As y’all may or may not know, I recently spent six weeks away from home, caring for my niece post-brain surgery.
It was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done in my life. Not the most stressful, but up in the top five.
To start with, I was chronically sleep-deprived. She started out with pills once every four hours, which meant staying away until 12:30 AM to give her pills, followed by getting up at 4:30 AM to give her pills. That was the schedule for the first ten days or so after she got out of the hospital.
As I always have great difficulty falling back asleep, even given how tired I was, that made for very little sleep.
Eventually, the pill schedule lightened up, and we went to every six hours. Then she started being able to take her own pills, so I didn’t have to be up until 12:30 AM and then get up at 6:30 AM.
Mind you, even tired I’m still a very light sleeper, so I regularly woke up when her alarm went off. At that point, there was always a 50/50 chance that I didn’t go back to sleep. In addition, I was always on call and even asleep listening for her, in case she fell (which she did, more than once).
My niece also has a hundred-pound dog who needs regular walks. So in addition to not getting enough sleep, I averaged 11K steps per day. Which was good, but it also meant that I was getting up and moving every morning regardless of how much or how little sleep I’d gotten.
It took about a week after I got home for me to feel physically rested again. I spent a lot of time sitting and not doing much. I am eternally grateful that my caregiving situation was temporary. Doing this full-time with no end in sight would have been a lot rougher. (I probably would have come up with different solutions for myself, different schedules, more respite, etc.)
However, even though I’ve (mostly) recovered physically, I’m still emotionally drained. I have no emotional resilience.
I learned this the first week back when I received some pretty bad news (family-related). The news made me go numb. I just shut down for a while. The stress was so bad I ended up with a migraine.
This was…not good.
I got on the phone with a therapist before the end of the week, telling her that I was looking for some 201 stress relief tools, as my 101 tools weren’t doing the job.
What was I doing to relieve my stress?
- Getting in contact with my friends and support network and letting them know what was going on, getting their support.
- Continuing to walk. Maybe I’m not up to 10K steps per day, but still getting out and moving regularly.
- My Fitbit tells me my heart rate. I’ve been paying close attention to it, to make sure that I’m actually resting, that my heart rate is at or below my at-rest heart rate, and that I’m not just distracting myself. (I’m looking at you, those oh-so-tempting-but-not-restful games on my phone.) This, for me, means reading.
- I bought myself flowers for the little garden that’s directly outside of my door, so when I look outside I see bright colors that make me smile.
- I’ve been grilling—gonna make a pot roast on the grill today. Made BBQ sauce and a rub yesterday. I’ve been curing pork belly all week, and I’m going to smoke it for bacon in a while. And so on.
- I’ve spent time weeding, as it’s spring and that’s what you do at this time of the year. I find the creative destruction incredibly satisfying.
- I’m taking all my supplements, putting my health first.
- I’m sleeping as much as possible. However, since I’m no longer completely exhausted, I’m not sleeping as well as I did when I first got home. So I’m taking OTC sleep aids every other night again.
According to the therapist, I’m doing all the right things. There isn’t much more I can do to help rebuild my emotional reserves.
Except to give myself grace and some time. This didn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t going to be fixed overnight. Particularly since I’m still on the phone every day with my niece, providing support. Stressful things continue to occur in my family. Plus, writing takes emotional strength. And tapping into that means spending those reserves.
In retrospect, I realized that I’d been looking for a secret handshake, something that would help immediately, and make me emotionally resilient again in just a week.
Unfortunately, there ain’t no such thing. I just have to deal with it every day, chipping away at the deficit, slowly refilling those emotional batteries again.
I’m not sure when I’m going to feel better, feel as though I can withstand an emotional blow without crumbling. I’m paying very close attention to the things that feed me versus the things that suck out emotional energy. I’m trying to limit those to one per day. (As opposed to the day when I did five of them, and ended up being completely shattered the following day.)
I’m still searching for help. I’ve picked up the book Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin. She, too, states that it’s a long journey and that it involves systems, not temporary fixes. Fortunately, I’m on the right path, and I’m privileged enough to have the time to figure this out.
Still. I’m likely to be less social, at least for a while, until I feel emotionally stronger, and more capable, again.
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