Who are you… when the version of you that ‘works’ starts to cost you?

Now in her mid 40s, she had become exceptionally skilled at keeping all the balls in the air.
Career, family, responsibilities, nothing was dropping.

It worked from the outside.

She came to me because something kept feeling off. Nothing loud. Niggling enough though to be a bother.

→ Aches that lingered

→ Sleep that didn’t quite restore

→ A kind of tension she couldn’t fully explain nor shake off

At some point along the way, she’d decided: this is just how it is now.
This phase of life. This version of her.

And to be fair, that version had done a lot for her.
It had helped her succeed, stay reliable, be the person others could count on.

Equally, it also meant she was almost always “on”.

Thinking ahead. Holding things together. Not really stopping long enough to check on her own needs.

When I asked her how that felt, she paused for a moment and then said:

“I don’t actually know who I am, if I’m not all this.”

We didn’t start by changing her life.

We looked at the seemingly little things:

→ Where she was saying yes automatically

→ Where she was pushing through instead of pausing

→ Where her body had been giving signals she’d learned to ignore and override

Nothing big. Yet not nothing either.

Over time, something began to shift: A little more breathing space. Decisions came with a little more clarity and a little less effort to hold it all together.

Not because everything changed - just her holding patterns changed.

Maybe that’s part of the work: Not becoming someone new, just easing the grip on who we’ve learned to be.

So a simple question to sit with:

→ Where might you be holding onto a version of yourself that no longer fully serves you?

→ Who might you be if that version softened, even slightly?

📍 Comment and share if this resonates.

Lead with health · You and your systems