When Did You Stop Feeling Like Yourself?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself drawn into the Winter Olympics. I love the variety of sports and the level of talent, of course. But what stays with me are the stories. The years of hard work, the pressure, setbacks, the quiet moments no one sees.

Two stories really stood out for me.

Ilia Malinin, just 21, went in as a gold-medal favourite. Under the weight of Olympic pressure, he fell twice and landed only three of his seven planned quadruple jumps. He later called it an “inevitable crash.”

And Alysa Liu, 20 years old, who stepped away from figure skating after the 2022 Olympics (at 16) because she was burnt out. She said she was “trying to fit the mould that everyone wanted for her.” This year, she came back on her own terms. Her way. And she won gold.

Both of their stories bring mental health and burnout in sport into the spotlight. But they don’t just belong to athletes.

They belong to anyone who has pushed too hard for too long. Anyone who has walked away from something they once loved and who has realised they were living by everyone else’s expectations and quietly losing themselves in the process.

That’s what burnout does.

It doesn’t usually arrive in one dramatic moment. It builds slowly. You keep going, keep showing up and being the capable one and then one day you realise, you don’t quite feel like yourself anymore.

If I look back honestly, my own season of burnout didn’t begin with one event. It was a series of them.

My first son Ben was born in 2008. Eight weeks later, I got married. Three months later, I went back to school to study nutrition. I struggled quietly with being a new mum. I went back to work full-time while studying part-time. I had a miscarriage. I graduated and started building my nutrition business. I got pregnant again and had Sam in 2013.

On paper, it just looks like life. Busy, full and normal.

Other women do this.

Women handle this all the time.

My life wasn’t harder than anyone else’s.

That’s what I told myself.

On the outside, I still looked like Mel. I smiled and showed up and told everyone I was “fine” but somewhere along the way I stopped feeling like myself. I was showing up everywhere for everyone else… except for myself.

Does this resonate?

You still function, get everything done but you don’t quite feel inside your own life the way you used to.

There’s no single moment where it happens, it happens gradually like it did for me over a number of years. Where you become the responsible one. You anticipate needs before they’re spoken, you smooth things over and you keep all the moving parts of your life going.

And slowly, without meaning to, you start shaping yourself around what’s needed, what works instead of what you want. There’s less spontaneity, less fun and more management of life, more control. Until one day you realize you don’t actually know what you want anymore.

You become really good at managing life and really disconnected from living it.

I clearly remember sitting in my therapist's office for one of our first sessions together (first of many!) She asked me a question “What do you like to do?”

Sounds pretty easy, right?

Well it wasn’t. I could tell her what my husband liked to do, what my kids liked to do but I had nothing when it came to what I liked to do.

My life on the outside looked great, I was running a successful nutrition business, I had a loving, supportive husband and 2 great kids. I was a nutritionist so eating all the “right” things, working out. I was living the dream! 

It looked like I was handling everything fine, being productive, ticking all the boxes. But inside, I was numb. I was moving through my days like I was outside of myself. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt relaxed in my own body.

That was me coping and believe me, coping can look impressive and successful but in reality it can be empty and sometimes, quietly harmful.

Coping kept everything running. It just didn’t keep me

The Cost of Being the Capable One

Don’t get me wrong, being strong is a beautiful thing. It builds resilience. It gets things done but it can also be costly, especially when being strong slowly turns into abandoning yourself.

I didn’t have panic attacks until 2017, that’s 9 years after my first son was born. That’s the thing, nothing exploded overnight, it built quietly, gradually. So slowly I didn’t even see it happening. The signs were there for years but they were subtle and I ignored them. Some of my signs were:

• I didn’t ask for help (had never been good at that)

• I stopped asking for what I needed

• I said yes to helping everyone else before checking in with myself

• I powered through exhaustion instead of resting

• I felt resentful of my husband because he would go out with his friends 

• I couldn’t relax without feeling guilty.

• I avoided hard conversations because it felt easier to just handle it

• I wore the “busy” badge of honour.

• I would go to 6am HIIT workouts three times a week even when i was so tired I felt sick

• I would take ski lessons because everyone else wanted me to ski (I didn’t)

When you ignore the signs, you become the one who can handle it and when people see you handling it, they let you. Eventually, you stop noticing how tired you actually are because tired becomes your normal.

What Feeling Like Yourself Again Actually Looks Like

I didn’t feel like myself overnight, but that therapy session was the beginning. It made me realise something hard. I hadn’t lost myself. I had abandoned myself and I couldn’t ignore that anymore.

This journey isn't about becoming someone new, it’s about returning to the version of you that is hidden beneath the coping, the roles, the responsibilities. She’s still inside, she’s just been muted.

I began to make gentle shifts like:

• I started a ‘“What Do I Like to Do” list and every time I did something that made me feel calm, good, peaceful, it went on the list.

• I stopped my 6am HIIT workouts.

• I stopped learning how to ski because I didn’t like it, even though my whole family loved to ski..

• I asked my mother-in-law to host Christmas that year so I didn't have to.

• I sat down with my husband and told him how I really felt. Yes, I had been hiding a lot of it, even from him.

• I went to my first ever restorative yoga class.

• I began to leave the kids with my husband and go out on my own

This was the beginning of my coming home.

When was the last time you felt fully like yourself? Not the productive one, responsible one, the needed one. But YOU?

If something in you misses that version of you, that’s not random. It’s not proof something is wrong. It might just mean you’re ready to come home and coming home doesn’t start with changing your whole life.

It starts with noticing where you left yourself.

Mel x