Why Self-Care is Important
With the increasing awareness in mental health and mindfulness, I just wanted to share wit you all my personal experience as to why it’s important to look after your state of your mind and personal well-being.
I want to start off by saying this year has been a rather rocky start to the year. It’s not the wedding that’s stressing me out but people and social situations that’s still that’s freaking me out. I’m not going to go into too much details about the ins and outs of it, but you get the gist of it. Work has been increasing stressful lately so I feel as though I’m slipping back into my old ways and letting the small things in life take over me like I have no control whatsoever. My streams of thoughts are constantly adrift somewhere in the vast corners of my own mind where I’m still finding it very difficult to be able to relate to people. I’ve never been a ‘people’s person’ let’s put it that way (I mean, what does that even mean?!).
I’ve explored pretty much all options, like CBT for instance, and it’s great if you have the time and space to do it right in the moment. My day job as a teaching assistant can be very hectic at times so I don’t have the time and energy to able to use the CBT techniques as advised by my therapist. I’ve recently started to take propanolol, which is used for various other ailments, but in particularly for anxiety since it’s a beta blocker. Now, I’ve always been in two minds about using medication but there comes a point in your life whereby there are certain avenues you need to try out and only you know what’s best for yourself. I wasn’t trying to self-diagnose myself but I’ve across it on the web and thought I should give it a go to see if there’s any difference in the physical and metal side of things. This week has been extremely tough if I’ll be blatantly honest as it’s really affected my sleep, so consequently I’m like a zombie in the day time- not really paying attention to anyone or even remotely focused on certain things throughout the day.
I have read that it’s one of the most common side effects from it and, although it’s supposed to be short term, I slightly regret taking it as I love my sleep. My sleep is everything to me. I’m a regular sleeper- always on time- my sleep patterns is pretty spot on too. So the fact that my sleep has become so irregular all this week I actually want to cry. I really hope this doesn’t last that long and that it’s only temporary- otherwise I’m going to completely ditch and find something else.
I’m constantly reminding myself that everything will be ok. Things will slowly work out. It takes time, positive energy and copious amounts of chocolate. Life always throws you those bloody curve balls you’ve just got to go through.
It’s Friday. Thank goodness it’s Friday and that the week is over. I’ll see how the weekend goes with the propanolol. I just want more sleep right now!