Integritus Prime

Lately, I have been reflecting a lot on my relationships, and how important it is to nurture them. However, the nurturing needs to be reciprocal. I am no longer present to relationships where I am the only one tending the connection.

I have people around me that I love, who seem chronically busy. They are going at breakneck speed in their lives whether it’s professionally or personally. Their leisure time is filled up with volunteering, chores, and many other things. Let’s look a little deeper at what is going on.

One explanation is that the busyness is there to mask something else. In my experience, it’s a coping mechanism for something that is too traumatic or painful or stressful. Indeed, chronic busyness can be a manifestation of denial or avoidance of certain feelings or issues, or a way to suppress those feelings or thoughts about what we cannot control.

My reflections led me back to the relationships that matter most, and I’d like to break it down into three levels of relationships:

1. Relationships with our loved ones: It might be that our loved one is suffering, or the relationship is a source of pain, so we busy ourselves so much that we have zero time to dwell on this reality. It could also be that our loved one is aging or ill, and it’s too devastating to be present to that, so we distract ourselves with tasks that keep the mind working. There is no time to sit and reflect, because that might bring a flood of difficult thoughts and feelings. As a result, we are not present with the ones we love.
2. Relationships with our own emotions: A healthy way to maintain mental clarity and emotional balance is to journal and reflect on how we are feeling from day to day. Chronically busy people have no time to do this, and are often out of touch with how they are really feeling. They are not in the moment, or in their bodies to register what is going on. They are flying from one task or appointment to the next. Ironically, they do not bring themselves fully to any of the myriad things they are so busy doing, creating burnout and hollowness instead of meaning.
3. Relationship with ourselves: Ultimately, how we bring ourselves to any situation involving balance and self-care is a function of our self-love. When we are chronically busy, it’s likely we are beating ourselves up too, about always being late or never catching up to the endless supply of things to do. Someone who loves themselves as a foundation would never compromise their boundaries with self – you see, to overcommit and become too busy all the time is a violation of our boundary with ourselves to love and take care of ourselves. Many people don’t have this boundary. So, we trap ourselves in a downward spiral where there’s always too much to do, and we never have time to do it all.

All the while, keeping ourselves chronically busy means we are not being authentic. The authentic thing to do is to be who we are, and to face ourselves and our lives. To sit with our pain and fear, and to find strategies to cope that uplift, not deplete. The impact of chronically busy people is harmful to self and others, because life, moment by moment, is being missed. People who love us feel discarded and dismissed. We feel exhausted and frenetic. The busy train is charging, and there is no time to admire the view, disembark and smell the flowers, or sit quietly and check in with oneself. The first step would be to slow down, and build in some mindfulness practices. Often, this doesn’t happen without some intervention or complete burnout, because we find ways to defend our chosen coping mechanism.

Share with us your experiences about chronically busy people.