Over the summer, work was hard. Really hard. My boss was promoted, meaning they weren’t available most of the time (but still wanted to be heavily involved in decision making for the office). Two of my staffers quit. I was trying to keep the entire area afloat during our busy season, and all of us were super stressed out.
This is probably when my ulcers started. It’s also definitely when my adrenal fatigue reared its ugly head.
Previously, my go-to self care technique was a glass of wine. Or whiskey. Or a gin and tonic. Or beer. You get the idea.
It got to the point where I was drinking way, way too much.
I am horrible at self care. I had no idea what I should do to help lower my stress and my drinking. Finally, after a crazy amount of Googling and Facebook crowd-sourcing, I decided on two tactics: meditation, and scheduling some self care tasks for myself.
The meditation I went crazy with- I’m pretty sure I downloaded eight different phone apps trying to find the one I liked best. For me, I preferred an American accent on my speakers, so Calm and 10% Happier were the two I settled on. And let me say, Calm’s sleep stories are a godsend when the mind just won’t shut up! Later, when I couldn’t access them at work due to some weird firewall thing, I added Meditation Studio to the mix.
I also used an app called Routines (iPhone only, sadly) to set up reoccurring items that I needed to do each day, so that I could build better habits.
This ended up helping, but was no replacement for the slight improvement to the work situation that occurred this fall. Between the two, I’m starting to feel like my life is marginally under control again. It’s a nice feeling, and one I hope to continue to build on.
And in the meantime, if you have any self-care tips and tricks, please share in the comments!
FroggingBack 