Mental Health Updates and Making Change

Hi lovies! It is currently the week after my very much needed fall break. We had two days off and the weekend so I took my depleted, burnout self home to recharge. I want to share my reflections, thoughts, and actions with you all as I work to help myself. My hope is that by sharing my struggles and my goals to get me off of this struggle bus, I can help you do the same. 

I think that I forget how often I experience burnout which is what makes it so cyclical. I burnout after 3 or so months and then I crash and burn and need a week to sleep and cry and then I’m refreshed, but nothing ever changes and I soon thereafter crash and burn yet again. I want to paint the reality of this situation so I am not going to sugarcoat my feelings. 

If you have followed my blog for a while now, you know that I love to be active in all sorts of ways. I like to be go go go. I love trying new hobbies, meeting new people, and shoving my schedule full. This can be so fun and exhilarating and the opportunity to learn new skills and knowledge brings so much joy. However, packing everything in as turned into making everything a fire drill. I always line tasks up back to back to back so I can get as much in as possible. This is fun a few days a week, but not every second of every day. The mental planning starts to weigh on me as I constantly think of the next of many to-dos. I was never truly in the present moment. In my 3-month burnout cycle I tend to start off very present and in touch with my emotions. I think about what I am grateful for very often and practice what I preach. As time goes on, though, I lose steam. The things that were fun aren’t so fun anymore. Everything becomes nothing more than a box to check. As I reflect, I think to myself, what is productivity worth? And am I truly being productive? 

I can tell you that productivity is not worth your mental health or your joy. Productivity does not just mean checking the boxes. I want to learn, I love to learn, but I’m not learning anything by moving through the actions mindlessly just to say that I completed them. I became so constantly exhausted mentally and physically that I had no energy to do anything more than practically sleep walk through things. I isolated myself. I always had to be in control of the plan, my thoughts, my life. I missed out on things just because I wouldn’t shift my schedule around. Since I HAD to wake up at 6 am the next morning, I couldn’t stay up later to socialize. But why do I HAVE to follow the same schedule everyday I thought? I found and still do find comfort in being in control. I like a schedule and a plan because I think that everything will stick to it, but when it doesn’t what happens then? I would honestly say, most things don’t go to plan. At the beginning of my burnout cycle, I would accept that my plan my go array, but was I really accepting it? No. I pretended to accept it, but really it would eat me alive when things were out of place or I had to switch tasks around. If that is how the beginning of the cycle started, you can only imagine the end. 

This burnout changed me and I’m hoping it did so for good. I have tried to make change, but I never really stuck to it. I have learned that it is a mental shift that needs to occur. A way of thinking. This time I hit my lowest. It is hard to describe the feeling. l felt like a zombie, nothing sounded very exciting except for sleep, I had no real ability to think or do because I was so depleted from months of work and little rest. My mind felt like it had exploded, I packed so much information and spent so much time using it to worry and plan that it finally exploded and now very little was left. I would go over my to-do list a million times a day to make sure everything was on track and continue to remind myself what I had to do next. My emotions were heightened; I was so fragile. One little blip in my day and an anxiety attack was soon taking over my entire body. Sobbing, grasping for air. I didn’t want to feel sad anymore, but I knew I had done this to myself. As I sat on my bathroom floor tears speeding down my cheeks as I tried to catch my breath, I promised myself that nothing was worth that feeling. The feeling that even though I had been so productive and excelling academically, I wasn’t enough. The negative thoughts that flooded my mind overtook my body too. My usual bright and sparkly self was replaced by a self-hating, mindless, and exhausted person. Since I had sent no time for me or my mental health, every negative thought or feeling cropped up and it couldn’t be stopped. 

After my last exam finished and it was time to go home, I didn’t even have enough energy to reflect. Now, after lots of sleep and meals made by my lovely parents here I am. I know that it is in my personality to fill my schedule with hobbies and jobs and socialization which is awesome and I love that quality. However, I will no longer be rushing through life. I will focus on the things that bring me joy, not just doing the “hardest” things because I can. I will recognize what I need and unapologetically take it. I will reserve time for my mental health and take rest proactively. I know that everything that needs to get done will get done. I have found that reminding myself of these things daily is the only way for me to stay on track. Positive affirmations do work and I know they do, now I have to make sure that I do them. However, I want to implement tasks like working out and affirmations in a fun and exciting way, not another box to be checked. For example, I woke up this morning and instead of setting a specific regime for positive affirmations I simply looked in the mirror and hyped myself up. I do it throughout the day, too. Call me crazy, that’s fine, but it does work. I notice that not only am I happier, but I compliment others more often too. I have more to give to myself and to others and that makes this world a better place. With working out, instead of being forced to stick to a workout that I planned the night before, I wake up, see how I am feeling, and go from there. I make the rules of my life, and I am not going to make my own life suck. 

I have always thought about the phrase “you make time for what is important” which I completely agree with. However, I think I need to change my stance on this a bit. School isn’t the only important thing in the world. My mental health is important, my joy, sleep, fun, house tasks, etc. I noticed my room was getting dirty because I wasn’t making time to clean it. I thought I was “too busy,” but really that just made me more stressed. My room, at that point, had become a reflection of my mind. Cluttered, stressed, disorganized. It all comes back to rushing through life and relating my worth to productivity. I am more than my productivity and I want to enjoy this beautiful life. 

As much as I made Ellavate for you all, I also made it for myself. To write my thoughts on paper, hear your opinions, and grow together for the better. It is ok to go through hard times, they are bound to happen. But, for me, this is cyclical and I have control to turn it around. I am committed to taking care of myself and being in the moment. I am working to live my life through internal feeling, rather than external appearance.