[00:00:00] I used to think pushing through exhaustion made me strong. I didn't realize how much of my life was being driven by this constant fear of falling behind. Behind on work, behind at home, behind in life. And even when my body was begging me to slow down, I still kept trying to prove I could do it all.
Turns out, it was destroying my nervous system. Because you can only fight your body for so long before your body finally starts fighting back. And I think a lot of us living with MS are trying to cram eight hours worth of life into a two-hour energy window, then shaming ourselves when we can't keep up.
That is what we're talking about today. And before we get started, I wanna invite you to something special. Living with MS can feel overwhelming, but one habit can shift everything. That's what I'll show you [00:01:00] inside my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression Starting with Just One Habit. Think of it as your first step towards more energy, confidence, and hope.
Save your seat at alinebrennan.com/webinar. Welcome to my MS podcast, where women with MS learn how to slow progression and live a life they love. I'm Aline Brennan, your MS sister and a practitioner who knows the science and the reality of living this too. Each week, I share simple, science-backed habits to boost your energy, stay consistent, and feel like yourself again.
Because MS may be a part of your story, but it doesn't get to write the ending. Hello, hello my friends. Welcome back to my MS podcast. I am so happy that you are here, whether this is your first episode tuning in or if you [00:02:00] have been here since day one. Welcome, welcome, and I'm so glad that you are here for this exact episode.
Because I wanna share a moment that I recently had where I realized that I have been having the same argument with myself for years. Like, literally years. And I think part of me knew it was happening all along, but I kept trying to ignore it I kept trying to ignore the obvious because I never wanted to stop.
I was obsessed with being productive. So it didn't matter the circumstances, I kept pushing through to get it all done, to plow through exhaustion, because I genuinely wanted, and honestly still want, to do it all. And for a long time, I convinced myself that was strength, right? Like, if I could push through and [00:03:00] still get it done, that was me being strong Well then, I got MS.
But instead of having this come to Jesus moment, I took that as a sign that I needed to dig even deeper to still get it all done. It wasn't like I had this realization like, "I really need to recalibrate. I really need to set some new expectations for myself in a day." No, I just stacked more pressure on myself that if I could stay disciplined enough, healthy enough, positive enough, organized enough, then maybe MS wouldn't take away my ability to be productive.
So like every night, I keep making these little bargains with myself like, "Tomorrow I'm gonna be more productive. Tomorrow I'm gonna catch up and actually maybe even get ahead. Like, I'll answer the text messages, clean the house, get the work done, schedule the appointments, be more present, and oh by the way, I'm also [00:04:00] going to drink my water, take my supplements, get my movement, and go to bed earlier."
Right? Like can you relate to this, right? It's like all of it. And the crazy part is I genuinely believed I could do it, which is wild because logically I know better. I know I have MS. I know my energy is different now. I spend so much time trying to support my body. My CoQ10, my leafy greens, my hydration, like all of it, right?
But every morning I wake up with the same pressure. That pressure that hits before I even get out of bed. It's like the second my eyes open. Before I check in with even how I actually feel that day, my agenda is already running in my mind, and it's already determined my day before my energy and my health did.
It's like my to-do list is non-negotiable. [00:05:00] It was just a matter of how much resistance from my body I would have to try to fight through it. And part of me thought that was a good thing because I didn't want MS to win. I didn't want MS to determine my day. I wanted to prove I could still do all the things that I wanted to do.
I could still get everything done in a day. But recently, I had a moment that made me realize just how deep this pattern actually goes for me. Because the truth is, this didn't start with MS. I've spent a lifetime building my identity around overachieving long before the MS diagnosis ever came around. I don't think I ever really knew how to sit still.
Like, even growing up, I was not the kid that was sitting and watching cartoons on a Saturday morning. I [00:06:00] always needed to be doing something, and even my hobbies had to be productive. Like, you know, as a little girl, you make those beaded bracelets and necklaces? Yeah, I did that, and then I wanted to make a little business out of it, so I would sell them at garage sales.
And in high school, I didn't sit in the cafeteria and eat with my friends during lunch. I went to the guidance counselor's office, not because I needed counseling, but because I was helping to lead programs of welcoming other students into the high school. Then, when I get to college, I barely had my dorm room set up, and I already had joined this one student organization and committed myself to attending their national conference that was just a month away.
And by junior year, I was president of that organization, the first student in the college to hold that position as a junior. And even that wasn't enough. Like, I still wanted the whole college experience, [00:07:00] so I rented a house with my friends. We threw parties. We had fun. And I vividly remember one Halloween, we threw a party at that house, and we had been decorating all day, getting the food ready, the decorations up, setting everything up.
And right before the party started, I went upstairs to squeeze in a little more work. And my roommate literally had to come upstairs and tell me to stop working because the party had, was starting. All of the people were downstairs, and I am still upstairs on my computer trying to be productive. And here's the kicker.
At that time, I thought that hyperproductivity was a badge of honor. Like, I hate admitting this, but I kinda felt like that made me the girl who was able to do it all. I was living that social life of college and yet acing the academic route as well. And to no surprise, at one point over the years, I started [00:08:00] taking yoga, likely to help manage some stress.
And ready for this irony? I couldn't even just stay a student and just roll out my mat and have my own yoga practice. Nope. This girl right here needed to become a certified yoga instructor, and not just with one 200-hour certification program. I did three. Like, what? And I laugh about this now, but it also makes me sad.
It really does, because I look back on all of these seasons in life, and I see how hard on myself I have been, how much I have constantly pushed myself further, even when I wanted to slow things down. And then I entered the corporate world, where I was climbing the ladder at Fortune 500 companies and working on incredible projects.
And then when I went home, I was building my nutrition business at night and on the weekends. [00:09:00] And then I started taking the train up to Manhattan to study functional nutrition, so I was getting certifications outside of the corporate job that I was having. Then in 2014, when I ended my corporate career to go full-time with my business, I moved up to New York to attend culinary school, and even that, I attended culinary school during the day, and I was the girl who went back to school at night to take night classes when all of my other friends were going out and enjoying life in Manhattan.
Why am I going back and taking extra classes? I was getting the full experience during the day. What did I think was going to happen by forcing myself back into the classroom at night? And looking back, I can see this so clearly now. I knew that some of these things were, like, crazy in the moment, but I almost didn't know any other way.
At the time, it felt normal. [00:10:00] I thought it made me disciplined and driven and successful. But I'm realizing now that some of the worst stress in my life isn't coming from inflammatory foods or toxins that I'm exposed to or lack of sleep. It's the constant belief that no matter what I accomplish, it's never enough.
And when your identity gets wrapped in productivity, what happens when your body can't produce that same way anymore? Like, who am I if I can't over-perform? That is the question that I have been sitting with, and as you can imagine, it doesn't feel comfy cozy. Because here's the thing about burnout. Your body keeps the score.
You can only override your body for so long. Eventually, it reaches a breaking point, and my breaking point was when I came home from culinary school. I joke that I, like, [00:11:00] had to crawl my way to the train station to come home, but that's not much of an exaggeration. I have never, to date, ever experienced a level of fatigue like that before.
My cortisol levels had bottomed out. My body was like, "And we are done." I'm done trying to outrun the exhaustion, the stress, and the warning signals. And for the first time in my life, pushing harder wasn't working anymore. At the time, I remember saying, like, "My button to dig deeper is broken. I can no longer dig deeper."
Now, I didn't know it, but this was MS fatigue. I didn't have my diagnosis at the time, but that actually, number one, was MS fatigue, but also was the worst MS fatigue I have ever experienced. And I had to slowly rebuild, like so many of us do when that MS fatigue hits [00:12:00] and ramps up. I struggled to get out of bed in the morning.
Like, I would do one child's pose on the floor, eat breakfast, and then go right back to bed. And it took weeks to start regaining my energy. And here's the part that I don't wanna admit, but I'm going to anyways because I think it might really help you, and you might be able to relate to this as well. The second I started feeling better, the second I started feeling better, I immediately tried maximizing every ounce of energy again.
If I was at fifty percent, I wanted fifty-one. If I got to seventy-five, I wanted ninety. I constantly fight the energy that I have, feeling like anything less than ultra-productive is failure. I believed this for years, and it's something I can't [00:13:00] ignore anymore. It wasn't until recently that I started to see the toll that this was actually taking, not just on my energy, but on my nervous system.
It's like every single week when I couldn't keep up, the anxiety would spiral. I'd tell myself I had fallen behind again, so I'd work the weekends to try to make up the time. It sounds odd to say, but the reality is I was shaming myself, and that shame cycle only made MS fatigue harder to recover from.
And here's the thing about a dysregulated nervous system. Your ability to tolerate life dramatically decreases. Like everything around you feels louder and more irritating. I felt like I was crying more easily than I ever have in my life. I felt constantly frustrated with myself, with others, with situations.
I was more emotional than ever [00:14:00] before. And that's when I realized something. This wasn't just physical exhaustion anymore. My nervous system was completely overloaded. I couldn't fight my body and my nervous system at the same time. The fight itself was the problem. Every time I tried to push past my limits, every time I tried to m- make those bargains with myself about tomorrow, every time I tried to shame myself for not hitting an impossible standard, I was adding stress on top of stress.
And the worst part? The stress was making MS worse, which made my energy worse, which made the shame worse. Do you see the cycle? It was like I couldn't escape it. And that's when I knew something had to change. Well, this past Mother's Day weekend, I had just returned home from a work trip in Connecticut, and there were a [00:15:00] ton of things that I needed to catch up on.
But it was Mother's Day weekend and I decided not to work just for one weekend. And at first, of course, I told myself I was gonna fall behind. The podcast wouldn't get done. YouTube would never get launched. The algorithm was gonna ghost me. All those catastrophic thoughts- came rushing in. But instead of listening to them, I did something different.
I acknowledged the thought and said, I'm not responding right now. Like as those thoughts came in one by one, I literally said, I acknowledge the thought and I am not responding right now. Now, if you're rolling your eyes listening to this, I get it. Same. Like first time I heard about this concept, I was like, yep, nope, a little too like woo-woo for me.
I'm better than that. Well, guess what? Joke's on me. I humbled myself and I gave it a try and it has [00:16:00] helped so much. So if you have things that are constantly running in the back of your mind that are not serving you, they are more the voice of like your own worst enemy and maybe part of your own shame cycle.
Here's what I want you to do. The minute you hear it, stop and say, I acknowledge that thought and I'm not responding right now. Now, you may need to say that every minute on day one, but then day two, it's every five minutes. Day three, every 30 minutes. Day four, every hour. Like each day, it starts to loosen its grip.
And that's what happened for me. So I didn't work the weekend. And when Sunday came, I felt so much better. My energy was better. My nervous system was calmer and I was overall less anxious. And I think that's when [00:17:00] it finally hit me. I don't want to spend my whole life fighting. Fighting my body, fighting my energy, fighting my reality.
Because the truth is, MS is already exhausting enough. I don't need to add a war within myself on top of that. I kept acting like acceptance meant giving up. Like if I stop pushing myself past my limits, somehow MS would win. But now I can say I honestly know and believe that that is not true. I think constantly overriding myself is what has been stealing so much of my peace.
And I would go on to say my joy and my health too. I think for years I've secretly been trying to prove something. Prove that MS couldn't slow me down. Prove I could still do it [00:18:00] all. Prove that I was still capable. But capable according to who? Productive according to who? Like, keep up with who? Why? I don't want my daughter growing up believing life is just one endless performance.
I don't want her learning that rest has to be earned, or that her worth is tied to how much she can produce in a day. And if I don't want that for her, why am I still doing it myself? So I am trying. I am very much a work in progress, but I am trying to do this differently moving forward. Instead of waking up and immediately asking, "How much can I squeeze into this day?"
I'm trying to ask myself, "What actually matters today? What is realistic given the energy that I have? What would support my nervous system today?" A question I [00:19:00] never thought I would ask myself, but now I know it matters. I don't want every day to be an endless chase and pressure to squeeze out every ounce of productivity anymore.
Maybe it's learning how to stop living like you're constantly behind. Maybe it's learning how to let what we did do be enough. And honestly, I think that's the real truce I'm trying to make, not with MS, but with myself. I see it differently now, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. And that's the question I wanna leave you with today.
What would change if the thing you needed to stop fighting wasn't MS, but yourself? And my friend, if you are listening to this and thinking, "I needed to hear this," or maybe, "I didn't [00:20:00] realize how much I've been fighting myself, too." If you've been feeling stuck in that constant cycle of pushing and crashing and shaming yourself and then trying to push harder again, first, you are not alone, and I hope this episode made you realize that.
It's why I put so much of my personal stories out there. They're not always glamorous, but I do it in the hopes that it helps you feel a little less alone, and maybe it helps your journey be just a little bit easier. And that's also exactly why I created my free class, because this conversation that we've had today goes so much deeper than productivity.
In my class, we talk about what it actually looks like to support your energy, to regulate your nervous system, and to build habits that work with your body so you're not constantly fighting yourself anymore, [00:21:00] especially in seasons where your capacity is limited because of MS fatigue, especially for those of us living with MS while also trying to show up for our families, for work, and so much more.
So if this episode felt like someone finally put words to what you have been experiencing all along and struggling with but haven't been able to adequately express it, I would love for you to join us in my free class. You can view the invitation over at aleenebrennan.com/webinar. Again, it's aleenebrennan.com/webinar.
I would love to see you there. All right, my friends, I'm gonna wrap it there. As always, I hope you enjoyed this conversation, and I hope to see you in class this week. Take care. And that's it for today's episode of my MS podcast. I hope you're walking away with one small step you can put into practice today, [00:22:00] because that is how real change happens.
And remember, MS has its own biological clock, which means the sooner you start, the more power you have to influence your future. The best time to begin is now. That's why I created my free webinar, How to Help Slow MS Progression, starting with just one habit today. Grab your spot at aleenebrennan.com/webinar.
See you there.