When Keeping Up Is the Problem
You may not need a better routine. You may need to tell the truth about what your life is costing you.
You Do Not Need a Better Routine. You Need a Life That Stops Requiring Your Self-Abandonment.
Sometimes the problem is not that you cannot keep up. Sometimes keeping up is the problem.
You may not need more discipline, a better planner, or another morning routine. You may need to tell the truth about what your life is costing you.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that sleep does not fix.
You can take the nap.
Cancel the meeting.
Drink the water.
Buy the planner.
Delete the app and download a different app that promises to organize your life in softer colors.
You can create a morning routine, an evening routine, a supplement routine, and a Sunday reset routine.
And still wake up tired.
Because sometimes the problem is not that you have failed to build a life-giving routine.
Sometimes the problem is that you are using routines to make an extractive life more tolerable. (read that again) you are using routines to make an extractive life more tolerable.
Sometimes you are not tired because you lack discipline.
You are tired because too many parts of your life require you to leave yourself in order to participate.
That is a different problem.
And it requires a different kind of answer.
The question underneath the question
When we say, “How do I become more consistent?” the question underneath may be:
How do I keep meeting demands that exceed my capacity without anyone noticing what it costs me?
When we say, “How do I stop procrastinating?” the question underneath may be:
Why does my body resist this thing my mind insists I should be able to do?
When we say, “How do I become more productive?” the question underneath may be:
Who taught me that my value becomes visible only after I produce something?
And when we say, “How do I get back on track?” perhaps we need to ask:
Who laid the track?
Where is it taking me?
What has it required me to run over (including myself) to stay on it?
This is not an argument against structure. I love a structure that helps us hold what matters. Many neurodivergent, disabled, chronically ill, traumatized, and overwhelmed people need supportive structure, not because we are deficient, but because access should not depend on forcing ourselves through unnecessary friction.
But there is a difference between structure that supports your life and structure that trains you to endure it.
One creates capacity.
The other conceals the cost.
Self-abandonment rarely introduces itself honestly
Self-abandonment rarely announces:
“Hello, I am here to disconnect you from your body, override your limits, and make belonging conditional on your usefulness.”
It sounds more reasonable than that.
It sounds like:
Just get through this week.
Do not make it a big deal.
They need you.
You can rest later.
Be the bigger person.
Do not disappoint anyone.
You already said yes.
Other people have it worse.
You should be grateful.
You can handle more than most people. (ask yourself which one, or more, felt familiar)
And maybe you can.
But capacity is not consent.
Being capable of carrying something does not mean it belongs to you.
Being able to survive a pattern does not make the pattern sustainable.
Being the person who always figures it out does not mean you should always be left to figure it out alone.
When adaptation becomes identity
Many of us learned to become exquisitely responsive to everyone except ourselves.
We notice the shift in another person’s tone before we notice our own jaw tightening.
We anticipate what the room needs before asking whether we want to be in the room.
We can feel disappointment coming and rush to prevent it.
We call this kindness.
Sometimes it is kindness….
Sometimes it is hypervigilance wearing good manners.
We call it responsibility.
Sometimes it is responsibility.
Sometimes it is fear wearing a calendar.
We call it resilience.
Sometimes it is resilience.
Sometimes it is a body that has never been given another option.
The adaptation may have kept you connected, employed, praised, protected, or needed. We do not have to shame it to tell the truth about it.
It was intelligent.
It was protective.
It may also be exhausting you now.
This is why liberation work cannot stop at changing our thoughts. The body may still be obeying an agreement the conscious mind no longer believes.
A reset is not a prettier version of the same demand
The wellness industry often sells us a reset that leaves the original system untouched.
Take a weekend away so you can return to the same impossible pace.
Buy something soothing so you can tolerate what is harming you.
Perfect your routine so no one else has to change.
Regulate yourself so the room never has to become safer.
Become more resilient so the institution can remain violent.
That is not a reset.
That is maintenance.
A real reset asks more dangerous questions:
What am I maintaining that is no longer maintaining me?
What only works because I overfunction?
What relationship depends on me having no needs?
What commitment belongs to a version of me who no longer exists?
Where am I calling something “necessary” because naming it as a choice would require me to choose differently?
What am I afraid will happen if I stop being endlessly available?
This is where Rest becomes Reset.
Rest gives us enough space to hear ourselves.
Reset asks us to believe what we hear.
A small practice: Find the Flinch
Do not make a list of everything you need to change. That can become another demand.
Instead, think about the week ahead.
Move through it slowly in your mind: the appointments, responsibilities, people, rooms, calls, errands, and expectations.
Notice where your body flinches.
Maybe your breath gets shallow.
Maybe your shoulders rise.
Maybe your stomach tightens.
Maybe you suddenly feel tired, irritated, foggy, or far away.
Do not immediately cancel anything. Do not force yourself to solve it.
Simply ask:
What does my body know about this that I have not yet put into words?
Your body is not a courtroom witness. You do not need to cross-examine it until it produces enough evidence to justify your discomfort.
The flinch is information.
Not an order.
Not the whole answer.
Information.
And information is enough to begin.
Practice Your Praxis
Self
Where am I using discipline to override information from my body?
Home
What only gets done because one person repeatedly abandons their own capacity?
Work & Community
Which “urgent” expectation would become negotiable if we valued people more than pace?
The New Agreement
You do not have to burn your whole life down by Friday.
You do not need to make a dramatic exit to prove you are choosing yourself.
Liberation is not only found in the big refusal.
Sometimes it begins with a pause before yes.
An honest “I need to check my capacity.”
A meal before the meeting.
A deadline renegotiated before collapse.
A request for help before resentment.
A decision not to explain your no into a yes.
A willingness to let someone be disappointed without making their disappointment an emergency.
The new agreement might be this:
I will stop treating my body as the obstacle standing between me and the life that keeps hurting it.
I will let my body become part of how I decide.
That is not selfishness.
That is sovereignty.
And perhaps the reset you need is not a better way to keep up.
Perhaps it is permission to stop organizing your life around the demand that you abandon yourself.
Continue the journey
This is the doorway.
In the next three subscriber reflections, we are going beyond awareness and into embodied practice:
The Reset Audit: a guided examination of what is draining, outdated, one-sided, inaccessible, or sustained only by your overfunctioning.
Your No Is a Nervous-System Practice: why boundaries can feel dangerous even when they are necessary, and how to practice refusal without abandoning yourself in the process.
When Rest Becomes Another Performance: how grind culture follows us into healing; and how to build practices that restore rather than measure us.
Paid subscriptions are $10 monthly or $100 annually. Equity Partners subscribe at $150 annually and help fund scholarship access for members of our community.
If cost is the barrier, email scholarships@desireebstephens.com. No proof required. No story owed. Just ask.
Because liberation education should be sustained through reciprocity, not guarded through scarcity.
You can also go deeper inside the Liberation Education Academy:
https://desireebstephens.com/academy-membership
Or practice in community through The Healing Homestead Collective:
https://desireebstephens.com/homestead
In solidarity and liberation,
Desireé B. Stephens
Educator • Counselor • Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of The Healing Homestead Collective
New Agreements. New Systems. Deeper Connection. 🌬️
You’re up early! (I guess I don’t know your time zone, so maybe I’m wrong🤣). I’m just noticing a lot of my favorite writers have also not slept super well this week & last. Too much crazy is ongoing. The idea of slow care looks pretty good. 🕊️💕
Love it. Love your words and style and thinking . Thank you !