Anatomy of a Shame Attack: Exercise Increases Energy

Why Hearing “Exercise Increases Energy!” Might Make You Want to Sit on the Couch and Never Move Again — and What You Can Do to Change the Story.

Stop me if you’ve lived this one.

You’re having a rough day just because you’re you, or because you’re you and there’s only so many hours in a day.

You’re ricocheting from Point A to Point B when a well-meaning acquaintance squares up for a check-in.

“Hey! How are you doing?” she asks. You already know what her answer’s gonna be and you’re already ready to tap out of the conversation.

But you vaguely remember that answering honestly will help you feel like you’re living a more authentic life... or whatever.

So you take a chance on this whole answering honestly thing.

“Things are busy. I’m tired,” you say, already wishing you could take it back.

Why didn’t I just say fine? you think.

“Oh, I know!” she says. “You know what gives me more energy?”

Here it comes, you think.

“Exercise!” she says, clearly manic.

Then she goes on and on about how her exercise class / new hiking habit / gym membership / yoga practice is giving her “more energy than she ever thought possible!”

The longer she goes on,[ref] Not long at all, really, but it feels like forever.[/ref] the more repulsed you are by the idea of ever moving again.

Loath to witness even one more of her peppy vocal cartwheels, you suddenly remember you left the oven on and bolt.

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Your acquaintance wasn’t lying. Exercise does give her more energy. That’s what it does for almost all of us. The more we move, the more energy we have. [ref]The less we move — I’m looking at you, office workers — the more useless and exhausted we feel. [/ref]

Despite what you believe, you aren’t immune to this and myriad other short-term benefits of exercise.

Like mental clarity.

Sounder sleep.

And general well-being.

So if exercise would bump up your energy, why does her suggestion make you want to camp out on the couch?

Or, at the very least, end the conversation promptly?

The answer, in a word, is shame.

Shame can be defined as the internalized belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. If you have shame like I have shame, you learned this young and repeatedly. Like proper verb conjugation, it became a simple, subconscious knowing.

I’m wrong. What I do is wrong. This is not something that can be fixed.

Jump ahead 35 or 40 years and you subconsciously interpret your acquaintance’s well-meaning suggestion to exercise as evidence that you’re fundamentally broken.

She says, “I feel better when I…”

You internalize, I feel like hell because I deserve to feel like hell.

She says, “Exercise is just so great!”

You internalize, I don’t exercise like she does, therefore she’s better than me.

She says, “I used to be exhausted, but now I have more energy.”

You internalize, Lack of energy was her problem, she fixed it with exercise. But I’m my problem, and there’s no fixing that.

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How Does Shame Keep Us Stuck In Inaction

Odds are this woman is just sharing her experience.

Instead of simply taking in what she says, we shame-based folks use it as a basis for comparison. And inevitably, we come up short.

We feel judged, inside and out.

Then again, maybe she’s trying to be helpful.

Instead of feeling inspired by her experience to take action, we get bogged down in a torrent of memories of all our efforts to ‘get more active.’  

We feel suffocated under the lead blanket of our own ‘failures’.

Until we recognize shame’s power over our thoughts and actions, whatever she says and whatever her motive may be, it can feel like torture. Those shame-based ideas hurt, and we’ve been numbing those suckers out almost as long as we’ve been alive.

We’re more uncomfortable with each passing second. We want to feel different, or less, or better, or nothing.

Hence feeling magnetized to the couch — to the promise of rest and relaxation.