Depression

Perhaps you will identify with the story below. Alexandria struggled to keep her eyes open on her long drive home from work. The freeway was bumper to bumper. “Stupid drivers! Can’t you go faster?” Her head pounded from yet another headache. Work had been demanding as usual. “Today’s only Tuesday. How am I going to survive the rest of the week?” The drive was the exclamation point to a wearisome and demanding day. She felt her temper rise. Her headache got worse. She told herself yet again she needed to find a new job; one that was rewarding. A job that paid her what she deserved. This wasn’t a new thought: she had told herself she needed a new job for the past five years. But she was stuck. She had a reprieve of sorts working from home during the Pandemic, and had taken on more and more responsibility as people quit. But now, back in the workplace, the shortage of workers, the stress, the drive, had escalated her level of stress. Her bosses gave her more and more responsibility. No real salary increase. “That is just wrong. Insulting! Obviously, they don’t care about their employees.” They don’t care about me. No one appreciates the work I do.” Alexandria now answered to four bosses all with demands of their own. Just today, she had to cover for a sick employee and could barely get her own work done…and as she was walking out the door, one of them called her back and unexpectedly told her a report was due first thing in the morning. She felt her anxiety mount. “I have no idea how I’m going to get that done! I wonder why I wasn’t told about it earlier. Doesn’t she know my schedule is full? Why can’t someone else do it?” A particular employee who sat around doing little came to her mind. Her anger rose at the thought of it. “I don’t have any time for myself. I haven’t gone anywhere at all for ages…by the time I get home I don’t have any energy to do anything. I really need to find another job where I’m appreciated, not taken for granted.” As she exited the freeway she pulled into her usual fast-food drive-through to get dinner. Finally home, she walked through the door, set her stuff down, opened a beer to go with her burger and fries and flopped on the sofa to watch TV. Alexandria was at her wits end. She was exhausted. Unmotivated. Stalled in her tracks. She was drained, emotionally tapped out, not only too tired to do anything, but she felt unappreciated. Her spark was gone, her appearance reflected how she felt. She was frozen in her helplessness and in her exhaustion, and felt not good enough to get a better job. Not good enough to get a decent salary. Alexandria was burned out. If any of her story sounds familiar, you, like Alexandria, may be burned out. Ask yourself: do you still get satisfaction from your job or not? Has your motivation all but disappeared? Do you feel that what you do is not really that important? That you’re taken for granted? Are you feeling your negativity increase? Do you feel you are being taken for granted? Underpaid? Are you tired all the time? As you look in the mirror, do you see an unhappy stressed face? Are you finding yourself complaining to others or to yourself more? Have you stopped your exercise routine or other means of self-care? Has your diet gone to pot? Have you put on unwanted pounds? Have you told yourself you shouldn’t drink so much? Have you turned down some invitations to socialize with friends? Those are some signs of being not only burned up but burned out! Burnout is a state of being where a person is exhausted in body-mind and spirit. Alexandria felt overwhelmed, taken for granted, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep up with the constant demands her bosses made of her. The past eight years she had faithfully shown up, enthusiastically had dug in her heels to be the best she could be, but now she felt taken for granted, unappreciated, underpaid. Her resentment was piling up. And yet she was too emotionally drained and lacking confidence in herself to look for a new job. The thought of it, of having to go someplace new with perhaps the same type of bosses – or maybe worse — pushed her to a sense of despair. What to do? First, before you can fix a problem, you need to know there is a problem. If you think you have a problem, give yourself benefit of the doubt. Check yourself out. Likely you’ll notice you are affected in your total being, body-mind-spirit. To get yourself grounded, here are some “tried-and-true” body-mind-spirit techniques you can do: First on the list, always, are basic , basic techniques: Breathing techniques. This is so basic you might say, “I know, I know.” But do you stop to actually do a breathing technique? When was the last time? One that I learned and really appreciate is was from the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. What caught my eye was the heading “Emotion Regulation.” Any of us who are stressed, anxious, irritable can certainly identify with the concept of needing to regulate our frayed emotions. INSERT HYPERLINK TO DESCRIPTION Meditation: Yes, yes, I know you know. But have you paused for a few minutes to give yourself a few minutes to just be? It’s super hard for those of us who are wired with anxiety. Our mode is go-go-go. You know that these days you can find most anything you need to know on You Tube. Go there and search out someone who is really good at meditation who resonates with you and can guide you. Get a book on meditation and read a bit of it each morning. Here are