Chronic pain is an amazing teacher. It’s a huge part of my story because, like so many of you, I have lived with undiagnosed and “mysterious” chronic pain for over a decade now. You can read more about my chronic pain story in future posts and what it has taught me.

It seems as if every client I meet is dealing with some sort of reoccuring inflammatory condition without explanation as to what it could be, except an umbrella term of chronic pain of the …..insert part of the body here. One thing that everyone seems to have in common is work and/or financial stress.

According to Health Canada, Chronic pain is when the pain lasts longer than 3 months. Sometimes chronic pain can occur: without a known cause. after an injury has healed. after a condition has been treated.

I’ve been thinking about what could possibly be at the root of so much collective dis-ease and how the two are related. Personally, I believe that the stress of hustle culture and capitalism are creating these chronic inflammatory states within the body which are, when left unaddressed, developing and showing up as autoimmune disease. You could also read this as capitalism is the root of autoimmune disease.

Autoimmune disease happens when the body’s natural defense system can’t tell the difference between your own cells and foreign cells, causing the body to mistakenly attack normal cells. There are more than 80 types of autoimmune diseases that affect a wide range of body parts. —Johns Hopkins Medicine

This, my friends, is the real pandemic. This stress deeply impacts ever aspect of our being, mind, body, and emotional, mental and spiritual health.

It’s clear to me, hustle culture and capitalism are the cause of our collective chronic pain

Get your hand up if you experience any of the following signs and symptoms of this

• numbness in extremities

• poor sleep

• fatigue

• brain fog

• skin rashes like eczema

• low-grade fevers or the constant feeling of a cold coming on

• muscle pain and fatigue

• hair loss

Yep! These are all signs of the body saying “HELLLLLLLOOOOOO! We’re inflamed because we’re so overwhelmed in life! I’ve had enough here.”. But, we’re not listening to our body because it feels like the price of not getting paid outweighs being sick and miserable when we have a family to provide for.

Why?

We are socialized and conditioned to push through our symptoms, our body’s natural defense alarm system, in order to hit that goal, meet deadlines, get that promotion, or keep our customers happy. Whether we work for ourselves or someone else, the goal is to make the most amount of money in the shortest time possible. Capitalism = profit above ALL else.

We are also facing a new problem. Those who were forced to receive a work-mandated health procedure are facing serious and fatal adverse reactions regardless of their socio-economic circumstances or previous health status. So the status of your health and the connection to your workplace is more corelated than ever. Not to mention, we are living in a time where instead of choosing to leave our profession for a different life, many Canadians have been forced to. Stress levels are at an all-time high.

What’s going on Collectively?

We are watching a massive workforce shift crumble right in front of our eyes in a wild dumpster fire, one after the other, after the other. Collectively, we have been forced to see that those corporations we thought cared about our well-being, without a shadow of doubt, give zero you know whats about us. So if we weren’t feeling the stress of hustling for dollar before, we sure are now and it’s manifesting in significant ways in our body and in turn, our relationships.

• we’re exhausted

• we’re shoveling unhealthy food in our faces for quick hits of dopamine

• pouring wine into a large glass just so we can feel better for a minute

• we’re snapping at our kids

• we don’t have enough energy to listen to the details from anyone else’s day but want to word vomit the trauma from our own

• feel like passing ships in the night with our partners

• having nothing left to give

We are all feeling sick and trapped working ourselves to death, trying to follow a false narrative that hustling is the only way to create abundance. We can turn to each other, but we all seem to be in the same sinking ship. What’s the point? How can we remedy this? It seems like the answer is simply to leave it all behind and run away!

What if you can’t leave the hustle behind?

Obviously, my number one recommendation would be to get out of that toxic workplace or flow and find abundance in experiencing all that life has to offer, but, perhaps it’s not in the cards to leave your job or close your business, or you’ve been let go and need to make an income because we still use money as something to exchange for goods and services.

So, how can you protect yourself under the conditions of capitalsm and keep from working yourself into an early grave?

Start with one thing

In my experience, change works best when it is intentional and slow. Plus, we know we’re up against a giant machine. Just ask a doula what it’s like to advocate for her client in a hospital setting. She knows. There’s only so many waves you can make within the system, but if you’re stuck with it, you’ve got to make it work until you make take that step to make different choices.

When I started my journey into working as my own boss, it was totally because I was sick of making someone elses dollar while I struggled to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. So I had the right mindset going in, but I couldn’t I also couldn’t leave right away and go live in a sprinter van down by the river. I was in the middle of moving from one side of the country to another, pregnant, and knew I needed to build a support network first before I quit. So, over the next ten years, I slowly added on baby steps wherever I could to towards the life I truly wanted, participating as much and as little as I wanted in capitalism along the way.

My chronic pain still rears it’s ugly head on stressful days, but I’m actively working on it. It took a ton of boundary work, some huge life changes, and a lot of help from my plant friends to get my chronic pain settled as I manage the overwhelming stress of our current social circumstances.

I want to keep talking about this topic with you because I’m sure it’s showing up in your life similarly as it’s showing up in mine. Please let me know if this resonated with you today and tell me about your chronic pain and how you’re dealing with hustle culture in the comments.

If you’re curious about how plant medicine can help you and want to do the work of finding the roots of your health and wellness concerns, book your Herbal Wellness intake session. I also offer 15 minute free discovery calls if you have any questions about the process and how clinical herbalism can help. My books open October 1st, 2022.

—Nessa Hayes, Clinical Herbalist