What’s Wrong With Me?

That was the question running through my mind the day my body simply stopped.

I was sitting on the couch at home and I couldn’t move.

Not because I didn’t want to — but because I literally couldn’t. My body had shut down in a way I had never experienced before. For four hours, I sat there frozen, exhausted and confused.

And the only thought in my mind was:

What’s wrong with me?

At the time, I had no understanding of the nervous system. There was no language for burnout, nervous system overload or survival mode the way there is today.

So I assumed the problem had to be me.

I was a single mom with three kids. It was Christmas time. I had responsibilities at work, deadlines to meet and a life that felt like it was constantly demanding more of me.

I had been dropping balls.

Missing deadlines.

Forgetting things.

Feeling overwhelmed in ways I had never experienced before. So I did what many women do when things start falling apart.

I blamed myself.

Clearly, I thought, this must be a time management problem.

Looking for the Fix

Around that time, I enrolled in a course called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People through the Franklin Covey Institute. I believed what I needed was better organization. Better scheduling. Better systems.

That course changed my life.

But not in the way I expected.

What I began to realize was that the problem wasn’t my calendar. The problem was that I was constantly putting out fires. And most of those fires weren’t even mine.

The Pattern So Many Women Live In

Somewhere along the way, many women learn that our role is to take care of everyone else.

We smooth things over.

We solve problems.

We hold families together.

We manage emotions.

We carry responsibilities that often don’t even belong to us.

And when something goes wrong, people instinctively turn to us to fix it.

For a long time, that was my life.

In fact, it got to the point where people around me would create fires — and then look at me to put them out.

And I did.

Because that’s what I believed I was supposed to do.

The Cost of Ignoring Yourself

What I didn’t realize at the time was how deeply I was ignoring my own needs. I had absolutely no compassion for myself.

Like many women, I had been conditioned to push through. If we have feelings, we’re told we’re being too emotional. If we express anger, we’re told we’re being difficult.

So over time, we learn something very subtle but very powerful:

We learn to dismiss our own experience.

We override our exhaustion.

We silence our emotions.

We ignore the signals our body is trying to send.

Until one day, the body says:

Enough.

A Different Way of Living

Years later, after doing deep healing work and understanding the nervous system, I can see that moment very differently.

There was nothing wrong with me.

My nervous system was exhausted.

My body had simply reached its limit.

And today, I live very differently.

Recently, there was a situation in my family involving one of my brothers. I called my mother to check in and she said, “I’ll let you find out what’s going on.”

And my response surprised even me. I said, “No thank you. This isn’t my story. This is between you and him.”

The old version of me would have jumped right in. I would have gathered information, tried to solve the problem, smoothed things over and carried the emotional weight of the entire situation.

But that pattern no longer belongs to me.

Because stepping into the middle of someone else’s story doesn’t create peace.

It creates stress.

Drama.

Emotional exhaustion.

It takes a serious toll on the nervous system.

What I Know Now

What I know now is something I wish more women understood. Burnout doesn’t happen because you’re weak. It doesn’t happen because you’re disorganized. And it certainly doesn’t happen because there’s something wrong with you.

Burnout often happens because your nervous system has been carrying too much for too long.

Too much responsibility.

Too many expectations.

Too many emotional fires that were never yours to put out in the first place.

And healing doesn’t come from pushing harder.

It comes from learning how to treat yourself with the same compassion you’ve been giving everyone else.

A Gentle Reminder

If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

I want you to know something important.

Sometimes the real question isn’t what’s wrong with you.

Sometimes the real question is:

How long have you been ignoring what your body has been trying to tell you?

And perhaps the most powerful step forward is not fixing yourself.

But finally learning how to listen.