There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes from fighting your own body. I know this because I spent years doing it — pushing through the discomfort, dismissing the signals, telling myself it would pass. It rarely did.
My gut has always been sensitive. I grew up thinking this was just the way things were — some people have robust digestive systems, and some don't. I was in the second group. It wasn't until much later that I began to understand what was actually happening, and more importantly, what I could do — or stop doing — about it.
The first thing I got wrong
I thought the goal was to eliminate the problem. To fix whatever was broken and return to some version of normal. This turned out to be the wrong frame entirely. The goal, I've come to believe, is not elimination but relationship — learning to live with the body rather than in spite of it.
The body often knows things the mind hasn't caught up with yet. The gut, in particular, seems to speak a language of its own — not in words, but in sensations, in timing, in the particular way it responds to a difficult day.
This realisation didn't come from a book or a doctor. It came from paying attention. Slowly, over many years, noticing patterns. Connecting dots that seemed unrelated. Understanding that what I ate mattered, but that how I ate, and in what state of mind, mattered just as much.
What slowing down actually meant
Tai Chi helped. Not because it's a digestive cure — it isn't — but because it taught me to notice. To be present in the body. To feel the difference between tension and ease, and to understand that I had some role in which one dominated.
Slowing down wasn't just physical. It was about learning not to power through when the body was asking for something else. It meant eating more slowly, paying attention to what I was eating and why, and creating space — in the day, in the week — that wasn't filled with noise.
I won't pretend this is simple or that I've mastered it. Some days are harder than others. But there is a real difference between the version of me who treated her gut as an inconvenience to be managed and the one who has learned, gradually and imperfectly, to listen.