You worked straight through to your vacation. On the first morning off you woke with a sore throat, and you spent the week in bed. It was the same last year. You joke that your body waits for vacations. By the end of the day I've got nothing left, and I get up the next morning and do it again.
This page does not explain the getting sick, and it makes no claim that one thing causes the other.
Anything about the illness itself, and why it keeps happening, is for your doctor.
This is one shape of a wider pattern. The fuller picture is here: why does rest feel dangerous.
01
What you do before you stop
Look at the weeks before the time off.
You may not have slowed at all. You cleared the desk, covered for others, and finished at midnight the night before leaving. You told nobody you were running low, because you were still getting everything done.
Rest may only ever happen when it is forced, by a vacation on the calendar or by being sick in bed.
People say you work too hard, and you agree, and nothing changes.
The cost you can count is the time off itself. The vacation you waited for goes by in a sickbed.
02
What the not-stopping may be protecting
"If I'm not producing, I don't know who I am."
Stopping while you still could go on may not feel allowed. Under Output, rest may seem to need a reason nobody can argue with. I've always been the one to push through and keep moving forward.
Read about Output →"Strong is the only version of me they know."
Slowing down might show that you were tired. Under Strong, you may keep the pace so that nobody sees you flag.
Read about Strong →Other rules can be here, and it may be none. You may simply have a job that is too big.
03
What is under the rule
Under Output, the fear may be that without achievement you don't matter. What would answer it is worth that doesn't require performance.
Under Strong, the fear may be that if they see you struggle, you lose the only standing you have. What would answer it is being seen at less than full capacity and still being held.
04
One question that separates them
Which is harder: having nothing to show, or being seen struggling to get it done?
Nothing to show is the Output answer. Being seen struggling is the Strong answer.
If neither is it, there is not enough to tell. That is a result.
Working hard before a break is not a rule. Someone who works hard, loves it, and rests without guilt is not under Output, and what tells you more is what happens when the producing stops. For Strong, what to look at is cost.
Subtraction keeps to what you do. The illness is outside what it can speak to.
05
One thing to try this week
Look back at the two weeks before your last time off.
Write down the last day in that stretch on which you stopped at a normal hour, if there was one.
Beside it, write what you told yourself on the other days in order to keep going.
Why stopping can be so hard is on Why Does Rest Feel Dangerous?