Life burned me out, so I took a mental health break.

Note: This post makes some reference to suicidal thoughts.

Recently I took about two weeks off from work. No holiday. No plans. One reason: to rest. I want to say this decision didn’t come lightly, and that’s because it came at me like a hurricane, and smacked me into a wall. Admitting that this was the first time I took an extended break (not just a day or two off) because I was burned out—and not for a planned holiday or other personal reasons—made me realise just how deep I’d fallen into the pit. I preach so much about mental health and taking care of oneself but I hadn’t taken my own advice or heeded any signs I was burning out. I didn’t realise how badly I was doing until it was too late. The way I remember it happening was that I emotionally broke down and decided to give myself a “long weekend”, which turned into taking a few days of sick leave because I realised I was wrecked, which turned into a total of a week and a half, because my depression had taken its toll.

It wasn’t hard to get out of bed. Physically staying in bed has long been something that makes me feel uncomfortable regardless of reason, so I generally find it impossible to continue staying in bed. But recently, my mood has been so low that it has been hard to do anything except that. I would just move from the bed to the couch and then scroll on my phone, unable to initiate basic tasks like showering or eating.

My lows were very low. Thoughts of “why am I here” and “what’s the point” came up every now and then, but not all that frequently. I can objectively recognise that there are times I am glad to have the support of people around me, and where I truly think that I am contributing to the world in a positive way, and in a way that I care about. I also do have a range of hobbies that keep me occupied, even though I had been finding those hobbies less interesting. Sometimes, we do the things we love and go through the motions even though it doesn’t seem like we are getting the same enjoyment out of them. But it hurt me to recognise the loss of interest.

My doctor diagnosed me with a relapse in depression, which had felt serious when I was around 16 years of age, and again at around 20 years of age. There was a period of time during my mid-20s that triggered self-destructive and suicidal thoughts (they were not acted upon). It is hard for me to reflect on that time at the moment because the events of 2024 and 2025 are still fresh, and it’s all linked… but rather than diving into that now, I think I will save that for therapy. Now I have a self-awareness and emotional maturity that I didn’t have before, and recognising what I am going through makes me about as upset as the depression itself. Can you be depressed about being depressed? Oof.

I wanted to stick by a few guidelines for my mental health break:

• Rest. Actually, truly, rest. If my body isn’t feeling it—going to the gym, hanging out with a friend, etc.—don’t push it.
• As much as possible, do or plan nothing. The space is for me to rest, first and foremost, and ensure flexibility so that I can make better decisions because I have a lot of time to work with.
• Be conscious of spending the entire time pampering and wellness woo-woo. It’s so easy to splash cash and book things like massages, facials, spas, and other such “pampering” things. The same goes for filling the time with wellness things like meditations and yoga, or things that I may not even enjoy but feel like “would help”. Don’t fall into that trap.
• Be conscious of spending too much money on activities. The focus, once again, is to rest, not to go about spending money spoiling myself, or going to exhibitions when there might be free options, or going to a fancy restaurant on purpose.
• Protect my energy and time alone. A few times, I felt like I had to decline people’s requests to spend time with them, because I was trying to safely guard my time off work. While I do have some friends who don’t sap my energy and we can exist in the same space but do things independently, I was still cautious of the importance of spending my time truly recovering.

I didn’t actually think of any desired outcomes for my mental health break. I knew I would return to work afterwards. It may or may not have been tempting to give up and quit my job (self-destructive, not-thinking-straight nonsense). But I knew the problem was not my job, specifically. I knew I needed some kind of reset. I knew I needed to prioritise rest because I recognised signs of burnout—push came to shove. There was a little bit of figuring it out as I went.

🗓️ How I spent my time

I already had a couple of social outings and mentally exhausting life admin planned for my first three days of my break, so I made a conscious decision to really take a break for the few days after that, and not commit to anything else. I wanted to fit in a Tokyo Head Spa massage, since I’d heard about it not too long prior, and I wanted like, one little thing like a spa or pampering type of thing to treat myself. I was a bit worried I wouldn’t be able to get an appointment during my time off, but luckily some spaces opened up. I’d booked in a couple of doctor’s appointments to discuss mental health and get a blood test, and popped in a placeholder for a Mastodon meetup in the city. I did my very best not to lock in too many events, once again, following the guidelines I’d made for myself. I wanted to allow as much flexibility as possible.

I spent a bit of time with my friends and family. I visited my friend Kat and we went to the beach, and the following week she visited me and we had some champagne and just chatted the night away. I am not normally a beach person and especially don’t love getting deep into the ocean, but quite happy to go there and enjoy the view and maybe walk in the water. This time I did spend a bunch of time in the water where it was shallow! Good company is good company. 💙

One of my neighbours in my apartment block gifted me a colouring-in book after I told him I was doing all sorts of arts and crafts to cope with my emotions. I spent a lot of time colouring in, because I missed it and I think the last time I had done a colouring-in book was a solid ten years ago when the art was becoming popular. I had also run out of other crafts at home (no cushion or rug kits) and although I bought a pad of paper to do some painting, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired.

I read the book Unlovable by Darren Hayes after it was recommended by some of my friends. It was a great read. I also wrote some poetry, which is a habit I am trying to keep up. Kat and I agreed on a date to present some more poetry at an open mic.

My coach Peter had come back from a holiday and I wasn’t quite feeling back into going to the gym while my emotions were so up and down, so instead of a training session first day back, we sat in the gym cafe for a chat about goals for the year.

Little things I treated myself to, that I feel like are so core to me and my personality, were things like getting bubble tea, going to a Vietnamese restaurant for pho, and a little bit of thrift shopping (I found a pair of shorts and a skirt, that I love—both were a gem of a find!). I love that I gave myself the permission to do those things without feeling shameful about it, and just doing what I felt would nourish my soul.

Something that I feel like greatly improved my quality of life was getting a filter coffee setup. I have always wanted to make proper coffee at home and filter coffee felt approachable and moderately inexpensive to me. I got a coffee grinder on sale, a filter coffee flask from Victoria’s Basement (IYKYK), and Chris gave me a some coffee beans to get started. The process of making my coffee in the morning feels really nice.

🧠 Things I learned

🫀 I should not feel guilty for honouring my body

There is nothing like actually listening to what your body needs and then realising that you are better for having done those things. This is something I feel like I preach but didn’t really actively take my own advice until I took this break. When I say listened to my body, I mean really listened. If I didn’t feel like going to the gym, I checked in mentally as well, thought about it, and decided not to push myself especially if my body literally felt tired. If I felt like consuming a specific kind of food or drink, and had thoughts of “oh no, I should eat something healthier” or “I should save money”, I paused to think about it and whether my body truly desired that food or drink, or if I was being impulsive.

Probably more often than not, I just let myself have the food and drink I wanted, knowing I could trust myself to not let these decisions turn into unhealthy habits. I also felt far less guilty about these choices than I normally would.

🛏️ True rest feels good

I let myself skip the gym on multiple occasions, knowing that I would return when I felt like it. In a regular routine, the opposite would probably be encouraged—just go, even if you don’t feel like it. Yet I knew that there was something to be said about forcing myself, given that I had already burned out. I had to be gentle. On some days, I let myself fall out of regular routine, and wake up late, and start my day later than usual, so I could catch up on sleep. I intentionally didn’t try hard to fix my sleeping routine. Getting to sleep hasn’t been an issue for me, but there were days when I just spent my evenings doomscrolling or texting friends until midnight or later, and rather than still force myself to wake up at 6:00am, I let myself sleep in and get the sleep I needed.

Some days, I didn’t feel like getting out of the house. It was too hot, I literally just wanted to avoid interacting with anyone, or I just wanted to paint or do colouring in at home. I do itch if I don’t go outside at all during the day—I love and really need my sunlight and fresh air. But some days I avoided doing this until the late afternoon or evening. Thankfully, we are in summer now, so the days are long and it’s still light until 8:00pm or so. So an evening walk was still pleasant.

🕰️ Time can feel abundant when you don’t plan things

I know we don’t all have the luxury of taking time off work for weeks, and this definitely doesn’t apply when you are working full time, but deliberately treating my time as precious sort of reset my perspective of time. I was also comparing this to taking time off work but for a holiday or having other plans. Sometimes I feel exhausted by the own plans I’ve made, even though I wanted to do all those things, and even if I tried to space activities out accordingly. Not having a plan on some days during my break gave me a sense of freedom and sometimes made me feel like I had more time. Not necessarily more time to do things, but I perceived time as passing a little slower than usual. When you don’t have the structure and rigidity of your work or job, the passing of time feels different.

I don’t think you can fully feel this if you just take one day off, maybe even two. I felt this to a great extent during my break because of the longer duration of my break. It might also have to do with the fact that I had a couple of new experiences. Some of these included visiting a neighbourhood I don’t frequent often, walking to places I don’t often walk to, going to a concert at a venue I haven’t been to before, and treating myself to a head massage. Even so, I think it’s good to remember that just because you have time in your calendar, doesn’t mean it needs to be filled. (People who try to squeeze in a 20 minute meeting between other meetings and around your lunch break, I’m looking at you. /snark)

🙏🏻 The goal is not to be productive and do things

I am guilty of trying to be productive in other ways whenever I am not working my day job. I very quickly realised that prioritising rest and taking care of myself during this break meant that there was no room for trying to do over-achieving bullshit like (finally) fully convert my blog to Astro, write a dozen blog posts (we tried, my friends; we tried 😛), or read a million books. I decided that this was simply not the time, especially while being depressed and finding it so hard to do normal things like cook myself food. I became conscious of these tasks when it became difficult, making sure to “pat myself on the back” when I managed to achieve something ordinary, even if it was something so small.

🎥 Creating short-form videos on social media

I felt rather excited by the idea of taking a break. I don’t know if it’s just me, but sometimes I feel guilty for feeling good about doing something as ordinary as taking time off work. Is that the workaholic in me talking? Is that some habit I need to break? Either way, I wanted to use the opportunity creatively. Along with planning to paint, colour in, write poetry, and feed my brain with experiences that would inspire me, I decided to document my mental health break by making some short-form videos on Instagram. It is the only social media I regularly use, apart from Mastodon (I try to have a presence there, but don’t use it frequently), and even though the video format has really taken over on the platform, I still mostly post photos, so this was a bit of a challenge for me already.

I was inspired by a video that I’d created at the end of 2025, with some highlights of moments with my friends, and my thoughts on experiencing love from our friendships and family. It took a fair bit of time to create that video as I gathered all the clips and made it fit with the voiceover I wanted to put over the video. I tried to match up certain clips to certain things I said in the video, which was a bit tricky because I had to shuffle it all around. I have to admit, even though I have had very minimal experience with making videos with the Instagram app, the interface was pretty easy to get the hang of. I normally abhor editing videos, but making that video made me want to explore the medium more, and give myself a little bit of a challenge to share something online in a different way.

Each day, I took a few video clips just to document moments in my day. Some of these would be an entire video of me cooking dinner or doing an exercise at the gym, which I sped up and whittled down to a couple of seconds, while others were just short selfie videos of me walking, or looking down at my feet and walking to a destination. I was able to take shorter clips over the duration of my break, once I got used to a consistent style of videos. It was a pretty ordinary “day in the life” style where I just recorded a voiceover to explain what I got done that day and how I rested, along with any additional thoughts.

My intent wasn’t to get a lot of engagement or grow my following; I really just wanted to share my journey. Regardless, there was a recommendation of keeping videos to 90 seconds at most, as longer videos would be shown to a smaller audience, and most music appears to be limited to using only a 90 second portion. I mean, I didn’t want to be recording long voiceovers anyway, so that seemed like a reasonable limit.

I got some lovely feedback on what I was doing and had some people reach out to say they were inspired to take their mental health more seriously, or that they just enjoyed what I was sharing because it was refreshing to see something so honest in this sea of highlight reels online.

🌻 Going forward

While I certainly don’t recommend burning out such that you have to take leave at short notice, I think this kind of “reset” is valuable. I am a bit reluctant to suggest this, because the word “reset” is thrown around on social media as some wellness woo-woo, and that is quite literally the opposite of what I am encouraging. The beauty of taking some time off and scheduling almost nothing during that time is that everyone will have different needs and ways of resting. I cannot tell you what to do, but, putting aside all the fancy massages and retail therapy and trying to be a whole new person, you will probably choose to engage in hobbies you enjoy, see some people you love and care about, and indulge in guilty pleasures like favourite snacks or binge watching favourite shows and videos. And by doing that, I think you do figure out what you get joy from in life.

When I returned to work, Chris helped me by starting a matrix with “best” and “shittiest” things and together we talked about the things at work that I find good and tolerable, and the things that are less so. We brainstormed strategies for each of them, which helped me call out certain bad habits I have with work, and also recognise my strengths, with the overall goal to reinvent myself at work. I went for a staggered return to work, doing a few hours and working up to full days, and I definitely felt no guilt for doing it that way. I am still trying to reinforce better habits but sometimes a new habit doesn’t always directly erase the old one. These things are still taking some time.

After obtaining a mental health plan from my doctor, I had my first appointment with a psychologist today. I had done my research and wanted to find someone who was neuroaffirming, and this person was a good fit. I liked their gentle manner and attitude, and that they had understanding of how ADHD and depression can coexist. Here’s hoping the journey continues well. Thanks for reading this far. 🤍