Sensitive People Problems and the Art of Self Care

What a year this week has been. Hormones, mean girls and out of control kids. It was supposed to be a short week but as I often find something always happens to make these ‘short weeks’ feel even longer than normal weeks, and this week everything happened.

I’m probably exaggerating the car crash if I week I’ve just stumbled out of but hey I’m sensitive. Most people think that sensitive just means you overreact to everything but that’s only part of the story. We live most of our lives inside our own heads so if it feels that bad, it is that bad. To us and sometimes those that are watching us too.

It started with a migraine. Monthly event that is sometimes bi or even tri monthly due to the IUD I have in which was meant to solve all my monthly problems. I was tempted to go home sick but as staffing was tight I took some nuerofen and battled on. Then some Panadol and battled on some more. See I can be strong and sensitive!

Little known side effect of migraines is that they can sometimes cause ‘brain fog’ and, my personal favourite (not) a ‘feeling of impending doom’. I tried to ignore both but it was difficult, as there were numerous staff off, there were a few of us that don’t work at the centre all the time. The regular staff were frustrated by our lack of intimate knowledge of each child’s routines and quirks and did not bother to try to hide it.

By mid afternoon I was easily distracted, paranoid and my head was still throbbing. Mistakes were made. Not life or death but annoying nonetheless. I was glad when I finally got home and laid in a dark room torturing myself with the events of the day over and over. And I had to go back the next day to the same centre.

The following day I had a migraine hangover and the paranoia wasn’t getting any better. I was stuck in a room with the two staff who had shown me no sympathy the previous day. They giggled quietly what felt like constantly by themselves whilst ignoring just about anything I asked them about what to do in the room. And they told the director all about the previous day too so that was a fun conversation!

Also for a few weeks miss 9 has been a stream of profanity and meltdowns to get out of bed in the mornings. Not all her fault as I had let the late night technology use slide in favour of getting some time to myself. Short term gain, long term pain.

Parenting my children was difficult because I’m a people pleaser and I don’t like to ask from anything from anyone but believe me when I say setting out expectations and consequences was a lot easier than I thought and the payoff happened a lot sooner than expected. They weren’t new rules we’d just gotten off track a bit and in a weird way I think the kids kind of enjoyed being pulled into line.

I realise this post is probably going on a bit long so I’ll probably do more in seperate posts about self care in the coming weeks but I’ll just share a few tips that helped me this week:

• Tired kids are cranky kids. Enforce bed time with every thing you got. It’s best for everyone.
• Tell some of your friends about your work dramas. They always take your side and make you feel better.
• Workplace bullying is never okay but you can generally find at least one other person at the place who sees what’s going on and says ‘yep it’s them not you’. Thank the lord for those people. If you see it call it out, if you’re not in a strong position to do so (I get it) support the person being bullied.

So as I sit here in a hot bath writing instead of cleaning, I fully admit that I’ve been a bit shit this week but at least I’m not a bully. Be kind to each other out there and when you’re giving kindness out, don’t forget yourself.