I will
never forget the first time a doctor told me I was depressed and sent me to a
psychiatrist. It was the scariest and
most traumatic thing I had ever been through in my mental health. I had a job, I was a mom of a beautiful family
but I was not coping. I had tried to
reach out to people around me at the time, but it was a walk I had to do
alone. I was living by the promise a
minister had given me at 16 that my mental health would be ok because of who I
am. Just keep doing good Kay!
I started
exercising, spending more time paying attention to my emotions and committed to
better self care. Work remained
stressful and it became clear there was more to the dark side than I could
understand. I continued to give my
best. When it turned out that my best
was not good enough, I walked out of the job.
The problem
at that time was I needed my support system like never before. We were just
making big life changes and at the time I thought it was part of the greater
picture and things were going to fall together well. How wrong I was!
The
unravelling of safety, home and the growing demands on my family led me back to
a psychologist in 2017. This time I was
more open to look at why I was depressed and it became clear that it was not a new
feeling. I had worked hard to ignore it
and found it hard to believe because I love my family, my work and I have a lot
of passion. The things put in place for
my self care worked temporarily.
I started
reading widely and started understanding that I had bigger issues in life. I had been walking with a high ACE score and
that my body was catching up with informing me that not all is ok.
I was
diagnosed with an auto immune disease at the beginning of 2020, reminding me
again that the body keeps score.
Covid hit
and hunger hit and I found myself and my family working harder than ever
before. I ran myself ragged!
It is 2021
now and we are still working hard, but my melt downs/Burnout symptoms have become more
frequent. It is clear that I have co-dependency issues and not the greatest emotional boundaries.
It is clear that I am not always ok!
But this too shall pass right?
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