Balance...What Is It Anyway?

How do we gain that perfect work-life balance?  It seems more like work-study-socialise-be happy-be healthy-be successful-don’t crumble-don’t slip up- balance.  How are we supposed to do everything we’re supposed to do and keep up with the fast pace of life and not fuck up? 

This week has been horrible for me, so many things have gone wrong at once and I’ve been struggling to cope.  My anxiety has been sky high and it’s been hard to get up every day and carry on.  I still did get up and do what I had to do, but it’s so much harder when your mind is gripped by going over and over everything that’s happened.  My whole body shakes, I feel sick, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, it doesn’t go away.  It doesn’t matter that I know deep down that overthinking doesn’t change anything, that I just have to learn from my mistakes and move on, I can’t stop over analysing what’s happened.  

Having anxiety, to me, feels like something else has control over my mind.  In my heart, I know that worrying about something achieves nothing and doesn’t affect the outcome. But somehow, my mind whirs around anything and everything that has gone wrong or could go wrong, at super speed.  It goes so fast that it sends my heartbeat into palpitations and suddenly I’m completely lost in what I’m doing and frozen still in a bubble of panic.   It sucks. 



I’ve noticed that I have to get into this state before I realise that I’m doing too much and need to slow down.  I constantly have plates spinning in my head and I’m always running around trying to make sure they’re all perfectly balanced until one day, they all fall down and smash.  Why can’t I evaluate the situation, and realise that maybe I have to put one or two plates down so that I can make sure that things stay balanced, so nothing gets broken?  

I hate making mistakes, I want things to be right all the time and that’s just not realistic.  I need to get past this because one day it’s just going to burn me out.  This week has been the worst I have felt in a long time and I do not want to feel like this again.  I used to feel like this every day and just a hint of feeling this terrified and twisted up again is just vile.  

I want more than anything to be happy and free minded, I just need to accept that shit happens and it’s not going to be the end of the world.  How do I do that? How do I stop myself from doing too much and crashing out?  I just want to work hard and be successful and everything else on top of that.  It’s too much.  

At the moment, I just want to crawl under a rock and hide from all of my responsibilities for a while.  I know that all this will do is make it worse, I just need to step up and face my demons.  It’s difficult. 



But I have a holiday to go on soon and this spinning feeling won’t last forever, it does fade away.  This time, I need to learn from this experience and prevent it from happening in the first place.  Balance, happiness and being stress-free are the most important things.  I need to be selfish with my emotions sometimes and just do what I want, instead of putting other people’s emotions before my own.  

I’m sure so many of you feel the same or similar to me.  It makes life a lot harder to deal with sometimes, but we can be here for each other!  The support I have had from my family and friends has really helped me, even though it doesn’t look like it does at the time.  

The key thing is to reach out to others.  Bottling things up makes the issue feel 100% bigger and can make you feel really alone.  I’ve opened up to those around me this last week and explained all that I’ve been feeling, and even though it’s hard to work up to, I feel so much better for getting it off my chest.  



Please seek out those around you, if you’re feeling low for any reason, speak to someone.  Those who love you will want to hear how you’re feeling and want to help you.  Don’t suffer in silence, it isn’t worth putting yourself through it. 

It’s ok not to be ok, if we can all support each other, we can make things better.