What Is Wrong With Me? Learning to Listen Before Your Body Becomes a Crisis

Why We Ask, "What Is Wrong With Me?"

In February of 2017, I got the flu. Just as I started feeling better, I got it again. Then I got it a third time. By that point, I was behind on work, behind on laundry, behind on life, and becoming increasingly frustrated with my body. I remember thinking, “Come on. Get it together.”

I had been sick for nearly three months, and somehow I had turned that into a character issue. I was not asking what I needed. I was asking what was wrong with me.

Eventually, another thought entered my mind, almost like a brief moment of sanity.

“You’ve had the flu for three months. Of course you’re run down.”

That thought made perfect sense, yet it felt strangely unfamiliar. I was used to pushing and ignoring my body. In my mind, I believed determination could solve almost anything.

As I reflect on that time, I am thankful another question came to me.

“Can you trust that if you give your body what it needs, it will recover?”

I had to sit with that question for a while. It felt uncomfortable because I was not used to thinking that way. I was used to asking what I needed to do, not what I needed. After all, what did my body have to do with doing laundry? What did fatigue have to do with answering emails or keeping up with responsibilities? I remember wondering whether I was simply being lazy.

When I told my husband what I was thinking and feeling, he quickly reminded me how ridiculous that sounded. In fact, he said, “You are one of the least lazy people I have ever known.”

He was right.

The reality was not a moral failing or a productivity issue. I had been sick for months. My body was exhausted, and my immune system had been working overtime. Recovery required rest, nutrition, hydration, and time.

Somewhere along the way, however, I had learned and created a story that said if I was not doing something, accomplishing something, or producing something, I was lazy. That story made it difficult to receive what I needed in order to heal.

As I look back, I think part of the reason my recovery took so long was that I kept trying to negotiate with my body’s limits instead of respecting them. Over the years, I have realized I am far from alone in this. I have watched and listened as many women have done something similar. They feel exhausted and wonder whether they are becoming depressed again. They struggle to focus and become concerned that something is seriously wrong. They feel emotional and wonder whether they are losing progress.

Sometimes there is an illness, a mental health condition, or another health issue that deserves attention and treatment. I also think many women are hoping it will be something they can simply take a pill for so they can keep going.

I once had a woman tell me through tears, “I can’t slow down. I have too many people counting on me.”

What she did not realize was that God never designed our bodies to carry life this way. We are not robots or androids. Sometimes we need to slow down long enough to rest, grieve, or replenish what has been drained from us.

Many women I know carry too much. They carry their own responsibilities, along with the problems, expectations, and emotions of other people. Many times, the people whose burdens we are carrying never asked us to do it. Often, they do not want us to do it either.

Lately, I have been using the analogy of a paper plate. You know those commercials for the more durable paper plates? Someone piles mounds and mounds of spaghetti onto a thin paper plate until it falls apart and lands in the person’s lap.

Who uses a thin paper plate for that much spaghetti? If you were going to use one, you certainly would not pile it that high. A normal serving of spaghetti would probably hold just fine. But in the commercial, they keep adding more spaghetti and more meatballs until the plate collapses.

Our lives can be like those paper plates. The answer is not to become an indestructible plate. The answer is to respect how much we can reasonably hold. Instead, many of us keep adding meatballs.

Perhaps it is time to examine what we are putting on our plate before asking, “What is wrong with me?”

When Your Body Comes Last

A better question for us to ask is, “What do I need?”

Like me, many people find that question surprisingly difficult to answer. We have spent so much of our lives measuring ourselves by what we accomplish that our needs begin to feel like inconveniences instead of necessities. We pride ourselves on being capable, responsible, productive, and dependable. When our bodies ask us to slow down, our first instinct is often to push harder.

Those qualities serve them well. They are dependable, hardworking, and often the people everyone else counts on. Ironically, those same strengths can make it easy to overlook their own needs. So rather than treating those signals as information, we treat them as obstacles. We override them, minimize them, or simply ignore them. Instead of responding to fatigue with rest, we pour another cup of coffee. Mental overload convinces us to work even harder. A small gap in an already full schedule quickly fills with one more commitment. Heavy emotions are pushed aside by staying busy. Eventually, your body finds another way to get your attention.

What each of us has to learn is that our bodies are always giving us feedback. They communicate through our energy levels, sleep patterns, appetite, concentration, emotions, tension, headaches, pain, illness, and fatigue. Every signal tells part of the story. Wisdom begins when we become curious enough to listen.

Unfortunately, many women live as though their bodies are obstacles to overcome rather than gifts to steward. That mindset shapes the way we respond to ourselves. Exhaustion becomes a reason to work harder. Rest becomes something to earn. Recovery becomes a reward waiting on the other side of productivity.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learn to morally judge ourselves for having needs. If we are tired, we tell ourselves we shouldn't be. We compare ourselves to someone else and think, If she can do it, why can't I? Instead of asking what we need, we push harder.

When we feel overwhelmed, we minimize our experience. We tell ourselves everyone else is managing just fine, so we should be able to as well. If we need rest, we decide we'll wait until everything else is finished. If we are grieving or emotionally drained, we tell ourselves to get over it and move on.

Sometimes I think we speak to ourselves the way an impatient parent speaks to a crying child: Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about. Rather than responding with compassion and curiosity, we respond with criticism and demands. Over time, that voice becomes so familiar that we mistake it for wisdom when, in reality, it keeps us from hearing what our bodies have been trying to tell us all along.

Learning to Listen to Your Body

I see this pattern in many of the women I work with. They are incredibly capable. They show up for their families, careers, friends, churches, and communities. They solve problems, carry responsibility, and rarely let people down. Those strengths serve them well, yet they can also make it difficult to recognize when their own reserves are running low.

It may come through persistent fatigue, difficulty concentrating, frequent illness, tension, disrupted sleep, or a growing sense that everything feels harder than it used to. These experiences are information. They are your body’s way of telling you that something needs your attention.

Listening to your body means allowing your physical, emotional, and mental well-being to become part of the conversation. You begin paying attention to your energy instead of simply pushing through it. You notice patterns. You become curious about what has changed, and you ask better questions before jumping to conclusions.

You might ask yourself, “How long have I been feeling this way? How have I been sleeping? What has my schedule looked like over the past few weeks? Am I recovering from an illness, carrying grief, or living under more stress than usual?”

These questions create room for understanding. They help you respond to your circumstances with wisdom and allow you to consider what your body may be asking from you. I think that is what stewardship looks like. Stewardship means caring wisely for something valuable that has been entrusted to you. As Christians, we often talk about stewarding our time, finances, and gifts. Our bodies deserve that same care.

Your body has carried you through every season of your life. It has carried you through celebrations and disappointments, busy seasons and quiet ones, work, relationships, illness, recovery, and everything in between. It has been faithfully working on your behalf every day.

Have you been listening to what it has been trying to tell you?

I still come back to the question that surfaced during those months when I kept getting the flu. “Can you trust that if you give your body what it needs, it will recover?”

That question has shaped the way I think about far more than physical illness. It has changed the way I approach seasons of grief, chronic stress, and burnout. It reminds me that healing responds to care. I have learned that when I give my body the space, care, and time it needs, it is remarkably faithful to heal. God designed it that way.  

Before you decide something is wrong with you, pause long enough to become curious. Ask yourself what your body has been asking for. You may need rest, nourishment, support, time, or simply a slower pace for a season.

Your body carries you through the life you have been given. Treat it with the wisdom, compassion, and stewardship you would offer something truly precious.

One final thought before we close, I want to make one important distinction. Listening to your body does not mean assuming every symptom is caused by stress or burnout. Sometimes our bodies are alerting us to a medical condition that needs evaluation and treatment. Asking yourself, "What do I need?" may lead you to take a nap, set a boundary, or spend time grieving. It may also lead you to schedule an appointment with your primary care provider, a therapist, or another healthcare professional. The goal is not to guess. The goal is to listen with curiosity and respond with wisdom.