{"id":92,"date":"2023-05-25T00:48:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T00:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/?p=92"},"modified":"2023-05-25T00:48:20","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T00:48:20","slug":"emotional-first-aid-for-burnout-and-hopelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/2023\/05\/25\/emotional-first-aid-for-burnout-and-hopelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotional first aid for burnout and hopelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Two weeks ago on a Monday, I found myself in a position of calling my boss and telling her\u00a0 I&#8217;m unable to cope with everything and that I wouldn\u2019t be working that day.\u00a0 When she asked if she should use my one leftover personal day, I told her, sure, whatever you think is best, but this will be more than a day.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how long because I can\u2019t see farther than tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She understood that I was having an <em>unraveling<\/em>. \u00a0 I\u2019ve been going through a difficult personal situation for four years, and through a particularly difficult phase in these last few months.\u00a0 I had booked a vacation to Cuba because I needed the sun and rest so badly.\u00a0 I went and the first day there I got some distressing news about a situation that escalated for a few days.\u00a0 I did what I could from afar, but finally had to disconnect from it, knowing that people will do what they will do, and\u00a0 I&#8217;ll just deal with the fallout when I return.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t check email or messages for the two days remaining, but of course that brought on heavy anxiety on the return trip.\u00a0 I think that refusing to come back from Cuba would have been a perfectly reasonable decision under the circumstances.\u00a0 But I have children who were waiting for me, so I made the bargain I needed with myself to get myself on that plane back.\u00a0 I told myself that if I came back,\u00a0 I\u2019d let myself not go to work if I couldn\u2019t deal with it.\u00a0 At first I thought that I found myself hopeless and\u2026\u00a0 emotionally <em>injured <\/em>because I didn\u2019t get the rest I so desperately needed due to the distressing situation.\u00a0 But then maybe it was just that I was overly optimistic that one week in the sun\u00a0 could help me recover from such a long period of instability, emotional torment, and layers of stress.\u00a0 Maybe the week only gave me enough space to come down off the hamster wheel and once I was off I realized that I have no energy to lift a foot to go back on.\u00a0 In any case, I found myself with some medical stress leave, a\u00a0 referral to a psychiatrist, because the antidepressant I take seasonally isn\u2019t working as well as it did the first year or two, and the hope of getting \u201cfixed\u201d in time for the most important meeting of my life &#8211; mediation for my divorce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The wait for specialists such as the psychiatrist is usually long, so my doctor advised that I call the crisis line to get quicker access to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next week&nbsp; I&#8217;ve had a series of reality checks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The fact that the family doctor gave me leave&nbsp; doesn\u2019t guarantee that my work insurance would approve it &#8211; I have to go through their process.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The wait for the psychiatrist is 6 weeks is from the time they process the referral and they still haven\u2019t called me after 4 weeks<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The crisis line can point me to resources, but their wait times are even longer<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The best help that the therapist I was able to access through my work Employee Assistance Program was to tell me to \u201cnot lose hope.&nbsp; Just remember that, don\u2019t lose hope\u201d.&nbsp; (if you don\u2019t understand why it\u2019s enraging to get this with nothing further to help me find the hope I already told him&nbsp; I&#8217;d lost, then you\u2019ve never felt hopeless and you don\u2019t need to read this)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>After a week and a half of this and reaching out to other therapists to find someone regular to work with, I finally realized:&nbsp; I\u2019m on my own with this. My reality was:&nbsp; I\u2019m on my own with this, my mediation is in 3 weeks, and I can\u2019t be this broken crumpled crying woman when I go in for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m emotionally exhausted, I have very high anxiety when I have to open my email. Or even when I try to do something better than binge watch old sitcoms to pass the time &#8211; like check news headlines or even check new podcasts.\u00a0 Or making plans of any kind.\u00a0 The only thing that feels right is watching Netflix.\u00a0 But I do have a timeline &#8211; 3 weeks.\u00a0 So I can\u2019t just let myself lay on the sofa until I feel like getting up. \u00a0 In this state it\u2019s surprisingly difficult to remember what is healthy, what really makes a difference.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 I would have been happy to get a to do list or schedule from someone, but alas\u2026.\u00a0 I\u2019m on my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So here are some things I started doing and doing them reminded me how good they are for me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol>\n<li>Yoga &#8211; for reconnecting with my body. \u00a0 I\u2019m doing the slow kind, videos from YouTube &#8211; with subtitles like: yoga for depression, yoga for PTSD, reconnecting with your body, body reset.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Crying &#8211; to get the negative feelings out of my body.&nbsp; In the beginning I was just bawling every few hours, not exactly doing it on purpose.&nbsp; But as uncontrollable crying subsided, I told myself that&nbsp; I\u2019m going to keep allowing crying, to process emotions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Exercises to reestablish my self worth. &nbsp; I\u2019ve done a lot of work on this in the past couple of years, so I thought that I was ok in this area.&nbsp; But living for an extended period of time in a situation that was out of my control and being at the whim of others took a toll.&nbsp; So I&#8217;m taking the time to reflect on how much&nbsp; I&#8217;ve grown, and what I&#8217;m proud of in myself.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Walking &#8211; I started walking every day during Covid for the extra exercise, but it has become\u00a0 invaluable for my mental health.\u00a0 In this period that feels like a crisis I wasn\u2019t able to maintain all my good habits, but\u00a0 I\u2019m keeping the daily walks.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hiking &#8211; for the connection to nature and longer stretches of solitude.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re burned out and feeling hopeless and need to borrow a plan because you have no strength to figure out your own, do these things. Daily if possible.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two weeks ago on a Monday, I found myself in a position of calling my boss and telling her\u00a0 I&#8217;m unable to cope with everything and that I wouldn\u2019t be working that day.\u00a0 When she asked if she should use my one leftover personal day, I told her, sure, whatever you think is best, but this will be more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[33,35,34,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}