“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.”
― Kahlil Gibrán, Sand and Foam
Dear Readers, Today I am tired. In a world that favours doing, and being productive, it is hard to feel tired. I have a restlessness that feels better if I am checking off a to-do-list, completing tasks. On less productive days, I feel out of sorts. If that day holds a lack of structure, I feel adrift. And yet, letting the body lead, responding to one’s tiredness rather than resisting, is at the heart of mental health recovery.
I have seen myself work so hard, and push myself beyond my limits, which was followed by inevitable collapse. And my collapse came in the form of serious bipolar episodes. It has been a hard way to learn the balance between rest and doing. Not overriding my tiredness with more pushing, and adjusting when necessarily my to-do-list, makes a significant positive difference in my mental health. Taking some external pressure off allows my internal pressure to subside.
For me, healing bipolar is so much about regulation. Being finely attuned to my nervous system helps with this. But regulation, for me, doesn’t mean creating a tightly imposed self-care schedule each week and forcing myself to live this on repeat. For some people this is exactly what works. For me, it creates tension and pressure. This lack of flexiblity causes some internal panic. Inevitably there are days where my schedule needs adjusting because I am not up to what my mind has laid out. Where I am tired, my exercise might need to be adjusted. When I feel muscle tension in my shoulders, I know that I need to spend less time on the computer. If I am feeling overwhelmed, usually I need to do less and create some unstructured days. If I feel socially obligated, I know that I need to create space for myself with less socializing time. Responding to the body when it signals me is establishing trust. This is a kind of trust I never had. I have said yes, when I really wanted to say no, so many times in life. But this is changing through awareness and an acceptance of both my capacity and an acknowledgement that it’s okay to have needs, even when it opposes the needs of other people.
I have struggled these last two weeks because my creativity took second place to my health. I was catching up on sleep and this created lower energy while my nervous system reveled in relaxation. My motivation went down. As usual in my hormonal cycle, as I approached Day 28, I got more tired, and needed more space around me to unwind and ground. But I fought this lower energy. I had to fight the feeling of not doing enough or not being enough. This is always what is underneath my push for doing – my sense of self-esteem has been closely connected to my doing, and my work. I am avidly trying to seperate the two. Instead of feeling behind when I have a long sleep, I want to feel good that I caught up on rest. It’s an important shift for my mental health and helpful for those in mental health recovery to become more body-centred and less attached to doing.
I was also reflecting on perfectionism this week. I realized that I had started to put pressure on my art making, wanting to create and learn how to make amazing collages. This pressure was actually turning me away from the art making because I started to become afraid of not doing it right, of messing up and a sense of deep overwhelm encrouched on my process. I lost some of the desire to make art.
As I mentioned this happens in my recovery too. When I get really rigid about what I eat, how I exercise, how I am sleeping etc. I create an anxiety within myself, an overwhelm about my wellness. I tend to try to control all these things in hopes of creating lasting wellness. But when I create rigid beliefs, “I only sleep well when I exercise intensely,” not only am I down on myself for taking a rest day, I become fearful that I won’t sleep. Some of the best sleeps I have had come when I have’t exercised as much. Why? It was more a quality of relaxing, and feeling so relaxed than of what I did in the day.
That is why I think intuitive mental health recovery works better for me. I want to be present in myself each day rather than constantly overriding what my body needs.
I have seen so many times with those in recovery from mental health struggle when they aren’t doing. Many articles on bipolar talk about a tendancy towards perfectionism combined with more difficulties in regulation. Anxiety is also something that often coexists with bipolar. Sometimes the doing is about not being able to sit with the feelings that are happening. Sometimes we need distractions and to use doing as meditation but It becomes a problem when we are not addressing what is going on in our emotional sphere.
In my experience, creating reasonable expectations for your life, being able to sit with yourself and hearing what your body has to say, are important emotional markers of healing with bipolar.
So this week I am in process with art, rather than have a completed art work. I am allowing the art to be for pleasure rather than a goal. When the pressure is released, the creative energy comes from joy and curiosity.
When I take pressure off, when I flow with my day, and with my energy, I tend to find more balance. Exerting a sense of force, from a fear of getting everything “done,” or meeting all expectations I place on myself, I lose my grounding.
It’s like I can feel when I write or make art and when I am forcing it to be something, some idea I have in mind of what is good or right. But letting go, letting myself be a bit messier, a bit more fluid, I relax and the creativity flows. For example, I knew that my blog needed to change from more researched pieces with a set format to something more open. I felt my body relax as I changed course with my writing.
This week I was feeling a bit stressed so I tried to create a very fixed schedule of self-care. After doing it a couple days, it felt onerous instead of achieving what I wanted: which was feeling good inside. I was trying to fix something that was an internal misalignment with something external. What I needed what to gentle up expectations and leave room to hear my voice inside. What was it longing for?
This is what I heard when I stilled myself: a desire to make things easier, to take off some pressure, to have more time to be than do, and to release myself from expectations to be “perfect” in areas that drained me. What a relief to my mental health when I allow myself to be human. When I don’t berate myself for my flaws. When I allow myself my full feelings without judging myself for them. When it’s okay to be me, rather than wanting to be the best version of me all the time. And this is a lesson I keep having to learn over and over because it is so essential to my mental illness.
I notice when I am tired or need to come inward that social media becomes more triggering. So many people speaking their version of truth with so much black and white becomes overwhelming. Also they are often trying to project their best selves, the part of themselves that comes off polished and in control. I have less tolerance for this when I feel vulnerable because it just reinforces the perfectionist inside of me that feels like I’m not enough. I also notice I really gravitate to people who are exposing their imperfect, most real selves. Women showing their “imperfect” bodies, with stretch marks, extra weight, and curves. Patrirachy takes a big hit when people love and show their real bodies. Mental health recovery doesn’t need to be perfect either. In fact, sharing the pain, the challenges, the grief with continual self-acceptance allows others to accept themselves as is.
So this tired, inner time is so valuable because it alerts me to what feeds healthy self-worth, what nourishes me rather than makes me feel less. It brings me back to the idea that my house, my car, my body, my resume, my feelings don’t have to be perfect in order for things to feel okay.
So I invite you on your mental health recovery journey to ease up on expectations, find areas where you can give yourself space to be imperfect and still feel good. Where do you want to put your energy? You don’t have to put energy into everything. Can you let go somewhere so you can embrace room for what matters to you?
In these last couple weeks, I notice how I rearrange my shoes to have them neatly by the door. One day they were a mess, all jumbled in a pile, but for some reason when I looked at them I felt there was a kind of beauty in the mess. That how they should be was only a conditioned part of my mind. Perhaps art, perhaps recovery is like this. Can we let go of the conditioned part to see the essence?
Well that is what I have for you today. I have taken a mental health day for myself today and cancelled plans so I can more deeply relax. When I wrote in my journal this morning, the first thing that came out was I am too tired for everything I had on my schedule. And fortunately this was one of the days I could cancel without larger reprecussions. I gave to myself first today.
Sending care, kindness and gentleness through the coming week💙💙💙Meegan
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Resting is so important! When we visited Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery we appreciated their Lazy Day each week. The nuns said that he advised 2 lazy days a week, but they told him that they had too much to do to accommodate that.
Good for you, Meegan, to act wisely and compassionately–and it needs to start with oneself, so yay for you.
And thanks for sharing your loving reflections!
Evelyn Goodell
Hi Evelyn, Thanks for your lovely comment and affirming the importance of rest! What a gift to visit Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery…I love that he believed in lazy days. They are so important to our wellbeing. Wishing you and your family well Evelyn❤️❤️❤️