This is an email I sent to a very sad friend on how to be pragmatic about life with a mild mental illness and balancing everything else. If I write it down, maybe I’ll take my own advice too. Hope this helps other people too.
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hey.
i’m going to make this as practical and pragmatic as i can, based on my own learnings of being depressed and broke
overwhelmed feelings come from two areas.
• actual tangible circumstances, some of which can be controlled (eg, finances) and uncontrolled (death, sickness).
A lot of these circumstances can be chronologically based too, such as anxiety driven by
- lack of control of the future
- regret of the past
- attribution of that regret to the perceived loss of the present
• impaired cognitive function
this can be exacerbated by
- poor mental health (mainly this)
- lack of sleep
- poor diet
- lack of control over controllable circumstances, leading to stress
if you prioritise to fix the filters by which you look at your circumstances, you can grasp things a little easier, mentally and emotionally.
it’s also really important to distinguish emotional from mental by allowing yourself to take a big breath and put the emotions into a “box” (writing them down helps). long walks help, btw. get that circulation through your brain.
hope this helps. it doesn’t solve anything really, but if you can categorise what’s going on, it helps to sort out what’s going on. i like to think of it as sorting laundry into colours and fabric types.
xx
