Note: I wasn't sure if I wanted to share this, but I know that it can hard to take the first steps to deal with it, so I hope it can help you breathe and give more time for yourself
With the internet, it's so easy (especially when no one's monitoring) to get sucked into the emails, tweets, tumblr, youtube, and all these forms of media that take away our time from ourselves.
I knew I always felt overextended but I didn't know why and I definitely didn't know how to stop. My self control has never been the best. So I end up with these black holes in my day and countless things on my list that I still have to do. Usually my instinct is to prioritize the demands of others before my own. My own mentality of it being: it involves someone else, and they are counting on me to do x,y,and z and I don't want to let them down. In doing that, most of my day goes to doing things that are expected of me. It ended up getting to the point where I would get up at 4.30-5am in the morning to do course work and giving myself enough time to wake up before I go to my morning meetings or class. Between my own graduate course work, TAing, research for my thesis, and custom orders (for my sewing) on the side, I ended up doing what many do when they feel over extended: I cut time for eating, sleeping, and sometimes leisure. My sewing just became one more thing I had to do. Eventually if a person keeps pushing, the body and mind decide they've had enough and they shut down.
It's quite hard to bounce back from an extensive shut down, but my body just had enough, and it wasn't going to do the long hours I demanded of it. The lists I made didn't help either. My lists and my type A personality always saw the glass as half empty so it always wondered why wasn't I do doing stuff and thinking about how my stuff I didn't do. Mondays were always the worse because after a weekend of being less than ideally productive, I'd go over a list in my head of all the things I have to do. Even now as I'm telling you my story, I'm holding my breath. Often times, I forget to breathe and forget to do things to take of myself in the name of productivity. It's always been "how much can I do in the shortest amount of time."
It eventually festered into clinical depression and anxiety. I won't get into the nitty gritty details of it, but there were definitely thoughts of self harm, extreme isolation, and just loosing track of time. I had tried to deal with it by seeing a specialist at my school for a while (weekly sessions for 6 weeks), but then decided to take two weeks from school. This is much easier to do in graduate school when most of your work is independently driven. I live alone for the most part so holing myself up in my apartment was way too easy. The two weeks I originally took off ended up becoming 2 months. I started seeing someone in the private practice three times a week, and just work through the expectations placed on me by myself and by the voices in my head that others have put there.
My obsessive nature (yes I have OCD on top of this) lends to the downward spiral of always thinking about all the stuff I have to do and obsessing over the stuff I didn't.
It's almost been a year since the beginning of my downward spiral, and while I am more functional now, I still hold my breath, I still find black holes in my life, but I show up to most classes and I resume more activities. I still have help to deal with this on a daily basis, but a lot of it is about taking care of myself.
Sometimes people will place those voices in your head that tell you you aren't doing enough, your best isn't good enough, or you're just going about life the wrong way. In the end you'll be the one living with your actions, so why not do them in a way to take care of yourself. I encourage all of you to take time to self discover so you can push away all those voices that are trying to force you onto a path that's not yours. Seek help if you need it, sleep, eat, and have fun.
For those who do have a mood disorder, I encourage you to be kinder to yourself. I know it's hard to get up in the morning, so give yourself a pat on the back when you get up. Give yourself credit for what you can do, and don't be afraid to seek help. Whether it's psycho-therapy, medication, or other alternatives, it's hard to get started, but it's really worth it in the end. You get to take your life back into your own hands rather than being at the whims of your moods.
All the best with all of you. I'll be sending you well wishes.
<3 Laine
