A few weeks ago a friend asked me how things were going with my lamp since I blogged about it. Well, let me tell you: I’m a fool. I started feeling bad as early as the first week of October this year which is earlier than usual. So I started using it regularly in November. That went well. And then December came.
I stopped wanting to. My motivation went through the floor. Every morning I thought to myself, “I don’t really want to…” Then I didn’t. POOR CHOICES.
Here’s the thing: there are one of two mistakes we make when we’re feeling the winter blues (or for any other mental health related things).
- I’m feeling good so I don’t need it. Wrong. We’re feeling good because the treatment is working. That doesn’t mean STOP, it means CONTINUE.
- I don’t feel like it/I don’t want to. It means the treatment isn’t yet working because motivation is low. At least that’s how it is for my personal experience.
Learn to trust the data
I need to learn to trust data in front of me rather than my feelings. The data of the last few years says: you’re not yourself at Christmas and your family thinks you’re this bump on a log who doesn’t like being with people and doing basically anything but eat and play Dutch Blitz. That’s not who I am normally (though, let’s be serious, I’ll eat and play Dutch Blitz any time). This experience this past winter tells me I need to ask my husband to help me not listen to my feelings or my own head because it isn’t trustworthy.
This past year I tried to do better than the previous year. I did! Sort of!
So here’s to learning about how to function optimally, healthily and to asking for help in doing that.
Do you have a hard time reading or accepting the data that you see about your health? How can you fix that? If you’d like to share, leave a comment or leave some feedback here in the comments.
