Do You Need A Break?

Feeling unwell is generally easy to spot. A tummy ache, headache, sore throat – once you’re over the age of about 3, these feelings are easy to recognise and easy to treat. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s the same for mental health.

This is one of those circumstances where being a sufferer of mental ill health has actually improved my quality of life now that I have recovered, because I’ve almost trained myself to spot when my mood is that little bit lower, my motivation is lacking and my unhealthy thoughts start to crawl back. It can happen so quickly, so I have to be able to address it before it gets worse.

For many people though, I don’t think it’s necessarily as obvious when things start to decline. When you have a busy lifestyle, it is really easy to throw away words like ‘stress’ as if they don’t matter, as if it’s just a part of daily life. You’re doing three things at once, and you can’t find your other shoe. You’re juggling work and home life and left your lunch at home. You might start crying when your hairband snaps or there’s no toilet roll left because it’s just the last straw. You might have run out of straws a long time ago. And when someone asks what’s wrong, you say “I’m fine” or maybe, “I’m just a bit stressed”.

In the fast-paced society that we live in today, stress can even be expected of us. If you’re not in the office early and leaving late, if you’re not rushing from work to the gym to the supermarket to your home, if you’re not filling every weekend with social events, then are you really living?

But the thing is, stress is not good for our health. It’s been proven that chronic and untreated stress can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease. But even in it’s less drastic forms, stress does not feel nice. It can make you feel grumpy and short tempered, emotional, exhausted, it can lead you to overeat, it can make you feel anxious. Also, ironically, it can hamper the very thing you’re stressing about by distracting you or making you feel down about it, and you end up in a bit of a downward spiral.

These last few weeks (or months) have felt pretty busy for me. Not really for any particular reason, I’m just filling most of my time lately. I’m really pleased to have got back to blog writing and I really do love it. But last week I didn’t get a blog post out in time, and before I knew it, it was Tuesday again and I still hadn’t finished the post I started two weeks ago.

And rather than telling myself that it was ok, that I just hadn’t had the time and it didn’t really matter when I published my next post, I started telling myself that I was failing, that I can never commit to anything, that it was “typical me” to start something and not be able to keep it going.

Then I stopped, and I realised what I was doing to myself. Putting myself down, making myself feel even worse. And my blog still wasn’t getting written.

Sometimes you need to give yourself a break. And that might literally be a break from everything – stopping what you’re doing and stepping away from it all. Or it might be just an evening of letting yourself relax, not worrying about hitting the gym or getting some extra work done. It might be that you have to carry on doing what you’re doing, but in your mind you can just take a breath. Just one breath in, and one breath out. And with that breath you can remind yourself to go easy on yourself, not to put so much pressure on yourself, to let yourself off.

The high standards we can set ourselves definitely have their time and place. They push us to achieve and they drive us forward, they give us something to aim for. But sometimes we can be so focused on the standards of the things that we are doing, that we forget to hold ourselves accountable to our emotional standards. The standard we set ourselves for how we feel. It’s so important that we check in with ourselves every now and again to make sure we’re feeling good. Just like with a headache or a sore throat, we should be able to recognise when we’re not quite feeling ourselves, and do something about it.

There might be some quick wins. For me, I know that if I’m feeling a bit low or I’ve had a rubbish day, a run will make me feel better instantly. Similarly, sometimes I know that I’m pushing myself too hard, and what I need is a night off, chilling out on the sofa instead. Your quick win could be anything that helps you to clear your head a bit. But when you really start paying attention to your mental health on a regular basis, you’re also working on a long term win. Reminding yourself every now and then to take a break means that you won’t get to the stage where your body decides it for you.

For me, setting myself some emotional standards and making sure I stick to them has made a huge difference. I’ve waved goodbye to high blood pressure and unexplained crying, and have welcomed some time for myself to breathe.