Take Time for Yourself
When you are feeling overwhelmed and run down it’s easy to keep piling more and more onto our work load. The stress just keeps coming and soon your mental health is completely shattered. There is an easy way to help combat this stress from being overworked.
The key is to make time for yourself. Now it might be easier said than done. Many of us have school, work, and other commitments that take up much of our time and finding any time for ourselves seems physically impossible. The thing is it can be as little as fifteen minutes. While the longer the time you spend on yourself the better, as little as a fifteen minute break to yourself can be helpful.
Find something that relaxes you, that you enjoy. Is it reading? Doodling? Listening to music? Playing with your dog? It can be anything. I personally like to read and listen to some music. I’ll find fifteen minutes to a half hour, to just close myself off from everyone else. I will usualy go to my bedroom at home or my dorm room at school, turn on some music and grab a book I had previously started reading. I read a chapter or two, depending on how much time I feel I can spare from everything else going on. Also, depending on what mood I’m in perhaps I spend some of that time writing, working on my current manuscript. To me writing is relaxing, I know that is not the case for everyone, so find something you enjoy.
Another issue I come across is that I feel guilty for taking time for myself. I have so many things to do, things that also usually effect someone else, or someone is depending on me to do. I also know that I am not the only one who feels this way. Many friends of mine will feel guilty for saying no to someone when they ask them to go out of their way to do something, even when they are already have their hands full. They don’t like taking the time to be by themselves cause they feel they will disappoint someone.
BUT taking time for yourself is not a waste of time, it’s not up to someone else to determine if you ‘deserve’ time off. The only way you can releave your stress and decompress is if you let yourself.
An example of mine is my family recently got a 3 month old puppy. If you know anything about pets they are hard work, and puppies/kittens/any baby animal is even more work. So I spend all my time when I am at home trying to help take care of her. She needs to be constantly supervise cause she will get into things and chew things she is not supposed to. I feel guilty that when I am away at school, I don’t have any of that work load on me and my family has to do it all. That’s why I try and make it up when I am home. The only problem is, I already have very busy weekdays and usually have homework/papers to write on the weekends. On the weekends I do go home, I get nothing done. I get no time to myself cause I’m constantly running around with an energentic puppy, I’m doing chores my family throws onto, since I am home. Does anyone else get this when they go home? Their family decides that since your home and haven’t done any housework that it’s now your job to do the dishes, laundry, vaccumm, and ect? Even though you now do all those things when your at school, all on your own. I’ve heard I am not the only one. So going home can become so stressful and by the time I am back at school on Sunday getting ready for the week, I start it just as stressed as when I ended the previous one.
I have to force myself to take time to myself, usually Sunday afternoon, I turn on some netflix or hulu and I watch an episode or two, maybe eat some chips or ice cream, before I start going through all my homework and seeing what needs to get done for Monday. Another time that would be useful to take time to myself is when my puppy decides playtime is over and it’s now naptime. I can usually leave her during her naps to do whatever it is I want to get done because she’s knocked out cold.
The key is to try and find those moments when everything slows down and you can step away. Moments where no one should need something from you and if they do it can wait. Try and find these moments everysingle day. There should be a few of them. Take the time to decompress, to breath, and do something you enjoy.
