Unhealthy Busyness after Abuse is a Trauma Response

I want to talk about the importance of recognising and responding to hyper-productivity as a coping mechanism during and after toxic and abusive relationships. It's such an important topic because unhealthy busyness is a trauma response that will impact on your healing journey if you don't address it.

Until you really stop to unpack it, busyness seems harmless enough. There doesn’t seem to be anything inherently wrong with filling your schedule to accomplish tasks, meet goals, and keep up with social connections. And it is often said that busyness can help to keep you from ruminating or reduce anxiety, and improve our well-being [1, 2, 3].

But, busyness comes in healthy and unhealthy forms. Healthy busyness comes from the intention to reduce our engagement in unhealthy ruminations, while the intention behind unhealthy busyness is escapism - to avoid processing our emotions or to make ourselves emotionally numb. [4]

People who have experienced trauma have different responses, with some shutting down or withdrawing, and others busying themselves with hyper-productivity to avoid thinking about their experiences. In other words, some people respond using unhealthy busyness.

Feeling the need to stay constantly busy is a coping mechanism and a trauma response.

And, in a society that applauds achievements and productivity, it’s a coping mechanism that is often celebrated rather than being recognised as deeply detrimental to our well-being. We need to recognise unhealthy busyness after abuse as a trauma response.

In emotionally abusive and toxic relationships, our self-worth is systematically eroded. We find ourselves chasing the love and acceptance that is missing from that relationship through achievements and what we produce. As a result, we form a core belief that our self-worth comes from what we produce and achieve. While this core belief is a lie, it also sets us up to use busyness in our attempt to prove that we are lovable and boost our self-worth. Emotionally abusive and toxic relationships also create a deeply unpleasant everyday environment that we desperately want to get away from, and unhealthy busyness can easily become a default coping mechanism. But while busyness might be a less harmful form of escapism than other activities, it is not harmless.

Looking back, I realise that the coping mechanism which carried me through the many years I spent in an abusive relationship was my ability to be incredibly busy.

Even before that relationship, I had always enjoyed organising things – events, parties, fundraisers, shows. But as the years rolled by in that toxic relationship, I became more and more driven, striving constantly to push myself further and further - I became hyper-productive. I filled my diary, my days, my nights, taking on more and more. Hosting huge parties, luncheons for the entire extended family, elaborate menus and themes, organising camping trips and vacations, joining committees, putting on theatrical productions. I even worked a full-time job whilst simultaneously running my own newfound business.

All of this busyness was, in reality, an attempt to distance myself from the negation and invalidation I was constantly being subjected to in my relationship. I was using hyper-productivity to try escape the ugliness of my reality.

Part of what this behaviour pattern delivered to me was the delusion that my life was great. Of course, in truth I was unhappy and there were times when what I was going through broke through my illusions and I felt desperate and scared. But there was always some event that I could throw myself into to distract myself – a Festive Season, a birthday, an exciting vacation. And the years just rolled on by, filled up with busyness and productivity. I was hiding behind a façade of a “perfect life” with myself, the bubbly, energetic and always positive hostess and achiever, at the forefront. I even believed it myself.

It took a lot of reflection to recognise that busyness is a very harmful coping mechanism in a toxic, abusive relationship.

While I was using busyness as a coping mechanism - a form of escapism - it was harming me and those around me.

I didn’t realise that whilst my busyness and hyper-productivity gave me respite and escape from the life I was enduring, it was actually escalating and exacerbating the situation I was in. The abusive behaviour from my ex-husband only got worse and worse, with each activity I took on actually giving him a new way to belittle and humiliate me.

My busyness also made me ignorant and oblivious of the damage being inflicted by my abusive partner on others within my immediate and extended family. I truly believed that my efforts to create a perfect family and a perfect life was enough to keep his dark treachery restricted to what I endured in privacy and deluded myself that it didn’t touch anyone else. I was so wrong. In reality, I had unwittingly been an enabler, allowing an abusive person years of free reign to inflict damage on those I loved, on those who I had believed I was protecting with my drive to create a life filled with exciting experiences and wonderful memories.

Busyness as my own personal brand of unhealthy busyness did not end when I left a toxic, abusive relationship.

Once I had taken the leap and left the toxic and abusive relationship that I was in, the busyness continued. This was partly because I had no choice but to throw myself into rebuilding my life and making a living whilst also creating some stability for my two young children. But, it was also a continuation of what had been my defence mechanism for so long. If I was busy, I had no time to think about what I had been through, what it had done to me. If I was busy, I could keep going, and if I could keep going, then I had not been irrevocably damaged, right?

I found I had a knack for helping others going through their own turmoil, and I trained as a life coach in order to better help the young people within the tutoring business I was running. I was able to see clearly what others were going through and dispense sage advice and wisdom, helping and inspiring others. It created a new false belief that I was unscathed by what I had been through.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t pretend I did not go through a number of the usual and important steps on my healing journey. I went for therapy, I leaned on those close to me, I did a lot of work to rebuild my life.

But what I had not done was to take time to just be, to face myself, to be alone with what had happened to me, to allow myself time and space to heal. I had filled the gaps with busyness.

If, like me, you leaned into busyness at some point either during the time of your abuse or at some stage on your healing journey, this is a gentle reminder to hit the pause button and think about what kind of busyness you are exercising.

Learning to address my unhealthy busyness in my healing journey was a crucial step that you will benefit from taking too.

To really make progress on my healing journey I realised that I needed to slow down and become more self-aware and that this would only happen when I had the space and time to be still and quiet - when I wasn’t being busy.

Doing any of the things that I was busying myself with was not making me feel more worthy, it was making me feel more empty. But, it was those still moments that allowed me to get back in touch with myself, to hold a space for uncomfortable feelings, and to ultimately process my trauma. Learning to be still was the key to reminding myself of my own worth because I was giving myself permission to rest and actually refill my own cup.

It is because busyness had been my crutch for so long that I needed to find ways of resting that helped me to cope with the emotions that did surface during down time. For me, incorporating creative mindfulness, trauma-informed yoga, and self-care journaling into my downtime helped me to enjoy the space that I was establishing in my schedule for myself.

Some of my friends have found that reconnecting with nature, through gardening or taking walks in parks has been a powerful way to slow down and address their unhealthy busyness. Others have found that taking a dancing class or practicing dancing at home has helped them to reconnect with their bodies as they hold a space to process and work through their emotions. You might find that working with a trauma-informed professional to find coping skills for processing your trauma without using busyness as a coping

mechanism to be extremely helpful. There are a number of trauma informed practitioners who offer individual counselling or therapy, mindfulness, yoga, dance or creative sessions, and you will be able to find someone who resonates with your goals and values to work alongside you in your healing journey.

Whatever you choose to do, you don’t have to do it alone if you don’t want to. And always remember to give yourself the precious gift of TIME!

If you want to read more about how to start thriving and get your inner glow shining again, why not check out my book? It's packed with useful and practical advice for healing and recovering from emotional abuse and toxic relationships, and includes inspirational stories from survivors who have reclaimed and rebuilt their lives.

Get the BOOK

Sources:

[1] Leeds Children’s Hospital, ‘Managing Anxiety: Tips and Startegies to help you cope’, https://www.leedsth.nhs.uk/assets/LCH-COVID19/8d07e0113a/Anxiety_-Tips-and-strategies-to-help-you-cope-Final-w_-logo.pdf

[2] https://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/how-to-lose-anxiety

[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00098/full#:~:text=The%20Busier%20the%20Better%3A%20Greater%20Busyness%20Is%20Associated%20with%20Better%20Cognition,-Sara%20B.&text=Sustained%20engagement%20in%20mentally%20challenging,improve%20memory%20in%20older%20adults.

[4] https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/45/5/933/5098532?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Disclaimer: I am not a professional counselor or psychiatrist. The contents of this article are based on my own lived experience, professional experience in academic research, as well as hours of conversation with other people with lived experience and counselors. While the information in this article is intended to help anyone who is recovering from abusive experiences and toxic relationships with narcissists, it should not be used as a substitute for working with licensed professionals for important psychotherapeutic work that is vital for recovery. Please reach out to a licensed professional to get any psychotherapeutic support you need, and if you are in immediate danger please call your local domestic abuse hotline or domestic violence hotline where you will be able to get access to support.