I Rationalized Instead of Listening

For a long time, I kept explaining what was happening to me.

Not out loud.
Internally. Constantly.

I kept having these quiet conversations with myself. I’d tell myself why this made sense, why it wasn’t a big deal yet, why I just needed a little time. It felt easier to explain it than to stop and feel how off everything was.

That’s always been a reflex of mine.

Growing up around emotional instability, I learned early how to stay alert. I learned how to read the room, manage myself, anticipate what was coming. I learned that being perceptive was safer than being porous. That understanding things gave me leverage, even when I couldn’t control them.

My mind learned to work overtime.

It learned how to scan, assess, explain. How to stay ahead of emotion by organizing it. How to keep moving by staying cerebral. I didn’t check in with my body. I didn’t ask what my younger self was holding. I didn’t listen for anything quieter or less coherent. I relied almost exclusively on my brain because it had always kept me safe.

That reflex followed me into adulthood. Into leadership. Into responsibility. Into a life where being capable wasn’t just rewarded, it was required.

So when I started to feel off, I did what I’ve always done.

I rationalized.

I told myself this was burnout. Years of pressure catching up. A heavy season doing what heavy seasons do. Of course my energy was low. Of course my edges felt dull. Of course I wasn’t functioning the way I used to.

Burnout fit the story I already believed about my life.
It felt earned.

It also let me stay upright.

As long as I could explain what was happening, I didn’t have to interrupt anything. I didn’t have to stop. I didn’t have to question the systems I relied on — discipline, endurance, competence, will.

I just needed time.
Perspective.
Space.

Except time didn’t change anything.

What I didn’t say out loud — what I barely let myself think — was how embarrassed I felt by my own inability to function. Not in dramatic ways. In small, quiet ones.

I couldn’t do things that had always been easy for me. I couldn’t initiate. I couldn’t follow through. I couldn’t summon the internal momentum I had built my life around.

And instead of asking what was happening inside me, I judged myself for it.

I kept thinking, this shouldn’t be this hard.
I kept wondering what was wrong with my discipline.
I kept assuming I was failing some internal test I’d always passed before.

I started feeling ashamed before I even knew why. Not loud shame. The kind that makes you smaller in your own eyes. The kind that convinces you to hide the evidence and double down on self-control.

So I intellectualized harder.

I told myself I was reacting to professional loss. That losing ground in work would naturally destabilize anyone. That meaning had cracked, and of course my energy followed. That once things stabilized externally, I would recalibrate internally.

That explanation made sense too.

Work had always been an organizing force for me. A compass. When that cracked, everything felt less anchored. I assumed the rest of me would catch up once I found my footing again.

But even as I told myself that, something didn’t line up.

I wasn’t spiraling.
I wasn’t avoiding.
I wasn’t resisting my life.

I was trying — quietly, consistently — to do what I’d always done. And it wasn’t working.

The more I explained myself, the less responsive my body became. The more I reasoned, the further away I felt from the parts of me that actually register truth — my body, my heart, my younger self, my spirit. The brain was running the show alone, unchecked, convinced it could think its way back to capacity.

I understood plenty. I still couldn’t move.

What strikes me now isn’t that I missed the signs.

It’s how completely I trusted my mind with something it couldn’t actually handle on its own.

I didn’t lack awareness.
I lacked listening.

Rationalizing had always protected me. It had gotten me through instability, pressure, responsibility. It had helped me survive by staying sharp and ahead.

I didn’t realize it had also learned how to override everything else.

I kept asking myself why I couldn’t do what I’d always done, instead of asking what part of me was no longer being heard.

And by the time that question started to surface, the strategy I’d relied on for most of my life — letting my head make all the decisions — had already exhausted itself.

xoxo💋
Paola

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