My mental health honestly exhausts me.
Monday, I felt so good. I had done a hard hike, spent time in God’s ceration with my hubby, and the weather was perfect.
I had a weird night of sleep that night (as usual). I tend to have vivid dreams most nights. I sleep “enough,” but it’s not quality. Most of my dreams are things that I believe are just always there subconsciously, but I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it in the daytime.
Between increased shame and dreams that deal with that, I just feel overwhelmed with the depth of my poor mental and emotional health.
Again, I do have good days. Sometimes I feel like it’s a switch that’s flipped off and on.
Tuesday, I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. My youngest seems so frustrated with me a lot. I kind of lost it on him that day. Things were just rough. That evening, we had family therapy, thankfully. It helped quite a bit as far as me understanding his feelings better and maybe learning a little more about myself and why I feel so deeply the way I do sometimes.
He told me that evening that he feels like I put too much pressure on myself for their school (and other things), and that basically bleeds onto them. In different words, he basically told me I need to chill out.
It’s hard because I often feel like I just shouldn’t homeschool. When I’m doing well, I feel like I’m an awesome “homeschool teacher.” But when I’m depressed, I feel allll over the place and unable to be consistent with anything. He told me that night that he does NOT want to be in school and feels that I’m the best one to teach him. I just need to relax.
That’s SO hard for me. I always feel like I’m going to really mess my kids up.
He tells me often that he learns best when I’m not all stressed out and trying to do “all the things.” He learns best when I focus on less, move slower, and dig a little deeper.
Despite all of my striving to be different, I still make so many decisions out of fear and constantly have the weight of fear on me all day. I feel the most free when I let go, but I feel like it always comes back.
I do think that it will just take time and practice and constant re-framing of my thoughts. It’s just hard.
This morning, I sat down and just wrote out all of the fears that sit in my heart and mind all the time. I won’t be sharing all of these here, but it came down to a few things: 1) Many of my fears include what other people think about me, 2) Other fears are things I have zero control of no matter how hard I try, and 3) The others are things that are just imperfections in myself that I struggle with… I probably need to accept them.
Getting them out on paper made me realize that they aren’t as big as they feel inside.
I realized yesterday that when I’m having a good day, I tend to add a lot to my plate and make more rules for myself. Then, on the hard days, I feel like everything is falling apart because I cannot possibly live up to the rules that I make for myself.
For example, Monday while we were driving to our hiking destination, I was listing out all of the things that I “should” add and take away from my diet to “help” my mental health (which I shared in my last blog post). The hard thing about that is that the rules actually just make my mental health worse. I’ve also been so afraid of gaining weight, but I have zero desire to “diet” or log my food anymore. I have to learn to live within that. And if I gain weight, it doesn’t reflect who I AM. One of my fears is that people will judge me because I put so much time and effort into losing weight and getting into a good space habit-wise. But the problem is, habits are SO hard for people with ADHD. Also, those were more about control than anything. True habits wouldn’t have just fallen off when life got hard. But again, habits are so hard for me. I STILL have to be super intentional to just make sure I brush and floss… which are things that should be a habit for people. Every little thing takes a lot of effort, and it’s especially hard when I’m depressed. I believe truly coming to terms with that and taking one day at a time would be truly freeing.
I see others easily gain habits and make changes that they want to change like it’s no big deal. But for someone with ADHD, everything feels hard.
My goal at the moment is to try to add things one at a time like James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits. Truly just try to focus on a little bit. Not overhauling everything like I’ve done so many times. Instead of trying to get back to my 5 days of working out per week, I’m just trying to do 2-3 workouts per week right now. I am also trying to walk more. I’m trying to just do things that make me feel better and not focusing on weight loss, having visible muscle, etc. I have viewed health habits as an emergency so many times… I MUST change everything RIGHT NOW. Research shows that doesn’t work, and it doesn’t last long.
Something else that I’m realizing is that I often take on what others think is best and struggle to know what I truly think is best. Between Podcasts, the homeschooling community online, the fitness community online, the homesteading community, etc, I get so mixed up and lose sight of what is best for me and for my family.
I am still not even sure what I want in every area of my life, but through trial-and-error and good-and-bad days, I’m slowly figuring it out.
Today, I’m just trying to chill.
Rest.
Relax.
Take one day, one minute at a time.
It’s looking like Ethan might be going back to school next year. He has made so much growth and improvement. He has been asking if it would be possible to go back. I have been telling him that I’m just not sure. But I went ahead and filled out the choice application (we aren’t officially in the district but live like 5 minutes away from the school… we are on the county line). I don’t know when we will know if it is accepted or not. The application is due by February 12th, and I wanted to give us some options. I was thinking at the time that I wanted Levi back in school as well, but I don’t think that will happen. We are just praying that God would give us wisdom. I cannot control Ethan. I can control what happens in our home, but he’s almost 17… so he will be out of the house very soon. He needs to be able to learn how to manage himself… his behavior, his academics, etc. Like I said, he is doing so much better lately. I’m still nervous. But God is ultimately in control. I emailed the assistant principal and the case manager that worked with Ethan a few days ago just telling them that we applied for choice enrollment for him for next year, and they were actually excited. They SEE him. They truly like him. They don’t see his behaviors as who he is. I truly appreciate that so much. It was never like that in Texas.
It also looks like Levi and I will be taking a more relaxed/year-round approach to school. We are required to have 172 days of “school” per year here in Colorado, and that just hasn’t been happening between our mental health struggles and all the change and craziness that has been going on in our life. We will keep it light in the summer, but the benefit is that we can just chill a little bit more. We are also kind of approaching things in a more unit study manner, but I will be adding in some skills-work as well… math, writing, grammar, etc. Just a little bit each day! I’m also really trying to take school one day and minute at a time as well. Levi has been showing me all the learning that happens on his own which truly helps me relax a bit.
Levi is also in the process of getting evaluated for autism which will give us some more information. Hopefully it’ll help us learn how to help him to be successful. Either way.
Yesterday, I was truly thinking that maybe I DO have bipolar 2 like I was previously diagnosed. I still don’t know… my nurse practitioner really doesn’t think so because I never have a reduced need for sleep. But the extremes are exhausting. Extremes happy because of ADHD as well… but the extreme depression then “higher” periods are a sign to me. I’m going to keep talking with my nurse practitioner about it. We will see what happens. I have been on bipolar meds before (for YEARS), and I didn’t think they helped me. In fact, I felt like they made me feel much worse. We will see. I feel sometimes like there is something that has been missed in my diagnoses or that something isn’t managed… specifically my ADHD. Or maybe I need to just “ride the wave” of this season instead of trying to figure out it out fix it. I’ll probably start feeling better in March… then in the summer I will struggle again (as I always do). I’m so exhausted by the ups and downs and extremes that I have struggled with my entire life.
But. Again. All I can do is take things one day, one minute at a time.
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