What Do You Do When You Can’t Do Proper Self-Care?

Or: A look at five weeks of stress, anxiety, and depression.

I am working on a project at my job that has eaten my life over the past month or so. A conservative estimate puts me at about 150 hours of work on this since February 1, and as it winds down, I’ve probably got another 20–30 hours left to do.

This particular project is big. Not only does it require a ton of work, but it’s responsible for 20% of next year’s revenue in one shot. The pressure is on, the stakes are high, and holy crap am I feeling it.

Today is the first day in about a month that I’ve felt like I have a chance to breathe a little. My life has been consumed by this behemoth of a project, and on top of a few years of unresolved stressors, I’ve been a wreck. This is the first day in a long time that I’ve come into work and not felt like I’m going to have an aneurysm at any moment.

I’ve talked a lot about self-care in the past: how important it is, different ways to do it, different types of self-care, and the like. For the most part, I try to make self-care a key part of my life. It’s vital to my survival in a very literal sense.

Last month, I fell down on that.

I didn’t want to. I know how important it is to take care of myself and my mental health. I know that if I don’t do proper self-care at least a little, my mental health spirals down fairly quickly.

Unfortunately, I pretty much stopped any form of active self-care and most passive forms of self-care because I just couldn’t. I trudged through my days and weeks without taking time to empty out the rapidly-accumulating sludge in my brain.

Oh man did I pay the price for that.

Life has been miserable lately, and at this point, it feels like I’m neck-deep in quicksand. I’ve been so mentally and emotionally exhausted that I don’t have much energy for other people. My wife is pretty much the only person who has gotten much of anything out of me the past few weeks.

Any semblance of regular self-care went out the window. I stopped talking to most of my friends, and on the occasions when I did see them, I mostly vomited my sludge all over them. I am blessed with good friends because they all lent a sympathetic ear instead of pushing me away.

I also realized that I don’t have any hobbies anymore. The things I used to do for fun — playing video games, fiddling with my ukulele — I haven’t done in a long time and don’t have the energy or motivation for anymore. My free time is mostly spent on the couch, buried in my phone or lost in Netflix.

I haven’t written anything for fun in a long time. Writing is my job and my passion, and I write a lot of stuff that isn’t job-related, including a lot of what winds up here on Medium. Hell, I only wrote one piece last month, and it was something crappy I shoveled out the door so I could feel like I did something.

I have been so buried in muck that all of the things I do to take care of myself have fallen away. My energy is so low that I can’t bring myself to do anything but the bare minimum outside of work. I’ve taken to napping between work and dinner in an attempt to gain back a little of my precious energy.

The past few days, I haven’t even had the energy to eat. I just didn’t crave food. Last night was the first time I ate a full meal in three days. Before that, I only ate because I knew that I’d be more miserable if I didn’t.

So, now that I’m pulling out of this a little bit, I’m trying to take some lessons from my long period of no or low self-care. Hopefully, you can draw something from my lessons as well.

Lesson one: Give it your best every day

When you’re facing a lot of stress and depression, it’s hard to feel like you’re accomplishing anything. Often, you feel like you’re beating your head against a concrete wall in the vain hopes that you’ll crack the wall first.

Whatever you do every day, give it your best shot. Go into work and work as hard as you can manage. If you have free time, put your energy into things that are fun and rejuvenating. If you’re beat after work but have a little energy to cook a healthy meal, put your best effort into it. Your body will thank you.

Try to identify the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s hard when you’re in the thick of it, but figure out where it is. For me, it’s my deadline. Once that deadline hits, I’ll be out of it and can focus my energy on proper self-care. Until then, I’m putting my head down and powering through my days.

Lesson two: Sometimes your best is to not do anything

There have been quite a few days in the past month where I got home and didn’t have the energy to do anything. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, self-care means doing whatever you can manage, even if it’s barely anything, and that’s okay.

I didn’t have the energy or patience to pursue any of my regular hobbies, and I beat myself up over it. I need to do something fun for me so I can gain some energy back! I’d tell myself. Quit being a slug and do something!

You know what? Sometimes it’s okay to be a slug. Sometimes that’s all you can manage, and that’s fine. You can only do your best every day, and sometimes your best is staying in bed all day so you can recuperate a little bit. There is nothing wrong with that.

Lesson three: It’s okay to ask for (and receive) support

Another thing I talk a lot about is having a support network. This is what you need it for.

I’ve leaned on my wife a lot in the past month to take care of things that I can’t. She understands, thankfully, and has been doing her best to keep our household running. I owe her a lot for that.

Until recently, though, I’ve mostly kept my stress to myself. Aside from my veteran friend, who hears a lot of my gripes, and my wife, who hears all of my gripes, I haven’t talked to many people about this. When I do, it’s mostly a short, high-pressure hose of garbage that elicits sympathy and a promise that they’re here if I need to talk more about it. I rarely do.

You know what? I should. My friends are friends for a reason, and part of being friends is supporting each other through tough times. I do my best to support them, and they do their best to support me, and that’s what friendship is about.

Getting help is not a sign of weakness, nor is asking for help. Nobody can do everything by themselves, nor should they. We’re social creatures for a reason. Do your best to allow yourself to accept help. It does not make you less of a person. I know it’s hard sometimes.

My mentality is along the lines of “if we succeed, we do it together; if we fail, it’s all my fault.” The upshot of that is that if I feel like I’m failing, I won’t ask anyone for help, I’ll just let myself fail. I don’t want to drag other people down with me. That’s a horrible mindset, and I need to stop doing it.

Lesson four: Don’t beat yourself up

One of the things that I did a lot during the past month was beat myself up over not doing self-care. As I said, I know how important it is to take care of yourself, and self-care is one of the things I preach to everyone. Why couldn’t I take my own advice?

Beating myself up is counterproductive. Like I said, sometimes it’s okay to do nothing as a form of self-care. Even though it’s not the most productive form of self-care, it will be even less helpful if you feel awful for doing it.

In the same vein, don’t beat yourself up for leaning on your network. That’s what they’re there for. Your friends are friends for a reason, and your therapist and doctors are there to support you.

You can only do what you can only do

Self-care is a process. Sometimes that process involves planned activities and an investment of energy. Sometimes it’s doing whatever you can manage. Both are okay, and both are part of the process.

Some days, you can manage to do all of the things you want to do, and other days, you just can’t. That’s okay. Part of the process of self-care is learning to be okay with the days where you can’t do everything you want or the days where you can’t do anything at all.

Sometimes, all we can do is hang on for dear life. And that’s okay.