Drowning in Stress: Self-Care and Struggling to Power Through

That feeling when you don’t know how to help yourself anymore.

I write a lot about self-care. My last article was about self-care, and what you can do if you are having trouble keeping up with your normal self-care routines. When I wrote that, I wanted to provide some tangible tips for how to pick yourself up when you fall down on your self-care routines.

This is the story of how I got there.

In the recent past, my life has been a bit hellish. My wife and I experienced a few sudden vet expenses for two of our cats, and we now must feed them some really expensive food. One of our females doesn’t get along with the other female, and it feels like nothing we do has helped solve the problem completely.

My work stress was also high, as my January was full of projects and my February and part of March were dedicated to one project that was responsible for 20% of next year’s revenue. I had to get my bosses to reassure me that if we are awarded less than 20%, I would still be able to keep my job.

The world is also, apparently, going to hell. World War III was trending in the first week of the year, the presidential election is in full swing, and we are staring down the barrel of a pandemic. I obsessively follow the news to feel like a good citizen, but it has been wearing on me.

In the more distant past, the past few years have been a bit of a struggle for my wife and I. Lots of personal emergencies and sudden expenses have taken a toll on our moods and finances. For a long time, it has felt like we take one step forward and two steps back.

Pile on top of that the stress from the holidays that was still fresh and my typical seasonal depression, and you have a recipe for a stress bomb that wrecked my mental state for a while.

The point was driven home a few weeks ago when my therapist asked me what I was doing to take care of myself. After dodging the question a few times, she pinned me down and forced me to answer. My answer: nothing.

I realized that I had lost all of my self-care tools in the whirlwind of stress. Things I used to do for fun? Gone by the wayside. Hobbies, like my ukulele? Untouched for months. My self-care consisted of pretty much nothing but laying on the couch, watching Netflix or browsing Facebook.

Obviously, I needed to triage first. I stopped listening to the news in the car, switching to music instead. Also, no more reading the news on my lunch break. I also blocked several people on Facebook who posted the most inflammatory stuff, political or otherwise. I don’t need that stress in my life.

I also am doing my best to take the advice I’ve received from my therapist, my wife’s therapist, and my boss: quit helping so many people. My therapist said I’ve spent so much time focusing on other people that I don’t take care of myself as much as I should. My wife’s therapist calls it “pouring from an empty cup.”

In a meeting with my boss the other day, we were talking about how my depression and stress has affected my work life. I told her that I am trying to take better care of myself, and part of that is focusing more on myself. She commented that it seemed like every Monday, I’d come into work and talk about how I had spent the weekend helping one person or another, but never seemed to do things for myself anymore.

None of this is to say that I’m going to abandon my friends or be blissfully ignorant of the world. I still follow the news, just not as obsessively as I used to. I am a helper by nature, so I don’t plan on abandoning my friends either. I just need to take more time for myself.

Do I have a plan? Not yet. I have a few things to do that are focused on others this weekend, but I plan to sit down and figure out my approach soon. I can’t really afford to put this off, for the sake of my mental health.

I think some time off is in the cards. Getting away from both work and the city where I live feels like a good plan. Usually, my vacations consist of just hanging out at home, but in this case, I feel like getting away for a few days would help. Considering one week never seemed like enough, I started planning to take a solid month off.

In the past week, I’ve been feeling a bit better (read: not like a total dumpster fire). This caused me to reconsider my initial plan to try for the full month. A good friend, who is older and more experienced than I, strongly suggested that I take off the full month regardless of whether I thought I needed it or not.

Ideally, I will get a chance to get away from my town for a week or two, disconnect from the world, and rejuvenate myself. It sounds both fantastic and terrifying. A week without internet, without news, without connection to my friends, is a scary prospect. It also sounds incredibly nice.

Until I can get that time off, I need to bridge the gap somehow. Being more intentional about my self-care is a starting point. I need to do better than just being lazy on the couch. I started the other day by playing around with my ukulele for the first time in months. It felt good.

I’ve landed in this hole through a long string of events, accidents, and emergencies. While I have a lot of help and support from my friends, only I can pull myself out. My first step is to create a plan, since playing by ear has contributed to my current predicament. Next comes sticking to the plan, which will likely be the hardest part.

I’m confident that I’ll get through this. After all, I’ve survived 100% of my worst days so far. By comparison, this will be easy.

I hope.