• Celebrity
    • Daniel Kaluuya Digital Cover
    • Digital Cover Method Man
    • Digital Cover Zazie
    • Celebrity News
    • ‘Yes, Girl!’ Podcast
    • Entertainment
    • Black Celeb Couples
    • Celebrity Moms
    • Red Carpet
    • If Not For My Girls
  • Fashion
    • ESSENCE Fashion House 2022
    • Fashion News
    • Street Style
    • Accessories
    • Fashion Week
  • Beauty
    • Black Beauty Awards 2022
    • ESSENCE Hair Awards 2022
    • AVEENO Skin Health Startup Accelerator
    • Beauty News
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
  • Hair
    • Hair News
    • Natural
    • Relaxed
    • Transitioning
    • Weave
    • 4C
  • Love
    • Love & Sex News
    • The Solve Podcast
    • Weddings
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
  • Lifestyle
    • Black History Month
    • ESSENCE Gift Guide 2022
    • ESSENCE + smartwater Live Well Challenge
    • Build Your Legacy 2022
    • Dream & Plan with Confidence Prudential
    • AMEX Platinum Travel
    • Homecoming Season 2022
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Money & Career
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Black Travel Guide
  • News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Sponsors Recognition Page 2022
    • Latest News
    • Raise Your Voice
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Video
  • Festival
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Fest Videos
  • Events
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Girls United Summit
    • 2022 ESSENCE Fashion House
    • 2022 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2022 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
    • 2022 Homecoming Season
    • Wellness House
    • She Got Now
    • Dear Black Men
    • I Am Speaking
    • Power Tools
  • Studios
  • Girls United

WHERE BLACK WOMEN COME FIRST

Every day we're serving Black women deeply. Come get a plate of goodness! Sign up for daily content and exclusive offers you'll love!

Your email is required.
Your email is in invalid format.
Confirm email is required.
Email did not match.
By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and that you have read our Privacy Policy
Skip to content
SUBSCRIBE
  • MAGAZINE
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Celebrity
    • Daniel Kaluuya Digital Cover
    • Digital Cover Method Man
    • Digital Cover Zazie
    • Celebrity News
    • ‘Yes, Girl!’ Podcast
    • Entertainment
      • Paint The Polls Black
    • Black Celeb Couples
    • Celebrity Moms
    • Red Carpet
    • If Not For My Girls
  • Fashion
    • ESSENCE Fashion House 2022
    • Fashion News
    • Street Style
    • Accessories
    • Fashion Week
  • Beauty
    • Black Beauty Awards 2022
    • ESSENCE Hair Awards 2022
    • AVEENO Skin Health Startup Accelerator
    • Beauty News
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
  • Hair
    • Hair News
    • Natural
    • Relaxed
    • Transitioning
    • Weave
    • 4C
  • Love
    • Love & Sex News
    • The Solve Podcast
    • Weddings
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
  • Lifestyle
    • Black History Month
    • ESSENCE Gift Guide 2022
    • ESSENCE + smartwater Live Well Challenge
    • Build Your Legacy 2022
    • Dream & Plan with Confidence Prudential
    • AMEX Platinum Travel
    • Homecoming Season 2022
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Money & Career
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Black Travel Guide
  • News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Sponsors Recognition Page 2022
    • Latest News
    • Raise Your Voice
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Video
  • Festival
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Fest Videos
  • Events
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2022 Girls United Summit
    • 2022 ESSENCE Fashion House
    • 2022 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2022 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
    • 2022 Homecoming Season
    • Wellness House
    • She Got Now
    • Dear Black Men
    • I Am Speaking
    • Power Tools
  • Studios
  • Girls United
Home · Lifestyle

Soul-Care: How Spiritual Weariness Can Impact Your Physical Health

Are you resting your soul? Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith explains how not addressing the ways you're being depleted and a lack of boundaries can wear you down physically.
Soul-Care: How Spiritual Weariness Can Impact Physical Health
Westend61/Getty
By Victoria Uwumarogie · Updated July 22, 2021

Soul-Care is a three-part series about ways Black women can practice self-care when it comes to resting their souls, with input from experts in medicine, psychology and theology.

Have you ever found yourself exhausted by the day to day, but your fatigue was the kind that couldn’t be fixed with sleep?

In these Covid times, you’ve probably experienced it. There have been a number of headlines about people experiencing “burnout” from juggling too many things at once or working too hard at multiple areas of life. It’s a tumult that can upend you and leave you feeling troubled, desperate for some type of change, with a soul that’s not at rest. If not addressed, it can lead to an unrest and unhappiness that’s overwhelming. I can say that I experienced it, as work, caring for a baby, being separated from family and trying to keep a home and marriage intact left me shaken for months.

“The first thing you really have to start with is looking at what parts of your life actually are getting depleted on a regular basis because sometimes what we do is we just say that we’re tired without looking at where the depletion is occurring,” says Saundra Dalton-Smith, M.D., internal medicine physician and author of Sacred Rest. She says there are seven different areas where people find themselves tapped out. They include the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory and creative areas of life. When you feel like you’re doing everything but the things that matter to you and bring you joy, for example, exerting extensive creative energy for work that doesn’t provide fulfillment or meet your needs, or you often spend time around people who are insufferable, a “social” issue, you can feel a heaviness of the spirit.When you’re mindful of the energy being used up, you can begin to work to ease the exhaustion you feel.

If you’re not, and you allow yourself to constantly be in a state of unrest, eventually the body reacts. Dr. Saundra says that is why many patients she’s had end up at the doctor. They’re seeking answers for why they’re uncomfortable.

“Spiritual as well as emotional unrest can present with a physical complaint. As an internal medicine physician, this is actually where most people end up in my medical practice, not because they think they have something spiritual or emotional, they just know they’re uncomfortable,” she says. “Whether that’s they can’t sleep at night, they are experiencing insomnia, sometimes they’re experiencing chronic neck and back pain because of the tension that they’re carrying in their muscles and their shoulders. Sometimes they’re experiencing problems with headaches or blurry vision because the increased stress that they’re experiencing from their spiritual and social unrest is now causing them to have a cortisol response or a stress response that’s driving up blood pressure, driving up heart rate, increasing all these other issues in their body that really at the root cause is being pushed on from something that’s emotional or spiritual, or even social.”

When you pinpoint the ways in which your energy is being drained, Dr. Saundra says it’s necessary to set healthy boundaries to turn things around. A lot of lines were blurred for people in the pandemic. A major example is the ways in which work life mixed with home life required people to pour into everything but themselves.

“People forgot how to turn it off so they would just sit down with their computer the second they woke up with their cup of coffee and that computer would still be on looking at emails for work to the second they went to bed because all the boundaries went away,” she says. “The fact is that we have to have some level of work-life integration that is healthy. You can’t put them on either side of the scale and balance them, which is what we’ve been telling people: ‘Let’s balance work and life.’ They’re not meant to be on opposite sides of the scale. They’re meant to be integrated in a way so that they both stay healthy.”

Whatever has been contributing to a spiritual weariness, Dr. Saundra explains that it’s important to zone in on it in order to rest your soul.

“Spiritual energy has more to do with how you sense your effort affecting the whole. So do you feel connected? Do you feel like you are contributing? Do you feel like you belong? Do you feel like you are living in your purpose and your calling and you are accomplishing something that is actually bigger than you? So often a lot of us stay within our comfort zone and our comfort zone sometimes will actually keep us in this tension from where we desire to see ourselves and where we currently are,” she says.

It can seem like the rat race, the sacrifices, the drama never ends, which can lead to the unrest, but whether it’s getting sleep, keeping away from people who drain you, making time for yourself and your passions and less time for all that takes that time from you, prioritize you to be the best you.

TOPICS:  burnout Mental Health self-care wellness
COMPANY INFORMATION
  • Our Company
  • Customer Service
  • Essence Ventures
  • Change Your Address
  • Contact Us
  • Job Opportunities
  • Internships
  • Media Kit
  • tag
SUBSCRIBE
  • Newsletters
  • Give a Gift of ESSENCE
  • Magazine Tablet Edition
FOLLOW US
MORE ON ESSENCE
  • Home
  • Love
  • Celebrity
  • Beauty
  • Hair
  • Fashion
  • ESSENCE festival

ESSENCE.com is part of ESSENCE Communications, Inc.

Essence may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.

©2023 ESSENCE Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Essence.com Advertising Terms

Get The ESSENCE Newsletter and
Special Offers delivered to your inbox

By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Get The ESSENCE Magazine
by subscribing below
subscribe now