With deadlines to meet, errands to run, a wedding to attend, and a week of managing work, your life is based on responsibilities. In today’s world where an espresso shot is the answer to lack of sleep and working away the day is key to getting ahead-it gets difficult to pay attention to your deteriorating mental health. This indicates that you’re due a mental break.
12 Signs You Need A Mental Break
1. When You Fall Sick Regularly
Our crucial life events trigger an amount of stress that usually causes a toll on our bodies. To avoid this domino effect, take your mental break and prepare for swamped weeks by sticking to a schedule that will allow you the sleep and nutrition you need to feel better and maintain your functionality.
Do you feel like you’re constantly lashing out at people, even when they’ve said nothing triggering? Being on edge usually stems from feelings of anxiety. As a result, you’re left feeling agitated, which causes you to be irritable and moody with the people around you.
3. Neglecting Your Needs
If your schedule begins to turn into a cycle of skipping out on dinner to prioritize a deadline and overlooking doctor appointments to save time, it’s a smart idea to take a step back. Even though your responsibilities are important, your health is mandatory — and not taking care of yourself will cause you more stress than you probably already feel. In addition to allowing your body to unwind, a mental break is a great opportunity to create a schedule that will stop you from disregarding your health.
4. Sound Sleep
There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to recharge for the next day. But, when going to sleep gets difficult due to endless thoughts that keep running in your mind, it’s only natural that you feel everything but at peace. It’s true that your mental health can often manifest as physical symptoms. Thus, a mental break will give you the fresh air you need and the sleep you deserve.
5. Being Sad Constantly
Although it’s good to recognize how you feel, it becomes concerning when it’s a feeling that’s constantly sad and unmotivated. If the thought of doing your favourite activity makes you tear up or the motion to cook your next meal suddenly becomes paralyzing, accept that you could need to pause and come back stronger than before.
6. Lack Of Focus
When your mental health is suffering, it’s difficult to stay positive or even summon the energy and enthusiasm that’s required to focus on work. At this point in time, you may even be susceptible to missing social cues. Constantly forgetting, unable to focus, and experience a negative impact on your problem-solving and decision-making skills.
When your mental health is going south, you might find yourself slacking off at work. Missed deadlines, half-hearted submissions, skipped meetings—they’re all to be expected if your heart just isn’t in it. In such a situation, it’s better to take a mental health break from the responsibilities than to do a half-baked job.
8. Withdrawing Socially
It feels normal to want to isolate yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed. You want to avoid further stimulation or anything that feels like effort. Maybe you also don’t want other people to know how you’re feeling.
9. You’re Self-Sabotaging
Self-sabotaging can be one of the biggest indicators of a mental breakdown. This behaviour dsyregulation could either be conscious or unconscious depending on the person’s level of awareness. The most common self-sabotaging behaviours include procrastination, self-medication with drugs or alcohol, comfort eating, and forms of self-injury. But, more often than not, people don’t want to admit that they are self-sabotaging. Seeking mental health therapy can help you pinpoint the behaviour patterns you want to break and create a plan for how you’ll address them.
10. You Feel Numb
Sometimes when you’re at the cusp of a mental breakdown, you may not feel much of anything. You might stop caring about how you look, lose interest in activities you used to enjoy, and isolate yourself from family and friends.
11. Extreme Mood Swings
While most of us experience different moods—you might have days when you feel happy and at ease and other days when you’re sad and tired. Changes in moods are part of being a human. But if your moods cycle higher and lower than average, you might be heading towards a mental breakdown.
12. Changes In Appetite
During a mental breakdown there’s usually less ability to care for oneself in the way one typically would. Amidst this the stress hormone cortisol can trigger cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods. This could lead to you eating, or conversely overeating.
How Can You Recover From A Burnout
While there’s no quick fix to burnout, there are several ways to alleviate stress levels and return to a healthier state of being.
1) Identify Your Stressors: Knowing what your stress triggers are will allow you to avoid or reduce interactions with them. To identify the indicators consider paying attention to incidents, people, or situations that consistently trigger stress.
2) Establish Healthy Boundaries: Healthy boundaries are non-negotiable when it comes to for recovering from burnout. Whether it’s setting internal boundaries or external boundaries, these acts will help you manage your time and stress levels.
3) Take A Social Media Detox: Taking a break from social media can allow you to focus on yourself and not in comparison. With that, it may also likely give you back hours in your day that were otherwise spent on endless and purposeless scrolling.
4) Move Your Body Each Day: We often ignore the role of exercise as a stress killer. By showing up for a brisk walk or a 20 minute yoga session daily, your body begins to regulate its stress response.
5) Show Self-Compassion: Acknowledge that you’re going through a tough time and give yourself the love you deserve. Note that what you’re going through is uncomfortable, yet it is temporary, and you will not always feel as you do in this moment.
6) Lean On Your Social Network: Remember isolation is not the answer. Take efforts to share openly with trusted friends and family members about what you’re going through, and invite them to do the same.
Bottom Line
If you’re experiencing any of these signs, it may be an indicator to hit pause. Consider reaching out to a therapist for additional support as sometimes these signs could overlap with those of depression.
About the author:
Suhasini Jha is a Mumbai-based ex-journalist who has previously worked with Firstpost and Moneycontrol.
Read More: 5 Ways To Find Comfort In Not Knowing All The Answers
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