Hello, and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Miscarra, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about the importance of taking a break.

More to come on that in a moment.

First, let's settle and together with the sound of the bells.

Okay, so before diagnosing yourself with anxiety or depression, check to first see if you just need a break from the intensity of your life.

The thing is when we're overwhelmed for prolonged periods of time, we can actually get stuck in this fight, flight, or freeze response, which is our system's natural reaction to intense stimuli to get us out of the situation or to relate to the situation in a way that helps us to survive.

And it's good to have in short bursts and still can be useful in day to day life to get us out of difficult circumstances.

However, when we're in that chronically, it can really mess with our hormones, the chemicals moving through our body,

and also just our felt sense of ourselves in relationship to our life.

We'll feel chronically unsafe, we'll feel a lot of extra activation in our system, or we'll go in the other direction, and we'll feel a sense of numbness.

And so we're stuck in this fight, flea, flight, or just freeze reaction to our life, and they can lead us feeling like I have all of this anxiety, or I'm depressed, or there's something wrong with me, whatever the assessment might be.

When in reality, you just might need a break, and this isn't always easy to catch.

It's not always the case where it's just like massive thing, one after another, four weeks on end, and it's like, yeah, obviously I need a break, there's so much going on.

Sometimes it's just like where we're stretched slightly beyond what we're used to, but it's happening over and over and over.

And there is quite a bit going on that we can tolerate, but it's pushing us, and we are a bit in this fight, flight, freeze, reactivity, a lot of stress moving through our body, and we've gotten so accustomed to it, we don't even know that we're in it.

And yeah, it can trigger these feelings of anxiety, or depression, or numbness, or something being wrong with us.

But we just might need time to reset, to take a break, to re-ground, or to retreat somewhere where we can recharge.

And this could be our home, this could be a vacation, or connecting with a good friend.

But a lot of times I think we prematurely go into these assessments that there's something wrong with me, and they need to be fixed, and we put a diagnosis on it.

And yeah, I don't want to minimize the reality that our mental health can sometimes be complex, and we need resources and support, and those diagnoses can be useful.

But a lot of times we may just need a break, just as any other human would need if they were going through your situation.

So thank you all for your practice, I'll talk to you tomorrow, and until then, as always, take care.

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