Packed calendar safety

This is the first in a two-part series, where drive women use busyness as emotional protection and explore what’s under our packed calendar.

There she sits at a granite kitchen counter at 9:42pm. The blue glow of her phone casts a stern shadow on her exhausted face. The cold surface under her forearm contrasts clearly with the warmth of a mug of chamomile tea growing cold beside her. Her color coded calendar app lights her up like a slot machine.

The familiar weight of the three project deadlines is pushed down onto her shoulders like a heavy coat she can’t take off. A school board meeting she needs to prepare tomorrow morning. This weekend, her daughter’s soccer tournament. the goal. And somewhere in the busyness and mental chaos, a nagging reminder about the appointment of a doctor she continues to reschedule – about the mole that has been bothering her for months.

She rolls her shoulder against the familiar tension headache that formed at the base of her skull. Her breasts weigh again. This is something that always surfaces during unusual, quiet moments like silt precipitating in quiet water.

But instead of sitting with it, her thumb moves instinctively. She finds an empty 30 minutes on Thursday and fills out immediately in a conference call that could soon be emailed.

The rescue immediately attacks her.

The calendar is full again. The crisis avoided.

Or is it?

If you find this scene uncomfortably familiar, you are not alone. This is what I’ve noticed in hundreds Treatment A session with a driven woman: We turned busyness into armor. This is a sophisticated shield that protects us from emotions we are not ready to face.

“Busy” has become our autoresponder to “How are you?” We are humbled about our overwhelming to-do list, although we feel secretly important because we are in overwhelming demand. But what if your chock-up calendar serves your future purpose? Productivity?

How about keeping things at bay, not just busyness, but keeping something else at bay?

Busy as an armor: A great strategy hidden in your vision

Let’s be clear from the start: Using busyness as protection is a great adaptation strategy. Your mind has developed this creative solution to help you deal with difficult emotions and situations. This was not a personal mistake.

Recent research has revealed fascinating things about ambitious experts. Achievement can function as a socially acceptable form of emotional paralysis. alcohol Or infinite Social Media scroll. difference? Busyness earns praise rather than concern from others. It doesn’t look worried, it has a golden star.

Think of busyness as emotional body armor. It’s heavy, protective and extremely effective. It will start to measure your weight very much and you will be able to barely move.

I walked this path myself. While building a newly licensed therapist while managing the pressures associated with your 30s, I recognize the seductive pull of a packed calendar. Techniques temporarily quiet your inner voice questioning whether you are sufficient. Dopamine A hit that crosses items from an infinite to-do list. External verification that comes with being considered a person who “has it all together.”

But if you’ve ever felt anxiety When you face an empty day, or when you realize you’re filling up your free time before you arrive, it may be time to gently explore what your busyness is protecting you. And whether that protection is currently too high.

What lives under the calendar

When you peel off the layer of constant activity, there are often certain unpleasant emotions waiting underneath. These are not random emotions. They are specific things that help us avoid or postpone busyness. They are feelings that are too big, too messy, or too threatening to a carefully constructed sense of control.

• Loneliness and fear Abandonment. For many aspiring women, especially those who have experienced emotional contradictions. Childhood,Unstructured time can cause a sense of loneliness. A calendar filled with meetings and phone calls ensures you are always connected to someone, even if those connections stay at a secure, professional distance. You need to be busy. They feel safer than one person is needed.
• sorrow And raw losses. Loss comes in many forms – something obvious like death or death divorceand something like a subtle thing like a career path, a relationship that didn’t work out, or a version of yourself that you thought you would become. Continuous activity creates little space for these feelings of sadness to emerge. Once every moment is explained, there is no room for sadness to manifest.
• Feelings of insufficient or “uncomfortable.” Achieve temporarily calms it down Inner Critic I question your worth. Each completed task provides evidence for the nagging feelings that you somehow aren’t enough. Productivity is a proof of value.
• Anxious about the future. Planning and scheduling creates an illusion of certainty in an inherently uncertain world. The more detailed the plan, the more safe it feels. Controlling your calendar makes you feel like you’re in control of your life.
• Relationship tension. Work provides socially acceptable reasons to avoid dealing with the difficulties of personal relationships. “I want to talk about our issues and we have this deadline,” the emotional pattern goes. Intimate Bay. Professional urgency beats personal vulnerability each time.

The most impressive are the following: Research shows that “a richness of time” (where there is open and unstructured time) creates more anxiety for driven experts than time rarity. Brain imaging studies reveal increased activity in fear centres over unstructured hours, similar to those observed in actual threat situations.

In other words, for many ambitious women, the empty calendar feels truly intimidating Nervous system.

Part 2 of this series explores how your body responds when using practical steps to protect your busyness, the hidden costs of this strategy, and finding safety beyond your to-do list.