grappling with uncertainty

I’ve been a workaholic since I first started working as a teenager. I left school and got a job as an office junior in a solicitor’s firm, then I took on an evening job as well. When the solicitor’s firm realised I could touch type (thanks to many teenage hours spent on message forums and typing Boyzone fan fiction), they quickly promoted me to the role of legal secretary. In that role, I was the shared secretary for three fee-earners while the other, more experienced secretaries all had just one fee earner.

I worked hard. I got through work fast. I was eager to please, happy to use my own initiative. I devised crib sheets and templates, set up systems and studied customer service. I became passionate about work.

Fast forward ten years and I was married to a solicitor and, together, we started our own law firm. Creating a law firm is like creating anything else from scratch – you start with nothing and you have to create everything. My handprints were on every single decision, every policy and every ethos. I still loved systems and remained passionate about offering excellent customer service. I cared deeply about the work we did. The stakes being so high was a source of adrenaline to me. We keep the good guys out of prison, I liked to say.

For me, working hard became an addiction. It was exhilarating to stay up late or get up early, to feel like part of the hustle culture espoused by leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone. Clients would message my personal phone (separate phones are for wimps!) and get quick responses at every time of the day and night.

It wasn’t just that there was no boundary between my personal and work life, it was that I had no personal life. Virtually all of my friends were employees or colleagues. Most of my conversations even when I wasn’t at work were about work. Even on a supposedly replenishing solo holiday abroad one year, I met up with a client.

When the pandemic started and gave many people an enforced opportunity to switch off from work, I doubled down on it instead. Furloughing the team, I ran the business alone for many months. I set ridiculous goals (because a global pandemic is no time to be slouching on your to do list) and met them all. I took pride in this, of course I did. I was defined by my ability to work hard and get great results.

My burnout started so slowly I barely saw it coming. As the symptoms of this became almost constant chronic migraines, I did what any workaholic would do – I made getting better my next goal. But all of the tests and medications and diet changes and therapy had no success, and my ability to work was reduced until my output was barely recognisable. I would go to work every day for a few hours, or every alternate day, or two days a week. I would move away from client facing work, I would work remotely so I could take screen breaks with less guilt. I would take a few weeks off, a couple of months off. I would try desperately to reset my nervous system so I could return to my former glory. But nothing worked.

There were two particularly difficult conversations I remember. One, with a therapist just before I went back to work after one of my earliest periods off. I explained to her that as my return date grew imminent, I couldn’t get my head around the idea that the phone would ring in the office and I would answer it. It had become unfathomable to me, the person who had once proudly done video chats with clients at 2am to chat about their cases, that a person should wish to speak to me, call the office and I would answer. I knew as I said this that it was crazy, that I was being incredibly dramatic and weak. Answering the phone was no big deal. But still. “I just can’t imagine it,” I told the therapist. She paused and told me, “then you’re not ready”.

Her words were incredible to me. A permission slip to listen to my body and be honest about what I was capable of.

The other call came perhaps two years later, during another period off work. By this point, I was off work more than I was at work, and my unreliability had me knotted with guilt. I had began working with a national migraine charity and, through them, had tried various privately available prescriptions, none of which had worked for me. Each time a new pill or injection was announced, I would have a call and give it a try. This was expensive; every medication was around £300 for a month and required a review call with a doctor every three months which cost a further £150. I had been in this cycle for some time and was having another follow up call with this migraine specialist when she told me, “you know, you might have to accept that this is as good as it ever gets for you”.

Her words were not as devastating to hear as you might imagine. I had always been somewhat stoic about becoming a person who is chronically ill. I felt tremendous guilt for the impact my reduced capacity had on other people, sure, but the idea of me being a person with chronic illness was surprisingly something I could get my head around. Some people had poor health. Why wouldn’t I be one of them? Why would it be someone else and not me? Sure, I could accept that.

What was harder to accept was the reality that I could no longer have a place in the business I had started and grown, like a baby. My hero complex made it incredibly hard for me to step aside and leave everything to the team. I would agree to step back to focus on my health, and then something would happen – an employee would be off sick, or a big case would overrun, or a last minute instruction would come in, and there’s nothing I loved more than a last minute instruction that means you have to work harder and longer and… all of the things I could no longer do.

The compromise I reached was to step back from work for the whole of 2025. This was designed to allow my nervous system a good chance to reset without the constant pressure of attempting to be well enough, which then spiralled and caused my symptoms to worsen. This chunk of time allowed me to slow down and accept my new limits. Yesterday, for example, I saw my daughter off to school and then went back to bed and slept until 1pm. This doesn’t happen often but it’s also not unusual. For the old me, it would be unheard of, both that I’d need that level of rest and that I’d allow it if I did.

I have learned many things about myself this year. I’ve leaned in to simple joys like reading, putting up bird boxes and watching bluetits prepare their nest for chicks, going to the library once a week, enjoying leisurely dog walks with a friend, watching all of the Harry Potter movies, napping, baking bread.

I’ve avoided stress as much as possible and have studied boundaries and practiced working on my own. As a chronic people pleaser, boundaries have had no place in my life. Now, I will leave a text message unread until I want to deal with it, and I am trying to step back and allow other people to sort out their own problems. Before I would wade in, whether they wanted me to or not.

This journey from overachieving workaholic to a perpetually tired person with chronic illness has been difficult, but beautiful, and it isn’t over yet. We are nearing 2025 and I am not better.

The future is uncertain, and my Type A personality doesn’t like uncertainty.

What will happen next? I don’t know, but I’d like to share this journey with you.