What to do when you have had enough?: There are times when we simply give up on a situation because we are mentally exhausted. We can have enough of a relationship, a job or, life on the whole. So what to do when you have had enough? These situations bring absolute hopelessness and despair around us.
It does not only exhaust us mentally, but physically as well. We begin to feel symptoms of emotional distress through bodily changes. The only thing we want to do in situations, when we have had enough, is to either run away from it or to linger on it. We do not tend to solve it and make it alright.
This is where things start going wrong.
There comes a point in everyone’s life which makes us believe that life is unfair.
We have been there where we had tensions piling up on our plates and we were exhausted to solve them. We become so busy with our lives that our mental and physical health starts deteriorating.
If we get the thought that we have had enough, it indicates that we need to give our thought processes a break.
They are not capable of performing too many functions at a single time.
You cannot expect them to solve your relationship issues, world peace issues, career issues and every possible issue to exist at once. The mechanism installed in our brains needs time as well.
It is easier to tackle all these issues individually. When we try to solve them all together, we get overwhelmed with stress and we feel we have had enough in life.
Feeling so is normal but you cannot ignore it. If we think logically, life is not complicated.
We have made it complicated. We have turned everything into a rat race and that is where things start getting messed up and competitive.
When we forget about our dentist’s appointment or when we forget to water the plants or wash the car, we tend to pile on a load of guilt. We make ourselves realize that we failed in doing basic tasks and doing so was not a big deal.
What we do not realize and fail to tell ourselves is that these errands might be insignificant on their own, but together they overwhelm us with burden and stress. The constant reminder of not doing enough messes up our mental health.
Piling up lots of stressors leads to deterioration in our physical health as well. We lose energy and feel tired all the time. This becomes the first symptom of being mentally overwhelmed and this is when we have had enough of life.
Your trauma can be minor or major, it still is a trauma. It is natural to experience emotions like anger, sadness, despair, frustration, and hopelessness. It is a part of the process of grieving.
When we have had enough of our life, we tend to blame ourselves and our processing.
Here begins the game of guilt. In situations like these, the easiest way out is blaming ourselves.
Instead of blaming ourselves, we need to give our mental and physical health a break.
We need to accept the situation and breathe.
Sometimes not doing something is the best you can do.
Table of Content
Get a Therapy Session
Getting sessions of psychotherapy in situations of despair can be extremely beneficial because the help we can get from a professional is unmatchable.
It helps to heal traumas from the past and it helps in developing coping strategies and mechanisms for the future. This is exactly what you require when you think you have had enough of life.
It is a misconception that therapy is only effective in cases of clinical illnesses. If you feel that your mental state is overwhelmed or if you feel mentally exhausted, therapy can effectively heal your situation.
Talking about our emotions and receiving a fresh perspective about them by a therapist can help an individual accept their traumas and move on with their lives.
This is exactly what we fail to do previously.
Accept the Trauma:
There is this motto which we need to live by,
“If we keep on rereading previous chapters of our life, we can never move to the next chapter”
In order to move on in our lives, we need to accept our trauma. Unless and until we do that, we cannot progress because we linger on the same issue.
Accepting your trauma will give you a chance to move on in life.
For example, if something gets stolen in our house and we keep on questioning our life because of the incident, will we ever be able to move on?
No. The correct way of going about it would be accepting the trauma and being careful in the future.
These traumas are a part of everyone’s life and there is no way we can ensure that they do not happen. What we can do is to learn the coping mechanism of facing traumas and learning the process of healing.
Write:
This is probably the most effective way of releasing emotions.
If you have a reserved personality, you will relate to me when I say that a journal is a person’s best friend.
In situations when we think we have had enough, writing a journal can be extremely effective in the process of healing our mental health.
Writing is not just limited to journals, you can write absolutely anything and everything. If you have had enough of a relationship, you can write letters to your partners and say everything you cannot say out loud.
You can write letters and not send them to anyone. The idea of writing in times of despair and hopelessness is to release negative energies in the form of ink.
If you think you have had enough, take a sheet of paper and start writing everything that is jotted in your mind. After you are done, burn that page. This is how I release my emotions and trust me it works every time when I am emotionally overwhelmed.
Work-out:
Literally the solution to all your problems.
Working out is the best way to release all the negativity and emotional stress piled up in our minds.
A minute of plank can release negative thoughts in the form of our sweat.
The feeling that we have had enough of our life also arises because we do not give ourselves enough time.
Working out is probably the best way through which we can ensure a sane mental as well as physical health.
Psychologists also advise people suffering from unstable mental health to start working out as it releases bio-chemical named dopamine that is responsible for our mood.
Moreover, working out can give us a feeling of control which we tend to lose when we think that we have had enough of life.
Read More:
Reading opens up an entirely new world for you. In times when we think we have had enough, the best possible thing is to give our thought processes a break.
Reading during that break can be an extremely effective way to heal as well as to change your thought processes positively.
You can read anything you like. It does not have to be a thick book of 1800 pages.
It can be anything; humor, self-help, romance, comparative literature, fiction, non-fiction, and so on.
You can read anything close to your heart. In times of despair, what works for me is rereading Harry Potter by J.K Rowling. It helps me escape the realities of the world for a while.
Taking some time off the monotonous routine is exactly what we need to do when we are hopeless and exhausted mentally.
Entering another world for a while can be effective in helping you get back on track.
Take Care of yourself:
At times the reason we think that we have had enough of life is that we are neglecting ourselves. This is something we all tend to do at some point in our lives.
Something we can do on our part to heal our mental state is to give ourselves time. A little dose of self-care is always effective.
Self-care can be in the form of anything. It can be a gaming night with your friends, it can be binge-watching Friends, it can be trying out new DIY masks or it can be spending an evening in the park feeding ducks.
Self-care will differ from person to person since the idea of self-care is to give you happiness and a little time away from all stressors of the world.
So the next time you feel emotionally overwhelmed and unstable, treat yourself with a sushi night or go for a massage.
It will help you process information in a way better manner.
Find a new hobby:
The feeling of thinking that we have had enough is also an outcome of an extremely monotonous life. Ask yourself, when was the last time you did something different in your everyday routine?
Find a new hobby and invest your energy in it for a while. It can be anything like gardening, blogging, cycling, reading, painting, baking, and anything that will distract you from your routine for a while.
Dedicate an hour of your day to doing something new or learning something new. Sign-up for an online class on a new software, or maybe learn a new language.
The options are unlimited, you just have to choose.
Sometimes the best we can do for our mental state is to give it a break. We need to realize that our thought process needs some time off the unlimited stressors we have in our life.
So if you feel emotionally distressed or if you feel that you have had enough of everything, it is time for you to pick up a new hobby to stay distracted.
You can even learn a thing or two from your new hobby!
Detach yourself from things and people that hurt you:
We also tend to think that we have had enough in life because we are surrounded by negative energies and pessimist people.
This adversely affects our mental health and emotional state in multiple ways.
To ensure that our mental health is sane, the first thing we need to do is to detach ourselves from everything that hurts us in some way or another. It can be a friend who jokingly body-shames you or it can be a family member who mom-shames you.
Tolerance in the case of self-destruction should not be acceptable in any case. If you want to heal yourself, the first thing you need to do is to not let anyone decrease your self-esteem.
Moreover, no matter how hard it is you need to stay away from things that adversely affect your mental health. They can be a hobby or a person; you need to detach yourself for the sake of your betterment.
If you do this, you will no longer feel that you have had enough of life because you will be surrounded by positive people and positive vibes.
Travel:
Traveling is a great way to take your mind off stressors and tensions of life. It can also help you explore your inner-self.
It is not important for your travel to be a Europe trip, since many including me cannot afford a Europe trip when our life is falling apart. It can be a short trip to the village nearby, or it can be a weekend getaway to any place nearby.
Traveling when you are feeling that you have had enough can help you breathe out of the monotonous life for a bit. Our mind is so overwhelmed, that all we need at that point is a fresh breath of air.
So the next time you feel that you are mentally exhausted, think about going away from your routine for a bit. It can be as short as a weekend trip as well since even a day away from your usual life can help.
While you are traveling, take the time to explore yourself. Leave your worries behind so that your thought process can also take a short vacation, trust me it needs a vacation more than any of us do.
Live by a motto:
Having a motto to recall in times of despair can also be extremely effective. You can decide and live by any motto that touched you. For me it is,
“This too shall pass”
This motto has done wonders for me in times of despair. I used to reread it every time when I thought I have had enough. Trust me, it has given me hope. I used to think of all those times when I thought so before, yet I managed to get through them
If you are feeling overwhelmed or tired, select a life motto or create your own life motto and promise yourself to live by it. Make it your holy grail in all situations.
Take a pair of sticky notes and write it on them. Paste them everywhere; on your car steering, on your refrigerator, walls, and anything else that you have an encounter with throughout the day.
Daily reminders about your strength can make a huge difference. They can encourage you to keep moving on when you do not see light at the end of the tunnel. These life mottos can be those daily reminders of strength to you.
We need to let our minds believe in them. The next time you read, “It is what it is” as an Instagram caption, maybe try believing in it as well.
Conclusion:
Feeling that you have had enough in your life is normal however what is not normal is that you do nothing about it. This is a signal that your mental state needs a break hence you need to detach yourself away for a while.
If a hopeless individual follows the above-mentioned ways and habits, there can be a considerable difference in their mental health as well as their physical health.
Being emotionally overwhelmed can also have effects on our physical health. Our ability of functioning normally tends to get affected which can result in several other disruptions.
Hence it is necessary to ensure that your mind gets the break it needs because your mental health, as well as your physical health are at stake. This is one situation in which only you can help yourself.
If you start thinking that you have had enough, you need to comprehend it and accept it. If you think you have had enough of a relationship, you need to talk it out with your partner and see where it goes.
If you are aware that you are going through an unstable emotional state, you need to try out things that help heal it. It can be psychotherapy or it can be a coloring a Mandela art book. You need to figure out what works for you, yourself.
We all have different coping mechanisms, for some it can be cleaning the dishes whereas for some it can be drawing in a journal. Hence there is always a coping mechanism that will help us after we start feeling that we have had enough.
The intensity of your emotional state is also different. For some it is mandatory to get professional help whereas some people can heal it themselves with the help of things mentioned above. This is also dependent upon the threshold of the individual.
So the next time you feel overwhelmed or you feel that you have had enough, try the things mentioned in this article and some of them will surely work for you. You need to do this for the sake of your emotional state as well as your ability to function normally in life.