Crying, mood swings, falling apart, when was the last time you had an 8 sleep?
The art of not engaging basic self-care.
I am probably the last person that is qualified to publish this article based on my horrible almost self destructive life style. Yet, my experiences have also made me the one who gets to talk the most about the harm and damage of not engaging basic self-care.
Over the past few years I have discovered the most obvious pattern which I have been ignoring for years. I get depressed if I don’t eat or sleep enough, so much to the point that I’ve had a therapist bail on me because I was too depressed. Then for me, life become beautiful gain with a simple bowl of pasta sided with vegetables. Happiness can be so simple yet I still never really put my own theory into practice until things are really bad.
We all think that we are superheros that are made out of steel, at least that’s what some of us apparent. I have friends who consume alcohol or even substances 4-7 days a week, and will go to classes hungover while still able to receive all their critiques. I will have to admit that I have behaved like such once in my life during my gap year as well.
However, after entering college I have switched gears from alcohol to coffee. Large amounts of coffee. How would I ever just stop with coffee? Putting every single drop of energy into my academic career, I had left my body behind. Like every one else, I eat like shit, I only take naps- not sleep. To what I believed, my physical and mental health is not worth a penny comparing to one weekly reading response.
“F*** my body, I only care about making my paper to be perfect”. At least that’s what I thought for a while.
My physical body started to bail on me first, it was around last year my diet which only includes greasy food and coffee had me start to have severe heartaches. I thought I was going to die from a heart attack. My professor forced me to go to school nurse, because they don’t want me to “faint in class”.
Turns out, I wasn’t going to die at all. It was just not enough sleep and way too much coffee that irritated my “vagus nerve”. I am not able to give citable medical definition, but it is basically something that spreads over my entire body, great.
Although I stopped drinking 4 cups of coffee every day, I still don’t learn from my lessons. I switched gears from coffee to soda and fries, and soon after my mental health started to break as well. I started to have multiple break downs in a short period of time. I was (still am) grumpy all the time due to tiredness.
“When was the last time you had a decent meal and slept for 8 hours?”
At least 3 people had asked me over the past week. So for obvious reasons I will not able to give out and tips on how to maintain self-care. Nevertheless, I just intend to provided a living example of some now who doesn’t engage in self care. Hope you’ll learn to not be like me.