As I mentioned in the last post I’ve been struggling with mental health during 2020 and 2021. After talking with my psychologist trying to explore exactly what it is it was pretty clear that the major cause behind it was me worrying about my health and lately also my son’s.
I don’t know if I watched too much “House” or if it’s the availability of information but I’ve been self diagnosing myself for years and most of the time it was harmless. But since summer of 2019 I’ve taken it up quite a few notches to the level that I got panic attacks over small things. It could be a pain in my arms, something with my breathing, it was always something terminal. Or something serious enough that I couldn’t work anymore or something like that. Unfortunately it didn’t stop there – I would keep playing out the scenario that would end with us losing the house and “what would my wife do if it really was terminal”, all those thoughts that I couldn’t help having and losing sleep over. It doesn’t help that I know on the intelligent level that it’s ridiculous, when my mind started racing away it was too late.
But it didn’t stop there, when I started doing the same every time my son complained about something being wrong that’s when it got totally out of control. In my defense – the doctors still haven’t diagnosed reasons behind some things. Then you add a pandemic on top of that and eventually I broke.
But seeing a professional and talking about it really helped. I got some tips how to try to control it, also some breathing exercises and I even tried happy pills for a while. And now I still find myself having these thoughts but I’m way better at controlling it, being able to distract my mind with something and it’s been quite a while since I lost sleep over it! And it helps that so far after some 15 examination (everything from MRI and a camera up my ass) no one has found anything serious wrong with me.
It’s been almost a year since my last update and there are a lot of reasons for that. The primary being I almost burnt myself out last year. And I changed jobs. And got covid. And stuff in the family.
But first thing first – how I almost burnt myself out from stress last year.
I pride myself in being efficient and optimising everything I do. This is required at work but when you start optimising how to empty the dishwasher it takes on a whole new level. And a few years ago my lovely wife almost got burnt out at her work, so we both try to be observant for one another when it comes to stress levels. And she’s told me that ever since we moved to our new house my stress levels have gone up and my mood gone down. Stupid male as I am I didn’t listen to her. But after 2 years of uncertainty at work thanks to a bankruptcy and covid, taking on extra on call duty to make more money, a year of panic attacks over my and my sons health (we’re fine!) and the life during the pandemic which cause agoraphobia, as well as a member of the family being very, very ill, after last summer I found myself in a meeting at work that I had organised and 10 minutes in I forgot where I was and what I was doing. My body had had enough. I had a meltdown in my head and took the rest of the week off. After trying to work 2 days the following week my body said “stop it” and I took 5 weeks off to get myself together. I sought medical help and met a psychologist for a few sessions and got a lot of help from my wife and eventually I made it back to work. But during this time I was also transitioning to a new job I managed to get and fortunately for me that job doesn’t require 24/7 on call duty and I’m starting fresh with no baggage or expectations of being a miracle worker which I had put on myself at my old work. So I’m going to set expectations low for myself at the new place but fortunately I won’t have to worry about us going out of business because of covid, heatwaves, airport chaos or any of the other things you have very little control over!
So to sum it up – I almost hit a brick wall but fortunately I had the help and means to stop it in time and I’m very grateful for my family and friends helping out because it would have ended very badly. And I have a newfound respect for mental health!
And my advice it simply – listen to your body. It will tell you way before it gets this far. I didn’t. And take things slowly. Go for a walk in a nature. Put your fork down between bites. Don’t try to get as much done as possible. Put your mobile away.