The daily overwhelm

Hello all, good afternoon from the north of England, where today, and this is not a weather report, it is a little bit chilly and grey, hmm, where has the sun gone, oh, this is England, we have this weather, anyway, it's just that you are having the best day that you can have, me, I'm in a little bit of a, what I call a black hole, some people call it the black dog, this mental illness, symptoms place, where I know a lot of us go. 

Now every day, to explain, because I think there are people out there who believe that when you mention that you've had a good day or you've done something, that mental illness long term, I'm talking about long term with respect to mental illness that's been for many years, it disappears, wow, well, to explain, for me, it is every single day, and has been for at least four decades that I know of, and maybe longer than that, however, for me it goes up and down, up, down, up, down, every single day is completely different. With that, goes overwhelm. 

Now everything that I talk about is my own experiences. By the way, I'm right about my own experiences, because they are my own experiences, other people's experiences of what they have, especially around mental illness, because for me, there is not one mental illness, there is not one symptom, there are many different people with many different backgrounds who have similar symptoms at different levels. 

Some people may be extremely depressed, some people may be not as depressed, some people may be extremely overwhelmed, and it's debilitating like it can be for me. 

Some people may be extremely depressed, but may not be extremely overwhelmed. Look at it as a spectrum, or a number from one to ten. Some days, my overwhelm, or the overwhelm that I experience can be ten. Often with that, I'm not getting out of bed or doing anything much, very little self-care. 

When I look at notifications on the phone, emails, the phone rings, thinking about doing almost anything, my brain appears to shut down, it is overwhelmed. Now the reason why I'm explaining this is because I believe that some people can take it very personally. 

They can see that what is actually a symptom of mental illness, or neurodiversity, or being on the autistic spectrum for instance, that not replying for days, that can be something extremely personal. Now rather than, for instance me, I may ask the question like, what's going on with you? 

Now the difference I talk about between friends and followers, friends probably know that I am overwhelmed because they're asking me, or they're hearing it within me, they're seeing it within me, they're reading my posts, so they have a little bit more of a clue. Or they ask me questions like, are you overwhelmed Simon? 

However, with followers I can see that some people who don't know what's going on, and I am sometimes too overwhelmed to explain to people that I'm too overwhelmed, which is interesting isn't it? Too overwhelmed to explain why I'm too overwhelmed, because if I explain to lots of individual people who do not even take the time to get to know and are not actually asking me about it, they're making assumptions, presumptions, judgments on all of these things, which that's okay for them. 

If I spent that time doing that, then I would not be dealing with the overwhelm, and I would be more overwhelmed. See there is a thing that goes along with this, if you notice, a theme, there is a theme that goes along with overwhelm. 

So I'm going to use...these voice notes to explain to people in my own terminology, in my own way because again I treat everybody as an individual. Another person's overwhelm may affect them completely differently to how it affects or impacts me. 

And by the way it's not cool to question people like myself and actually ask are you really overwhelmed Simon? I know that's not very cool at all. Maybe I respect that if I say I'm overwhelmed what can you do to be helpful, kind and supportive? 

That's what I aim to do even if it's frustrating sometimes. That's what I aim to do with other people. So yes there is overwhelm for me every single day at different levels. The worst level of overwhelm can be almost paralyzing as in doing or not able to do anything much at all.

 However I still aim to do at least something good. So now I've got out of bed, it's taken me around four or five hours, I've got out of bed. I'm recording this. That's two positive things from the day. I'm still extremely overwhelmed however I want to do a couple of things which will bring some good to the day without overwhelming myself more. 

What I've learned with overwhelm is not to push it. When I am overwhelmed it is my body telling me something like Simon slow down. So in the past when I was doing the people-pleasing, loving other people and not loving myself type of thing, my aim will be to reply to all of those emails, speak to all of those other people and put myself out there for other people so that they wouldn't be offended. 

And now I find that people are offended whatever choice I would make. So my choice now is to make sure I look after myself, make sure that I do self-care, make sure that I love myself first. Then if I have things left I will give it in a almost a pecking order of friends and then it dribbles down to followers and randoms as I call them. 

So yes some people out there may take it extremely personally. However somebody was in a bed with tubes coming out of their mouth, would you be making comments to them like oh why are you not replying Simon? Why are you not making an effort Simon? 

Well it's an illness that I'm managing and it's an illness which is 24 hours a day. Wow! A mental illness is 24 hours a day. It doesn't have some switch on off on off. That would be amazing. I would love to have an on-off switch. I don't have it. So I trust that this may help people have a little bit more understanding of overwhelm within myself. What it can do, the impact that it has, and that it is very rarely a personal thing. However it's very personal to me. Anyway until next time!