Nurses, It's Time To Heal Ourselves

If you had told me about the changes that would come to the healthcare system, I would never have dreamed things would have gone so far off the rails.

Thankfully nursing is not linear. Meaning, there are many possibilities with the nursing degree. The business of health care may be restrictive, but you and your license are not.

As nurses in today's fast-paced society, we are faced with the ever changing landscape of the healthcare system. We have been bombarded with deadlines, social media, and constant connectivity dominating our lives. The important thing is that we must get back to the goal of getting back to ourselves.

We must get back to healing ourselves.

We are inundated with demands that stretch out our mental, physical, and emotional resources, making it easy to neglect our own well-being. Healing ourselves in such a landscape is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

We live in an age where technology is a blessing and a curse. Our cell phones provide us unparalleled access to information, connection, and productivity. On the other side it bombards us with constant notifications, distractions, and comparisons.

Social media can create a skewed sense of our reality if we don’t step away from it occasionally. Too easily, we constantly feel pressure to keep up with others. This often can lead to anxiety, depression, and a sense of inadequacy.

The societal expectations to hustle and keep up and keep pushing forward has us prioritizing work and external success over the personal happiness and health of ourselves. The grind mentality can erode our mental health, leaving us feeling burned out disconnected from ourselves.

The first step in healing is acknowledging the need for it. Whether it's emotional trauma, stress from work, or physical exhaustion, we must give appropriate attention to our own needs.

The first step in this process is to get quiet and still with yourself. Cease the scroll, I say. Set specific times to not scroll. To begin with, do not sleep with your phone on your nightstand. Get a clock. This will help prevent the before sleep scroll. You will be amazed at how much better your sleep quality becomes if you opt to read a book instead of looking at a phone 30 minutes before slumbering off.

Having the phone away from your bed will also stop the first awake scroll. No more checking emails before you are out of bed. After reading Arianna Huffington’s book Sleep Revolution, I began to incorporate these tips and tricks into my life. To my surprise, I had clearer thinking. The brain fog lifted, stress, anxiety alleviated, and generally better health overall because I was decreasing cortisol and inflammation within my body.

We have become conditioned to always do life with cell phones in hand. What if we took a break from them? There is so much freedom in being disconnected, even if it is just an hour here and there. I think we need to take back who controls the internet … is it you, or does the internet control you?

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