'The mental fog was awful'
Today, Liz Tucker is a health and wellbeing counsellor specialising in stress management. Fourteen years ago, at the age of 30, she burned out from work-related stress.
"I had a building company at the time and was working incredibly hard. It wasn t unusual for me to drive from Taunton, up to York and down to Norfolk in the space of 24 hours. I d start work at 7am and often wouldn't finish until 8pm the following day, 36 hours later. The year I burned out, I drove over 100,000 miles.
"I loved the buzz of it. There was a lot of stress involved, but I really enjoyed the adrenaline kick of having something turn out right in the end. It was very satisfying.
"At first the work was manageable. Then, during the year before I became ill, I started working at weekends. I had no social life at all, which didn t bother me at the time.
"Then I met my partner and, because of the pressures of trying to see him and keep on top of the work, it all began to fall apart. I started feeling really tired and very lethargic. One Sunday night I went to bed early because I felt like I was getting a bit of a cold.
"When I woke on Monday, I simply couldn t get out of bed. I could move my fingers, head and feet, but I had no energy in my arms and legs.
"When the doctor told me I d burned myself out from too much stress, I found it difficult to believe. To me, stress meant being unhappy, whereas I was really enjoying my life. But it was true: there was no work-life balance and I was living a high-stress life.
"In addition, my diet was appalling. I lived on food that I bought in petrol stations, and I hadn t been getting nearly enough sleep. My body had shut itself down in protest.
"For the next three months, I couldn t get out of bed. All I did was sleep. Very slowly, I began to improve but then, after a few months, the doctor diagnosed ME. I was housebound.
"The physical symptoms were bad but the mental fog was awful. It was like someone had drilled a hole in my head and filled it with concrete.
"I was like this for four years, and I was declining. My partner was beginning to wonder whether I was going to die, and when he asked the doctor, the answer was, I simply don t know. She has the body of an 80-year-old . It was very shocking to hear.
"I think, up until that point, I d believed the doctors knew what was right for me. So hearing that they didn t know what to do made me start thinking about my own future. With my partner, I began thinking about what was right for me to do.
"I decided I needed some pleasure in life. I had been so worried for so long. I began having a weekly massage and hypnotherapy to help me relax. I also decided not to watch anything on TV that was violent or miserable.
"The biggest turning point was when I began to pace myself. Up until then, I d compare myself to how I was before. If I was feeling a bit better, I would try to do lots of things and then feel ill with exhaustion again. I began to realise I was setting myself unrealistic goals so I decided to take things gradually.
"After I d started this regime of proper relaxing, it was remarkable how quickly I began to feel better. I was eating a healthy diet with lots of fruit and vegetables and I d stopped having caffeine and alcohol. I began to notice the changes within a few weeks.
"After three months, I was feeling so much better, but because I d spent so much time in bed, I was very weak physically.
"After six months, I was back to normal. I had lots of energy, my skin was better and I didn't have to stay in bed the whole time. It was amazing.
"I ve now been working as a health and wellbeing counsellor for 10 years. I went back to university and studied human health and biology, really just to find out what had happened to me. I found it so interesting it has turned into my career.
"I m working really hard again and get a lot of satisfaction out of it, but the difference is that now I have a work-life balance and know what to do when things get too stressful."
