i did not have the greatest week last week, i was feeling overwhelmed and frazzled and just kind of frustrated with everything. i sat down to write posts every day this week and after staring at blank pages for large chunks of time and not being able to come up with anything half way decent to write i decided to take a mental health week. i feel like i’ve been running myself into the ground a bit the last few weeks, with work, the blog, getting the condo all set up, and training for dopey, i have pretty much been waking up, going for a run, going to work, coming home working on the back and going back to bed just to get up and do it all over again! so it was nice to take a few mental health days and decompress a little bit!
i feel like i’ve been in this strange limbo, i’m in a major transitional point in my life and growing a lot. living alone has definitely accelerated the transition and sometimes it can just be a little overwhelming. thankfully last week i was the only one in the office so work was more relaxed, so i took a couple days off from training, (which my body paid for dearly on sunday during my 9 mile run), talked to my mom quite a bit, caught up on my favorite guilty pleasure show – keeping up with the kardashians- and just gave myself a bit of a break.
my 5 favorite ways to decompress and take care of myself:
1. get a manicure, or take the time to sit down and really focus and paint my nails. it seems so small but taking the time to get pampered. it’s relaxing and i feel so much better when my nails look nice. i spend a lot of time typing, i mean a lot so it drives me crazy looking at chipped nail polish which means i rarely paint them so it’s always fun to paint them!
2. read a book, i love to read. unfortunately, i don’t get a lot of time to read because these days i feel like i’m always working ha! so when i need to decompress, sometimes there are few things that are better than putting away all technology, lighting a candle, curling up with a blanket and reading.
3. call my mom, i talk to my mom more now than any other point in my life. seriously, i call her at least once a day (which drives her mildly crazy i think, sorry mom!) it’s nice to talk to her about absolutely nothing sometimes, or to sit there and just vent all my frustrations (again probably driving her crazy)
4. sleep, our bodies need sleep, at least 7 hours, we run ourselves into the ground and stay up late and are glued to our devices. get the right amount of sleep, download the sleepcycle alarm clock so that your alarm goes off when your in a light sleep instead of still in your REM cycle. this is my absolute favorite app on my phone, it’s changed the way i sleep. you can make notes about what you’ve done throughout the day and when you wake up you can see a graph showing how you slept. it’s amazing.
5. watch tv, i really love watching tv but i try not to do it too much, with the exception of course of binge watching a show on netflix. sometimes it’s nice to come home and sit in front of the tv and watch something that requires no brain function. just some mindless time, it forces me to relax.
what are the things you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed? how do you take care of yourself on your mental health days?
