what was I thinking?

Image credit: depressed by Basti Steinhauer from the Noun Project

​What a week it has been. Britain lost its collective mind and left the European Union, I emigrated to France for three days, and the US nominated Donald Trump as their next President of the United States! OK, that last one was a lie, but us leaving the EU is tantamount to it happening, so I predict the feelings are similar. To conclude, stuff has gotten stressful this week.

​​I found myself with much regret this month after deciding that Stress would be my topic of choice for June. It's almost as if rather than figure out ways to de-stress, I wanted to bask in my anxiety and get so deep into it that I eventually drowned. Just how talking about negative things is sometimes unhelpful; the same can be said for writing about it too.

And let's be honest, as if any of us need help figuring out what our stressors are? Most of the time we are fully aware, we just don't know how the hell to stop our brains from obsessing over them at 3am as we lie in bed, wishing that we had taken the time to worry earlier, when the news was on and it was appropriate. But despite my lack of a fool-proof solution to stress, I've still been thinking about it and analysing it.

See, as a frequent passenger of the depression train, I often have to ask myself if I'm stressed for an external reason (work, money, family) or because of my inner workings which sometimes plunge me into darkness.Am I not sleeping well because I’m subconsciously punishing myself for something that happened to me as a child or because I'm lonely and want a relationship? Am I eating despite no hunger because I'm worried about that presentation tomorrow, or because I want to distract myself from the boredom I feel about life in general? Am I ignoring those OKCupid messages from OK guys because I'm waiting for that elusive passionate spark, or because I'm dead inside?

It's a tightrope of emotions sometimes, and at other times the reasons are clearer and easier to navigate. But this is interchangeable and inexplicably frustrating a lot of the time. So what do I do? I sit in it and think about it until I have burnt myself out and run out of energy for most things. This is obviously, not a solution to the problem. So my second go to is to blog about it, like this, in the hope that I will come to some hopeful conclusion.

I always want to end my blog posts on a positive note somehow, to give my readers some light at the end of a rapidly darkening tunnel, but hope is a hard thing to hold on to. Sometimes you just have to sit in the stress until you figure out some practical steps to get out of it. It really is as simple and difficult as that, and was often the track I would follow as a therapist.

But sometimes when you're in it, you forget what you already know; which is so typical of us humans, right?Anyway to conclude (vaguely), stress is a part of life, at least it is for me. I still don't stress about little things, but the trade-off is that the big things keep me awake at night. I'm trying to find a balance between the two and I'm sure I'll let you know once I figure out how.

I don't know what next month's theme will be, but off the top of my head, let's say Honesty. Yikes, get ready for some dark posts you guys.