I really appreciate this post.
My addictive personality type lead me to become completely obsessed with this work, and earning more money. Working from home makes it especially challenging to draw the work and home life balance - I even work and sleep in the same bes! I pushed myself to be available for bookings every day, and on the days I wasn’t taking bookings I would work on my website. I stopped socialing, stopped exercising, stopped cooking... and stopped living life!
My poor brain was never getting a break from work!
Suddenly both my brain and body screamed NO! I reached a point of burn out and had to cancel bookings. I’ve just taken just over a week off to rejuvenate my mind and body and feel more connected with the outside worlds. .
Last week I attended a workshop on boundaries - this made me realise that I have not been true to myself in work life or personal life. Made me realise I Spend a lot of time giving to people I don’t want to. This plagues my mind with resentment. Boundaries are incredibly important in this line of work. I sometimes tolerated late arrivals, rudeness, people pushing for extras. By not saying NO to these clients I was not practicing self care.
The workshop brought up a lot of emotions- over the past week I have filled a notebook with my thoughts, and emotions. As it has already been mentioned on this thread- I agree emotional awareness and being able to identify emotions is critical for mental well being and self care.
I Realised that I had been using work to drown my negative emotions rather than feeling them. At the time I didn’t realise this. My attitude toward work has changed. Of course, I still want to earn a nice income. However. I will limit myself to a set amount of bookings per week, and make sure I have time to myself to do things which nourish me physically and mentally.