Not trying to prove I’m not lazy

I spent a lot of my teen and adult life trying to prove to others, and myself, that I wasn't lazy. I had so internalized toxic productivity that I would try to look busy whenever someone came into the room, or at the end of a day, I’d list all the things that I did that day, or do a bunch of stuff that didn’t really need to be done, just so that I could be seen doing them, or show myself how much I was getting done.

These things that I used to see as accomplishments, I now categorize as symptoms of a sickness, that repeatedly led me into burnout.

So I’ve been practicing not trying to prove to people that I'm not lazy. Which is very hard to not do, and brings up all sorts of anxieties, but I use my anti-anxiety work to help me through it.