4. Beyond My Own Mental Health Struggles

Grasping the delicate threads of hope and fortitude, my own battle with the lurking shadows of mental health has been a profound journey I share with you. As Jenny Lytle, a seasoned nurse with three decades of experience, I confront the guilt-ridden turmoil of feeling overwhelmed despite a seemingly fulfilling life. Nursing in hospice, home health, and substance use disorder has unveiled the stark reality of suffering and resilience, inspiring me to spearhead a mental health ministry that bridges the gap to professional care. 

In this episode, we navigate the emotional labyrinth of self-compassion and the healing potential of lifestyle changes, medication, and therapy. Listeners, whether you're a fellow nurse, someone grappling with mental health, or a caring friend, I invite you to embrace this heartfelt conversation. Let us extend grace to ourselves and others as we unravel the complexities of mental well-being and discover the collective strength in our shared vulnerabilities.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Nurses' Break Room with Jenny Lytle. Arryn and I'm Jenny. I want to continue our last conversation talking about mental health struggles and some of the things that I have been dealing with recently myself, and part of that for me and I believe in talking to some other women that I'm not alone here Part of that is that my life is good. So just a little bit of history on me and my nursing background. So I've been a nurse for 30 years this year and I currently work three different PRN positions. I do on-call for hospice and I've done hospice for 18 years now. So I do hospice and I do some home health. And then I also have recently started a position with a substance use disorder organization and, especially compared to the kind of things that my patients and clients are facing and a lot of the clients that I'm dealing with and our new mental health ministry at church that I helped to launch, it's really difficult to not feel guilty for struggling mentally because I don't have to worry about a lot of the things that the people that I'm in contact with all the time are worrying about. So we're healthy.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Everyone in my family is pretty healthy. We've had some losses, but expected and or a little more normal losses that seem a little more right, older people that, yes, things change and we want to keep them with us forever. But we're not dealing with the loss of a child or a young spouse or things like a lot of the hospice patients are dealing with and nothing catastrophic where we've had some major injury and have those kind of things going, like some of my home health patients have. Home health patients have, and then, thankfully, we are not dealing with substance use in a direct. We have in some family ways and some friends. It definitely has touched our lives, but it's not something that I am dealing with myself on a regular basis and we I don't have to worry about food and where all those things are going to come from. Now we have some debt and a lot of that is because of my spending habits that I'm working on.

Speaker 1: 3:01

But the whole point of this is there are people who have big awful things going on in their lives. They have these big stressors and it's understandable how they could end up struggling with depression, with anxiety, with those feelings of frustration and hopelessness. I have a good life, I've been. My husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary last year and we bought a new house not new, but we bought a house and had it renovated and it's beautiful. It is something that we prayed for and hoped for and really thought, you know, that's probably not gonna happen, but that's more him than me. I am a little more positive in ways than that, and that's another thing is I am normally very positive, very optimistic. I can get mad kind of easily, but I also get over it pretty easily, and so just to be in this funk of not just the standard few days funk or here and there funk, but just really down and starting to feel somewhat hopeless was concerning, and so I feel like there are others who are dealing with those same kind of things.

Speaker 1: 4:22

Like I said, we just started a, launched a mental health ministry at church because I was feeling that was something that really was needed. There's so many people who do need help with their mental health and getting into a licensed professional is challenging. There's long waits and sometimes people feel like they don't have that time to wait. Sometimes maybe it's a money or an insurance issue and we are not trying to take the place of mental health professionals. I clearly know my role and my limitations, but we want to be that bridge to be able to, to offer people some support and a listening ear and maybe some guidance, and just let them know that somebody cares and that there are things that can be done when sometimes that's sometimes that is medication, sometimes that is intensive type therapy, and sometimes it is a few lifestyle changes, and so there's just there's so many different things like that that come into play.

Speaker 1: 5:28

But I think it's time that we, as women, as nurses, as just as human beings, that we have more grace with other people and with ourselves and not try to figure out is this something that I should be feeling?

Speaker 1: 5:46

Is this do I have any right to feel this bad right now?

Speaker 1: 5:50

Or looking for a cause?

Speaker 1: 5:53

I wanna know why am I feeling this way?

Speaker 1: 5:55

And again, I don't do that with other people, the way I do it with myself, and I'm much harder on myself than I am on others, and I know that a lot of you are too, and I don't want that to always be the case.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I want to be able to talk about that. I wanna be able to have breakdowns and breakthroughs and get through some of this and be able to have a community where we're supporting each other through this, because it happens and, like grief, does I feel like a lot of times mental health, especially with the way things are in the world today. There's just these waves that we have to ride sometimes and I am so glad that you are with me on this journey and I can't wait to dive in a little more about the things that are going on with me, with others in the world that I've talked to, and just come up with some ways to sometimes ways to circumvent some of that, ways to help navigate some of the things that we're going through, but also sometimes just knowing that we're not alone, that we're not being selfish, that we're not being lazy, that we just all need some companionship, need some reassurance that there's others that get it from time to time. So thank you so much for tuning in.