Juggling Mental Health Between Work and Home

Before starting a family, my mindset was always work as much as possible, do whatever you need to do for your company, be available to help. Once I had my daughter the mindset slightly shifted towards family life and during the pandemic it hit a low like many others. It’s been challenging to readjust my mindset to not be so incredibly die hard about work, but the pandemic certainly taught me like other Americans, our whole life and identity should not revolve around work.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m lucky enough that I don’t need to work full time. For childcare reasons, it just makes sense for my family. The biggest issue I’ve had for almost 4 years, is it never feeling like enough. I can go from having a week of stay-at-home duties and finally get into my routine where I switch back to working and managing employees that I spend all of my time catching back up with changes. It’s an issue many mothers’ struggle with and it is draining.

Make Your Home Time your Home Time

The number one thing I recently started changing when I’m home is that I will not open my work email. My exception is to grab my work schedule when that comes out. What was happening is that I started getting in the habit of reading my emails while I was nursing my son. A few things would occur. Firstly, I would read about issues that were going on and become frustrated at home about situations I couldn’t change. That annoyed feeling would unfairly trickle down to my family.

The other issue is I’d catch up on a lot of my emails, make mental notes of needing to follow up on and issues or changes that happened while I was gone. By the time I got back, didn’t matter if it was 2 days off or closer to 7 days off, I’d simply forget the issue or change until it as too late. This was building up stress at work since I’d have to dig back through emails for answers when I realistically didn’t need to be reading them at home in the first place.

While I don’t personally work from home, I try doing this site and watch my husband work from home. Make sure you’re setting dedicated work times and not overlapping the two. I’ve watched him get involved with house projects during slow periods of work and then become stressed out trying to finish projects.

Change Your Mindset

One thing the pandemic certainly highlighted for me was my horrible work ethic while I or my children were sick. I’d always feel bad calling in. I’d tell myself “Nope I’m not that bad. I have no fever. I can do this.” Well, spoiler alert, that’s not healthy. I’m not saying you need to call in for the sniffles, but I’ve worked through plenty of illnesses that I should not have. This again I feel like is a luxury as I know there as so many who literally cannot afford to take time off of work.

At the end of the day, a change that helps me separate my work and home mindset the most is reminding myself that in the workforce, everyone is replaceable. Unless you’re a small business owner running it yourself, employees are replaceable no matter if they are good or not. I’ve had plenty of co-workers that either were great work friends or insufferable to work with and once they left for whatever reasons, the business keeps running. This thought process is strong for me as it’s a reminder to keep the balance. Work hard, but do not make the place your life.

Finding Time for Yourself

This is something I’m still working on. I dive into my kids so much that I forget to take time for myself. To add to that even more, when the pandemic started, and my husband started working from home there was very little time apart from each other. I’m not referring to going to the bathroom in peace or making it through a shower without anyone disturbing you. That’s just a basic right at this point. What I’m referencing is something you enjoy doing and something just for you.

I’ve finally gotten back into knitting and decided to try out crochet. My next steps are setting specific time aside for Yoga. The aspect I’m trying to overcome is feeling guilty about taking time for myself while I have my kids. It’s hard for me to have someone else watch them while I’m doing something for myself. I always think about how I want that time with them because I’m not working. Of course, it always ends up with feeling like I’ve lost myself. That is what I want to improve the most this year on. I fully believe you are your best at parenting when you are taken care of.

What are some ways you juggle your mental health?