Lately I’ve been feeling in a rut. As someone who struggles quite heavily with depression I’ve been in quite a bad place the past few week, particularly this week and so I’ve been thinking about what to do when things starting getting out of hand.
For me depression comes in bouts, some worse than others, some that are manageable and some where I feel like I can’t get out of bed or I don’t want to eat for days on end. It can be tough but I’ve realised in the last year that there are some signs of it coming – for me anyway they are as followed:
- Lack of appetite – as soon as I start getting down I just don’t eat, I think this has more to do with my off relationship with food but I genuinely eat a lot normally so it is pretty noticeable.
- Everything becomes a shithole – I get super messy, I seem to produce an incredibly large floordrobe within a matter of days. I like to eat my food why doing my uni research so my desks gets covered in coffee cups and bowls – I know how gross that sounds don’t worry.
- Disrupted sleep – Now I think this is a weirder one, I find myself waking up every few hours or hourly during my sleep, as someone with pretty bad insomnia anyway this annoys me next level.
- The constant need to be alone – It’s like I go fully off the grid, I don’t feel the need to post on social medias, or reply to texts. It’s like I become completely detached from the digital world and I find myself going out of my way to avoid people I know and to be really secluded. As if I just want to be alone in a world of my own.
The thing is even though I know now a little better when its about to happen I still find myself falling into it just as hard every time and it low-key makes me loathe myself a little more every time. But now I’ve started to take some steps towards selfceare in these moments/days and these are some of the things that I do when things start to get too much.
- Take it slow – In the grand scheme of things does it really matter if you don’t post on social media? Does it matter if you stay in bed an hour extra occasionally? No of course not. Have a cup of tea and do some reading it really doesn’t matter if it takes and hour extra to get the studio as long as you do go.
- Don’t beat yourself up – For me anyway, I find that beating myself up about the situation makes me want to do things even less, if thats even possible. That the angrier I get at myself the worse the situation becomes.
- Reach out to friends – I find it so difficult to tell my friends when things aren’t okay, I find it really hard to tell them I’m not alright and I need help. It is something that I need to focus on trying to do more because honestly all my friends are amazing and they help me so much when I’m in a bad place and sometimes the distraction can be so helpful to get me out of my “mind palace” as such.
- Do things that make you happy – For me this is writing, reading or painting for the most part. I find as I said above the distraction helps but there is always a certain bliss to doing the activities that you love the most.
I’d love to know what things you do when things get too much and if you do struggle if you know what sort of things start to bother you pre-hand?
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