JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

That time I thought I was losing my mind

by

Zakiya Tuere-Savary & The XX Team
2269 days ago
20190512

Work. Dance. Tu­tor. Study. Re­peat. Work. Dance. Tu­tor. Study. Re­peat. That was my life for 18 months when I de­cid­ed to ob­tain my mas­ters de­gree via dis­tance learn­ing. I com­fort­ed my­self in the knowl­edge that it would not be for­ev­er and to be hon­est, I was too bad­mind to quit, but there came a point where I re­al­ly thought I was walk­ing a tightrope with re­gards to my men­tal health. Al­though my ed­u­ca­tion was my pri­or­i­ty (mon­ey was not to be spent in vain), all the ac­tiv­i­ties of my lifestyle pri­or to school re­mained part of my day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties. I was sleep de­prived to say the least, de­pend­ing on ap­prox­i­mate­ly three hours of sleep from day to day.

Sleep is cru­cial for health and well­be­ing as it al­lows our brains to recharge and our bod­ies to feel re­ju­ve­nat­ed. Pro­longed sleep de­fi­cien­cy is not on­ly linked to in­creased risk of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) like di­a­betes and heart dis­ease but al­so ef­fects on mem­o­ry, mood and even judg­ment. Stress has a di­rect neg­a­tive ef­fect on sleep pat­tern. How­ev­er, there are two types of stress - eu­stress and dis­tress. Both of these en­cour­age the re­lease of cor­ti­sol (stress hor­mone). Eu­stress is con­sid­ered the good stress, the one re­spon­si­ble for that ‘carpe diem’ at­ti­tude. Con­verse­ly, dis­tress is of­ten­times re­ferred to as bad stress, usu­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with vary­ing lev­els of anx­i­ety. There­fore, one of the main ef­fects of sleep de­pri­va­tion is the con­tin­u­ous re­lease of the cor­ti­sol from the adren­al glands in times of pro­longed stress. This alone has been linked to men­tal ill­ness.

No mat­ter how much you try, you can­not make up for lost sleep. It was fun to try though. When I com­plet­ed my stud­ies I was elat­ed of course, but I had to take lots of time to read­just. Ini­tial­ly, I felt so un­easy be­ing able to just get home and do any­thing I want­ed, in­clud­ing noth­ing since I was so ac­cus­tomed to work­ing late night to ear­ly morn­ing - some­times falling asleep mid-sen­tence on an as­sign­ment to then get ready to do every­thing all over again the next day. Af­ter all of this, I could fi­nal­ly re­claim that time.

How much sleep is enough though? Many fac­tors af­fect this, in­clud­ing in­di­vid­ual needs and al­so needs of an age group. Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Sleep Foun­da­tion, with re­spect to age, the rec­om­mend­ed sleep pe­ri­od for adults be­tween 25 and 60 years is six to nine hours, sev­en to eight be­ing op­ti­mum. I know right, on­ly in a per­fect world. Based on your lev­el of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty too (which should be at least mod­er­ate for most, if not all) rest should be high on the list of pri­or­i­ties so that mus­cles have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­build af­ter be­ing used. There al­ways seems to be so much to do and so lit­tle time, but per­haps that’s where fierce­ly con­sis­tent pri­ori­ti­sa­tion would come in.

And now I have a mas­ters de­gree, like many oth­er peo­ple, but the weight of that state­ment holds dif­fer­ent­ly for every­one. The time be­tween com­plet­ing my pro­gramme and grad­u­at­ing was passed be­ing ju­bi­lant, yes, but al­so catch­ing up and be­ing able to whole­heart­ed­ly do things I may have missed out on be­fore. And then there was al­so the time be­tween re­ceiv­ing my cer­tifi­cate and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­mence­ment cer­e­mo­ny it­self, so much so, that the fi­nal well of emo­tion over­came me on the ac­tu­al day I would walk across the stage (a mo­ment I can al­ways see re­peat­ed­ly be­cause a dear friend record­ed it for me). Cross­ing that stage rep­re­sent­ed so much for me. All the sleep­less nights, the spare time used to ‘just’ fin­ish this dis­cus­sion or read on that up­com­ing top­ic, the joy of know­ing I was one step clos­er to cre­at­ing the life I imag­ined and de­served based on get­ting clos­er to my pur­pose - I felt it all on that stage - the highs and lows that brought me to that present time, and the grate­ful­ness for all in­volved, but al­so the be­lief I have in my­self and the faith test­ed in God to bring me through it.

You can do all the things, but not all things at the same time. A valu­able take away point is how much I start­ed tak­ing self-care for grant­ed be­cause I just couldn’t seem to make the time for it. Every­thing and every­body else was a pri­or­i­ty. In hind­sight, that was quite an in­jus­tice as I wasn’t my best for any­thing or any­one. Alas, as you learn you grow and I’m def­i­nite­ly thank­ful for the ex­pe­ri­ence not just for what I learnt aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but al­so what I learnt about my­self in that time and how it has pre­pared me for oth­er sea­sons in my life. So ‘take heart’ and com­fort in the fact that rough times don’t last, per­se­vere and grow through what you go through be­cause at the end of the day we are all con­querors.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored