Why You’re Tired Before You Even Start

In this episode of Business with Chronic Illness, I’m unpacking the unseen, unspoken emotional workload that so many of us carry before we ever open our laptops or talk to a client. From managing symptoms in silence, to performing “fine” for others, to overthinking how we’re perceived — this episode is about the labor that never makes it on our to-do list, but deeply impacts every part of how we run our businesses.

I’ll share personal stories, client moments, and the powerful mindset shifts that have helped my clients reclaim their capacity, set true boundaries, and build businesses that actually honor their health — not compete with it.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why your emotional labor counts (even if you don't see it, if no one else sees it)
• How the invisible cost of “being fine” shows up in pricing, planning, and perfectionism
• The real reason you’re tired — and why it’s not your fault
• A simple question to help you design your business around your actual capacity
• How to build in space for recovery, without guilt or shame

🔗 Resources & Next Steps:

• Research mentioned in this episode - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6430278/
• 🎧 Listen to more episodes of Business with Chronic Illness
• 💬 DM me the word GENTLE or Thrive on Instagram to learn about Chronically You & Profitable — my program for building a sustainable coaching business with chronic illness.

✨ I use HoneyBook to simplify client onboarding, automate my calendar, and keep my business flowing—even on low-energy days. Check it out here to save 50%.

Transcript

Nikita: 0:00

Hey guys. We're gonna talk about the invisible workload of being quote unquote fine, and how chronic illness shapes our business decisions before we even notice and how to be more aware of that. This is for the woman whose looks fine, right? Who shows up when her body says no, who moves through the day doing 10 invisible things before getting to the thing that she actually is doing that's visible to everybody else. I. Today we're going to unpack something we rarely name, and it's the emotional and energetic cost of holding it to quote unquote gather when you live with chronic illness and how that silent weight shapes your business more than you think. Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness, the Globally Ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness who want to start and grow a business online. I'm your host, Nikita Williams and I went from living a normal life to all of a sudden being in constant pain with no answers to being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses. And trying to make a livable income. I faced the challenge of adapting traditional business advice to fit my unique circumstances with chronic illness, feeling frustrated and more burned out than I already was while managing my chronic illness to becoming an award-winning coach with a flexible, sustainable online coaching business. I found the surprisingly simple steps to starting growing a profitable business without compromising my health or my peace. Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same. If you're ready to create a thriving business that aligns with your lifestyle and wellbeing, you're in the right place. Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for women with chronic illness and how we make a living. This is business with chronic illness. Now I am, I, I consider myself the queen of the word fine. I have felt like I've said that since I was a child. I'm fine. In conversations, I'm fine. I am actively working on not. Always saying that and really sharing and being vulnerable of what I'm feeling and what's actually going on, because it's really important because at the end of my day, there have been times with my day where I'm more tired, and it's not just because of the physical things. It's this invisible workload of like trying to manage living with chronic illness and the overall emotional stressors that are happening in the world. And so I really wanted to talk about this because this came up in my, group program at this time, chronically you and profitable, where I coach women who want to start and grow a business based off the profession or hobbies that they have or who are currently in a business and they're burnt out and they don't wanna be anymore. They wanna build a more sustainable business, and they're wanting to learn how to heal from that. But inside of that program, we've been talking about this invisible load, and I want to share this from. A layer of their story as well as my story to give you context on how this is actually affecting your ability to make more money, your ability to grow your business when you don't take into account or you are not aware of this invisible workload. Now, another way of saying this, invisible workload is actually a scientific term and it is related to what. The National Institution of Health and it was a study on what is called the Allostatic Load. So. Basically, what is that? Right? Nobody really talks about this. I actually heard this terminology first from a, one of my coaches and I kind of dismissed it'cause I just was like, oh, that's some more stress stuff, right? Some more stress stuff that we're not accounting for. Then I heard it in another podcast episode by another coach and I, I'm gonna say her name. I can't remember her name right now, but another coach that I was listening to and then also I started. Like realizing, I actually have my own terminology of this, which was like the invisible load. Like we have this invisible load that nobody else is seeing, nobody else experiencing or even notices except us, and that's what I considered it. But there is actually a scientific term for this, and it's called allostatic load. And this refers to the cumulative physical wear and tear on your body resulting from chronic stress. Now. Obviously all people experience this to some degree, but what's most important, and what I found really interesting is that for women of color, this is actually something that is more, we have a higher aesthetic load markers and the score and, and than anyone else, most minorities have a higher aesthetic load. So this invisible when I like to call this invisible. Load this invisible workload that nobody is even accounting for before we walk into a room, before we go to an event, before we get on an airplane. No one else is like really understanding this and we aren't even understanding this, right? We just know it happens. It's something that's just we're experiencing and when we start talking about this it from a science standpoint. This shows up in different aspects of our body. So I'm gonna talk about this a little geeky, just a little bit, because I find it very fascinating and I think it adds to the conversation we need to have with in our own communities and our families around understanding what this means and how it affects us. And I'm actually going to link this research point from the National Institution of Health, and it's talking about the, this CE load. And again, I. It is something that has an effect on our nervous system and it actually has an effect over time, and it has an effect over our, like our health situations, our chronic situations is what we might be having. It affects our hearts, Our metabolic infrastructure, our inflammatory system, our neuroendocrine system. So it affects so many different aspects of our body and psychologically it affects how we think, how we operate, and how sustainable or unsustainable our things that we are trying to do can and will be. So. It's so important because these things cumulatively, like literally allostatic load is a cumulative experience, like something that's happening either short term. Like pretty quickly. It can be added upon by sudden shifts or long-term shifts and challenges that are happening in our environment that can affect our body and our mind. And so obviously we live in a world where there's so many things happen all of the time, and. It's a lot. It's a lot. And so I think we kind of dismiss this allot ness. We, dismiss our invisible workload and then we get frustrated in our businesses and in our lives when they don't work the way we want to because of a couple different things. So I can't wait to talk about this on how this shapes our businesses. And I wanna give you some ways to start shifting the pattern and some potential things that might help you. Overcome or not even overcome.'cause Allo static load is just kind of what's gonna happen in this system of where we live in. But how can we counterbalance? That's really what we're talking about is how can we counterbalance this? And there's a couple different ways we can do that. But before we get into that, let's paint a picture of what this invisible workload looks like. Okay. Because how this is, it silently shapes our business decisions before we even realize it. So let me be real. There are some days that I record a podcast episode, send two emails, check in on a client, and then I feel like. Doing all of that. I ran a marathon. Like at the end of the day I'm exhausted and I'm like, I ran a marathon and I did one or two things for my business. Right? Or maybe I did a lot of things for my business and it still feels like a marathon. It doesn't matter how much work I actually do in my business, I can always in at the end of the day or the week or something and feeling like. Dog that was tired. Sometimes like that's a real thing. And for me, that happens a little bit more in my personal life and in my business because of me being aware of this allostatic load or this invisible workload that I know happens. And this taps into what I always talk about here in the show is your return of energy. What are you doing to counterbalance this? But why does this happen? Well, it's because of this thing we've done before we actually even get to the quote, quote work before we even clean the kitchen before we even go to the JOB that you might go to, like before you send that email. These are some of the invisible things that might be happening. You're managing pain that didn't show up on your calendar. You know, like you're dealing with pain that maybe is new. Like this week I. I did something to my wrist a couple weeks ago, and I think just now I'm starting to like, my body's starting to be like, Hey, this was hurting. This is hurting, and it's like loud and it's a pain that has literally made me have to adjust and compensate. So I'm. Constantly, my brain is constantly going back to that pain. Like I feel it when I stand up, when I move, like when I'm even moving my hands in this, in the show right now. So there's just, that's something that shows up on, on your calendar, quote unquote, without you even realizing it. That's an invisible load. Pep talking yourself through a three day, you know, migraine or flare up hangover. Like, you've had this pain or you've had this cold. I had a client, towards the end of last year who had like got caught this cold that lasted for like three months. Right. And she would still show up to the calls, which was amazing in her own capacity, in the way that she felt like she could, and sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she would send me a message, she'd be like, girl, I can't make it today. And I'm like, totally. You don't even have to explain, but that's a load, right? While she's still being a mother, while she's still taking care of the things she's gotta take care of. That was a load. Right. Trying to remember if you took your meds. I, for me, this is a real thing. I have a couple meds. I don't have, I don't take a lot, a lot of meds, but I have a couple meds that's not something you take every single day. It's something you take every few, like few weeks. And it's like, it's like, did I take that? Like, even though I have a calendar, like there's, there's a load to that. Or it could be writing a caption three times because, you know, brain fog made you feel like what you were seeing was completely incoherent. Right? And another invisible load could be negotiating with yourself. Like, do I push this or reschedule this? Or I might feel guilty about this. Do I do this now or do I do this later? And all that happens before you probably, I. Open up Zoom to record an episode or have a conversation with a client, right? I know I'm not the only one, and I know clients aren't the only ones that are experiencing this. You are experiencing this for so many of the women I coach. The real work isn't the business. It's the silent effort before the business. It's the prepping our energy to sound quote unquote good on a client call. Even though our body's screaming, it's. Overthinking how to respond to a DM because we don't want to come off like it's canceling something and then spiraling into guilt because it doesn't feel quote unquote, professional. Second guessing your prices because your energy's inconsistent. So you feel like, what are we doing? These are like things that you're doing that you're constantly thinking about. This is the cost of what we, what I say, of being fine. And what happens is clients come to me and they're like, Nikita, I don't know why I'm not moving the needle. Like I feel like I'm crawling at a snail space, a snails pace. And often I'm like, you're not crawling. You're doing baby steps or moving, but what's actually making you feel like you're doing so much? And it's like everything is this invisible load. And it's, it's, it goes unnamed. Sometimes we internalize these feelings to mean that we're lazy and consistent, we're failures. We aren't smart, we aren't beautiful. We, internalize all of this stuff and none of that is true. It's just that our real work starts before we actually began the work, right? We had all of these things in our minds. We had all of these feelings and things that we were juggling all the time. So let me tell you about one of the tools that has quietly become the heartbeat of my business over the years. It's HoneyBook. I use it for everything. No, seriously everything. It's how I book my podcast guests, bring on new one-on-one clients, even manage group coaching calls when my other platforms decide that they wanna have a meltdown from contracts and payments to contact forms, to task reminders. HoneyBook keeps all of the moving parts in one place, and it is all automated. And here's the real kicker. It works with my capacity. Whether I'm having a low energy week or need to automate a bunch of stuff in one go, or just create a system that makes it easy for me to run a flexible business, HoneyBook gives me that freedom to still move my business forward if you are looking for a central hub to help you work smarter. Not harder. I highly recommend you checking it out. So if you head on over to the show notes, you'll get 50% off your first year. And yes, that's my affiliate link, but I only share what I actually use in love. HoneyBook is my jam and I hope you check it out. And by the way. I want you guys to think about this too when it comes to your marketing. I didn't intend to bring this up in this episode, but it just dawned on me this is something really important. You may be becoming more aware of your own invisible workload right now, but everyone has a version of this. Everyone has a version of this. So when you are telling yourself, when you're marketing something and you're creating something and you're like, oh, I've done it enough times, they should know already people should get it already. It hasn't been like, when is enough time? Enough time. Remember that the world that you're probably talking to are also experiencing this invisible workload, right? And that is consuming their ability to really hear everything that you may have been saying. So the more you repeat, the more you keep talking about something you're not annoying anybody. You're really not, you're not annoying anybody because they're so consumed with their invisible workload that they may see your, like your offering and then forget about it because they're dealing with their invisible workload. So that's why we say, and that's why you hear oftentimes in marketing's like repetition is everything people need to hear and see it in multiple different ways because they are also dealing with an allostatic load. It's not about you. The reason why someone didn't. Sign up for your offer or didn't sign up for the thing most often isn't because you are not enough and it's because everybody else is dealing with their stuff, right? That's invisible to everybody else. So I just wanna put that in there. For those of you who are like listening to this and thinking, I. Yes, I totally relate to this feeling of having this invisible workload, and it feels like there's so much, and again, for women of color, I feel like we have this astronomically big because we have social things that we're dealing with. We have our family, things that we're dealing with. We have our trauma, we have epigenics, we have all of this stuff, right, that it's like I. Invisible to everybody else. And then we're trying to operate a business and then we're act, then we're frustrated'cause we're like, we're putting all this effort out there on top of this invisible workload that we are not acknowledging ourselves and then not acknowledging that other people have a similar aspect of that and being frustrated and mad and thinking it's about us, that our offer isn't getting out there or that people don't like us, or that I shouldn't be wasting my time talking about this over and over again. But in reality, we also would want that type of support. We would also want someone to keep sharing with us something that's valuable that we just haven't had time to consume yet or say yes yet, but we want to. Okay. Okay, so how does this invisible workload shape our businesses and what can we do about it? The invisible workload starts shaping how we price, what we yes to, and how we show up online. I've seen it in myself and I've seen it in my clients where we start undercharging because we feel unreliable, right? Because we're looking at like all of the things that we're doing. We're thinking it's not a, we're not doing enough. So if I'm gonna charge more, like if I ask the client to charge more for something because they're ready and they're at capacity, they don't feel like they can because they think. Because they haven't acknowledged this invisible workload. They think, well, I'm already unreliable, so I can't charge more. But in fact, the fact that they have clients and the fact that they stay with them and the fact that they keep re like renewing or sending referrals says that they can charge more. They won't, or they haven't given themselves permission to because they view themselves as unreliable because of this invisible workload. Right. We over schedule because we're trying to prove we can keep up. Like that one always gets me like we. Are adding so many things to our plate. We're adding so many things to our calendar because we are trying to prove that we can do more. When in actuality because of this invisible workload, you are already doing more and you actually don't have capacity to do more. So you trying to stuff more means you actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy of not being actually able to do more. Right. So this is, this is just something to keep in mind. We build business models based on shame and not capacity. I'm gonna say that again. Sometimes we're building business models based on shame, quote unquote, I am wrong and I have to fix it. And so my offer should reflect that I am wrong and this is how I am fixing me and not on capacity. Okay. Ugh. So here's what I want to tell you. Just because no one else sees your labor and sometimes you don't even see your own labor, doesn't mean it's not actually there. It doesn't mean that it's not valid. It doesn't mean that all of those things that we talked about at the top of this episode are not happening, and you're juggling while doing the thing. Here's the thing. You deserve and need to factor this invisible workload into your pre-work, into your energy management strategy. You have to, because you will run yourself ragged. You will not be able to expand, you will not be able to receive more. And that's why inside of my Chronically You and Profitable program, we don't just create offers and systems and be like, this is what you're offering your systems should look like. We actually look at what your business costs you energetically and other things that are invisible that cost you energetically. And then we build from there. Right. I just was on a call with a client and in our group call, and one of the things she had mentioned, she's like, yeah, I think I need to add more to, like, I need to do more. And my first question wasn't, okay, yeah, let's do it. Or like, what's working? What's not working? My first question was, how is the doing actually doing? Right. How is what you're doing actually working? How are you feeling while you're doing it? What cap, like what energy, what capacity, what results are you receiving from what you're doing? Right? And after coaching and talking with her through that, she realized, oh no, I I, I'm still doing my steps. I have enough and it's still creating results, but I cannot add to this right now. I will see results and she's seeing results, but it's just, I, I don't need to add to this. So here's a small shift I want to offer you this week or whenever you're listening to this. When it comes to bringing awareness to this invisible workload, to bring awareness to how you wanna show up in your business for longevity purposes is ask yourself, what does it take? For me to get to the starting line each day before I'm at the line. So for you, if you're having a business, if you are thinking about starting a business, like think about what does it take me to get to that point before I'm actually there, and then ask yourself, have I built space for that in my business or am I punishing myself for needing it? That part right there. Are you punishing yourself for needing it? What I mean by that, and I'll use myself for an example, is that I am not really a morning person. Like I'm I'm. I am. I am. I have tried. I can be, I'm sure if I put my mind to it, if it was something that I wanted to be, I can be, but it's not something that I need to worry about. At this time of my life. For a while there, I spent time trying to force myself to have calls early in the morning, like nine 10, and have conversations with people. And then by the midday I would be so exhausted mentally and fatigued. I would be like so frustrated, but I would still be sitting there trying to force myself to catch up.'cause I slowed down in the middle of the day because I didn't give myself the morning time that I needed. In order to do the work, I can do the same work in the afternoon and half the time without the type of time I need to give myself in the morning to do that. So I was punishing myself and trying to force myself to be still doing it at the same pace, same time, but it was taking me longer. See how that's like a cycle? I don't know if you got that or if you understood that, but what I'm trying to say is that sometimes we're trying to force ourselves to build a business in a space. That does not work for us, and then we punish ourselves for doing it on repeat. That's what the invisible workload will do if you don't acknowledge it and allow space and capacity for it. So now for me, at this point in my life, I give myself until 11, right? Usually until 11, I don't take calls, I don't do anything. I take my time to get up in the morning, do my routine, my rituals of what I do for myself, and then I jump into my work, right? Because it's just easier that way. And I don't beat myself up for it. I don't beat myself up for being not a morning person. I'm just not a morning person right now. And that's okay. So where can you give yourself that type of permission? So again, the way to start shifting and acknowledging the space of the invisible workload is to start asking yourself how you are coming to these activities in your life and in your business. This is the real work, and you don't actually have to do this alone. This is something we do a lot of inside of the program because. It's so important. Like we can, I can give, anybody can give you a strategy. You can ask Chad GPT to give you a strategy. You can ask anybody to give you a strategy. But are you telling them about the invisible workload that you actually have and how that affects your energy and capacity to actually do the strategy? Probably not. Probably not. And then you're beating yourself up later for not having done it. Let's stop it because that as well as adding to the fact that you don't have the capacity for any growth or sustainability in where you're trying to go. So. If this episode brought up a deep yes, this is me. I want you to know that you're not invisible here. You're not invisible here on this show. You're not invisible in my world. You're not invisible. Share this episode with a friend who's holding it together, quote unquote, silently. Usually, these are what I call your strong friends. Let them know you see them right. And if you're ready to build a business that finally factors in you, even on your low capacity days, I'd love to support you inside of my group program called Chronically You and Profitable. You can go to my Instagram at Thrive with Nikita, and I can send you the details. You can just DM me the word gentle or thrive, and I can give you some more information that way. I know you came from the podcast. Here's what I want you also to just remember, you are not behind. I think in, in, in, in the narrative of businesses, oftentimes we hear, I'm behind. I'm guilty of this. I feel like this often, this is why I have a therapist and why I have coaches that support me because that is a true feeling. And we live in a world that's constantly telling us that we're quote unquote behind. You know, that's a constant information, but your pace is your pace. I. Your pace is your pace, and that's nothing to snuff at. It's nothing to beat yourself up about. It's something to live and feel and be grateful for. And oftentimes the real reason why we feel behind is that you're just doing more than most people ever understand and that you give yourself credit for. And that my friend is a thing that's holding you back by not acknowledging that. So I hope this episode served you. I hope it gave you some awareness about some things that's going on in your life and your business potentially. And remember, there is an invisible workload of being quote unquote fine and how it shapes your business decisions and all of the things that you're trying to accomplish in your life. I will see you in the next episode. That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness. If you would like to start and grow an online coaching business with me, head to the show notes to click a link to book a sales call, and learn how to make money with chronic illness. You can also check out our website at ww dot crafted to thrive.com. For this episode's, show notes and join our email list to. Get exclusive content where I coach you on how to chronically grow a profitable business while living with chronic illness. Until next time, remember, yes, you are crafted to thrive.