Ask James: How Do I Deal With Mental Exhaustion?

How do I deal with Mental Exhaustion?

– Hopeless

Dear Hopeless, 

As students and staff reach a close to this chapter of school, this is something that everyone especially students and teachers deal with a lot during this time. First, let’s understand what mental exhaustion is, when you have been dealing with long-term stress, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and emotionally drained, make your responsibilities and problems seem impossible to overcome, and just making you feel just tired and unwilling to do things.

As I said before this is something that students and staff deal with often as we are in the last months of school. The reason why people get this way is that they put so much effort into the beginning of school and try their best and work their hardest, but they end up pushing themselves before it’s over leaving themselves with no energy to complete the overwhelming tasks of tests and everyday classes.

So how do we fix this problem? Well, we start off by taking a break. Take a break, give yourself time to relax and unwind. Now I know that this seems like such a hard thing to ask, because of deadlines, tests, teaching lessons, etc. But your mental health needs to come first, if you are a student let your teachers know what you are feeling/going through and come up with a solution to help ease your time. If you are a teacher find an easier way of teaching/grading to help benefit you and your students. Find ways to help yourself and have others understand what your going through too so they can help. 

When you’re working giving yourself time to breathe and destress is also very pertinent, go do something fun that will give you something to do besides work or go take a nap.  This isn’t an exact permanent fix to your problem but it will definitely help. Or you could what I do and take baths, showers, do movie nights, watch my favorite show, etc just for me to relax. Also during your relaxing time don’t look at work, don’t do work and please don’t try to think about work too. Later, find a schedule that works to stop/lower your stress/exhaustion. During this time it’s important to make things work for you and not the other way around.

I hope this helped you. See you again XOXO,

James