The Completion of Depletion

I’m depleted. Out of juice. Stopped dead in my tracks.  I know I’m not alone. Just saying the words, “I’m depleted” somewhat eases the sense of depletion. I suspect you might know the feeling. The question is: Why does it take so long to admit it? And who do we think we’re fooling?

Like so many of you, I am finely attuned to my body and to my mind. The slightest change in calibration – be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - reverberates throughout my integrated system like shock waves. I trust my body and what it communicates, and I trust that I know my body best. I trust myself to make sound decisions that affect my body, mind, and spirit – I trust you to make yours.

What I mistrust? The ubiquitous “I’m fine”, “I’m well”, “I’m good” when someone asks me how I am and when I ask someone else. This mistrust bases itself on my direct experience. If I, your average human being albeit one who possessed huge amounts of energy, feels depleted from time to time, I assume with a high degree of confidence that most other humans do, too.

My depletion flows from a hidden underground spring of challenges, many of which we share. A primary culprit? Two years of coping and then recovering from the pandemic – in the case of MB and me fighting to save a business while facing the worry about loved ones. We’ve heard your pandemic sagas, too:  saving your kids from the shock and challenge created from it, working from home (a blessing and a curse), feeling stuck.

Depletion results from so many triggers: grief, worry, overwork, no work, conflict with friends and family members, overeating and undereating, too much exercise and, for most of us, too little. Sometimes the cause slams into us like the fast-moving service vehicle that recently rear-ended my car on the freeway from following too close. When an accident happened in front of me, and I was able to avoid colliding into it because I’d left enough space, the driver behind me had not. Stopped dead in my tracks turned out not to just be a phrase. That impact depleted me in multiple ways and forced me into cutting back my schedule.

I wanted to keep going – this is both an instinct and a learned behavior (“just keep going” being a favorite idiom in many family structures). My head, my neck, my brain, my mind, my heart say otherwise. I’m listening to them. MB said recently and kindly, “My Energizer Bunny is missing in action.”

Stopping for a while, what a notion. It’s in the pause that we find ourselves and our well-being again. I’m working less because those are the doc’s orders as my eyes and brain require time to establish the proper communications patterns between them. In the pause, a secret revealed itself to me: When we finally admit to feeling depleted, healing and rebounding begin. Slowly, the body wants to move again. Carefully, the brain permits trying different approaches to counter the ever-present pounding headache. Mindful that we are energy, we attune to the ebb and flow of it and make different choices.

What if, when you feel depleted, you stopped yourself dead in your tracks? What if, instead of blustering through with the “I’m fine” and “I’m well”, you told the truth – “Right now, I’m pausing for a bit”? Would you, like me, begin to turn a corner into respecting your body, mind, spirt? And if you’re already practiced at this, share your stories.

What I’ve learned from this experience is to honor only that which I am feeling – whatever the feeling is – and pause in it. In the pause a solution reveals itself, whether it’s for rest, action, reflection.

The philosophy of yoga encourages us to “stay in the body”; to find the middle path; to non-harming ourselves and others (ahimsa); to telling the truth to ourselves and others (satya), and to cleanliness toward ourselves and others (saucha), which means to take care with ourselves and others.

Don’t wait for a debilitating shock to your system, for doctor’s orders, for collapse. Admitting to depletion (satya) completes it so we can move forward with the confidence that we know ourselves best. Admitting to depletion is the first step in defeating depletion. Join me.

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