Anxiety, Balance and Boundaries
I am sure you didn’t come here for a lecture on what anxiety is. I am not an expert on emotional wellbeing and I am not even an expert on my own life, but I know one thing for-sure…. If I want to succeed in life I know that I need to be aware of how my decisions and conscious choices affect my well being. Its a work in progress…
There is a lot of shame and stigma with mental health. I am not here to break the glass or educate you, but I want to bring awareness and acceptance, through my own experience.
The most annoying and irritating question people have been asking me since I am a child is: “Simcha, how do you do it all?” I always answered with a snarky laugh, or uncomfortably “you know, I just do what I got to do”.
From a really young age, I have always had this over achiever and “peoples pleasing” personality. Growing up as the daughter of Chabad emissaries, into a naturally born environment where you live to help others physically, mentally, emotionally and of course spiritually. This is all I have ever known. My parents are the kindness, selfless and constantly giving of themselves. So naturally growing up there really wasn’t any other option for me.
I grew up loving anything that had to do with helping out in our Chabad Youth Center. From the age of 12 I was running and directing Summer teen camps, teaching Hebrew Sunday school, helping plan all holiday parties, Shabbatons, etc… I always knew I wanted to do more, be involved, help my parents in their pure work, teach, organize, help plan and create something better and bigger then me.
Working on the job, I learnt some real life skills and tools to be able to stress manage, work fast, think faster and just keep going and what I thought was thriving with my every day busy life. I LOVEDDDD it!
All the compliments and constant satisfaction from people of what I was doing, was starting to define my self worth and was starting to feel good, until it didn’t.
A persons compliments shouldn’t define an expectation for yourself, and that is what started happening for me.
That is what my self worth became. Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I did, but as a young girl in your teens all you want is that approval, even if it meant loosing yourself, which I didn’t realize I was doing and that was damaging.
I would get lost in what it is I want and what my personal needs were.
When I was 22 I moved to NYC. My parents felt I was doing too much here in LA and needed a change of scenery. My days consisted of teaching at a private school, working on planing all the events and programs at our Chabad center, and tutoring, all while treading the waters of the event planning and design world. As soon as I got to NY I got a great job, that was supposed to be 6 hours a day, I thought that would be perfect for myself to be able to have a perfect balance of work and personal life, but it didn’t work out like that.
I didn’t know what it was to have personal space. I would work work work or procrastinate and come home at 9PM instead of 3 or 4 PM, after sometimes just staring at the computer screen for hours being totally unproductive. It was so unlike me, and thats when I realized that the quiet is deafening and not for me. After a short 6 months I rushed back to LA, and back to my chaotic way of living. Its all I knew, it’s all I thought I knew how to live.
I thought I could handle it all, and even if I couldn’t, I convinced myself that I could, that I was capable, that I am the girl that can do it all.
This is the drive that got me into the event world. As you can imagine, quite unhealthy.
Over the course of the years I took on so much responsibly, I was eager to build up my company all while continuing to work for my parents and keep my usual responsibilities.
Slowly, I couldn’t keep up with it anymore. My family was warning me, to slow down. It was almost insulting that they thought I wasn’t capable to handle it all. I wasn’t aware of my workload, i just kept going like an automatic machine. People would ask me to do things or volunteer and I would say Yes to everything.
Until one day I couldn’t keep up anymore. It started with headaches, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath. What was it I was experiencing? I was so confused. I really had no one to talk to. I was so alone and ashamed. Why was I feeling like this? What is wrong with me? Why me? I am normal, I don’t have issues. These are all things I was telling myself.
I started to realize that No, I can’t do it all. It’s okay to ask for help, to delegate, to create boundaries.
I simply wasn’t aware of the triggers. The stress and anxiety I was creating and manifesting in myself by not creating proper limits and boundaries for me and my family.
I have started to work really hard to create boundaries, but I am human and don’t always keep to it. Boundaries for me and many people dealing with anxiety is the best medicine. Yeah, ok. You keep hearing about "the importance of setting boundaries" and you kind of have an idea of what people mean by that. I put together a list of tools to help create boundaries. I hope it can help even one person.
Name your limits. You can't set good boundaries if you're unsure of where you stand. You can’t set good boundaries if you’re unsure of where you stand. So identify your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual limits.
Tune into your feelings. Ask yourself, what is causing this feeling? What is it about this interaction, or the person’s expectation that is bothering me?
Be direct. Maintain healthy boundaries by being direct
Give yourself permission to feel, to breathe, to take a break.
Practice self-awareness. If you notice yourself slipping and not sustaining your boundaries, ask yourself: What’s changed? Consider “What I am doing?” or “What is the situation eliciting that’s making me resentful or stressed?” Then, make a conscious choice: “What am I going to do about the situation? What do I have control over?
Make self-care a priority. This is so hard for me, but do things that make you feel good, and are selfishly for you to enjoy only. Give yourself permission to put yourself first.
Seek support. If you’re having a hard time with boundaries, seek some support, wether it be a therapist or a good friend.
Taking on too much lead to unreasonable levels of anxiety which increased panic attacks. I don’t wish it on anyone. So when people ask me how I do it all, I actually get offended, because only I know the repercussions of what that means. Stop, listen to your cues. Its okay to not be able to do everything and be everywhere. We live in such an overachieving world and that is such a pressure. I love my world, but I hate the anxiety of not being emotional mature and aware of what I am doing to myself. I pray for anyone dealing with anxiety, that you find ways to cope, create boundaries, and find success in the small achievements that you accomplish.
I wrote in my last blog post, about how the pandemic really helped me be one with myself, my family, my children and most importantly my thoughts. To stop, breathe, think. I really took the time to think how to create better boundaries and use some of the tools above to help me. I am not healed, but I am aware.
Be aware of your workload because a healthy body is a healthy mind.
Till next time.
XO, Sim