Is it true that you can literally work yourself sick? Perhaps. Stress, poor self-care, and insufficient sleep and rest all play their roles. However, what about the way your mental state can shape your healing just the same as it shapes your illness? Recovery duration varies significantly depending on one’s mental state. Nothing proves this more than the influence of mental state and how much it matters in the context of workers getting sick. When there is an extended period off, it negatively impacts the business and the worker. Sickness and healing can vary widely and be as unique as the individuals and their workplaces. Mental state can influence healing based on the value of recovery or the choice to stay on extended sick leave at home. It is a poor message when a person’s sick leave away from their job is much better than whatever is going on in their wellness work world.
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1. Working hard or hardly working: your mind and body’s needs
Are you at the point of burnout after grinding so hard for your everyday nine-to-five (plus mandatory overtime) job? For you, sickness could be a welcome and much-needed break. When you are sick and unable to work, there are “perks”. You can sleep in (since physically you can’t do much else). You can indulge in eating comfort food (if you can prepare it, afford to order it, or manage to keep it down). And you can abstain from contributing to whatever you do professionally, at least until you get better.
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Sickness buys you an adult time-out. When physical illness is linked to burnout, work feels impossible. The physical masks the mental. No one questions your competency, and only you know what your capacity is to manage one more work task that can be too much. Your mental state is your way to know when the demands of the job push you beyond the point of no return until you break.
Physical illness is “acceptable” in a way that a mental break is not. Burnout is often perceived as a weakness, a lack of teamwork, or an inability to handle the demanding aspects of the job. Mental state commands you to give it all you can until you can’t give anymore. A physical illness becomes an important barrier that stops you from pushing yourself further when further is too far. It’s your body crying out for attention.
Physical illness is understood and treated with compassion in ways that mental burnout is not. Somehow, however, your body has figured out what your brain does not connect the dots and realize. Sickness equals acceptable rest. You keep the doctor’s notes going, extending illness and establishing this oddly accommodating series of physical symptoms into a staycation with benefits: rest and delayed responsibility. Isn’t that what sick leave is for—to be used when illness prevents us from working due to our compromised health?
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But what about the other extreme: the workaholic? A workaholic who prioritizes work above all else may still come to work when they’re sick, determined to push through. In such cases, their manager might need to explicitly tell them to go home and recover, rather than simply suggesting it, to prevent others from getting sick.
Being sick is never in the workaholic’s work plan. They can hardly wait to get back to work, which is an extension of their sense of how important they are and a continuation of their connection to personal production goals that define their purpose. From the workaholic’s perspective, sick leave is for chumps (especially if they can cash it out at the end of the year if not used). They take pride in their perfect attendance, never missing a day due to illness, vacation, or using paid time off. A Type A person through and through, they view downtime as something to be conquered and sacrificed for the sake of a task, not as a moment to be welcomed or wasted while feeling unwell. They take their daytime cold medicine with the same enthusiasm as a frat boy gulping down Jello shots, determined to bounce back as quickly as possible, with even more resolve. They are ready to tackle the next project without jeopardizing their health. Nothing is more important than giving honor to the ambitious person they are inside, with their eyes on the ultimate prize: promotion.
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2.) TLC or time for you: your spiritual, social, and emotional needs
Maybe you and your partner have been missing each other. If you didn’t share a bed, you’d never see each other. They work nights, and you work days. The burden of sickness finds its way to your home as an unexpected blessing. As long as you’re sick, your paths cross for a few hours. During those happy hours, you receive TLC from your partner, who is loving and concerned, willing and able to nurse you back to health between their shifts and your naps.
Tea, toast, broth, and orange juice have their healing effects, but quality time is your love language. While you’re under the weather, each act of your partner’s compassion is essential rain where a drought previously existed. Though not able to be prescribed, tender, loving care (TLC) is exactly what you need, even if only for a day. When you add kids into the equation, it’s clear that your partner’s decision to take on the responsibility of caring for them after school—allowing you to enjoy some much-needed “me-time”—deserves recognition, perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize or canonization. Just 24 hours later, and you feel refreshed and back to normal.
3.) A day off (to chill?)
Consider this: if you are underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated, you are like many workers. You may also feel like another nameless, faceless blue-, pink-, or white-collar cog in the corporate machine. You perform your role day after day without complaint. One day, you wake up and you have a slight fever, a tickle in your throat, and a stuffy nose. You decide not to risk it and call your supervisor to let them know you won’t be in today; you’re sick. The medicine you take knocks you out for several hours. When you wake, you order food to be delivered and settle under a throw blanket in a comfy spot on the couch. You choose to binge-watch a Netflix series, and day turns to night. It is good. A day off from work by borderline playing hooky, diagnosing yourself, vegging out in front of the TV, and eating cold take-out, and you are healed!
What you need to heal may differ depending on your mental state and how you view illness, work, support from your loved ones, and how much you like your job. From head to heart, through mind and body, or across a range of feelings, and despite an indomitable spirit, even a brief illness can result in suffering the extremes of emotions while you are out sick. There are so many factors to be considered. Mental state makes the variable intensity of symptoms require more than a cookie-cutter treatment.
Additionally, knowledge of what type of healing is necessary and a reasonable expectation of when you and your doctor estimate that you will return to work must also be evaluated. The workplace can let workers heal from home. With the help of the worker’s mental state and, assuming that they want to get well ASAP, using their comfortable home environment on an outpatient basis can be creatively therapeutic. Most of all, a positive, cooperative mental state can deliver the desired outcome of a rapid and complete recovery, leading to an expedited return to work.
