Today’s guest post is written by Rachael, who runs the wondrous Call On Courage podcast.

Have you overly noticed how you undeniability something affects how you perceive it? There’s a famous quote: “Watch your thoughts, they wilt your words; your words wilt your actions; your deportment wilt your habits; your habits wilt your character; your character, it becomes your destiny.” We go from the micro that is a single idea right through to the macro of future destiny. Is that grandiose or grain of truth? I think this quote inhabits both descriptions. Where mental health is concerned, it’s vital; we label and frame our diagnosis virtually the language of recovery. It’s unhelpful to my mental health and well-being to describe myself as a depressed person…but someone who has had challenges facing peepers and anxiety.

My flavour of peepers goes hand in hand with burnout. Have you experienced vacuum before? It’s a pretty weird feeling. I’m not sure how much it varies. Mine came with a heaviness. It’s like my whole system refused to recharge and be energised forwards. I could have slept for a week and felt the vacuum would only ease off a little. It’s like an internal weariness comes at you in a heavy handed fashion. It was both my physical soul that felt the crash and my emotional wellbeing at the same time. Everything I took for normal slid out of view. I remember walking somewhere really familiar in town and felt like an 80 year old woman trying to get there. My soul was responding sluggishly to simple tasks. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and feeling relieved I ‘looked normal.’ On the inside I felt terrible. It was like the vacuum had grated lanugo on me at a soul level. There were circumstances in the mix I was finding very nonflexible to process. I think it’s important to distinguish when external pressures are making you finger a unrepealable way. Pressure builds and it’s key to identify when it’s reaching a unlearn bursting point.

One of the components of my vacuum was grief. I was grieving the fact a work dream had gone in the very opposite direction I had set out aim with. Grief is potent and there’s no easy way to merrily sidestep it. None of us are immune to grief, but few of us have the resources to handle it well. It’s not an often talked well-nigh subject and I wonder if we tend to nail it to bereavement specifically. Whereas the grief I was processing was increasingly well-nigh a personal dream substantially going up in smoke or that trigger happy F-bomb of Failure. Grief shows up in many forms, not only bereavement. I’m no good at failure, I midpoint who is? But I do think there’s a weft trait of practising risking increasingly – you can wilt increasingly worldly-wise to vellicate when from things not working to plan. There is an art and practise to failure that links into our mental health. My regret with vacuum is it’s preventability. I had poor work boundaries. Poor boundaries dig their heels into something and for me that was my energy and vacuum levels. I don’t know if I could single handedly have prevented my vacuum – who can? At the time it’s untellable to visualize where my waddle marrow sawed-off was. But now, I see with way increasingly clarity and precision what led me lanugo that path and how I’d recognise the red flags so much quicker now.

Burnout fundamentally reverted me as a person. I ended up with non-negotiables in my mental health armoury – specifically virtually boundaries. Stuff much clearer on how I communicate my No’s, my nonflexible stops between work and life wastefulness and often speak up for my needs superiority of time. Vacuum moreover lets go of a lot of small things too. The regrets, pettiness, splitting hairs and small mindedness that can scramble my thinking. No to all that dross that doesn’t serve my weightier self well. My vacuum journey didn’t exactly end in a bed of roses. In spite of the fact I got through it and out the other end, I ended up getting a diagnosis of oesophagus cancer. Not the ending I was hoping to type out.

I had a big surgery which resulted in 50% of my stomach going and stuff reshaped to fit virtually where the tumour had been removed. Without coming out of vacuum and feeling much stronger mentally, I was quite buoyant in my early days of remission. So much gratitude! This cancer was unquestionably treatable. The relief was immense. And then something odd happened. I had flipside breakdown. This time I crashed hard. It wasn’t vacuum but I experienced some momentary issues with delusional thinking. Totally out of weft and very much a side swipe to a strong streak of recovery ground I had been taking. I type these words and finger it’s very fitting I’m writing for My Brain’s Not Broken – considering that’s exactly what I’d go when and tell my unwell state as the truth. My Brain’s Not Broken – we’re just having a sane reaction to some insane lifestyle changes. My soul had reverted so much. I had been reduced lanugo to substantially living off a victual supplies or puréed diet. Everything you can imagine as nutrition gets composite within a rush of pulverisation. Aside from chocolate tweedle ice cream. I can manage that. And good coffee and negronis. It’s not all bad, but it is a difficult transition without stuff used to ordering pretty much anything off a menu.

The range of eating out now has reduced to soup, coffee and ice cream. I daren’t risk anything else, expressly in public considering it can get unprotected and I don’t have a moments notice to cough it when up. My smart-ass is reacting to trauma, and that’s okay. Increasingly than okay; having a dispersal is a necessary part of my healing process.

This circles when to my original point. Be shielding how you label your good and not so good mental health days. I was worldly-wise to vellicate when from my delusional episode within a matter of days rather than weeks. I didn’t criticise myself. I refused to go lanugo the shame and judgement path. I just aimed to be unceasingly kind to myself. I have been so much physically. Is it any wonder my smart-ass needed its own moment to temporarily have its shutdown to recover from so much that threatened to disrupt the normal undertow of my life?

I want to tropical with something I know to be true. We are much increasingly than what our mental health might dictate to us on a bad day. We are creative beings, infinitely capable of so much. Early on I reminded myself of who I truly think I am rather than the diagnosis that has gone surpassing me. Within my recovery journey I make sure I’m living out two hopeful things: purpose and connection. I’ve started a podcast and website well-nigh valiance – and that for me has been a big form of purpose-filled therapy. Moreover I make time to play; just connect and hang out with people who know and truly love me whether I’m on good form or not. These are the things that have helped me get when on track, and take stronger ground than I have before. I’m doing so much largest now.

Rachael is a self-described ‘recovering workaholic’ who has hustled hard, taken risks and swung precariously upper on the career ladder. Some of those upper rungs didn’t withstand her weight so well. She’s now in remission from Oesophagus cancer. She chats to people well-nigh their overcoming stories on her podcast, ‘Call on Courage’: www.calloncourage.com/podcast