Self care

So in the past couple of days it has become obvious to me that the holiday is over, and it's been quite painful. For couple of days I was really nasty and jumpy, before I figured out what my problems was... and I'm still in a process of self analysis, something I do quite a lot. I've been suffering all classic signs of stress and depression: difficulty (and unwillingness) to communicate my thoughts and feelings, I'm easily frustrated, I have stomach problems, I suffer from anxiety and even panic attacks, I'm reluctant to leave home or do anything, I'm sad, I feel hopeless, I have mood swings, self doubt... sounds nice doesn't it.

Something that works for me these days has been trying to concentrate on self care. It's a techinque I read from somewhere, and the idea is that you write down a list of things that make you happy or bring you joy, and then try to do at least three of them a day (and it's almost impossible to be sad if you do that). They don't need to be big things - if taking a bubble bath makes you feel better then that's enough.

Often when I'm stressed I forget the importance of self care, at the time when it's most important... and I realised yesterday that it was happening to me again. I went out with a purpose of buying some Christmas gifts for my sister and her boyfriend, something I had seen and just wanted to go and buy thinking it might make me feel better. But I was standing there in the shop looking at these things and suddenly a huge wave of self doubt came to me and I could picture my sister's face on Christmas Eve with polite disapointment and I was suddenly convinced that she wouldn't like it and I was stupid even thinking it. I became really distraught and left the shop almost in tears, and standing there on the street I realised that I was totally overreacting and I really needed to do something about it before I'd go mad.

So I started walking down Robson trying to gather my thoughts, thinking that I knew the answer to this, I had the tools to solve the problem. And I remembered self care, and I tried to think of my list of nice things to do and that's when I wandered to the book shop looking for a feel good buy.

Today has been all about self care. We wanted to go to the bank this morning so we slept late, and by coincidence when at the bank we managed to take care of signing the credit card applications which we otherwise would have had to come in separately to do. After that I went back home, and I've been reading my book, eating good food and generally taking care of myself... now I feel almost back to normal. I'm able to plan the move in couple of weeks time without getting upset but being able to think about it rationally and even enjoying it a little bit.

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