Foot off the pedal.

Pressing pause & stepping back.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

So, I had a whole range of stuff I wanted to do this week, but didn’t end up doing half of it. This week just got a little too much for me, not because of any anniversary of a relative or a ton of deadlines, but because of my mental health. Yes, my brain did a fine number on me this week. I know you’re thinking that I don’t usually go into this sort of topic & I don’t. Whenever I interact with people publicly, I don’t usually publicly disclose what’s going on with me behind closed doors, usually because:

1. It’s not relevant to my research for Project Infant or my genealogy research.
2. I don’t want to bore people with it.

At first & I still felt that I was not being forthcoming with people I would chat with on the phone or whoever contacted me privately to have a chat as I never wanted to disclose any of my mental goings-on to them.

It’s funny how this was going to be a different post originally titled “Blowing a fuse” - about burnout in genealogy but that it will now be a part of this one instead.

I won’t go into detail but my mental health battles started about six or seven years ago. I was the kid who always stood out, which didn’t always work in my favour, I didn’t have a lot in common with my peers so for most of my time in secondary school, my main (and only) friend was genealogy. I would constantly be picked on for anything to my looks or my interests or both at any given time. Due to the fact I didn’t have any friends circle to speak of, I just kept taking it and my school would never do anything about it. 4 years in, I swapped schools so that took some of the strain off but what went on there was and still is very fresh in my mind. My brain would always stress and worry about almost everything I did, I had learned to tune it out but that wouldn’t end up helping me in the long term. Fast forward to Tuesday, that’s when I broke down, I was not in a good place.

The following morning, I posted this as I did not know how indefinite my mental state at the time was going to be.

And, I must say I got so many nice messages and I was overwhelmed but thankful for every single one. The one thing that I kept seeing was how many people had also had similar battles. When I posted that, my head (which loves to twist things) made me think “Look at you, you’re just showcasing something else that’s wrong with you!”, It took me a hot minute to realise that wasn’t the case but it took some convincing. I’ve learned that it’s a part of being human. [As cheesy as that sounds, you have to admit it’s true] So, before you ask - I’m better than I was on Tuesday night but I’m not quite “me” again. I’ve been taking life in baby steps for the moment.

So, a lot of what I have been doing lately has been unrelated to genealogy because honestly, I think I burnt myself out. Be it doing my own genealogy research or client research or trawling death records to find hundreds of names of mothers and children who died in mother and baby homes, I got myself stuck in a very deep rut which I found hard to get out of. And that’s one thing, I do want to mention.

As much as we all love to joke around and say “Every waking moment of my day, I’m doing genealogy.” however in an ideal world, that’s not always a healthy thing to do. I mean, sure - some days I’ll be so engrossed in research that three hours can magically go by. But if it’s not today or tomorrow, one day you will burn out and you may or may not feel guilty for not doing genealogy. Don’t! It’s not as if you’ll be flogged because you didn’t fill a daily genealogy research quota. As I’ve learnt, to quote a very wise genealogist: “In the long run, you’ll be fine. In the short run, you have to help Daniel.” At that moment, I realised I didn’t listen to me all the time and because of that, it didn’t help me at all.

So, the next thing is - to make time for yourself, I didn’t - so don’t make the same error that I did. Stream the new Taylor Swift album, read that new book you’ve had sitting on your shelf or Kindle library, or do that meditation that you always said to yourself you should do but didn’t. Do it: make time for yourself.

And make those small little changes to make yourself happier. For numerous hours on end, I’d sit in my bedroom/office space and do research for hours on end sometimes not talking to my family. I would have done that research outside of the room if my system wasn’t a base unit with two monitors. So, I changed that, my new portable system - made for the same use but I can be in the vicinity of my family.

And one other thing, when I was reaching out and getting help, I learnt that while it has since improved, men and mental health appears to be a taboo thing. “Don’t cry” or the idea that men can’t be sensitive or can’t be seen to be having mental health issues, it’s such rubbish. I wish there wasn’t such a stigma around mental health for anybody - it’s a part of being human, I think we all spend a long time beating ourselves up for it rather than actually reaching out and making ourselves better.

So, to wrap up this semi-off-topic-but-blog-post-I-felt-was-needed:

Whoever you are if you are struggling: reach out, please - you are valued. Don’t suffer in silence. It doesn’t help or do you any good. And find an outlet to express you.