This one’s personal.
And honestly, I debated sharing it because I kept telling myself, Emma, it’s just an ankle injury. Get over it. But it wasn’t just an ankle. It was a lesson I apparently needed to learn the hard way about mental health, and if you’re a business owner who keeps pushing and pushing and pushing, I reckon this is going to land.
Life sure has a way of forcing a pause when you refuse to take one voluntarily, especially when your mental health has been quietly relying on momentum.
Losing My Regulator
So, I hurt my ankle. One stupid little moment, one wrong step, and suddenly I was benched. If you know me, you know I’m a 20,000 steps a day kind of girl. I run three times a week and I do it religiously. Walking and running are my things. They clear my head, shake off client stress and keep me optimistic, which is why they matter so much for my mental health.
They are not just “exercise”. They are my mental health regulators, and I don’t say that lightly. They are how I process. They are how I stay steady. They are how I keep my mental health in a good place without even thinking about it.
And when I hurt my ankle, all I could do was sit and rest it. The universe basically tapped me on the shoulder and said, calm down. So I sat. And I rested. And I rested some more. And the longer I sat, the more I realised how much my mental health depends on those simple, consistent habits.
Two weeks in, I still couldn’t do much. No walking, running or 20,000 steps. Nothing. And without that outlet, my mental health started to wobble in ways I didn’t expect.
The Second Stressor
During those two weeks, I also had to go for a skin check. If you listen to this podcast, you’ll know I had a melanoma cut out last year, so we needed to make sure everything was still fine. Even when you think you’ve “moved on”, your mental health remembers what it felt like last time.
My brilliant skin doctor looked at one spot and said, “I’m just going to take a photo of this.” The last time he said that, it was a melanoma.
He finished up and said, “Look, it’s probably nothing to worry about. We can either watch it for three months, or you can go get it cut out.” Cool. Referral in hand. Off I went.
And here’s the part I want you to notice. In my head, I was telling myself it wasn’t a big deal. The doctor said it was probably fine, so I filed it away and moved on. Or at least I thought I did. But mental health does not always follow the story you tell yourself. Sometimes your body keeps the score, even when your brain is trying to be logical.
The Breakdown
Then I jumped on a call with Serena, my sister and business manager. It was our first day back after five days off. Except those five days weren’t “off” in any enjoyable sense. I was literally just sitting, resting, not able to move or do much of anything, trying to convince myself I was fine while my mental health was clearly not fine.
Serena started the call with a normal question. “How are you, Em?” And I burst into tears.
I felt flat and heavy and I couldn’t work out why. The skin thing wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. So why was I crying on a work call with someone I love and trust? That’s the thing with mental health. You can be “fine” on paper and still not be fine in your body.
That’s when Serena reminded me of something I already knew, but had completely lost sight of. Walking and running are the things I do for me. They help me process. They help me manage my mental health. They keep me steady. And I hadn’t been able to do any of that for two weeks.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. My mental health wasn’t falling apart because I’m dramatic. It was reacting because my regulator had been taken away.
What Was Happening Underneath
When I sat with it afterwards, I realised there were a few things happening at once. The ankle injury removed my physical outlet. The skin check triggered that familiar fear, even though I was telling myself it was nothing. And the forced rest stripped away my routine, which is where a lot of my identity and sense of control lives. All of that impacts mental health, whether you label it that way or not.
Business owners are particularly vulnerable to this. We build our days around doing. We are wired for action. So when something forces us to stop, we don’t just lose the activity. We lose the thing that makes us feel like ourselves. And when your sense of self gets shaky, your mental health gets shaky too.
And when you lose that, everything else starts to wobble. Your mood. Your patience. Your focus. Your optimism. Your ability to cope. Your mental health starts sending signals, and if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss them.
That cry with Serena was actually a beautiful release. My body was telling me something my brain was trying to ignore. I was not okay, and I needed to acknowledge that instead of powering through. That is mental health in real life. Not a neat checklist. A human moment where you finally stop pretending.
The Reset Plan
So what did I do?
I strapped my ankle and did a thousand steps. That’s it. A thousand, for someone who normally does 20,000 a day. It felt like nothing, but it was something. It was movement. It was me telling my body and my brain, we’re coming back. It was me supporting my mental health in the smallest possible way.
Before that, I also sat quietly with a cup of tea and did nothing. Zip. Zilch. I let my brain process without forcing it to produce anything. Sometimes mental health needs quiet more than it needs productivity.
I also practiced gratitude for the rest of my body. I know it sounds a bit woo, but I’d been so frustrated with my ankle for “letting me down” that I forgot everything else my body does for me every single day. Shifting that perspective helped my mental health soften. It brought me back into the present.
Recovery isn’t dramatic. There’s no single moment where you go, yep, I’m back. It’s gradual. It’s small steps and it’s consistency. And for mental health, that consistency matters more than big bursts of motivation.
Four Questions to Ask Yourself
I don’t want this to be a nice story you listen to and forget by lunchtime, so here are four questions to sit with, especially if your mental health has felt a bit wobbly lately.
What’s your thing? The activity that regulates you. The one that keeps you steady. Name it, write it down, because if you can’t name it, you can’t protect it. And if you can’t protect it, your mental health will eventually pay the price.
Are you still doing it? Be honest. When was the last time you did the thing? If it’s been more than a week or two, that’s a flag. Business owners are brilliant at deprioritising themselves when things get hectic. The irony is, the busier you are, the more your mental health needs the thing.
What’s your minimal viable version? When you can’t do the full thing, what’s the smallest version that still counts? A slow walk. Ten minutes. One page. One lap. Work it out before you need it, because when life takes your legs out from under you, you need to know what good enough looks like for your mental health.
What are your early warning signs? For me, it was feeling teary, flat, heavy, and not knowing why. Your signs might be snapping at your partner, dreading Monday mornings, scrolling your phone at 11pm because you can’t switch off. Learn your signs. Write them down. Tell someone you trust so they can flag it when you can’t see it in yourself. Mental health is easier to protect when you catch it early.
Who’s Checking on You?
I want to say something about this because it matters. I coach women in business for a living. I talk about energy management, self care, balance, all of it. And I still missed my own signs. That’s how sneaky mental health can be when you’re high functioning.
Just because you know the theory doesn’t mean you’re immune.
That’s why you need people around you who will ask how you really are and won’t accept “I’m fine” as an answer. Serena did that for me. She didn’t let me brush it off. She reflected back what she could see, and that was the moment I started to understand what was happening. Sometimes mental health needs another person to hold up a mirror.
Who does that for you?
If you don’t have someone, find someone. A business buddy, a coach, a friend who gets it. Someone who has permission to say, “You don’t seem like yourself. Let’s talk.” Because mental health is not something you have to manage alone.
Your Mental Health is Your Business
In business, we talk a lot about strategy and sales and revenue and marketing and systems. All important. But none of it works if the person running the business is running on empty. Your mental health is not separate from your business. It is your business.
When you are regulated, you make better decisions. You show up better for your clients. You have the energy to do the business development that keeps the pipeline full. You have the patience for the hard conversations. That’s mental health. That’s capacity. That’s leadership.
When you’re not regulated, everything suffers. And it doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it just looks like feeling flat, feeling heavy, and not quite knowing why. That’s mental health waving a little flag, hoping you’ll notice.
So if that’s you right now, please hear me. You are not broken. You might have just stopped doing the thing that keeps everything else working.
Go do the thing. Even the smallest version of it. Let’s start there. For your mental health. For your life. For your business.
LINKS
For a copy of Emma’s book, ‘Go-getter: Raise your mojo, shift your mindset and thrive’ – https://emmamcqueen.com.au/want-more/emmas-book/