Why can being signed off work feel like you're doing something wrong, even when you know you're genuinely unwell? Resting can become tangled up with guilt, productivity, and self-worth. In this episode of Inner Work, Dr Marianne Trent explores why we compare ourselves to colleagues, feel the need to prove we're ill, struggle to switch off from work, and find it difficult to give ourselves permission to rest and recover.
Have you ever been signed off work and then spent half your time feeling guilty for not working? You know you're unwell, your doctor knows you're unwell. You might even have the ability to tell someone else in exactly the same situation that they're not well and they shouldn't be working. But somehow when it's you, resting can feel suspiciously like failing. So why do we find it so difficult to be ill? I'm Dr. Marianne Trent and this is Inner Work. Hi, welcome along. There can be so many different reasons why you're signed off sick from work. And yet of course, intellectually, we know that we're there for a reason, but it sometimes doesn't stop that sense that it feels like we're skiving, it feels like we should be doing more or that we should still be at work and it's not right. What we're going to look at today is just to have a little examine of some of those thoughts and feelings.
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I think one of the tricky things is being able to imagine perhaps what your colleagues or other people doing the same job as you will be doing right now, because you're usually part of that workforce. And we almost need to give ourselves permission to just allow them to be doing that whilst we are doing what we are doing. We don't need to be constantly comparing and contrasting because that's more likely to make it that you're coming up short. Your job right now is to help yourself feel better or to rest or to heal. Their job is to be doing whatever they're doing. So we're just trying to encourage ourselves to stay in our own lane and not compare ourselves to them because it might well be that we're not going to measure up favourably to that. And even if you know that you've been in a really busy work environment and that it's going to be more stressful because you're not there, that just has to be accepted because right now you're not well enough to be at work for whatever reason that is.
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Like I said, your job right now is to get yourself well again so that you can go back out there and kind of do all the things again. Or it might be that you are like, "This work is really part of the problem. I need to find something else to do," but you're going to need to find the energy to do all of that as well. And I think the next thing I want to talk to you about is the idea that our productivity gets so tangled up with our self-worth. It's that idea that if I'm not producing something, completing something, doing something, achieving something, properly earning my money, then it isn't enough. I'm not enough. I'm not validated. I'm not who I'm used to being. Again, we need to just take a little look and just think, right, right now my productivity, I'm allowing myself to perhaps be less productive than I usually would be because I'm trusting that that's part of my story to becoming well again.
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So it's just accepting and tolerating that even if it feels a little bit tricky. Now I want to talk to you about that urge to prove that you're really, really ill. And I'm going to give you a little example from when I was off sick after losing my own dad and I was doing some really unusual things. And on the days where my children were at school or at the Child Minders where I would usually be at work, it gave me time to do other things. I was learning how to make soap in my kitchen at one point, but I couldn't be comparing and contrasting that to the job that I do as a qualified clinical psychologist. So just because I'm well enough to follow a simple recipe to make soap doesn't mean that I'm able to hold a clinical caseload of risk and of responsibility of running supervision sessions, of going to supervision sessions, because those two jobs are very, very different.
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So me being able to spend time producing something and immersed in an activity like making soap gave me a break from the pressures of my work and was all part of my recovery. So do try not to constantly be like, "Oh, well, if you've gone out for a walk, then it must mean that you're well enough to be at work." Because I really do think that those two things are not the same. I also want to check that you definitely are off work because actually keeping an eye on your emails, on your phone or on your work laptop or occasionally logging into Teams or seeing how your workflow is going, that is not sick leave. If you're on sick leave, all of that should be parked over here or parked with someone else to get them to do that. If you are on sick leave, you are not meant to be doing any of those things because you're not well enough to be doing them.
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And I know, I know, I know, I know that being disconnected from that or feeling like you can trust other people to do things, that can be really hard. But we need to know that if you are off sick, you're likely not even insured to be doing some of those things as well. So it's really empowering yourself to stay boundaried, to not keep checking in, to not keep doing part of your job, unless that's what you've been agreed that you're going to do. Unless you're doing some sort of phased return programme, there should be a very different setting between you working and you not working. So I really just want you to make sure that you are in work off mode, not work on partially on mode. I want you to just really be honest with yourself. Recovery really isn't something that you need to perform efficiently.
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You don't need to cram every second of the day with useful, productive things. It really isn't that. A day where you spent genuinely resting or maybe gently moving your body, nourishing yourself with some homemade food or something healthy. The other day I went to the shop and I just walked there and I picked up some pre-sliced watermelon and it was so delicious. A day spent nourishing yourself, obviously that's not all I ate that day. A day where you're able to start rebuilding those blocks is really, really important. And I really, as a last though, want you to have a think about chunks of sick leave. Obviously different employers will vary, but when it comes to the NHS, often it's better to have one period of sick leave rather than multiple events of sick leave. So what I don't want is for all the guilt, the pressure, the shame, the worry about what's happening at work when you're not there to mount up in your kind of pressure list to get you back to work sooner than you are ready to be there.
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What we want is for when you return to work for you to be able to maybe do a phased return, but to start to thrive, to actually enjoy being back with your colleagues, to enjoy doing the work that you have chosen as your career and to help that enrich your life, not detract from it. So I really want to make sure that by the time you go back to work that you really are well enough to be there or certainly curious about whether your current wellness will be sustained. So I appreciate that workplace HR and how much sick leave you've had in the past and whether you even get paid sick leave at all. And if you're self-employed like me, you don't often, that might mean that you're going back to work sooner. But if you're employed and you do get good sick leave policies, good sick leave pay, just make sure that you genuinely are well enough to be back at work.
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Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of Inner Work. I would love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this episode of Inner Work, I think you might also really enjoy the one on safety and why that might be what we're striving for. The next episode of Inner Work will be along at 8:00 PM UK time. Thanks so much for being part of my world. Do be kind to yourself. I'll see you soon. Take care.
