Vocabulary
Demand: The expectations you and others have for your performance.
Resources: Your current capacity emotionally, mentally, physically, and cognitively.
Despite what a toddler and your boss told you, you have a limited amount of resources.
This is a math equation.
When you ask yourself to do something that you do not have the resources to do, you are in a deficit.
You simply do not have the resources to meet the demands.
You can’t push, shove, or power through without something eventually falling apart.
Your mental health will take a dive when you ask it to do more than you have the capacity to do.
This means that as a non-robotic human, you will experience overwhelm, anxiety, and depression.
You are asking your body to do what it is not meant to do.
It isn’t supposed to work.
Mental Health Math:
Your signal might be most apparent when you try taking a break.
Your body is asked to down shift to relaxing mode and you have a panic attack.
There you sit in surprise that your body can’t adjust from a knuckles clenched drag race to a Sunday morning bike ride at the beach.
Bodies don’t work like this.
You can’t ask it to work overtime and then ask it to submit. Your body talks back (also like a toddler) if you don’t regard its economics.
Journal Prompts:
I am asking my body to…
I have the resources to…
My mental health math is…
I wish more people understood this.
Same! Also me. My hip wishes I would remember this when I overdo my running mileage for the week.