leave, after a head injury at work, when I was financially able to work part-time for a spell, and when I was first made redundant. It’s not that I don’t want to work, it’s that my soul is screaming for me to do the work that is meaningful to me. Such as my writing, which I love to do more than anything. In all those pockets of time, I again spent a lot of time walking in nature, I spent a lot of time reading (well, fairytales when on maternity leave!), I visited historic sites which is another passion of mine, history. And I spent time writing for my own pleasure. I spent time exploring my spirituality, listening to gurus and meditating. And in all those times, I didn’t feel stressed. The stress came when I went back to work invariably, doing a job that didn’t fit me at all. And it came when I had severe financial constraints.
I’m still not good at unwinding after a demanding day, but what writing this has reminded me is what I need to do to unwind. I need to walk in nature. I need to write (a demanding day invariably isn’t one where I am writing). I need to do a lot more reading, not just before I fall asleep. Less time mindlessly watching television or doom scrolling on my phone. And I need to increase the time available to me for writing, it’s my passion and one I am determined to turn into something that pays me a good living.
I am also determined to live a soul-led life. What does that mean? It means knowing when it is my egoic mind ranting away about something, and tune in instead to my soul. As someone said to me once ‘drop down into your heart, away from your head, and listen to what it’s saying’. I’ve found since doing so that in stressful times, my heart is calm. My soul is fine, it isn’t panicking or allowing fear to take over. No, it’s calm because it knows the plan. It knows that everything is going to work out fine. And it’s having faith in that. That sometimes our lives may look terrible when viewed from the outside or through the egoic mind, but if in the moment we can go into our hearts and experience the peace, the love and the knowing, we will calm down. We don’t need to know the how of it, just know that all will be well and have faith that things will take the course they need to. And that the end result will be the best possible outcome for you, just don’t try to control it.
That’s another stressor I have struggled to let go of, control. It’s the result of my childhood, this need to control the environment around me so that I can be assured of the outcome. But I have learned that the more I try to control the outcome, the less in control I am. Because we can’t control our environment, we can only decide our reaction to it. We aren’t helpless, things aren’t done ‘to’ us, we create our reality. That creation, though, depends on our reactions to events and the limiting beliefs we carry around. Unwinding after a demanding day is a way of releasing control, of allowing our sympathetic nervous system to calm down into rest and digest and our thoughts can calm down as well. And when our thoughts calm down, we can think more rationally and find better solutions to any problems we may have. Solutions we can create into our reality.
The one thing I will say with total conviction to anyone reading this, myself included, is: PLEASE take the time to unwind after every day, not just a demanding one. Take the time to decant the day in the best way possible for you, move on from it and just let the mind and sympathetic nervous system calm down. Take my suggestions if they help – walking, reading, meditating, journaling – or make your own ritual. Maybe have a bath. Whatever you do, please remember that alcohol isn’t a means of unwinding, it really is about shifting yourself out of fight, flight or freeze that life currently has a way of pushing us into.
Have a very happy unwind all!
Louisa Simpson 