I’m not going to lie, November was a tough month. A lot of stuff went down. If you follow me on any of my social media pages you’ll have noticed that things have been crazy. Like more than just work being busy, but there were a few things that pretty much almost pushed me over the edge.
The 3 month headache from hell.
For the last few months, I’ve been having the most unbearable headaches, and I’m talking in your head 24/7 the worst pain you can think of head aches. When you’ve a chronic illness, both you and most of the time the Dr’s just brush it off as an associated symptom of said illness and they (and almost everyone you know) seem to think you’re either a chronic hypochondriac or are just looking for sympathy. I can assure neither of those are in my nature, and these headaches were the fucking worst. My Neurologists finally cracked the code after consulting with a colleague of his and said head pain was diagnosed, to be one of the worst pain syndromes out there – but it can and will be treated. If you want to find out more about this, you can read so here
Working with a constant headache isn’t fun at all, but unfortunately when you’re the boss and others rely on you, you push through and still work best you can all the time. Thank god that’s over and hopefully it stays that way.
Someone stole my shit
The last blog post I wrote and posted on my page, received by far the most traffic any of my articles to date has received, clocking in at almost 2.8M (yes that stands for million) reads, and it seems that the content and subject matter hit a chord with many. Anyone that writes, will tell you that when you dig deep and share the best pieces of yourself, you’re digging deep and sharing yourself with others, and it leaves you feeling pretty bloody vulnerable. It’s also incredibly humbling to think that there are so many people out there interested so thank you. About a month after the article had been up and online, I received an email via my website from a stranger, alerting me to the fact that there was a woman who had taken the article and blog post and had posted it on her own website – using it and palming it off as here own. I was told that this individual had done it previously to others and as I did my own investigating that and a lot of other things come to light. I had to speak to lawyers, attempted to approach this individual to call her out on it and have the article and piece removed. I had to speak to lawyers and while I had penned an entire blog post about it, it had already done a lot to my state of mind, and figured it best not to continue on about it. The short story is that this woman is a fraud, she is well known by many for her antics and lies, and she has serious mental health issues. This was at an already busy time for me a stress I didn’t need nor want in my life.
Things have been incredibly busy
“Yeah, yeah everyone is busy” or “being busy having your own business is good” but I’m talking things have been the busiest they’ve been since I’ve started business. Yes good, but in hindsight there are things I could have done and will have to do moving forward you see to ensure I put myself first. Here’s where I fucked up
1. I took on clients who I should have said no to. My gut said no but I went against it and it was a big mistake. They were unwilling to take my advice, they were time consuming and they were a super pain in my arse. I spent time worrying or dealing with them when I should have been spending that time on doing nothing or looking after myself. I have learned from this, and have shown them the door.
2. I’m horrible at putting myself first. As a people pleaser, I’m always more interested in putting everyone else first or don’t say no when I should. I know these are both toxic behaviors but I still continue with them. Subsequently I don’t eat properly, I forget to drink water, I sometimes don’t recall if I even went to the bathroom that day. I worry too much about dumb shit and I put un realistic time lines and frames on myself. I was working 7am -1am most days and at my 100 miles an hour pace. This is a bad idea for anyone and if I saw someone else doing what I was, I’d probably of ordered and intervention, but when it’s yourself behaving and interacting in a certain way – well we tend to turn a blind eye.
Not only is the above bad for anyone, but fact- MS hates stress and all of the above was not going to help me in the long run. But ask anyone with a chronic disease or illness. We all live in a perpetual state of denial and we think we’re fucking invincible.
It all come crashing down…
Last week I’m certain I probably clocked a 100 hour work week. I worked all weekend, with the intent that on Monday morning, I’d take things a little slower and ease into my day. I’d not set an alarm and I’d do some things for myself/ run some errands. I woke up to grab a drink of water and I’d already had waiting for me over 100 emails, 8 missed calls and those people who couldn’t reach me then took to contacting me via other forms (namely social media or sms) to tell me they needed to talk to me. This was at 10am.
If you’ve ever had a panic attack or suffer anxiety, you’ll know that it’s the worst and the barrage of communication was just that one thing that set me off on what I can only explain as a total and utter meltdown. My brain couldn’t think straight, I found it hard to breath and the nervous breakdown I knew would one day come to meet me, felt like it was finally here. The funny thing is though right – I’d thought there were times were I might actually finally have lost the plot – where a week or month in a sanitarium or solitary confinement medicated sounded fucking great. It would mean an actual break, a real holiday (finally, because every time I try something comes up and it doesn’t happen). and the meds they provide you for I’d imagine for sedation seemed like the rest my poor brain needed.
As hard as it was to get dressed and drag my arse to my GP, I did it because I knew I needed help and it wasn’t something I or anyone close to me could do this time.
Instantly seeing my GP who’s like a caring, kind Greek aunt to me immediately made me feel at ease. I cried, she listened and we had a good talk about why it was important for me to look after myself. One thing that stuck with me that she said, and it’s something I tell myself every day is “What happens to your business and everything else if you breakdown”. I explained it was never a possibility because so many people rely on me. She also asked me things like what happens if I don’t sleep, eat, drink etc. I’m not an idiot and the questions weren’t hard, but until I spoke them out loud to someone else, did it then resonate that I was so wrapped up in doing things for everyone else I forgot to look after or care for me.
See I’m a smart person, and these are all basic things right – but I had lost sight of these basic human needs and self care processes I needed for me because you know… I left with a prescription for some sleeping pills, a script for some Valium, a hug from her and she sent me home to watch a chick flick and eat some chocolate. A brilliant remedy and recommendation might I add.
While I was there, I had to set reminders in my phone to remind me to eat, when to go to the bathroom, when to stop working and also to drink water. I had to promise to delegate more, say no to things that weren’t good for me and to start looking after myself. It’s been a week, I go back to see her tomorrow and this week has been better and has been a real wake up call to me.
Running your own business is hard, but different hard to when I started. So what’s the point of this you ask? Often when we meet other people in business, in life etc when people ask about how we are etc we just brush off our feelings, problems or issues and try to do to much. We’re worried that people will judge us, that people won’t care about what’s going on or that we’re expected to be strong and be killing it all the time. We put up fronts, facades, don’t say how we really feel and then we wind up somewhere here.
There is no shame in asking for help, there is no shame in admitting you can’t cope. There is no shame in admitting that things are wearing you down or are all too much. Because life isn’t perfect. No ones life is, but that’s OK, that’s actually normal and we shouldn’t be ashamed to tell others when it’s not.
So as we roll into December I’m realistic that things are going to be busy, but you know what I’m going to be OK. I’m actually really looking forward but some things will and have already had to change in my life. Because if I don’t put my foot down, and look out for my best interests then no one else will and it’s time to change that story and continued path of self destruction.
I’ve already had some exciting conversations for projects I am going to finish in 2018 I started a long time ago, but never allocated the time (my time to) and I’m really excited to share that with you when the time is right.
Be kind to yourselves as we go into what is and can be an incredibly hard and trying time. Ask for help if you need it and it’s OK to not be able to do it all. Reality is, we can’t have it all and that’s totally OK.. Just pick the bits you want and the rest can EAD!!
Chrissy x