3. My Own Mental Health and Self-Discovery

It's easy to sweep our mental health under the rug, convincing ourselves we're fine. But sometimes, that rug gets pulled out from beneath us, and we're forced to face the music. Join me as I share the raw and real moments of my own mental health journey. From the darkness of depression and anxiety to the complexities of postpartum emotions, I pull back the curtain on the silent battles many of us face. This conversation isn't just about the struggles, though; it's about the leaps of faith we take towards healing.

We'll tackle the tough questions, like whether medication for mental health should carry the same weight as treatment for physical ailments. I'll take you through my moment of reckoning – that turning point where I had to choose my well-being over self-judgment and guilt. With honesty, I share the lessons learned about the importance of sleep, the quest for a balanced life, and finding the fortitude to put ourselves first. Whether you've been in the trenches of mental health challenges or you're navigating them now, this episode is a beacon of understanding and hope.

Stressed out but don't have the time or energy to do anything about it? Check out The Busy Nurses' Guide to Less Stress at www.jennylytle.com/guide

and make sure to like, subscribe, and leave a review of the podcast - it really helps!

Decrease your stress FAST!

Grab my free resource, "The Busy Nurses' Guide to Less Stress" at https://www.jennylytle.com/guide and uncover the secret to less stress without a lot of time or effort.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylytlern/

More ways to connect here: https://linktr.ee/jennylytle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Nurses' Break Room with Jenny Lytle. Aran and I am Jenny. Today we are going to dig in a little bit to mental health struggles, and most of us know that there is a mental health crisis in the world in our country For sure. I'm in the US and I have had my own mental health issues. I've struggled with some depression and anxiety off and on through the years. Nothing super serious in my adult life. That's not actually true, I guess now that I'm saying that. So I do want to be as transparent as I'm comfortable with, which is generally pretty comfortable as long as it's just impacting me Like I don't want to. There's some things that are maybe going on with my family or obviously with patients and things like that, but or friends that I may not be as upfront about. But for me myself, I do want to be pretty open about that, and so, as I started to say that I haven't really had any serious issues, that's not accurate.

Speaker 1: 1:30

When I was a teenager, I was suicidal. I had just some, made some bad choices and then had some bullying issues and there was just a lot of things. It was a perfect storm A little bit of sexual abuse and comparatively, compared to a lot of people it was a very minor, but it still impacted me deeply and so that was something that I dealt with for years. And then I was on anti-depressants for a while when I was in my early 20s, and then I just things got better and it wasn't something that I really needed anymore. But after I had my kids I realized later that I really had some pretty pretty big postpartum depression that I just wasn't really acknowledging. But in the past several years I have said when I've been working with either coaching clients or my patients or just talking with my friends, I've said I don't think there's anything wrong with medication when needed for any type of mental health issue, but I personally just don't feel like I need that right now. But if that changes at some point, then I will sure go ahead and get back on things.

Speaker 1: 2:49

I realized a couple of months ago that but you know what it's probably about that time I was not liking the way that my thoughts were going and I felt very frustrated with myself and disappointed in myself, because I have the tools I need, I know what to do and I I couldn't do it. I just literally felt like I could not do it, and I know that simple things like sleep and I have really prioritized since 2020, I've always been a big sleeper anyway, but I've really prioritized sleep since 2020. However, I also work on call and so my nights are interrupted, and I'm also a woman of a certain age and I have hot flashes and trouble with sleeping sometimes and for the most part, that's pretty well controlled, but not always and so my sleep is somewhat interrupted and it was just. It was time when I felt like I really needed to do something. But I also felt guilty because I for a variety of reasons, but one of them was because I hadn't been doing the things that I knew to do, and it felt like I was cheating by wanting to go on a medication. I had a lot of mental battle, a lot of struggle with that. Now, nobody else put that on me. That was all something that I did, and now I don't feel that way about other people. But that's what really made me realize how much we do these things to ourselves.

Speaker 1: 4:28

And if I had, if somebody had come to me and said that they were diabetic and that they just really they knew they needed to eat better. But they weren't really doing that right now and they just felt. They just felt out of control, they felt like they couldn't and they were going to be going on meds to help with their blood sugar. I wouldn't be rate them or judge them for going on meds while they and hopefully then be able to have the energy and the oomph to do the things that they knew that they needed to do, make the lifestyle changes, and that they knew they needed to get to where they wanted to go. But I wasn't allowing myself that same permission, that same bit of grace, and I even when I went to the doctor and said, look, I think I need to go back on meds it's been 20 some years and but I feel like this is what I need to do. And I had to go through my whole and I know I'm not doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing. And he was like, okay, and maybe this is what you need, and it was, and I am feeling better most days, and then some days I'm not, and then that irritates me too. But I just I want to normalize this whole issue of us not having everything together, of mental health being an issue, of us needing to take care of ourselves, and we just don't always do that, and I think for me personally and I know a lot of other Christians I'm a Jesus follower. I'm okay. If you're not, that's not.

Speaker 1: 6:10

I'm not going to try to push my beliefs on anybody, but at the same time, it is my podcast and so I will talk openly about that, but I don't want anybody to feel comfortable because I'm not judging you. I think I just said I don't want anybody to feel comfortable. I don't want anybody to feel uncomfortable. I'm not judging you for possibly having different beliefs than I do or being unsure, but I do. I do think that we put more on ourselves as Christians and women in general. If you don't share my beliefs and you're thinking, I'll do that too, but we have this thought that we need to either pray and have more faith and that God will get us through things.

Speaker 1: 6:53

I do absolutely believe that God can get us through things. I also believe that there's medication, there's treatment, there's things like that that are there and able to help us, and I also believe that sometimes we get shamed, maybe, and some of that maybe, things that we just put on ourselves, and I know that's something that I've done too, for needing to, wanting to take care of ourselves. Or maybe not even needing to, maybe not even wanting to, but more like everything in our lives is telling us you've got to slow down, you've got to take care of you, but we don't want to and we don't feel like we have time or we feel selfish. And when you add that layer of we're supposed to be taking care of everybody else, we're supposed to be serving people and we have this calling in our lives and for most of us, I feel like we believe nursing is a calling or a mission. It's part of our purpose, it's part of our identity. But we also know that. We know on a head level that you can't take care of other people if you're not taking care of yourselves. But we still try to do it, and it's so easy to get back into those patterns. I completely get that, because that has happened so many times with me and I focus on this. This is what I'm passionate about and it still happens, because I'm human and that just that is the way that things go, and so that's a start into how and why.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Now is the time for this particular podcast, because I really do think that, as nurses, we need to take a break. We need to have a place where we can go and be open and be upfront and be honest about the things that we're going through, and some of those may be nursing related, some of those are just everyday life, but having our identity tied up in nursing it definitely changes things, because we're so used to giving that having our own needs met and having our own needs acknowledged can be a challenge, and so I'm going to be getting into this more in the next episode. My goal is to keep all of these episodes short, because I know that you, like me, are very likely busy. You've got a lot of things competing for your attention, and I want there to be a nice stopping point where you are able to move on to the next thing that you need to in your life and then just come back in and get together with me whenever it works out for you. Thank you so much and I will see you next time.