October is Mental Health Awareness Month!

By Dr. Precious Serero,

As we come to the end of the Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to share what I recently shared on my Instagram. I don’t only talk about burnout from a professional perspective but from my experience with severe burnout and how I’ve come out of that and how long it took.

BURNOUT – it’s a real thing.

My health took a downward spiral in 2021 due to many factors and I tried to get rid of things from my plate one after the other, that’s when I learnt boundaries -I didn’t have to learn that the hard way – 2 years later and still on a recovery journey.

Here are some of the things I experienced with severe burnout

– I was on anti-depressants and sleeping pills because I could barely manage, I was on a low depressed mood for most of the time. Depressed doesn’t mean sad, I wasn’t sad, I was depressed.

– Constant fatigue – my self-diagnosing self-attributed this to the 3 separate episodes of Covid-19 I had meanwhile my Vitamin D levels were down in the boots (I’ll tell you the benefits of Vitamin D in a separate post). And then you appear lazy, because why are you always tired and sleepy.

– Insomnia – this was the most painful thing, regardless of how early I went to bed, I’d toss and turn until the wee hours of the morning.

– Lack of interest in daily life activities – nothing, and I mean nothing interested me, I’d still do things so that I kept moving (movement of any sort – antidote to depression – I attended things that I could attend, I spoke at events, I showed up for my patients)

– Don’t know how to phrase this – but I couldn’t see the future, I couldn’t see my life/self beyond a years’ time, at some point I was constantly worried that I’m going to die.

– Business suffered – because when you are still starting up and the business depends on you, when you fall it falls.

– I was losing hair, my bones hurt, yes, I could feel them, I had muscle spasms, I had memory lapses, palpitations and

My vitamin D levels are almost back to normal after weeks of high dose Vitamin D, I feel alive! I feel like Precious. I’ve been off anti-depressants for some time now, I sleep well, I recently started walking, the other weekend I did 15km in 2 days, something I could have never done while I was sick.

Although I’m not fully recovered, God am I a whole lot better! And have slowly eased into a lot of life things that I enjoy.

I’m sharing this to help someone who might be deep in this pit. YOU CAN GET OUT. MY GOD DOES NOT FAIL!!!