Learning To Feel Safe To Rest: Workaholism, Motherhood, Identity Shifting, Substance Abuse

Rest can feel like failure when your nervous system has been trained to survive through productivity. I’m sharing a raw identity shift that took years to reach: becoming the non-workaholic version of me. The kind of change where you stop measuring your worth by output, stop spiraling when you sit down, and finally feel safe being present with your life.

I talk through the moment I realized I had a real problem, sitting on the couch with my family while feeling terrible inside simply because I wasn’t working. We unpack why workaholism is often a nervous system pattern, not a simple “time management” issue, and how earlier coping like substance use can mask the same discomfort. If you’ve ever felt anxious on your day off, guilty for resting, or scared your business will crumble without constant effort, you’ll recognize yourself here.

If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a recovering workaholic friend, and leave a review so more people can find the support they need.

Transcript

Welcome And Listener Milestone

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you ever get the feeling that you're destined for an even bigger, bolder, more magical life? Welcome to the Conscious Clove Up. I'm your host, intuitive energy healer and coach Crystal Ward. My goal is to help you create the life you fantasize about by teaching you energetic spiritual laws of the universe and neuroscience tools. I'll share how I utilize these teachings in my own life with stories of single motherhood, entrepreneurship, finances, and relationships. Let's dive on into the depths of consciousness and glow up from the inside out.

The Identity Shift I Craved

When Work Became A Compulsion

Why Rest Felt Unsafe

The Break That Healed Me

Grace With Change And Sobriety

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hello, good morning, afternoon, or evening. Welcome back to the conscious glow up. I have been loving looking at the stats for this podcast. I'm now at 67 total downloads in six continents, and I know that will grow as I create more episodes. But I'm very proud of myself for this milestone. If you've been a listener of this show and have been enjoying it, I would love if you could give back to me and rate the show so that you can help me grow even more. And if you want to be notified when new episodes air, then go ahead and subscribe and you will be the first to know. What I have for you today is an episode about one of my identity shifts. I love talking about identity because it is the thing that is woven in every part of our life. We have one big identity, but with many different facets. Right now I feel like I'm in the in-between of two very different facets of my identity, kind of like different personalities. And this isn't like a, oh, it's been a few days kind of thing, or a seasonal thing, or an I'm on my period kind of thing, or I ate too much gluten and can't get off the couch kind of few days. This has been more like a three-month transformation or shift, so I'm pretty sure it is just a thing for me now. This new personality, this new crystal that I am dealing with is actually a version of me who I have known I needed to and desperately wanted to step into for about five years now. The version I'm talking about is the non-workaholic crystal. I used to spend literally all night working on my business, and I mean until three in the morning, and even then I would have to force my laptop shut if my eyes weren't burning with fatigue yet. And if I had a day off from serving at the restaurant I work at and my daughter was at her dad's house, game over. I was seeing no light of day other than the blue light that emitted from my screens. I started my own business when I was on eight months maternity leave and during COVID, so you can imagine how free my days were, other than being a stay-at-home mom, for me to mentally focus on my business as much as I wanted to. And I really feel like it turned into an actual disease. I think there does need to be Workaholics Anonymous if it doesn't already exist. I didn't realize it right away, but about two years into my entrepreneurial journey, one night I was sitting in the living room with my then two-year-old daughter and her father. He and I were on the couch and she was walking around the living room picking up things and putting them in an Easter basket like she liked to do for twelve months out of the year. That night, sitting there with him, watching her, I realized something that felt so familiar, but that I'd never actually paid attention to. Sitting on the couch, watching my kid's dad laughing and enjoying his time with her, all I could think about was how horrible I felt inside that I was not working. And that was when I realized the severe problem that I had. It wasn't just about wanting to spend all of my waking hours at my desk with my head buried in my coaching business, but it was about the shame that came with the desire to work instead of spending quality, focused, intentional, present time with the beautiful person I had created. The person whose life I knew would speed in front of my eyes, like all parents before me had promised. They grow up so quick, enjoy it, was a phrase I heard all the time, and every time I heard it, it felt new again, like I wasn't taking them seriously, and that I would strongly regret it in 18 years. But it wasn't just a simple desire to spend my life in my laptop. It was a deeply rooted uncomfortability that my body could not shake at the time. It was not that my mind didn't want to be in the room with my family, but it was that my nervous system had been so wired to work since I was very young that working was the only thing that felt comfortable or safe to me. I actually just had a huge realization as I'm reliving these memories in my mind for this podcast episode that after college I spent a lot of time drinking and doing drugs. Well, in college too, but after a lot because I had no schoolwork and only a job to clock in and out of. What I'm realizing is that those substances actually allowed me to slow down, to feel safe and calm, and to just fucking relax. They gave me a chance to get out of my head and into my body and be present in my life. The memory of me anxious on the couch wanting to work on my business, I was about six months sober during a year and a half long sobriety stint I took in that era. So it's no wonder that all my feelings and anxieties were coming to the surface for me to face ultimately so that I could process them and start to operate in a different, more healthy way. Like I said, this was years ago, sometime in 2021, I think, and only now am I finally able to embody the person who does not feel incredibly anxious, unproductive, and lazy when she relaxes. I finally no longer feel like I am doing something bad when I am not working on my business or being productive in my life. The part of me that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the now three-month-ish version of me, is the version of me who feels safe to live without feeling the constant need to be producing. And God, what a load off that has been. I knew five years ago that I wanted and needed to change this, but despite that knowing, it was still really hard for me to just be that new person because of how terrified my nervous system felt when I wasn't working, and how strongly the belief that I am not enough unless I do a shit ton of work was having a hold on me and my life. Things we experienced as children have a way of shaping who we are as adults and how we operate in our lives. For me, it was a full list front and back of chores on the weekend before I got to play Xbox or hang out in the woods in my backyard with my friends, the toads, the snakes, my dogs and cat, and my little sister. And yeah, I know that chores are great for character development and doing your share around the house, and they are important, and I am not saying that no child should do chores, but I programmed into myself at a very young age that I was only safe and valuable once all of my work was completed and if it all passed inspection. So it is no wonder that I never felt okay to relax, because in my mind, no amount of work I did in my business was enough, probably because I didn't have somebody externally, like a parental figure, giving me the okay that I was finished and had done enough, and that I had deserved to be doing something else now, something that I wanted to do that was not work-related. So I worked endlessly, waiting for the non-existent you've done enough voice from myself. I constantly worked through the formative years of my daughter's life, spending all of my extra mental bandwidth thinking about my business. The years after noticing that anxiety and ease, that time I was on the couch, I still spent day in and day out working because not only did I feel it was still the only safe way to live, but I also assumed that if I pushed myself to exhaustion every chance I got, I would sign more clients. And the irony, oh, the irony on that one is that my business was the most inconsistent financially while I worked the most. But once I finally started prioritizing other areas of my life, such as the gym, going for walks, and exploring hobbies, did I actually start to make more of a regular income go figure? I even had a coach while I was in her mastermind about two years ago tell me that I had to give myself one full day off from business every week, and she demanded it. She literally told me because I said so, and honestly, she needed to demand it, and I understood why she was so serious, because she saw and knew what I was doing to myself and my life working like it would save me from drowning. But even she, a coach I look up to looked up to, who had what I wanted for my own business, could not even convince me to take time off. It has been a long, slow process, but I finally made it. I think what finally got me to the other side fully is actually the relationship I'm in. I've been with him for five months, and when we first got together, I decided I wanted to fulfill my old hobby of going to Raves and just letting the fuck loose in my life. So I took off all of December, this past December, it is April right now. I took off all of December, not only from my business, aside from when I saw clients, but I also kind of paused my intuition development classes. Though at the time I did not realize how beneficial that period actually was for my business and for my life and for myself, because I was constantly telling myself how bad it was that I wasn't focusing on my career or classes, which go hand in hand because intuition mastery is going to be a key aspect of my business. I was feeling like I was putting myself behind, doing myself a huge disservice by not focusing on what I was building. But now I see in hindsight how that month-long sabbatical was actually the final step to me healing my workaholism. So I gave myself until January to relax, party, and spend as much time with my new boyfriend as I wanted. And since January 1st, it has been back to business, however, with a much different process. I actually do more, but in less time. I don't work just to work, just to check off a to-do list. I don't work just to feel productive or safe or valuable or good about myself. Now, when I work, it is intentional. It is actually always quite productive. I've started this podcast, I've hosted multiple live webinars and workshops, which if you want information on when those roll out or the next ones, then email me at crystal at crystalwar.com, K R Y S D A L, and that is where I send the invitations to those free workshops. And in this time, I've also completed more classes with my school, and my intuition training has blown open my gifts in ways that amaze not just my clients, but myself as well. What felt like too long of a break was actually the final unwinding of what I knew I needed to rewire in my brain and in my life. I learned that I will not die or become a less valuable human when I am not working. I learned that my business will always be there for me. I learned that I am still intuitive even when I'm not actively watching new class modules, and that every day my gifts are still expanding. I learned that my body is actually safe to relax, to just be, even if I haven't done something business productive. I learned that I can just be a human and my entire life and livelihood will not crumble in front of my eyes. I learned that I can enjoy watching the birds build their nests outside, or go for hour-long walks and play with random people's dogs, or eat frozen yogurt with my daughter, and not have to constantly be thinking about what I should be doing in my business instead, or what I will be doing later. I've learned that I get to be present in my life, and everything will still be okay. And that working until 3 a.m. every night is actually not going to be the thing that makes me a millionaire. I am so far on the other swing of the pendulum that now I almost have to force myself to work. There are still some days when I'm pretty gung-ho and it feels great, but for the most part I'm finally so rooted to my innate value as a human that I no longer get off on being productive anymore. And if I had to choose which side of the pendulum's swing I wanted to be on, it would definitely be this side, even though sometimes I really have to force myself to work. This lesson, this identity shift, is also reminiscent of my sobriety desire. I've known for 10 years that I wanted to be completely sober. I knew 10 years ago, even before I knew I was going to have a business or become a master intuition, but it has been exactly that amount of time, 10 years, that's gotten me here. And I've gone through many phases of sobriety up to a year and a half in one period. But I always gave myself grace. I knew that through the desire and through the trial and error that I would one day embody sober crystal. So here I am, sober and a recovering workaholic. If you have an identity shift that you have been desiring to embody, give yourself that same grace. Give yourself the time of trial and error. And know that each time that feels like an error, or you are feeling still far from the embodied version of that desired identity, that every day you are still taking the steps to become her or him, and that you will get there as long as you do not give up on yourself.