The Boiling Frog, The Facial and The Cat: On Not Noticing How Tense You Are

Last week, a lovely woman touched my jaw and I nearly levitated off the table.

I was having a facial. My first hour of doing absolutely nothing for myself in about a month — since the whole moving-the-business-home saga you read about last week (the taco shelf sends its regards). And it was only when I finally lay down on that table, with nowhere to be and nothing to multitask, that I noticed it: my jaw was aching. Properly aching. Clenched tight, apparently, for who knows how long. When she got to massaging those muscles it was genuinely painful — and she confirmed what my face had been trying to tell me: everything in there was rock hard.

My shoulders, for the record, were up around my ears. They may have been there since the removalists arrived.

The boiling frog (that's me. I'm the frog)

You've probably heard the boiling frog thing: drop a frog into boiling water and it jumps straight out, but put it in cool water and heat it slowly, and it won't notice the danger until it's too late. Lovely imagery, I know. But is there a better description of how stress creeps up on us?

Because nobody wakes up one morning and decides to clench their jaw for a month. It happens by degrees. One stressful week rolls into the next, the water gets a little warmer, and your body quietly adjusts — shoulders up a notch, jaw a little tighter, breath a little shallower — until tense is just… how you are. You don't notice, because you're never still long enough to notice.

And I had all the classic signs, looking back. Waking in the small hours with my mind already running laps. Snappier than usual. Doom-scrolling. And my concentration was shot — I couldn't read my book at night anymore, so I switched to listening on Audible instead, and then I couldn't even manage that. I kept having to skip back to find my place because my mind had wandered off mid-chapter and taken the story with it. (Honestly, it was like perimenopause symptoms on steroids, and don't we love when those two join forces.)

The kicker? My usual check-in points had all quietly disappeared. My pilates classes fell off the calendar in the move. My walks — which are normally my mental health walks — had become quick loops for the dog's benefit, phone in hand, multitasking the whole way. For a solid month I hadn't actually been present in my own body at all. The water had been warming the entire time, and I was busy telling everyone I was fine.

And then the cat

So there I was, fresh from my facial, jaw finally unclenched, shoulders lowered back to their factory settings, thinking: right, lesson learned, I'll look after myself properly now.

Life's response? Our cat, Baba Ganoush (yes, like the dip) stopped eating.

He went listless and flat and just not himself, and by the second day my gut said this is not nothing. The vet agreed — quite concerned, actually — and he was whisked off for a barrage of tests, then onto an IV for fluids, then admitted to the emergency vet hospital overnight. As I write this, we still don't have answers. He's home, he's eating again (enormous relief), but his energy isn't back, and we're waiting on more blood tests Monday.

And do you know what my shoulders did the moment that first vet call came in? Straight back up around my ears. Didn't even ask permission. One phone call, and every bit of that facial was undone.

Here's the uncomfortable truth

This is the part most self-care content skips, so let's say it plainly: the stress doesn't wait politely for you to finish relaxing. In today's world it's always there in the wings — one phone call, one email, one school newsletter, one “Mum, don't be mad but…” away. You can do everything right, take your hour, unclench your jaw, and be right back in the warm water by dinnertime.

I'll be honest with you: I've been through so many stressful seasons that sometimes I worry I'm getting used to tense as my usual state. That my body's idea of “normal” is quietly recalibrating upwards. And I don't think I'm the only one. I think half the mums reading this have shoulders around their ears right now and haven't noticed until this exact sentence. (Go on — drop them. I'll wait.)

So what do we actually do?

Two things, and they sound contradictory, but they're not.

First: get fierce about protecting your reset time. Not precious — fierce. Because here's the maths nobody tells you: every week you skip the walk, the class, the hour that's actually yours, the tension compounds. There's so much more to undo to get back to your set point. An hour a week keeps you near baseline; a month of nothing means someone has to excavate your jaw with her thumbs. Guard those non-negotiables the way you'd guard your kids' — because you already know how to be fierce about the people you love. You're just not on your own list.

And second — this is the important bit — sometimes you genuinely can't. Sometimes the cat is in hospital and the tests are pending and the space and time for looking after yourself is literally taken from you, and everything falls down around you for a while. That's not failure. That's a season. Let it fall. Because here's what I've learned from a lot of these seasons: the falling-down times can actually become the strong ground you rebuild from. You come back knowing your tells earlier — the jaw, the 3am wake-ups, the audiobook you can't follow — and you rebuild your set point stronger and sooner than you did the time before.

Notice sooner. Reset fiercely. Forgive yourself completely when you can't. That's the whole practice.

A little something just for you

This is a Self Love week if ever there was one. It's the blend I reach for when I've slipped to the bottom of my own list again — for those feelings of remembering I matter too, treating myself with the same kindness I hand out to everyone else all day, and giving myself permission to take up an hour of my own life without guilt. If your shoulders just dropped two paragraphs ago, it might be one for you too.

Book the thing. Take the walk without your phone. And when life takes the hour off you anyway — because some weeks it will — be as gentle with yourself as you'd be with a friend.

Your jaw will thank you. Eventually. Mine's still negotiating.

Alisha x

P.S. Baba Ganoush update as at time of writing: home, eating, milking the sympathy for all it's worth. More tests Monday — keep everything crossed for our boy.