Sensory Strides #51: Depression, Setting Limits; C Joybell

Quote “The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore.”– C. JoyBell

Welcome to the Sensory Strides podcast. Observations of the world through activity, reading, listening, and everything else.

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This was a difficult week for me. Every other month or so I will often have a day where I feel I am not accomplishing anything. On those days, I close myself off from others because I am not a nice person. I recognize those days and realize they are self induced from stressing myself out because I am not meeting my own high expectations. However, this past week I had a series of six days in a row of a feeling along these lines, but about day four, realized it was more than just a bad day and that I was in a depressive state. After recognizing it, I began focusing on self awareness and identified the likely source of the depression. The source was not in my control, but my reaction to it was in my control. I set aside my issues not meeting deadlines because of the situation and instead turned to achieve results for other projects that I would be able to meet. On day six, when I was still not feeling any improvement in the depression, I was planning to reach out to a counselor in order to get some outside support. On that day six, I had successful outcomes and was able to take the next day to not do anything and let my brain rest. I am now feeling much better. I know that I have always been my worst critic and I know what things trigger these episodes so I have set limits for myself to try to minimize the issues that cause these bad days. With everything going on in the world, I allowed myself to ignore some of those self imposed limits and I was paying the price. I am working to continue to support those I work with, which happens to be in healthcare, while making sure I am practicing good habits for myself and not ignoring those limits I know I need to work within.

I encourage anyone that is struggling right now to recognize your own needs and put yourself first. Just like they say on airplanes, put your mask on before helping others. If you aren’t healthy, you can’t support those that need you. In this current health care situation, we are more easily able to connect with health care providers from our home. Please use those resources if you need them. This is a stressful time and we need to take care of our mental health in addition to our physical health.

Thanks for joining me. Be sure to check our show notes for links to inspiration items and … don't forget to stop and smell the roses.

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