Overprotective Intelligence

I couldn’t help but wonder:
When did my body start acting like it has a PhD in risk management?

Because the moment I think about working out, not even doing it, just casually considering sneakers, my body launches a full internal review. Risk assessment. Worst-case scenarios. A strong recommendation to cancel all plans and lie down “just to be safe.”

Energy? I have it.
Motivation? Shockingly present.
My body? Already drafting a medical disclaimer.

This is the strange math of chronic illness. You’re told to move, gently. To build strength. To support your nervous system. And yet pain doesn’t wait for movement. It arrives early, like it wants credit for something that hasn’t happened yet.

It’s not pain as feedback.
It’s pain as foreshadowing.

Somewhere along the way, my body learned that movement might equal danger. So now it protects me aggressively. Before effort. Before strain. Before I’ve even made a bad decision. An intelligence so overdeveloped it forgets to ask for context.

I call it overprotective intelligence.

And here’s the irony. When I do work out, when I manage to get past the internal security checkpoint, it helps. A lot. My energy stabilizes. My mood improves. I feel strong in a grounded, adult way, not in a “prove something” way. Movement isn’t the enemy. Avoiding it isn’t the solution either.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that working out with chronic illness is not a straight line. It’s not the glossy before-and-after story people love. It’s slow. It’s inconsistent. And it comes with the deeply annoying experience of watching other people improve faster.

They lift heavier.
They lose weight quicker.
They bounce back in half the time.

Meanwhile, I’m over here celebrating an 80 percent day.

That’s the frustrating part. You’re doing the right thing by being gentle. You’re listening to your body. You’re stopping before pain turns into punishment. And yet the process takes longer. Progress moves at a pace that feels almost sarcastic.

Sometimes 80 percent is all you can give. And for a body like mine, that’s not failure. That’s regulation. That’s care. That’s choosing longevity over collapse. But try explaining that to the part of your brain that still measures success in speed and comparison.

Because comparison is sneaky. It shows up at the gym, on social media, in your own head. It asks why your results don’t look like theirs. Why is your timeline different? Why won’t your body just cooperate already?

The answer is simple and deeply inconvenient.
Different bodies. Different rules.

So I remind myself, again and again: this is not a race. This is not about keeping up. This is about rebuilding trust with a body that learned to brace for impact. It’s about teaching it, slowly and repeatedly, that movement can be safe. That effort doesn’t always end in consequences.

Overprotective intelligence isn’t the villain. It’s a survival strategy that worked once and hasn’t gotten the memo that we’re doing things differently now.

What if strength isn’t giving 100 percent every time, but knowing when 80 percent is exactly enough?

And what if real progress has nothing to do with anyone else’s timeline at all?