I attended a class based on neuropsychology and anxiety recently. I got a lot out of it, and I’m realizing I’m so stressed all the time that I don’t know how to relax. And I’ve realized this has been going on for a long time. I’m used to working 12 hours a day, every day. I’m used to not having days off or vacations. I’m used to having 20 minutes or so of ‘free time’ and spending it working on my website, updating social media, or bathing dogs. I literally don’t know how to ‘settle’ anymore. I talk about achieving balance, and that IS what I want. I don’t want to feel stressed anymore.

I didn’t realize all these symptoms were from lack of sleep, mental rest and lack of down time. I seem to always be tired. I’m working on eating healthier, working out more consistently, balancing house chores with work chores, and setting more strict “work hours” for when I do my pick ups, drop offs, and answer client phone calls and messages. But when I’m not working, I’m thinking about work. When there’s just ‘one more thing’ or projects that are incomplete, I can’t stop thinking I’m wasting my time just sitting and not doing anything. I forget things over and over again. And most of all, it feels like my emotions are non existent. Like, I I just don’t feel anything. It’s strange because I’ve always had an over abundance of my emotions and they are normally all over the place. Now, this lack of emotion is disturbing to me.

It feels like once I “get off work”, and try to turn off, we make dinner, and then we watch 20min or so of a show, and then go to bed. There really isn’t time for much else after dishes have been done (and sometimes, we don’t even do that!). On weekends, we catch up on gardening, house projects, cleaning, shopping, and sometimes we’ll have time to go out and do something. But it’s hard to enjoy even getting out because we try to pack so much in. Even when I go to sleep, my mind is still racing. Then, I wake up and immediately my mind is racing. It’s on overdrive all the time. It doesn’t slow down, it doesn’t stop, and when I meditate, I can stay focused for about 3 minutes, and then I lose it. For just 10 minutes, I want to focus on my breathing and thank my body for all it does for me. But I can’t stay focused that long. Apparently, that’s a symptom of stress too.

There are not enough hours in the day to do everything. I’m stretched thin. I’m functioning, and I’m not unhappy, I just don’t have anything else to give at the end of the day. Even in the middle of the day, I have to psyche myself up to do anything that’s not on my normal routine. It shouldn’t be that way. Even if I just need to google something, or return a personal phone call, or clean up a mess. I have to mentally prepare myself to get off track and hopefully I can get back on the track again. I’m just going through the motions, but not really living. That’s stress too, I found out.

Everything in my life is great, and I’m moving forward towards bigger and better things every day. I found a great love, who makes me want to do better, dream bigger, and then make it all come true. We want that for each other, and we want to help each other achieve those dreams. But we are both stressed to the max with all the recent changes in our lives that the big dreams are just overwhelming. Recently though, we’ve both been too tired to do that. Going out always seems like work. I want to go have dates, and enjoy a getaway weekend sometimes, plan vacations where it’s not the most stressful thing in the world to leave, work on chores without feeling like I’m sacrificing down time or having to pick and choose between work and house projects.

I want to hear what people say, and stop assigning negative thoughts to compliments. I always hear negativity, and part of what we are trying to work on is removing negative influence in our lives. We want a wealth of positive vibes, happiness, and love. But when we are stressed, negativity makes a nest inside us and comes out in forms of self destruction. For me, it’s negative thoughts that are tied in to compliments, and not feeling like I’m enough. I want to eliminate the stress so I don’t have to feel like this. Because I know that’s not true.

I’m taking a different approach to finding balance and I have started learning about energy healing from within, psychotherapy and reiki. We’ve started on a new spiritual journey together where we are attending these classes and learning how to better balance ourselves and work through our underlying internal issues. I’m scared, but also feel like once I know, I can begin a new path to healing. I want to be able to feel connected to my spirit once again. I want to stop missing the beauty.