Running to slow down
If you had met me during my former corporate career you would have likely said I was confident, outgoing, driven, focused, passionate and friendly. And possibly a bit arrogant. And this would have been a fair assessment.
At the height of my career I was a self-confessed Type A personality. According to a quick Google search, “Type A and Type B personality theory describes two contrasting personality types. In this theory, personalities that are more competitive, outgoing, ambitious, impatient and/or aggressive are labeled TypeA, while more relaxed personalitiesare labeled Type B.”[i]
I was most definitely Type A. I was an ambitious perfectionist and a high performer who thrived off of structure, control, action and results, as well as rewards and recognition.
Outwardly I projected an image of confidence and strength to colleagues, senior management, my staff and my clients; however, I was like a duck — smooth and calm on the surface, yet always frantically kicking my feet below the surface. No one knew just how frantically I was kicking, not even me, until I started suffering from panic attacks and depression. At the time of my panic attacks I was a highly stressed, burned out, overworked leader sleepwalking through life, living in a perpetual state of autopilot mode.
I worked for an American Fortune 100 company and like many individuals in today’s society who operate in a global environment accommodating multiple time zones, I was “always on” — meaning I was contactable 24/7, 365 days a year. On top of that, constant re-structuring resulted in an unsustainable workload, which equated to increased working hours that saw me going from a passionate high performer to a cynical, disengaged, burned out, anxious and depressed employee that just could not ‘snap out of it’ and re-engage — try as I might.
In my quest to rebuild my mental health I became an avid runner which saw me running long distances ranging from between 9 and 13 miles at a time, four to five times a week. I discovered that I loved running. Once I got past the first 20 minutes of a run during which time my body and mind complained, and cursed about how much running sucked, I began to love the rhythm of my breath and the sound of the steading pounding of my feet on the pavement. My mind would begin to get clear, my anxieties would start to dissipate, and I would get into ‘the zone’,logging mile after mile.
I logged roughly 50 miles each week for about 18 months, and my back and knees did not thank me for it. Yes, running made my mind clearer and calmer, however my lower back began to groan, and my knees grumbled each time I leaned down to pick up my cat’s food bowl. For months, my husband told me to give it a rest and reduce the amount of running I was doing however I was very concerned that if I stopped running, my anxiety and depression would return. You see I had replaced one addiction for another — I had gone from being a wired and tired workaholic to a devoted runner, addicted to the runner’s high and the euphoria I felt upon completing an hour or so of running.
I did not listen to my husband or heed his advice to reduce my running, so the universe decided to take matters into its own hands.
One morning I set out for a run and about a mile in I tripped and fell over a paving stone. Embarrassed, and not wanting anyone to come help me, I jumped up, glared accusingly at the paving stone and carried on running for another 5 miles. It was not until I returned home that I became aware that I had cut my knee open and there was blood dripping down my leg.
After resting my knee for a week, I went for another run. I had just started running when I saw a dead ginger cat in the bushes across the street from me. Oh, no, oh no, it is a dead cat, oh no, oh no I whispered to myself. Knowing that if it was my cat I would want to know what had happened, I knew I had to cross the road to see if the cat had a collar on, so that I could call the owner. As I turned to run across the street, I ran straight into a metal post and smashed my knee into the post — the same knee I had fallen on the week before. In tears from the pain as well as my anguish over the cat, I hobbled across the street towards the cat only to discover it was not a cat, but an orange sweater!
After the phantom cat-sweater incident I had to quit running for 3 months in order to enable my knee to heal. During the recovery period, I discovered that I did not need to run to feel calm anymore. Perhaps the initial period of running after my panic attacks and depression served a purpose but I now think that I needed to run to learn to slow down.
[i]“Type A & B Personality Theory.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia.org, 06 April 2005, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory. Accessed 18 October 2017