The Exhaustion That Rest Doesn't Fix
On going viral, the voice that wouldn't let me stop, and what's underneath it
Last week, a post went viral.
Over 115,000 people saw it. Almost 2,500 liked it. Hundreds of comments. My phone became a small, vibrating rectangle of notifications, and my full-time job became responding to strangers on the internet.
Which I am genuinely glad about. The conversation mattered. The rage in those comments was real, and it was right, and it needed somewhere to go.
But by Friday, I was spent.
And somewhere underneath the spent was a voice.
You should be capitalising on the momentum. This is the moment to post again. People are paying attention right now - you can’t just go quiet. What if they forget about you?
That voice is not good strategy. That voice is Good Girl Conditioning wearing a LinkedIn growth hack costume.
It is the voice that says your value is conditional on your productivity. That rest is something you have to earn. That being useful, to the algorithm, to the audience, to the conversation, is not optional.
I know that voice intimately. I’ve been studying it for twenty years. I still have to talk back to it on a regular basis.
The exhaustion women carry is not usually about the things we can point to.
It’s not the job, exactly. It’s not the kids, exactly. It’s not the 400 LinkedIn notifications or the long weekend or the to-do list with no bottom.
It’s the invisible rules running underneath all of it.
Be useful. Be available. Keep going. Don’t drop the ball. Don’t go quiet. Don’t take up space resting when you could be taking up space producing.
Those rules are exhausting to follow. Especially when you’ve been following them so long that you’ve stopped noticing you’re doing it.
I had to notice one of them in myself this week. A small one, in the scheme of things. But it’s always the small ones that remind you the work is ongoing.
Which is why, on Thursday 4 June at 7pm UK, I’m running a free two-hour masterclass:
Why You’re Exhausted (And It’s Not Because You’re Doing Too Much)
Not because the exhaustion is your fault. But because the rules creating it have a name, a source, and - crucially - an end. And once you can see them, you can start deciding which ones you’re actually willing to keep following.
In two hours we’ll cover:
Why the exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix is coming from somewhere deeper than your to-do list
The invisible rules women are conditioned to follow - and how to spot which ones are running you
Why everything you’ve tried so far has been treating the symptom, not the source
What actually shifts it
It’s free. It’s the real thing. And I think it’s going to name something for a lot of you.
Register here - https://good-girl-deprogramming.kit.com/exhausted
Thursday 4 June · 7:00 to 9:00pm UK · Online via Zoom · Recording available if you can’t make it live.
I hope you had a weekend with something in it that reminded you you’re a person.
Mx