12 Ways to Keep Going

Solve the Problem

I noticed, after analyzing my mood journal for the last two months, that my sleep pattern went from eight hours of consistent sleep to ten. Katherine has been climbing into bed with us, and I'm afraid of waking her in the morning. So I've been sleeping in with her and skipping my 15 minutes of meditation. But that time in the morning is a critical piece to my recovery, and if I go over nine hours of sleep too many mornings, I begin to feel depressed. I also noticed that I am most depressed on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings.

I put on my detective hat and ask myself why that is. Ah! Because I don't get a break from the kids all weekend. My reserves are used up by Sunday night or Monday morning. Also, there is inevitably more stress on the weekends, trying getting all the week's household jobs done, and less structure.

Once I could identify some possible triggers, I worked at finding solutions. I asked Eric get me up earlier in the morning, even if Katherine woke up with me. I decided we needed to hire a sitter, if only for a few hours on the weekend, to give us a small relief from the noise and chaos. And I got up early and went to church by myself on Sunday in order to squeeze a little structure and personal time into the weekend for me. Arriving at some small solutions--even if they don't solve the entire problem--made me feel like I had a little power to shift my mood from panic to peace.