My Body Keeps Making Me Lie Down

Written by Vania Phitidis
Counsellor & Therapist
Last updated on 2 October 2026

My body keeps making me lie down.

Literally.

I’ve had about five years of pretty relentless stress. Not just being busy, or having a lot on. There were repeated periods of real crisis, with very little space between them, and a lot of emotional and practical stuff to hold. I got very used to mobilising myself, dealing with whatever was in front of me and carrying on.

I’m very good at functioning. Maybe too good.

In March, my osteopath told me that if I didn’t take a step back from caring responsibilities, I would most likely crash.

The timing was almost absurd. At exactly that point, my parents’ needs escalated significantly. Stepping back wasn’t an option. In fact, what was needed was the opposite. I needed to step up.

So I did.

The particular set of crises that had been demanding my attention and energy for so long finally came to an end, and instead of bouncing back, I seemed to go to ground – you could say – as predicted by my osteopath.

I’ve started to wonder whether I was running on adrenaline for much longer than I realised. When there was an active crisis, something that needed sorting out or someone who needed me, there was a reason to keep going. I could mobilise myself and do what needed to be done.

And when that came to an end, there wasn’t the same immediate need to mobilise. It’s as though, without that push, I discovered how little capacity I actually had underneath it all.

I didn’t suddenly become exhausted because I’d stopped firefighting. I wonder if the absence of a fire was what allowed me to feel how exhausted I already was.

It started in June, not long after my dad died, with a really bad SI joint flare. Apart from seeing clients, I had to lie down. I couldn’t really be on my feet or sit in a chair for any length of time. I had treatment and, after a couple of weeks, I started to feel better.

Then, almost immediately, I developed the most extraordinary urticaria. It genuinely felt like wildfire, starting at my feet and gradually making its way up my body. I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t put shoes on and my sleep became even more disrupted. Eventually I needed oral steroids to get it under control.

We went on holiday, and as soon as we were away it flared up again.

When we came home, I felt completely flat. I was exhausted in a way that felt very different from ordinary tiredness. I didn’t really recognise myself. This wasn’t how I knew myself to be.

And then a few days ago I got the most excruciating sciatica. I had to spend the day with my feet up, taking all the pressure off my hips and joints. And then, almost as mysteriously as it had arrived, it went away.

I don’t know what is causing all of this. There are all sorts of possible physiological explanations, and I’m not trying to turn it into a neat story about my body.

But I am making a meaning of it.

Every time I try to get back to business as usual, my body seems to say, “No. You’re lying down.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to learn about rest. In 2017 I had the most horrific flu and was completely knocked out with post-viral fatigue for about three months. I paid a lot of attention to what my body needed then. There was a very clear sequence: I’d had flu, my body was struggling, and I needed to rest.

I was quite good at it. I even put rest in my calendar. I’d take an hour in the afternoon and lie down whether or not I felt tired, because I knew that my body needed the opportunity to recover.

This time is much harder to understand.

There isn’t a clear physical illness that I can point to. It’s been years of stress and strain, with one thing following another, and then suddenly there was less to respond to. I don’t think I realised how much of my energy had been going into staying upright and carrying on.

And I’m finding that I can’t use exactly the same measures of whether I’m okay that I’ve always used.

Yesterday was a good example. I’d had a reasonably good night’s sleep. I worked in the morning, had lunch and went for a walk. The last time I’d done that walk, I’d crawled home, metaphorically speaking. Yesterday I walked home and my energy didn’t crash. I was genuinely pleased about it.

I came home and thought I could probably do some more work. I had energy. I felt okay.

But I’d already done considerably more than I’ve been able to do over the last couple of months, and I had this thought: I need to stop. Have a rest. Don’t wait until you crash.

So I went and lay on my bed and watched something on television. And almost immediately I could feel that my whole body really did want to lie down. I fell asleep for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes.

If I’d carried on, I probably could have done the work. That’s the strange bit. I wasn’t at the point where my body was forcing me to stop. I had to make the decision myself.

I’m beginning to understand that this is a different kind of listening.

It’s not just about noticing that I’m tired and responding to that. Sometimes I’m not tired. Sometimes I actually have energy. But that doesn’t mean I need to spend it.

I have to take into account what I’ve already done, what has been happening in my body, how much recovery I’ve needed recently, and what I know tends to happen when I push on because I still technically can.

I’ve spent a lot of my life measuring my capacity by what I can get myself to do. If I can work, walk, exercise and do all the things that need doing, then I assume I’m okay to do those things.

But there is something else going on here too. I’ve been conditioned to conflate my value with being capable, useful and reliable. Somewhere along the way, being a “good person” became tangled up with being someone who could cope, who could be counted on, who got things done and put others first..

So stopping isn’t always just stopping. Sometimes it bumps up against a much deeper internal driver: if I can do something, shouldn’t I? If someone needs me, shouldn’t I help? If I have the capacity, shouldn’t I use it?

I’m beginning to realise that “I can” isn’t necessarily the same as “it’s a good idea to”.

I’m also starting to realise that I’ve been overfunctioning for years, longer than the five years of active crises. There’s a reason my mother gave me the nickname ‘Dynamo’, and that wasn’t when I was a child!

So the idea of getting back to a place that felt normal to me, my old self, isn’t necessarily what is healthy for me. That’s a lot to take in, process and adjust to.

I’m no longer trying to work out how to get back to the version of me who could just keep going. I’m having to relearn what is appropriate and what is normal for my body, mind and spirit, here and now.

I don’t know what that looks like yet. I suspect it will change as I recover, and I’ll get things wrong along the way.

For now, I’m learning to notice that having the capacity to do something doesn’t necessarily mean that doing it is what I need.

And I’m getting a little better at stopping before I’m made to stop.