Finding a balance...

[Tangled Web]

We have had such a crazy busy couple of weeks that has made the time fly by so fast. It makes it extremely hard to keep track of the days. Work has been very chaotic and that is what our focus has been on. It has taken all our energy and time, that we have not had any time for working on us. But the way I look at it, it is nice to have a break from dealing with our issues, just wish we could find more of a balance that didn't involve one chaotic thing after another.

So we were wondering.....how do people find a way to balance your lives? What types of things do you do to take breaks from things that are becoming too overwhelming? For us it seems like we throw ourselves into something else and let that completely overtake us, leaving everything else that was overwhelming us before behind. The only thing is that in doing that it doesn't take us long to feel overwhelmed again in the new situation we threw ourselves into and all we eventually end up feeling in the end, is completely burnt out.

So how do people find that healthy balance? Or what are some things you've tried to find it?
Are you able to see patterns (like my example) that you do when you are becoming completely overwhelmed with something? And do you have effective strategies in place to help you deal with those things that gets you to place where things become more balanced again?

TW

[rainbows]

Hi TW,
Sorry that it is Difficult,overwhelming.
We do not know things to do for this. We cannot work anymore.
We wish you New Ways to deal with this that will work.
Hoping for yous.
from rainbows

[FreyasSpirit]

We have been experimenting with the approach of reducing responsibilities as much as possible and taking time for ourselves when we feel overwhelmed. In the most extreme cases, we isolate (leave all irc channels, cancel all social plans) and plan to do nothing other than eat sleep and work. Sometimes, this leads to us averaging 12h/day in bed for a week.

We don't believe this technique is sustainable long term, but it does a good job of helping us get through a week of stress. It also buys time for us to figure out what is going wrong if we do not know or buys time for stressful things to resolve themselves.

Prior to this year, we had a tendency to seek hypomania to get us through stressful times. At the end of last year, our life started falling apart and there were outlets for our hypomania which allowed us to not crash for far too long. When we did eventually crash, it was a conscious decision because using hypomania to make our life stop falling apart was not working. We took a month for ourselves and based on that experience, now believe that isolating and taking time for self is a much better way than hypomania to avoid the anxiety. We do believe that going hypomanic is a useful coping strategy that can get us through a stressful short term solution, but we watch it very closely because if we do not specifically allocate time for crashing afterwards, then it can be very bad.

In general, unless there is a very specific short term problem with a definite end date, we prefer the first method of reducing responsibilities and allowing ourselves to go splat because it leaves us in a much better state when it is over.


Rereading this, we feel a bit brain fogged and feel like it is rambling and probably missing some information. We will probably look at this later and see if there is anything more we want to say.

[The People]

I know almost no monominds who live a balanced life. So I don't expect any more from myself as a multie.

[MakersDozn]

Our approach is similar to FreyasSpirit's approach. It's hard to accomplish, though. The last few years of our father's life (2010-2014) were very stressful for us because of the time and energy that we put into helping to care for him. It seemed impossible to balance these responsibilities with our own healing, and we're only beginning to recover from this.

We agree with The People; most singletons have difficulty with work/life balance as well. But multiples and other survivors deal with additional stressors that are far beyond the experience of other people. So it helps to go easy on ourselves.

MDs

[The People]

Exactly MD. Go easy on ourselves. Would one expect a person with a hearing impairment or in a wheelchair to function in the same way as a person with a fully functioning body? They may do so equally but they take a different rote in everything they do. So it is for multiples. Comparing the way we do things to monominds is like having a person in a wheelchair race the 100 meter run with the football player. Each would get there in their own way. Each is capable of breaking records. But in their own race. Not in a race against each other. Mind you we could put the football star in a wheel chair but it still isn't an equal race.

[rainbows]

HA ! You KwaK me up sometimes !
We agree Totally !
from rainbows